Mark Rosenstein

Marc Rosenstein is the Director Emeritus of the Israel Rabbinical Program at HUC-JIR's Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem. Hegrew up in Highland Park, Illinois, and received a BA in biochemistry from Harvard College. He was ordained by HUC-JIR in 1975 and received an MA in Jewish History from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the same year; later, he earned a PhD from the Hebrew University as a Mandel Jerusalem Fellow. He made aliyah with his wife Tami and three children, to Moshav Shorashim in the Galilee, in 1990.

After working as a pulpit rabbi in Port Washington, N.Y., and later as a principal – first at the Solomon Schechter Secondary School outside of Chicago and then at Akiba Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia – he became director of the Galilee Foundation for Value Education at Shorashim. The foundation has carried out educational projects on behalf of Partnership 2000, the Mandel School for Educational and Social Leadership, the Melton Centre for Jewish Education, MAKOM Israel Engagement Network, the Union for Reform Judaism, the TALI schools network, and the ORT network of schools in Israel. Among the Foundation's other projects are a Jewish-Arab youth circus, a Hebrew-Arabic web newspaper, and a variety of educational programs at Zippori and other historical sites in the Galilee.

Rabbi Rosenstein wrote the original “Dilemmas of Jewish Life” curriculum for the Florence Melton Adult Minischool in 1993, and in recent years has been involved, with other members of the Foundation staff, in curriculum development and teaching in the Gandel Institute – the Israeli version of the Melton Minischool.

Rabbi Rosenstein retired from the directorship of the Galilee Foundation for Value Education in 2013. He was named director of the Israel Rabbinical Program at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem in 2009.

Selected Publications and Edited Works

• Galilee Diary, New York, URJ Press, 2010
• ”Binding and Teaching: a Meditation on the Right to Educate,” in S. Wygoda and I. Sorek, eds., Educational Eclectics: Essays in Memory of Shlomo Fox, Jerusalem, Mandel Foundation, 2009, pp. 149-158.
• ”Circus in a Frayed Tent,” in R. Kronish, ed,. Peace Education in Israel, Paulist Press – in press (fall 2014)