Jonathan Decter is the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic studies at Brandeis University. He completed his PhD at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and is a specialist in the history, literature, and thought of Jews in the Middle Ages with a focus on the Iberian Peninsula, the Islamic world, and the Mediterranean. Professor Decter’s most recent book, Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean, is the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture for 2018. His first book, Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe, was awarded the Salo W. Baron prize for best first book in Jewish Studies in 2008. He is also the co-editor of three edited volumes and an editor of the Journal of the Intellectual History of the Islamicate World. In addition, he publishes extensively on medieval Hebrew and Arabic literature and Jewish Thought in academic journals and edited volumes.
During his tenure as the Corcoran Chair, Prof. Decter will advance work on his third monograph, tentatively titled Jewish Thinking about Religion in the Medieval Mediterranean. The project has important implications for understanding the history of Christian-Jewish relations as it charts the movement from a rabbinic conception of Christianity as a heresy largely indistinguishable from paganism to a medieval conception of Christianity as a neighboring religion with its own doctrine, approach to scripture, and related practices. The project is also pertinent in that it involves Jewish understandings of both eastern and western forms of Christianity. Prof. Decter will also offer a seminar "Debating Religion: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue and Dispute" and organize a conference on medieval perspectives on religion.
