As a scholar of early modern religious and cultural history, I teach a broad variety of courses in Jewish history, early modern European history, and religious and cultural history of the pre-modern era. In my research I specialize in early modern religious and cultural history in Poland, focusing on the multifaceted topic of Jewish-Christian relations. My work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2012), the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (2007 and 2012), the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Koret Foundation, YIVO Institute, and the Yad Ha-Nadiv Foundation (Israel), among others. In 2002, I was a Harry Starr Fellow at Harvard University. In the academic year 2007-2008, I was an Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.
Articles
Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto: Jews and the Reformation (with Debra Kaplan), Sixteenth Century Studies (2009)
Existing historiography has created a historiographic ghetto, seldom considering Jewish sources and Jews as relevant...
Apostasy, Fraud and the Beginnings of Hebrew Printing in Cracow (with Edward Fram), AJS Review (2006)
The article investigates the mysterious history of three Jewish brothers who began a Jewish press...
The Legend of Ger Zedek (Righteous Convert) of Wilno as Polemic and Reassurance, AJS Review (2005)
The article analyzes the popular legend of a righteous convert to Judaism in eighteenth-century Wilno...
Matai nosad ha-defus ha-`ivri be-Qraqov? [Hebrew: When Did Hebrew Printing Begin in Cracow?] (with Edward Fram), Gal-`Ed (2005)
The article challenges the common assumption that the first Hebrew book printed in Poland was...
Books
Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation (2011)
My book, Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation tells a story of...
Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-Modern Poland (with Adam Teller and Antony Polonsky) (2010)
Boundaries—physical, political, social, religious, and cultural—were a key feature of life in medieval and early...
Jews and Catholics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post Reformation Era (2006)
My first book, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post...
Contributions to Books
Sacrilegi e spazi sacri e profane: Ebrei e cristiani in Polonia d’età moderna, Brotherhood and Boundaries: Fraternià e barriere (2011)
As late as the 1926, and perhaps even up to the eve of World War...
Crime and Sacred Spaces in Early Modern Poland, Kommunikation durch symbolische Akte. Religiöse Heterogenität und politische Herrschaft in Polen-Litauen (2010)
This principle of intersection between action and sacredness was shared by both Jews and Christians....
Popular Press
Putting "Blood Libel" in Historical Context, Harvard University Press Blog (2011)
When Sarah Palin used the term “blood libel” in response to the shooting in Arizona...
Other
Review of Michael Ostling, Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland. Oxford University Press, 2011, for Polin/American Association for Polish Jewish Studies (2013)
Witches and witchcraft have fascinated not only the people of the premodern era, but also...