[4] He moved to Israel but developed anti-Zionist views in response to what he has claimed was an Israeli policy of breaking the arms and legs of Palestinian demonstrators during the First Intifada.
A number of Boyarin's students, including Christine Hayes, Charlotte Fonrobert, and Azzan Yadin, occupy Rabbinics posts at various American universities.
Joseph Cedar's Oscar-nominated film Footnote alludes in a running joke on a fine point of Talmudic scholarship to Boyarin and his reputation for vast erudition.
In Unheroic Conduct (1997), Boyarin's interests mesh with those of others, such as Sander Gilman and Jay Geller, who have begun to explore the relationship between psychoanalysis and Judaism.
Boyarin holds that passivity is an essential feature of Judaism, and that because this is a quality that is held in common with homosexuality, it has the power to inspire panic among Jews who fear the censorious gaze of authority.
Boyarin supports his argument that passivity is essential to Judaism with the observation that Judaism worships a powerful male authority figure who demands obeisance, and with documentary evidence such as Haggadot, prayer guides for the Jewish Passover ritual of the Seder, that show the wise son as the retiring scholar, and the wicked son as the man of war.
Martha Nussbaum credits him with the insight that Jewish sensibilities "reshaped Roman norms of manliness, making the astonishing claim that the true man sits still all day with a book, and has the bodily shape of someone who does just that".