Prof. Beth A. Berkowitz is the Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Judaic Studies at Barnard College. She holds an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a PhD in Religion from Columbia University. She is a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and Vice President of the Jewish Law Association. Berkowitz was awarded Salo Baron Prize for Outstanding First Book in Jewish Studies for Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2007). Her most recent books include What Animals Teach Us About Families Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature (University of California Press, 2026) and Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2018).