Shamma Friedman is the Benjamin and Minna Reeves Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was Dean and Director of Jewish Theological Seminary's Jerusalem campus, now known as the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. In 1985, he founded the Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research. The Institute, under his direction, has established a website containing the text of almost all surviving Talmud manuscripts. Friedman also initiated the Tannaitic Literature website at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, aiming to include all primary textual witnesses of tannaitic works.

His work deals with various aspects of Talmudic studies, including literary and conceptual development, stratification of the Talmudic sugya, linguistic studies in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the nature of variant readings of the Talmudic texts. He was elected to the Israel Academy of the Hebrew Language and the American Academy of Jewish Research.

In May 2014 Shamma Friedman reiceived the Israel-Prize for his life's work in the area of Talmudic research. The price is regarded as the highest honor of the state Israel.

For Shamma Friedman's website please click here.