Hayim Lapin

Hayim Lapin is an American Jewish studies and history scholar, currently Robert H. Smith Professor of Jewish Studies and History and director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Education Lapin received bachelor's degrees from Columbia University in Ancient Studies in 1986 and from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in Jewish History in 1987, a master's degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Talmud in 1987, and a PhD from Columbia in Religion in 1994.

Career From 1991 to 1993, Lapin was adjunct assistant professor of history at the State University of New York at Purchase. In 1993–1994, he was assistant professor of Rabbinics and Ancient Jewish History at Baltimore Hebrew University. In 1994, he joined the University of Maryland, where he served as assistant professor in the Department of History from 1994 to 1998, associate professor from 1998 to 2005, and since 2005 as professor. In 2010, he was appointed Robert H. Smith Professor of Jewish Studies.

Lapin served as the director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland from 2006 to 2011. Lapin said that Twitty is "someone who crosses all sorts of boundaries and encourages us to talk about all sorts of issues that are important on campus and the wider community."

In May 2019, Lapin reported that the Jewish studies major at the university was being redesigned, saying: “We’re going to take a real serious look at the fact that we don’t have a lot of majors and what can we do to encourage majors.” Lapin attributed the recent decrease in students in the program to campus recruiters’ “emphasis” on bringing in STEM majors as well as “the interest in career-oriented majors on the part of students.”

In January 2020, after a two-year review process by Lapin and Maxine Grossman, another Jewish Studies professor who joined him in its development, the Maryland Higher Education Commission approved a new major focused on religions of the ancient Middle East. The 30-credit program will study the emergence of ancient Judaism, Christianity, and early Islam between 850 CE and 1200 CE.

With professors Shaye J. D. Cohen and Robert Goldenberg, Lapin edited The Oxford Annotated Mishnah.

Publications Lapin has written many articles on rabbis and rabbinic culture in late antiquity and is working on a digital edition of the Mishnah. His publications include:

“An Application to Lease Katoikic Land.” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, volume 28 (1991): pages 153–61. “Palm Fronds and Citrons: Notes on Two Letters from Bar Kosiba's Administration.” Hebrew Union College Annual, volume 64 (1993): pages 111–35. “Early Rabbinic Civil Law and the Literature of the Second Temple Period.” Jewish Studies Quarterly, volume 2 (number 2) (1995): pages 149–83. Early Rabbinic Civil Law and the Social History of Roman Galilee: A Study of Mishnah Tractate Baba' Mesi'a'. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. . Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine. Edited Hayim Lapin. Bethesda: Capital Decisions Ltd, 1998. . “Rabbis and Cities in Later Roman Palestine: A Survey of the Literary Evidence,” Journal of Jewish Studies, volume 50 (1999): pages 187–207. “The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine by Catherine Hezser.” Review by Hayim Lapin. AJS Review, volume 24 (number 2) (1999): pages 378–80. “The City in Roman Palestine by Daniel Sperber.” Review by Hayim Lapin. AJS Review, volume 25 (number 1) (2000–2001): pages 107–09. Economy, Geography, and Provincial History in Later Roman Palestine. Mohr Siebeck, 2001. . “The Cambridge History of Judaism. Volume 3: The Early Roman Period by William Horbury, W. D. Davies, John Sturdy.” Review by Hayim Lapin. Shofar, volume 20 (number 4) (summer 2002): pages 155–57. Jews, Antiquity, and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination. Edited by Hayim Lapin and Dale B. Martin. University Press of Maryland, 2003. . “The Origins and Development of the Rabbinic Movement in the Land of Israel,” chapter 8 of The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume Four: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, pages 206–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. . “The Construction of Households in the Mishnah.” In The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective. Edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner. Brill Academic Publishers, 2006. . “Epigraphical Rabbis: A Reconsideration.” The Jewish Quarterly Review, volume 101 (number 3) (Summer 2011): pages 311–46. Shaping the Middle East: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in an Age of Transition, 400–800 C.E. Edited by Kenneth G. Holum and Hayim Lapin. Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2011. . Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. .