- Moshe Feinstein
Moshe Feinstein (1895 - 1986) was a Lithuanian Orthodox rabbi and scholar, who was world renowned for his expertise in halakha and was the "de facto" supreme rabbinic authority for Orthodox Jewry of North America. In the Orthodox world, it is universal to refer to him simply as "Reb Moshe."
- Gil Student
Rabbi Gil O. Student (born August 8, 1972) is an ordained but non-pulpit serving American Orthodox rabbi. He has written about the interface between Judaism, more specifically Orthodox Judaism, and modern controversial topics. He has also written in opposition to the claim by some Chabad Lubavitch Hasidim that the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, may have been the long-awaited Jewish Messiah (i.e. the "Moshiach").
- David Klinghoffer
David Klinghoffer is a controversial author and essayist, and a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, an organization that supports the concept of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. He is also a frequent contributor to National Review and a columnist for the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward. Klinghoffer is a practicing Orthodox Jew who has written a spiritual memoir about his journey from Reform Judaism to becoming "ba'al tshuva" (Hebrew, …
- Samson Raphael Hirsch
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch was the intellectual founder of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed "neo-Orthodoxy", his philosophy, together with that of Ezriel Hildesheimer, has had a considerable influence on the development of Orthodox Judaism.
- Aryeh Kaplan
Aryeh Kaplan was a noted American Orthodox rabbi and author, who had a background in both physics and Judaism. He is widely viewed as a prolific and original teacher; his work ranged from studies of the Torah, Talmud and works of mysticism to outreach and philosophy.
- Shneur Zalman Of Liadi
Shneur Zalman of Liadi (September 4, 1745 – December 15, 1812 O.S.), was an Orthodox Rabbi, and the founder and first Rebbe of Chabad, a branch of Hasidic Judaism, then based in Liadi, Imperial Russia. He was the author of many works, and is best known for "Shulchan Aruch HaRav", "Tanya" and his "Siddur Torah Or" compiled according to "Nusach Ari". He is also known as Shneur Zalman Baruchovitch, Reb Schneur Zalman, RaZaSh, …
- Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Joseph Ber (Yosef Dov, Yoshe Ber) Soloveitchik (1903 - 1993) was an American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist and modern Jewish philosopher. He was the descendant of the Lithuanian Jewish Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty. As "Rosh Yeshiva" of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University in New York City, The Rav, as he came to be known, ordained close to 2,000 rabbis over the course of almost half a century.
- Mordecai Kaplan
Mordecai Menahem Kaplan (June 11, 1881-November 8, 1983) was a rabbi and the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Kaplan was born in Lithuania and was ordained as a rabbi at Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York City in 1902. Kaplan began his career as an Orthodox rabbi at Kehillath Jeshrun, a synagogue in New York. He helped to create the Young Israel movement of Modern Orthodox Judaism with Rabbi Israel Friedlander, …
- Avraham Fried
Avraham Fried born Sunday 12 Adar II 5719 - March 22, 1959 (full name: Avraham Shabsi HaCohen Friedman אברהם שבתי הכהן פרידמאן) is a popular musical entertainer in the Orthodox Jewish community. As a child, his extraordinary vocal talent was immediately noticed and he performed at various functions at a very young age. Avraham is a Lubavitcher Hasid.
- Shmuley Boteach
Shmuley Boteach (born November 19, 1966) Los Angeles, California, USA is an American Orthodox rabbi, radio and television host, and author.
- Yosef Blau
Yosef Blau is an Orthodox rabbi. He currently serves as the Mashgiach Ruchani, Director of Religious Guidance at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), Yeshiva University, since 1977. Current president of the Religious Zionists of America (RZA). Rabbi Blau earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959 from Yeshiva College. He earned a Masters of Science degree at the University's Belfer Graduate School of Science in 1960, …
- Jonathan Sacks
Rabbi Sir Jonathan Henry Sacks (born 1948, London) is the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom's main body of Orthodox synagogues. His official title is "Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth". As well as the spiritual head of the United Synagogue, the largest synagogue body in the UK, he is the Chief Rabbi of most orthodox synagogues, …
- Meir Kahane
Rabbi Meir David Kahane (also known by the pseudonyms Michael King, David Sinai and Hayim Yerushalmi, 1 August 1932 – 5 November 1990) was an American-Israeli Orthodox rabbi, author, political activist, and a former member of the Israeli Knesset. Kahane was known in the United States and Israel for his strong political and nationalist views, …
- Chaim Berlin
Chaim Berlin (Hebrew: חיים ברלין) was an Orthodox rabbi and chief rabbi of Moscow from 1865. He was the son of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, and his younger half-brother (from his father's second marriage) was Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan (choosing "Bar-Ilan" as the Hebraized version of "Berlin"). From 1889-1892 he lived in Volozhin, where he was a head of a rabbinical court.
