Samuel (Shai) Secunda

Primary Academic Program: Interdisciplinary Study of Religions

Academic Program Affiliation(s): Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies

Biography:

B.T.L., Ner Israel Rabbinical College; M.L.A., Johns Hopkins University; M.A., Ph.D., Bernard Revel Graduate School, Yeshiva University; additional studies at Hebrew University (Iranian and Talmudic studies) and Harvard University (Iranian studies). Dr. Secunda is a religious studies scholar who has taught at universities in Israel and the United States, including the Hebrew University and Yale University, where he was a postdoctoral associate. He previously served as a member of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and lecturer in the university’s comparative religion and Hebrew literature departments. His academic interests range from rabbinic and Middle Persian literature to classical Jewish history, the Babylonian Talmud in its Sasanian context, Zoroastrianism, and critical approaches to the study of religion, including gender and religion. He is the author of The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (2014) and The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and editor of Shoshannat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman (with Steven Fine, 2012) and Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations between Jews, Iranians, and Babylonians in Antiquity (with Uri Gabbay, 2015). His articles have appeared in the Association of Jewish Studies Review, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, Jewish Quarterly Review, Iranica Antiqua, and Jewish Studies Quarterly, among other publications. He has also contributed book chapters to the Wiley-Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism, Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism, and Reconstructing the Talmud. At Bard since 2016.

Contact:

Phone: 845-758-7389
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