Ella Darivoff Director
Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Steven Weitzman specializes in the Hebrew Bible, the origins of Jewish culture, and the history of biblical interpretation.
Weitzman's recent publications include The Jews: A History (third edition; Routledge, 2019), a biography of King Solomon, part of the “Jewish Lives” series published by Yale University Press; The Origin of the Jews: the Search for Roots in a Rootless Age (Princeton, 2017), which garnered a National Jewish book award; and a special issue of the journal Prooftexts devoted to the reception history of biblical poetry (vol 40,1, 2023). His current research includes a Covid-instigated study of the role of the Ten Plagues in collective imagination; and he also dabbles in the study of religion more broadly, publishing especially on how different parts of the US government interact with religious communities.
Weitzman received his Ph.D. from Harvard University after completing his B.A. at U.C. Berkeley, and spent several years teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University where he served as director of its Jewish Studies program, and then Stanford University where he played a similar role. At the University of Pennsylvania, he is honored to be the incumbent of the Abraham M. Ellis Professorship of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures, and to serve as the Ella Darivoff Director of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.