Yitzhaq Feder is a lecturer at the University of Haifa. His research integrates textual study with advances in psychological and anthropological research. He has received numerous prizes, including the 2012 SBL David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Innovation in Biblical Studies. His most recent research focuses on biblical and ancient Near Eastern notions of taboo and their implications for understanding the emergence and historical development of morality.
'... Feder's application of cognitive theories to biblical pollution regulations and rhetoric calls into question the ancient and continuing efforts to explain them systematically. These very important contributions to the field should be engaged by everyone working on these issues.' James W. Watts, Vetus Testamentum 'Feder places the biblical purity laws in their ancient Near Eastern context while also using insights from psychology, anthropology, and cognitive linguistics to illuminate aspects of the biblical purity rules, showing how similarly/differently contagion and pollution are thought about today. Some of Feder's arguments will be contested, but any scholar interested in this topic will need to reckon with Feder's nuanced, thought-provoking approach. Summing Up: ***' J. S. Kaminsky, Choice 'Overall, this monograph is a significant step forward for the study of priestly ritual and the concepts of purity and pollution. ... [It] is a powerful argument against the scholarly creation of abstract symbolic systems, and a testament to the messiness of lived experience the religious and ritual practices that emerge from it. Such a corrective is extremely necessary, and it is one which I enthusiastically welcome.' Liane M. Feldman, Journal of Near Eastern Studies