Yaron Ayalon smiling in front of a cityscape.

Yaron Ayalon

Associate Professor of Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies and Director of Jewish Studies Program

Education
Ph.D., Princeton University, 2009, Near Eastern Studies
B.A., 2002, Tel Aviv University, Middle East History and Education

Research Interest
Yaron Ayalon studies Sephardic Jews, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East, and Israel using an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates history, psychology, sociology, climate science, and disaster studies. He is the author of a book on natural disasters in the Ottoman Empire and how Jewish and other communities dealt with them; another forthcoming book on Jews in the Ottoman Empire, and other articles. Dr. Ayalon is an editor for the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World and co-chairs the Sephardi/Mizrahi division of the Association for Jewish Studies.

Courses Taught
  • JWST 400 – Tradition and Innovation in the Jewish World
  • JWST 350 – Jews and Muslims: Coexistence and Conflict
  • JWST 220 – History of Israel
  • JWST 210 – Jewish History, Ancient to Modern
  • JWST 201 – Black Jews, Arab Jews: Prejudice and Diversity
  • JWST 201 – Racism and Antisemitism in the Modern World
  • JWST 201 – Social Justice in the Jewish World
  • JWST 201 - The Arab-Israeli Conflict
  • FYSE 124 – Film and Media in Israel


Select Publications
  • Ottoman Jewry: A New History (forthcoming)
  • Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire: Plague, Famine and Other Misfortunes (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
  • “Sadness, Shame, Anger: Ottoman Jews and Emotions” in AJS Review (forthcoming in 2024)
  • “Ottoman Jews and plagues” in Jewish Social Studies 26 (2020), 1:46-54
  • “Plague, psychology, and religious boundaries in Ottoman Anatolia,” Turkish Historical Review 9 (2018), 1-17
  • “Rethinking leadership in Ottoman Jewish communities,” Jewish Quarterly Review 107 (2017), 3:322-52
  • “Jewish and Muslim Charity in the Ottoman Empire: The Fluidity of Religious Boundaries” in Charity in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Traditions eds. Michal Rozbicki and Julia Lieberman (Lexington Books, 2017), 211-27

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