Rabbi Shalom Carmy is Co-chair Faculty of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva College, where he teaches Jewish Studies and Philosophy, and the Editor of Tradition . He has written many articles on Biblical theology, Jewish thought, Orthodoxy in the 20th century, and the role of liberal arts in a Torah education. In addition to his exegetical and analytic work, Carmy’s theological contribution is distinguished by preoccupation with the way religious doctrine and practice express themselves in the life of the individual.

Sam Fleischacker is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois-Chicago. His writings include A Short History of Distributive Justice (Harvard, 2004) and the forthcoming Divine Teaching and the Way of the World (Oxford, 2011). He has also edited a collection entitled Heidegger’s Jewish Followers (Duquesne, 2008).

Menachem Kellner is Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa, and Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His most recent books are Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides and Torah in the Observatory: Gersonides, Maimonides, Song of Songs (both published by Academic Studies Press, Boston). He is now writing a book in Hebrew on Maimonidean universalism.

Mark D. Rosen is a Professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. His focus is on constitutional law, democracy, and an assortment of fields that address the benefits and complications of decentralized political power (namely: conflicts of law, separation of powers, state and local government law, international law, and American Indian law). He has a deep interest as well in Jewish law. As his contribution here demonstrates, many of the questions he explores in constitutional law can usefully illuminate parallel phenomena in Jewish law.

Devorah Schoenfeld is Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. She has a forthcoming book comparing Jewish and Christian medieval Bible commentaries on the near-sacrifice of Isaac, and has also written on interpretations of the story of Moses and on Talmudic dream interpretation.

Daniel Statman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa. His primary interests are in moral and legal philosophy, moral psychology, and modern Jewish philosophy. He is the author of Moral Dilemmas , co-author of Religion and Morality , and editor of Moral Luck and of Virtue Ethics .

Suzanne Last Stone is University Professor of Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. She writes and lectures on the intersection of Jewish thought, legal theory, and the humanities. Her publications include: “In Pursuit of the Counter-text: The Turn to the Jewish Legal Model in Contemporary American Legal Theory” ( Harvard Law Review ) and “The Jewish Conception of Civil Society” in Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society (Princeton University Press).