Hebrew and Jewish Studies awarded major research grants

'Late Aramaic: The Literary and Linguistic Context of the Zohar' combines two areas of expertise which have never been brought together before: Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah and Semitic languages, with particular reference to Aramaic.

The project is being led by Dr Ada Rapoport-Albert, Professor Mark Geller and Dr Willem Smelik. They will examine the Aramaic language, in which the bulk of the Zohar was written, in order to locate it within what they believe to have been a long and unbroken tradition of Aramaic writing. The Zohar is generally taken to be a unique sample of late, 'artificial' Aramaic, originating in 13th century Spain - an assumption which the project intends to challenge.

'Towards a New Cultural History of Czernovitz: The Jewish Press, 1918-1940' is a collaboration between Dr. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Dr. Susan Marten Finnes, from Queens University, Belfast. The research focuses on the inter-war period, which saw the town of Czernovitz, now part of the Ukraine, generate intense, largely Jewish cultural activity in German, Yiddish, Hebrew, and to some extent Romanian.

The research proposes to demonstrate that far from the prevailing picture of harmonious co-existence between diverse linguistic, religious and ethnic groups in inter-war Czernovitz, the community was actually divided by heated ideological and religious conflicts, which ultimately contributed to its remarkable cultural dynamism and creativity.

Both research grants are for a period of five years and will each fund a full time research fellow and two new PhD dissertations.

To find out more about the research projects, use the link below.

Link: AHRB research grants