Elsie Stern is the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Bible at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she has the privilege of teaching Biblical Civilization to first-year students. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Yale University, and her Master of Arts and doctorate from the University of Chicago. She is the author of From Rebuke to Consolation: Bible, Exegesis and Ritual in the Literature of the Tisha b’Av Season (Brown Judaic Series, 2004), and is a contributor to the Jewish Study Bible (Oxford University Press, 2004, 2014), The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (Women of Reform Judaism, 2008), as well as author of several contributions to scholarly journals and volumes of essays. Most recently, she served as co-editor of the Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media (T and T Clark, 2017). Her current research focuses on the transmission and reception of biblical texts in early Jewish settings. She is particularly interested in the relationship between the texts of Torah and their performance and transmission in lived contexts.
Ask any student or alumnus of RRC, “What is distinctive about a Reconstructionist rabbinical education,” and you will probably hear a few things repeatedly. Among