About me
Following ordination (NY 1975) I served as Hillel Director and Jewish Chaplain at Dartmouth College (1975-1981), then became Hillel Director at Cornell University (1981-1997).
In 1997 I moved back to my hometown of Chicago where I held positions at KAM- Isaiah Israel Congregation (Director of Education), Congregation B’nai Abraham in Beloit, WI (Rabbi), American Jewish Committee (Interreligious Affairs), Congregation Kol Ami (Education Rabbi), and one year as Rabbi in Residence at Congregation Rodfei Zedek, where I am also a member. For ten years (2003-2013) I was Rabbi of Congregation Or Chadash, a congregation founded in the 1970s by members of the Jewish LGBTQ+ community.
Another career highlight is being on the rotating faculty of the Bronfman Youth Fellows, including five summers in Israel.
In 2005 I received my PhD from Chicago Theological Seminary with a dissertation entitled “Resurrecting the Pharisees: Ideology and Identity Between Christians and Jews,” on constructions of the Pharisees in New Testament, rabbinic literature, and modern scholarship.
Prior to retiring in 2021 I taught courses at DePaul University, University of Illinois at Chicago, and at Hebrew Seminary in Skokie, IL. From 2000-2005 I served as Book Review Editor of the CCAR Journal / Journal of Reform Judaism.
I live in the Hyde Park neighborhood with my wife, Susan Boone, who is recently retired from the University of Chicago. My daughter, Sara, lives in Brooklyn.
I am pleased to have published several scholarly articles, including:
“Rabbi Akiba's Crowns: Postmodern Discourse and the Cost of Rabbinic Reading” in Judaism, Fall 2000
“Luke’s Pharisees, Emerging Communities” in Sandoval et al, eds. Contesting Texts (Fortress, 2008)
“’Extreme Attention to the Real’: Levinas and Religious Hermeneutics” in Shofar, Summer 2008
“S.Y. Agnon, ‘The Great Synagogue’” translated and with an introduction, in The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Winter 2016. The translation is included in the Toby Press volume of Agnon, Forevermore & Other Stories.
“Two Resurrected Pharisees: Saul of Tarsus and Yohanan ben Zakkai and the Beginnings of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism” in Doreen McFarlane, ed., Furthering Interfaith Biblical Scholarship (Pickwick, 2024)
