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Phd Alumni | Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

Phd Alumni

Yaniv Abir

Yaniv Abir

Department of Cognitive Sciences

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Research subject: Epistemic bridges between different levels of explanation in the study of consciousness - a data driven approach

Supervisor: Prof. Ran Hassin

Abstract: Using data-driven methods we are constructing high-dimensional models of the preferences of the human unconscious. Using these models we seek to directly compare the results of different methods of measuring conscious experience and its neural correlates, thus constructing bridges between sometimes disparate methods, anchored in different levels of explanation - biological and psychological.

Bio: I study high-dimensional models of selection for consciousness, hoping to understand the basic priorities of human cognition, and learn about the mechanism behind emergence of content into consciousness.

 Publications:

Abir, Y., Sklar, A. Y., Dotsch, R., Todorov, A., & Hassin, R. R. (Under review). Determinants of conscious experience – a data-driven approach.

 

Presidential Stipend 2017/18

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Shai  Alleson-Gerberg

Shai Alleson-Gerberg

Department of Jewish History

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Subject: The Book of the Words of the Lord: Its linguistic, literary and doctrinal character

Supervisor: Dr. Paweł Maciejko

Abstract: For inveterate eighteenth century opponent of Sabbateanism Rabbi Jacob Emden, skeptical, rationalist worldviews on the one hand and Sabbateanism on the other, constituted the opposite faces of theological heresy that threatened to undermine religious foundations and topple traditional Jewish society. Emden was right. While the God of the philosophers was fettered to the rationalist mechanism of the universe, hidden from the world and indifferent to its fate, ‘the God of Sabbatai Zvi’ was very personal, capricious and unpredictable. He cancelled his Law at a sweep and commanded his messiah to convert. In any case, the old world was crumbling away. Jacob Frank (1726-1791) who is considered to be the most radical Sabbatean representative in the eighteenth century, tried to bring ‘a new thing to the world’ by crushing all the laws and religions including the Sabbatean tradition from which he emerged and Christianity into which he disappeared with his followers. The Book of the Words of the Lord (Zbiór Słów Pańskich), a collection of Frank’s sayings, is a unique reflection of the rupture in Jewish society at turn of the modern era, and a fascinating attempt at religious renewal. 

 

Words of the Lord is the main Frankist source and of the utmost importance for the movement’s history after the Frankists converted to Christianity in 1759, and detailed documentation of their doctrine at its climax. A manuscript in three recensions, it is no ordinary work. Lacking a distinct plot and with no consistent rationale, it is a mixture of fables, dreams, tirades and memories from different times. It is also a stew of different traditions: Be they, rabbinical and Zoharic exegesis or elements of Catholic rite, Polish Kabbalah or Turkish Sabbateanism, Sufi narratives or Slavic folklore. The syncretistic nature of Words of the Lord and the ethos of novelty that echoes constantly throughout, is also expressed in its language. The source is written in Polish inlaid with Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Ladino and Turkish. Its 'iconoclastic' content, use of ‘liminal’ linguistic means, such as multi-lingual puns, and finally, its rejection of the holy tongue in favour of the ‘seventy tongues’ of the nations – all this comprises the new language that Frankists sought to adopt on their twisted path towards the secret gnosis of Edom and the true God. In Frank’s words: ‘When you come to the sun, you must talk like the sun and dress in the same robes as the sun, and when you come to the moon, wear the same robes as the moon and talk in moon language. 

 While research on Words of the Lord has mainly focused on the Kabbalistic and Sabbatian roots of Frankist doctrine, my research will analyse its philological, literary and theological aspects, while taking the wider historical context of the early modern period into account. Baroque phenomena such as the tension between external façade and hermetic internal content, positioning personal religion based on non-traditional reading of the scriptures, abandonment of God and God’s abandonment of the world, the obsession with dreams, etc. – all these are important features of Words of the Lord which need to be considered. In this way, for the first time, a detailed and inclusive picture of the source will emerge. I aim to shed new light on the creation of the anthology, its contacts with various literary and religious traditions, its hermeneutics and finally, also on the inner world of Jacob Frank and his disciples at the turn of the modern era.

