Dr Yitzhaq Feder uncovers the parallels between The skin disease Tzaraat in Leviticus and literature of the Ancient Near East.
 
Yitzhaq Feder is a lecturer in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa and tel aviv His research synthesizes the traditional philological study of ancient texts with the cognitive science of religions. He has conducted research on purity and pollution in the Ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and has examined how this work can be applied to psychological and evolutionary theory. His most recent research focuses on biblical notions of taboo and their implications for understanding the relationship between emotion and morality. His latest book, Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible: From Embodied Experience to Moral Metaphor, won the best book on the Hebrew Biblice from the Biblical Archaeology Society in 2023.