Beth Berkowitz

• PhD: Department of Religion, Columbia University
• MA: University of Chicago Divinity School
• BA: Columbia College

• Talmud and rabbinic literature
• Jewish difference
• Animal studies
• Bible interpretation

BOOKS

What Animals Teach Us About Families: Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature. University of California Press, 2026.

Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Religious Studies and Rabbinics: A Conversation. Co-edited with Elizabeth Shanks Alexander. Routledge, 2017.

Defining Jewish Difference: From Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures. Oxford University Press, 2006. Awarded Salo Baron Prize for Outstanding First Book in Jewish Studies.

SELECTED ARTICLES

• “Biblical Animals in Rabbinic Literature.” In The Oxford Handbook of he Bible and Animals, edited by Suzanna Millar, forthcoming.
• “Animal Studies and the Talmud.” In What Is the Talmud? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming.
• “Appetite for Udders: The Return of the Repressed Mother in b. Hullin 109a-110b.” In Reading the Talmud as an Ethical Prompt, edited by Deborah Barer and Ariel Mayse, Journal of Textual Reasoning, 15, no. 1 (2024): 121-152.
• “Animal Families in the Biblical Tradition.” In Animals and Religion, edited by Dave Aftandilian, Barbara Ambros, and Aaron Gross. New York, NY: Routledge, 2024, 128-133.
• “Udders, Queer Nests, and Animal Family Trees: Kinship as Keyword in Animal Studies in the Bible.” Biblical Interpretation 31 (2023): 635-651.
• “Jews and Animals.” Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies.
• “Birds as Dads, Babysitters, and Hats: An ‘Indistinction’ Approach to the Modern Bird Mitzvah in Deuteronomy 22:6-7.” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 26 (2022): 79-105. 
• “Rhetoric of the Mishnah.” In What Is the Mishnah? The State of the Field, edited by Shaye J.D. Cohen, 187-203. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2023.
• “Mishnah Tractate Sanhedrin.” In The Oxford Annotated Mishnah, edited by Shaye J.D. Cohen, Robert Goldenberg, and Hayim Lapin. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022.
• “Bio-Power, Sabbath Burdens, and the Badly Behaved Donkey in Babylonian Talmud Tractate Shabbat.” In Studies in Rabbinic Narratives, Volume 1, edited by Jeffrey R. Rubenstein, 31-46. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2021.
• “Animals and Ancient Judaism.” Currents in Biblical Research 18, no. 1 (2019): 80-111.

• Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research

• Vice-president of the Jewish Law Association

• Editorial board of the Jewish Culture and Contexts Series of University of Pennsylvania Press

• Steering committee of the Society of Biblical Literature Unit for Rabbinic Literature and Unit for Animal Studies and the Bible

• Introduction to Judaism
• Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
• Animals and Religion
• Introduction to Rabbinic Literature
• Introduction to Talmud Text Study
• Talmudic Narrative
• Divine Human Animal
• Crime and Punishment in Jewish Culture
• Theory of Religion
• The Production of Jewish Difference

• Cosmic Ecologies and Animalities in the Jewish Middle Ages
• Moses Was an Animal, and Other Insights from Animal Studies: Beth Berkowitz Interviews Sébastien Doane and Suzanna Millar, Co-Chairs of the New Bible and Animal Studies Unit of the Society for Biblical Literature
• SBL 2024 Response to When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven
• As Tree of Life Trial Enters Final Phase, 6 Jewish Scholars on What Text and Tradition Say about the Death Penalty
• Amici Brief Nonhuman Rights Project
• 7 Jewish Texts You Must Read – Profs Choose Their Favorites
• Execution and Irony: A Retrospective on Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures
• The Uppity Donkey and the Distraught Rabbi: Critical Animal Studies and the Talmud
• Unexpected Influences
• Divine Law in the Container Store
• Animal Natures and Rabbinic Writings