Robert Harris

Biography

BA, Columbia University; BHL, MA, Rabbinical Ordination, and PhD, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Robert A. Harris is professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at The Jewish Theological Seminary, teaching courses in biblical literature and commentary, particularly medieval Jewish biblical exegesis.

Dr. Harris is an expert in the history of medieval biblical exegesis. He authored Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency: Commentaries on Amos, Jonah (with Selections from Isaiah and Ezekiel).  TEAMS Commentary Series. Kalamazoo, MI:  Medieval Institute Publications, 2017. In 2004 he published a book in the Brown Judaic Studies series, Discerning Parallelism: A Study in Northern French Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis. In addition, he has published many articles and reviews in both American and Israeli journals. His dissertation (1997) was titled The Literary Hermeneutic of Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency. He is currently at work on a book entitled The Reinvention of Reading in the 12th Century Renaissance.

Dr. Harris has participated in the editing and publication of two volumes of collected essays:

• Peter Machinist, Robert A. Harris, Joshua A. Berman, Nili Samet, and Noga Ayali-Darshan, eds. Ve-‘Ed Yaaleh (Gen 2:6): Essays in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Edward L. Greenstein. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021.
• Harris, Robert A. and Jonathan Milgram. Ha-Kol Kol Yaakov: The Joel Roth Jubilee Volume. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism, Volume 61.  Boston: Brill, 2020.

He also contributed essays to both volumes:

• Harris, Robert A. “Genres of Prophetic Rhetoric in Rabbinic Exegesis.” In Ve-‘Ed Yaaleh (Gen 2:6): Essays in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Edward L. Greenstein, edited by Peter Machinist, Robert A. Harris, Joshua A. Berman, Nili Samet, and Noga Ayali-Darshan, Vol. 2, 1023–1045. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021.
• Harris, Robert A. “On the Recitation of “Amen” Between Ge’ulah and Tefillah of the Shaharit Service.” In Hakol Kol Yaakov: The Joel Roth Jubilee Volume, edited by Robert A. Harris, and Jonathan Milgram, 113–38. Boston: Brill, 2021.

Dr. Harris’s most recent publication are:

• Harris, Robert A. “Rhetoric and Polemic in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance:  Literary and Religious Interpretation in R. Yosef Kara’s Commentary on Isaiah.” In Bible et sociétés : pratiques et enjeux de l’exégèse (Moyen Âge et première modernité) (forthcoming).
• Harris, Robert A. “Speaking to and About the Other: Terms for Christians and Christianity Among twelfth century Rabbinic Exegetes.” In Shared Scripture – Divided Faiths: The Medieval Jewish-Christian Encounter over the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. Edited by Frans van Liere. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.
• Harris, Robert A. “From פשטי דקרא to פשוטו של מקרא: The Origins of Peshat Commentary in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Rabbinic Exegesis.” In Reading: Performance and Materiality in Hebrew and Aramaic Traditions, edited by Hector Patmore, Cambridge: University of Cambridge, Open Book Publishers, 2025.
• Harris, Robert A. “The Voice of the Woman: Narrating the Song of Songs in 12th Century Rabbinic Exegesis.” In The Jewish Middle Ages, edited by Carol Bakhos, and Gerhard Langer, 103–31. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2023.
• Harris, Robert A. “Peshat Rules: Two Recent Publications By Mordechai Cohen.” JSIJ: Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 23 (2023): 1–15.
• Harris, Robert A. “A Parapet, or Just One? Interpreting the Hapax Legomenon in the Middle Ages, and Other Issues Relating to Deuteronomy 22:6.” In David Gavra Tava: Studies in Honor of David Marcus: Journal of the Ancient Near East Society Special Supplement, edited by Edward L. Greenstein, 72–86. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2022.
• Harris, Robert A. “From “Religious Truth-Seeking” to Reading: The Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Emergence of Peshat and Ad Litteram as Methods of Accessing the Bible.” In The Oral and the Textual in Jewish Tradition and Jewish Education, edited by Jonathan Cohen, Matt Goldish, and Barry Holtz, 54–89. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 2019.
• Harris, Robert A. “Sexual Orientation in the Presentation of Joseph’s Character in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature.” AJS Review 43:1 (2019): 67–104.

Dr. Harris is a regular contributor for thetorah.com, including:

• On the Origins of Peshat Commentary
• Who Was Balaam’s God: YHWH El? Or Bull El?
• Korban Chagigah from the Torah to the Seder Plate: The Cow That Laid an Egg

He regularly delivers papers at academic conferences, such as the Society of Biblical Literature; the World Congress of Jewish Studies; and the International Medieval Congress. Many of his addresses have ultimately been published in various scholarly and academic journals.

Dr. Harris also lectures on medieval exegesis, biblical narrative, the Passover Haggadah and Jewish liturgy in congregations and adult education institutes around the country. A popular program reevaluates Hanukkah, and is titled “That Kislev Affair: What Really Happened at Hanukkah?”

