David Ruderman: A Life in Jewish Scholarship

In this episode of Jewish Insights, Justin Pines sits down with one of the most celebrated Jewish historians of our time — Professor David B. Ruderman, the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania and former founding Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies — for a rich and deeply personal conversation about a remarkable 50-year career, from growing up as a rabbi's son to building Jewish Studies programs at Yale and Penn and teaching across a dozen European cities.

At the heart of the conversation is Professor Ruderman's lifelong passion for biography — rescuing lesser-known, unconventional Jewish figures from historical obscurity, what he movingly describes as a kind of tichyat hametim, a revival of the dead. His latest book, The Making of an Anglo-Jewish Scholar, brings to life Solomon Yom Tov Bennett, a defiant intellectual in 19th-century London, as a window into the enduring complexity of Jewish-Christian relations and the power of encounter with the wider world to deepen, rather than diminish, Jewish identity.

Together, they also confront the urgent challenges facing Jewish Studies today — the decline of the humanities, the rise of campus antisemitism, and a global retreat from Jewish scholarship — as Professor Ruderman reflects honestly on both the golden era he helped build and his hopes for its renewal.

Professor David B. Ruderman is the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania. Learn more about his work at https://www.history.upenn.edu/people/faculty/david-b-ruderman