- Shlomo Carlebach
Shlomo Carlebach (January 14 1925 - October 20, 1994) was a Jewish religious teacher, composer, and singer who was known as "The Singing Rabbi" during his lifetime. Although his roots lay in traditional Orthodox yeshivot, he branched out to create his own movement combining Hasidic-style warmth and personal interaction, public concerts, and song-filled synagogue services. At various times he lived in Manhattan, New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Moshav Me'or Modi'im, …
- Chaim Potok
Rabbi Dr. Chaim Potok (February 17, 1929 - July 23, 2002) was an American author and rabbi. Herman Harold Potok was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrants from Poland. His parents, Benjamin Max (d. 1958) and Mollie (Friedman) Potok (d. 1985), gave him a Hebrew name, Chaim Tzvi. His Orthodox education taught him Talmud as well as secular studies. He decided to become a writer as a teenager, after reading Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited".
- David Berger
David Berger is a rabbi, a professor of history at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and a visiting professor at Yeshiva University's Bernard Revel Graduate School. He is most famous for his critique of Chabad messianism. In 2006, Berger accepted his appointment as a full time faculty member at Yeshiva University. He will teach primarily Medieval Jewish history at the graduate level.
- Judaica Press
Judaica Press is an Orthodox Jewish publishing house founded in New York City in 1963 by S. Goldman, and then taken over by his son Jack Goldman in response to the growing demand for books of scholarship in the English-speaking Jewish world. In addition to undertaking the now ubiquitous Judaica Press "Mikraoth Gedoloth Nach" (Prophets and Writings of the Tanakh-Hebrew Bible) series, …
- Blu Greenberg
Blu Greenberg (born 1936) is an American writer specializing in Modern Orthodox Judaism and women's issues. She is the author of "On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition" (1981) and "Black Bread: Poems, After the Holocaust" (1994). Greenberg is active in the movement to bridge the gulf between Orthodox Judaism and feminism. In 1997 and 1998, she chaired the first and second International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy, …
- Eric Yoffie
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie is the President of the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregational arm of the Reform Jewish Movement in North America. Yoffie has remained the unchallenged head of American Judaism’s largest denomination since 1996 due to his popular advocacy of political liberalism and religious traditionalism. Raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, he is a graduate of Brandeis University and received his Rabbinical ordination from Hebrew Union College.
- Bernard Revel
Rabbi Bernard (Dov) Revel (September 17 1885-1940) was an Orthodox rabbi and scholar. He served as the first President of Yeshiva College from 1915 until his death in 1940.
- Daniel Lapin
Daniel Lapin (born 1950?) is a political commentator and American Orthodox rabbi living in Mercer Island, Washington, and the founder of Toward Tradition (a conservative Jewish-Christian organization). He also once headed the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice, Los Angeles, California,(as well as the Commonwealth Loan Company and the Cascadia Business Institute). Lapin is co-chair of the conservative American Alliance of Jews and Christians.
- Aharon Lichtenstein
Aharon Lichtenstein (born in 1933) is a noted Orthodox Jewish rabbi and rosh yeshiva. Rabbi Lichtenstein was born in France, but grew up in the United States, studied in Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin under Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner. He earned a BA and "semicha" ("rabbinic ordination") at Yeshiva University and a PhD in English Literature at Harvard University, where he studied under Douglas Bush. After serving as Rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University for several years, …
- Aharon Kotler
Rabbi Aharon (or Ahroyn, Aaron, Aron) Kotler (1891 - 1962) was a prominent leader of Orthodox Judaism in Lithuania, and later the United States of America, where he built one of the first yeshivas in the US.
- Shlomo Goren
Shlomo Goren (1917-1994), was a former Orthodox Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. Goren, born "Gorenchik", was born in Zambrow, Poland and immigrated to British administered Palestine with his family in 1925. He served in the Israel Defense Forces during three wars, wrote several award-winning books on Jewish law, and was appointed Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1968. Rabbi Goren served as Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973- 1983, …
- Nosson Scherman
Rabbi Nosson Scherman is an American Haredi Orthodox rabbi best known as the general editor for ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications. He studied in Beth Medrash Elyon in Spring Valley, New York. He joined ArtScroll in 1976 and has contributed translations and commentaries for ArtScroll's Stone Chumash, the ArtScroll Siddurim and Machzorim, and the Stone Tanach. He served as general editor of the 73-volume translation Schottenstein edition of the Talmud from 1990 until 2005.
