Notes on Contributors
Giancarlo Lacerenza is Full Professor of Jewish History, Epigraphy and Antiquities at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, and is editor-in-chief the review Sefer yuhasin and the series Archivio di Studi Ebraici / Archive of Jewish Studies.
Abraham David Ph.D. (1977) from the Hebrew University. Was born in Israel in 1943. He is dealing with Jewish history in Europe and the Near East in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. He has published numerous articles and several books in Hebrew and European languages.
Simcha Emanuel (PhD 1993) is a Professor in the Department of Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds the Ludwig Jesselson Chair of Codicology and Paleography. Emanuel is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Fabrizio Lelli is Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at “La Sapienza” University of Rome. His research mainly focuses on the philosophical and mystical literature of late Medieval and Early Modern Italian Jewish authors. He has published monographs, essays, and translations of Hebrew works, composed by Yoḥanan Alemanno (c. 1434–c. 1506), Elijah Ḥayyim of Genazzano (c. 1440–c. 1510), Elijah Menaḥem Halfan (late 15th C.– c. 1541).
Ilana Wartenberg is head of Italia Judaica at the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Centre at Tel Aviv University. An expert of medieval and early modern Hebrew science, she has been researching Hebrew mathematical treatises from Renaissance Italy influenced by the vernacular.
Francesca Valentina Diana is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Jewish Studies at the University of Pisa. Her research focuses on Jewish chronicles from the 15th and 16th centuries, moralistic literature in Hebrew and Judeo-Spanish, and the history of Sephardic communities in the Mediterranean basin. Her latest article, “Rieducare gli ebrei: La letteratura in giudeo-spagnolo contro l’erranza spirituale nella Livorno del XVIII secolo” (2023), explores Jewish Ethical and Cultural Wandering.
Guido Bartolucci (PhD 2004) is associate professor of Early Modern History at the Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna. His works focus on Christian interest for Jewish tradition between the 15th and 17th century and on the history of Jews in Italy in Early Modern Time. He published two monographs, La repubblica ebraica di Carlo Sigonio. Modelli politici dell’età moderna, (2007), and Vera Religio. Marsilio Ficino e la tradizione ebraica, (2017).
Alessandro Catastini conducted his studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and was full professor of Hebrew at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” He is the author of seven monographs and numerous articles and reviews.
Corrado Martone PhD (1995) in Jewish Studies, University of Turin, is Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at that University. He has published monographs, translations and many articles on Second Temple Judaism and textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.
Roberta Tonnarelli PhD (EPHE, Paris 2022), is curator at the Fausto Levi Jewish Museum of Soragna. Her fields of research include Jewish confraternities, epigraphy and history of cemeteries, Hebrew paleography and codicology with numerous lectures and articles to her credit.
Günter Stemberger is Professor emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria). His fields of research and publication are the rabbinic literature, the pre-Islamic history of the Jews and Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity.
Andreas Lehnardt (PhD 1999, Free University Berlin) is professor for Jewish Studies at Mainz University. He is head of a project on Hebrew binding fragments in Germany called ‘Genizat Germania’. Among his various publications, he is author of Hebräische Einbandfragmente in Frankfurt am Main. Mittelalterliche jüdische Handschriftenreste in ihrem geschichtlichen Kontext (Frankfurter Bibliotheksschriften 11) (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 2011) and of Hebräische Handschriften: Die hebräischen und aramäischen Einbandfragmente in deutschen Archiven, Bibliotheken und Sammlungen, Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland VI,2 (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag 2021).
Judith Olszowy-Schlanger FBA (PhD Cantab. 1995) is Professor of Hebrew Manuscript Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, Paris, President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. She has researched and published extensively on Hebrew palaeography, diplomatics, and linguistic tradition. Her recent publications include Learning Hebrew in Medieval England. Christian Scholars and the Longleat House Grammar (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 2023).
Saverio Campanini is professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the Alma Mater Studiorum—Università di Bologna. His research focuses mainly on Medieval Jewish mysticism and its reception in the Latin West in the Renaissance. Among his publications: Four Short Kabbalistic Treatises (2019); Francesco Zorzi, L’armonia del mondo (ed. by S. Campanini, 2010); (with S. Jurgan and G. Busi), The Gate of Heaven. Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version (2012); The Book of Bahir. The Hebrew Text, Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation and an English Version (2005).
Jordan S. Penkower is Professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University. His books and articles focus on Hebrew Bible manuscripts and Masorah, the Bible in Rabbinic Interpretation, and Medieval Jewish Exegesis with an emphasis on Rashi.
