91�첥

Schedule  Speakers  Hotels  FAQs    About Rabbi Ellenson

Overview

91�첥 is honored to host two scholarly conferences whose aim is both to reflect on the impact of David Ellenson’s career and to build on his extraordinary legacy.   Invited participants will explore modern Jewish thought, law, and liturgy in the spirit of innovation and collaboration that David so valued.

The conference will be co-chaired by Alyssa M. Gray (HUC), Michael Marmur (HUC), and David N. Myers (UCLA).

A Conference In Memory of David Ellenson: Assessing His Impact, Advancing His Legacy has been made possible by the generous support of:

Elisa Spungen Bildner and Rob Bildner
Dorian Goldman and Marvin Israelow
Burt and Brenda Lehman
The Morton H. Meyerson Family Foundation
Elizabeth Scheuer and Peter Joseph
Skip and Ilana Vichness

Institutional Partners

Meet the Speakers

Leora Batnitzky, Ph.D.

Professor of Religion, Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies, Princeton University

Presenter, Jewish Intellectual History

Leora Batnitzky joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1997, served as Chair of the Department of Religion from 2010-2019, and currently serves as Director of Princeton’s Program in Judaic Studies.

Her teaching and research interests include philosophy of religion, modern Jewish thought, hermeneutics, and contemporary legal and political theory. In 2002 she received Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. She is the author of Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (Princeton, 2000), Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation (Cambridge, 2006), and How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton, 2011). She is currently completing a book on Ecclesiastes: A Biography, forthcoming in Princeton University Press’s Lives of Great Religious Books series.

She is in the final stages of co-editing the Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies with Steven Weitzman and Eve Krakowski. She is co-editor, with Ilana Pardes, of The Book of Job: Aesthetics, Ethics and Hermeneutics (de Gruyter, 2014), with Hanoch Dagan, of Institutionalizing Rights and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2017), with Yonatan Brafman, of an anthology Jewish Legal Theories (Brandies Library of Modern Jewish Thought, 2018) and, with Ra’anan Boustan, of the journal Jewish Studies Quarterly. Along with Vivian Liska and Ilana Pardes, she is co-director of the .

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Shira Billet, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Presenter, Jewish Thought

Shira Billet is assistant professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics at JTS, academic director of JTS’s Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice, and the BA and MA advisor for the Jewish Ethics program at JTS.

Dr. Billet completed her doctorate in 2019 at Princeton University. Before joining the faculty at JTS in 2022, she was a postdoctoral associate in Judaic Studies and Philosophy at Yale University.

Dr. Billet’s research focuses on 19th-century and early 20th-century German Jewish philosophy, both in historical context and in relation to contemporary conversations in philosophical ethics. Her current book manuscript focuses on different conceptions of “witness” within the philosophy and Jewish thought of Hermann Cohen (1842-1918).

Dr. Billet’s recent publications include “‘Do Not Grieve Excessively’: Rabbis Mourning Children Between Law and Narrative in The Rabbinic Laws of Mourning and Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man” (Journal of Textual Reasoning, 2023); “Hermann Cohen’s Virtue Ethics,” in Jewish Virtue Ethics (SUNY Press, 2023); and “Between Jewish Law and State Law: Rethinking Hermann Cohen’s Critique of Spinoza” (Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2018). In addition, she has several forthcoming articles on Hermann Cohen and other aspects of modern Jewish philosophy and ethics.

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Arnold M. Eisen, Ph.D.

Chancellor Emeritus; Professor of Jewish Thought, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Presenter, Jewish Thought

Arnold M. Eisen, one of the world’s foremost authorities on American Judaism, is chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary and professor of Jewish Thought. Professor Eisen became chancellor in 2007 and stepped down in spring 2020 to return to teaching and scholarship as a full-time member of the JTS faculty.

Professor Eisen is the author, among other works, of Galut: Modern Jewish Reflection on Homelessness and Homecoming, and Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community, and co-author of The Jew Within.
As chancellor, Professor Eisen’s initiatives included the development of JTS Torah Online; Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts; the interfaith Center for Pastoral Education; the Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice; and the Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue.