 

Presidential Stipend 2014/15

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Netta Amir

Dr. Netta Amir

Department of History

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Subject: The Formation of the Way of the Cross in Late-Medieval Jerusalem

Supervisors: Prof. Ronnie Ellenblum, Prof. Iris Shagrir and Prof. Reuven Amitai 

Abstract: The Way of the Cross has been one of Jerusalem’s most prominent axes for Christian worship in the past 700 years or so, at least from the Latin-Christian perspective. Although its production process finds its roots in the Crusader period, the Way of the Cross flourished and became a stable part of the pilgrimage circuit while Jerusalem was under Muslim rule, and while the Christians were limited by changing restriction of movement, worship and ownership. My dissertation deals with the formation of the Way of the Cross in Late Medieval Jerusalem.

Bio: Netta Amir is a PhD student at the History Department and a receiver of a Mandel Scholion scholarship as well as a  Rotenstreich scholarship. Her dissertation deals with the formation of the Way of the Cross in Late-Medieval Jerusalem, and it is being written under the supervision of Prof. Ronnie Ellenblum and Prof. Iris Shagrir.

Rotenstreich Stipend 2018/19

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or amir

Dr. Or Amir

Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

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Subject: Mamluk Emirs and Sufi Shaykhs: A Study in the Relations between Rulers and Holy Men

Supervisors: Reuven Amitai and Daniella Talmon-Heller

Abstract: This study examines the relations formed between the Mamluk elite and Sufi Shaykhs in Greater Syria (Bilād al-Shām), from both a utilitarian perspective – i.e. bestowing patronage in exchange for religious and political legitimacy; as well as from the perspective of the Mamluks’ sincere belief in the charismatic and thaumaturgic talents of those Shaykhs, and the Mamluks’ active participation in various Sufi rituals. Among the main inquiries of this study will be, to what extant the Mamluks, as well as the historiography composed during their reign, were affected from the Seljuq traditions, which were adopted and developed under the Zengids and Ayyubids; and what can be learned about the Mamluks from their attitude towards those Shaykhs, as well as what can be learned from it about the important role those Shaykhs played in the Islamic society of Late Medieval Syria. 

Publications:

  • "חייהם הדתיים של המוסלמים באזור צפת במאות השלוש-עשרה – ארבע-עשרה על פי מקור חדש-ישן," קתדרה 156 (תשע"ה), 70-39.
  • “Niẓām al-Dīn Yaḥyā al-Ṭayyārī – An Artist in the Court of the Ilkhans and Mamluks”, forthcoming in Asiatische Studien 2017.
  • “Forming a New Local Elite: The ‘Uthmānī Family of Ṣafad”, forthcoming in Proceedings of the Third Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies, Leiden 2018.

 

Presidential Stipend 2014/15

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Roy Amir

Dr. Roy Amir

Philosophy

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Subject: Ground-Laying as the Object's Ground: The Notion of Rationality in
Hermann Cohen's System der Philosophie

Supervisor: Prof. Elhanan Yakira, Dr. Tatiana Karachentseva

Abstract: The work analyses the notion of rationality presented in Hermann Cohen's "System der Philosophie" (1902-1912). In contrast to the customary view, I show that his rationalism is grounded in an intensional theory of conceptuality, taken in the Leibnizian sense. Such a theory comprehends the concept as an expression of the intelligibility of an individual being, an expression of its being a rational possibility, rather than a general-formal relation. The work demonstrates that a reading of Cohen's "logic of origin"  on the base of the principles of a Leibnizian intensional theory of concepts clarifies the internal logic of Cohen's arguments and provides means for evaluating the problematics of rationality placed at the core of the system. I show that Cohen's system attempts to present an intensional rationalism without the (dogmatic) presupposition of the compete rationality of the actual. In that, it represents a unique and philosophically valuable notion of rationality.  

  

I am interested in rationalism (both as a philosophical tradition and as a philosophical stance), Kant, German Idealism and Neo-Kantianism. My research so far has dealt with Cohen's system, with the notion of rationality it embodies, and with the manner in which this notion influences Cohen's ethical, cultural, theological, and political views.   

Publications:

Amir, Roy. Messianism and the Possibility of knowledge in Cohen and Benjamin, Paradigmi. Rivista di critica filosofica (2017:1), pp. 61-78. 

 

Rotenstreich Scholarship 2015/2016

Presidential Stipend 2013/2014

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Adam Anabussi

Middle East and Islamic studies.

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Research Topic:  The Palestinian refugees relation with their families in Israel, Between 1948-1970.

