2006

Jewish Studies Expert To Speak At Muhlenberg College

On March 27, 2006, Jewish Studies expert Lawrence Schiffman will present a lecture, "The DaVinci Code, The Passion, and the Reconstruction of Jewish History in the Christian West," at 7:30 p.m. in Miller Forum, Moyer Hall.

 Wednesday, March 8, 2006 01:59 PM

This event is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Schiffman will address the recent depiction of important issues relating to Jews and Judaism in the wider American media, in writing and on the screen. He will raise serious questions about the manner in which Jewish history has been and is portrayed in the Christian West, even in our open-minded American society. Schiffman will discuss the various forms of counter history of the Jews, what causes them, and how academic Judaic studies respond to these challenges.

Schiffman is chairman of New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and serves as Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He is also a member of the University’s Centers for Ancient Studies and Near Eastern Studies. He is a past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Center for Online Judaic Studies in New York.

He has been featured in the PBS Nova series documentary, “Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” as well as in four BBC documentaries on the scrolls, the McNeil-Lehrer program, and a Discovery special. He appears regularly in the popular educational series, “Mysteries of the Bible,” which appears on Arts and Entertainment (A&E) and he appeared in “ Kingdom of David” on PBS.

In 1992/3 he was a fellow of the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadelphia where he was part of a research team working on the unpublished scrolls. Together with a colleague, he served as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2000). In 1991, he was appointed to the team publishing the scrolls in the Oxford series, Discoveries in the Judean Desert. He is a former editor of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries published by Brill. He is a regular contributor to the Long Island Jewish World, New York Sentinel and associated newspapers.

Schiffman received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law, and Talmudic literature.

Schiffman served as director of New York University’s program at the archaeological excavations at Dor, Israel, from 1980-82. He has served as visiting professor at Yale University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Duke University, Shier Visiting Distinguished Professor in Judaic Studies at the University of Toronto, the Johns Hopkins University, the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, the Luce Visiting Professor at the University of Hartford and the Hartford Seminary, the Azrieli Graduate School of Education at Yeshiva University, the Pontifical Gregorian University and this Spring Queens College of CUNY. He was a member of the academic committee for the Summer 1997 celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls held in Jerusalem. Schiffman is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and a corresponding fellow of the Rennert Center for Jerusalem.