The Shalom Hartman Institute Faculty
The Lola Stein Institute in Toronto brings world-class faculty from the Shalom Hartman Institute to conduct serious text study for educational leaders from day schools, congregational and supplementary schools, summer camps and universities.
Faculty participation is subject to change. The following is a list of faculty who have taught in the past. Click here to see a list for this year's faculty.
Faculty participation is subject to change. The following is a list of faculty who have taught in the past. Click here to see a list for this year's faculty.
Ruth Calderon is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and one of Israel's leading figures spearheading efforts to revive Hebrew Culture and a pluralistic Israeli-Jewish identity. In 1989 in Jerusalem, she co-established ELUL, the first beit midrash in which secular and religious women and men studied and taught together. In 1996 in Tel Aviv, she founded in ALMA, a Jewish liberal arts program for advanced learning. Dr. Calderon is the author of A Bride for One Night (2001), a personal homiletic reading of Talmudic legends, and Talmudic Alpha Beta (2014). From 2013-2015, Dr. Calderon was a Knesset Member from the Yesh Atid Party, where she was Deputy Speaker, member of the education and state control committees, and Chairperson of the Lobby for Jewish Renewal. Dr. Calderon holds a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Talmud from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Christine Hayes is a faculty member and Senior Kogod Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She is the Weis Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University. Christine received a BA in the Study of Religion, summa cum laude, from Harvard University and both an MA and PhD from the University of California Berkeley, Department of Near Eastern Studies. Christine’s research at the Institute focuses on talmudic-midrashic studies; her most recent work, What's Divine about Divine Law: Early Perspectives won the 2015 National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship. Other published works include Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds (1997, winner of the Salo Baron prize), Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (2003, National Jewish Book Award finalist), The Emergence of Judaism, Introduction to the Bible, and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and scholarly anthologies. She is an elected member of the American Academy for Jewish Research, serves as co-editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review, and is the Association for Jewish Studies’ Vice-President for Program.
Steve Greenberg is known as an award-winning author, noted rabbi and teacher, and religious iconoclast. A faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and Senior Teaching Fellow at CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, he has broken boundaries and led the fight to make Orthodox Judaism more open and inclusive and accepting of homosexual members. Steve helped organize the first Orthodox Mental Health Conference on homosexuality, and has worked with numerous families in reconciliation, and he is a founding member and educational advisor of the Open House in Jerusalem, an organization that advances the cause of social tolerance.
Winner of the coveted Koret Book Award for Philosophy and Thought, Steve is the author of the groundbreaking book Wrestling with God & Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). The book was also selected as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. Steve received his B.A. in philosophy from Yeshiva University and his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.
Winner of the coveted Koret Book Award for Philosophy and Thought, Steve is the author of the groundbreaking book Wrestling with God & Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). The book was also selected as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. Steve received his B.A. in philosophy from Yeshiva University and his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.
Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He has just completed a term as Visiting Assistant Professor and the inaugural Chair of Jewish Communal Innovation at Brandeis University. Yehuda received his doctorate in Jewish Studies from Harvard University, where he wrote his dissertation on the Jews of the Mediterranean Diaspora and their relationship to the rise of rabbinic piety. His recent project offers new thinking on how contemporary Jews can and should relate to our past. An alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowships and Bronfman Youth Fellowships, Yehuda has taught at Harvard University, Hebrew College, the Brandeis Initiative on Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy, NYU's Center for Online Judaic Studies, and the American Jewish Committee's Commission on Contemporary Jewish Life.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a research fellow at the Shalom
Hartman Institute, a member of the Institute's iEngage Project, and a
contributing editor to The New Republic. His first book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, was published in 1995. In 2001 he published, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. A Hebrew version of that book was published in 2006 by Shalom Hartman Institute.
Elana Stein Hain is the Director of Leadership Education at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she serves as a lead faculty member and oversees the content of the Institute’s lay and professional leadership programs. A widely well-regarded teacher and scholar, Elana earned her doctorate in Religion from Columbia University with a dissertation on the topic of legal loopholes in rabbinic literature sponsored by Professor David Weiss Halivni. A graduate of the Yeshiva University Graduate Program in Advanced Talmudic Studies and the Cardozo Interdisciplinary Fellowship in Jewish Law and Legal Theory, Elana has taught across the country and in Israel, including as a member of Wexner Institute faculty. Elana previously served as clergy member at Lincoln Square Synagogue and The Jewish Center, both in New York, as well as adjunct faculty at NYU. She is a board member of Sefaria: A Living Library of Jewish Texts, co-founded the Orthodox Leadership Project (OLP) to support female leaders working in the Orthodox Jewish community, and was recognized by The Jewish Week in its inaugural "36 Under 36" as an emerging Jewish leader.
Marc Wolf is Vice President, East Coast of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, overseeing creative programmatic and strategic growth, relationship management, and development in Eastern cities in the United States as well as Canada. Marc received his MA and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and was both a rabbinic intern at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and a Rabbinic Fellow in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Leadership Initiative. Previously Marc served in several major leadership roles at the Jewish Theological Seminary, including Vice Chancellor, Director of Community Engagement and Chief Development Officer during which time he was a regular contributor to the Weekly Torah Commentary.
Noam Zion is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, he has a Master of Arts in philosophy from Columbia University. His numerous publications include: A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah, "A Different Light: The Big Book of Hanukkah, A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home, Sipurei Reshit, a Hebrew anthology on contemporary readings of Genesis that he published together with his daughter, and Halaila Hazeh, and A Night to Remember, haggadot that he published together with his son.