Shaye J.D. Cohen

Shaye J.D. Cohen

Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy
ON LEAVE Spring 2024
Shaye J.D. Cohen

PhD, Columbia University

 

Shaye J. D. Cohen is the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. This is one of the oldest and most distinguished professorships of Jewish studies in the United States. He began serving on the Committee on the Study of Religion in the fall of 2002. Before arriving at Harvard in July 2001, Prof. Cohen was for ten years the Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. Prof. Cohen began his career at the Jewish Theological Seminary where he was ordained and for many years was the Dean of the Graduate School and Shenkman Professor of Jewish History. He received his Ph.D. in Ancient History, with distinction, from Columbia University in 1975.

 

The focus of Prof. Cohen's research is the boundary between Jews and gentiles and between Judaism and its surrounding cultures. What makes a Jew a Jew, and what makes a non-Jew a non-Jew? Can a non-Jew become a Jew, and can a Jew become a non-Jew? How does the Jewish boundary between Jew and non-Jew compare with the Jewish boundary between male Jew and female Jew? On these and other subjects Prof. Cohen has written or edited ten books and over sixty articles. He has published a study of circumcision and gender in Judaism, entitled Why aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? (2005). He is perhaps best known for From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (1987; second edition 2006; third edition 2013.) which is widely used as a textbook in colleges and adult education, and his The Beginnings of Jewishness (1999), which has been widely discussed in scholarly circles.

 

In 2022 appeared the Oxford Annotated Mishnah, edited by Prof. Cohen with two colleagues. This massive undertaking was ten years in the making, and consists of three large volumes, over 2500 pages, and is the work of fifty contributors. Its stated goal is to make the Mishnah, the foundation document of rabbinic law, accessible to people for whom it is otherwise inaccessible. Prof, Cohen is currently working on a book on the relations between Judaism and Christianity in antiquity.

 

Professor Cohen will be retiring in three years.

 

Contact Information

Harvard University
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Semitic Museum, 6 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

office hours: contact the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
p: 617-496-6422

Methodologies and Approaches