Zvi Jonathan Kaplan is professor of history and Chair of the History department at Touro University. He earned his law degree from the University of Toronto and his doctorate in history from Columbia University. His scholarship focuses primarily on modern French Jewish history. He has also published on Moses Mendelssohn and Hungarian Ultra-Orthodoxy. Dr. Kaplan is the author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea? French Jewry and the Problem of Church and State (Brown Judaic Studies, 2009) and French Jewry and the Church-State Dilemma: From the Revolution to the Great War (Academic Studies Press, 2025), and co-editor of The Jews of Modern France: Images and Identities (Brill Press, 2016).
Education
- BA Summa Cum Laude, History, Yeshiva University
- MA, University of Toronto
- JD, University of Toronto
- MA, Columbia University
- MPhil, Columbia University
- PhD, Columbia University
Honors and Awards
- Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Fellowship Grant
- Presidential Research Development Grant
- Best Faculty Research Publications Award
Research
I am a historian of modern French Jewry, examining the transformation of Jewish religious leadership, communal authority, and political integration in France from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. My research employs close institutional and intellectual analysis of the consistorial system, the modernization of the French rabbinate, and the evolving relationship between religion and state in the wake of emancipation and secularization. I examine how rabbinic authorities and Jewish communal institutions confronted the challenges posed by French civil law, particularly regarding marriage, divorce, and family status, exploring to what degree they reconciled halakhic norms with the demands of the modern state. More broadly, my work considers how French Jewish leaders navigated the pressures of citizenship, republicanism, and laïcité. By situating the French Jewish experience within broader European developments, I illuminate the complex interplay of religion, politics, and modernity in the formation of communal life.
Publications
- Scott, M., Underwood, N., & Kaplan, Z. J. (2025). French Jewry Confronts the Separation of Church and State: Challenges and Opportunities. Jewish Ideas of France: Migration, Diaspora, and Empire (1st), 110-126. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003399728-7
- Kaplan, Z. J., Lockshin, L. G., Fishbane, S., & Levine, E. M. (2024). Silent or Outspoken? Jewish Leadership and the Dreyfus Affair. Ha-Tov v'ha-Meitiv: Contemporary Scholarship in Jewish Studies—Essays in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Touro University. Retrieved from https://touroscholar.touro.edu/gsjs_pubs/177
- Kaplan, Z. J., Lockshin, L. G., Fishbane, S., & Levine, E. M. (2024). Silent or Outspoken? Jewish Leadership and the Dreyfus Affair. Ha-Tov v'ha-Meitiv: Contemporary Scholarship in Jewish Studies—Essays in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Touro University. Retrieved from https://touroscholar.touro.edu/lcw_pubs/157
- Kaplan, Z. J., Lockshin, L. G., Fishbane, S., & Levine, E. M. (2024). Silent or Outspoken? Jewish Leadership and the Dreyfus Affair. Ha-Tov v'ha-Meitiv: Contemporary Scholarship in Jewish Studies—Essays in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Touro University. Retrieved from https://touroscholar.touro.edu/gssw_pubs/119
- Kaplan, Z. J., Lockshin, L. G., Fishbane, S., & Levine, E. M. (2024). Silent or Outspoken? Jewish Leadership and the Dreyfus Affair. Ha-Tov v'ha-Meitiv: Contemporary Scholarship in Jewish Studies—Essays in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Touro University. Retrieved from https://touroscholar.touro.edu/president_pubs/322
- Kaplan, Z. J. (2022). Breaking Up Is Hard to Do? Restructuring French Jewry in Post-Separation France. Jewish Studies Quarterly (JSQ), 29 (1), 72-88. https://doi.org/10.1628/jsq-2022-0005
- Kaplan, Z. J., & Lockshin, L. G. (2022). Silent or Outspoken? Re-Examining French Jewish Responses to the Dreyfus Affair. Antisemitism Studies, 6 (1), 4-31. https://doi.org/10.2979/antistud.6.1.02
