Jarrod Tanny is Associate Professor of History and the Charles and Hannah Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Born in Montreal, Canada, Tanny lived and breathed Seinfeld and Jewish humor long before making it part of his teaching and writing career. Having received his Ph.D. in Russian and Jewish History at the University of California at Berkeley, he embraced his East European Jewish ancestry and wrote a book called City of Rogues and Schnorrers, which examines how the city of Odessa, in today’s Ukraine, was mythologized as a Jewish “city of sin,” celebrated and vilified for its Jewish gangsters, pimps, bawdy musicians, and comedians. Odessa’s “Jewish” comedy drew him further into humor studies and he has published numerous essays on comedy and original satires. The Seinfeld Talmud combines Tanny’s love of Seinfeld with his knowledge of Jewish history and culture presented through the lens of parody. Had Seinfeld aired 1,500 years ago in the Middle East, the great rabbis of antiquity would not only have embraced the show, but would have made it a foundation of Judaic Law.

Bruce A. Edminster began his career as a pastor in Southern California in the early 1970s. He then took a leave of absence to begin his Ph.D. at Fuller Theological Seminary. In 2021, he finished his degree at Northwestern Theological Seminary. Dr. Edminster has taught Bible classes in Southern California. He also holds a B.A. in Theology, with a minor in Biblical languages, and a Master of Divinity, with a major concentration in Biblical languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac. Latin and Egyptian Hieroglyphics).

Born in Belgium, Julien Delhez studied classical philology at the University of Liège and ancient languages at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2015, he relocated to Germany to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony. Shenoute of Atripe and the Rise of Monastic Education in Egypt is the revised version of his doctoral thesis.

Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon is Senior Fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Among her books are The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom, The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World, Soulmates: Resurrecting Eve, Why America is Such a Hard Sell, and Notes from the Other Side of Night. The author of over 250 articles and reviews on international affairs, human rights, literature, and philosophy, her writings have recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Liberty, the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), Academic Questions, InFocus, Starting Points, Doc Emet Productions, the American Mind, and the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, among others. Born in Romania, she emigrated with her family and arrived in the U.S. as a teenager. In the 1990s she was Vice President for Programs at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), where she designed, conducted, and managed projects related to a wide variety of democratization projects.

David Roman was born in Madrid in 1973. After a long career as a foreign correspondent with the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region, he started work on Emperor Whisperers, his first non-fiction book. He is married with two children and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Nils A. Haug is a trial lawyer by profession and member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, and a faculty member of Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Retired from law to focus on writing and teaching, his particular field of interest is the intersection of Western culture with political theory, philosophy, theology, English literature, ethics, and law. Dr. Haug holds various degrees including an M.A.(cum laude) in Biblical Studies and Ph.D. in Theology (Apologetics).

Steven Greer is Research Director at the Oxford Institute for British Islam, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bristol Law School, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, all in the UK. He studied Law at the University of Oxford, Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and holds a Ph.D. in Law from the Queen’s University of Belfast. In a career spanning nearly 40 years he has taught and delivered numerous papers throughout the UK and abroad, including in China and at Harvard Law School. He has also published widely, particularly in the fields of criminal justice, human rights, and law and terrorism. Two of his books were shortlisted for prestigious prizes. He has also acted as consultant/advisor to various organizations, including Muslim and Arab ones, written for the Guardian, the Times of London, the Irish Times, and the Belfast Telegraph, and appeared internationally on numerous radio and television stations.

Reinhold Knoll, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Vienna

Translator: Kenneth Quandt, Ph.D.

V. Adefemi Isumonah, Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan (Nigeria)
Nathaniel Umukoro, Department of Political Science, Edo University (Nigeria)

Zelda Kahan Newman is retired from Lehman College/CUNY. She has written academic papers on Talmudic chant and Hassidic Yiddish. She is the English language translator of the Yiddish poet Rivka Basman Ben-Haim and has published a dual-language book titled The Thirteenth Hour, with the poet’s original Yiddish poems alongside Kahan Newman’s English translations