Avriel Bar-Levav is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies at The Open University of Israel. His research focuses on early modern Jewish history and thought, with particular attention to the history of the Jewish book, Jewish attitudes towards death, magic and personal writings. He is also co-editor of the journal Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture, published by Brill. Bar-Levav is currently engaged in a project on Jewish single-sheet prints (broadsides or broadsheets) and manuscripts, funded by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the research authority of The Open University of Israel, in collaboration with the National University of Israel. This research is conducted at the Open University in collaboration with the DHSS Hub, which includes computational dimensions.
Selected publications:
In a Double Language: The World of Texts and the World of Readers in Hebrew and Yiddish in the Writings of Rabbi Shimon Frankfurt of Amsterdam
“Table Talk and the Bond of Reading: A Jewish Broadsheet for Meals," Polin, vol. 33 (2021): 97-116.
“Prognostication in Medieval Jewish Culture," in Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers, and Hans-Christian Lehner, eds., Prognostication in the Medieval World: A Handbook, vol. 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 175-178.
Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures, Oxford University Press, 2022.
Death in Jewish Life Burial and Mourning Customs Among Jews of Europe and Nearby Communities, DeGruyter Brill, 2024.