Azzan Yadin

  • Azzan Yadin-Israel
  • Yadin-Israel, Azzan
  • Chair and Professor of Jewish Studies
  • Schools: Ph.D. University of California Berkeley and Graduate Theological Union, B.A. Hebrew University
  • CV File: Yadin-Israel_CV_2024.pdf
  • Office Address: 14 College Avenue, Miller Hall 103
  • Phone Number: 848-932-1714

Research Interests

Rabbinic legal hermeneutics; origins of midrash; biblical interpretation.

Courses Taught

Classical Jewish Philosophy
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Prophets, Priests and Rabbis

Publications

My scholarship is publicly available at: https://rutgers-nj.academia.edu/AzzanYadinIsrael

Books:

  • Scripture and Tradition: Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
  • Intuitive Vocabulary: German. Lingua Press, 2013.
  • Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Articles (asterisk denotes peer review):

  • *“For Mark was Peter's tanna: Oral Tradition versus Eyewitness History in Papias,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 23 (2015).
  • *”Some Uses of Deixis in Rabbinic Hebrew,” Journal of Semitic Studies 60 (2015), 331-340.
  • *“Bavli Menahot 29b and the Diminution of the Prophets,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 5 (2014), 88-105.
  • *“Rabbinic Polysemy: A Response to Steven Fraade,” AJS Review 38 (2014), 129-141.
  • “Qabbalah, Deuter¬osis, and Semantic Incommensurability: A Preliminary Study,” in Ra'anan Boustan, Klaus Hermann, Reimund Leicht et al. (eds.), Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 917-940.
  • *“A Note on a A Middle High German Calque in Sefer Hasidim,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 19 (2012), 385-387.
  • “Concepts of Scripture in the Schools of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael,” in Benjamin Sommer (ed.), Jewish Theologies of Scripture, (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 47-63.
  • “The Creaturely Limits of Knowledge: Martin Heidegger’s Theological Critique of Immanuel Kant,” in Leonard V. Kaplan and Rudy Koshar (eds.), The Weimar Moment: Political Theology, Liberalism, and the Law (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012), 123-144. Co-authored with Sam Moyn.
  • “Rabbi Aqiva and the Site of Revelation,” in Moulie Vidas and Philippa Townsend (eds.), Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late. Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 177-216.
  • *"‘Aretz et la sémantique de la terre,"Les Cahiers du judaïsme 30 (2011), 104-113.
  • *“Rabbi Akiva’s Youth,” in Jewish Quarterly Review 100 (2010), 573-597.
  • “Engaging Rabbinic Literature: Four Texts,” in Paul Socken (ed.), Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?: The Relevance of the Ancient Jewish Text to Our World (Lanham, MD.; Lexington, 2009), 201-214.
  • *“The Semantics of tinoq in Mishnaic Hebrew” (Hebrew), Leshonenu: The Journal of the Academy of the Hebrew Language 71 (2009), 73-79.
  • “Blorit: Pagan Mohawk or Sabra Forelock?: Ideologically Manipulative Secularization of Hebrew Terms in Socialist Zionist Israel,” in Tope Omoniyi (ed.), The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict, and Accommodation (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 84-124. Co-authored with Ghil’ad Zuckermann.
  • *“Ronald Dworkin and Self-Undermining Interpretation,” in Diné Israel: An Annual of Jewish Law 25 (2009), 209-234.
  • *“Rabban Gamliel, Aphrodite’s Bath, and the Question of Pagan Monotheism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 96 (Spring 2006), 149-179.
  • “Resistance to Midrash? Midrash and Halakhah (Oral Tradition) in the Halakhic Midrashim,” in Carol Bakhos (ed.), Current Trends in the Study of Midrash (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 35-58.
  • *“Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla’s works ‘Gates of Justice’ and ‘Gates of Light’” (Hebrew), Pe‘amim 104 (2005), 41-64.
  • *“Goliath’s Armor and Israelite Collective Memory,” Vetus Testamentum 54 (2004), 373-395.
  • *“Qol (Voice) as Hypostasis in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122 (2003), 601-629.
  • *“Hammer on the Rock: Mekhilta Deuteronomy and the Question of Rabbinic Polysemy,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 10 (2003), 1-17.
  • *“A Greek Witness to the Semantic Shift לקח-‘Buy’,” Hebrew Studies 43 (2002), 31-37.
  • *“4QMMT, Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Legal Midrash,” Dead Sea Discoveries 10 (2002), 130-149.
  • *“Shnei Ketuvim and Rabbinic Intermediation,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 33 (2002), 386-410.
  • *“Samson’s Hida,” Vetus Testamentum 52 (2002), 407-426.
  • *“Web of Chaos: Bialik and Nietzsche on Language, Truth and the Death of God,” Prooftexts 21 (2001), 179-203.

Professional Affiliations

Association of Jewish Studies

Society for Biblical Literature

Prooftexts: Journal of Jewish Literary History (rabbinics book-review editor)