He received his Ph.D. in Jewish history from Columbia University, taught at the University of Southampton (U.K.) and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His scholarly interest is modern JEwish history focusing on the social and cultural history of East european Jewry in the noneteenth and twentieth centuries. His first book, "Kievaa: Jewish Metropolis, 1861-1914" , is forthcoming from Indiana University Press.