Alisa Braun is the academic director of the Institute for Jewish Learning and comes to The Jewish Theological Seminary from the Me'ah National Initiative, where she was its academic director. Dr. Braun served as the academic coordinator of the Jewish Studies program at the University of California, Davis, where she taught courses on modern Jewish literature, history, and film.

She has a PhD from the Department of English at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on Jewish writers in America and the institution of patronage. She has both studied and taught in the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture. Dr. Braun teaches about various aspects of the modern period in the Context program.

Lynn Feinman is the manager of site relations and administration of The Institute for Jewish Learning at The Jewish Theological Seminary. She is responsible for registration, coordinating logistical matters with Context partners, supporting students' use of Blackboard, and marketing and publicity.

Lynn holds a master's degree in Library Studies from the University of Rhode Island and a bachelor of fine arts from the School of Visual Arts. She served as librarian at the 92nd Street Y for 9 years, and held various positions over 16 years, culminating in instructional services librarian, at the Springfield City Library in Massachusetts. She loves the cultural and Jewish life of New York, and is an avid English country dancer.

Moshe Margolin is the senior director of the Institute for Jewish Learning at The Jewish Theological Seminary and the driving force behind its new Context program. He was formerly the executive director of the Me'ah National Initiative and conducted Hebrew College's Me'ah program in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.

Mr. Margolin's career spans more than 30 years, and he has held senior administrative positions in both the United States and Israel in an array of educational settings, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Fulbright Commission in Tel Aviv, the New York City–based Academic Affairs offices of the Hebrew University, Ben-Gurion University, and Tel Aviv University. He was the founding vice president of Education of Birthright Israel.

Mr. Margolin received his BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his MA in University and College Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University. He graduated from Me'ah in 2006, and continues to study in the Context Advanced Seminar program. He is on the board and is co-chair of Adult Education at the Jewish Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He is married to Dr. Judith Margolin, a psychologist, and the father of three adult children. Judy and Moshe live in Princeton, New Jersey.

Faculty List

Rachel Bergstein is a PhD candidate in Modern Jewish History at Yale University. Her research focuses on American Jewish History with a particular emphasis on Jews in the South. She has an undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Jewish Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York City. Ms. Bergstein has taught and lectured on many topics in Jewish Studies, including Jewish history, Bible, and rabbinics. She is currently working on her dissertation, "From Leo Frank to Civil Rights: Jews in the New South City, 1915–1968."

Rachel Bergstein

Erica Brown, PhD, is a writer, educator, and consultant who serves as the scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. She is the author of four books from Jewish Lights Publishing: Inspired Jewish Leadership: Practical Approaches to Building Strong Communities, a National Jewish Book Award finalist; Spiritual Boredom: Rediscovering the Wonder of Judaism; The Case for Jewish Peoplehood: Can We Be One? (co-author); and Confronting Scandal: How Jews Can Respond When Jews Do Bad Things. Dr. Brown is a faculty member of the Wexner Foundation, an Avi Chai Fellow, an erstwhile Jerusalem Fellow, and the recipient of the 2009 Covenant Award for her work in education. She earned degrees from Yeshiva, Harvard, and Baltimore Hebrew universities and from the University of London. She has served as an adjunct professor at American and George Washington universities.

Erica Brown

Alan Cooper is the Elaine Ravich Professor of Jewish Studies and provost of The Jewish Theological Seminary; he joined the faculty in 1997 as professor of Bible. In 1998, Dr. Cooper was appointed professor of Bible at New York's Union Theological Seminary. Previously, he was a professor of Bible and the director of the School of Graduate Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He also taught religious studies for 10 years at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Cooper received an MA and PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University. His publications include a monograph on Canaanite divine names that appear in the Hebrew Bible and many articles on biblical poetics and the history of interpretation. His current works-in-progress include a commentary on Psalms 31–60 for the Jewish Publication Society, a series of articles on the literary history of the Pentateuch, and a monograph on traditional interpretation of Leviticus 12.

