Shirley Idelson

Associate Professor of the Practice and Leon A. Jick Director of the Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership

Departments/Programs

Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership
Near Eastern and Judaic Studies

Degrees

City University of New York, Graduate Center, Ph.D.
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, M.S.
Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, M.A.
Dartmouth College, B.A.

Expertise

American Jewish history with a particular interest in Jews and higher education, rabbinical training, Reform Judaism, and professional leadership training.

Profile

Please visit my new faculty profile page.

Shirley Idelson is Associate Professor and Director of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University, and, an Affiliate Faculty Member in Brandeis's Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. She is also a Reform rabbi and journalist, who has served as a college chaplain, dean of a seminary, and radio producer and reporter.

At Brandeis she directs the Hornstein Program, where she teaches and mentors students preparing for careers in Jewish professional leadership. She is also involved in numerous Jewish, rabbinical and women's professional organizations and boards.

Courses Taught

HRNS	350a	Myra Kraft Seminar in Israel
HRNS	350b	Myra Kraft Seminar in Israel
HRNS	380a	Proseminar: Issues, Structure, and Perspectives of the American Jewish Community

Scholarship

Idelson, Shirley. We Shall Build Anew: Stephen S. Wise, the Jewish Institute of Religion, and the Reinvention of American Liberal Judaism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2022. (forthcoming)

Idelson, Shirley. "Ideological Perspectives of the First Generation of Students to Attend Stephen S. Wise's Jewish Institute of Religion." Reappraisals and New Studies of the Modern Jewish Experience. Ed. Brian M. Smollet and Christian Wiese. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014

Idelson, Shirley. "In a New Country." Torah Queeries. Ed. Gregg Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser and David Shneer. New York: New York University Press, 2009

Idelson, Shirley. "This Is My Dovenning." Archie Rand: The Nineteen Diaspora Paintings 2004.

Idelson, Shirley, ed. ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies. St. Paul, Minnesota: Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies, 14 2002.

Idelson, Shirley, Rebecca Alpert and Sue Levi-Elwell. Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

Idelson, Shirley. "Shelomit bat-Dibri." Jewish Women on Biblical Themes. Ed. Debra Orenstein and Jane Littman. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1996