Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter is a leading American Orthodox rabbi, scholar and educator whose active rabbinic career and numerous publications have inspired many to deepen their connection to Judaism. Dean of the Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Institute in Boston, he also serves as rabbi of the Maimonides Minyan in Brookline, Massachusetts. From 1977-1981 he served as rabbi of Young Israel of Sharon, MA, creating a new and vibrant Jewish community. From 1981-2000, he was the senior rabbi of The Jewish Center in New York City, overseeing the growth of the congregation from 180 to more than 600 members. He recently concluded his tenure as founding editor of The Torah u-Madda Journal , a prestigious academic publication that gained international acclaim under his direction. He also presently serves as a member of the faculty of The Wexner Foundation and The Wexner Heritage Foundation.
Rabbi Schacter received rabbinic ordination from Mesivta Torah Vodaath in 1973 and earned a PhD in Near Eastern Languages from Harvard University in 1988. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1973 from Brooklyn College, where he was honored with the Abraham S. Goodhartz Award for Excellence in Judaic Studies. Dr. Schacter was a teaching fellow at Harvard from 1978-1980, director of Yeshiva University's Torah u-Madda Project from 1986-1997, and an adjunct assistant professor at the Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University from 1993-1999. In 1995, he was awarded the prestigious Daniel Jeremy Silver Fellowship from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.
Rabbi Schacter is co-author of the award-winning A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism (1997), published by Columbia University Press, and author of nearly fifty articles and reviews in Hebrew and English. He is the editor of Reverence, Righteousness and Rahamanut: Essays in Memory of Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung (1992), Jewish Tradition and The Nontraditional Jew (1992), the award-winning Judaism's Encounter with other Cultures: Rejection or Integration? (1997) and co-editor of The Complete Service for the Period of Bereavement (1995).
Rabbi Schacter holds a number of prominent Jewish communal positions. He served as founding president of the Council of Orthodox Jewish Organizations of the Upper West Side of Manhattan from 1994-2000, is a member of the Board of Governors of the Orthodox Union, and is on the editorial boards of Tradition, Jewish Action and Bechol Derachecha Da'ehu . He has been awarded several research fellowships and grants to further his scholarly research.
Rabbi Schacter is a highly sought-after speaker in the United States, Europe, and Israel. He is currently completing a book featuring the teachings of Rabbi Soloveitchik on Tisha B'Av, as well as a new Hebrew edition of the autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden, an eighteenth-century Jewish scholar, to be published by Mosad Bialik in Jerusalem.