Speaker Profile Professor Kimmy Caplan

Kimmy Caplan teaches modern Jewish history in the Kushitzky Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University. His field of scholarly interest is religious history in the 19th and 20th Centuries, with a special focus on popular religion, and his topics of research include sermons and sermonic literature, Jewish religious denominations, American Jewish history, and Israeli Haredi society in the 20th century.

In 2002 his book Orthodoxy in the New World (Hebrew) appeared with the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, and in 2007 his Internal Popular Discourse in Israeli Haredi Society (Hebrew) appeared with the same publisher. He edited two volumes, one with Emmanuel Sivan (2003) and the other with Nurit Stadler (2009), and a third edited volume is scheduled to appear in 2012. Caplan is currently writing a biography of Amram Blau (1894-1974), one of the founders and first leader of Neturei Karta, an extreme anti-Zionist Haredi group.

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