Supervisors:  Prof. Liat Kozma and Dr. Abigail Jacobson.

President Stipend

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Avigail Aravana

Avigail Aravna

Department of Bible Studies

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Research subject: Isaiah 24-27 and its Reception in Second Temple literature 

Supervisor: Prof. Michael Segal, Dr. Ronnie Goldstein

Abstract: The study seeks to trace the textual expressions of the unit of prophecies called "The Apocalypse of Isaiah", chapters 24-27, and its development in Second Temple literature.

Bio: Avigail Aravna is a graduate of the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and will be a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the President's Fellowship and a colleague at the Mandel School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Her research deals with biblical and external apocalyptic literature during the Second Temple period.

Publications: 

“Sending Subtle Threads of Influence into the Past: A Reexamination of the Relationship between Isaiah 24:6 and Jeremiah 23:10” in:The History of Isaiah: The Making of the Book and its Presentation of the Past (FAT). Edited by T. Hibbard and J. Stromberg. Mohr Siebeck. (forthcoming 2021)
 

Presidential Stipend 2017/18

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Chanan Ariel

Dr. Chanan Ariel

The department of Hebrew Language

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Subject: Studies in the Vocabulary and Syntax of The Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah)

Supervisor: Prof. Yochanan Breuer

Abstract: Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Moses Maimonides), born in Cordoba, Spain under Islamic rule (1138 CE) and later the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt and the physician of the Egyptian royal courtuntil his death (in 1204 CE), is well known for his philosophical work, The Guide to the Perplexed, and for his Halakhic work, Mishneh Torah . In the latter, Maimonides compiled all Halakhic statements in Rabbinic literature, sorting them by topics. He settled all of the disputes that remained in the Halachic literature and translated into Hebrew all the Aramaic citations from external sources . This text is a masterpiece, characterized by uniform structure and linguistic clarity.
 
The proposed research focuses on two major areas of language: vocabulary and syntax, and aims to discuss them systematically, comparing Mishneh Torah to Mishnaic Hebrew, on the one hand, Maimonides' declared language of choice in this text, and therefore his 'default mode', and on the other hand comparing it to Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic to account for the evident differences between the language of Mishneh Torah and Mishnaic Hebrew.

Publications:
1.    חנן אריאל ואלכסיי יודיצקי, "שלוש קריאות חדשות בתעודות מדבר יהודה", לשוננו עב (תש"ע), עמ' 337–341
2.    חנן אריאל, "הגעיה וקביעת סוג הקמץ – מחלוקת מדקדקי ספרד", ישראל: מחקרים בלשון לזכרו של ישראל ייבין (בעריכת רפאל יצחק זר ויוסף עופר), ירושלים תשע"א, עמ' 21–43
3.    חנן אריאל ואלכסיי יודיצקי, "אל תמחול את היונה: עיון במגילה ארמית מקומראן", אקדם 49 (מרחשוון תשע"ד), עמ' 6–7 (לגרסה אנגלית מורחבת ראו פרסום 15 להלן)
4.    חנן אריאל ואלכסיי יודיצקי, "בע"ר ובע"י בעברית ובארמית", מגילות י (תשע"ד), עמ 149–162
5.    חנן אריאל, "המקור הנטוי המשמש כפועל חיווי במגילות קומראן", נטעי אילן: מחקרים בלשון העברית ובאחיותיה מוגשים לאילן אלדר, בעריכת מ' בר-אשר וע' מאיר, ירושלים תשע"ד (2014), עמ' 29–50
6.    חנן אריאל, "על ארבע סתומות במגילות מדבר יהודה", לשוננו עו (תשע"ד), עמ' 9–26
7.    חנן אריאל, אלכסיי יודיצקי ואלישע קימרון, "פשר על הקצים א –ב ( 4Q180ו־4Q181): ההדרה , לשון ופרשנות", מגילות יא–יב (תשע"ד-תשע"ה [הכרך יצא לאור בשבט תשע"ו]),  עמ' 3–39
8.    חנן אריאל ואלכסיי (אליהו) יודיצקי, "יברך – עדות על תצורת הפועל בימי הבית הראשון", לשוננו עח,ג (תשע"ו), עמ' 239246–
9.    חנן אריאל, "מתמוטטים, כושלים, נידחים ושבויים: עיוני סמנטיקה ופרשנות במגילות קומראן", מגילות יג (תשע"ז) (בדפוס)
10.    Chanan Ariel, “Dual: Pre-Modern Hebrew”, Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, (ed. G. Khan et. al.), Brill: Leiden and Boston 2013, vol. 1, pp. 775–776
11.    Chanan Ariel, “Orthography: Biblical Hebrew”, Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, (ed. G. Khan et. al.), Brill: Leiden and Boston 2013, vol. 2, pp. 940–948
12.    Chanan Ariel, “Usage of Biblical Vocabulary in Mishneh Torah (The Code of Maimonides”, Iberia Judaica 7 (2015), pp. 127–140 
13.    Chanan Ariel, “The Expression of Material Constitution in Revival Hebrew”, Journal of Jewish Languages 3  (2015), pp. 231–244
14.    Chanan Ariel and Alexey (Eliyahu) Yuditsky, "Remarks on the Languge of the Pesher Scrolls", Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 114  (2015), pp. 1–6
15.    Alexey (Eliyahu) Yuditsky1 and Chanan Ariel, “ואל תמחולהי ביד שחפא: ‪4Q541, Frag. 24 Again”, Dead Sea Discoveries, 23, 2 (2016), pp. 221–232‬‬‬‬
16.    Chanan Ariel, “Deviations from the Mishnaic Hebrew Syntax in Mishneh Torah Due to the Influence of Arabic – Subordination or Intentional Usage?”, Bar-Asher Siegal, Elitzur A. and Aaron Koller (editors), Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew and Related Fields: Proceedings of the Yale Symposium on Mishnaic Hebrew, May 2014, New Haven-Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language Press (in press)
17.    Chanan Ariel, "Why Did the Future Form of the Verb Displace the Imperative Form in the Informal Register of Modern Hebrew?", (final draft under review for publication of the papers from the Language Contact, Continuity and Change in the Emergence of Modern Hebrew conference, Jerusalem July 2016)

