Dr. Elana Stein Hain is the Rosh Beit Midrash and a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she serves as lead faculty and consults on the content of lay and professional programs. A widely well-regarded thinker and teacher, Elana is passionate about bringing rabbinic thought into conversation with contemporary life. She is the author of Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Legal Loopholes and Integrity (Penn Press, 2024) which uses loopholes as a lens for understanding rabbinic views on law and ethics.
She is currently working on a book-length anthology, tentatively called Torah for Democracy: Religious Zionist Perspectives, which brings together late 20th/early 21st century religious arguments in favor of democracy.
Elana holds degrees from Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Yeshiva University Graduate Program in Advance Talmudic Studies. She formerly served as clergy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
For more of Elana’s ideas, check out TEXTing IRL, a bi-weekly podcast that considers issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts; Talmud from the Balcony, an occasional learning seminar exposing the big ideas, questions, and issues motivating rabbinic discussions; and visit her Academia page here.
