About:
Benjamin Bar-Tikva is a professor in the Department of the Literature of the Jewish People at Bar-Ilan University, specializing in the study of medieval Jewish sacred poetry. He is head of The Jamie Lehmann Chair for Piyyut Studies and Research. Professor Bar-Tikva is involved in research of the prayer customs of the medieval Jewish communities of Provence and Catalonia, and has published the treasures of liturgical poetry hidden in the weekday and holiday prayer books of these traditions in scientific editions accompanied by scholarly introductions and poetic investigations. At the same time he studies the liturgical poetry of the communities of the descendents of the Jews who were driven out of Spain (1492), composed in the subsequent centuries in the Jewish Orient, in North Africa, Greece and the Balkans. Professor Bar-Tikva also collects halakhic liturgical poetry, and publishes it in scholarly editions accompanied with broad commentary, presenting it in its social and historical contexts. He devotes special attention in his books and research papers to an examination of the links between liturgical poetry and the worlds of the Bible, Midrash, Jewish custom and halakhah.