Summer 2026 Faculty News
July 21, 2026
Over the summer, the JTS faculty has been engaged in academic research and scholarship both at home and across the globe. Here are a few highlights.
One exciting development for the entire faculty is the return of The Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society (JANES) to JTS. A peer-reviewed academic journal, JANES is dedicated to scholarship on the languages, literatures, and material culture of the ancient Near East. The journal was founded in 1968 and housed at JTS starting in 1982. Thanks to JTS faculty and staff’s efforts, the journal will once again be hosted by JTS. The journal covers a wide range of topics, including Biblical studies, archaeology, anthropology, art history, linguistics, philology, and religious studies, with special attention to Assyriology, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hittite, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Check back often to read future volumes. You can find Volume 38 (2026), just published, along with all previous volumes at janes.jtsa.edu.
Dr. Robert A. Harris, Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages, has been working as a Visiting Professor at Bar Ilan University in Givat Shmuel, Israel, where he has finished editing new publications and has been meeting with professors, recent doctoral graduates, and current students.
In June, Professor Marjorie Lehman, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, delivered a paper at “Books on the Move: Transfer in the World of Hebrew Books,” a conference at The Schocken Institute for Jewish Research of The Jewish Theological Seminary. Her paper entitled “Books Rooted in Place: Examining the Library of the Bikur Cholim Synagogue in Bardejov, Slovakia” focused on the synagogue’s extraordinary collection of approximately 500 volumes. The synagogue and its contents were protected from Nazi and Slovak looters in 1942 by Anna Koperniechova, a non-Jewish neighbor. In preparation for the conference, Professor Lehman traveled to Bardejov, Slovakia, to attend the community’s annual memorial commemorating the Jews of Bardejov, who were murdered during the Holocaust.
In July, Dr. David Fishman, Professor of Jewish Thought, visited Ukraine and worked on the Jewish Archival Survey, a joint project of JTS and the Ukrainian Archival Service. He also spoke at a program in the city of Kamianets-Podolsk in honor of the publication of a guide to Jewish Kamianets-Podolsk and attended services with the Masorti community in Chernivtsi.
Also in July, Dr. Yael Landman, Assistant Professor of Bible, was a guest on Bar Ilan University’s podcast “The Bible Bar,” hosted by Professor Joshua Berman. The discussion drew on her article, “A Mother Gets Custody: The Legal Background to
