Faculty

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Shai Secunda, Director

Shai Secunda is Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism at Bard College. He received a bachelor’s degree from Ner Israel Rabbinical College, a master’s from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA/PhD from Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Talmud in its Sasanian Context (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) and The Talmud’s Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and its Sasanian Context (Oxford University Press, 2020). His work uses philological analysis of the Talmud—the work which sits at the center of the classical Jewish canon—to reveal the rich cultural and religious worlds of late antique Babylonian Jewry and their neighbors in Sasanian Iran, especially the Zoroastrians. He has also published widely on Jewish studies scholarship and contemporary culture in the Jewish Review of Books, where he is a contributing editor. Before coming to Bard, he taught at Yale and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At Bard since 2016.

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Dror Abend-David

Dr. Dror Abend-David graduated with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University, and has taught in a number of countries: Israel, Turkey, Cyprus, Lithuania, and the
United States. He published one monograph: ‘Scorned my Nation:’ A Comparison of Translations of The Merchant of Venice into German, Hebrew, and Yiddish; Peter Lang, 2003, and two scholarly collections: Media and Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach; Bloomsbury Academic, 2014 (soft cover 2016) and Representing Translation: Languages, Translation, and Translators in Contemporary Media; Bloomsbury Academic, 2019 (soft cover 2020). Dror has published articles on Translation in relation to Media, Drama, Literature, and Jewish Culture.

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Andrew K. Atwell

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Joshua Boettiger

Joshua begins at Bard this Fall, after spending the last nine years serving a congregation in Ashland, Oregon. He was ordained through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2006 and then in 2018, he received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Pacific University. He is a Bard alum (1996), a Rabbis Without Borders fellow, and also serves as the Associate Rosh Yeshiva at the Center for Contemporary Mussar – where he teaches text, theology, and practice of Jewish approaches to mindfulness and service. Joshua is excited to be back at Bard with his wife, Vanessa, and their nine-year old daughter, Paloma – and to work as part of the Interfaith Chaplaincy.

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Leon Botstein

B.A., University of Chicago; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University, Department of History. Lecturer, Department of History, Boston University (1969); special assistant to the president, Board of Education, City of New York (1969–70); president, Franconia College (1970–75). Editor, The Musical Quarterly (1992– ). Music director and conductor, American Symphony Orchestra (1992– ) and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra/Israel Broadcast Authority (2003– ). Conductor, Hudson Valley Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra (1981–92). Coartistic director, Bard Music Festival (1990– ). Guest conductor, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bern Symphony, Bochum Symphony Orchestra (Germany), Budapest Festival Orchestra, Düsseldorf Symphony, Georg Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra (Bucharest), Hudson Valley Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Madrid Opera, NDR Symphony Orchestra (Hamburg), New York City Opera, ORF Orchestra (Vienna), Philharmonia Orchestra (London), Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, Romanian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Philharmonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Wroclaw Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Recordings with the American Symphony Orchestra (Arabesque, Vanguard Classics/Omega, Koch/Schwann, New World Records, Telarc); BBC Symphony Orchestra (Chandos, Telarc); Hanover Radio Symphony Orchestra (Koch International Classics); London Philharmonic Orchestra (IMP Masters, Telarc); London Symphony Orchestra (Telarc, Carlton Classics); National Philharmonic of Lithuania (Arabesque), NDR Radio Philharmonic (Koch International); NDR Symphony Orchestra (New World Records); Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston (CRI); Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Arabesque). Recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, Austrian Cross of Honor First Class, Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Frederic E. Church Award for Arts and Sciences, National Arts Club Gold Medal. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Trustee emeritus, Central European University (board chair, 2007–2022; board member, 1991–2022); board member, Open Society Institute, National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Member, National Advisory Committee for Yale–New Haven Teachers, National Council for Chamber Music America. Past chair, Association of Episcopal Colleges, Harper’s Magazine Foundation, New York Council for the Humanities. Articles in newspapers and journals including Christian Science Monitor, Chronicle of Higher Education, Gramophone, Harper’s, Musical Quarterly, New Republic,New York Times, 19th-Century Music, Partisan Review, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Salmagundi, Times Literary Supplement. Essays and chapters in a number of books about art, education, history, and music, including the Cambridge Companions to Music series and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Contributor to volumes in the Bard Music Festival series on Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Copland, Debussy, Dvoˇrák, Elgar, Haydn, Ives, Janáˇcek, Liszt, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Schumann, Shostakovich, Strauss, and Tchaikovsky, published by Princeton University Press. Editor, The Compleat Brahms (W. W. Norton, 1999). Author, Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture(Doubleday, 1997); Judentum und Modernität: Essays zur Rolle der Juden in der Deutschen und Österreichischen Kultur, 1848–1938 (Böhlau Verlag, 1991; Russian translation Belveder, 2003); The History of Listening: How Music Creates Meaning (forthcoming, Basic Books); Music and Modernism(forthcoming, Yale University Press). (1975– ) Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities

