Beth Berkowitz

Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies
bberkowi@barnard.edu

Beth A. Berkowitz is Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion at Barnard College. She is the author of Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2006; winner of the Salo Baron Prize for Outstanding First Book in Jewish Studies); Defining Jewish Difference: From Antiquity to the Present(Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2018). She is co-editor of Religious Studies and Rabbinics: A Conversation(Routledge, 2017). She has published articles in the Journal for the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Jewish Studies, Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal of Ancient Judaism, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, AJS Review, and Biblical Interpretation. Her area of specialization is classical rabbinic literature, and her interests include animal studies, Jewish difference, and Bible reception history.