About Identity/Crisis

In this newsletter I’ll be sharing monologues from my podcast Identity/Crisis as well as other timely reflections on Judaism, Jewish life, and the issues of the day. I’m a big believer in Kahnemann’s “slow thinking,” which feels counter cultural these days; and I care a lot about Jewish history and memory, issues of Jewish peoplehood and Zionism, how the ancient rabbis renegotiated Judaism to meet their own modernity (and paved the way for ours), and Jewish communal inside baseball in which I am the self-appointed commissioner.

About Yehuda

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is President of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a leading thinker and author on the major challenges facing the Jewish people. He is the author of Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past, the co-editor of The New Jewish Canon, and the host of the Identity/Crisis podcast.

Under his leadership, the Shalom Hartman Institute has grown significantly as a leading think tank and educational center for the North American Jewish community, and Yehuda has become a trusted voice on how to navigate the complicated moral, spiritual, and political questions of the day with depth and sophistication.

Prior to his time at Hartman, Yehuda received his doctorate from Harvard University in ancient Judaism and rabbinics and served as the inaugural Chair of Jewish Communal Innovation at Brandeis University. He lives in New York with his wife Stephanie Ives and their three children.

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