The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is a Conservative Jewish education organization in New York City, New York. It is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism and a center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies. The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is one of the most significant collections of Judaica in the world.
The Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion is a Jewish seminary with three locations in the United States and one location in Jerusalem. It is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism. HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, Ohio, New York City, Los Angeles, California, and Jerusalem. The Jerusalem campus is the only seminary in Israel for training Reform Jewish clergy.
The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) is a consortium of eight private independent American theological schools and eleven centers and affiliates. Seven of the theological schools are located in Berkeley, California. The GTU was founded in 1962 and their students can take courses at the University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, some of the GTU consortial schools are part of other California universities such as Santa Clara University and California Lutheran University. Most of the GTU consortial schools are located in Berkeley area with the majority north of the campus in a neighborhood known as "Holy Hill" due to the cluster of GTU seminaries and centers located there.
Jewish studies is an academic discipline centered on the study of Jews and Judaism. Jewish studies is interdisciplinary and combines aspects of history, Middle Eastern studies, Asian studies, Oriental studies, religious studies, archeology, sociology, languages, political science, area studies, women's studies, and ethnic studies. Jewish studies as a distinct field is mainly present at colleges and universities in North America.
David Novak, is a Jewish theologian, ethicist, and scholar of Jewish philosophy and law (Halakha). He is an ordained Conservative rabbi and holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. His areas of interest are Jewish theology, Jewish ethics and biomedical ethics, political theory, and Jewish-Christian relations.
The Budapest University of Jewish Studies is a university in Budapest, Hungary. It was opened in 1877, a few decades after the first European rabbinical seminaries had been built in Padua, Metz, Paris and Breslau. Still, it remains the oldest existing institution in the world where rabbis are graduated.
Christian M. M. Brady is an American scholar who specializes in biblical literature, rabbinic literature, and the targumim, especially Targum Lamentations and Targum Ruth. He is the inaugural Dean of the Lewis Honors College and Professor of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Kentucky (2017). He was interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky from 2020 to 2022. He was Dean of the Schreyer Honors College from 2006 to 2016. He was formerly associate professor of Classical Studies and Jewish Studies at Tulane University. His administrative roles at Tulane included, associate director of the Jewish Studies Program (1997-1998), Director of the Jewish Studies Program (1998-2003), associate director of the Honors Program (2003-2004), and Director of the Honors Program (2004–2006).
Elliot R. Wolfson is a scholar of Jewish studies.
Alan Franklin Segal was a scholar of ancient religions, specializing in Judaism's relationship to Christianity. Segal was a distinguished scholar, author, and speaker, self-described as a "believing Jew and twentieth-century humanist." Segal was one of the first modern scholars to write extensively on the influences of Judaism on Paul of Damascus.
Adam S. Ferziger is an intellectual and social historian whose research focuses on Jewish religious movements and religious responses to secularization and assimilation in modern and contemporary North America, Europe and Israel. Ferziger holds the Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. He is a senior associate at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and is co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute for Modern and Contemporary Judaism. He has served as a visiting professor/fellow in College of Charleston (2017), Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK (2013), University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (2012), and University of Shandong, Jinan, China (2005). In 2011, he received Bar-Ilan's "Outstanding Lecturer" award. Ferziger has published articles in leading academic journals of religion, history, and Jewish studies and is the author or editor of seven books including: Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity ; Orthodox Judaism – New Perspectives, edited with Aviezer Ravitzky and Yoseph Salmon ; and most recently Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism, which was the winner of a 2015 National Jewish Book Award.
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American scholar, college administrator and rabbi; president of Gratz College. from 1998 to 2009; president emeritus of Gratz College and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, since 2009. He is a specialist in Biblical history, the paleography and epigraphy of ancient Semitic languages, and American Jewish history.
Norbert Max Samuelson was a scholar of Jewish philosophy. He was Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, having held the Grossman Chair of Jewish Studies there. He wrote 13 books and over 200 articles, with research interests in Jewish philosophy, philosophy and religion, philosophy and science, 20th-century philosophy, history of Western philosophy, and Jewish Aristotelians. He also lectured at university-level conferences around the world.
Bradford Humes Young, also known as Brad Young, is a professor of Biblical Literature in Judeo Christian Studies at the Graduate Department of Oral Roberts University (ORU). He is also founder and president of the Gospel Research Foundation, Inc.
Burton L. Visotzky is an American rabbi and scholar of midrash. He is the Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies, Emeritus at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS).
Christine Hayes is an American academic and scholar of Jewish studies, currently serving as the Sterling Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University, specializing in Talmudic and Midrashic studies and Classical Judaica.
Ahron Daum was an Israeli-born Modern-Orthodox rabbi, educator, author, and former chief rabbi of Frankfurt am Main from 1987 to 1993. From 1995 until his death in 2018, he was a lecturer at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium.
Marvin Alan Sweeney is Professor of Hebrew Bible at Claremont School of Theology (1994–present). Dr. Sweeney was trained under the tutelage of Rolf P. Knierim at Claremont Graduate University. He was a Yad ha-Nadiv/Barecha Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he worked with Moshe Greenberg (1989-1990); a Lilly Theological Research Grant Recipient (1997-1998); and a Fellow of the Summer Institute for Modern Israel Studies, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and Brandeis University (2004). Sweeney previously taught in the Religious Studies Department and Judaic Studies Program at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL (1983-1994), and he has served as Dorot Research Professor at the W. F. Albright Institute in Jerusalem, Israel (1993-1994); Visiting Professor of Bible at the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, CA ; Underwood Professor of Divinity at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea (2011); visiting scholar at Chang Jung Christian University in Tainan, Taiwan (2015); and Professor of Tanak at the Academy for Jewish Religion California, Los Angeles, CA (2000-2019). He also serves on the faculty of Religion at Claremont Graduate University (1994–present). In 2019, Sweeney relocated to Salem, Oregon, due to the attempted transfer of Claremont School of Theology to Willamette University.
Hayim Lapin is an American Jewish studies and history scholar, currently Robert H. Smith Professor of Jewish Studies and History and director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Catherine Hezser is Professor of Jewish Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She specialises in rabbinic Judaism, the early history of Judaism in the Near Middle East, and the social history of the Jews in Roman Palestine during late antiquity.
