David Ellenson RSS

is chancellor of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and was its president from 2001-2013.

Latest

• Why we invite political debate over Israel at a Jewish university

  May 25, 2018 1:04pm

  (JTA) — At the 2018 commencement of the Skirball Campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, graduation speaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon spoke out strongly, even provocatively, against Israeli policies in the West Bank. In the same address, Chabon also articulated deeply Jewish and Zionist commitments (not merely…

• Eugene Borowitz, teacher to generations of rabbis, defined dilemma of the modern Jew

  January 26, 2016 12:27pm

  Rabbi David Ellenson offers a remembrance of his teacher, whose charge to question one’s obligations to God was not an academic exercise but an existential demand.

• Remembering Leonard ‘Leibel’ Fein, ‘a great man in Israel’

  August 18, 2014 4:25pm

  Above all, liberal scholar and activist Leonard Fein was a learned and feeling Jew steeped in the values and teachings of the tradition, Rabbi David Ellenson writes.

• Op-Ed: Shalit, Israel and rabbinic debate

  October 18, 2011 1:26pm

  A position enunciated by a leading Sephardic rabbi in a 1985 prisoner exchange involving Israel and Lebanon provides a rationale for understanding why the current Israeli government made the decision on the swap deal that freed Gilad Shalit, the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion writes.

• Op-Ed: A plea for inclusion and religious liberty on LGBT rights

  July 7, 2010 7:33pm

  The president of the Reform movement’s main rabbinical seminary argues that if Orthodox Jews are serious about protecting religious liberty, they should back proposals to legalize same-sex marriage.

• Remembering Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk

  September 16, 2009 11:11pm

  The Reform leader’s life and accomplishments were legendary, with his deepest commitments to humanity, the Jewish people and the State of Israel, writes the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.