Alan Cooper

Eliezer Diamond is the Rabbi Judah A. Nadich Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Diamond received his PhD from JTS. He received rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. He is the author of Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (Oxford University Press, 2003). Besides asceticism, his areas of interest include Talmudic and midrashic terminology, rabbinic narrative, and Jewish law and the environment. A popular teacher and lecturer, Dr. Diamond has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and Stern College.

Eliezer Diamond

James Diamond teaches in an adjunct capacity at Princeton University. He received a PhD in Comparative Literature from Indiana University and rabbinic ordination from The Jewish Theological Seminary. His research focuses on Hebrew literature from the biblical to the modern periods, and on Jewish intellectual history in the modern period. He is the author of three books and several articles on these subjects. From 1995 to 2004, Dr. Diamond was director of the Center for Jewish Life at Princeton / Princeton Hillel. He has taught the Bible module at various Me'ah sites in New Jersey. Those experiences, in part, led him to write his recently published book, Stringing the Pearls: How to Read the Weekly Torah Portion—A Companion for Home and Synagogue (JPS, 2008). Currently he is working on another book about the Bible, provisionally titled Scribal Secrets: Textual Oddities in the Torah and the Stories They Tell.

James Diamond

Barat Ellman earned a PhD candidate in Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Semitic Languages at The Jewish Theological Seminary. She teaches extensively in the areas of Bible, rabbinic commentary, liturgy, and Judaism in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Rabbi Ellman also works with individuals in preparation for life-cycle events, including bar/bat mitzvah, marriage, and conversion. Rabbi Ellman's scholarly work focuses on biblical religion and ideology, and on literary and mythological motifs in the Hebrew Bible.

Barat Ellman

Talya Fishman is an associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania whose research focuses on medieval and early modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history. She received her BA, summa cum laude, from Wesleyan University, her MA from The Jewish Theological Seminary, and her PhD from Harvard University in Post-Biblical Jewish History and Literature. Dr. Fishman has been the recipient of grants from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Along with many articles, Dr. Fishman is the author of two books: Shaking the Pillars of Exile: 'Voice of a Fool,' an Early Modern Jewish Critique of Rabbinic Culture (Stanford University Press, 1997) and Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2011). Dr. Fishman's current book project, Sensing Torah: A Medieval Jewish Guide to the Cultivation of Religious Experience, will examine the interplay of scientific, epistemological, polemical, and aesthetic concerns that shaped a Hebrew memory treatise of late medieval Spain.

Talya Fishman

Arnold Franklin earned a BA at Harvard College and a PhD from Princeton University's department of Near Eastern Studies. He has taught at New York University; University of California, Davis; and Hunter College; and is currently an assistant professor in the History Department at Queens College, where he offers courses on ancient and medieval Jewish history. Dr. Franklin's forthcoming book, This Noble House: Jewish Descendants of King David in the Islamic East (University of Pennsylvania Press), explores the profound concern with lineage that developed among Jews in Muslim lands during the Middle Ages.

Arnold Franklin

Benjamin Gampel, author and teacher, specializes in the study of the Jews of the medieval and early modern worlds. He received his PhD from Columbia University and is the Eli and Dinah Field Professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Gampel edited Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World (Columbia University Press; new edition, 1998), which is an account of the international conference held in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Castile and Aragon. At present, he is writing a book on the pogroms and forced conversions of 1391 in the Iberian Peninsula and the effects of those events on the course of Jewish history.

Benjamin Gampel

Alyssa Gray is an associate professor of Codes and Responsa Literature at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She received her PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics from The Jewish Theological Seminary, and also holds an LLM in Jewish Law from Hebrew University. Dr. Gray has written on a number of topics, notably martyrdom in the Palestinian Talmud, the redactions of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, the relationship of halakhah and law, treatments of sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud and medieval halakhic works, liturgy, and the medieval halakhic texts concerning women as givers of tzedakah. She is the author of A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah (Brown, 2005) and is currently working on a book about wealth and poverty in classical rabbinic literature.

