James Kugel,
Starr Professor Hebrew Literature, Harvard University
Professor of Bible, Bar Ilan University

James Kugel was the Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University from 1982-2003.  He retired from Harvard to become Professor of Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he also served as chairman of the department of Bible.  A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Kugel is the author of more than eighty research articles and seventeen books, including The Bible as it was (winner of the Grawemeyer Prize in religion in 2001).  His more recent books include The God of Old, The Ladder of Jacob, How to read the Bible, awarded the National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007, In the Valley of the Shadow, and A Walk Through Jubilees, and The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times.  He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, and Editor in chief of Jewish Studies: an Internet Journal.  In 2016, he was awarded Israel's Rochschild Prize in Jewish studies: in 2017, he was elected a member of the Israeeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Sponsored by the Program in Judaic Studies, Ronald O. Perelman Institute for Judaic Studies, and the Department of Religion