Lawrence Schiffman

In 2020, a Festschrift was published in his honor by former students and colleagues. The volume, entitled From Scrolls to Traditions, contains 20 articles on the Biblical period, Second Temple period and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

2014: co-Recipient of the National Jewish Book Award in the Scholarship category with Louis H. Feldman and James L. Kugel for editing Outside the Bible.

In 2011, Schiffman was a consultant for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit which showcased the significance of the scrolls at Discovery Times Square. The exhibit, entitled "The Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times," brought artifacts from the biblical and Second Temple period to New York City. Some of these artifacts (including scrolls) had never been exhibited outside of Israel before.

Lawrence Schiffman is also a member of the University's Center for Ancient Studies and Center for Near Eastern Studies. He served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies from 2000 to 2003. During the academic year 1989/90 he was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of a research group dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was a member of the academic committee for the Summer, 1997 celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the 2008 60th anniversary conference, both held in Jerusalem. Schiffman is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and a corresponding fellow of the Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He has been chairman of the Columbia University Seminar for the Study of the Hebrew Bible. He is a member of the board of the World Union for Jewish Studies and the Society for Biblical Literature where he served as chairman of the Qumran section. He is also a member of the Enoch seminar and of the Advisory Board of the Journal Henoch. He is also chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) and led an IJCIC delegation for a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican in June 2013, according to the World Jewish Congress.

In 1992/3 Schiffman was a fellow of the Annenberg Research Institute in Philadelphia where he was part of a research team working on the unpublished scrolls. Together with a colleague, he served as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2000). In 1991, he was appointed to the team publishing the scrolls in the Oxford series, Discoveries in the Judean Desert. He edited the journal Dead Sea Discoveries for ten years. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Center for Online Judaic Studies in New York.

In 1985, Schiffman helped organize a Dead Sea Scrolls conference at New York University, where the field of Dead Sea Scrolls became organized as a separate field in Judaism in Late Antiquity.

Schiffman served as director of New York University's program at the archaeological excavations at Dor, Israel, from 1980 to 1982, in conjunction with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Israel Exploration Society. He has served as visiting professor at Yale University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Duke University, Shier Visiting Distinguished Professor in Judaic Studies at the University of Toronto, the Johns Hopkins University, the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, the Luce Visiting Professor at the University of Hartford and the Hartford Seminary, the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Queens College and Yeshiva University.

Lawrence Harvey Schiffman (born 1948) is a professor at New York University (as of 2014); he was formerly Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University and Professor of Jewish Studies (from early 2011 to 2014). He had previously been Chair of New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and served as the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU). He is currently the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and Director of the Global Institute for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies. He is a specialist in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law, and Talmudic literature.