18.    חנן אריאל, "על סימון הקמצים, השוואים וההטעמה בסידור קורן", אתר הוצאת קורן במרשתת https://www.korenpub.com/koren_he_ils/shitat_hanikud (גרסה ללא ההערות נדפסה בסוף סידור קורן  נוסח אשכנז ונוסח ספרד, בעריכת הרב דוד פוקס, ירושלים תשע"א 2011)

 

Rotensreich Stipend 2015/16

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Miri Avissar

Miri Avissar

Department of General and Comparative Litrature

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Subject: Ludic Quests: Gogol, Melville, Nabokov

Supervisor: Prof. Ilana Pardes

Abstract: In my doctoral research, provisionally titled "Ludic Quests: Gogol, Melville, Nabokov," I offer a comparative reading of three novels: "Dead Souls," "Moby-Dick," and "Lolita." The focal point of my analysis is the examination of correspondences between the geographic and the poetic-cum-interpretive quests performed in each work. I argue that both types of quests—the literal and the figurative—are characterized by distinct playfulness, a particularly significant manifestation of which is the personages' and speakers' continual digression to the margins of the road and of discourse alike. In addition to explicating philosophical and formal affinities between the three novels with regard to the benefits and the hazards of ludically going off track, my study seeks to trace the Russian-American dialogue in which Nabokov engages with two of his nineteenth-century predecessors.

Publications:

* "על העיוורון: ספר איוב כמודל להארה רוחנית בסונטה התשע-עשרה של
מילטון", מוזה: כתב עת לתלמידי מחקר במדעי הרוח, גיליון 1 (2017): 7-22.

 

Rotenstreich Stipend 2017/18

Presidential Stipend 2015/16

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Asfahan Bahaloul

Asfahan Bahaloul

Department of Jewish history and contemporary Jewry

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Subject: Shaping of the Holocaust in the Arab Newspapers

