The uniqueness of Tzvee Zahavy's expertise in the academic study of the Talmud and in the analytical interpretation of Jewish prayer stems from his background, training and accomplishment. He was ordained at Yeshiva University, where he studied with Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein. He received his PhD from Brown University where his mentor was Professor Jacob Neusner. He has taught more than 6000 students and received awards for his Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship from Yeshiva University and for Distinguished Teaching from the University of Minnesota. He was awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and he served in 2009 as adjunct professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. The real measure of Jacob Neusner's contribution to the study of religion emerges from the originality, excellence, and scope of his learning. He founded a field of scholarship: the academic study of Judaism. He built out of that field to influence a larger subject: the academic study of religion. He created durable networks and pathways of interreligious communication and understanding. And he cared for the careers of others. Ever generous with his intellectual gifts, Neusner is one of America's greatest humanists. In all aspects of his career, he exemplifies the meaning of American learning. In all he has done, Jacob Neusner fulfills the distinctive promise of the academic study of religion in an open and pluralistic society that values religion as a fundamental expression of freedom. -from the Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition