Mira Balberg

Mira Balberg is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, specializing in ancient Mediterranean religious history with primary focus on late ancient Judaism (200 BCE–500 CE). Her scholarship investigates cultural interactions between Jewish communities and Greco-Roman/Christian environments, particularly examining how rabbinic literature reinterpreted biblical frameworks through cross-cultural dialogues.

• PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University (2011)
• Chair of the Department of History at UCSD

Her research applies ritual theory and subjectivity studies to analyze transformations in rabbinic legal and narrative texts, including topics like:

• Redefinition of purity laws through Hellenistic medical concepts
• Cultural reimaginings of sacrificial practices
• Gerontological representations in Talmudic narratives
• Memory failures in halakhic construction
• Interactions between magic and legal discourse
• Material religion in rabbinic thought

While emphasizing rabbinic literature's cultural complexity, her work also explores modern Israeli cultural productions and the post-secular relevance of religious studies frameworks.