Dr. Harris spent the Spring, 2025 semester as a Visiting Professor at Bar Ilan University.  While there, he delivered two public lectures, “Rabbinic Peshat in the Context of the Medieval Reacquisition of Classical Rhetoric” and “‘YHWH is a Man of War’ (Exodus 15:3):  The Depiction of God As a Warrior in Medieval Rabbinic Exegesis”; both of these lectures will appear in Hebrew in Israeli publications.  He also completed two English-language essays that are slated for publication in Israel, Returning to the “Unresolved Problem”: The Tension Between Peshat and Halakha in the Study of Torah” and “I Forgot to Remember to Forget:  the Verb נשני in the Context of Genesis 41:51.”  He also taught a course on Medieval Exegesis in the University’s Bible Department.

Dr. Harris has enjoyed teaching at a number of universities in Israel and Europe: he spent 1995–1997 as a visiting scholar at the Bible Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and returned there again in the summer of 2007 as a visiting associate professor. In 2004 and 2007, he taught in Moscow at JTS’s Project Judaica at the Russian State University for the Humanities; in 2019, he returned to Project Judaica, this time at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In 2011, he was a visiting professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and in 2018 served as the Gesenius Visiting Professor at the University of Halle, Germany.

Dr. Harris is a past president of the Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, a constituent organization of the International Medieval Congress.

Dr. Harris has served as a rabbi in several congregations in the United States and Israel, including the Pelham Jewish Center in Westchester County, New York, and Moriah Synagogue in Haifa, Israel.  He has continued his love for congregational work for the past 25 years by serving Temple Beth Shalom (“The Tremont Street Synagogue”) in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the High Holidays, and frequently visits there during the year as well.

Dr. Harris regularly performs with his rock band, SR2, and he has composed two original rock ‘n’ roll albums.  He is an avid performer and producer of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, and has directed and acted in at least one per year since the mid-1990s. He is a past director of theater at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, where he translated more than a dozen musical comedies into Hebrew. Dr. Harris also directed musical productions in Hebrew at JTS, as well as in Jewish schools around the metropolitan area.

Publications

• “Improving the Quality of Our Disagreements:  The Potential of ‘Scriptural Reasoning’ for Helping to Repair the World,” Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 15:2 (November 2016): Special Issue on Interreligious Reading after Vatican II.  http://jsr.shanti.virginia.edu/back-issues/volume-15-number-2-november-2016/

• “What’s In a Blessing?  Rashi and the Priestly Benediction of Numbers 6:22–27,” in Birkat Kohanim: The Priestly Benediction in Jewish Tradition.  Edited by Martin S. Cohen and David Birnbaum. New York: New Paradigm Matrix, 2016, 231–258.

• “Concepts of Scripture in the School of Rashi,” in Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction, ed. Benjamin D. Sommer (New York and London: New York University Press, 2012), 102-122.

• “Jewish Biblical Exegesis in the Middle Ages:  From Its Beginnings Through the Twelfth Century,” The New Cambridge History of the Bible.  Volume 2, 596–615, edited by Richard Marsden and Ann Matter (Cambridge University Press), 2012.

• “The Book of Leviticus Interpreted as Jewish Community,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 6 (2011): 1-15.  Download at:  http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/scjr/article/view/1783.

• “The Reception of Ezekiel Among Twelfth-Century Northern French Rabbinic Exegetes.” In After Ezekiel: Essays on the Reception of a Difficult Prophet, edited by Andrew Mein, and Paul M. Joyce, 71-88. New York, London: T&T Clark International, 2011.

• “Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis.” In History of Biblical Interpretation.  Volume 2:141–171.  Edited by Alan Hauser and Duane F. Watson. Grand Rapids, Mich.:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

• “Twelfth-Century Biblical Exegetes and the Invention of Literature.” In The Multiple Meaning of Scripture: The Role of Exegesis in Early-Christian and Medieval Culture, edited by Ineke Van ‘t Spijker, 311–29. Commentaria, vol. 2. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009.

• “Rashi and the ‘Messianic’ Psalms.” In Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism-Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Chaim Cohen, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Avi Hurvitz, Yochanan Muffs, Baruch J. Schwartz, and Jeffery Tigay, 845–62. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2008.

• “Rashi’s Introductions to His Biblical Commentaries.” In Shai le-Sara Japhet: Studies in the Bible, Its Exegesis, and Its Language, edited by Moshe Bar-Asher, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Emanuel Tov, and Nili Wayzana, 219–41. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007.

• “Contextual Reading: Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency’s Commentary on Jonah.” In Bringing the Hidden to Light: The Process of Interpretation-Studies in Honor of Stephen A. Geller, edited by Kathryn F. Kravits and Diane M. Sharon, 79–101. Winona Lake, IN: JTS, in collaboration with Eisenbrauns, 2007.

• “Structure and Composition in Isaiah 1-12: A Twelfth-Century Rabbinic Perspective.” In “As Those Who Are Taught”: The Interpretation of Isaiah from the LXX to the SBL, edited by Claire Mathews McGinnis and Patricia K. Tull, SBL Symposium Series, 171–87. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006.

• “The Rashbam Authorship Controversy Redux: On Sara Japhet’s The Commentary of Rabbi Samuel Ben Meir (Rashbam) on the Book of Job (Hebrew).” The Jewish Quarterly Review 95, vol. 1 (Winter 2005): 163–81.

• Discerning Parallelism: A Study in Northern French Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2004.

Learn with Dr. Harris at JTS Torah Online

Read Dr. Harris’s work on Academia.edu