I was born in Boston, MA and grew up in the United States. After receiving an AB from Harvard College (summa cum laude, 1999) and holding a Marshall Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (M.Phil, 2001), I came to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where I completed my PhD summa cum laude in 2007. I am Professor of Arabic at the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where I research and teach the cultural, intellectual, and literary history of the Jews in the Mediterranean and Near East, on the basis of Judeo-Arabic, Arabic and Hebrew texts.  

I have authored A Judeo-Arabic Parody of the Life of Jesus: The Toledot Yeshu Helene Narrative (Mohr Siebeck, 2023) and Karaite Exegesis in Medieval Jerusalem (Mohr Siebeck, 2011); I am the co-editor of Beyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World (with David M. Freidenreich; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and Authorship in Mediaeval Arabic and Persian Literatures (with Julia Rubanovich; The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation, 2019). My research takes me to various archives of medieval Judeo-Arabic and Arabic manuscripts, primarily the Firkovitch collection housed in the Russian National Library as well as “Cairo Genizah” collections around the world. I have published extensively on the parody on the life of Jesus written by Jews and known as Toledot Yeshu, in its varied Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew versions that circulated in the Near East, as well as on Arabic and Judeo-Arabic literature, Judeo-Arabic Bible commentary, and various aspects of interreligious relations in the Arabic-speaking Near East. My current research is devoted to the reconstruction, transcription and translation of the tenth-century Pentateuch commentary by the Baghdadi Karaite scholar Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī, Book of Gardens and Parks (Kitāb al-Riyāḍ wa-l-Ḥadāʾiq) as well as to the identification and cataloguing of the biblical materials in the Firkovitch Collection.

My work has been supported by the Israel Science Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Minerva Stiftung, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development. I have held fellowships and visiting professorships at Harvard University, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and the University of Pennsylvania. I serve on the editorial boards of Ginze Qedem, Jewish Quarterly Review and Intellectual History of the Islamicate World as well as on the advisory boards of the Shlomo Pines Organization and the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies.

I am committed to minimalist and earth-friendly living, and commute to the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University by bicycle; I’m also an avid runner and swimmer, and have participated in numerous triathlons and races. I have a great love for the music of the Middle East as well as for the current-day liturgy and musical gatherings of the Jewish communities whose medieval past I study. I live in Jerusalem with my spouse Misha and our children.