Alyssa Gray

Adam Gregerman is Jewish scholar at the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies and an affiliate faculty member in Theology at Loyola University Maryland. He has degrees from Amherst College (BA), Harvard Divinity School (MTS), and Columbia University (PhD), and studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Gregerman has written on many topics, including rabbinic theology, religious polemics, mission and conversion, and the land of Israel in Jewish and Christian theology.

Formerly, he was visiting assistant professor of Religion at Connecticut College and an instructor at Columbia University, Barnard College, and Union Theological Seminary. He is on the board of the Baltimore Jewish Council (BJC) and a member of the BJC / Muslims of Maryland Dialogue, a program in which Jewish and Muslim participants gather to build connections among individuals and communities.

Adam Gregerman

David Hoffman is a lecturer in the Department of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary and serves as scholar-in-residence in the Development Department. Rabbi Hoffman recently completed his PhD in Talmud, writing on notions of honor and anger in rabbinic literature. He was appointed by Chancellor Arnold Eisen to serve on the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly and has taught widely in synagogues across North America. Rabbi Hoffman served for many years as the director of the Eisenfeld-Duker Beit Midrash and as religious and academic adviser to the Mekhinah program of The Rabbinical School of The Jewish Theological Seminary. Rabbi Hoffman was ordained at JTS, where he was a Wexner Fellow.

David Hoffman

Tamar Jacobowitz received her PhD in Midrash from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also earned a BA in English Literature. Her doctoral dissertation explores Leviticus Rabbah, a midrash on the book of Leviticus, and analyzes the rabbinic discourse of the body in relation to reproduction, gender, disease, and illness. Prior to graduate school, she studied Talmud and Bible at the Drisha Institute in New York City. Dr. Jacobowitz lectures on Bible and Midrash in communities throughout the country. She is currently on the faculty of SAR Academy in Riverdale, New York, and is the researcher and cowriter of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance's gender-sensitive Grade 5 Bible curriculum for day school students.

Tamar Jacobowitz

Tamar Kamionkowski is vice president for Academic Affairs and academic dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she is also an associate professor of Bible. She received a BA from Oberlin College, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and a doctorate in Near Eastern and Judaic studies from Brandeis University. Dr. Kamionkowski is the author of Gender Reversal and Cosmic Chaos: Studies in the Book of Ezekiel (Sheffield Academic Press, 2003) and numerous articles on prophetic literature, priestly literature, and feminist readings of biblical texts.

Tamar Kamionkowski

Aaron Koller is an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Semitics at Yeshiva University (YU). A YU alum, he wrote his PhD thesis on the interface of archaeology and lexicography. Dr. Koller has published articles on biblical law and language, and is currently working on two projects: a lengthy article on the history and iconography of drinking practices in the Near East and a monograph on the radical politics of identity in the book of Esther.

Aaron Koller

Eugene Korn is a scholar and teacher in the areas of Jewish philosophy, law and ethics, and Jewish-Christian relations. He earned a PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University and was ordained by the Israeli Rabbinate. Dr. Korn is the executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University, where he holds a chair in Christian-Jewish Studies. He has designed courses in Jewish thought, ethics, and Jewish law, and has taught Wexner Fellows and Jewish communal leaders. He is also editor of Meorot: A Forum of Modern Orthodox Discourse. Dr. Korn is currently writing a book on the significance of Tzelem Elokim (Image of God) in Jewish tradition.

Eugene Korn

David Kraemer is the Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian and professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary, where he earned a PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics. As director of The JTS Library, Dr. Kraemer oversees the most extensive collection of Judaica—rare and contemporary—in the Western hemisphere. He is a prolific author and commentator. His books include: The Mind of the Talmud (Oxford, 1990), Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (Oxford, 1995), and The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism (Routledge, 2000). His most recent book is Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages (Routledge, 2007).

