Roni Masel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, and holds the Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Jewish Studies. Professor Masel’s main research interests include Hebrew literature, Yiddish literature, Jewish history, queer theory, and postcolonial theory. Masel is currently completing a book for which the working title is, Bad Readers: Misreading, Mistranslation, and Other Textual Malpractices in Hebrew and Yiddish.Dr. Masel received a PhD from New York University, and a B.A. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
To start, can you introduce yourself? How did you originally decide to pursue academia?
My name is Roni Masel; Hebrew and Yiddish are my primary languages in the Department of Comparative Literature. I am also affiliated with the Center for Jewish Studies. I very much see my work in both fields, Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies.
How did I get to do this? It wasn’t really a decision – it just sort of happened. I started university when I was 21, and I was very depressed. I knew that I wanted to study, but I couldn’t afford it. I ran into an old high school teacher of mine who told me that if I studied Yiddish, I would be able to get a scholarship. So I did. I guess you don’t hear very often about people going into the humanities for the money, but that’s sort of what happened. But of course I’m partly joking: I’ve always been drawn to the humanities. My dream was to be a professional soccer player, but I wasn’t very good at it so that wasn’t an option. I grew up in a religious community, and I loved the humanities part of that education: religious studies, literature, history, language, philology. I wanted to be a rabbi, but that was also not among the options where I grew up for someone born to the “wrong” gender. So I decided to become a secular version of a rabbi [laughs]. But again, it wasn’t really a decision. I knew that I liked it, but when I started studying at the university, I guess I realized I had a knack for it and that it gave me ever-expanding forms of pleasure. I wanted to continue, and eventually got here. But pleasure remains a driving force in all of this - both in teaching and writing.