Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania

Project: Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors: Communities on the Roman-Sasanian Frontier

Research areas:

• Late Antiquity
• Ancient Judaism
• Syriac Christianity
• Roman and Sasanian Imperialism

Books

2023

• Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (forthcoming at Cambridge University Press). 

2016

• (with Aaron Michael Butts) The History of the ‘Slave of Christ’: From Jewish Child to Christian Martyr. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.
  <sup>- Reviewed in Journal of Early Christian Studies, Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion; Selections appeared in Invitation to Syriac: An Anthology (U of California, 2022).
  - Honorable Mention, Mediterranean Seminar Book Prize 2022</sup>

Edited Volumes

2023

• (with James Adam Redfield) The Making of the Rabbinic Past, Special Issue of Jewish Studies Quarterly (Forthcoming).

2020

• (with Aaron Michael Butts) Jews and Syriac Christians (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck).
  ^{- Reviewed in Revue Biblique, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, Journal of Jewish Studies, Journal for the Study of Judaism, Church History, Theologische Literaturzeitung, and The Downside Review.}

Articles

2023

• “Editorial Material in the Babylonian Talmud and its Sasanian Context,” Association of Jewish Studies Review 47, 51-76.

2022

• “Where did Rav and Shmuel Preside? Lingering Institutional Assumptions in the Study of the Late Antique Babylonian Rabbis,” Jewish History 36, 1-28.

• “Playing with Persecution: Parallel Jewish and Christian Memories of Late Antiquity in Early Islamic Iraq,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 81, 247-260.

• “Reassessing exilarchal authority between Sasanian and Early Islamic Rule,” Journal of Jewish Studies 73, 263-287.

• (with Avigail Manekin-Bamberger), “Babylonian Jewish Society: The Evidence of the Incantation Bowls,” Jewish Quarterly Review 112, 1-30.

• (with Mark Letteney) “Reconsidering the Earliest Synagogue in Yemen,” Studies in Late Antiquity 6, 627-650.

• (with Aaron Butts and Michael Hensley) “Once Again on ʾbk wdmin Ethio-Sabaic,” Aethiopica 25, 193-200.

2021

• “Being Roman in the Sasanian Empire: Revisiting the Great Persecution under Shapur II,” Studies in Late Antiquity 5, 361-402.
• “The Curious Case of the Jewish Sasanian Queen Šīšīnduxt: Exilarchal Propaganda and Zoroastrian Contact in 9th-11th Century Baghdad,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 141, 365-380.
• “The Sources of the History of ʿAbdā damšiḥā: The Creation of a Persian Martyr Act,” in Syriac Christian Culture: Beginnings to Renaissance (CUA Press), 149-173.

2020

• “Whoever is hungry, come and eat”: On the Origins and Later Development of a Puzzling Passover Passage,” Aramaic Studies 18: 171-197.

• “A Long Overdue Farewell: Retiring the Purported Jewish Origins of Syriac Christianity” in Jews and Syriac Christians (Mohr Siebeck), 121-144.

• (with Aaron Michael Butts) “Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium,” in Jews and Syriac Christians (Mohr Siebeck, 2020).

2019

• “Rethinking Babylonian Rabbinic Acculturation in the Sasanian Empire,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 9: 280-310.

2018

• “A Persian Anti-Martyr Act: The Death of Rabbah Bar Naḥmani,” in The Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and its Cultural World eds. Jeffrey Rubenstein and Geoffrey Herman (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2018), 211-242

2017

• “When the Jews Greeted ʿAlī: Sherira Gaon’s Epistle in Light of Arabic and Syriac Historiography,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 24: 122-144.

2016

• “Irano-Talmudica and Beyond: Next Steps in the Contextualization of the Babylonian Talmud,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106: 248-255.

Forthcoming articles

• “Hopeful Rebels and Anxious Romans: Jewish Interconnectivity in the Great Revolt and Beyond,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 72 (2023).

• (with James Adam Redfield), "The Making of Rabbinic Pasts.” Introduction to Jewish Studies Quarterly special issue (2023).

• “Historiography of Babylonian Jewish Communities: A Critical Evaluation and Future Directions” in Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity ed. Catherine Hezser (2023).

• “Babylonian Rabbinization in Late Antiquity through the early Middle Ages.” In Rabbinization & Diversity vol. 2, eds. Raʿanan Boustan, Geoffrey Herman, Eve Krakowski, and D. Stökl Ben Ezra (2024).

Other contributions

2022

• “Whoever is Hungry, Come and Eat”: From the Babylonian Poor to the Ashkenazi Elijah,” Jewish Review of Books, Spring: 31-33.

2019

• “Judaism Here, There, but not Everywhere,” response to Daniel Boyarin’s Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion in Marginalia forum.

Forthcoming contributions

• (with Avigail Manekin-Bamberger) “Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism,” in The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, 333 B.C.E.–600 C.E. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• (with Yakir Paz) Translation of Narsai’s Homily on Saint Stephen in Narsai: The Homilies ed. Kristian Heal, Robert Kitchen, Aaron Michael Butts Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America.
• “Persia” (Rabbinic Literature). Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Berlin: de Gruyter
• “Persecution” (Rabbinic Literature). Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Books in progress

• (with Krista Dalton), Oxford Handbook of Rabbinic Literature (Oxford University Press).
• (with Gideon Bohak and Avigail Manekin-Bamberger), Jewish Magic in the Early Medieval Period (Magic in History series at Penn State Press).
• (with Yakir Paz), The Great Persecution: Martyrs at the Court of Shapur II (Gorgias Press).
• (with Yitz Landes), The Epistle of Pirqoi Ben Baboi: Critical Edition, Translation, and Introduction (Cambridge Genizah Studies series, at Brill).

Reviews

2018

• Aryeh Kofsky, Serge Ruzer, with Reuven Kiperwasser, Reshaping Identities in Late Antique Syria-Mesopotamia: Christian and Jewish Hermeneutics and Narrative Strategies (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2016), Church History 87: 172-174.

2017

• Khodadad Rezakhani, ReOrienting the Sasanians: East Iran in Late Antiquity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), at Ancient Jew Review, 2017.

2015

• Laurie Pearce and Cornelia Wunsch, Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2014), at Ancient Jew Review

2014

• Shai Secunda, Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), at the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, 2014.