Present     
Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of German, Russian and East European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2011     
Together with Moshe Taube initiated and headed the international research group "Cultural Archaeology of Jews and Slavs: Medieval and Early Modern Judeo-Slavic Interaction and Cross-Fertilization" held at the Hebrew University Institute of Advanced Studies

2010     
Won the European Research Council Grant for the project "Jews and Slavs in the Middle Ages"

2007 – 2011     
Directed an ISF-funded research project on the subject of "Slavonic Pseudepigrapha in the Intercultural Transmission"

Past Visiting Research Positions at: Harvard, Moscow State University, University Colledge London, Stanford, Oxford, Freie Universität Berlin

1999     
Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The project will provide a textual study of the Ladder of Jacob (hereafter – Ladder), an early Jewish apocalyptic pseudepigraphon preserved in Slavonic, concentrating on the issues of its transformation in the process of intercultural transmission. The project aims (a) to improve our understanding of the Ladder at the different stages of its transmission; (b) to define the modes of transformation and the patterns of inter- and intra-cultural transmission of the Ladder on different levels: semantic, structural, and functional; (c) to prepare a new translation and commentary of the work; and by this (c) to contribute to the elaboration of an integrative interdisciplinary approach to the Slavonic pseudepigrapha.

2014     
"Jews and the Language of Eastern Slavs", in: Jewish Quarterly Review 104.1, 105-143.

2013     
"How the Devil Got His Hooves and Horns: Towards the Origin of the Motif", in: Numen: International Review for the History of Religions 60, 195-229.

2012     
"Jews from Rus’ in Medieval England", in: Jewish Quarterly Review 102.3, 371-403.

"The Jews of Slavia Graeca: the Northern Frontier of Byzantine Jewry?" in: R. Bonfil, O. Irshai, G. Stroumsa, R. Talgam (Hrsg.), Jews of Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, Leiden/Boston (2012), 297-316.

2010     
History of the Jews in Russia: From Antiquity to Early Modern Period, in Russian: Jerusalem - Moscow: Gesharim - Mosty Kultury, in Hebrew: Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History (2010).

"Veritas Slavica: On the Value of Slavonic Evidence for the Early Apocalyptic Tradition", in: Polata Knigopisnaia: an Informational Bulletin Devoted to the Study of Early Slavic Books, Texts and Literature 38, 1-65.