Yonatan Adler

Prof. Yonatan Adler is an Associate Professor in Archaeology at Ariel University in Israel. In 2019–2020, he held the appointment of Horace W. Goldsmith Visiting Associate Professor in Judaic Studies at Yale University. Adler specializes in the origins of Judaism as a system of ritual practices, and in the evolution these practices over the long-term. His research in recent years has focused on ritual purity observance evidenced in the archaeological remains of chalk vessels and immersion pools. He has also researched and published extensively on ancient tefillin (phylacteries) from Qumran and elsewhere in the Judean Desert. He has directed excavations at several sites throughout Israel, most recently at ‘Einot Amitai and at Reina, two sites in Galilee where Roman-era chalk vessel workshops have been unearthed. Adler was appointed in 2018 by the Minister of Culture to serve as a member of the Israeli Council for Archaeology.