Hayim Lapin

 ( Living People ) 

As a professor of Jewish studies at Maryland, Lapin studies the history and literature of the Jews in late antiquity. He thus investigates where the came from, the origins of the synagogue and the prayers, and how Jews coped with Roman Empire rule.

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. And he became the director of the Jewish Studies Program again in May 2017.

As director of the center, Lapin invited Michael Twitty, a food blogger and Judaic studies teacher from Washington, D.C., to speak to University of Maryland students about the intersection of Judaism and African-American culture. "UMD students learn about intersectionality of black and Jewish identities through food." The Diamondback, 4 April 2018. 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." And in December 2019, he invited a Sephardic law and ethics professor from Bar-Ilan University to the University of Maryland to discuss his discovery and translation of an 18th-century story about a Rabbi and a Sheikh.Laina Sara Miller, "Professor from Israel Leads Discussion of 'The Rabbi and the Sufi Sheikh,'" Mitzpeh, 3 December 2019.

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.”Vanessa Reis, “Jewish Studies Program Sees Redesign as Student Engagement Declines,” Mitzpeh, 13 May 2019. 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.” Lapin suggested that another big change in the program will be in having students develop an area of interest and concentrate on that area of interest. He related that the department was also questioning how much Hebrew the curriculum should have, saying: “We require more Hebrew than most other majors, which makes it more like a language major in some respects.” Lapin also reported that the program was working on creating other majors as well, saying: “We have a new major in Ancient Middle Eastern Studies,” which was in the process of being reviewed by the university.

At a Digital Humanities session at a joint conference of the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion in San Diego in November 2019, Lapin presented with Professor Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra of the École pratique des hautes études on “Automatic Transcriptions of Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts and Crowdsourcing Their Corrections.” They discussed digital rendering of Hebrew texts, which involve data points at the level of the letter or stroke. They told how they were originally at 3 errors per 100 characters, and are now at 1.8. They reported that computers can learn to recognize letters extended to fill a line of text.James F. McGrath, "Algorithmythicism at #AARSBL19," Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath, February 18, 2020.

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.Chloe Goldberg, "A new UMD major focuses on the development of Christianity, Judaism and Islam", The Diamondback, Feb. 27, 2020.

With professors Shaye J. D. Cohen and Robert Goldenberg, Lapin edited The Oxford Annotated Mishnah.Jackie Hajdenberg, "They Set Out To Produce an ‘Accessible’ Mishnah. The Price Tag: $645," The Jerusalem Post, June 15, 2022.