FORA.tv Speaker - Yaakov Elman

Yaakov Elman is Professor of Judaic Studies at Yeshiva University and an associate of Harvard's Center for Jewish Studies. He has authored or edited eight books, and written dozens of articles on rabbinic intellectual history, Jewish biblical exegesis, and nineteenth century Hasidic thought. For the last decade he has devoted himself to studying the intersection of Babylonian Jewish and Middle Persian cultures and religions. The result has been a revolutionary view of the interaction of Rabbinic Judaism with the Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism of the early Sasanian period (200-500 CE). He is currently working on a tandem intellectual history of Sasanian rabbinic and Zoroastrian thought.