Introducing the Co-Head of Global Jewish Studies: Professor Zev Garber

As part of our commitment to bringing you the latest social-scientific research on religion, GCRR is proud to introduce the Co-Head of our "Jewish Studies" division, Professor Zev Garber.

Zev Garber is Professor Emeritus and Chair of Jewish Studies at Los Angeles Valley College and has served as Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at the University of California at Riverside and as President of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH). Currently he is Editor of Iggeret (newsletter of NAPH), Editor-in-Chief of Studies in Shoah series (UPA), Co-Editor of Shofar, Founding Editor of Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies, and Editorial Advisor to Western States Jewish History. Also, he was the Visiting Rosenthal Professor at Case Western Reserve University (Spring, 2005).

Pictured Right: Zev Garber with former Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, who (at the time of the photograph) was Head of the Irgun Zvi Leumi. Begin was the most wanted Jewish underground fighter in British Palestine, never captured nor detected. In 1948, Begin was elected to the Israeli Knesset as head of the opposition Irgun party (later Likkud).

Author of many academic articles and reviews, Professor Garber's book publications include Methodology in the Academic Teaching of Judaism (1986), Methodology in the Academic Teaching of the Holocaust (1988), Teaching Hebrew Language and Literature at the College Level (1991), Shoah: the Paradigmatic Genocide (1994), Perspectives on Zionism (1994), What Kind of God? Essays in Honor of Richard L. Rubenstein (1995; consultant editor), Peace, In Deed: Essays in Honor of Harry James Cargas (1998), Academic Approaches to Teaching Jewish Studies (2000), Post-Shoah Dialogues: Rethinking Our Texts Together (with Steven Jacobs, Henry Knight, and James Moore, ed., 2004), Double Takes: Thinking and Rethinking Issues of Modern Judaism in Ancient Contexts (with Bruce Zuckerman, 2004), Shoah and Israeli Writing ( 2005), Mel Gibson’s Passion: The Film, the Controversy, and Its Implications (2006), The Impact of the Shoah in America and in Jewish American Life,Casden Annual, vol.6, USC (2008), Jesus in the Context of Judaism: Quest, Con-Quest, or Conquest? (2010), The Jewish Jesus: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation (2011), Teaching the Historical Jesus: Issues and Exegesis (Routledge Press, 2015), and Judaism and Jesus (with Ken Hanson, 2020). Finally, Maven in Blue Jeans: A Festschrift in Honor of Zev Garber was published by Purdue University Press in 2009.

Hear Zev Garber Lecture at the Religion and Holocaust Academic eConference!

You can watch Professor Garber give a lecture on the "Terminology and Theology of the Holocaust/Shoah" at this year's International eConference on Religion and the Holocaust. Tickets to the virtual academic conference are available now.

We highly recommend checking out some of Professor Garber's latest publications:

There is a general understanding within religious and academic circles that the incarnate Christ of Christian belief lived and died a faithful Jew. This volume addresses Jesus in the context of Judaism. By emphasizing his Jewishness, the authors challenge today's Jews to reclaim the Nazarene as a proto-rebel rabbi and invite Christians to discover or rediscover the church's Jewish heritage. The essays in this volume cover historical, literary, liturgical, philosophical, religious, theological, and contemporary issues related to the Jewish Jesus. Several of them were originally presented at a three-day symposium on Jesus in the Context of Judaism and the Challenge to the Church,hosted by the Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University in 2009. In the context of pluralism, in the temper of growing interreligious dialogue, and in the spirit of reconciliation, encountering Jesus as living history for Christians and Jews is both necessary and proper. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of the New Testament and early church who are seeking new ways of understanding Jesus in his religious and cultural milieu, as well Jewish and Christian theologians and thinkers who are concerned with contemporary Jewish and Christian relationships.

This insightful volume represents the hands-on experience in the world of academia of two Jewish scholars, one of Orthodox background and the other a convert to the Jewish faith. As a series of separate but interrelated essays, it approaches multiple issues touching both the historical Jesus (himself a pious Jew) and the modern phenomenon of Messianic Judaism. It bridges the gap between the typically isolated disciplines of Jewish and Christian scholarship and forges a fresh level of understanding across religious boundaries. It delves into such issues as the nature and essence of Jesus message (pietistic, militant or something of a hybrid), and whether Messianic Jews should be welcome in the larger Jewish community. Its ultimate challenge is to view sound scholarship as a means of bringing together disparate faith traditions around a common academic table. Serious research of the great Nazarene becomes interfaith discourse.