Gafni is interested in the attitudes of the Jews of the Second Temple towards the Land of Israel. His research focuses on how Judaism was reshaped during the years the Jews after the Temple's destruction. He has authored numerous academic articles, three books, and he edited over fifteen books regarding a wide range of topics in Jewish History. Gafni's focus is research on political, social and religious Jewish life during the Second Temple Period. His book The Jews of Talmudic Babylonia: A Social and Cultural History was honored with the 1992 Holon Municipality Prize for Jewish studies. Additionally he has written more than 100 entries in the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Gafni's most recent book, titled, Land, Center and Diaspora: Jewish Constructs in Late Antiquity was originally delivered in a series of lectures in Oxford called the Third Jacobs Lectures in Rabbinic Thought in January 1994. In the book he seeks to "shed some light on what the Jews of the period, in Judea, as well as in diaspora, might have thought about their particular situation as a scattered people, and how these thoughts translated into concrete policies and subsequent measures that shaped and defined relationships among the various Jewish communities of Late Antiquity." The most recent works published by Gafni are The Jewish Family – Metaphor and Memory, explaining the institution of Jewish marriage in Rabbinic times, and Irano-Judaica II which articulates the expressions and types of “local-patriotism” among the Jews of Sasanian Babylonia. Professor Gafni has been a professor in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for over 40 years and a visiting professor at Yale University and Brown University. He has offered courses entitled “The Beginnings of Judaism”, “The Great World Religions”, and has lectured in institutions throughout Israel and North America.
Selected publications
Books
Babylonian Jewry and Its Institutions in the Period of the Talmud, Jerusalem 1975, 117pp.
Author and Editor: From Jerusalem to Yavne – Israel's Open University, Tel Aviv 1977
Priesthood and Monarchy – Studies in the Historical Relationships of Religion and State, Jerusalem 1983, 311pp.
Studies in Jewish History – The Second Temple Period., by M. Stern, Jerusalem 1991, 670pp.
The Kingdom of Herod, by M. Stern, Tel-Aviv 1992, 112pp.
Sanctity of Life and Martyrdom – Studies in Memory of Amir Yekutiel, Jerusalem 1992, 312pp.
Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple, Mishna and Talmud Period- 2 Studies in Honor of Shmuel Safrai, Jerusalem 1993, 408pp.
The Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman World – Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, edited with A. Oppenheimer and D. Schwartz, Jerusalem 1996, Hebrew Section 488pp.; English Section 158pp.
Sexuality and the Family in History: Collected Essays, Jerusalem 1998, 432pp.
