three identical drawings of scales, each with the left side lower than the right

Meet the fellows!

2022–23 Fellowship Theme: Jews and Modern Legal Culture
The Katz Center is thrilled to announce the cohort for the 2022–23 academic year, engaging the theme of Jews and Modern Legal Culture.
library book spines lined up

About Us

Jewish History, Texts, Cultures, Ideas, and Experiences
Katz Center research spans all periods of Jewish history, from distant antiquity through to the present day; it reaches into every part of the globe where Jews have lived, and it is grounded in a wide range of disciplines and approaches.
ruta plant illustration on top of beige brick background

JQR 112.1 now available.

New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review
The oldest English-language journal in the field of Jewish studies has a new issue, available online and in print. See the Table of Contents on our blog.
manuscript close-up with Hebrew word "Shmini" adorned with marks

In partnership with Penn’s Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

New Virtual Course
"In the Margins of a Medieval Jewish Prayer Book: What Can Physical Manuscripts Tell Us about History?" is taught by Elisabeth Hollender, Professor of Jewish History at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Coming Up
June 13 - 14, 2022
For the Academic Community

The Jewish Home: A Volume Workshop >

This two-day in-person workshop brings together Katz Center fellows from the 2019–2020 academic year, which was focused on the theme of The Jewish Home.

Learn More
June 15 - 17, 2022
For the Academic Community

Creative Disruptions: Reimagining American Jewish Studies >

This three-day retreat brings together the 2020–21 Katz Center fellows to explore a constellation of questions about the expansion and future of American Jewish studies.

Learn More
July 31, 2022 - August 4, 2022
For the Academic Community

Summer School: Crises, Change, and Creativity in Jewish Experience >

Over a week of intensive learning with a cohort of leading scholars from different subfields and disciplines, graduate students will explore the ways Jews, as individuals and as communities, contended with different sorts of crises over the course of history.

Learn More
See Full Calendar

International Fellowship Program

Rethinking Premodern Jewish Legal Cultures

illustration of scale with one side higher than the other

The 2021–22 fellowship program treats law in theory and practice, as both created by and imposed on Jews. Seeing law as constituted by and embedded within wider dynamics, the fellows see law’s impact on various historical, religious, intellectual, artistic, and political moments, for a wide variety of actors: Jews and non-Jews, men and women, the empowered and the marginal.

Fellowship Info
Meet the Fellows
COVID Guidelines

Blog

A Nineteenth-Century Manuscript for the Sefirah Counting
May 20, 2022
A Nineteenth-Century Manuscript for the Sefirah Counting
by Louis Meiselman

Penn Libraries' Rare Judaica Cataloging Librarian examines a manuscript in the Alfonso Cassuto Collection. 

Grants for Jewish Studies in Ukraine
May 17, 2022
Grants for Jewish Studies in Ukraine

Applications for small grants to support research in Jewish studies in Ukraine are now open.

view all blog posts