Chaim Hames
Chaim J. Hames is a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer-Sheva, Israel, and the incumbent of the David Berg and Family Chair in European History. On August 1, 2018, he assumed office as Rector of BGU. Hames' research focuses on medieval history, with a particular interest in inter-religious encounters, particularly between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. He also works on religious conversion, inter-religious polemics, mysticism, philosophy, apocalypticism, and magic.
Early life and education
Chaim Hames was born in England in 1966 and immigrated with his parents to Israel in 1978 when he was 12. He grew up in a Religious Orthodox-Zionist household in Petah-Tikva and attended Midrashiat Noam, a Yeshiva High-School in Pardes Hanna.Following three years of military service, Hames completed a B.A. in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Hames received an M.Phil in 1992 and Ph.D in Medieval History from the University of Cambridge in England in 1996 where his supervisor was Professor David Abulafia.
Career
Hames joined the Department of History at BGU in October 1995.In 2000, Hames spent six months as a fellow at the Center for Judaic Studies in Philadelphia. He is a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge where he was on sabbatical in 2002-2003. In 2009, he spent a sabbatical year at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona where he worked with an ERC funded research group on medieval Hebrew translations of Latin texts. Together with Alexander Fidora, he was also part of the ERC Consolidation Grant working on the Latin Talmud.
Hames served as Chair of the Department of History from 2011 to 2015. In 2013, he established the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters as part of the I-CORE initiative. He was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences from 2016 to 2018. He became Rector of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev on 1 August 2018. He was elected a fellow of the Academy of Europe in 2019.
Hames has published over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and collected volumes, as well as a number of books: The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century, a book about Ramon Llull, a Christian mystic, philosopher and missionary from the Balearic Islands who developed a method for converting Jews and Muslims utilizing Kabbali
He was guest editor of two volumes of the Mediterranean Historical Review entitled Mediterranean Reflections: Studies in Honour of David Abulafia and of Jews, Muslims and Christians in and around the Medieval Crown of Aragon: Studies in Honour of Elena Lourie. Together with Alexander Fidora and Yossef Schwartz, he edited a volume entitled Latin into Hebrew: Vol. II: Texts in Contexts and was the editor of The Brighter Side of Medieval Inter-Religious Encounters which appeared as a special number of the journal Medieval Encounters.
He has also written a book for general audiences in Hebrew dealing with Judaism in contemporary Israel entitled, I Believe: Judaism and Israel, Past, Present, Future.