Supervisor: Dr. Amos Goldberg & Professor Hillel Cohen

Abstract: The media arena is perceived as a key site for the distribution and reproduction of cultural significances, as well as social patterns, thereby reflecting perceptions, standpoints and values. The Israel Arabic press is a tool for shaping the character of the Arab-Palestinian society between two identities: national and civil. The Israel Arabic press has a key role in examining identity-associated dilemmas: parallel trends- The Holocaust memory in Israel and the Arab discourse into this memory can be examined through the cultural approach to media research. The journalistic act serves to expose ideological mechanisms, and so the media at large, particularly the press, construct and shape national narratives among an imaginary community whose individuals have a sense of shared fate.The Arabic press’ choice of highlighting, or ignoring, Holocaust discussions also has its roots in cultural national contexts. In order to discuss the Holocaust’s role in shaping the collective memory of the Arab society in Israel, one can employ the term of naturalisation, coined by Roland Barthes.2 This construction or the lack thereof attests to the ideological view held by the Arabic press in regards to this sensitive issue. It therefore follows that the significances of journalistic texts are constructed by means of symbolic representation systems that make up the cultural-media discourse. The constructs and significances of the Holocaust memory framing are examined using two major perspectives: the narrative, shaped from a cultural or personal point of view, and the constructivist one, whereby knowledge is a product of human construction, not necessarily a reflection of an “objective” reality exposed.

Bio: I analyzed the Arab press with different political orientations and demonstrated the changes of Arab newspaper coverage relating to the Holocaust discourse. I took into account that in the Eighties there was a dramatic increase in publication of new popular Arab media.

New publications such as “Panorama” a weekly tabloid which dealt with not only political issues but also popular culture. On the other hand the Northern communist party paper
“Al Etihad” (The United) and “Sout el Hak” ( The voice of Truth and Justice) which belongs to the Israeli Islamic movement are more extreme newspapers than the moderate Panorama.

Publications:

Shaping of the Holocaust in Arab Newspapers

 

Presidential Stipend 2016/17

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Hallel Baitner

Dr. Hallel Baitner

Talmud and halakha

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Subject: Sifre Zuta beMidbar and its incorporation in Midrash

Supervisor: Prof. Menahem Kahana

Abstract: The Tannaitic midrash Sifre Zuta beMidbar did not survive in its entirety, and some of it was revealed through lone genizah fragments and many quotations in mediaeval rabbinic literature. Like of the halakhic midrash from the school of R. Akiba, this midrash too employs mishnaic material which stood before it in various ways.As it has already been shown, its mishna was not the known mishna of R. Judah the Patriarch, but rather another mishnaic corpus that can teach us the sources and redactional methods of our mishna. My philological-exegetical research aims to characterise this corpus and its ties to our mishna, as well as the ways in which the midrash employs it.

 

Presidential Stipend 2012/13

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Dr. Tali Banin

Department of English

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Research subject: Posthuman Intimacy: Birds in the Discourse of Love of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Ford Madox Ford

Supervisor: Dr. Ruben Borg

Abstract: In my doctoral dissertation I look at how early 20th-century British writers employ bird imagery to define love. Using three points of focus - bird song, bird movement, and nesting - I examine how D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Ford Madox Ford renounce romantic conventions in favor of a "nonhuman love" inspired by bird courtship rituals and behaviors. By working at the intersection of literary modernism, critical animal studies, ornithology, and philosophies of love, I hope to gain a fresh perspective on these canonical writers, which feeds into contemporary discourse both on the posthuman and on the dissolution of the Victorian courtship plot in modernist fiction.     

 

President Stipend 2017/18

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Naama Bar-Eitan Sadovsky

Naama Bar-Eitan Sadovsky

Hebrew Literature

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Subject: Lateness – Poetics of Late Poetry

Supervisor: Dr. Tamar Hess

Abstract: In the dissertation I wish to examine the late poetry of Tuvia Rivner, Israel Pincas, S. Shifra, and Avot Yeshurun in light of the perspective of "late style" and old age.
"Late style" as an independent field of research that offers a multi-directional model for the examination of late works has yet to be assimilated in the research of modern Hebrew poetry. This, despite fascinating and varied developments in this field of research around the world. Studies of the artist as an old man and artistic works towards the end of life have been conducted in recent decades in various fields of art, such as music, painting, and literature, juxtaposing aesthetic research tools and psychoanalytical theories concerning the cycle of life and theories from the field of gerontology, which at the same period of time established itself as an independent scientific field of research.
In the proposed research I wish to open a more significant window upon these developments and, as I mentioned above, use the perspectives of old age and "late style" to examine the late works of the four poets. The working assumption is that this perspective can serve as a valuable interpretive tool for understanding the poetical changes in the late work of these poets and vice versa: A thorough examination of the late works of these poets and the uncovering of the inner dialectical processes that motivate stylistic changes in their work can contribute to the developing theoretical discussion in this field.

