Simcha Gross is a specialist in ancient and early medieval Jewish history, with a particular focus on the contextual study of the rabbis and rabbinic literature in their Persian and Islamic contexts. He also specializes in the study of Syriac Christianity. His research focuses on the Jews of the first millennium of the common era in their Roman, Sasanian, and Islamicate contexts. His first monograph, Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2024, and centers on the formative aspects of Sasanian imperialism on Babylonian Jewish society and culture. He has co-authored a translation and comprehensive introduction to the only Syriac martyr act to feature a Jewish convert, entitled The History of the 'Slave of Christ:' From Jewish Child to Christian Martyr (PMAS 6; Gorgias Press, 2016), and has edited a volume entitled Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium (Mohr Siebeck, 2020). He teaches courses on Jewish history, ancient Jewish literature, Syriac Christianity, Jewish Magic, ancient empires, and violence.
He was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton in the School of Historical Studies, a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, and a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies. He is currently a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship for experienced researchers and a fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.
Prior to arriving at Penn, Simcha taught in the History Department at the University of California, Irvine (2017-2019) and in the Religious Studies Department at Stanford University (2016).
Yale University, PhD (2017)
