Leah Garrett

Director and Chair Leah Garrett is on sabbatical for the 2024-2025 academic year.

While she is on leave Schneur Zalman Newfield will be the interim Director of Jewish Studies.

Leah Garrett is the Larry and Klara Silverstein Chair in Jewish Studies and director of Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

She has published five books on literature and history including her most recent, X-Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War Two (Mariner Books (Harper Collins) and Chatto (Penguin)), 2022. Her fourth book, Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel, won the 2017 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award for modern Jewish history and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

Dr. Garrett has also been the recipient of multiple fellowships including a Fulbright Fellowship to Tel Aviv University and a ACLS Junior Faculty Mellon.

Leah Garrett is currently working on a new book entitled The Angels of Iwo Jima: The Untold Story of the American Combat Nurses in the Final Battles of World War Two (Basic Books). Her last book, X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War Two, (Harper Collins, US and Penguin, UK, 2021) was covered by CNN, Time Magazine, the BBC, CSPAN and was the subject of major features in newspapers including The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Daily News, The Daily Mail, and the Times of Israel. The Daily Telegraph called it "a thrilling story, well-told" while the Times of London labelled it "absolutely brilliant…relights the lamps of the past so they glow anew". X Troop was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and was translated into multiple languages including Hebrew.