Before coming to JTS, Professor Eisen served on the faculties of Stanford, Tel Aviv, and Columbia universities. He has contributed regularly to print and online media, including the Wall Street Journal, The Jewish Week, Huffington Post, Tablet, and Fortune, and he discussed Jewish education, philosophy, and values on his blog, . He is a lifelong and devoted Conservative Jew.

Professor Eisen sits on the advisory boards of the Tanenbaum Center, the Covenant Foundation, and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture.

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Marcia Falk, Ph.D.

Poet, Painter, Judaic Scholar

Presenter, Liturgy/Siddur

Marcia Falk is widely known in the progressive Jewish world for her poetic re-creations of Hebrew and English liturgy from an inclusive, nonpatriarchal perspective. Her groundbreaking prayer book, The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Holiday, is used today by congregations and individuals in North America, Europe, and Israel. Excerpts appear in the prayer books of the Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Reform movements.

Falk received a BA from Brandeis and a PhD from Stanford. She was a Fulbright Scholar and a postdoctoral fellow in Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University. In 2024, she received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Dr. Falk was a professor of literature, Bible, and creative writing at Binghamton University, the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford.

Falk’s other publications include The Days Between, a prayer book for the High Holidays; Night of Beginnings, a haggadah for the Passover seder; and an acclaimed translation of the biblical Song of Songs; and Inner East: Illuminated Poems and Blessings. She has also translated the poetry of modern Hebrew and Yiddish writers. Her latest book of her own poems is The Sky Will Overtake You.

A Life Member of the Art Students League, Falk is also an exhibited painter. Her latest project is a series entitled “Inner East,” which juxtaposes her paintings with excerpts from her books to create a new version of the traditional mizrach.

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Adam S. Ferziger, Ph.D.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Bar-Ilan University

Presenter, Halakhah

Adam S. Ferziger holds the Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University. He is coconvener of the Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism, University of Oxford. Ferziger is a leading scholar of the history of modern Judaism in the U.S., Israel, and Central Europe. His research focuses on Jewish religious responses to modern and contemporary life. His book, Beyond Sectarianism (2015) won a National Jewish Book Award. His newest monograph, Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism, appeared in July 2025.

Ferziger received his B.A., M.A., and rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University, and, after moving to Israel in 1987, his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan.

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Michah Gottlieb, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies; Director of Graduate Studies for Ph.D. Program, New York University

Chair, Jewish Intellectual History

Michah Gottlieb is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought. He has a PhD in Philosophy from Indiana University, an MA in Kabbalistic literature from NYU, and a BA in Philosophy from McGill University.

Professor Gottlieb’s research centers on modern Jewish thought from Spinoza to Levinas with a particular focus on German Jewish thought. He’s particularly interested in questions of ethics and politics. Professor Gottlieb has published dozens of articles and several books including: The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle-Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise (Oxford University Press, 2021); Faith, Reason and Politics: Essays on the History of Jewish Thought (Academic Studies Press, 2013), and Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological-Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Prior to coming to NYU in 2006, Professor Gottlieb taught at Brown University. He has held fellowships at the University of Hamburg, Princeton University, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book The Jewish Reformation was awarded the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize in the History of Jewish Diaspora by the American Historical Association.

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Alyssa Gray, J.D., Ph.D.

Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics, 91�첥

Conference Co-Chair
Moderator, Halakhah

Alyssa M. Gray is the Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics, and Professor of Codes and Responsa Literature at 91�첥 in New York. She received her Ph.D. with distinction in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She also holds an LLM in Mishpat Ivri (Jewish law) from the Hebrew University Faculty of Law and a J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law.

Gray’s scholarly interests are the development of Talmudic literature, the history of Jewish law, and literary studies of post-talmudic legal writings. Her books include Charity in Rabbinic Judaism: Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness (New York and London: Routledge, 2019; paperback ed., 2020) and A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah (Brown, 2005; 2nd digital edition; Brown, 2020).

