Guest Speaker:
Benjamin R. Gampel,
BA Brooklyn College; MPhil, PhD, Columbia University

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Dr. Benjamin Gampel serves as the Dina and Eli Field Family Chair in Jewish History at JTS. A specialist in medieval and early modern Jewries, Dr. Gampel most recent book, Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392, won the 2016 National Jewish Book Council’s Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship. This prizewinning volume treats the riots and forced conversions of 1391 in the Iberian Peninsula and explores why monarchic authority failed to protect the Jews during these fate-filled months.

Dr. Gampel, who earned his doctorate from Columbia University, spent almost a year researching in local Spanish archives for his first book The Last Jews on Iberian Soil.  Dr. Gampel was able to re-create some long-forgotten history of the Iberian Peninsula Jews. He also edited the volume Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391–1648.

Dr. Gampel is known as a stimulating teacher and delightful lecturer on the whole range of Jewish history. He has addressed synagogue and lay groups, organizations of all stripes, and scholarly conclaves. Truly an energetic scholar and teacher, Dr. Gampel is dedicated to bringing the history of the Jews to a wide public audience.