Chana Shacham-Rosby, PhD

Teaching Associate (Fall 2021-22),
Department of Jewish History, Ben Gurion University
Starr Fellow (Spring 2022),
Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University

“My research interests include charting communication channels through which religious and theological knowledge was shared between strata of medieval Jewish society, as well as between Jews and Christians, in central Europe. My PhD dissertation, completed in 2019, focused on attitudes towards the figure of Elijah the Prophet in a wide range of primary sources. I found that between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries a significant process took place among Ashkenazi Jews regarding Elijah, and its results influenced the perception of this character in modern Jewish culture. Some of these conclusions were published in “Elijah the Prophet: The Guard Dog of Israel” (Jewish History 30:3) and “Exchanges of Religious Knowledge and Practice in the Medieval Ashkenaz” (Chidushim 23).

I am currently developing two additional topics that grew out of my PhD research. The first is a study of Elijah’s Chair in the context of ritual materiality. I am interested in the form and function of the chairs that were used during circumcision ceremonies, and especially the influence of contemporary domestic material culture on the ritual significance imbued in these objects. In addition, I am looking for traces of inter-religious dialogue between Jews and Christians that was stimulated by theological plays produced in the shared public spaces of medieval towns. I propose that certain statements in the writings of Ashkenazi Rabbis about Elijah’s eschatological roles are emphasized responses to the portrayal of Elijah’s character in Antichrist Plays. As a Starr Fellow this spring, I will begin a new project focused on the historical and social circumstances that generated the inception and subsequent wide-spread circulation of the late thirteenth-century halakhic work, Shaʿarei Dura.”

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