About

Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Classics and German Studies. Her academic specialization is in Judaism, focusing on talmudic literature and culture. Her research interests include gender in Jewish culture, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, discourses of orthodoxy versus heresy, the connection between religion and space, and rabbinic conceptions of Judaism in relation to Greco-Roman culture. She is the author of 'Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender' (2000), which received the Salo Baron Prize for best first book in Jewish Studies and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Jewish Scholarship. Additionally, she co-edited 'The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature' (2007). Her ongoing work includes a manuscript titled 'Replacing the Nation: Judaism, Diaspora and the Neighborhood.' Her extensive academic career includes numerous visiting professorships, fellowships, and leadership roles within Jewish and religious studies organizations, reflecting her significant contributions to the field.

Research topics

• Literature
• Epistemology
• Art
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Theology
• Mathematics
• Law
• Archaeology
• Pure mathematics
• Ancient history
• History
• Psychoanalysis
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Of Roman Bath-Houses, Mosques and Churches: Rabbinic-Jewish Approaches to “Religious” Spaces of Others

  2026-01-01

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• Prophecy in Classical Rabbinic Tradition

  2025-05-15

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  In the context of this collection of papers I have been tasked with discussing rabbinic perspectives on "prophecy," ideas and approaches reflected in the vast library of late antique Jewish texts that we have come to think of as "rabbinic literature," a literature that spans several centuries (first through the seventh century CE approximately), and the two imperial worlds of Late Antiquity, namely the Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire to the East.There, on the Eastern side of the Roman limes, the latest and the greatest of the rabbinic compilations was shaped, namely the so-called Babylonian Talmud or Bavli.Of course, I am certainly not the first scholar to undertake this particular task.Indeed, to many scholars of rabbinic thought and theology the question about the role of 'prophecy' , about the mode of the prophetic, that is so essential to Biblical literature and its theology, is at the very core of understanding the rabbinic project, at the core of the question of Jewish continuity or continuities, and of the conversation with Christian (and Islamic) theologies.It seems that with very few exceptions, the literature of the rabbis of late antiquity is simply not populated with contemporaneous figures, men, or women, that are either identified as prophets, or that a reader or student of this literature today would recognize as such, however s*he may identify the 'prophetic.' Evidently, the rabbinic sages have a lot to say about the Biblical prophets (nevi'im),1 including Biblical women that are identified as prophetesses.They devote ample amounts of energy to decoding the biblical prophetic texts known to them as Nevi'im or Prophets and ask how a Biblical prophet may have deserved to receive the gift of prophecy (nevi'ut).2However, in their own intellectual and cultural world the rabbinic sages seem to avoid prophetic 1 As we will have occasion to consider in this paper, rabbinic literature from tannaitic traditions onwards divides Biblical prophets into the nevi'im rishonim (the first or early prophets) and the nevi'im acharonim (the later or last prophets, e.g., tSotah 13:3).The former are those aligned with the period of the First Temple in Jerusalem (e.g., mSotah 9:12, see below, and elsewhere in the Mishnah), the latter group refers to the early post-exilic prophets Haggai, Zekhariah, and Mal'akhi, on which see below. 2 E.g., bSanh 39b with respect to Ovadiah.Evidently, there is no real difference between the abstract noun nevi'ut or prophecy or nevu'ah, both in use in rabbinic texts.In Biblical literature only the latter appears, and here only rarely, e.g., in Neh.6:12, where nevu'ah refers

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• Sexuality in Jewish Traditions

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-04-26

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• The Cambridge World History of Sexualities

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-04-26

  book

  Volume II focuses on systems of thought and belief in the history of world sexualities, ranging from early humans to contemporary approaches. Comprising eighteen chapters, this volume opens with a chapter on the evolutionary legacy and then delves into the sexualities of ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and Rome, continuing with pre-modern South Asia, China, and Japan, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Chapters include an examination of sexuality in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and also look at more recent approaches, including scientific sex, sexuality in socialism and Marxism, and the intersections between sexuality, feminism, and post-colonialism.

  PublisherDOI

• Dina de-malkhuta dina and Talmudic Divorce Law: A Challenge for Rabbinic Law in Diaspora

  2023-09-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Nakedness

  Encyclopedia of the Bible Online · 2022-04-12

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• Miqweh

  Encyclopedia of the Bible Online · 2021-12-07

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• Ritual

  Böhlau Verlag eBooks · 2021-10-11

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• The Concept of Diaspora in Rabbinic Sources

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Literature
  • Ancient history

  Abstract The rabbinic diaspora in the Persianite and Sasanian empires of the second through seventh century CE provided the context for the production of one the great monuments of the culture of Jewish learning, the Babylonian Talmud. As the originary compilation of the rabbinic movement, the Mishnah (second century ce), on the other hand, appears as a text that was not only produced in the “land of Israel,” but also remained tethered to the land in its vision. This chapter discusses the dynamics of cultural mobility that enabled the rabbinic movement to transplant its traditions of learning to the geographic diaspora of what the rabbis referred to as Bavel (Babylonia). It traces some specific rhetorical strategies and, more generally, the consciousness that allowed the rabbis to transform Jewish dispersion into diaspora.

  PublisherDOI

• In Praise of Mortality

  Brill | Schöningh eBooks · 2021 · 2 citations

  • Philosophy
  • Epistemology
  • Psychoanalysis

  Finite in the Time of Images". The essay examines the reflections of the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his diagnosis of a collapse of our symbolic orders, manifested as language, art, religion, and ethics and resulting in the loss of the father and paternal speech. The search for a new expression that is "anarchic", i.e., one that is capable of renouncing the pre-modern repression of singularity, but also resisting postmodern arbitrariness and the refusal of referentiality, while serving to re-create our language and modes of communication, is the gist of her article.

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Frequent coauthors

• Martin S. Jaffee

  5 shared

• Catherine Hayes

  3 shared

• Yaakov Elman

  3 shared

• Jeffrey L. Rubenstein

  3 shared

• Isaiah M. Gafni

  3 shared

• Michael D. Swartz

  The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

  3 shared

• Steven D. Fraade

  3 shared

• Seth Schwartz

  Virginia Mason Medical Center

  3 shared

Labs

• Vice Provost for Student AffairsPI

Education

• B.A.

  University of Washington

• M.A.

  Graduate Theological Union

• Ph.D.

  Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Other

  Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles

  1999

• Other

  University of Judaism

  2000

• Other

  Hebrew Union College in New York

  2002

• Other

  Graduate Theological Union/Center for Jewish Studies

  2006

• Other

  Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Department of Catholic Theology

  2008

• Other, Talmud

  University of Judaism

  1996

• Other, Religious Studies (in Judaism)

  Stanford University

  2000

• Other, Religious Studies (in Judaism)

  Stanford University

  2006

Awards & honors

• Herman F. and Elisabeth Graebe Memorial Fellowship (1990)
• Newhall Teaching and Research Fellowship, Graduate Theologic…
• Lady Davis Dissertation Fellowship, Hebrew University of Jer…
• Newhall Research Fellowship, Graduate Theological Union (199…
• Hazel D. Cole Fellowship, University of Washington (1994-199…