Bios: Rabbis Pamela Barmash and Elliot Dorff

About Rabbi Pamela Barmash:

Rabbi Pamela Barmash is the co-chair of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly and has served on it since 2003. She also has been a member of the Joint Beit Din of the Conservative Movement since 2008. She is a professor of Hebrew Bible at Washington University in St. Louis and was also the director of Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies there. She has been a fellow at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and she is the editor of the journal Hebrew Studies. She has published five books and over fifty articles, essays, and reviews in academic journals, encyclopedias, and popular media, and she has written eight teshuvot and a number of letters of guidance for the CJLS. Her scholarly research is in the areas of law and justice and of history and memory, and in her rabbinic writing, she wants to inspire more Jews to be mindful of God in the daily routines of life and lead deliberately ethical lives. She received a B.A. from Yale University, rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She served as the rabbi at Temple Shaare Tefilah, Norwood, Massachusetts, for eight years and taught at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem for many summers. 

About Rabbi Elliot Dorff:

Elliot Dorff was ordained a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1970 and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1971 with a dissertation in moral theory. Since then he has directed the rabbinical and Masters programs at the University of Judaism (now called the American Jewish University), where he currently is Rector and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. Every other year since 1974 he has also taught a course on Jewish law at UCLA School of Law as a Visiting Professor. He was awarded the Journal of Law and Religion’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and he holds four honorary doctoral degrees.

Rabbi Dorff is Chair of the Conservative Movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and served on the editorial committee of Etz Hayim, the new Torah commentary for the Conservative Movement. He has chaired four scholarly organizations: the Academy of Jewish Philosophy, the Jewish Law Association, the Society of Jewish Ethics, and the Academy of Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies. He is a member of the Board of the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s committee, Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion Advisory Committee. He has served as a member of the Board and an officer of the FaithTrust Institute, a national organization that produces seminars and educational materials to help people avoid or extricate themselves from domestic violence. Rabbi Dorff's publications include over 200 articles on Jewish thought, law, and ethics, together with fourteen books that he wrote and another fourteen that he edited or co-edited. 

Rabbi Dorff is married to Marlynn, and their four children have produced eight grandchildren, who, he thinks, are more important than anything mentioned above!