The Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) at the Graduate Theological Union welcomes Deena Aranoff for a one-year appointment as assistant professor of Medieval Jewish Studies. Dr. Aranoff comes to "Holy Hill" from Columbia University where she completed her doctorate in early-modern European history, and from Hebrew College in Massachusetts, where she taught medieval and modern Jewish history and the Hebrew Bible. She has also studied rabbinic and medieval Jewish texts at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem.

"The study of medieval Jewish texts demands knowledge of rabbinic literature as well as patterns and circumstances of medieval Jewish life and thought," said Dr. Aranoff. "My goal is to help students learn how to read and understand medieval Jewish texts and history. My particular interest, the Jewish and Christian study of Hebrew in the early-modern period, provides a fascinating opportunity to explore the interplay between Christian and Jewish culture."

This fall she will be teaching courses on medieval history, Jewish mysticism, and attitudes toward Hebrew in Jewish and Christian thought.

"Deena's specialty in Renaissance Hebraism will be a very important field for us at the Graduate Theological Union," said Naomi Seidman, Koret Professor of Jewish Culture and director of CJS, "because that was the first era of true Jewish and Christian cooperation in Hebrew Studies. We are always thinking about the different approaches Jews and Christians take to the study of Hebrew and the ways we learn from each other."