Koret Postdoctoral fellowship program

Tehillah Lieberman is a postdoctoral fellow at the Koret Center, hosted by Prof. Vered Noam and Dr. Guy Stiebel from the School of Jewish Studies and Archaeology in Tel Aviv University. She earned her PhD in Archaeology from Bar-Ilan University, where her dissertation examined the lives, status and social visibility of women in Late Second Temple Jerusalem from an archaeological perspective. Her current research focuses on women in refugee societies and displaced communities in the Judaean Desert during the Roman period – following the Jewish Revolts. Focusing on how societies adapt in times of crisis and forced migration, specifically exploring the role of gender in such situations. Tehillah has more than a decade of field experience as an archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority and has directed several excavations in and around Jerusalem. She is interested in (and has published studies on) various topics including gender archaeology, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Jerusalem, classical pottery, daily life, Greek epigraphy, ancient identity and material culture, the Hasmonean dynasty, social, cultural and religious interaction and more. Her work integrates archaeology with literary sources and social theory to illuminate the lived experiences of past societies, often those absent from the traditional record.

Sivan Gottlieb is a scholar working at the intersection of art, science, and culture. She researches the visual culture of the late Middle Ages, especially illuminated Hebrew manuscripts and their connections with non-Jewish cultures. While her doctoral dissertation examined medical illustrations in Hebrew manuscripts, her current research centers primarily on diagrams in scientific and medical manuscripts. Her studies explore the transfer of knowledge from written text to visual “text,” and the ways in which visual knowledge from different cultures was translated, adapted, and reinterpreted within the Jewish context. Sivan was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow of the European Union at the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada, Spain; a Harry Starr Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University; and a fellow at the Halpern Center for the Study of Consciousness According to Judaism at Bar-Ilan University. Her doctoral dissertation was awarded the Zalman Shazar Prize for a Debut Book Publication (2024). Sivan lives in Gea with Amihai, and their three children.

A scholar of Biblical Studies, specializing in Biblical Historiography, Historical-Literary Criticism, the Persian Period, and Textual Criticism. His doctoral dissertation (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2019–2024) focused on Nehemiah's autobiographical account in the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah, where he argued that the attribution of the construction of the wall of Jerusalem to Nehemiah is a secondary editorial development with significant textual and historical implications. His methodological approach combines philological analysis, comparison with Ancient Near Eastern literature, and an examination of religious and historical ideologies, demonstrating how the development of the text reflects shifts in worldviews within Jewish society during the Second Temple period. His current research, in collaboration with Prof. Oded Lipschits, explores the formation of Jewish identity during the Persian period. The study integrates diachronic textual analysis with archaeological findings, aiming to distinguish between viewpoints authentically belonging to the Persian era and later interpretations imposed upon earlier traditions. He lives in Haifa, is married, and is a father to two sons.

Asnat Ratz is a historian of the Jewish people in Late Antiquity. Her research focuses on religious violence, historiography, and the formation and transmission of traditions between Judaism and Christianity. She holds a BA from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Jewish History and Hebrew Literature, and an MA and PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her doctoral dissertation examined Christian violence against Jewish communities in the eastern Roman Empire and the construction of narratives of Christian triumph. During her postdoctoral fellowship in Regensburg, Germany, Asnat studied the destruction of the Jewish community of Minorca (418 CE) and the figure of the Mother of the Maccabees in Judaism and her cult in Eastern Christianity. Her current research challenges the prevailing scholarly assumption that Jews in the western Roman Empire assimilated into their Christian surroundings during Late Antiquity, seeking instead to identify forgotten Jewish communities in Western Europe and to trace their cultural impact on their environment. She lives in Jerusalem, is the mother of three daughters, and enjoys pottery, hiking, and pilates.