Rabbi Marc Rosenstein, Ph.D., M.H.L, M.A.

Director Emeritus, Israel Rabbinical Program

school/program: Jerusalem-Based Programs
academic field: History
campus: Jerusalem

Marc Rosenstein is the Director Emeritus of the Israel Rabbinical Program at HUC-JIR’s Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem. He grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, and received a B.A. in biochemistry from Harvard College. He was ordained by HUC-JIR in 1975 and received an M.A. in Jewish History from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the same year. He later earned a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University as a Mandel Jerusalem Fellow. In 1990 he made aliyah with his wife, Tami, and their three children to Moshav Shorashim in the Galilee.

After working as a pulpit rabbi in Port Washington, NY, and later as a principal – first at the Solomon Schechter Secondary School outside of Chicago and then at Akiba Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia – he became director of the Galilee Foundation for Value Education at Shorashim. The foundation has carried out educational projects on behalf of Partnership 2000, the Mandel School for Educational and Social Leadership, the Melton Centre for Jewish Education, MAKOM Israel Engagement Network, the Union for Reform Judaism, the TALI schools network, and the ORT network of schools in Israel. Among the Foundation’s other projects are a Jewish-Arab youth circus, a Hebrew-Arabic web newspaper, and a variety of educational programs at Zippori and other historical sites in the Galilee. 

Rabbi Rosenstein wrote the original “Dilemmas of Jewish Life” curriculum for the Florence Melton Adult Minischool in 1993, and in recent years has been involved, with other members of the Foundation staff, in curriculum development and teaching in the Gandel Institute – the Israeli version of the Melton Minischool.

Rabbi Rosenstein retired from the directorship of the Galilee Foundation for Value Education in 2013. He was named director of the Israel Rabbinical Program at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem in 2009.

Galilee Diary, New York, URJ Press, 2010

”Binding and Teaching: a Meditation on the Right to Educate,” in S. Wygoda and I. Sorek, eds., Educational Eclectics: Essays in Memory of Shlomo Fox, Jerusalem, Mandel Foundation, 2009, pp. 149-158.

”Circus in a Frayed Tent,” in R. Kronish, ed,. Peace Education in Israel, Paulist Press – in press (fall 2014)

Rabbinical Authority Historically Considered

Visions of the Jewish State

Myths, Realities, and Dreams: Value Conflicts in Imagining – and Teaching – Israel

The Challenge of Being a Democratic Jewish State

Non-Jews in the Jewish State: The Palestinian Arab Citizens of Israel 

Uses and Abuses of the Holocaust

Teaching Israel in Difficult Times

What Does it Mean to be a Zionist Today?

Religion, State, and Pluralism in Israel

Are We One? Dissent and Division in the Jewish People Throughout History

Though he Tarry: The Messiah and Messianism as a Force in Jewish History

The New Jew: Jewish Identity in Israel

Joseph is Us: Recurring Themes in Israel-Diaspora Relations

Jeremiah: A Prophet For Our Time?

Megilat Esther as a Satire on Diaspora Jewish Life

An Educational Midrash on Akedat Yitzchak

From Generation to Generation: Parents vs. Teachers in the Jewish Tradition

State, Community, and Authority: The Dilemma of Jewish Law in Our Time