CLAL Faculty 

Rabbi Joshua Saltzman

Rabbi Joshua Saltzman is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at CLAL--The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He recently finished a statement paper entitled "Judaism Beyond Borders: Globalization and the Jewish People in the Twenty-First Century."

Prior to his work at CLAL, Rabbi Saltzman worked as Director of Communications, Education and Outreach at the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). AJWS is a not-for-profit organization that works in partnership with local grassroots, non-governmental organizations in the developing world by providing financial assistance, technical support, skilled volunteers and emergency relief and reconstruction. He spent many years traveling as a rabbi and human rights advocate in the developing world and working with the refugees and indigenous populations.

Rabbi Saltzman was founder and director of the New York Kolel, a new adult Jewish study at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), where he also taught as an adjunct faculty member. He has been an education program consultant for the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Edgar Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at New York University

Prior to the rabbinate, he was a journalist at the Baltimore Jewish Times. He spent 11 years in Israel where he lived on a kibbutz, and served as a commander and battle medic in the IDF and the Lebanon War of 1982. He received his B.A. from Hebrew University and studied at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

He received his ordination from HUC-JIR and went on to do graduate work at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University in Jewish theology and philosophy. He wrote his thesis on Emanuel Levinas, a modern Jewish philosopher. He has published a number of articles and has edited several books, including Pathways of Faithfulness: Personal Essays on Jewish Spirituality.

He resides in Brooklyn, New York with his son Yoni.

Email: jsaltzman@clal.org