Oral Tradition Volume 14, Number 1March 1999
About the Authors
Dan Ben-Amos
Dan Ben-Amos is Professor in both the Folklore and the Asian and Middle East Studies departments at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to Jewish folklore, his research interests include African folklore, epics, folktales, myth, humor, and the history of folklore studies. Books he has written or edited include Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity, Folklore Genres, and Sweet Words: Story-telling Events in Benin.
Elizabeth Shanks Alexander
Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Assistant Professor at Smith College, teaches in the Program of Jewish Studies. She completed her doctoral work in Rabbinics at Yale University in 1998 and wrote a dissertation entitled “Study Practices that Made the Mishnah.” Her current research explores the role played by gender in Rabbinic oral tradition.
Steven D. Fraade
Steven D. Fraade is the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University. He is the author of From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy and is currently working on a comparative cultural history of ancient Jewish legal discourse.
Martin S. Jaffee
Martin S. Jaffee is Professor of Comparative Religion and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. His most recent work on oral tradition appears in Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE – 400 CE (2001).
Yaakov Elman
Yaakov Elman is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Yeshiva University. He has published research and scholarship on Talmudic and Jewish thought, including Authority and Tradition: Toseftan baraitot in Talmudic Babylonia, and has co-edited a volume on the transmission of Jewish tradition to be published by Yale University Press.
