Research interests: Judezmo (Ladino/Judeo-Spanish) in historical context and including its regional, social, and stylistic variants; Comparative study of Jewish languages.
Research interests: Biblical Hebrew; The languages of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Aramaic dialectology; Northwest Semitic; Semitic philology (Caspar Levias Chair in Ancient Semitic Languages).
Research interests: syntax of Biblical Hebrew and the Dead Sea Scrolls, pragmatics of Biblical Hebrew, questions and answers in biblical dialogue, grammaticalization of negative polarity items in Hebrew, syntax and semantics of Hebrew numerical phrases, relationship between philology and biblical interpretation.
Research interests: Modern Hebrew; The revival of Hebrew; Language and culture; Spoken Hebrew; Standardization and language planning; Grammaticalization and language change.
Research interests: Modern Hebrew; Semantics of natural language and its interfaces with syntax and pragmatics; Context dependent expressions; Language change and the revival of Hebrew; Corpus Linguistics.
Prof. Ofra Tirosh-Becker is the Bialik Professor of Hebrew language. She is a Professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and in the Department of Hebrew Language at the Hebrew University. She is the Head of the Hebrew University's Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures. From 2018 through 2021 she was the Director of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. She served as the Chairperson of the Department of Hebrew and as the Chairperson of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature. Prof. Tirosh-Becker is also a member of the executive committee of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, and a full member of this Academy.
She is the founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Jewish Languages published by Brill, a co-editor of Massorot: Studies in Language Traditions and the Jewish Languages, and the editor of the Languages and Linguistics Section of the online edition of the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. She was a visiting professor at Harvard University a few times.
Tirosh-Becker is a recipient of the 2011 Asaraf Prize from The Academy of the Hebrew Language, the 2013 Ben-Zvi Award for Research of Jewish Communities in the East, and the 2013 Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines (First Prize). Her two-volume book Rabbinic Excerpts in Medieval Karaite Literature was published in 2011 (Vol. 1: Philological and Linguistic Studies, Vol. 2: A Critical Annotated Scientific Edition of the Texts). Together with Prof. Lutz Edzard of Erlangen University, Germany she published the book Jewish Languages: Text Specimens, Grammatical, Lexical, and Cultural sketches (2021).
Her research focuses on the contacts between Arabic and Hebrew, including: North-African Judeo-Arabic; Judeo-Arabic translations of the Bible and of post-biblical literature; Medieval Hebrew; Hebrew in Algeria in the 19th-20th centuries; The contact between Hebrew and Arabic in the Middle Ages; Rabbinic Hebrew in Karaite writings.
Prof. Tirosh-Becker completed her B.A. at the Department of Hebrew Language and the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University. Her Master's thesis is on a Judeo-Arabic translation of Psalms from Constantine, Algeria, written under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher. In 2000 she received her doctoral degree from the Hebrew University. Her doctoral thesis, also under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher, focused on rabbinic Hebrew embedded in medieval Karaite literature, which for the most part was written in Judeo-Arabic.
In 2000 she carried out her post-doctoral training at the Center for Jewish Studies of Harvard University as a Starr Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. In 2001-2002 she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Eliezer Ben Yehuda Research Center for the History of Hebrew at the Hebrew University.
Research interests: Modern Hebrew; Semantics of natural language and its interfaces with syntax and pragmatics; Context dependent expressions; Language change and the revival of Hebrew; Corpus Linguistics.
Prof. Ofra Tirosh-Becker is the Bialik Professor of Hebrew language. She is a Professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and in the Department of Hebrew Language at the Hebrew University. She is the Head of the Hebrew University's Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures. From 2018 through 2021 she was the Director of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. She served as the Chairperson of the Department of Hebrew and as the Chairperson of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature. Prof. Tirosh-Becker is also a member of the executive committee of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, and a full member of this Academy.
She is the founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Jewish Languages published by Brill, a co-editor of Massorot: Studies in Language Traditions and the Jewish Languages, and the editor of the Languages and Linguistics Section of the online edition of the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. She was a visiting professor at Harvard University a few times.
Tirosh-Becker is a recipient of the 2011 Asaraf Prize from The Academy of the Hebrew Language, the 2013 Ben-Zvi Award for Research of Jewish Communities in the East, and the 2013 Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines (First Prize). Her two-volume book Rabbinic Excerpts in Medieval Karaite Literature was published in 2011 (Vol. 1: Philological and Linguistic Studies, Vol. 2: A Critical Annotated Scientific Edition of the Texts). Together with Prof. Lutz Edzard of Erlangen University, Germany she published the book Jewish Languages: Text Specimens, Grammatical, Lexical, and Cultural sketches (2021).
Her research focuses on the contacts between Arabic and Hebrew, including: North-African Judeo-Arabic; Judeo-Arabic translations of the Bible and of post-biblical literature; Medieval Hebrew; Hebrew in Algeria in the 19th-20th centuries; The contact between Hebrew and Arabic in the Middle Ages; Rabbinic Hebrew in Karaite writings.
Prof. Tirosh-Becker completed her B.A. at the Department of Hebrew Language and the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University. Her Master's thesis is on a Judeo-Arabic translation of Psalms from Constantine, Algeria, written under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher. In 2000 she received her doctoral degree from the Hebrew University. Her doctoral thesis, also under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Bar-Asher, focused on rabbinic Hebrew embedded in medieval Karaite literature, which for the most part was written in Judeo-Arabic.
In 2000 she carried out her post-doctoral training at the Center for Jewish Studies of Harvard University as a Starr Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. In 2001-2002 she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Eliezer Ben Yehuda Research Center for the History of Hebrew at the Hebrew University.
Research interests: Classical Hebrew with a focus on Mishnaic Hebrew, Palestinian Aramaic, Linguistic traditions and The Sharh of the Jews of North-Africa, Hebrew of the Jews of South-Western France.
Research interests: The historical development of Hebrew and its relationship with other Semitic languages during biblical and post-biblical periods; Northwest Semitic; Epigraphy; Aramaic dialectology; the Dead Sea Scrolls; Linguistic studies in the realm of biblical criticism.
Research interests: Medieval Ashkenazi Hebrew; Syntax of Hebrew and its historical development; Biblical and Modern Hebrew — similarities and differences; Biblical exegesis; Aramaic translations of the Bible; Biblical accentuation — syntactic and exegetical perspectives.
Research interests: Articulatory, acoustic, and perceptional phonetics; Intonation of colloquial Hebrew; Synthesis of Hebrew speech; Phonology and morphology of Hebrew throughout the various generations; Phonotactics; Revival of Hebrew speech; Teaching Hebrew as a foreign language; The use of computers for teaching Hebrew.
Research interests: Rabbinic and Karaite linguistic traditions and grammatical thought of the 10-13th centuries, and discovery of unknown texts from this era in the Geniza; Medieval Judeo-Arabic in the Cairo Geniza; North African reading traditions of the Bible and other classical texts.
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