University of Maryland Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies Home
University of Maryland's Jewish Studies degree combines a liberal arts education with practical career skills that last a lifetime.
University of Maryland's Jewish Studies degree combines a liberal arts education with practical career skills that last a lifetime.
Whether focusing on the texts and artifacts of the ancient world, the laws and social order of rabbinic Judaism, or the diversity of modern and contemporary Jewish identity, Meyerhoff students learn the skills that matter most in our increasingly AI-driven world: critical thinking, independent analysis, and the communication of human-driven insights and ideas.
The interdisciplinary nature of Jewish studies offers students the opportunity to understand the history of experience of the Jewish people – and the complexities of the contemporary Jewish world -- with nuance and sophistication.
Explore Jewish and Israel Studies
Centers and Programs
Centers and Programs
The Jewish and Israel Studies programs at the University of Maryland are centers for intellectual inquiry into Judaism, the Jewish people, and Israel. Our diverse and vibrant community includes undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff, and friends and supporters both locally and around the world.
Undergraduate Students
Undergraduate Students
Whatever your background or current interests, academic Jewish studies offers an opportunity for independent meaningful engagement with the history, literature, culture, and society of the Jewish people. Bring your curiosity, your questions, and your challenges to coursework that explores the meaning of the Hebrew Bible, the complexities of Jewish law, and the intensity of Jewish theology and mysticism, while encouraging an understanding of their relevance in today’s rapidly-changing world.
Graduate Students
Graduate Students
The Meyerhoff Center and Gildenhorn Institute offer graduate programs for students to further their exploration into Jewish studies and Israel studies. Contact us directly to find out if our program is for you.
Faculty and Staff
Faculty and Staff
Use the directory to learn more about our specialists in the varied subfields of Jewish Studies and Israel Studies, or access resources for faculty and staff, including important information on campus policies.
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Research & Innovation
The Meyerhoff Center and Gildenhorn Institute are dedicated to producing scholarly research that will inform and inspire today’s thought leaders and decision makers.
Explore our Current ResearchPublications and Activities
Why Deterrence Failed on October 7, 2023?
This article employs lessons from cases of both successful and failed deterrence in a longitudinal study of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Author/Lead: Elli LiebermanIsraeli policymakers have relied on cumulative deterrence strategies to combat terrorism. However, Israel has consistently failed to deter Hamas’ attacks, not only on October 7 but also in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021. A critical yet often overlooked observation is that cumulative deterrence strategies coupled with robust denial capabilities can lead to an attrition trap, which serves as a victory strategy for weaker actors, ultimately resulting in deterrence failure rather than success.
INSS The Institute for National Security Studies Strategic, Innovative, Policy-Oriented Research
Black Knights
Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race
Author/Lead: Rachel SchineA new account of racial logics in premodern Islamic literature.
In Black Knights, Rachel Schine reveals how the Arabic-speaking world developed a different form of racial knowledge than their European neighbors during the Middle Ages. Unlike in European vernaculars, Arabic-language ideas about ethnic difference emerged from conversations extending beyond the Mediterranean, from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. In these discourses, Schine argues, racialized blackness became central to ideas about a global, ethnically inclusive Muslim world.
Schine traces the emergence of these new racial logics through popular Islamic epics, drawing on legal, medical, and religious literatures from the period to excavate a diverse and ever-changing conception of blackness and race. The result is a theoretically nuanced case for the existence and malleability of racial logics in premodern Islamic contexts across a variety of social and literary formations.
This volume aims to shed new light on the history of the Jews in Italy between the early modern period and the emergence of a unified Italian state, explicitly placing Jews within the history of the state-building process. It seeks to reconsider Jewish history systematically by stressing the relation of Jews and the state and to trace how Jews and their communities were reshaped in the early modern period.
Volume Editors: Bernard Cooperman, Serena Di Nepi, and Germano Maifreda