Uriel Gellman
is a faculty member at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, where he holds the Marcell and Maria Roth Chair in the History and Culture of Polish Jewry. His fields of interest include the social and cultural history of Jews in Eastern Europe, especially the history of Hasidism, Jewish Orthodoxy, popular religion, and processes of modernity. He is the author of The Emergence of Hasidism in Poland (2018) and co-author of Hasidism: A New History (2018).
Gershon Greenberg
born and raised in New York City, is a historian of Jewish religious thought in the modern era, focusing on Holocaust religious thought and nineteenth-century Jewish philosophy. For the last four decades, he has served as visiting professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Bar Ilan University and at Hebrew University, where he also directs the research seminar on the Jewish religious dimension of the Holocaust. He is based in Washington, DC where he is a Professor of Philosophy and Religion at American University. His newest book is To Redeem History: Orthodox Jewish Real-Time Responses to the Holocaust (Yad Vashem, 2025).
Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky
a native of Vilnius, Lithuania, holds a BSc. and an MSc. in electronics engineering and a PhD in Jewish history from Tel Aviv University. He is a researcher of the history of East-European Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with emphasis on the history of the Lithuanian Jews. He is an author of The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivas (Indiana University Press, 2022). He is currently a lecturer in an MEd. Program at Efrata College in Jerusalem.
Lara Lempertienė
is the Head of the Judaica Research Center at the Department of Documentary Heritage at the National Library of Lithuania. She received her PhD from Vilnius University. Her field of interest is the cultural history of the European Jewry, more specifically—Jewish classical texts and their integration in Jewish education; Jewish book and press; and day-to-day life of Lithuanian Jewry. She edited and co-edited several scholarly monographs and collections, and published a number of articles in Lithuanian, English, Russian, German, and Polish
Vladimir Levin
was born and raised in Saint Petersburg, USSR. Educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he heads the Center for Jewish Art at this university. His research focuses on the history and culture of East European Jews in modern times, especially on Jewish politics in the Russian Empire and material culture of European Jews. His recent publications deal with synagogues in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine (Volhynia), and Russia (including the Volga region and Siberia), Jewish cemeteries in Croatia, and Torah breastplates from Poland.
Alexander Lvov
was born and raised in Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg), USSR, now lives in Jerusalem, Israel. He studied and worked at the European University in Saint Petersburg. He is an anthropologist and historian, who has developed an anthropological approach to the study of Eastern European Jews and related groups, focusing on the relation of practices to the Jewish textual tradition. He applied his approach in the monograph The Plough and the Pentateuch: Russian Judaizers as Textual Community (2011) and the article “Blood and Matzo: Texts, Practices, Meanings” (2006) published in Religious Practices in Contemporary Russia: Collection of Articles (in Russian).
Ariel Evan Mayse
is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University, the rabbi-in-residence of Atiq: Jewish Maker Institute, and the senior scholar-in-residence at the Institute of Jewish Spirituality and Society. He is the author of Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (Stanford University Press, 2024); Speaking Infinities: God and Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritsh (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020); and, together with Arthur Green, A New Hasidism: Roots and A New Hasidism: Branches (Jewish Publication Society, 2019).
Daniel Reiser
heads the Department of Jewish Thought at Hertzog College, Israel. He specializes in Hasidic philosophy, modern mysticism, and theology related to the Shoah. His latest books are Language of Truth in the Mother Tongue: The Yiddish Sermons of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (Magnes, 2020); Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism (De Gruyter, 2018); and Sermons from the Years of Rage (2017).
grew up in Portland, Oregon (USA). After receiving his BA from Yeshiva College and study in an Israeli yeshiva, he went to Hebrew University “for a year.” It led to a PhD in Jewish History there, written under Prof. Jacob Katz and an academic career—also there. He wrote on various themes, including the rise of Lithuanian yeshiva, the historicity of the story of the Khazar conversion to Judaism, the demography of Eastern European Jewry, the history (and significance) of the bagel and falafel, and more.
Tzipora Weinberg
is a PhD candidate in Modern Jewish History at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on the intellectual and sociocultural histories of Orthodox Jews in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars and their ramifications in contemporary Orthodox life. Her most recent articles appeared in Shofar and Yale Journal of Music and Religion. She is also a producer and host of Veiled Reference, a podcast that centers on hidden aspects and episodes of women in Jewish history.
Marcin Wodziński
was born and raised in Silesia, Poland. He is a social and literary historian working at the University of Wrocław, Poland. His research focuses on the history and culture of East European Jews in modern times, especially the Haskalah and Hasidism. Of his recent publications, he is most proud of Historical Atlas of Hasidism (2018) and Hasidism: Key Questions (2018).
Yehudah DovBer Zirkind
is a senior research fellow at the Hasidic Research Institute at Herzog College and the David Cardozo Academy in Jerusalem. In addition, he is a researcher, writer, and lecturer on a wide range of topics in Torah and academic Jewish studies. His research interests include Tanach, Jewish thought and theology, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, Hasidism, Yiddish music and folklore, and Judaic bibliography.
