(Philadelphia, July 16, 2024) The Jewish Publication Society is pleased to welcome our new Director and Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich, who will join JPS on September 1, 2024.
Dr. Simkovich joins JPS after serving as the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies and Director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
JPS Board President Gittel Hilibrand, Esq., said, “Dr. Simkovich is a master educator, a prolific writer, and an engaging speaker. She has a long history with JPS where she started as an intern, became a JPS author, and will now become our Director and Editor-in-Chief.”
Dr. Simkovich shared, “JPS’s mission of bringing Jewish ideas into the public sphere, and into Jewish homes, is more important than ever. I am excited to join its brilliant team, and in particular wish to thank JPS’s Director Emeritus and Interim Director, Rabbi Barry Schwartz, the president of JPS’s board, Gittel Hilibrand, Esq., and JPS’s entire staff and board for entrusting me with overseeing the next stage of its journey.”
She is the author of The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017); Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (JPS, 2018), which received the 2019 Association of Jewish Libraries Judaica Reference Honor Award; and Letters From Home: The Creation of Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity, (Eisenbrauns Press, 2024). Dr. Simkovich’s articles have been published in the Harvard Theological Review and the Journal for the Study of Judaism.
A Leon Charney Fellow at the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies, a Sacks Scholar at the Rabbi Sacks Legacy, and a Kogod Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Simkovich speaks regularly to audiences across North America and beyond on topics related to the Hebrew Bible, Jewish history, and contemporary Jewish-Christian relations.
For more information, please contact Deena Schoenfeld, JPS Director of Communications and Marketing, at dschoenfeld@jps.org. To reach Dr. Simkovich, please email msimkovich@jps.org.