David Kraemer

Anne Lapidus Lerner is director of the Jewish Feminist Research Group and assistant professor of Jewish Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Founding director of JTS's Jewish Gender and Women's Studies Program, Dr. Lerner teaches courses on the portrayal of women in Jewish literature, Hebrew and American Jewish poetry, and modern Jewish literature. Her most recent book is Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry (Brandeis University Press, September 2007). Her publications include Who Has Not Made Me a Man: The Movement for Equal Rights for Women in American Judaism, which has become a classic study of the interaction between the second wave of American feminism and Judaism, and Passing the Love of Women: A Study of Gide's "Saül" and Its Biblical Root, an examination of the ways in which the French writer André Gide reinterpreted the Saul stories in I Samuel.

Anne Lapidus Lerner

Mark Leuchter is an assistant professor in the department of Religion and director of Jewish Studies at Temple University. He received his PhD from the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto in 2003, focusing on the formation of law and prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible, and the history of ancient Israelite religion. His books include The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26–45 and Soundings in Kings: Perspectives and Methods (coedited with Klaus-Peter Adam).

Mark Leuchter

Jonathan Milgram is an assistant professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS. Dr. Milgram received bachelor's degrees from JTS and Columbia University. He earned his master's degree in Talmud and his rabbinic ordination at Yeshiva University, and his PhD from Bar-Ilan University. From 2000 to 2003, Dr. Milgram served as Sam and Vivienne Cohen Lecturer in Jewish Studies, a joint appointment at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School for Jewish Studies. From 1997 to 2003, Dr. Milgram served as coordinator of JTS's Saul Lieberman Institute for Talmudic Research, and in 2005 was assistant editor for Talmud and Rabbinics for the Encyclopedia Judaica, second edition.

Dr. Milgram's current work includes a study of the legal hermeneutics and reading practices of medieval authorities (Rishonim), with a focus on early-14th century Spanish rabbis. In addition, Dr. Milgram is currently working on a book about the history of inheritance law from ancient Mesopotamia to the Mishnah.

Jonathan Milgram

Ora Horn Prouser is executive vice president and academic dean at the Academy for Jewish Religion, a pluralistic rabbinical and cantorial school located in Riverdale, New York. She received her PhD from the Department of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages and Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary, where she was adjunct faculty for 16 years. Dr. Prouser has written and published widely in scholarly journals on topics such as literary approaches to biblical study, and feminism and gender issues. She served as an academic consultant with the Melton Center for Research in Jewish Education on its development of Bible curricula for day schools through the MaToK Bible curriculum and the Jewish Day School Standards and Benchmarks programs.

Ora Horn Prouser

Jeffrey Rubenstein is the Skirball Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at New York University. He received his PhD in Religion from Columbia University and rabbinic ordination and an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods; Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition and Culture; The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud; and Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (forthcoming). He has received a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship and was a finalist for the American Jewish Book Award (Scholarship Division) in 1999.

Jeffrey Rubenstein

Elisha Russ-Fishbane is a historian of Jewish life and culture of the medieval Islamic world. He teaches at Princeton University as a Tikvah Postdoctoral Fellow. He completed his doctorate in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His dissertation, Between Politics and Piety: Abraham Maimonides and His Times (July, 2009), is a historical portrait of 13th-century Egyptian Jewish society and spirituality through the career of that community's foremost religious leader. Elisha's research addresses on the socioeconomic, religious, and intellectual intersections of medieval Judaism and Islam. His current work explores the history and development of the Jewish pietist movement in Egypt, known as the Jewish-Sufi movement, as well the practical and experiential dimensions of medieval Sufism and Arabic philosophy.

Elisha Russ-Fishbane

Lawrence H. Schiffman is chair of New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and serves as Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. He is also a member of the university's Center for Near Eastern Studies and Center for Ancient Studies. He is a past president of the Association for Jewish Studies. During the academic year 1989–1990, he was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of a research group dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has been featured in numerous television documentaries on the scrolls, ancient Judaism, and Christianity. He served on the international team that published the Dead Sea Scrolls and is author of Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as numerous books and articles about the scrolls and Judaism in Late Antiquity.

