Max Schloessinger Professor Emeritus. Since 1999, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He was awarded the Israel Prize for Near Eastern Studies in 2016.

In 2002 Friedmann was member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2003 he received the Landau Prize in the Humanities.  Prof. Friedmann continues to teach on a volunteer basis in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Friedmann's studies center on Islamic religious thought, mainly in the Indian subcontinent. He assays the historical record for evidence of both tolerance and intolerance of other religious faiths in the Islamic tradition in his most recent work, "Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition". Since 1993, he has been the editor of the acclaimed Hebrew University publication Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam.