Xandy
Frisch

George Mason University
Louis Apfelbaum and Hortense Braunstein Apfelbaum Fellow

Research Topic

Healing the Traumatized Body in Second Temple Judaism

Bio

Xandy Frisch is an assistant professor of Judaic studies at George Mason University. She holds a Ph.D. in Second Temple Judaism from New York University, an M.A. in Religion from Yale Divinity School, and an M.A. in Jewish Education from Baltimore Hebrew University. 

Frisch was a 2012–13 scholar-in-residence at the Tikvah Center for Jewish Law and Civilization at NYU and a 2009–11 fellow at the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization at Cardozo Law School. Frisch has held a long interest in the literary deployment of representation of the body in Second Temple literature, and this fellowship year will expand this interest to questions of trauma and healing. 

Selected publications

  • “The Power of Pain: A Literary Reading of the Wicked Priest’s Death(s) in 1QpHab,” in From Scrolls to Traditions: A Festschrift Honoring Lawrence H. Schiffman, edS. S. Miller, M. Swartz, S. Fine, A. Jassen, and N. Gruenhaus (Brill, 2021), 99–114.
  • With Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Body at Qumran: Flesh and Spirit, Purity and Impurity in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Dead Sea Discoveries 23.2 (2016): 1–28.

Fellowship

2024–2025

Exploring health through the intersection between bodies and systems, language and physicality, religion and science, and beyond.