David Rotman, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Hebrew Literature and in the Program for Folklore and Popular Culture. His fields of expertise is the study of Jewish folk literature and folklore for generations. In a contemporary research, funded by the National Science Foundation, Rotman examines issues dealing with the impact of local and regional-geopolitical processes, on local folklore in Israel, while examining rituals of Mama Rochel (Rachel Imenu) during the last decades (in all aspects: ritual, narrative and religious).
Rotman, in collaboration with Dr. Dani Schrire, Dr. Tom Fogel and Michael Sade, is working on a project that deals with Yemeni immigrants to Israel, mainly from the Sana'a area, in Jerusalem during the British Mandate period. The project is based on the concealed ethnographic notebooks of the author Haim Hazaz.
Dr. David Rotman is the head of the Cherik Center for the study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel since April 2024.