Deena Aranoff
Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies and Senior Lecturer in Medieval Jewish Studies
Core Doctoral Faculty
At the GTU since
2006
(510) 649-2487
Deena Aranoff is Faculty Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. She teaches rabbinic literature, medieval patterns of Jewish thought, and the broader question of continuity and change in Jewish history. Her recent publications engage with the subject of childcare, maternity and the making of Jewish culture.
Degrees and Certifications
PhD, Columbia University
Research and Teaching Interests
- Jewish society and culture in medieval and early-modern Europe
- Rabbinic literature
- Medieval patterns of Jewish thought
- Continuity and change in Jewish history
Selected Publications
- “Household and Halakhah, A Genealogy of Jewish Practice,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society n.s. 28, no. 1 (winter 2023): 1-22.
- “Mother’s Milk: Childrearing and the Production of Jewish Culture,” Journal of Jewish Identities, 2019, 12(1)
- “The Biblical root ʹmn: Retrieval of a term and its Household Context” in Simon Bronner, Jane Kanarek and Marjorie Lehman eds., Mothers in Jewish Culture (Littman Press, 2017)
- "'Judaism over Time,' Reflections on Yosef Yerushalmi’s Zakhor," Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, 2012.
- “Elijah Levita: A Jewish Hebraist,” Jewish History, 2008