Gray has been a Fellow of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2021–2022), and a visiting professor at Yale University and at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She has also lectured in a variety of other academic and non-academic settings. She is a co-editor of AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Jewish Ethics and of HUC Press.

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Leah Hochman, Ph.D.

Director, Louchheim School of Judaic Studies; Associate Professor of Jewish Thought, 91�첥

Chair, Jewish Thought

Dr. Leah Hochman directs the Louchheim School for Judaic studies at the University of Southern California and serves as associate professor of Jewish Thought at 91�첥 Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.

Raised in the Seattle area, she earned her undergraduate degree at Pitzer College and both her M.A. and Ph.D. in religion and literature from Boston University. Her dissertation explores Moses Mendelssohn’s theories of religion and language. Dr. Hochman spent a year in Berlin as a post-doctoral fellow at the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum and, pre-pandemic, returned to Germany regularly to research and lead classes. Before coming to 91�첥/Los Angeles in 2008, she was assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at the University of Florida and taught in the Great Books program at Boston University.

At 91�첥, she teaches classes in medieval and modern philosophy, American Judaism, modern history, and food ethics. At USC, she teaches classes on contemporary Jewish literature, Jewish identity, and the academic study of Judaism.

She is the author of The Ugliness of Moses Mendelssohn: Aesthetics, Religion and Morality in the Eighteenth Century (Routledge, 2014) and the editor of Tastes of Faith: Jewish Eating in the United States (Purdue University Press, 2017).

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Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, Ph.D.

The Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor Emeritus of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual, 91�첥 Emeritus

Presenter, Liturgy/Siddur

Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman was ordained as a rabbi in 1969, received his Ph.D. in 1973, and taught from then until 2019 at 91�첥/New York. From 1984 to 1987, he also directed the School of Sacred Music. In 2003, he was named the first Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual.

Rabbi Hoffman has written or edited over forty books, including My People’s Prayer Book (Jewish Lights Publishing), a ten-volume edition of the Siddur with modern commentaries, which was named a National Jewish Book Award winner for 2007. He syndicates a regular column which appears, among other places, in The Jewish Week and The Jewish Times.

For many years, Rabbi Hoffman served as visiting professor of the University of Notre Dame and has lectured at such places as the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the University of Southern California, and the Yale Divinity School.

In 1994, he co-founded “Synagogue 2000,” a trans-denominational project to envision the ideal synagogue “as moral and spiritual center” for the 21st century. As Synagogue 3000, it has launched Next Dor, a national initiative to engage the next generation through a relational approach featuring strong communities with transformed synagogues at their center.

He founded and is Academic Coordinator of the Tisch Fellowship Program.

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Alexander Kaye, Ph.D.

Director, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies; Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Chair in Israel Studies; Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University

Presenter, Halakhah

Professor Kaye joined Brandeis in 2018 from The Ohio State University where, as assistant professor of history, he held the Saul and Sonia Schottenstein Chair in Israel Studies. His scholarship, which spans legal studies, religious studies and Israel Studies, draws on his training in the history of political thought and is complemented by expertise in rabbinical texts and legal theory. His first book, The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel (Oxford University Press, 2020), received the Salo Baron Prize for best first book in the field of Jewish Studies from the American Academy of Jewish Research, and the Yeshiva University Leon Charney Book Award in Israel Studies. In 2021, he was co-recipient of the Association for Israel Studies’ Young Scholar Award; he currently serves as co-editor of The Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture.

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Yitz Landes, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Presenter, Liturgy/Siddur

Dr. Yitz Landes is Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures at The Jewish Theological Seminary. His research focuses on the premodern transmission of Jewish knowledge, primarily vis-à-vis the history of rabbinic education and the history of the Jewish book. Additionally, Dr. Landes works on the development of Jewish ritual and liturgy, topics he addressed in his first monograph, (The Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies, 2018).

