Avi Blitz

Avi Blitz serves as Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts, teaching Hebrew language and Israeli cultural studies courses including HEB 346D (Israeli Society and Culture) and intensive Hebrew sequences.

He earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University (2020) with dissertation research on the Tsene-rene, a seventeenth-century Yiddish women's Bible synthesizing Hebrew scripture with midrashic and folkloric elements.

Blitz's research centers on Jewish literary traditions with emphasis on Yiddish literature's modern manifestations. His work examines contemporary Yiddish-speaking Haredi communities in Israel through journalistic publications and explores early 20th-century Jewish avant-garde movements via literary translations, particularly focusing on Polish-Jewish cultural intersections during the interwar period. This dual focus bridges historical textual analysis with living ultra-Orthodox cultural practices.

His recent scholarly output demonstrates concentrated engagement with Łódź-based Jewish avant-garde poetry from the 1920s, revealing thematic preoccupations with cultural preservation amid modernist experimentation.

With teaching experience spanning the United States, Latin America, Israel, and Europe, Blitz integrates transnational perspectives into Hebrew language pedagogy while maintaining scholarly connections to Yiddish literary heritage through translation projects and cultural analysis.