Current Appointment:
Professor Emeritus, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto.
Research Specialties:
Ottoman Turkish language, literature, and history; manuscripts in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian; Jewish languages; Oriental Jewry.
Selected Recent Publications:
Ottoman Turkish and Çaĝatay Manuscripts in Canada: A Catalogue of the Four Collections (Leiden, Brill, 2015). Detailed descriptions of the manuscripts in the Birnbaum collection [206 items, fully illustrated, and the small collections in the libraries of the Universities of Toronto and McGill, and the Royal Ontario Museum]
Introductory essay in Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar, Second Edition (University of Toronto Press, 2015).
In press: Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the Birnbaum Collection, Toronto.
In preparation: Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Birnbaum Collection, Toronto.