2026–2027 Jewish Studies Curriculum Initiative Fellowship
[note that the call for applications is now closed]
About
The Posen Library is an educational resource grounded in primary sources and made broadly accessible through the creation and curation of engaging contextual material. Our goal is to highlight the varieties of Jewish culture and civilization across time and space for English-speaking audiences and to be the first stop for those, in university settings and beyond, who are interested in teaching about the significant breadth of Jewish experiences.
Originally conceived as a 10-volume print anthology, the Posen Library’s free digital platform makes the published content globally accessible. Content from print volumes is added to the site as the volumes are published by Yale University Press. Nine out of the ten volumes have been published to date.
The Jewish Studies Curriculum Initiative (JSCI) comprises teaching modules centered around core teaching topics. Each module consists of an overview and curricular material that can be used in four class meetings, focusing on 20–25 primary sources (texts, images, and other media) with interpretive content and supplementary resources for both students and instructors. Posen Library curricula offer flexibility and are designed to be easily integrated into coursework in a variety of ways—perfect for launching a new class or refreshing a syllabus to include new perspectives and voices.
Fellowship Description
The Posen Library JSCI Fellowship is an annual, one-year offering devoted to the creation of accessible teaching materials for Jewish studies courses at the university level, in fulfillment of our mission to be the first stop for instructors teaching about the breadth of Jewish cultures and experiences. Each year the fellowship invites innovative scholars and educators to draw from the Posen Library’s collection and new digital resources to engage users.
2026–2027 Topics
For this year’s JSCI fellowship, we seek to provide curricular materials that will cover broad topics in early modern and modern Jewish history (1500 to the present). These materials will constitute the building blocks of a general introductory Jewish history course. Each fellow will be responsible for creating one teaching module for the JSCI. For the 2026–2027 fellowship, we are seeking proposals on any of the following chrono-geographical topics:
- Jews in Early Modern Europe
- Jews in Early Modern Muslim Lands
- Jews in the Early Modern Atlantic
- Holocaust
- History of Zionism
- Jews and Judaism after World War II
Priority will be given to proposals that (1) build on—without overlapping—the existing modules and (2) integrate primary sources and interpretive scholarship that highlight key themes outlined in the appendix.
Each module will draw from Posen Library sources and be curated as a collection of text and image materials. Fellows will select from existing Posen Library content available on the digital platform, suggest new entries to add to the Posen Library, and create contextual educational resources for the chosen additions. In addition to our website search, applicants may consult the print volume tables of contents and lists of guides, available here [link].
Fellows will work closely with Posen Library staff to develop their modules. All modules created will be reviewed by Posen staff and by experts in the relevant fields. The modules will be housed on the Posen Library website and will be available to other faculty to choose from to build their curricula. Fellows will be cited as the creators of the modules. Fellows will also advise on and participate in at least two outreach efforts, such as writing social media posts, an article, or a conference paper about their work; Posen Library will provide outreach toolkits for these.
Time Commitment
The fellowship will run from June 1, 2026, to May 31, 2027. Communications will take place virtually and will include regular video calls with Posen staff to check in on progress, coordinate, and support work.
- June–August 2026: approx 10 hours/week of research, writing, and meetings
- August–December 2026: 3–5 hours/week of writing and meetings
- December 2026–January 2027: 10 hours/week of editing and meetings
- January–May 2027: 3–5 hours/week of writing and meetings
- May 2027: up to 5 hours of final edits and meetings
Module Content Requirements
- 1 module overview: approximately 750 words
- 4 class overviews: approximately 500 words each
- 20–25 primary source introductions: approximately 100 words each
- Adding short bios for authors and artists not already on the site
- Providing short summaries and discussion questions for classes and primary sources
Posen staff will be responsible for securing permission and translations as needed for new primary-source materials, for copyediting new content, for working with our developers on any new site functionality, and for uploading content to the site.
Course Preferred Criteria
Modules should be geared to introductory-level survey courses with high enrollments that are frequently taught in Jewish studies programs. Chosen topics should have a substantial amount of material in the Posen Library, to reduce the number of new sources that would need to be added, though we recognize that this will vary by period and place. Course content should appeal broadly to students, instructors, and nonacademic users of the site and should reflect Posen’s commitment to the breadth of Jewish experience.
All faculty-generated course content will be available through open access for any Posen Library website user.
Instructor Preferred Criteria
Fellows should be scholars in the field who have completed their Ph.D. and are dedicated to pedagogical innovation and diversity. They should have a minimum of three years of teaching experience.
Compensation
Fellows will receive a stipend of $8,000 for their work, to be paid in quarterly installments over the course of the fellowship as progress toward deliverables is met.
Applications
Interested candidates should complete an application (available here) by April 13, 2026.
Appendix: Key Themes
- Migration
- Ethnicity & belonging
- Citizenship & nationality
- Politics
- Gender & sexuality
- Space & place
- Ritual observance
- Jewish thought
- Food & drink
- Performing arts
- Visual & material culture
Past Fellows
The 2025 JSCI fellows' modules are now available here.
Sarah Bunin Benor
Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
Sarah Bunin Benor received her PhD from Stanford University in linguistics in 2004. She has published and lectured widely about sociolinguistics, Jewish names, and Jewish languages, especially Jewish English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. Her award-winning books include Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Dr. Benor co-edits the Journal of Jewish Languages and directs the HUC Jewish Language Project, which features the Jewish Language Website, the Jewish English Lexicon, and the Heritage Words Podcast, which Dr. Benor hosts and produces.
Lila Corwin Berman
Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History, New York University
Dr. Berman’s research focuses on the political history of the United States, including the history of Jewish philanthropy and Jewish urban politics. Her forthcoming book, Who Is American? Jews, Citizenship, and Belonging (Princeton University Press), explores how categories of citizenship and rights changed over the course of the twentieth century and what this meant for Jewish belonging in the United States. Berman’s work draws attention to the ways Jews have defined, debated, and sought national membership in a variety of contexts. As a teacher, she prioritizes close and careful reading of primary sources and models a diversity of methods for understanding the meaning and lessons of the past.
Erez DeGolan
Assistant Professor of Classical Rabbinic Judaism, Fordham University
Erez DeGolan’s research and publications combine textual, historical, and critical methods in thematic studies of rabbinic literature from the first to the seventh centuries. He is especially interested in emotion in rabbinic literature and in the ways figures in emerging Judaism negotiated authority and empire. Dr. DeGolan holds a BA in Hebrew literature and Middle Eastern history from Tel Aviv University, an MTS in Jewish studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD in religious studies and ancient Judaism from Columbia University. He was the 2023–25 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish studies at Wellesley College and has taught and lectured on topics related to rabbis, bodies, humor, and politics in premodern Judaism.
Eitan P. Fishbane
Professor of Jewish Thought and Mysticism, Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Eitan Fishbane has published and taught extensively on sacred time and ritual practice in Jewish mysticism from medieval to modern times. Among Dr. Fishbane’s authored and edited books are The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 2018) and The Sabbath Soul: Mystical Reflections on the Transformative Power of Holy Time (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2012), a volume designed for a general readership and with an eye toward theological and spiritual meaning. He is currently completing a related volume entitled The Sabbath in Hasidic Thought: Sacred Time and Mystical Consciousness. You can find out more about him at www.eitanfishbane.com.
Geraldine Gudefin
Visiting Scholar, National University of Singapore Faculty of Law
Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian specializing in Jewish migration, family life, and legal pluralism. She holds an MA in history from Yale University and a PhD in history from Brandeis University. She has conducted extensive comparative and transnational research at the intersection of Jewish citizenship, gender, and family law in migratory contexts, with a particular focus on France and the United States. She is currently working on a book project about connections between family life and the state among Russian immigrants to France and another about Baghdadi Jews in late-colonial Singapore.
Geoffrey Levin
Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies, Emory
Geoffrey Levin is a 2025–26 Koch Junior Fellow in history at the University of Oxford, where he is working on a book entitled The Other Part of Us: American Jews and Middle Eastern Jewish Dilemmas, 1941–1979, which will examine the broader encounter between MENA Jews and American Jews in the years surrounding the mass migration of Jews from Arab lands. Levin’s first book, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948–1978 (Yale University Press, 2023), won the American Jewish Historical Society’s Saul Viener Book Prize. He has received an honorable mention for an Israel Institute Syllabus Prize and a 2025 Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award.
Ronnie Perelis
Chief Rabbi Dr. Isaac Abraham and Jelena (Rachel) Alcalay Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies, Yeshiva University
Ronnie Perelis has taught the history of the Jews of Spain and their diasporas in academic and popular settings throughout the world. His research investigates connections between Iberian and Jewish culture during the medieval and early modern periods, especially the dynamics of religious transformation among crypto-Jews (Jews who continued to practice Judaism in secrecy after conversion to Catholicism). Perelis was awarded an NEH grant for his project Translating the Americas, together with Flora Cassen. As part of this project he will prepare a critical edition, English translation, and historical study of the rediscovered manuscripts of Luis de Carvajal, a sixteenth-century Mexican crypto-Jewish thinker.
Karen E. H. Skinazi
Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Culture, Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
Karen Skinazi is the author of Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2018). She writes widely on Jewish culture and Jewish gender studies and is currently working on a book about British Muslim and Jewish women’s writing, entitled Chani and Fatima Join a Book Club: Reading for Peace, and a study of English-language literature by Sephardic and Mizrahi writers in the United Kingdom and the United States. Her teaching includes courses on Jews in popular culture, contemporary Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, and rabbis in the cultural imagination.
Module Editors
Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah is assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She served on the Posen Library advisory board from 2022 to 2024.
Noam Pianko is Samuel Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. He served on the Posen Library advisory board from 2022 to 2024.