Israeli scholar
Sarah Stroumsa (born 1950) is the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has contributed several investigations into Jewish and Arabic scholastic philosophy.
In 2021 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[1]
Career
After earning her B.A, Stroumsa joined the faculty at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1977.[2] By 1999, she was appointed to Full professor and later sat as Vice-Rector of the University from 2003 until 2006.[3]
In 2003, she was named the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor Emerita of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[4] A few years later, she became the first woman to serve as Rector of the Hebrew University.[5] The year after her promotion,
Stroumsa was the recipient of the Italian Solidarity Award.[6] During her tenure as Rector, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem jumped from 72nd to 57th on the World Universities Ranking list.[7] She also helped establish the University's first Muslim prayer room.[8]
After ending her tenure as Rector, she was the recipient of a Research Grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a Research Project at Freie Universität Berlin.[4] In 2018, Stroumsa and her husband earned the 2018 Leopold Lucas Prize.[9]
Personal life
Stroumsa is married to Guy Stroumsa and they have two daughters.[10]
Published works
Regarding Maimonides, she insists that Leo Strauss's 'dichotomy of esoteric versus exoteric writing does not do justice to Maimonides' context-sensitive rhetoric,' claiming instead that he "'plays a double game', reconciling and integrating dualities through the constant, creative interplay between Arabic and Hebrew, Islamic and Jewish culture."[11]
- Dawud ibn Marwan al-Muqammis's 'Ishrun Maqala (Etudes sur le judaisme medieval XIII, Leiden: Brill, 1989)
- With Daniel J. Lasker, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest: Qiṣṣat Mujādalat al- Usquf and Sefer Nestor ha-Komer (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1996), 2 Vols.
- The Beginnings of the Maimonidean Controversy in the East: Yosef Ibn Shimʿon's Silencing Epistle Concerning the Resurrection of the Dead (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1999; Hebrew).
- Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rāwandī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, and Their Impact on Islamic Thought (Islamic Philosophy and Theology XXXV; Leiden: Brill, 1999; Paperback edition 2016).
- With H. Ben-Shammai, E. Batat, S. Butbul, and D. Sklare, Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Firkovitch Collections: Yefet Ben ʿEli al-Basri, Commentary on Genesis, A Sample Catalogue (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2000; Hebrew).
- Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009; Paperback edition, 2012).
- .(ירושלים: מאגנס, 2021ֿ), הרמב״ם בעולמו: דיוקנו של הוגה ים תיכוני
- Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ, Twenty Chapters. The Judeo-Arabic text, transliterated into Arabic characters, with a parallel English translation, notes, and introduction (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2016).
- Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and its History in Islamic Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
- With Guy G. Stroumsa, Eine dreifältiger Schnur: Über Judentum, Christentum, und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft / A Cord of Three Strands: On Judaism, Christianity and Islam in History and Scholarship (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck: 2020).
- .(ירושלים: מאגנס, תשפ״ג 2022), דאוד בן מרואן אלמקמץ, עשרים פרקים: תרגום מוער מערבית יהודית
- Théologie et philosophie au temps des Almohades (XIIe siècle de l’Ère commune) (Rabat: Académie du Royaume du Maroc, 2023).
- Das Kaleidoskop der Convivencia: Denktraditionen des Mittelalters im Austausch zwischen Islam, Judentum und Christentum (Blumenberg Vorlesungen 7; Freiburg: Herder, forthcoming 2023).
