Talk:Adam Ferziger

Adam S. Ferziger (Hebrew: אדם פרזיגר; born November 10, 1964) is an American intellectual and social historian. He is a recipient of the National Jewish Book Award and the Association for Israel Studies Yonathan Shapiro Best Book Award. His research focuses on the religious, intellectual, and social history of Jews in modern and contemporary North America, Europe, and Israel, with particular emphasis on Jewish religious movements and responses to secularization and assimilation.

Biography

Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Riverdale, Ferziger was educated at the SAR Academy and the Ramaz School. He later studied in Israel at Beit Midrash l'Torah and Yeshivat Har Etzion. He received his B.A., M.A. (under the mentorship of Professor Jacob Katz), and rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University. He completed his Ph.D. summa cum laude at Bar-Ilan University under the mentorship of Professor Gershon Bacon.

During his doctoral studies in the 1990s, he was awarded the Schupf Fellowship, designated for young scholars who are active contributors to public Israeli life. In this parallel period, he served as the founding director of Bar-Ilan's Mechina for New Immigrants, a preparatory program that educated thousands of newly arrived immigrants, and as the rabbi of the Beit Binyamin Synagogue in Kfar Saba, where he focused on providing accessible religious education and services to a diverse local population.

Ferziger immigrated to Israel in 1989 with his wife, Dr. Naomi Ferziger, an occupational therapist with a Ph.D. in Neuroscience who is a senior lecturer, former Head of the Department of Occupational Therapy, and the current Academic Director of the International School at Ono Academic College. They raised their six children in Kfar Saba, and in 2022 relocated to Jerusalem.

Academic career

Ferziger is a Full Professor and holds the Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah with Derekh Erez Movement in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He is also a senior associate at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and is the co-founding co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute for Modern and Contemporary Judaism, which was established in 2013.

He has held visiting professor, lecturer, or fellowship appointments at several international institutions, including:

• Shandong University, China (2005)
• University of Sydney, Australia (2012)
• Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK (2013)
• College of Charleston, USA (2017)
• Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University, USA (Research Fellow, 2021)
• Rutgers University, USA (Allen and Joan Bildner Visiting Scholar, 2022)
• Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA (Visiting Professor, Department of Judaic Studies, Spring 2025)
• Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, USA (Robert Carrady Fellow, 2025)

In 2011, he was awarded Bar-Ilan University's "Outstanding Lecturer" prize.

As a senior research fellow at Bar-Ilan's Rappaport Center for Assimilation Research, Ferziger has authored major analyses on religious leadership and contemporary frameworks for Jewish identity. For over a decade, he served as a historian for Heritage Seminars to Eastern Europe, teaching youth groups on the legacy of Eastern European Jewry and the Holocaust. He frequently lectures at universities, international academic conferences, and communal settings throughout North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Australia.

Published works

Books as Author

• Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0812238655. (Finalist for the American Academy of Religion Award for Best First Book in the History of Religions, and the American Academy for Jewish Research Salo Wittmayer Baron Leadership First Book Prize).
• Jewish Denominations – Addressing the Challenges of Modernity. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Melton Institute, 2012.
• Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0814339534. (Winner of the National Jewish Book Award).
• Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism. New York: New York University Press, 2025. ISBN 978-1479833634. (Winner of the Association for Israel Studies Yonathan Shapiro Best Book Award).

Books as Editor

• Orthodox Judaism – New Perspectives (with Aviezer Ravitsky and Yoseph Salmon). Magnes Press, 2006.
• Russian Speaking Israelis at 'Home' and 'Abroad': Identity and Migration (with Vladimir (Ze'ev) Khanin and Alek Epstein). Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011.
• Darkei Daniel - The Paths of Daniel: Studies in Judaism and Jewish Culture in Honor of Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber. Bar-Ilan University Press, 2017.
• Yitz Greenberg and Modern Orthodoxy: The Road Not Taken (with Miri Freud-Kandel and Steven Bayme). Academic Studies Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1644690512.
• Creativity and Conflict: Jews in Interwar Poland: Essays and Assessments (with Gershon C. Bacon, Moshe Rosman, and Shaul Stampfer). Academic Studies Press, 2025. ISBN 979-8887195971.

Selected Articles and Chapters

• "Jewish Law and Orthodox Law," in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law. Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 423-444.
• "Fluidity and Bifurcation: Critical Biblical Scholarship and Orthodox Judaism in Israel and North America," Modern Judaism 39, no. 3 (2019): 233-270.
• "Female Leadership in Male Space: The Sacralization of the Orthodox Rabbi," The Journal of Religion 98, no. 4 (2018): 490-516.
• "Foreign Ashes in Sovereign Space: Cremation and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, 1931–1990," Jewish Studies Quarterly 23, no. 4 (2016): 290-313.
• "Hungarian Separatist Orthodoxy and the Migration of its Legacy to America: The Greenwald-Hirschenson Debate," Jewish Quarterly Review 105, no. 2 (2015): 250-283.
• "Beyond Bais Yaakov, Orthodox Outreach and the Emergence of Haredi Women as Religious Leaders," Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 14, no. 1 (2015): 140-159.
• "From Lubavitch to Lakewood: The 'Chabadization' of American Orthodoxy," Modern Judaism 33, no. 2 (2013): 101-124.
• “Ashes to Outcasts: Cremation, Jewish Law, and Identity in Early Twentieth-century Germany,” AJS Review 36, no. 1 (2012): 71–102.
• "'Outside the Shul': The American Soviet Jewry Movement and the Rise of Solidarity Orthodoxy (1964-1986)," Religion and American Culture 22, no. 1 (2012): 83-130.
• "Feminism and Heresy: The Construction of a Jewish Meta-Narrative," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77, no. 3 (September 2009): 494–546.
• “The Lookstein Legacy: An American Orthodox Rabbinical Dynasty,” Jewish History 13, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 127-149.