Stephen Sharot is Professor of Sociology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and has been Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology at Chapel Hill, and at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Judaism: A Sociology and Messianism, Mysticism, and Magic: A Sociological Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements (winner of the Kenneth B. Smilen/Present Tense Literary Award) and coauthor of Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in Israeli Society.