CLAL Faculty

Rabbi David Nelson, Ph.D.

Rabbi David Nelson, Ph.D. has been a Senior Teaching Fellow at CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning And Leadership since 1985. He received his Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, and his Ph.D. in Midrash from New York University.

Before coming to CLAL, David served as the rabbi of a congregation in Long Island. He has taught at Adelphi University and New York University, and currently teaches in the Cantorial School of Hebrew Union College. He has also served as rabbi and teacher-in-residence on the Reform movement’s kibbutzim in southern Israel, as well as in summer camps run by the Reform movement and by the Denver JCC.

As a member of the CLAL faculty, David  lectured and taught extensively throughout the United States and Canada. He was widely known for creating intensely spiritual and exciting encounters with Jewish text and community in Shabbatonim throughout the country. David was been a contributing editor of Sh’ma Magazine and a contributor to several Torah commentary projects published by the Reform movement. In 2005, his book Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post Einstein World, was published by Jewish Lights. Rabbi Nelson is director of the Jewish Life Connection at Bergen County YJCC in New Jersey, and president of Chavruta: A Community of Jewish Learning.