Rabbi Gordon Tucker is a Fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He is also Vice Chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Previously he was the Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, NY (a Conservative synagogue) from 1994 to 2018. He received an A.B. from Harvard College, Ph.D. from Princeton University, and Rabbinic Ordination from Jewish Theological Seminary.
He was Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America from 1979 to 1994, and has been on the adjunct faculty many times since. From 1984 to 1992 he was the Dean of the Rabbinical School, overseeing the rabbinic training of hundreds of rabbis. He was a member of the Rabbinical Assembly Committee on Jewish Law and Standards from 1982 to 2007.
In 1979-80, he was a White House Fellow, and served as assistant and chief speechwriter to U.S. Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti. He is the author of scores of articles on Jewish theology and law, and published Heavenly Torah, a translation of and commentary on Abraham Joshua Heschel’s three-volume work on rabbinic theology. An anthology of his writings was published in 2014, under the title Torah for its Intended Purpose. Most recently, his new commentary on Pirkei Avot was published by The Rabbinical Assembly in 2018.
He is a member of the International Council of the New Israel Fund, a past Chairman of the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel, and a past member of the Board of Directors of UJA-Federation of New York.
He is married to Amy Cohn, and has three children and six grandchildren.
