Torah in a Time of Plague

Contributor Biographies

Deena Aranoff is Faculty Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She teaches rabbinic literature, medieval patterns of Jewish thought, and the broader question of continuity and change in Jewish history. Her recent publications engage with the subject of childcare, maternity and the making of Jewish culture.

Zohar Atkins is the Founder and Director of Etz Hasadeh and the author of Nineveh and Unframing Existence. A Rhodes Scholar and a poet, he writes a weekly Torah commentary newsletter at www.tinyletter.com/etzhasadeh.

Michael Fishbane is Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. His writings span from the ancient Near East and biblical studies to rabbinics, the history of Jewish interpretation, Jewish mysticism, and modern Jewish thought. Among his many books are Text and Texture; Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel; Garments of Torah; The Kiss of God; and The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology. Both Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel and The Kiss of God won The National Jewish Book Award in scholarship. His commentary on the prophetic lectionary (Haftarot) in Judaism was published in 2002 (Jewish Publication Society Bible Commentary), and his book Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking was published in 2003 (Oxford University Press). Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology, was published in fall 2008 by the University of Chicago Press. In 2015, Fishbane published a multileveled comprehensive commentary presenting the full range of Jewish interpretations on the Song of Songs (Jewish Publication Society). In that year, a volume on him and his work appeared as part of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, entitled Michael Fishbane. Jewish Hermeneutical Theology. He is presently working on the poetics of Jewish liturgical poetry and topics in Hasidic mystical theology. Professor Fishbane received a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other major grants, and has twice been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University. He is a member of the American Academy of Jewish Research, and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in Textual Studies by the National Foundation of Jewish Culture. An entry on him and his work appears in the new edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica. Fishbane is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Arthur Green was the founding dean and is currently rector of the Rabbinical School and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College. He is also Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University. Both a historian of Jewish religion and a theologian, his work seeks to form a bridge between these two distinct fields of endeavor. He is the leading figure of Neo-Hasidism in the contemporary Jewish world, seeking to articulate a contemporary Jewish mysticism, based on the Hasidic model. His most recent writings include the two-volume A New Hasidism, co-edited with Dr. Ariel Mayse (JPS 2019), a translation of the Hasidic class The Light of the Eyes by R. Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl (Stanford 2020), and Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love (Yale 2020).

James Jacobson-Maisels is the founder and spiritual director of Or HaLev: A Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation (http://orhalev.org/) and the founding Rosh Yeshiva of Romemu Yeshiva (https://www.romemu.org/about/yeshiva/), a new contemplative yeshiva combining study and practice. He has taught Jewish thought, mysticism, spiritual practices, and meditation at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Haifa University,Yeshivat Hadar, and in various settings around the world. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago.

Ilana Kurshan is the author of If All the Seas Were Ink, published in 2017 by St. Martin’s Press and winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She has translated books of Jewish interest by Ruth Calderon, Yemima Mizrachi, Benjamin Lau, and Micah Goodman, as well as novels, short stories, and children’s picture books. Her book Why Is This Night Different From Other Nights was published by Schocken in 2005. She is a regular contributor to Lilith Magazine, where she is the Book Reviews Editor, and her writing has appeared in The Forward, The World Jewish Digest, Hadassah, Nashim, Zeek, Kveller, and Tablet. Kurshan is a graduate of Harvard University (BA) and Cambridge University (M.Phil.). She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and five children.

Sara Labaton is the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She has a PhD in medieval Jewish thought from NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and has taught in various Jewish educational settings.

Yitz Landes is a PhD candidate in Religion at Princeton. His research focuses on the reception history of rabbinic literature and Jewish liturgy. His first book, Studies in the Development of Birkat ha-Avodah, was published in 2018.

Ethan J. Leib is the John D. Calamari Distinguished Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He is the author or editor of five books – the most recent two about loyalty and friendship – and teaches courses about contract law and legislation.

Jon A. Levisohn is the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Associate Professor of Jewish Educational Thought at Brandeis University, where he also directs the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education.

Ayelet Hoffmann Libson is a scholar of Talmud and Jewish law and is an associate professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. In 2017-2018 she was the Gruss Visiting Professor of Jewish Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches courses on rabbinic literature, the history of Jewish Law, and the intersection between religion and human rights. Her publications have appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Legal History, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, AJS Review, and Jewish Quarterly Review. She is the author of Law and Self- Knowledge in the Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Shaul Magid is Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth, Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue. His forthcoming book Meir Kahane: An American Jewish Radical will appear with Princeton University Press.

Ariel Evan Mayse joined the faculty of Stanford University in 2017 as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies and serves as the rabbi-in-residence at Atiq: Jewish Maker Institute (atiqmakers.org). Previously he was the Director of Jewish Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. Mayse holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and rabbinic ordination from Beit Midrash Har’el in Israel. He is the author of Speaking Infinities: God and Language in the Teachings of the Maggid of Mezritsh (University of Pennsylvania Press), and co-editor of the two-volume A New Hasidism: Roots and Branches (Jewish Publication Society, 2019). He is working on a forthcoming monograph examining the relationship between spirituality and law from the dawn of Hasidism to the eve of the twentieth century.

Aviva Richman is Rosh Yeshiva and faculty member at Hadar Institute in Manhattan. Her doctorate from New York University is in Hebrew and Judaic Studies, with a dissertation on sexual consent and coercion in the Babylonian Talmud. Aviva is a graduate of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and also a graduate of the Center for Jewish Law at Cardozo Graduate Fellowship in Jewish texts and legal theory. She received private ordination following a traditional course of study in Jewish law, from Rabbi Elisha Ancelovits and Rabbi Danny Landes in Jerusalem.

Devorah Schoenfeld teaches Judaism at Loyola University Chicago. She received her PhD from the Graduate Theological Union in 2007, and received ordination from Yeshivat Maharat in 2019. She has written on Jewish-Christian relations, medieval biblical interpretation, and comparative theology. Her previous book Isaac on Jewish and Christian Altars (Fordham University Press 2012) compares Jewish and Christian medieval interpretations of Isaac’s near- sacrifice. She is currently working on a book on the theological implications of the Song of Songs in medieval exegesis.

Chaim Seidler-Feller recently celebrated his fortieth year of working with students and faculty as the Executive Director of the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA; he is currently Director Emeritus. Chaim received Rabbinic Ordination in 1971 at Yeshiva University, where he completed a Masters in Rabbinic Literature. Chaim has been a lecturer in the Departments of Sociology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is also a faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and the Wexner Heritage Foundation. He was the founding director of the Hartman Fellowship for Campus Professionals and a founding member of Americans for Peace Now. In 2014 he initiated a fact-finding mission for non-Jewish student leaders to Israel and the Palestine Authority that is now offered on sixty campuses across the country.

Erin Leib Smokler (ed.) is Director of Spiritual Development and Dean of Students at Yeshivat Maharat Rabbinical School, where she teaches Hasidism and Pastoral Theology. She is also a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She earned both her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and her BA from Harvard University. Rabbi Dr. Leib Smokler previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of the New Republic, and her writing has appeared there, as well as in other publications. She is currently at work on a book, Torah of the Night: Pastoral Insights from the Weekly Portion.

Joshua Teplitsky is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Program in Judaic Studies at Stony Brook University. He specializes in the history of the Jews in Europe in the early modern period. His current work explores public health, Jewish life, and epidemics. He earned his PhD from New York University’s Departments of History and Hebrew & Judaic Studies and has held fellowships at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies of the University of Oxford, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the National Library of Israel, and Harvard University. His first book Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library (Yale, 2019) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

Gordon Tucker is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He is Senior Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, NY, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA). From 1984 to 1992 he was the Dean of the JTSA Rabbinical School. He holds an AB degree from Harvard College, a PhD from Princeton University, and received Rabbinic Ordination from JTSA. He is the author of scores of articles on Jewish theology and law, and published Heavenly Torah, a translation of, and commentary on, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s three-volume work on rabbinic theology. Most recently, his new commentary on Pirkei Avot was published by The Rabbinical Assembly in 2018.

Tamara Mann Tweel is Director of Civic Initiatives at the Teagle Foundation. Previously, she served as the Director of Strategic Development for Hillel International’s Office of Innovation, where she founded and directed Civic Spirit, a multi-faith civic education initiative. She currently teaches in the American Studies Program at Columbia University, the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and serves on the Advisory Council of The Princeton University Office of Religious Life. Dr. Tweel received a master’s degree in theological studies from the Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in history from Columbia University. In 2009, she received the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Her work has been published in numerous academic and popular journals, magazines, and newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Journal of World History and Inside Higher Ed.