Emma Abate is Associate Professor at Bologna University. She is a specialist of Hebrew manuscripts; her books and articles are mainly dedicated to the study and edition of the Jewish magical and kabbalistic manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. She is the PI of the team project BiNaH: Bibliothèque nationale “Hebraica”, Hebrew Manuscripts in Paris based at Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (CNRS, Paris) and the scientific coordinator of the team project Books within Books: Hebrew Fragments in European Libraries.
Diletta Biagini after graduating from the Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna, received her PhD in Jewish Studies from the same university in May 2021. He carried out several research periods in the United States and Israel. In 2022, she published her doctoral thesis entitled Le confraternite della Comunità ebraica di Modena in età Moderna.
Alessia Fontanella after graduating from the University of Bologna, undertook a PhD at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University. She recently published the book L’espulsione e il ritorno degli ebrei a Mantova nel 1630 (Giuntina, 2023).
Sofia Locatelli PhD, specializes in Jewish Italian art and epigraphy. She actively contributed to the Books within Books project, cataloging numerous Hebrew fragments from the European Genizah. With multiple articles on these topics, her recent publication showcases her PhD thesis, titled Le lapidi dell'Antico Cimitero Ebraico del Lido di Venezia (Giuntina, 2024).
Elena Lolli PhD, serves as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL, and contributes to the research team of the ERC Synergy project MiDRASH. She has published the monograph The Book of the Dead of the Jewish Community of Lugo di Romagna for the years 1658–1825 (Giuntina, 2020)
Amalia Stulin is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion of University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on early modern Musar literature in Hebrew from Ottoman Palestine.
Justine Isserles Ph.D. (2012, École Pratique des Hautes Études—Saprat, Paris), focuses her research on the material aspects of Hebrew manuscripts, as well as the intellectual, liturgical, calendrical, linguistic, and medical history of medieval and pre-modern Jewry in western Europe. She has published in all these fields of research.
Josef M. Oesch Ph.D. (1977), Assistent Professor of Theological Studies at the University of Innsbruck (retired), author of “Petucha und Setuma. Untersuchungen zu einer überlieferten Gliederung im hebräischen Text des Alten Testaments” (1979) and articles on this subject. Occasional director of “Hebrew Fragments and Manuscripts in Austrian Libraries” and founder of “BILDI. Documentation for biblical literature Innsbruck”, now carried on by “ixtheo.de”. Recent publication: Ketubim Fragments in the Austrian National Library: P. Vindob. H 11, H 14, H. 104, H 119, H 156, H 191.
Ursula Schattner-Rieser Privatdozent Dr. phil. habil., Ancient Near Eastern Philologist and Jewish Studies, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Linguistics, Faculty Member of the Doctoral College “Entangled Antiquities” of the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Faculty of Philology and Cultural History of the University of Innsbruck, Innrain 52d, 6020 Innsbruck. Publishes extensively on Hebrew, Aramaic, Dead Sea manuscripts and ancient Judaism.
Giuliano Tamani has been full professor of “Filologia ebraica medievale” at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice from 1980–2012. His recent publications on Jewish printing in Italy include the article Il più originale libro ebraico stampato a Venezia nell’età pre-moderna: il Ma’aśeh Ṭuviyyah di Tobia Coen, “Materia giudaica” 27 (2022), pp. 561–574
Antonio Spagnuolo University of Bologna. A former research fellow, he obtained his joint PhD in Jewish Studies at the University of Bologna-École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, focusing on epigraphic evidence of Jews in Italy in relation to internal documentary sources. He collaborates with the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy-FBCEI and the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah-MEIS.
Libera Pisano (1985) is a Researcher Associate at Nova University of Lisbon. She received her PhD in theoretical philosophy at La Sapienza, University of Rome. She is the author of monographs and essays concerning German and German-Jewish contemporary philosophy.
Giuseppe Veltri is professor of Jewish philosophy and religion at the University of Hamburg. He is the editor-in-chief of several series published by Brill, De Gruyter, and Paideia. He is director of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies in Hamburg since 2015. His fields of research are Jewish cultural history, Jewish philosophy in the Renaissance and early modern period, magic, and biblical tradition and translations. Among his publications are Il Rinascimento nel pensiero ebraico (2020); an edition and translation of Simone Luzzatto’s Discourse on the State of the Jews (2019; with Anna Lissa) and Socrates, or On Human Knowledge (2019; with Michela Torbidoni); L’ebraismo come scienza. Cultura e politica in Leopold Zunz (2019; with Libera Pisano); Alienated Wisdom: Enquiry into Jewish Philosophy and Scepticism (2018), and Renaissance Philosophy in Jewish Garb (2009).