Dr. Simkovich is a scholar of early Judaism whose work bridges the world of the Bible with contemporary Jewish theology.

The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria

Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories that Shaped Early Judaism

Letters from Home: The Creation of
Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity

Meet Malka Z. Simkovich

Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich is the Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Publication Society, Visiting Professor at Yeshiva University’s Revel Graduate School for Jewish Studies, and a Council Member of President Isaac Herzog’s Voice of the People delegation.

She is the author of Letters From Home: The Creation of Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity (2024), Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (2018), and The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria (2016).

Simkovich’s articles have been published in journals such as the Harvard Theological Review, Sapir, the Journal for the Study of Judaism, the Jewish Review of Books, Tablet, Tradition, and The Christian Century.

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Praise for Letters from Home

“This thoughtful and well-crafted book is a must-read for anyone seeking a roadmap through the much-vexed questions surrounding Biblical and late Second Temple conceptions of Jewish universalism. With clarity and erudition, the author illuminates the complexity of key Biblical and post-Biblical texts and demonstrates that the same text could have both universalistic and particularistic reflexes.”

“Letters from Home is a brilliant and innovative exploration of ancient Jewish identity-construction that successfully overcomes the biases pervading earlier scholarship. The book’s insightful literary and rhetorical analyses show how Jewish ‘letter-writers’ from both Hellenistic-era Judea and Egypt negotiated the historical and theological meaning of the demographic dispersion of their community, while dialogically shaping their respective identities.”

“A brilliant study of how Second Temple letter-writers and authors constructed diaspora and shaped their own identities, which resonate with our own times as well.”

“Malka Simkovich’s Letters from Home is elegantly written, clearly structured, consistently argued, and certainly thought-provoking. It is particularly strong in its close reading of selected texts from the Hellenistic period.”

“Malka Simkovich’s study of ancient letters provides us not only with a much greater understanding of the relationship of Judean and Diaspora Jewry in Antiquity, but also with a wider perspective on issues that have confronted the Jewish people in modern times.”