Vice Provost

Lawrence H. Schiffman

Dr. Lawrence H. Schiffman is vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of Judaic studies at Yeshiva University. He taught for 39 years at New York University where he was the Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and chair of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

Schiffman received his BA, MA and PhD from the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law and Talmudic literature.

He has written and edited dozens of published books and over 200 articles on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Judaism. His most recent books are The Courtyards of the House of the Lord: Studies on the Temple Scroll (Brill, 2008) and Qumran and Jerusalem: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of Judaism (Eerdmans Publishing, 2010).

He was the director of New York University's program at the archaeological excavations at Dor, Israel, from 1980–82, and has been a visiting professor at Yale University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Duke University, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins University, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow), University of Hartford, Queens College, Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome), Yeshiva University and the University of Vienna.

Schiffman has served as a fellow and member for numerous institutes and committees. Together with a colleague, he served as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2000) and for 10 years as one of the editors of the journal, Dead Sea Discoveries. In 2006, he was the recipient of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Scholarship Award.

Active in many professional societies, Schiffman served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies and is currently on the Board of Directors of the American Friends of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem and vice-chair and representative of the Orthodox Union for the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultation (IJCIC), the Jewish liaison committee to the Vatican and other religious groups. He is a member of the steering committee of the Orthodox Forum of Yeshiva University and has edited several volumes in the Orthodox Forum Series.

Schiffman has been featured in PBS and BBC documentaries and has recorded two audio lecture series for Recorded Books. He has lectured widely in universities, academic conferences and for community organizations, and is a contributing editor of the Long Island Jewish World newspaper.