Dr. Rebecca T. Alpert
Associate Professor of Religion and Women’s Studies
A.B., Barnard College 1971
Ph.D., Temple University 1978
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (ordination) 1976
Current Research
Dr. Alpert's most recent publication is Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball (Oxford University Press, 2011). Her areas of specialization are Contemporary American Religion, Religion and Sexuality, and Religion and Sport.
Publications
Books:
Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition (Columbia University Press, 1997). 1998 Lambda Literary Award and 1999 Award for Scholarship from the Jewish Women’s Caucus of the Association for Women in Psychology.
Voices of the Religious Left: A Contemporary Sourcebook editor (Temple University Press, 2000).
Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation editor, with Sue Elwell and Shirley Idelson, (Rutgers University Press, 2001). 2002 Finalist for Lambda Literary Award.
Whose Torah? A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism (The New Press, 2008).
Recent Articles:
"Commentary on Exodus" in The Queer Bible Commentary , ed. Robert Goss, Deryn Guest, Mona West and Thomas Bohache (SCM Press, London , 2006) 61-76
"Same Sex Marriage and Reconstructionist Judaism" for Our Family Values: Same-sex Marriage and Religion edited by Traci West (Praeger, 2006) 239-252
"Sex in Jewish Law and Culture" in Sexuality in the World’s Religions ed. David Machacek and Melissa Wilcox, (ABC-CLIO, 2003).
"Who is a Jewish Baseball Player?" in The Proceedings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2003-2004 , ed. Bill Simons (McFarland and Company Publishers, 2005) 95-106
"Baseball Across the Generations in Jewish American Writing" in What is Jewish About America ’s "Favorite Pastime"? Essays and Sermons on Jews, Judaism and Baseball edited by Marc Lee Raphael and Judith I. Abrams ( College of William and Mary Press, 2006) 35-45
"Celebrating Judith Plaskow’s Work" Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Spring 2007) 23:1 2-10
"Dialogue on Feminism and Activism" with Danya Ruttenberg in Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice Edited by Or N. Rose, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, and Margie Klein (Jewish Lights Press, 2007) 206-214
"Jewish Identity and Jewish Genetic Diseases" The Reconstructionist 7:2 (Spring 2008) 69-84
"Jackie Robinson as a Jewish Icon" Shofar: The Journal of Interdisciplinary Jewish Studies Winter 2008 (Vol. 26, No. 2) 42-59