Yitz Landes

Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures

Department: Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures

Phone: 212-870-5812

Email: islandes@jtsa.edu

Building Room: Unterberg 506

Office Hours: Thursdays from 1:00–3:00 p.m., or by appointment.

BA and MA, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; AM and PhD, Princeton University 

Dr. Yitz Landes (he/him) is Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures. His research focuses on the premodern transmission of Jewish knowledge, primarily vis-à-vis the history of rabbinic education and the history of the Jewish book. Dr. Landes also works on the development of Jewish ritual and liturgy, a topic he addressed in his first monograph, Studies in the Development of Birkat ha-Avodah (The Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies, 2018). Additionally, Dr. Landes researches the relationship between Jews and Christians in antiquity and the history of the modern academic study of Rabbinic Literature. 

Dr. Landes received a BA in Talmud and Halakhah and Comparative Religion and an MA in Talmud and Halakhah and Late Antique Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as an AM and PhD in Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity from Princeton University.  

At JTS, Dr. Landes teaches courses on classical and post-classical rabbinic texts, on Jewish Liturgy, on ancient Jewish History, and on Hebrew manuscript cultures. In addition, he teaches a semester of the Jewish Canon curriculum for students in List College. 

Dr. Landes’s current book project, based on his doctoral dissertation, traces the reception and transmission history of the Mishnah, the central work of the rabbinic canon, from its inception in late second-century Galilee until the publication of Maimonides commentary to the Mishnah in the 12th century. By uncovering the various ways in which people studied, memorized, copied, and cared for the Mishnah, Dr. Landes maps the spread of Rabbinic Judaism by providing a detailed picture of the history of rabbinic literacy and identity, taking into account the diversity of the various premodern Jewish communities located throughout the Mediterranean world. For his dissertation, Dr. Landes received the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise from the Center for International and Interdisciplinary Theology at Heidelberg University as well as the J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award from the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Hamburg University.

Alongside his monograph, Dr. Landes is currently co-editing and translating The Epistle of Pirqoi ben Baboi, to be published in the series Cambridge Genizah Studies, and The Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon, to be published in the series Translated Texts for Historians.