The Early-Career Faculty of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies Represent its Bright Future (Part 1)
This article is written by Susan M. Carini, former Emory Executive Director of Communication (retired)
In 2026, Jewish studies at Emory crosses the half-century mark.
The earliest glimmerings came with the appointment of David Blumenthal to the newly founded Jay and Leslie Cohen Chair of Judaic Studies in the Department of Religion in 1976. The next year, Kenneth Stein joined the Department of History — and from that auspicious beginning other appointments in Hebrew language, literature and linguistics followed.
The Tam Institute for Jewish Studies (TIJS) was established in 1999 as an interdisciplinary unit within Emory College of Arts and Sciences. Two years later, following a generous endowment from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, TIJS was named for Donald Tam, the family’s rabbi and a revered community leader.
As the anniversary approaches, Director Miriam Udel wants to honor the rich past of Jewish studies at Emory and highlight its future by “shining a light on the strengths that the institute’s early-career faculty bring as researchers and teachers.”
One of the proudest achievements of outgoing director Eric Goldstein was to bring on four exceptional faculty members — Geoffrey Levin, Tamar Menashe, Craig Perry and Kate Rosenblatt — in the past five years.
This new talent, says Goldstein, “positions Jewish studies well for the next few decades. We didn’t want to simply add new areas of study; we also wanted to build on existing strengths and create synergies.”
Those hopes are being fully realized, as the profiles in this two-part series attest. This first part features profiles on Professors Geoffrey Levin and Tamar Menashe below; part two, to be released in TIJS’ next newsletter, will feature Professors Craig Perry and Kate Rosenblatt.
Geoffrey Levin
Assistant Professor, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and Tam Institute for Jewish Studies
Geoffrey Levin appreciates the rich interdisciplinarity that is a defining feature of TIJS.
From his graduate days, Levin was keenly aware of “Emory’s reputation as a place of serious Jewish studies scholarship that has brought undergraduates and graduates alike here to study as well as attracted top faculty.”
“It’s great to be at a place where people who specialize in the many branches of Jewish studies can all come together in conversation,” he adds.
Modeling empathy as a teacher
Interdisciplinarity lends a freedom and creativity to the courses Levin teaches. Another advantage Emory offered Levin was the focus on undergraduate teaching.
Jewish students, he notes, “reflect deep enthusiasm for learning more about things that connect to their own identities.” Levin is simultaneously attracting students from all over the world “who come in with a lot to contribute. It has been exciting to introduce them to these topics, as well as to each other.”
His course, “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Political Struggles, Personal Histories,” is answering a deeply felt need. Levin notes that when he first taught it in 2022, he had 35 students; in 2024, 68 signed up for it.
“I tell students that even if you do nothing in your career related to Israel, this course will teach you how to talk about sensitive topics, which is an asset under any circumstances, but especially in today’s world,” Levin notes.
In February 2024, the course received commendation in a Wheel article looking at options across campus for students seeking avenues to “respectfully discuss and debate the conflict [in Gaza].”
Even for students who come with pronounced ideological sensibilities, Levin has been impressed with their strong desire to learn, which is best done “in a scholarly setting. I also am committed to creating an empathetic environment for all students and all peoples who are being studied,” he says.
A central tenet of his teaching is always asking the question: What broader lessons can be taken from the Jewish experience, including religion, history, literature and politics?
A specialist in Israel and mid-20th-century American Jewish history
In November 2023, Levin’s first book was published: “Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978.” It chronicles the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel’s existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinians.
The book’s arrival came just a month after Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Asked how the timing affected reception, Levin answers: “Initially, it was paralyzing. I asked myself: How can you talk about your book when there is so much sadness related to events in Israel and Gaza?”
Yet, he also reasoned, “the book created space for talking about these issues without placing people in the context of the current war.” Since its publication, the book has been reviewed or discussed by more than two dozen publications, and Levin has been invited to speak at universities around the country as well as at local venues such as the Carter Library, Congregation Shearith Israel, Ahavath Achim and the Temple. In December 2023, he did a book talk at Emory for undergraduates and asked students — one Jewish, one Muslim and one of mixed family background — to serve as moderators. Despite the challenging nature of the topic, the event received only positive feedback from the diverse set of students who attended. A similar event hosted in February by Emory Independents about the overall Middle East conflict also went smoothly
Relations between Israelis and Palestinians are “one of the most important and challenging issues of our time. Because an issue is sensitive doesn’t give us license to walk away from it; rather it makes it all the more important that we address it,” he suggests.
A vision for the future of TIJS
“Those of us who are part of the Tam Institute want to continue to be seen as an important resource — a vibrant, interdisciplinary hub. For all of us on faculty, we are driven to find new things in the Jewish experience that illuminate broader questions about our common humanity,” Levin says.
Tamar Menashe
Jay and Leslie Cohen Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Department of History and Tam Institute for Jewish Studies
A native of Haifa, Israel, Tamar Menashe studied in Spain and Israel before coming to the U.S.
A legal historian working at the intersections of the law with gender, culture and interfaith relations, Menashe had an internship with Physicians for Human Rights before pursuing her PhD at Columbia University. “As a result, I began thinking more about minorities and how they interact with the law, about people’s agency before courts of law,” she says.
Ever-alert to what motivates students
Arriving at Emory in fall 2023, Menashe spent the previous year as a fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center at University of Pennsylvania. Her classes explore the law, legal cultures and deep histories of citizenship, gender and human rights in local and comparative contexts.
“My courses rest on students’ creative engagement with medieval and early-modern manuscripts and books. I look forward to adding to my classes more elements of digital humanities and civic commitment,” she says.
She was drawn to Emory knowing that, with dual appointments at TIJS and in the history department, she could do interdisciplinary teaching.
An example of that interdisciplinarity is her class Women and Law, which focuses on medieval and early-modern Europe and the Middle East. It marks an opportunity for Menashe to combine history with the law and gender studies.
The highlight, for Menashe as a teacher, is when students present their own projects. In her class Women and Courts of Law, one student looked at strategies Jewish women employed to get a divorce. Another student focused on the memoir of Glückl of Hameln, an 18th-century Jewish businesswoman, who continued the family business after her husband’s death. By seeing this source as evidence of the woman’s agency, says Menashe, “she brought her to life.”
Deepening Emory’s expertise in legal and gender history
Menashe focuses on Germany’s Imperial Chamber Court, founded at the close of the 15th century. Containing some 75,000 records, it is also a place where Jews litigated, coming in “substantial numbers,” she says. There’s vast scholarship about this court, but Jews were missing out of the narrative”; and so she has zeroed in on Jewish-Christian relations and women and the law.
Her dissertation, “The Imperial Supreme Court and Jews in Cross-Confessional Legal Cultures in Germany, 1495–1690,” won the 2022 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize for the best doctoral dissertation on a topic in German history written at a North American university. The award included an invitation to give a talk at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.
Menashe also was named the 2023–2024 Gerald Westheimer Early Career Fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute.
She is currently revising her dissertation as a book titled “People of the Law: Jewish Litigation and Minority Belonging in Early-Modern Germany.” Drawing on archival materials from 32 archives in five countries and sources in seven languages, it explores the legal realm as a site for minority resistance and belonging.
A second book is also underway that is simultaneously a digital humanities project reconstructing a minority legal archive Menashe discovered within the imperial archive.
A vision for the future of TIJS
“The Tam Institute’s importance lies in its interdisciplinarity and how it brings conversations from so many different areas and time periods together. I look forward to deepening that interdisciplinarity and bringing new technologies to how Jewish studies is done,” says Menashe.
Published 4/23/25