Rachel Slutsky is a fellow of the Kogod Research Center at Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She is also an incoming faculty member for the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America’s inaugural Teen Fellowship 2022-23. She holds the title of the Monsignor John Oesterreicher Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Jewish-Christian Relations in Antiquity at Seton Hall University. Prior to this, Rachel completed her doctorate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University, where she held the Isadore Twersky Fellowship 2021-2022. Rachel’s work explores the ways in which ancient and modern discourses employ Jewish law to cultivate communal self-understanding in juxtaposition to other Jews and the non-Jewish world more broadly. She is currently working on her first monograph, tentatively titled The Gentile Enigma: Divine Law and Identity in Early Judaism, based on her dissertation.

Rachel has taught and spoken throughout North America and internationally, most recently at the University of Hong Kong. She is a faculty member for Ma’ayan, an institute for Jewish adult education in Boston, MA, and a former adjunct faculty member at Lesley University. Rachel has held numerous fellowships, including a Summer Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center, a FLAS Fellowship in Yiddish at the University of Chicago, a Pedagogy Fellowship from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and numerous Center for Jewish Studies Fellowships from Harvard University. Prior to coming to Harvard, Rachel received her MA in Biblical Studies from the University of Chicago and her BA with honors in Jewish Studies and English literature from Stern College, Yeshiva University. She lives in Linden, NJ, with her husband and daughter.