- Shlomo Zalman Auerbach
Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (Hebrew: שלמה זלמן אוירבך), was a renowned Rabbi, Posek and Rosh Yeshiva of the Kol Torah yeshiva in Israel. He was born in the Sha'arei Chessed neighborhood of Jerusalem founded by his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Porush after whom he was named. He studied at the Eitz Chaim Yeshiva in Jerusalem and then, following his marriage, at Kollel Kerem Tzion about the Halachos (Jewish laws) of Eretz Yisrael.
- Hyam Maccoby
Hyam Maccoby (1924-2004) was a British scholar, dramatist, and Orthodox Jew specializing in the study of the Jewish and Christian religious tradition. In retirement he moved to Leeds, where he held an academic position at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds. Maccoby was known for his theories of the historical Jesus and the historical origins of Christianity Maccoby also wrote extensively on the phenomenon of ancient and modern Anti-Semitism.
- Menachem Mendel Schneersohn
Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1789-09-09 - 1866-03-17 OS) also known as the "Tzemach Tzedek" was an Orthodox rabbi and the third Rebbe (spiritual leader) of the Chabad Lubavitch chasidic movement.
- Steven Greenberg
Steven Greenberg is the first person with Orthodox Rabbinic ordination to announce his homosexuality while claiming adherence to Orthodox Judaism. Given Judaism's views on homosexuality, this has made Greenberg a focus for criticism and praise, as well as a symbol of the growing voice of the Jewish gay movement.
- Yitzchok Hutner
Yitzchok (Isaac) Hutner (1906 - 1980) was an Orthodox rabbi born in Warsaw, Poland, to a family with both Ger Hasidim and non-Hasidic Lithuanian Jews in their origins. He received private instruction in Torah and Talmud. As a young teenager, he was enrolled in the famous "mussar" Slabodka yeshiva in Lithuania, headed by the famous Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel. There, he was known as the "Warsaw Illui" ("prodigy").
- Tovia Singer
Tovia Singer (b. 1965) is the host of The Tovia Singer Show, a radio show that was launched in 2002, as well as a public lecturer who devotes his time to countering missionary work undertaken by such messianic organizations as Jews for Jesus. In that capacity he heads Outreach Judaism, which aims to provide educational resources to individuals targeted for conversion by missionary groups.
- Immanuel Jakobovits
Immanuel Jakobovits, Baron Jakobovits, KBE (8 February 1921-31 October 1999) was the Orthodox Judaism Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth from 1967 to 1991. His successor is the present Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.
- Rachel Adler
Rachel Adler is associate professor of Modern Jewish Thought and Judaism and Gender at the School of Religion, University of Southern California and the Hebrew Union College Rabbinical School at the Los Angeles campus. Adler was one of the first theologians to integrate feminist perspectives and concerns into Jewish texts and the renewal of Jewish law and ethics. Adler received a PhD from the University of Southern California in 1997.
- Nechama Leibowitz
Nechama Leibowitz (1905 in Riga, Latvia - 12 April 1997 in Jerusalem) was a noted Israeli biblical scholar and commentator, who rekindled an intense interest in the study of the Bible and its commentaries among Jews everywhere. Leibowitz was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Riga, two years after her elder brother, the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz.
- Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler
Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (1892-30 December 1953) was an influential Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Talmudic scholar, and Jewish philosopher of the 20th century. He is best known as "mashgiach ruchani" ("spiritual counselor") of the Ponevezh yeshiva in Israel.
- Shlomo Ganzfried
Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried was a Haredi Orthodox rabbi and posek best known as author of the work of Halakha (Jewish law), the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, by which title he is also known.
- Azriel Hildesheimer
Israel Azriel Hildesheimer (May 20, 1820 - July 12, 1899) was a German rabbi and leader of Orthodox Judaism. He is regarded as a pioneering modernizer of Orthodox Judaism in Germany and as a founder of Modern Orthodox Judaism.
- Edith Stein
Edith Stein (October 12, 1891 - August 9, 1942) was a philosopher, a Carmelite nun, martyr, and saint of the Catholic Church, who died at Auschwitz. In 1922, she converted to Christianity, was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church and was received into the Discalced Carmelite Order in 1934. She was canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (her Carmelite monastic name) by Pope John Paul II in 1998; however, she is still often referred to, …
- Sandi Simcha Dubowski
Sandi Simcha DuBowski is an American director and producer. Best known for his work on homosexuality and religion, DuBowski's directed the 2001 documentary "Trembling Before G-d" and is the producer of Parvez Sharma's upcoming documentary A Jihad for Love (formerly known as "In the Name of Allah") (2007).