Marta Topel

Statut

Année(s)

Laboratoire(s)

Contrat

Accueil LabexMed

Biographie

Marta F. Topel was born in Brazil but left the country to Buenos Aires (Argentina) when she was a child. In Buenos Aires she got her B. A. in Sociology, and in 1985 travelled to Israel to do her M.A. She returned to Brazil in 1990 and got her Ph.D. from the UNICAMP university in 1996. In 1998 she started to work in the Program for Hebrew Language and Jewish Literature at the University of São Paulo. She is a tenured professor in the undergraduate Program for Hebrew Language and Jewish Literature, and in the Graduate Program for Jewish and Arabic Studies at the University of São Paulo (USP). Topel had devoted the last 15 years to study Orthodox Jewish communities, both in Brazil and in Israel. Her last book Jewish Orthodoxy and Its Discontents: Religious Dissidence in Contemporary Israel (2012) was a pioneering study of desertion from Jewish Israeli Orthodoxy, and was translated to English. Although Topel continues to research different topics related to Jewish Orthodoxy, like the changes of the concepts of diaspora and home through History, and is developing new approaches to understand the Jewish dietary laws as they function nowadays, since 2017 Topel has also been developing a research about the emergence of new Jewish identities in Brazil, and how they relate to Brazilian Jewish institutions and to the State of Israel.

Actuellement

Professeur d'Anthropologie de l' Université de Sao Paulo At present time, Marta F. Topel has six M.A. and Ph.D. students under her supervision; she also teaches in the undergraduate and graduate courses in the both programs she works. Since 2017, she is the Head of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of São Paulo (USP). Her main topics of research are: Orthodox and contemporary Judaism, multiculturalism in Israeli society, ethnicity in the context of Brazilian society, and Religious Fundamentalism. Chercheuse invitée LabexMed à l'IDEMEC du 1er au 18 décembre 2018