Ishay Rosen-Zvi

Ishay Rosen-Zvi is a professor of rabbinic literature and department chair in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University. He is also a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He has taught at many universities, including Princeton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Harvard University.

Rosen-Zvi has written on issues of hermeneutics, self-formation and collective identity in Second-Temple Judaism and rabbinic literature. Among his publications are: Demonic Desires: YETZER HARA and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity (2011); Body and Soul in Ancient Judaism (2012); The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual: Temple Gender and Midrash (2012); Goy: Israel’s Others and the Birth of the Gentile (with Adi Ophir) (2018); The Secret Life of Jewish Holidays (2023); The Talmud: A History of Learning, with Yakov Z. Meir (2025); and How to Read Mishna and Midrash: An Introduction to Early Rabbinic Literature (2026).

In 2025, he received the Rothschild Prize for Excellence in the Humanities.

He earned his B.A. from Bar Ilan University and his Ph.D. with highest honors from Tel Aviv University.