Arnold Eisen

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Arnold M. Eisen (born 1951) is an American scholar of Judaism who was the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York, a role he left after the 2019–2020 academic year. Before JTS, he was the Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, and he also taught at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University.

In 2006, Eisen was named the seventh chancellor of JTS, succeeding Ismar Schorsch. He is the second non-rabbi to hold the post and the first with a social science background. He began as chancellor-elect on July 1, 2007, and started full-time on July 1, 2008.

As chancellor, he expanded JTS’s influence by reforming education for Conservative Judaism, shaping a new vision, and guiding a strategic plan. He created programs in synagogue arts, adult education, pastoral care, Jewish thought, interfaith dialogue, and the arts. Key initiatives included new curricula for JTS’s five schools, the Institute for Jewish Learning (and its Context program), the Center for Pastoral Education, and the Tikvah Institute for Jewish Thought. By 2011, the Mitzvah Initiative involved about 75 congregations reflecting on commandment and practice.

Eisen worked at Stanford, Tel Aviv University, and Columbia University. He earned a PhD in History of Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a BPhil in Sociology of Religion from Oxford, and a BA in Religious Thought from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied with Samuel Tobias Lachs and is known as a leading expert in religious change and the sociology of American Judaism. He has advised many synagogues and federations.

He serves on boards including the Tanenbaum Center, Covenant Foundation, and Taube Foundation, and chairs the Academic Consortium. He is married to Adriane Leveen, a Hebrew Bible professor at Hebrew Union College, and they have two children.

His major publications include Taking Hold of Torah (1997), Rethinking Modern Judaism (1998), and The Jew Within (2000), co-authored with Steven M. Cohen.