Prof. Dr. Youval Rotman
Youval Rotman is a Full Professor of History in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and holds the Salonica Chair for the History and Culture of the Jews of Greece. His scholarship focuses on social and cultural processes in the Mediterranean and Near East in the first millennium under Roman and Byzantine rule, which gave rise to new forms of religious communities. Within this framework, he has worked on slavery, redeeming captives, social abnormality in religious life, and rivalry between religious communities in the Byzantine world. His current research project, “The Soul in Search of God,” investigates the emergence of a new conception of interiority in antiquity.
His project at CEMES applies an interdisciplinary approach, combining psychoanalysis with historical-critical analysis to outline the reconceptualization of the human soul through person-centered messianism. In his comparison of three monotheistic examples of person-centered messianism—more hassedeq, Jesus, and Elijah—he aims to define a new theoretical framework that reveals how messianic figures embody a fundamental shift in understanding the human soul as a vehicle of self-transformation. By reframing this self-transformation as an eschatological rather than a purely ethical process, his project directly advances the mission of CEMES to explore the deep theological and psychological roots of messianic authority.
