Dr. Uri Shachar

I am a historian of the Middle Ages. My interests lie in cultural, intellectual, and literary relations between religious communities around the Mediterranean. My projects focus on multilingualism, polemics, and most recently on the rise of the French vernacular in the eastern mediterranean.  In addition, I am engaged in a project that focuses on the so-called “Cambridge Codex,” a manuscript discovered in the Cairo Genizah and which contains the earliest witness of the Yiddish language.

Education

B.A. Tel Aviv University

M.A. Johns Hopkins University

Ph.D. University of Chicago

Visiting Fellowships

2012-2013, University of Pennsylvania, The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Ella Darivoff Fellowship.

2015, Fordham University, Center for Medieval Studies, Visiting Fellow (Fall semester).

2017-2018, Harvard University, Starr Fellowship, Center for Jewish Studies.

2024-2025, Institute for Advance Study, Princeton.

Books and Edited Volume

A Pious Belligerence: Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of Righteousness in the Crusading Near East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).

With Michael Lower guest editors, “Voices of Conflict and Cultural Difference in the Medieval Mediterranean,” a themed issue of Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 30:3 (2018)

Essays

“The Topography of Sacrifice and Typology of Space in Twelfth-Century Martyrology”, Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 3:33 (2013): 277-306.

“Inspecting the Pious Body: Christological Morphology in the Ritual Crucifixion Allegation,” Journal of Medieval History 41:1 (2015): 21-40

“‘Re-Orienting’ Estoires d’Outremer: The Arabic Context of the Saladin Legend,” The French of Outremer: Community and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean, eds. Nicholas Paul and Laura Morreale, (Fordham University Press, 2018), 150-178.

“Enshrined Fortification: A Trialogue on the Rise and Fall of Safed,” Medieval History Journal 23 (2020): 1-26.

“Ecumenical Mysticism: On Conversion in the Eastern Tradition of Ordene de Chevalerie,” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 27:2 (2021): 165-195.

“The Boundaries of Israel: Polemical Warfare on Behalf of the Holy Land,” AJS Review 47 (2023): 105-126.

“Dukus Horant – The Codicology of a Mediterranean Epic,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies (2024): 1164-1200.

“Romancing Allegory: Theories of the Vernacular in Outremer,” in: Interlocutions: Shifting Perspectives on Medieval French in Contact, eds. Jane Gilbert, Thomas O’Donnell and Brian J. Reilly (York Medieval Press, 2024), 179-196.

“When the Study of Judaism Entered History,” Journal of Medieval History 51:4 (2025): 561–566.

“Monotheistic Environments in the Crusading Near East,” in: Brill Companions to the Christian Tradition: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean, eds. Rita George-Tvrtkovic and Jessalynn Bird (Leiden: Brill, 2025), 172-193.

“Livre de Sidrac and the Co-production of a Mediterranean Encyclopedia,” in: Religious Co-production in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Artifacts, Rituals, Communities, Narratives, Doctrines, Concepts, eds. Katharina Heyden and David Nirenberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), 235-254.

"The Hermeneutics of Power: the Jew in Competing Narratives of Imperial Origins,” in: Hermeneutical Jew: Studies in Honor of Jeremy Cohen, eds. Yosi Israeli and Ram Ben-Shalom (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), 89-106.