Dr. Landes received a BA and an MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as an AM and PhD from Princeton University.

At JTS, Dr. Landes teaches courses on classical and post-classical rabbinic texts, Jewish Liturgy, ancient Jewish History, and Hebrew manuscript cultures. In addition, he teaches a semester of the Jewish Canon curriculum for freshman students in List College.

Dr. Landes’s current book project traces the reception and transmission history of the Mishnah from its inception in late second-century Galilee until the publication of Maimonides commentary to the Mishnah in the 12th century. Dr. Landes also researches the textual criticism of various ancient and medieval Jewish works, and is co-editing a critical edition and translation of The Epistle of Pirqoi ben Baboi.

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Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D.

Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, United States State Department, Emory University

Panelist

Deborah E. Lipstadt was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 30, 2022 as the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, with the rank of Ambassador. As Special Envoy, she leads efforts to advance U.S. foreign policy to counter antisemitism throughout the world.

Special Envoy Lipstadt has a storied career as a historian, academic, and author. At Emory University’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, which she helped to found, she served as the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies. She has also taught at the University of Washington, UCLA and Occidental College. Special Envoy Lipstadt also served as a research fellow at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Her numerous, award-winning books include: The Eichmann Trial; Denial: Holocaust History on Trial; Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory; and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945. She received the National Jewish Book Award three times, most recently in 2019 for Antisemitism: Here and Now. Her biographical study of Golda Meir was published by Yale University Press in 2023. She was also named as one of TIME 100’s Most Influential People of 2023.

Special Envoy Lipstadt holds a BA from the City College of New York and an MA and PhD from Brandeis University.

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Rabbi Dalia Marx, Ph.D.

Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Professor of Liturgy and Midrash, 91�첥

Presenter, Liturgy/Siddur

Rabbi Dalia Marx, Ph.D. is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Professor of Liturgy and Midrash at 91�첥’s Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem, and teaches in various academic institutions in Israel and Europe.

Marx, a tenth generation Jerusalemite, earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University and her rabbinic ordination at 91�첥 in Jerusalem and Cincinnati in 2002. She is involved in various research projects and is active in promoting liberal Judaism in Israel. Marx writes for academic and popular journals and publications.

Marx is the lead editor of the Israeli Reform siddur, Tfillat HaAdam (2020). She is the author of When I Sleep and When I Wake: On Prayers between Dusk and Dawn (Yediot Sfarim, 2010, in Hebrew), A Feminist Commentary of the Babylonian Talmud (Mohr Siebeck, 2013). She is currently working on the new Israeli Reform High Holidays Machzor, together with Rabbi Leora Ezrachi.

Her book on the Jewish calendar, Bazman (Yediot Sfarim, 2018), which was endorsed by Isaac Herzog, President of the State of Israel, was translated into several languages, and recently into English: About Time: Journeys in the Jewish-Israeli Calendar (http://time.ccarpress.org). Marx also co-edited several books. Learn more about them on .

Rabbi Marx co-hosts a 91�첥 podcast with Rabbi Dan Prath, (produced and edited by Doron Levin) about Jewish Prayer.

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Michael Meyer, Ph.D.

Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus, 91�첥

Presenter, Jewish Intellectual History

Michael A. Meyer received his B.A. from UCLA and his doctorate from 91�첥 in Cincinnati. From 1964 to 1967, he taught at the Los Angeles campus of HUC. Since 1967 he has been on the faculty of HUC’s Cincinnati campus, where he is currently the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus. Professor Meyer also taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem campus of HUC, and the University of Haifa and Ben Gurion University.

Professor Meyer’s books have won three Jewish Book Awards, including The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824 (1967); Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (1988); Jewish Identity in the Modern World (1990); and a collection of essays entitled Judaism Within Modernity (2001). He has published more than two hundred articles and longer reviews.

Professor Meyer was president of the Association for Jewish Studies, chaired the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York, and served as international president of the Leo Baeck Institute. His two most recent books are Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times (2021) and Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler (2025).

