J. H. (Yossi) Chajes (Ph.D., Yale University 1999) is Professor of Jewish History at the University of Haifa and the director of its Center for the Study of Jewish Cultures. A former Fulbright, Rothschild, Wexner, and Hartman Fellow, Yossi has been a visiting professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and at Goethe University Frankfurt, three-time fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. His first book, Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (2003) was listed by the Wall Street Journal in 2013 as among the top five books ever written on spirit possession, alongside Aldous Huxley’s classic The Devils of Loudun. Yossi has published innovative essays on a wide variety of topics in medieval and early modern cultural history. His studies have explored Jewish women’s mysticism, Jewish autobiographical writing, the history of Jewish attitudes towards magic, and, most recently, the unstudied genre of kabbalistic diagrams. His current research is supported by the Israel Science Foundation. Yossi also studied and performed with R. Shlomo Carlebach for many years, and continues to travel to Jewish communities around the world as a chazzan and folk singer in that tradition. Yossi is married to Dr. Julie Chajes, is the father of five children (Ktoret, Levana, Yoel, Nehora (currently a combat-support Hummer operator in the IDF), and Yishai), and lives with his family in Zichron Yaaqov, Israel.