Alexander Kulik

Alexander Kulik studied at the Moscow State University, earned his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and conducted post-doctoral research at Harvard University. He currently serves as Professor (previously also Chair) of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies and Chair of the Academic Committee of the International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds the Tamara and Savely Grinberg Chair of Russian Studies and is a Member of the International Committee of Slavists (UNESCO). His research focuses on the cross-cultural transmission of texts and ideas.

A. Kulik has held visiting positions at Harvard University, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, University College London, Stanford University, University of Oxford, Université de Lausanne, Freie Universität Berlin, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, and National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. In 2010, he was awarded the ERC grant. He also founded and headed the Brill book series Studia Judaeoslavica.

The project

Title: Jews and Slavs in Early Eastern Europe

"The project is designed to study Judeo-Slavic intercultural communication in the context of cultural, social and political dynamics of different ethno-confessional groups in Medieval and Early Modern Eastern Europe. It will also focus on the Jewish mediation strategies between these groups and across different ethnic, social and political borders. The study will demonstrate that the interaction between Jews and Slavs depended not only on direct borrowing, but also on the transparency of a variety of East European cultures, which shared a common pool of ideas, images, and genres. This emphasis on a common inventory of texts, feelings, and ideas (resorted to by cultural historians such as Natalie Zemon Davis) will help to elaborate an innovative methodology for studying cultural interaction that makes the two parties involved, the Slavs and the Jews, be each other’s equals in dialogue and mutual exchange. At the same time, the hypothesis of a shared pool of meanings and feelings (as used by Jean-Christophe Agnew) will help to avoid the methodological trap which usually privileges one of the cultures at the expense of the other. Digging through the layers of ancient and medieval texts transmitted in different ways between Jews and Slavs or witnessing the contacts between them, we will seek to reconstruct the common pool of ideas, rites, and traditions that fertilized both the Jewish and the Slavic cultures in Eastern Europe. One of the expected results of the project will be the refining of methodological tools for the study of interaction between the Jewish minority and its host societies, which can be useful for the scholars of other, non-Slavic, cultures. Furthermore, these results will be of use to scholars working on subjects such as minority-majority dynamics and identity formation in medieval and modern Europe."

Hosting institution: Sorbonne Université

Selective Bibliography

• Biblical Pseudepigrapha in Slavonic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016; with S. Minov)
• Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in Christian Transmission (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press; editor-in-chief; with G. Boccaccini, L. DiTommaso, D. Hamidovic, M. Stone, 2019).
• Jews in Old Rus’: A Documentary History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming)
• “Gilayon and ‘Apocalypse’: Reconsidering an Early Jewish Concept and Genre.” Harvard Theological Review 116.2 (2023), pp. 190–227.
• “Counting on God’s Name: The Numerology of Nomina Sacra.” Harvard Theological Review (forthcoming).