David Brodsky is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College. He received his PhD from NYU in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He specializes in the study of Rabbinic Literature in its Zoroastrian-Persian, Christian-Syriac, and Greco-Roman contexts. He teaches Jewish history and literature from the First Temple through the Medieval period. Prof. Brodsky is the author of A Bride without a Blessing: A Study in the Redaction and Content of Massekhet Kallah and its Gemara (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), and numerous articles including “From Disagreement to Talmudic Discourse: Progymnasmata and the Evolution of a Rabbinic Genre,” “Why Did the Widow Have a Goat in Her Bed? Midrash and the Making of Jewish Humor,” and “Mourner’s Kaddish, The Prequel: The Sassanian Period Backstory that Gave Birth to the Medieval Prayer for the Dead.”