Adele Berlin

Adele Berlin taught at Maryland from 1979 till 2009 in the Jewish Studies Program, the Hebrew Program, and the English Department. In 1994 she was named the Robert H. Smith Professor of Biblical Studies. Her main interests are biblical narrative and poetry, and ancient and modern interpretation of the Bible. At Maryland Professor Berlin served as Director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies (1988-91), held the position of Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs (1994-97), and was Chair of the University Senate for the 2005-2006 academic year.

Among her seven books are three biblical commentaries: Zephaniah, Esther, and Lamentations. The commentary on Esther, published in English by the Jewish Publication Society, was translated into Hebrew as part of the Miqra Le-yisra’el series. The Hebrew version was awarded a prize by the Israeli Ministry of Education, Culure and Sport. Other books are Biblical Poetry Through Medieval Jewish Eyes, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, and Enmerkar and Ensuhkesdanna, A Sumerian Narrative Poem. She co-edited with Marc Brettler The Jewish Study Bible (2004), which received a National Jewish Book Award. A revised and expanded edition of this work will be published in 2015. She also served as editor-in-chief for the revised edition of The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion. Professor Berlin is currently engaged in writing commentaries on the book of Psalms and on Song of Songs and serving in an editorial capacity on several major publication projects.

Professor Berlin is a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and a past President of the Society of Biblical Literature. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University (Jerusalem). In 2005 she was awarded a Doctor of Hebrew Letters, Honoris Causa, by the Baltimore Hebrew University.