Prof. Ofra Tirosh-Becker

Ofra Tirosh-Becker is a Professor of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic and holds the Bialik Chair in Hebrew Language. She is the Head of The Center of Jewish Languages and Literatures at the Hebrew University. Former Director of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East (2018-2021), and a member of the executive committee of The Academy of the Hebrew Language. Prof. Tirosh-Becker research focuses on the contacts between Arabic and Hebrew, North-African Judeo-Arabic dialectology, Neo-Judeo-Arabic translations of the Bible and post-biblical texts, Karaite Hebrew, and the application of Natural Language Processing (NPL) tools to Judeo-Arabic. She is the Founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages (Brill), the Co-Editor of Massorot: Studies in Language Traditions and the Jewish Languages (the Hebrew University and Magnes). She has published the awards-winning two-volume monograph Rabbinic Excerpts in Medieval Karaite Literature (1282 pages; Bialik Institute: Jerusalem 2011), and more recently, together with Prof. Lutz Edzard, the volume Jewish Languages: Text specimens, grammatical, lexical, and cultural sketches (777 pages; Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden 2021). Read more >