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Bruce Chilton

B.A., Bard College; M.Div., General Theological Seminary, ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood; Ph.D., Cambridge University. Books includeAbraham’s Curse; Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography; God in Strength;Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography; Judaic Approaches to the Gospels;Mary Magdalene: A Biography; Revelation; Trading Places; Jesus’ Prayer and Jesus’ Eucharist; Forging a Common Future; and Jesus’ Baptism and Jesus’ Healing. Editor in chief, Bulletin for Biblical Research; founding editor,Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Studying the Historical Jesusseries (E. J. Brill and Eerdman’s). Fellowships and awards: with Jacob Neusner, Choice magazine award, best academic book (1998); Evangelical Scholars Fellowship, A. Whitney Griswold Center (Yale University); Heinrich Hertz Stiftung, Theological Develop ment Fund of the Episcopal Church, National Conference of Christians and Jews. Executive Director, Institute of Advanced Theology, Bard College. (1987– ) 

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Yuval Elmelech

B.A., M.A., Tel Aviv University; Ph.D., Columbia University. Fellowships: Public Policy Consortium (2000), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (2000), Paul Lazarsfeld Fellowship (1995–2000), all at Columbia University. Grants: National Science Foundation (1999); Seed Grant, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University (2001); Russell Sage Foundation (co-investigator, 2005). Author,Transmitting Inequality: Wealth and the American Family (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). Contributor: Social Science and Medicine, Social Forces, Social Science Research, Sociological Inquiry, Megamot (Hebrew), Russian Jews on Three Continents, Global Aging and Challenges to Families. Research Associate, The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. (2001– )

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Elizabeth Frank

B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Fellowships: Ford Foundation (1967–72); Temple University (1977); The Newberry Library (1977); American Council of Learned Societies (1977); National Endowment for the Humanities. Recipient, 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Louise Bogan: A Portrait (1985). Author of the novel Cheat and Charmer (Random House, 2004) and numerous articles on literature, art, and literary and art criticism in New York Arts Journal, Art in America, Journal of Modern Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, ARTnews, Bennington Review, The Nation, Salmagundi, New York Times Book Review, Partisan Review, others. Author, Jackson Pollock (1983), Esteban Vicente (1995).

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Cecile E. Kuznitz

A.B., magna cum laude, Harvard University; M.A., Ph.D., Stanford University. Awarded fellowships from American Council of Learned Societies (1997–98); Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (1999–2000); National Foundation for Jewish Culture (1999–2000); Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania (2002); Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (2004); United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2007). Author of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2014).  Articles published in American Jewish History, The Yivo Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe; S. Ansky at the Turn of the Century; The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies; Yiddish Language and Culture: Then and Now. Visiting assistant professor of Jewish history/Jewish studies, Georgetown University (2000–2003). (2003– )

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David Nelson

BA from Wesleyan University, Master' Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, PhD from New York University. His rabbinic experience has included five years in a small congregation, fifteen years at CLAL, a think-tank and center for leadership education, five years in a community center, and three years as the primary writer and teacher for the Reform Movement's Israel organization. He has taught in a wide range of venues, and, following the 2005 publication of his Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World, has focused increasingly on issues of science and religion.

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Joel Perlmann

B.A., Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Ph.D., Harvard University. Research grants from NIMH, NEH, NSF, NIE, Spencer and Russell Sage Foundations, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Author of Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935 (winner of the Willard Waller Award, American Sociological Association); Woman's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650–1920 (with Robert Margo); Italians Then, Mexicans Now: Immi grant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890–2000. Coeditor, Immigrants, Schooling, and Social Mobility: Does Culture Make a Difference? and The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals. Papers in numerous journals, including Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, The Annals, Historical Methods, International Migration Review, The Public Interest. Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute (1994– ). (1994– )