Alumni

Cal Jewish Alumni Network

The Cal Jewish Alumni Network (CJAN) exists to unite Jewish individuals who want to connect their Jewish identity—religious, ethnic, cultural, and shared ancestry—to the UC Berkeley community. As an organization, we promote Jewish culture, connection, and community; ensure belonging and inclusion for Cal's Jews on campus; and advocate for Jews' safety and rights within the university. Members benefit from networking opportunities with other Jewish UC Berkeley alumni, engagement catered to the Jewish community, and stakeholder representation within the University. We are an affiliate of the California Alumni Association (CAA).

Join us! For more information and to fill out a membership application, click here.

Alumni Archive

See what's happening with our graduate alumni. Click on the links below to learn more.

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2024 Alumni

Alexander UllmanAlexander Ullman

Alexander Ullman graduated with a PhD in English studying 20th century global Anglophone literature, with a Designated Emphasis in Jewish Studies. He is particularly interested in how sound and ethnicity meet in 20th century literature of the African and Jewish diasporas, specifically through the uses of dialect, translation, and...

2021 Alumni

Jenna Stover KempJenna Stover Kemp

Jenna Stover-Kemp works in the area of Hebrew Bible and is interested in cultural memory and intertextuality. Her dissertation traces three case studies from different literary genres and analyzes how relatively late biblical authors work with the memory of earlier text. Principally, she is interested in how forgetting is an aide to...

2018 Alumni

Sheer GanorSheer Ganor Sheer Ganor is a historian of German-speaking Jewry. Her research focuses on the nexus of forced migration, memory and cultural identities. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled “In Scattered Formation: Displacement, Alignment and the German-Jewish Diaspora.” This study traces the emergence of a transnational diasporic network of Jewish refugees...

2017 Alumni

Yosef RosenYosef Rosen

B.A., Yeshiva University M.A in Jewish Thought, Hebrew University Ph.D. Candidate in Jewish Studies, UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union

Before joining the JDP, Rosen attended numerous traditional and innovative yeshivot in Israel. His research focuses both on the history of Midrash and Medieval Kabbalah. He hopes to write his...

2016 Alumni

Anna Elena TorresAnna Elena Torres

Anna Elena Torres is the Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. She received a PhD from UC Berkeley, with a dissertation titled “‘With an Undone Shirt (Mit a tseshpilyet hemd)’: Anarchist Modernism and Yiddish Literature.” This research documents...

2014 Alumni

Ruth Haber

Advisor: Daniel Boyarin

Dissertation Title: Rabbis on the Road: Exposition En Route in Classical Rabbinic Texts

Current Position: Liaison for the Judaic, Yiddish and Israel Studies Collection at the UC Berkeley Library

David Michel Rosenberg-Wohl

Advisor: Erich Gruen

Dissertation Title: Reconstructing Jewish Identity on the Foundations of Hellenistic History: Azariah de’ Rossi’s Me’or ‘Enaym in the Late 16th Century Northern Italy

Mira Beth Wasserman

Advisor: Daniel Boyarin...

2013 Alumni

Riki Ophir

Advisor: Chana Kronfeld

Dissertation Title: Why Read Poems in Such Hard Times? Sociopolitical History and Aesthetic Commitment in Modern Hebrew, Yiddish and German Poetry

Yosefa Raz

Advisor: Ron Hendel

Dissertation Title: Weak Prophecy: Recasting Prophetic Power in the Classical Hebrew Prophets and in Their Modern Reception

Current Position: Post Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto

2012 Alumni

Samuel Frank Thrope

Advisor: Martin Schwartz

Dissertation Title: Contradictions and Vile Utterances: The Zoroastrian Critique of Judaism in the Škand Gumānīg Wizār

Current Position: Samuel Frank Thrope is a Jerusalem-based writer and the translator of Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s The Israeli Republic. He received the Golda Meir postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

2008 Alumni

Julia Watts Belser

Dissertation Title: Between the Human and the Holy: The Construction of Talmudic Theology in Massekhet Ta’anit

Website: http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/jwb84/?PageTemplateID=366

Current Position: Assistant Professor of Theology, Georgetown University.

Eliyahu Stern

Advisor: Daniel Boyarin

Dissertation Title: Elijah of...

2011 Alumni

Zehavit Stern

Advisor: Robert Alter

Dissertation Title: Eastern European Jewish Culture and the Re-imagination of Folk Performance

Current Position: University Research Lecturer, Oriental Institute, University of Oxford.

2006 Alumni

Henry Morrison Millstein

Dissertation Title: “Embodying Empire: Rabbinic and Early Christian Representations of Roman Power”

2004 Alumni

Rachel Havrelock

Advisor: Daniel Boyarin

Dissertation Title: “The Jordan River: Crossing a Biblical Boundary”

Website: http://engl.uic.edu/english/directory/faculty/rachel-havrelock

Current Position: Associate Professor, Department of English and Jewish Studies Program, University of Illinois at Chicago

2002 Alumni

Margaret Ann Sandel

Dissertation Title: Understanding Religions Language: An Integrated Approach to Meaning

2001 Alumni

Shachar Mordechai Pinsker

Dissertation Title: “Old Wine In New Flasks”: Rabbinic Intertexts and the Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction

2000 Alumni

Hamutal Tsamir

Advisor: Chana Kronfeld

Dissertation Title: The Israeli Statehood Generation and Women’s Poetry of the 1950s-1960s: Poetry, Gender, and the Nation-State

Current Position: Hebrew Literature Department, Faculty Member, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Matthew B. Hoffman

Dissertation Title: Reclaiming Jesus and the Construction of Modern Jewish Culture

Current Position: Associate Professor of Judaic...

alumni