Dr. Ron Lasri

Ron Lasri is a scholar of Jewish literature and history who specializes in the treatment of classic Talmudic stories and their cultural contexts within Sephardi societies. His research explores the reception of rabbinic Aggadah by the Jewish communities in medieval Iberia, and in the broader Sephardic diaspora throughout the Mediterranean basin. His work examines how literary analysis contributes to our understanding of the cultural history of Sephardi Jews.

His dissertation, "Yitzhak Aboab's and Yisrael Al-Nakawa's Menorat Ha-Maor: A Literary Evaluation of Two Anthologies of Rabbinic Aggadah from 14th-century Castile," received the 2022 Zalman Shazar Center's Yuval Heiman Prize, for an outstanding Hebrew dissertation in Jewish history. His book in preparation, based upon this dissertation, will be published by Shazar Press. 

His current undertaking in the “Contending With Crisis” project, explores the cultural and social history of middle-class Jews in fourteenth-century Castile and Aragon by examining the introductions to books written for the middle class.

Ron has taught at Ben-Gurion University and Rutgers University and continues to teach at Achva Academic College, covering literature, history, folklore, and Sephardic culture.