Lawrence H. Schiffman

Daniel Schwartz specializes in modern Jewish and European intellectual and cultural history. He received his PhD in History from Columbia University. He is currently finishing From Heretic to Hero: Spinoza in the Modern Jewish Imagination (Princeton University Press), a book that traces the various afterlives of the 17th-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza in modern Jewish culture. Dr. Schwartz is also engaged in the production of a documentary reader that will bring together a variety of responses to Spinoza in modern Jewish thought and literature. His new book project, tentatively entitled Ghetto: The Odyssey of a Word, Concept, Metaphor, and Place, will chart and analyze the changing meanings and uses of the term "ghetto" over time and between cultures.

Daniel Schwartz

Seth Schwartz is the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Classical Jewish Civilization and professor of Religion at Columbia University; until July 2009, he was the Gerson D. Cohen Professor of Rabbinic Civilization and professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He received a PhD in History from Columbia University in 1985. He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, in addition to having had Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships. Dr. Schwartz's research focuses on the history of the Jews between Alexander the Great and the rise of Islam (332 BCE to 634 CE). He is the author of numerous articles and three books: Consuls of the Later Roman Empire; Josephus and Judaean Politics; and Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE. A fourth, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society?, is forthcoming.

Seth Schwartz

Nancy Sinkoff is an associate professor of Jewish Studies and History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; she has recently been named chair of the Jewish Studies department. A historian of Early Modern / Modern Ashkenazic Jewry, she was educated at Harvard-Radcliffe College, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia University, where she earned her PhD in Jewish History in 1996. Prior to coming to Rutgers, Dr. Sinkoff was a Dorot Fellow in the Skirball Department of Judaic Studies at New York University. She is the author of Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (Brown Judaic Studies, 2004), for which she was awarded a Korot Foundation Subvention Publication Prize. Dr. Sinkoff is currently at work on a book-length historical study of Lucy S. Dawidowicz, an American-born historian of East European Jewry.

Nancy Sinkoff

Benjamin D. Sommer is a professor of Bible at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Previously, he served as director of the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies at Northwestern University. Dr. Sommer's research focuses on the history of Israelite religion, literary analysis of the Bible, and biblical theology. His second book, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2009), received two major honors: the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion and the 2009 Jordan Schnitzer Award from the Association for Jewish Studies. Dr. Sommer is also the author of A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 (Stanford University Press, 1998) and the editor of the Psalms volumes of the JPS Bible Commentary series. His current project, Artifact or Scripture? The Jewish Bible Between History and Theology, will examine whether the Bible, understood as the ancient Near Eastern document it is, can be relevant to modern Jewish thought.

Benjamin D. Sommer

Regina Stein, PhD, currently teaches at the Skirball Program for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El. She served as director of the Hadassah Leadership Academy, a Jewish leadership education program sponsored by Hadassah in select communities around the country. Dr. Stein has taught for the Wexner Heritage Foundation, CLAL, and the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel, as well as the Academy for Jewish Religion, The Jewish Theological Seminary, Temple University, and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

Regina Stein

David Stern is the Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served for many years as director of the Jewish Studies program. Educated at Columbia College and Harvard University (PhD, 1980), Dr. Stern was a junior fellow in Harvard's Society of Fellows and an instructor at Princeton University, the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and the Hebrew University. His fields of specialization are classical Jewish literature and religion, and the history of the Jewish Book. He has written widely on Midrash and is the author of eight books, including: Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Harvard University Press); Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature (Yale University Press); and Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (Northwestern University Press). He is currently working on the book The Jewish Library: Four Jewish Classics and the Jewish Experience, which traces the history of the physical forms of the Talmud, the rabbinic Bible, the prayer book, and the Passover Haggadah.

