Steven Weitzman serves as the Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and as the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Semitics Languages and Literatures in the department of Religious Studies. A scholar of the Hebrew Bible and its role in collective imagination, Weitzman's publications include Solomon: the Lure of Wisdom, published as part of the Jewish Lives series from Yale University Press, The Origin of the Jews: the Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age, winner of a National Jewish Book Award; and Disasters of Biblical Proportions: the Ten Plagues Then, Now, and at the End of the World, forthcoming from Princeton University Press in 2026.