Dr. Kaplan holds a Ph.D. ( ) in Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds the Bernard Cherrick Chair in the History of the Jewish People at that university and is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University, the University of London, All Souls College, Oxford, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales at the Sorbonne, the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. He is the author of several books, including"An Alternative Path to Modernity" (Leiden, 2000) and "The Dutch Intersection" (Leiden, 2008).