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Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D.

President; Professor of Political Thought, 91�첥

Moderator

Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D. is the 10th President of 91�첥. A leading scholar of political representation and a distinguished Jewish communal leader, Dr. Rehfeld has bridged both the academic and professional worlds.

The author of The Concept of Constituency (Cambridge University Press, 2005), a book of applied political theory, President Rehfeld received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and served as a member of the tenured faculty in Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis (2001 to 2019) and as President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis (2012 to 2019). He is currently on the boards of directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the JDC).

As 91�첥 President, Dr. Rehfeld leads the multi-campus international institution of Jewish higher education and seminary for Reform Judaism, which educates leaders to serve the Jewish People worldwide as rabbis, cantors, educators, and nonprofit management professionals, and offers distinctive graduate programs to scholars and clergy. He also holds a tenured faculty position as a Professor of Political Thought.

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Jonathan Sarna, Ph.D.

University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University

Panelist

Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History and former Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. In 2018, he resigned as chair of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program after more than a decade of leadership. He is past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. In 2009, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Sarna attended Brandeis University, the Boston Hebrew College, Merkaz HaRav Kook in Jerusalem, and Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1979.

From 1979-1990, Dr. Sarna taught at 91�첥 in Cincinnati, where he rose to become Professor of American Jewish history and Director of the Center for the Study of the American Jewish Experience. He has also taught at Harvard, Yale, the University of Cincinnati, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Dr. Sarna chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati. He has written, edited, or co-edited more than thirty books, including Lincoln and the Jews: A History (with Benjamin Shapell) and When General Grant Expelled the Jews. He is best known for the acclaimed American Judaism: A History.

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Yoav Schaefer

Princeton University

Presenter, Jewish Thought

Yoav Schaefer is a PhD candidate in Religion at Princeton University, where he studies modern Jewish thought and philosophy. His dissertation, “Salomon Maimon’s Kantian Interpretation of Maimonides,” explores Maimon’s interpretation of the medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides in Giv‘at ha-Moreh, a Hebrew commentary on the first book of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed.

Prior to arriving at Princeton, Yoav earned a B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University and studied Jewish philosophy and history at Tel Aviv University. He is the recipient of the Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Fellowship and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Graduate Prize Fellowship from the University Center for Human Values. His work has also been supported by Princeton’s Program in Judaic Studies, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.

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Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, Ph.D.

Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish History; Chancellor Emeritus, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Panelist, Jewish Intellectual History

Ismar Schorsch is chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary and Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish History. Since retiring as chancellor in 2006, Dr. Schorsch has returned to his first love: the life of the mind and serious scholarship. His most recent book Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2017.

Previously he had authored Canon Without Closure (March 2007, Aviv Press), a wide-ranging collection of Torah commentaries written during his tenure as chancellor. In 2004, he published a two-volume collection of the articles and essays written while chancellor titled Polarities in Balance; and in 1995, he published The Sacred Cluster: The Core Values of Conservative Judaism, a highly acclaimed monograph outlining the seven fundamental tenets of the Movement. In February 2018, Professor Schorsch was awarded the Moses Mendelsohn Prize by the city of Dessau, Germany.

Dr. Schorsch’s belief that the survival of the Jewish people depends on serious education resulted in the creation of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education. Dr. Schorsch received honorary degrees from Tufts University and the Russian State University. Dr. Schorsch was ordained by JTS in 1962, holds master’s degrees from JTS and Columbia University, and was awarded a PhD in Jewish History by Columbia in 1969.

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Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Ph.D.

Chancellor; Irving Lehrman Research Professor of American Jewish History, The Jewish Theological Seminary

Panelist

Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Irving Lehrman Research Professor of American Jewish History, a groundbreaking scholar of American Jewish history, and a visionary institutional leader, is the eighth chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the first woman to serve in this role since JTS was founded in 1886.

