JTS Welcomes New Faculty

Posted on Oct 04, 2018

Three distinguished scholars have joined the JTS faculty in the 2018-2019 academic year. In the fall, Dr. Sarah Wolf joined us as assistant professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, and Dr. Arielle Levites became our fourth Golda Och Postdoctoral fellow. In the spring, Professor Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi will be the next Ginor Visiting Professor of Israel Studies.

Sarah Wolf

Dr. Sarah Wolf received her PhD from Northwestern University, where she studied practices of textual interpretation in ancient and medieval Jewish culture. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled “The Rabbinic Legal Imagination: Scholasticism and Narrativity in the Babylonian Talmud,” reveals the narrative features of scholastic approaches to law in late antique Jewish literature. Dr. Wolf received her BA in Literature from Yale University and has studied Rabbinics at several institutions, including the Drisha Institute and Mechon Hadar. She is currently a David Hartman Center Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She will join the faculty as an assistant professor of Talmud and Rabbinics.

Arielle Levites

As a Golda Och Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Arielle Levites will continue to study contemporary Jewish life, with a focus on how religious education shapes our emotional and political selves. Throughout her accomplished career, Dr. Levites has served as a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, a visiting assistant professor at Hebrew College in the Shoolman Graduate School, a research consultant at the Jewish Education Project, and an affiliated scholar at Brandeis University’s Mandel Center. She holds a BA from Brown University in Religious Studies, a MSEd in Religious Education from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from NYU in Education and Jewish Studies.

The Golda Och Postdoctoral Fellowship, established in 2013 by the family of the late Golda Och (z’l), perpetuates the memory of JTS alumna Golda Och and commemorates Och’s professional and volunteer service to the Jewish community.

Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi

In her role as the Ginor Visiting Professor of Israel Studies, Professor Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi will bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to JTS. Professor Vinitzky-Seroussi is currently a sociologist at the Hebrew University and a faculty fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. Her major academic interest revolves around issues of collective memory and commemoration, specifically the ways in which societies cope with their difficult pasts. From 2012-2016, she served as dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Hebrew University, becoming the first woman to hold that position. Professor Vinitzky-Seroussi begins her position at JTS in spring 2019.

The Ginor Chair in Israel Studies was established in 1997 by the late Professor Zvia Ginor (z’l) and her children.