David Stern

Ellen M. Umansky is the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies at Fairfield University. Dr. Umansky received her BA in Philosophy from Wellesley College, her MA in Religion from Yale University, and, in 1981, her PhD from Columbia University. She has taught at Haverford and Vassar colleges; Emory, Princeton, and Columbia universities; and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The author of many books and articles on modern Jewish history, religious thought, and Jewish women's spirituality, her recent works include From Christian Science to Jewish Science: Spiritual Healing and American Jews (Oxford University Press, 2005) and the co-edited, revised edition of Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook. Among her earlier works are two books on Lily Montagu, founder and leader of the Liberal Jewish movement in England.

Ellen M. Umansky

Burton L. Visotzky is the Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies and director of the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies (LFI) of The Jewish Theological Seminary. As the director of LFI, he is charged with developing programs on public policy and interreligious dialogue. Dr. Visotzky earned his EdM from Harvard University, and his MA, PhD, and rabbinic ordination from JTS. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and a visiting faculty member at Union and Princeton theological seminaries, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Princeton University, and the Russian State University of the Humanities in Moscow. He is the author of nine books, including: Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Timeless Text (1991); The Genesis of Ethics: How the Tormented Family of Genesis Leads Us to Moral Development (1996); The Road to Redemption: Lessons from Exodus on Leadership and Community (1998); and From Mesopotamia to Modernity: Ten Introductions to Jewish History and Literature (co-editor, 1999). His 10th book, Sage Tales, was published in March 2011.

Burton L. Visotzky

David Wachtel, senior consultant for Special Collections at The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, holds advanced degrees in Medieval History and Jewish Studies from Columbia University. A consultant at Sotheby's since 2004, he has participated in the cataloging and sales of several outstanding collections of Judaica and Hebraica. Mr. Wachtel is a cocurator of the current New York Public Library exhibition Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He is the author of From This World to the Next: Jewish Approaches to Illness, Death and the Afterlife, and the manuscript section of the award-winning Yeshiva University exhibition catalog, Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein. His article "How to Date a Rothschild" appeared in the academic journal Studia Rosenthaliana. Mr. Wachtel is currently working on a book describing the formation and development of America's great Judaic and Hebraic book collections, specifically the roles played by brothers Alexander and Moses Marx.

David Wachtel

Beth S. Wenger is the Katz Family Term Chair in American Jewish History and associate professor in the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania; she also serves as director of its Jewish Studies program. Dr. Wenger received a PhD from Yale University and an MA in History from Columbia University and The Jewish Theological Seminary. Her most recent book, The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America, was named a National Jewish Book Award finalist. The book is a companion volume to the 2008 PBS documentary, The Jewish Americans. Dr. Wenger is also the author of the prize-winning New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (Yale University Press, 1996). In addition, she is coeditor of Remembering the Lower East Side: American Jewish Reflections. Her current book project, History Lessons: The Invention of American Jewish Heritage, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

Beth S. Wenger

Azzan Yadin-Israel is an associate professor of Rabbinic Literature at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University and received his PhD in Rabbinic Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Yadin-Israel has published articles on a wide range of subjects, is one of the editors of the book series Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, and chairs the Rabbinics section of the Association for Jewish Studies. His current research focuses on the relationship between Midrash and received traditions in early Rabbinic Judaism. His first book is Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion) (University of Pennsylvania Press, June 2004).

Azzan Yadin-Israel

Wendy Zierler is associate professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She received her MA and PhD from Princeton University. She is currently studying for an MFA degree in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Dr. Zierler was a research fellow in the English Department of Hong Kong University. She has also been a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. She is the author of And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Modern Hebrew Women's Writing; a Feminist Haggadah commentary in My People's Haggadah; To Speak her Heart, an illustrated anthology of Jewish women's prayers and poems; and The Selected Writings of Hava Shapiro, a collaboration with Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion colleague Carole Balin.

Wendy Zierler