Dr. Ruth Calderon is a former research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and one of Israel’s leading figures spearheading efforts to revive Hebrew Culture and a pluralistic Israeli-Jewish identity.
She co-established ELUL, the first beit midrash in which secular and religious women and men studied and taught together. In 1996 in Tel Aviv, she founded in ALMA, a Jewish liberal arts program for advanced learning and is the author of A Bride for One Night (2001), a personal homiletic reading of Talmudic legends, and Talmudic Alpha Beta (2014).
From 2013-2015, she was a Knesset Member from the Yesh Atid Party, where she was Deputy Speaker, member of the education and state control committees, and Chairperson of the Lobby for Jewish Renewal.
She holds a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Talmud from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.