Biography
Jonah Boyarin is a PhD Student in North American Religions and Judaism at Columbia University. Jonah received his BA from Wesleyan University in 2008, where he studied Religion and Economics. Most recently, Jonah served as the Jewish Communities Liaison for the New York City Commission on Human Rights. In 2020, he was named as one of the Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36,” really just squeaking in there. Jonah also co-founded the country’s first D.E.I. program at a Jewish day school, in 2016.
Jonah returned to academia to seek out new or suppressed modes for solidarity between Jewish New Yorkers and their neighbors. Through ethnographic research and analysis of contemporary Yiddish and Hebrew Hasidic literature, Jonah investigates how American Hasidim negotiate or resist Christian secularism, rising antisemitism, and racial capitalism. He also studies ancestral memory, religio-racial identity, and collective struggle across Indigenous Studies and Black Studies, in order to stage an encounter with Jewish Studies. Finally, Jonah is working on a project that weaves together indigenous climate justice and disability justice frameworks with ancient rabbinic visions of the sun.