Rabbi Yehoyada Amir, Ph.D.

Rabbi Yehoyada Amir, Ph.D., is a scholar of Jewish Thought, a theologian, and a Reform rabbi. He is Professor of Jewish Thought at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem. In 1994 he received his Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem at which he also taught for many years. From 1999-2009 he served as the director of HUC-JIR’s Israel Rabbinic Program, redesigned its structure and scope and made it the leading liberal rabbinical training environment in Israel. He and his team trained most Reform rabbis serving Israel today. Since 2009 he has taught at HUC-JIR and serves as a mentor to students and in-service rabbis. From 2014-2018 he served as the president of MARAM (The Israel Council of Reform Rabbis).   

His academic works deal with a wide range of modern Jewish philosophers, including some of the major European, Israeli, and American thinkers who designed modern and postmodern Judaism. His theological work takes this treasure of human and Jewish thought as a point of departure for the making of an up-to-date Jewish, dialogical constructive theology, fruitful for enhancing contemporary Jewish and Israeli life as well as responsible and sincere interfaith dialogue.  

A Pivotal theme of his scholarly and theological work is the scope and limitations of Post-Holocaust theology, in particular Jewish as well as general Human spheres. The main question he strives to respond to in this concern, is that of human responsibility in the shade of Holocaust and other 20^th century genocide atrocities.

Amir served as a guest lecturer and scholar at New York University, The Free University of Berlin, and Potsdam University. 

He has written Reason out of Faith: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig (Hebrew, 2004); Small still Voice: Theological Critical Reflections (Hebrew, 2009); and The Renewal of Jewish Life in Nachman Krochmal’s Philosophy (Hebrew, 2019).