Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler is a former faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.

She is also the Dean of Students and the Director of Spiritual Development at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Hasidism and Pastoral Torah, and a faculty member at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

Erin earned both her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and her BA from Harvard University. She was ordained by Yeshivat Maharat.

Erin previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there, as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jewish Week, and other publications. Her collection, Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Reflections (Ben Yehuda Press) received the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience.