Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal has been elected to the Israel Young Academy of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
She is the second faculty member from BGU following Prof. Taleb Mokari. There were 36 members in the Israel Young Academy prior to the current round of appointments. The Israel Young Academy was founded in 2012.
Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal is the incumbent of the Rosen Family Career Development Chair in Judaic Studies in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought. Her work focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in the first centuries CE, based primarily on the evidence provided by the Babylonian Talmud (composed between the third and seventh centuries CE, in Jewish Babylonia in the Persian Empire).
Her first book, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press 2013), won the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Book Award for Theological Promise (Heidelberg University). It examines literary analogies in Christian and Jewish sources, culminating in an in-depth analysis of striking parallels and connections between Christian monastic texts (the Apophthegmata Patrum or “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers”) and Babylonian Talmudic traditions. The importance of the monastic Christian movement in the Persian Empire during the time of the composition and redaction of the Babylonian Talmud led to the fostering of a literary connection between the two religious populations. The shared literary elements in the literatures of these two religious communities shed new light on the surprisingly inclusive nature of the Talmudic corpus and on a non-polemical aspect of Jewish-Christian literary relations in Persia of late antiquity. In opposition to previous notions according to which the Babylonian Talmud had little to say about Christianity, and when it did allude to Christianity, its approach was a polemical one, this book offers a look at close literary contacts between the two religions, and possible monastic passages interwoven into the Talmudic narrative.
Dr. Bar-Asher Siegal's current book (under review) focuses on stories of heretics in the Babylonian Talmud, in which figures named "minim" (lit. heretics) interact with rabbinic figures regarding the interpretation of Scripture. The book suggests reading the biblical texts found in the Talmudic dialogues as they were read in well-known internal Christian debates. According to this reading, the Talmudic stories no longer have to be read solely as a reflection of Jewish-Christian polemical debates, but rather a rabbinic attempt to answer Scripture-based debates taking place in Christian circles during this period.
The Israel Young Academy strives to promote relationships between academia, policy makers and society; promote the status of young scientists and scholars in Israel; promote scientific and scholarly capabilities; be involved in issues of national and international importance.