Previously, Dr. Schwartz played a central role in shaping and strengthening JTS’s academic programs, while teaching and mentoring countless students. From 1993 to 2018, she served as dean of the Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies, JTS’s undergraduate dual-degree program with Columbia University and Barnard College. In 2010, she was also named dean of the Gershon Kekst Graduate School. In 2018, she assumed the provostship, while continuing as dean of the Kekst School.

Chancellor Schwartz was one of the first women on the JTS faculty and played an instrumental role in introducing Jewish gender studies into the curriculum. As a scholar, she brings to light previously overlooked contributions of women to Jewish life and culture over the centuries and continually expands our understanding of American Judaism. Among her publications is the award-winning book, The Rabbi’s Wife, a penetrating examination of the role of rabbis’ wives in the development of American Jewish life.

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Rabbi Joseph A. Skloot, Ph.D.

Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual History; Associate Director, Tisch Rabbinical Fellowship, 91�첥

Moderator, Liturgy/Siddur

Rabbi Joseph A. Skloot, Ph.D., is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual History at 91�첥 and the Associate Director of the Tisch/Star Fellowship program. He received his Ph.D. in Jewish History from Columbia University, his rabbinical ordination from 91�첥, and his A.B. in History from Princeton University.

Skloot is a historian of Jewish culture and religious thought in the early modern and modern periods. His first book, First Impressions: Sefer Ḥasidim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing, was published by Brandeis University Press in 2023. He has also edited a volume of essays on contemporary questions in Jewish theology and life, entitled, Communities of Meaning: Conversations on Modern Jewish Life Inspired by Rabbi Larry Hoffman (Behrman House, 2024).

Prior to his appointment to 91�첥’s faculty, Skloot served as Associate Rabbi at Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C. He was chair of the Worship and Practice Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) for five years, overseeing the production of the Reform movement’s liturgies. He has served on the faculty of The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center in New York.

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Suzanne Last Stone, J.D.

Professor of Law; Director, Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University

Presenter, Halakhah

Suzanne Last Stone is University Professor of Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. She has held the Gruss Visiting Chair in Talmudic Civil Law at both the Harvard and University of Pennsylvania Law Schools, and also has visited at Princeton, Columbia Law, Hebrew University Law, and Tel Aviv Law. She is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia University Law School and was a Danforth Fellow in 1974 at Yale University. Before joining the Cardozo faculty, Stone clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and then practiced litigation at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison.

Stone is the co-editor-in-chief of Diné Israel, and is on the editorial boards of the Jewish Quarterly Review and Hebraic Political Studies. Her publications include: “In Pursuit of the Counter-text: The Turn to the Jewish Legal Model in Contemporary American Legal Theory,” (Harvard Law Review); “The Jewish Conception of Civil Society,” in Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society (Princeton University Press); “Feminism and the Rabbinic Conception of Justice” in Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy (Indiana University); and “Rabbinic Legal Magic” (Yale Journal of Law & Humanities).

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Rabbi Dvora Weisberg, Ph.D.

Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Professor of Rabbinics, 91�첥

Presenter, Halakhah

Rabbi Dvora Weisberg is the Rabbi Aaron Panken Professor of Rabbinics at 91�첥. She also directs 91�첥’s Summer Beit Midrash. From 2009 to 2020, Rabbi Weisberg served as the Rabbinical Program Director on the Los Angeles Campus; she then served as the inaugural Director of the HUC Rabbinical School from 2020 to 2025.

Rabbi Weisberg was raised in San Francisco. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Brandeis University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Rabbi Weisberg was raised in San Francisco. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Brandeis University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Her undergraduate thesis, for which she was awarded highest honors in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, was entitled “Can the Demands of Jewish Feminists Be Met Within the Halakhic System?” She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Talmud and Rabbinic Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and was ordained at 91�첥 in Los Angeles. Before coming to the College, Rabbi Weisberg taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Rabbi Weisberg is the author of Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism (2008), a study of the ancient rabbis’ vision of the family and its members, and Tractate Menahot: A Feminist Commentary (2020). Her book on levirate marriage and the family was a finalist for the 2009 National Jewish Book Awards in the category of Women’s Studies. She is currently working on a book exploring familial relationship between women in rabbinic literature.

