Dr. Rabbi Rani Jaeger is a Research Fellow and the Director of the Tanach Initiative at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He also serves as the Director of the Ritual Center, which leads the Hitkansut L’Yom HaShoah ceremony based on the Hitkansut Haggadah.

Rani spearheaded the establishment of the Tanach Initiative with the goal of improving Bible instruction and elevating the significance of the “Book of Books” among students in Israel’s state (secular) school system. In his previous roles at the Institute, he was the Co-Director and a founding member of the Be’eri Program and managed the School for Jewish Culture Studies.

He is a graduate of the first cohort of the Beit Midrash for Israeli Rabbis, a joint program of the Shalom Hartman Institute and HaMidrasha at Oranim.

Previously, Rani was a faculty member at Alma – Home for Hebrew Culture, the Ofakim program at Tel Aviv University, and a visiting lecturer at Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm, Sweden.

In 2004, he co-founded Beit Tefilah Israeli in Tel Aviv, where he currently serves as a co-leader, a community that celebrates Shabbat, holidays, and life-cycle events focusing on their renewal in a Jewish-Israeli spirit. The community is well-known for its ceremonies in the public sphere, most notably the Kabbalat Shabbat services held at the Tel Aviv port during the summer months.

As part of his work in the field of Jewish renewal in Israel, Rani was the designer and first director of the Gvanim program for the promotion of Jewish pluralism in Israel, established and funded by the San Francisco Federation.

He holds a B.A. in General History and Jewish Thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he also pursued an M.A. in American History. He earned his PhD from the Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies Program at Bar-Ilan University, focusing on Jewish-Israeli culture through the eyes of Abraham Shlonsky.

Rani lives in Jerusalem with Inbal and their four children.