Sarah Stroumsa


Sarah Stroumsa is the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor Emerita of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her academic education at the Hebrew University, as well as at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. She taught in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she served as Vice-Rector and then as Rector. She was a Visiting Professor at Harvard, Chicago, Michigan, Paris, and Münster.
Her academic focus is the history of philosophical and theological thought in Arabic in the early Islamic Middle Ages and the medieval Judeo-Arabic culture. In her philologically based work, she strives to offer a multifocal approach to the study of intellectual history.
Prof. Stroumsa currently serves as the President of the Society for Judeo-Arabic Studies. She is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities as well as of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the American Philosophical Society, and an associate member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco. In 2025 she was a recipient of the order Pour le Mérite.

Career

After earning her B.A, Stroumsa joined the faculty at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1977. By 1999, she was appointed to Full professor and later sat as Vice-Rector of the University from 2003 until 2006.
In 2003, she was named the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A few years later, she became the first woman to serve as Rector of the Hebrew University. The year after her promotion,
Stroumsa was the recipient of the Italian Solidarity Award. During her tenure as Rector, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem jumped from 72nd to 57th on the World Universities Ranking list. She also helped establish the University's first Muslim prayer room.
After ending her tenure as Rector, she was the recipient of a Research Grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a Research Project at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2018, Stroumsa and her husband earned the 2018 Leopold Lucas Prize.

Personal life

Stroumsa is married to Guy Stroumsa and they have two daughters.

Published works

Regarding Maimonides, she insists that Leo Strauss's 'dichotomy of esoteric versus exoteric writing does not do justice to Maimonides' context-sensitive rhetoric,' claiming instead that he "'plays a double game', reconciling and integrating dualities through the constant, creative interplay between Arabic and Hebrew, Islamic and Jewish culture."
  • Dawud ibn Marwan al-Muqammis's 'Ishrun Maqala
  • With Daniel J. Lasker, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest: Qiṣṣat Mujādalat al- Usquf and Sefer Nestor ha-Komer, 2 Vols. .
  • The Beginnings of the Maimonidean Controversy in the East: Yosef Ibn Shimʿon's Silencing Epistle Concerning the Resurrection of the Dead.
  • Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rāwandī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, and Their Impact on Islamic Thought. .
  • With H. Ben-Shammai, E. Batat, S. Butbul, and D. Sklare, Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Firkovitch Collections: Yefet Ben ʿEli al-Basri, Commentary on Genesis, A Sample Catalogue.
  • Maimonides in his World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker.
  • An updated Hebrew version of Maimonides in his World: הרמב״ם בעולמו: דיוקנו של הוגה ים תיכוני
  • Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ, Twenty Chapters. The Judeo-Arabic text, transliterated into Arabic characters, with a parallel English translation, notes, and introduction.
  • Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and its History in Islamic Spain.
  • With Guy G. Stroumsa, Eine dreifältiger Schnur: Über Judentum, Christentum, und Islam in Geschichte und Wissenschaft / A Cord of Three Strands: On Judaism, Christianity and Islam in History and Scholarship.
  • דאוד בן מרואן אלמקמץ, עשרים פרקים: תרגום מוער מערבית יהודית
  • Théologie et philosophie au temps des Almohades .
  • Das Kaleidoskop der Convivencia: Denktraditionen des Mittelalters im Austausch zwischen Islam, Judentum und Christentum.

    Edited volumes

  • The Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, vol. III, Studies in the History of Arabic Philosophy.
  • With Meir M. Bar-Asher, Simon Hopkins and Bruno Chiesa, A Word Fitly Spoken: Studies in Mediaeval Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible and the Qurʾān presented to Haggai Ben-Shammai.
  • With Haggai Ben-Shammai and Shaul Shaked, Exchange and Transmission Across Cultural Boundaries: Philosophy, Mysticism and Science in the Mediterranean World. Proceedings of an International Workshop Held in Memory of Professor Shlomo Pines at the Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 28 February – 2 March 2005.
  • With Sabine Schmidtke and Maribel Fierro, Histories of Books in the Islamicate World. Part I..
  • With Sabine Schmidtke and Maribel Fierro, Histories of Books in the Islamicate World. Part II..
  • With Geoffrey Khan and Sabine Schmidtke, Studies in Literary Genizot.