In this episode, Aaron “The Schmoz” Herman had the opportunity to speak with Dr. David Ellenson and Dr. Daniel Gordis about their new book Pledges of Jewish Alleglance:Conversion,Law and Policy-Making In Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa. Dr. David Ellenson and Dr. Daniel Gordis probe the challenges to Jewish self-definition in the modern period by examining a wide array of legal opinions on conversion and intermarriage, written by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orthodox rabbis in Europe, the United States, and Israel, and discover how these rabbinic decisions are, in fact, attempts to define policy for Judaism in the modern period.

Dr. David Ellenson is President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion — the 8th President in its 125 year-long history. He holds the Gus Waterman Herrman Presidential Chair and is the I.H. and Anna Grancell Professor of Jewish Religious Thought at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. A member of HUC-JIR’s faculty since 1979, he has served as Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor of Jewish Religious Thought. From 1981-1997, he also held the post of Director of the Jerome H. Louchheim School of Judaic Studies.

Dr. Daniel Gordis is President of the Shalem Foundation, and Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He is a regular columnist for the Jerusalem Post, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times, in print and on-line. The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel, and a recent winner of the National Jewish Book Award, Dr. Gordis was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism, the first rabbinical college on the West Coast of the United States. Dr. Gordis joined Shalem in 2007 to help found Israel’s first liberal arts college, after spending nine years as vice president of the Mandel Foundation in Israel and director of its Leadership Institute.