Honors Professor Rebecca Alpert

 

Rebecca Alpert

Rebecca Alpert was born in Brooklyn, New York and attended Erasmus High School. She went on to graduate from Barnard College before getting her Ph.D. in religion at Temple University and her Rabbinical training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in Wyncote, Pennsylvania.

Her specialization is in American and especially Jewish American religious history, and she focuses on issues related to gender, sexuality and race. Her thinking about many of these issues was shaped by her teachers, who included Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.

After graduation, Alpert worked on a contractual basis with a number of synagogues in the U.S.A. and Canada. In this capacity, she was a member of the first generation of congregational women rabbis. During this time, she also taught courses in Holocaust Studies at Rutgers University and was the Dean of Students at the RRC until 1987. Thereafter she served in several capacities at Temple University: as Director of Adult Programs, Director of the Program in Women's Studies, and as a faculty member in the departments of religion and women's studies.

Alpert's research has focused on explaining and expounding the Reconstructionist tradition and the place of gays and lesbians in Jewish religious history. She has lectured at a number of colleges and universities, including Columbia, UPenn, Princeton and Swarthmore and is an active public intellectual who writes for mainstream publications and frequently speaks at rallies and on panels in the Philadelphia region and beyond. Her current work centers on the relationships between Jews, blacks and baseball during the years 1930-1950.

Alpert is a recipient of Temple's College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Teaching Award. She has recently taught courses on religion in American public life, Jews, America and sports, and sexuality in world religions.

For fun, she goes to the movies with Director Ruth Ost, reads Elizabeth George mysteries while riding a stationary bicycle, admittedly watches more sports on TV than she should, and is a season ticket holder for Temple Women’s Basketball.

“Teaching in Honors gives me opportunities to meet smart, funny, and sensitive people who really care about compassionate learning and challenges me to offer them a classroom experience that will spark their imaginations and (maybe even) change their lives.” – Rebecca Alpert