Wouter Jacques "Wout" van Bekkum (born 21 May 1954) is a Dutch professor emeritus of Middle East Studies at the University of Groningen.
His expertise lies in the field of Semitic languages and cultures, especially the different varieties of the Hebrew language and Hebrew poetry from Late Antiquity until pre-modern times.
[1] During his life van Bekkum committed himself to the Jewish heritage and community in Groningen.
This led to him starting a study of Semitic languages and cultures at the University of Groningen in 1972.
In that year he started as lecturer of Classical, Rabbinic, Medieval and Modern Hebrew.
[4] During his career he was mostly focused on medieval Jewish poetry and Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic linguistics, specializing in piyyut.
Van Bekkum designed a new curriculum and managed to revitalize the program and attract more students.
[2] In 1996, aside from his work at the University of Groningen, he also started working as professor occupying an endowed chair (Dutch: bijzonder hoogleraar) of Modern Jewish history at the University of Amsterdam.
[1] Van Bekkum was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.
[5] In 2019 during the Medieval Hebrew Poetry Colloquium in Leuven, Belgium, he was honored with a Festschrift, edited by Joachim Yeshaya, Elisabeth Hollender, Naoya Katsumata, The Poet and the World, Festschrift for Wout van Bekkum on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Studia Judaica 107, De Gruyter Berlin, 339 pages.
Giving a Diamond, Essays in Honor of Joseph Yahalom on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday.
Dutch Studies published by NELL, 1-2, 109 - 120. van Bekkum, W. J.
), Aspekte und Ergebnisse der Sondersprachenforschung II (pp.
Revue de Qumran, Numéro 91(Tome 23), 341 - 356. van Bekkum, W. J.
Discussing Cultural Influences: Text, Context, and Non-Text in Rabbinic Judaism.
European Journal of Jewish Studies, 7.2, 187 - 197. van Bekkum, W., & Katsumata, N. (2017).
Between Convention and Innovation: A Study of Thematic and Literary Features of Three Sedarim for Wayyosha of the tenth and eleventh centuries .