Bio: I studied for my BA and MA at Hebrew University, in the Hebrew Literature department, and also completed MA studies on the creative writing track in the Hebrew Literature department of Ben Gurion University in the Negev. In the last years I devoted myself mostly to educating and teaching in the Hebrew University Secondary School (Leyada), and in various academic institutions - in The Hebrew University, David Yellin Teacher’s College, the Academy for Music and Dance, and others. I wrote my M.A. final thesis about Tuvia Rivner's poetry, with a view to examining the existential-linguistic contradiction that is at its core. In the dissertation I deal with the poetic features of late poetry, under the guidance of Dr. Tamar Hess.

 

Presidential Stipend 2016/17

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Moshe Elyashiv Bar-Lev

Dr. Moshe Elyashiv Bar-Lev

Linguistics

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Subject: Homogeneity phenomena and strengthening

Supervisor: Prof. Danny Fox and Dr. Luka Crnič

Publications:

  • “A unified existential semantics for bare conditionals” with Itai Bassi (2016). To appear in Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21.
  • “De re tenses and Trace Conversion” (2015). In S. D’Antonio, M. Moroney and C.R. Little (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 25, pp. 184–203.
  • “Hebrew kol: a universal quantifier as an undercover existential” with Daniel Margulis (2014). In U. Etxeberria, A. Fălăuş, A. Irurtzun and B. Leferman (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 18, pp. 60–76.

 

 

Presidential Stipend 2015/16

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Venus Bargouth

Dr. Venus Bargouth

The English Department

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Subject: Wordsworth's Revisions

Supervisor: Prof. Leona Toker

Abstract: This dissertation studies the revisions made by William Wordsworth to Salisbury Plain, The Borderers and The Ruined Cottage, the works whose early versions are, to a large extent, his response to the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution. The revisions made by the poet to these three works in the course of his life, during which his ideological, moral, political and poetical principles underwent changes, are sometimes radical. This study demonstrates how his evolving worldview is reflected in his textual changes. The revisions also show how Wordsworth’s experience of the French Revolution influenced not only his early political inclinations and poetic vocation but also many of his responses to political events in his conservative years and thus his later poetry. Hence, among other things, my research supports the position of those literary critics who deny that Wordsworth’s poetry elides its political moment: his early works do respond to the political and historical events of the time of their composition.  
    Pace New Criticism, which marginalizes the author’s intention or rather seeks to separate the artist and his works in accordance with the critique of the intentional fallacy, I argue that in order to understand what stimulated the composition of Salisbury Plain, The Borderers and The Ruined Cottage, and what later motivated the revisions made to these poems, we may seek suggestions from Wordsworth’s life even at the risk of disturbing his image as an extraordinary being.
     The three works, initially composed in the 1790s, mark a turning point in Wordsworth’s poetic progress. It was only after his return to England from France in 1792, during cycles of his hope and despair, that his genuine voice emerged. None of the poems written prior to Salisbury Plain manifests the revolutionary power of his poetic genius. Salisbury Plain, The Borderers and The Ruined Cottage form the foundation of Wordsworth’s life-long defence of humanity in general and the people of the lower classes in particular. Moreover, it is through these works that the poet’s philosophical vision of the oneness of the human heart with nature ripens, in his attempts to come to terms with the human condition and place suffering in a framework which facilitates coping with it.
     Evidence in Wordsworth’s correspondence suggests that in 1798, while working on The Ruined Cottage, he was also thinking about Adventures on Salisbury Plain and The Borderers. Rather than finishing one poem, laying it aside and taking up another, he simultaneously worked on the three, which explains some of the similarities in their thematic concerns and style. Yet the move from Salisbury Plain to The Borderers attests to changes in Wordsworth’s attitude to such issues as motivation, intention, crime, punishment, political institutions and formal law. Furthermore, whereas after 1799 Wordsworth never attributed importance to either Adventures on Salisbury Plain or The Borderers till the decision was made to publish them in 1842, The Ruined Cottage preoccupied him for the rest of his life. 
     The study of the development of the early versions of the three works reveals the maturation of Wordsworth’s art and the evolution of some aspects of his political and philosophical stance. He gradually becomes a poet of the human psyche. Whereas the early version of Salisbury Plain shares some features with contemporary protest poems, in his revisions Wordsworth transcends the political and social focus of protest poetry in probing the inner lives of his suffering characters, with an emphasis on guilt and fear. Conveying tension between reason and emotions, he works out emotivist principles in the ethical positions that transpire from his works as well as in his literary theory, unifying his axiology. He also resolves his attitude to such issues as compassion, remorse, penitence and justice. The Wanderer, as The Ruined Cottage was titled in 1814, serves as a step towards a larger work which would grant completion to Wordsworth’s philosophical and ideological principles. The alterations made for the 1814 version facilitate its incorporation into the design of The Recluse, the poet’s planned philosophical work about man’s relation to nature and society. 
      Wordsworth endorsed a succession of political and philosophical identities, moving from liberal republicanism to Godwinian rationalism to the transcendental philosophy of the One Life and eventually to political and religious conservatism. His longevity as well as shifts in his socio-economic condition made axiological changes possible. By his seventies he had become a rather conservative financially secure family man in the government employ. In 1843, the poet who had once declared that he abhorred monarchy became Queen Victoria’s Poet Laureate. Wordsworth did not deny that he was changing. Time-induced changes constitute recurrent thematic concerns in many of his works. In 1801 he noted that his early poems represented opinions widely different from those that he held at present. In The Prelude the speaker repeatedly observes that youth played a significant role in his early judgments. The mainstream public opinion of Wordsworth changed as well. By the late 1830s, those attributes of his poetry which had once been scorned by many came to be identified as the sources of his strength. His poetry was constantly quoted, and his works were acknowledged as intellectual stimuli. This new status imposed new obligations. 
     My research examines the ways in which these biographical factors may have influenced the revisions of Wordsworth’s early works, revisions that affected the fashioning of his image for posterity. 
     The changes which some of Wordsworth’s principles underwent are evident in the revisions that he made to the poems that he had written in his twenties but published in his seventies. In 1842, when he published his earlier radical, pantheistic and revolutionary anti-war poetry, such as Salisbury Plain, in Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, he omitted, added or rewrote complete verse paragraphs, as well as separate lines and words. Guilt and Sorrow; or Incidents upon Salisbury Plain and (to a smaller degree) The Borderers were so altered that they revealed little or nothing of Wordsworth’s erstwhile radicalism. This was followed by the 1845 publication of the likewise heavily revised version of The Excursion, of which the first book had started as The Ruined Cottage in 1797. By this time, in addition to other changes in his status, Wordsworth was also held in reverence as a conservative Christian poet. He now had to and probably wished to conform to what was required of him as a public figure. Drawing attention to his political past or reviving its spirit would have been counterproductive. The study of Wordsworth’s revisions suggests that he might have mitigated his earlier radicalism by self-censorship.  
      When the conformist elderly poet excised those cultural cues that anchored the poems in the historical context of the reactionary 1790s, he altered the portrayal of characters, their interactions, conversations and the nature of their relationships. Sometimes such changes cause inconsistencies and logical contradictions in the plot and the arguments made in the poems. Even when no drastic changes in thematic concerns are detected between two versions, changes in emphasis or word order indicate different attitudes or altered states of mind. The later version of The Borderers, for instance, seems to enhance the play’s philosophical concerns at the expense of the psychological ones. Although the revisions sometimes attest to major ideological changes, the earlier and later versions of the poems share thematic concerns, which points to a continuity in the poet’s preoccupations.
     Comparing the published versions with the earlier manuscript ones, this study considers whether the revisions serve to adapt Wordsworth’s early works, directly related to his moral crisis in France and suffused with republican opinions, to engagement with newly emerging social and political affairs, such as the contemporary debates concerning the Poor Laws and the abolition of the death penalty. The changes in the poet’s attitude explain how Salisbury Plain and The Borderers accrued different meanings when, as a political figure, he started serving different causes, some diametrically opposite to those of his early years. The new versions are not only geared up to the context of 1842 but also praise the selfsame institutions which Wordsworth had earlier abhorred.
     Wordsworth’s 1842 revisions also reflect changes in aesthetic preferences. In his later years he disavowed that principle on which his poetics was founded; namely, to write in ordinary language for ordinary people. Rather, he resorted to eloquent sometimes artificial language which suits élite expectations. Judging by his own criteria, with which some literary critics agree and some do not, the later versions have a greater aesthetic merit. This claim is examined in the dissertation.

 

 

Bio: I am interested in the Romantic period. I love excursions in nature. I have a husband, a son and a dog.

 

Rotenstreich Stipend 2016/17

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ilil

Dr. Ilil Baum

The Department for Romance and Latin American Studies

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Subject: Judeo-Catalan and Jewish Multiglossia in Medieval Catalonia

Supervisor: Prof. Cyril Aslanov

Abstract: My research focuses on the (socio)linguistic aspects of the Jewish communities of Catalonia before the Expulsion of 1492. The study consists of a linguistic and philological analysis of texts and documents in Catalan written in Hebrew characters (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries). Some of these documents have not been published or edited thus far.  I also discuss the notion of “Judeo-Catalan” and aspects of language usage in a multiglossic community: when and in what context did these Jews use Catalan and Hebrew, and what was their treatment and knowledge of Arabic and Latin throughout the Middle Ages.

 

Polonsky Stipend 2013/14

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Lital Belinko-Sabah

Dr. Lital Belinko-Sabah

Romance and Latino-American studies

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Subject: Discourse Analysis of Judeo-Spanish Folk-Narrative from the early 20th century

Supervisor: Dr. Aldina Quintana and Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem

Abstract: Mapping of syntactical and morphological structures marking foreground and background in Judeo-Spanish folktales documented between 1914-1935 in the Balkan region.

 

Rothschild Stipend 2014/15

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Moran

Dr. Moran Benit

Department of Hebrew Literature

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Subject: Ronit Matalon: A Writer and Intellectual

Supervisor: Hannan Hever

Abstract: My research project is devoted to the Mizrahi Israeli writer Ronit Matalon. Despite her canonic status in contemporary Israeli literature, her work has not to date been adequately studied by scholars and critics. Through close readings of her fiction and non-fiction publications over the last three decades, the research examines the process whereby Matalon has become a major Mizrahi intellectual and writer in Israeli culture. Besides Matalon’s own Bildung the project examines a parallel process experienced by her protagonists: all young Mizrahi women going out into the world and establishing their identities as educated, women writers.

Presidential Stipend 2012/13

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Boaz Berger

Boaz Berger

Department of History

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Subject: The Rise of Political Responsibility in British Parliamentary Culture, 1780-1790

Supervisor: Prof. Dror Wahrman 

 Abstract: In my research I trace the emerging of a political culture of responsibility, accountability, and professionalism in 1780s Britain. Examining the ruling elite's reaction to the aftermath of the American Revolution, I wish to explore how a new political ethos helped shape the British modern state and its political sphere.

Bio: I completed my BA and MA in the department of History in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My main filed of study is British visual cultural and economic and political history in the long eighteenth century. My research deals with the gradual development of the modern British democratic tradition and the changing roles of the politician in that process. 

Mosse Stipend 2018/19 

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Shraga Bick

Department of Comparative Religion

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Research subject: "Keep the Commandments": the construction of "the Commandments" and their role in forming social identity in Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity.

Supervisor: Prof. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony

Abstract: In my dissertation I intend to examine the ways in which the discourse on the Commandments ("mitzvot") functions as a tool in the attempt to reshape religious communities in the Jewish-Christian space of late antiquity. During this period, different communities continue to insist on keeping and practicing in one form or another the "Commandments", but often without a clear definition of the meaning and scope of this term. At the same time, the concept of the "Commandments", serves as a polemical tool in both Christian and Jewish texts, but even there it is difficult to find a clear and unequivocal definition. In my dissertation I will seek to trace the ways in which this category is used to reconstruct the religious discourse and practice in late antiquity.

Bio: I hold a M.A in Comparative Religion (summa cum laude) and a B.A in Law and Comparative Religion (magna cum laude) from the Hebrew University. My thesis, entitled "But I am Prayer: Voice, Body and the Anthropology of the Praying Self in Rabbinic and Syriac-Christian Literature", was written under the supervision of Prof. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony. For this work I received the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the humanistic disciplines (2017). In addition, I am a fellow in the doctoral program on human rights and Judaism at the Israel Democracy Institute.

 

Azrieli Fellows Scholarship 2019/20
President Stipend 2017/18

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