Erez DeGolan

Biography

Erez DeGolan studies rabbinic literature in Hebrew and Aramaic from the first to the seventh centuries CE. His research combines textual, historical, and critical methods to examine the lived experience of rabbis in late antiquity. Dr. DeGolan is currently at work on his first book, Rejoicing Rabbis: Emotions and Power in Roman Palestine, which explores the nexus between joy and political culture in rabbinic texts from Roman Palestine. He is also developing a new project on ritual attentiveness in premodern Jewish prayer. Dr. DeGolan’s work has appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Textual Reasoning, Jewish Law Association Studies, and Ancient Jew Review.

Dr. DeGolan currently serves on the Steering Committee of the Rabbinic Literature and Culture Program Unit of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). Previously, he has served on the Program Committee of the Association for Jewish Studies, was Book Review Editor for the Journal of Religion and Violence, and co-organized the 2020 Ancient Judaism Regional Seminar, which received the Cross-Institutional Cooperative Grant from the American Academy for Jewish Research. During his graduate studies, Dr. DeGolan was awarded the Morton Smith and Paul H. Klingenstein Fellowships, and completed his Ph.D. as a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. Before joining the Theology Department at Fordham University in 2025, he was the 2023–25 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Wellesley College.

Education

Ph.D. in Religious Studies and Ancient Judaism, Columbia University (2023)

M.Phil. in Religious Studies and Ancient Judaism, Columbia University (2019)
M.T.S. in Jewish Studies, Harvard Divinity School (2016).
B.A. in Modern Hebrew Literature and Middle Eastern Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel (2012)

Research interest

Rabbinic literature, history, and culture. Premodern emotions. Affect theory. Critical attention studies.

Publications

“Piety: Rabbinic Judaism.” In Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (2025)

“Rejoicing, Mourning, and Empire: Emotions and History in Ancient Judaism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2024)

“‘Heaviness of the Head’ and the Unbearable Lightness of Rejoicing,” Journal of Textual

Reasoning (2023)

 “The Constriction of Female Leadership: Tracing a Trend in the Early Reception of Miriam and Mary Magdalene,” co-authored with Dr. Miriam-Simma Walfish, In Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam, edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz (2020)

Review of Kiel, Yishai. Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity, Jewish Law Association Studies (2019)

Review of Hezser, Catherine. Rabbinic Body Language: Non-Verbal Communication in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity, Ancient Jew Review (2018)

 “A History of Judaism: Martin Goodman at the Center for Jewish History,” Ancient Jew Review (2018)

Translation (English to Hebrew) of Teeter, D. Andrew. “Sectarian Polemic or Interpretive Clarification? An Alternative Perspective on 1 Sam 7:6 in the LXX Version,” Meghillot: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls (2017)