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Yehuda Kurtzer

Yehuda Kurtzer is Visiting Assistant Professor and the inaugural Chair of Jewish Communal Innovation at Brandeis University, having won an international competition with his book proposal entitled, "The Sacred Task of Rebuilding Jewish Memory."  He is completing his doctoral dissertation in Jewish Studies at Harvard University on the Jews of the Mediterranean Diaspora and their relationship to the rise of rabbinic piety.  Yehuda's doctoral work focuses on transformations in Jewish identity in the changing ancient world and is interested in similar questions in the changing modern Jewish world.  While at Brandeis, he will be teaching courses in Jewish Studies and in the Hornstein School of Jewish Professional Leadership.

An alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowships and Bronfman Youth Fellowships, Yehuda has previously served as a teaching fellow at Harvard and as an Instructor in History at Hebrew College in Newton, MA. Yehuda has worked as a Research Fellow for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum helping to bridge the worlds of Jewish Studies and Holocaust Studies and as a consultant on rabbinic texts for Facing History and Ourselves.  He has lectured and taught widely in adult education settings, including The Curriculum Initiative, the Brandeis Initiative on Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy, NYU's Center for Online Judaic Studies, and the American Jewish Committee's Commission on Contemporary Jewish Life. Yehuda also helped co-found and remains active in Brookline's Washington Square Minyan. He lives in Brookline, MA with his wife Stephanie Ives and their sons Noah and Jesse.