Simcha Gro
Biographic Data
| ID | 3597329 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simcha Gro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simcha |
| FAMILY NAME | Gro |
| SIGNATURE | GRO S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2684-2180 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Synagogue Elevation, War and Divine Protection between Palestine and Babylonia
This article examines the rabbinic directive that synagogues be elevated above all other buildings in a city, a law expressed differently in the Tosefta and the Babylonian Talmud. While later authorities like Maimonides treated these sources as reflecting a single, unified legal norm, closer analysis reveals meaningful differences. This study argues that these variations are not incidental but were shaped by each texts distinct geographic, politi…
The Conversion of Adiabene: The Politics of Jewishness on the Near Eastern Frontier
This article explores what motivated the Adiabenian dynasty to foster connections with Jews and Judaism in the first-century Near East beyond the exclusively pious explanation offered by our surviving literary sources and in previous scholarship. It does so by building on three scholarly trends, concerning the social and political role of Jewish conversion in the late Second Temple period, the nature of late ancient royal self-fashioning, and dev…
Beyond ☪oe✡is✝ence
Among its many achievements, The Ways That Never Parted marked a paradigm shift in the study of Jewish–Christian relations by challenging the notion of rigid, essential group identities and boundaries and emphasizing instead that identities were fluid, discursively constructed, and frequently marked by interaction rather than conflict. While the methodological shifts consolidated in this work have had far-reaching and transformative effects, part…
From Togas to Turbans: Jewish Male Head Coverings between the Roman and Sasanian Worlds
This essay offers a contextual study of classical rabbinic discussions concerning male head coverings, disentangling them from the teleological framework of the later kippah or skullcap, for which these texts have often been cited as origins or normative foundations. It demonstrates that male headdress was deemed appropriate in different situations; bore different material forms; and carried distinct social, cultural, and theological connotations…
The Making of Rabbinic Pasts: Introduction
Once Again on ʾbk wdm in Ethiopian Sabaic
In an article published in this journal in 2010, Norbert Nebes argued that ʾbk wdm is an apotropaic formula, which can be translated, for instance in the case of RIÉ 9, as ‘und Waddum ist dein (göttlicher) Vater als Schutz vor einem Widersacher’ (wʾbk wdm [b]n ʿtkm). In contrast, it is proposed here that ʾbk wdm continues the previous list of deity names, as already suggested in 1976 by Roger Schneider. Key to this argument is the distribution of…
Reconsidering the Earliest Synagogue in Yemen
This article reexamines the evidence underlying the widely cited identification of a late ancient synagogue in Qanīʾ (modern Biʾr ʿAlī, Yemen), challenging its identification and the historical narrative built around it. We first assess the epigraphic, archaeological, and literary evidence used to identify a synagogue, and therefore a community of Jews, in fourth- through sixth-century Ḥimyar. We suggest that none of the evidence can bear the wei…
Where Did Rav and Shmuel Preside? Lingering Institutional Assumptions in the Study of the Late Antique Rabbis
Playing with Persecution: Parallel Jewish and Christian Memories of Late Antiquity in Early Islamic Iraq
Babylonian Jewish Society: The Evidence of the Incantation Bowls
Since their discovery, the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls have typically been understood to represent “popular” Jewish religious practice that stood in marked contrast with the scholastic rabbinic elite. As a result of this characterization, the usefulness of the bowls for understanding Babylonian Jewish society and the position of the rabbis within it has remained largely unexplored. With the continued publication and study of the b…
Reassessing exilarchal authority between Sasanian and early Islamic rule
The exilarch is widely believed to have held a supra-leadership position over Babylonian Jewish society during the Amoraic period, a position which persisted into the medieval period. One of the exilarch's chief responsibilities and privileges was overseeing the Jewish legal system, and more particularly appointing and authorizing judges. Despite the prevalence of this understanding of the exilarch, it is primarily predicated on a single extended…
Curious Case of the Jewish Sasanian Queen Šīšīnduxt: Exilarchal Propaganda and Zoroastrians in Tenth- to Eleventh-Century Baghdad
The Provincial Capitals of Ērānšahr, a medieval Zoroastrian Middle Persian text, recounts how the daughter of the Jewish exilarch married the Sasanian king Yaz- dgird I and gave birth to Wahrām Gōr, his successor. While the historicity of the text has been largely undermined, scant attention has been given to its authorship and purpose. This article proposes that the story's creators were members of the exilarch's household in the tenth through e…
Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium
Scholarly interest in intersections between Jews and Syriac Christians has experienced a boom in recent years. This is the result of a series of converging trends in the study of both groups and their cultural productions. The present volume contributes to this developing conversation by collecting sixteen studies that investigate a wide range of topics, from questions of origins to the development of communal boundaries, from social interactions…
Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium
The present volume consists of sixteen studies concerned with intersections between Jews and Syriac Christians over the first millennium CE, investigating a wide range of topics, from questions of origins to the development of communal boundaries, from social interactions to shared historical conditions.
