Dr. Tanja Werthmann specializes in medieval Jewish philosophy and mysticism in the context of Islamic philosophy and against the background of ancient Greek thought. Her current research explores the transmission of ancient Greek concepts through their Arabic and Jewish adaptations in early Kabbalistic literature and the ways in which they were appropriated by the early Kabbalists in forming new systems of thought.

Dr. Werthmann completed her PhD in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Idel and Dr. Caterina Rigo. Her dissertation is entitled “Forms of Platonic Eros in the Zohar: Metamorphoses of Ancient Greek Metaphysics in 13^th Century Kabbalah”. During her doctoral studies, Dr. Werthmann’s research was supported by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and the Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon completion of her doctoral thesis, Dr. Werthmann was awarded a research grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Shlomo Pines Prize for Excellent Young Scholars and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, where she has been a Polonsky Fellow in the years 2018-2020.

Prior to her PhD, Dr. Werthmann studied Philosophy and Musicology at the University of Heidelberg. Her M.A. thesis focused on ancient Greek philosophy and was written under the supervision of Prof. Jens Halfwassen. Dr. Werthmann also obtained a diploma from the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts with a specialization in piano.