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Rabbi Wendy Zierler, Ph.D.

Sigmund Falk Professor, Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies; Editor, Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, 91�첥

Panelist, Liturgy/Siddur

Rabbi Wendy Ilene Zierler, Ph.D., is Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at 91�첥 in New York. Prior to joining 91�첥, she was a Research Fellow in the English Department of the University of Hong Kong.

She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University; B.A. from Stern College of Yeshiva University; and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. In June 2021, she received rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva Maharat.

She is the author of Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation (SUNY Press, Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, 2017) and of And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Hebrew Women’s Writing (Wayne State UP, 2004. She is co-editor with Carole Balin of Behikansi atah, a collection of the trailblazing Hebrew writings of Hava Shapiro 1878-1943 (Resling Press, 2008). Her English translation of Shapiro’s writings, To Tread on New Ground: Selected Writings of Hava Shapiro, also co-edited with Carole Balin, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2014. She is co-editor of two books, These Truths We Hold: Judaism in an Age of Truthiness (with HUC colleague Rabbi Joshua Garroway, HUC Press 2022), and Building A City: Writings on Agnon’s Buczacz in Memory Alan Mintz (with Sheila Jelen, Indiana University Press, 2022). In 2017, she was appointed Co-Editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History.

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Meet the Co-Chairs

Alyssa Gray, J.D., Ph.D.

Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics, 91�첥

Conference Co-Chair
Moderator, Halakhah

Alyssa M. Gray is the Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics, and Professor of Codes and Responsa Literature at 91�첥 in New York. She received her Ph.D. with distinction in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She also holds an LLM in Mishpat Ivri (Jewish law) from the Hebrew University Faculty of Law and a J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law.

Gray’s scholarly interests are the development of Talmudic literature, the history of Jewish law, and literary studies of post-talmudic legal writings. Her books include Charity in Rabbinic Judaism: Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness (New York and London: Routledge, 2019; paperback ed., 2020) and A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah (Brown, 2005; 2nd digital edition; Brown, 2020).

Gray has been a Fellow of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2021–2022), and a visiting professor at Yale University and at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She has also lectured in a variety of other academic and non-academic settings. She is a co-editor of AJS Review: The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Jewish Ethics and of HUC Press.

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Rabbi Michael Marmur, Ph.D.

Professor of Jewish Theology

Conference Co-Chair

Michael Marmur is Associate Professor of Jewish Theology at 91�첥/Jerusalem. Until July 2018 he served as the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost at 91�첥, having previously been Dean of the Jerusalem campus. After some 20 years in administrative capacities, he now concentrates his energies on teaching and writing.

Born and raised in England, Rabbi Marmur completed a B.A. Degree in Modern History at the University of Oxford before moving to Israel in 1984. While studying for an M.A. in Ancient Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he completed his studies in the Israel Rabbinic Program of 91�첥 in Jerusalem, and was ordained in 1992. For six years following his ordination, he worked as rabbi and teacher at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa. He has been an employee of HUC-JIR since 1997.

Michael Marmur served for three years as Chair of the Board of Rabbis for Human Rights, and is still a member of its Board. He has lectured and taught courses in several countries around the world.

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David Myers

Distinguished Prof. and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History; Director, UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy; Director, UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute (BKI) who also will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa

Conference Co-Chair

David N. Myers is Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA, where he serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He also directs the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, and the UCLA Dialogue across Difference Initiative. He is the author or editor of many books in the field of Jewish history, including, with Nomi Stolzenberg, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (Princeton, 2022), which was awarded the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish studies. Most recently, he is the co-editor with Nechumi Malovicki-Yaffe of the volume New Trends in the Study of Haredi Culture and Society (forthcoming from Purdue University Press, 2024). From 2018-2023, he served as president of the New Israel Fund..

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