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Elliott Horowitz

Elliott Horowitz, who died in March 2017, was a distinguished historian who held positions at Ben-Gurion University and Bar-Ilan University, and was a frequent visitor to leading institutions in America and England. He was the co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, the author of Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton University Press) and many other influential studies, and a valued contributor to the Jewish Review of Books. He was a deeply erudite man with a quirky sense of humor; the line below his email signature invariably identified him as a member of the “Molkho Institute for Absurdly Abstruse Research.”

Fall 2017

Straying from the Fold?

Elliott Horowitz

Are typical Jewish converts ensnared in the nets of Protestant missionaries “swindlers, thieves, drunkards, whores, schlemiels, schlemazels, nudniks, and no-goodniks”?

Fall 2016

A Tale of Two Night Vigils

Elliott Horowitz

The tradition to stay up all night studying on Shavuot is far more well-known than the tradition to do so on Hoshana Rabbah. Neither would have been possible without Kabbalah and caffeine.

Summer 2015

The Great Gaon of Italian Art

Elliott Horowitz

Berenson’s teacher Charles Eliot Norton dismissively dubbed Berenson's method the “ear and toenail school,” but Berenson employed the technique in his first book to great effect.

Spring 2014

Dangerous Liaisons: Modern Scholars and Medieval Relations Between Jews and Christians

Elliott Horowitz

In the spring of 1942—which, as Mel Brooks noted, was “winter for Poland and France”—Salo Baron published a boldly revisionist article. He was thinking of present-day Europe, a 12th-century Jewish woman named Polcelina, and perhaps also his colleagues.