Jordan Rosenblum

Education:
Ph.D., Brown University, Religious Studies (2008)
M.A., Brown University, Religious Studies (2005)
M.A., Emory University, Jewish Studies (2003)
B.A., Columbia University, Religion (2001)
B.A., Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Ancient Judaism (2001)

Research Areas: Religious food laws, Rabbinic literature, kosher laws, theory and method of religious studies, animal studies

About: Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most recent book, Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig (New York University Press, 2024), won a 2024 National Jewish Book Award. According to The Wall Street Journal, “’Forbidden’ is an engaging and surprisingly cheerful study of that odd couple of the religious imagination, the Jew and the pig.” In addition, he is the author of Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature (University of California Press, 2020); The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World (Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge University Press, 2010), as well as the co-editor of four volumes: Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food (New York University Press, 2019); Animals and the Law in Antiquity (Brown Judaic Studies, 2021); With the Loyal You Show Yourself Loyal: Essays on Relationships in the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Saul M. Olyan (SBL Press, 2021); and Religious Competition in the Third Century C.E.: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2014). He is currently working on a the history of kosher controversies.

Selected Additional Publications

Co-edited Special Issue: “On Whose Terms?: The Study of Judaism and Daoism in Response to ‘Religion,’” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 37, edited by Michael E. Naparstek, Debra Scoggins Ballentine, and Jordan D. Rosenblum, 37 (2025).

“The Swine Suicides: On the Appearance and Disappearance of Pork-Related Jewish Martyrdom in Antiquity,” Journal of Religious Competition in Antiquity 1 (2019):37–47.

“A Brief History of Jews and Garlic,” in Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food, ed. Aaron Gross, Jody Myers, and Jordan D. Rosenblum, New York University Press, 2019, pp. 149–58.

“The Unwashed Masses: Handwashing as a Ritual of Social Distinction in Rabbinic Judaism,” Historia Religionum 10 (2018): 79–90.

“Thou Shalt Not Cook a Bird in its Mother’s Milk?: Theorizing the Evolution of a Rabbinic Regulation,” in Religious Studies and Rabbinics: A Conversation, ed. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander and Beth A. Berkowitz, Routledge Jewish Studies Series, Routledge, 2018, pp. 175–87.

“‘Blessings of the Breasts’: Breastfeeding in Rabbinic Literature,” Hebrew Union College Annual 87 (2016): 147–79.

“Changing the Subject: Rabbinic Legal Process in the Absence of Justification,” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism 18 (2015): 23–36.