Harvey (Haim) Hames - Biography#

Haim (Harvey) J. Hames is currently Rector of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (from August 2018).

Haim received his PhD in Medieval History from Cambridge University in 1996, and since then has been a lecturer in the Department of General History at BGU. From 2011-2015, he was the department chair. In 2013, he set up the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters as part of the I-CORE initiative (one of two Center's funded in the Humanities and the only Center based in BGU). He was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (from August 2016 – July 2018)

Haim's research interests include Medieval and Renaissance Jewish, Christian and Muslim mysticism and philosophy, apocalypticism, inter-religious polemics, Bible and Talmud translations and issues dealing with religious conversion.

Among his publications: The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden 2000), Like Angels on Jacob's Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans and Joachimism, (State University of New York Press 2007) and Ha-Melacha ha-Ketzara: Ramon Llull’s Ars brevis in Hebrew (Brepols 2012). He was guest editor of two volumes of the Mediterranean Historical Review entitled Mediterranean Reflections: Studies in Honour of David Abulafia (2010, 2011), as well as Jews, Muslims and Christians in and around the Medieval Crown of Aragon: Studies in Honour of Elena Lourie (Leiden 2004). Together with Alexander Fidora and Yossef Schwartz, he edited a volume entitled Latin into Hebrew: The Transfer of Philosophical, Scientific and Medical Lore from Christian to Jewish Cultures during the Middle Ages: History, Terminology, Methodology, (Leiden: Brill 2013) and was the editor of The Brighter Side of Medieval Inter-Religious Encounters which appeared as a special number of a leading international journal Medieval Encounters (22:1-3, 2016).

Haim has also written a book (in Hebrew) for a more general audience dealing with Judaism in contemporary Israel entitled I (do not) Believe: Judaism and Israel, Past, Present, Future, (Tel Aviv: Ktav Publishing House 2011).