Ishai Mishory

Office: AL-665 | Email: [email protected]

Ishai Mishory received his M.A. (2019), M.Phil. (2020), and Ph.D. (2024) in religious studies from Columbia University, and was a postdoctoral lecturer of the Core in Literature Humanities (2024–2025) there. His research focuses on printing by Jews and non-Jews in the early modern period as a site of negotiation regarding “what a book is.” Marrying the material and intellectual facets of book history, Mishory’s work in Jewish history questions narratives of religious history, alterity, ‘worldliness,’ community and communication.

Combining archival, bibliographical and historical work with a theoretical intervention on religion and secularism, Ishai’s current book project explores the printing work of a 16th-century Jewish printer across Italy and the Ottoman Empire in Hebrew, Latin and Italian. The book asks: what is, or could be, a “Jewish secularity” beyond a Christian definition? Does the adamancy of (certain) early modern Jews to ‘be in the world’ in any way change the received story of a so-called “process of Jewish secularization”? The interdisciplinary research for the book has included archival work in Italy as part of a Fulbright Fellowship, and a fellowship at the Center for Jewish History (New York City). Mishory is the translator of several academic and fictional texts, and has illustrated several children’s books.