When the Jews Greeted Ali: Sherira Gaon's Epistle in Light of Arabic and Syriac Historiography
Sherira Gaon's Epistle has been the most important source for the study of Babylonian Jewish history, and yet scholars have often relied too heavily on this work. This article argues that Sherira Gaon's Epistle must first be situated in its contemporary context, which reveals the many historiographical assumptions about the past that Sherira shared with both Arabic and Syriac historiography from the same period. In particular, analysis of Sherira…
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When the Jews Greeted Ali: Sherira Gaon's Epistle in Light of Arabic and Syriac Historiography
Sherira Gaon's Epistle has been the most important source for the study of Babylonian Jewish history, and yet scholars have often relied too heavily on this work. This article argues that Sherira Gaon's Epistle must first be situated in its contemporary context, which reveals the many historiographical assumptions about the past that Sherira shared with both Arabic and Syriac historiography from the same period. In particular, analysis of Sherira…
Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium
Scholarly interest in intersections between Jews and Syriac Christians has experienced a boom in recent years. This is the result of a series of converging trends in the study of both groups and their cultural productions. The present volume contributes to this developing conversation by collecting sixteen studies that investigate a wide range of topics, from questions of origins to the development of communal boundaries, from social interactions…
Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium
The present volume consists of sixteen studies concerned with intersections between Jews and Syriac Christians over the first millennium CE, investigating a wide range of topics, from questions of origins to the development of communal boundaries, from social interactions to shared historical conditions.
Curious Case of the Jewish Sasanian Queen Šīšīnduxt: Exilarchal Propaganda and Zoroastrians in Tenth- to Eleventh-Century Baghdad
The Provincial Capitals of Ērānšahr, a medieval Zoroastrian Middle Persian text, recounts how the daughter of the Jewish exilarch married the Sasanian king Yaz- dgird I and gave birth to Wahrām Gōr, his successor. While the historicity of the text has been largely undermined, scant attention has been given to its authorship and purpose. This article proposes that the story's creators were members of the exilarch's household in the tenth through e…
Reconsidering the Earliest Synagogue in Yemen
This article reexamines the evidence underlying the widely cited identification of a late ancient synagogue in Qanīʾ (modern Biʾr ʿAlī, Yemen), challenging its identification and the historical narrative built around it. We first assess the epigraphic, archaeological, and literary evidence used to identify a synagogue, and therefore a community of Jews, in fourth- through sixth-century Ḥimyar. We suggest that none of the evidence can bear the wei…
Where Did Rav and Shmuel Preside? Lingering Institutional Assumptions in the Study of the Late Antique Rabbis
Playing with Persecution: Parallel Jewish and Christian Memories of Late Antiquity in Early Islamic Iraq
Babylonian Jewish Society: The Evidence of the Incantation Bowls
Since their discovery, the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls have typically been understood to represent “popular” Jewish religious practice that stood in marked contrast with the scholastic rabbinic elite. As a result of this characterization, the usefulness of the bowls for understanding Babylonian Jewish society and the position of the rabbis within it has remained largely unexplored. With the continued publication and study of the b…
Reassessing exilarchal authority between Sasanian and early Islamic rule
The exilarch is widely believed to have held a supra-leadership position over Babylonian Jewish society during the Amoraic period, a position which persisted into the medieval period. One of the exilarch's chief responsibilities and privileges was overseeing the Jewish legal system, and more particularly appointing and authorizing judges. Despite the prevalence of this understanding of the exilarch, it is primarily predicated on a single extended…
The Making of Rabbinic Pasts: Introduction
Once Again on ʾbk wdm in Ethiopian Sabaic
In an article published in this journal in 2010, Norbert Nebes argued that ʾbk wdm is an apotropaic formula, which can be translated, for instance in the case of RIÉ 9, as ‘und Waddum ist dein (göttlicher) Vater als Schutz vor einem Widersacher’ (wʾbk wdm [b]n ʿtkm). In contrast, it is proposed here that ʾbk wdm continues the previous list of deity names, as already suggested in 1976 by Roger Schneider. Key to this argument is the distribution of…
Beyond ☪oe✡is✝ence
Among its many achievements, The Ways That Never Parted marked a paradigm shift in the study of Jewish–Christian relations by challenging the notion of rigid, essential group identities and boundaries and emphasizing instead that identities were fluid, discursively constructed, and frequently marked by interaction rather than conflict. While the methodological shifts consolidated in this work have had far-reaching and transformative effects, part…
From Togas to Turbans: Jewish Male Head Coverings between the Roman and Sasanian Worlds
This essay offers a contextual study of classical rabbinic discussions concerning male head coverings, disentangling them from the teleological framework of the later kippah or skullcap, for which these texts have often been cited as origins or normative foundations. It demonstrates that male headdress was deemed appropriate in different situations; bore different material forms; and carried distinct social, cultural, and theological connotations…
Synagogue Elevation, War and Divine Protection between Palestine and Babylonia
This article examines the rabbinic directive that synagogues be elevated above all other buildings in a city, a law expressed differently in the Tosefta and the Babylonian Talmud. While later authorities like Maimonides treated these sources as reflecting a single, unified legal norm, closer analysis reveals meaningful differences. This study argues that these variations are not incidental but were shaped by each texts distinct geographic, politi…
The Conversion of Adiabene: The Politics of Jewishness on the Near Eastern Frontier
This article explores what motivated the Adiabenian dynasty to foster connections with Jews and Judaism in the first-century Near East beyond the exclusively pious explanation offered by our surviving literary sources and in previous scholarship. It does so by building on three scholarly trends, concerning the social and political role of Jewish conversion in the late Second Temple period, the nature of late ancient royal self-fashioning, and dev…
History (10 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (9 works) · Judaism (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Ancient history (6 works) · Art (6 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (6 works) · Classics (6 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (5 works)