Rabbi Mira Wasserman, Ph.D.

Vice President for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature

Mira Beth Wasserman brings her background as a congregational rabbi and as a scholar of Talmud and Jewish ethics to the leadership team for Reconstructing Judaism. As dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, she is responsible for enacting RRC’s curriculum, for supporting faculty, students and staff in the cultivation of a constructive learning community and for advancing the intellectual and spiritual leadership of RRC’s faculty, students and alumni. In her new role as VPAA, she embraces the opportunity to serve colleagues and students in their pursuits of rigorous learning, beloved community and transformative Torah.

Rabbi Wasserman teaches courses in Rabbinic civilization and literature. In the classroom, she explores the history and cultures of diverse ancient Jewish communities while fusing immersion in classical text with new critical methods and theory and invites reflection on contemporary meaning-making. In 2016 and 2023, Wasserman was selected by her students to receive the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s Yaakov Gladstone Award for Fine Teaching.

Wasserman’s research focuses on the art of the Babylonian Talmud and on how the Talmud can be deployed to support contemporary Jewish ethics. She is co-editor of Modern Jewish Ethics Since 1970: Writings on Methods, Sources and Issues (2025), part of the Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought. Her book, Jews, Gentiles, and other Animals: The Talmud after the Humanities (Penn Press, 2017), is an exploration of what it means to be human according to the Talmud; it was awarded the Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish studies published in 2017. She is presently pursuing collaborative research on slavery and the enslaved in rabbinic law and literature together with Professor Marjorie Lehman of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

As director of the Center for Jewish Ethics from 2017 until 2025, Wasserman pursued public scholarship on race, gender and Jewish ethics. She led the NEH-funded project Race, Religion & American Judaism, sparking new scholarship and developing resources for studying the multiracial, multicultural realities of Jewish life. A go-to speaker on Jewish ethics and the #MeToo movement, she co-edited Respect and Responsibility: A Jewish Ethics Study Guide, deploying Jewish values and text study in the prevention of abuse.

Wasserman is Rabbi Emerita of Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, Indiana, where she served for over a decade. Her doctorate in Jewish Studies is from the University of California at Berkeley, her rabbinic ordination is from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and she is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. She spent two years pursuing Jewish studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Barnard College. Her focus on Jewish early childhood education as a congregational rabbi led to the publication of a children’s book, Too Much of a Good Thing.

Selected Courses

Rabbinic Civilization: An exploration of the history and cultures of diverse Jewish communities in antiquity.
Eichah Rabbah: An examination of ways Eicha Rabbah can serve as a resource for us as we confront the losses and traumas of our own age.
Slavery and the Rabbinic Imagination: A survey of midrashic forms through the prism of slavery, interrogating the place of slavery and enslaved people in rabbinic law, exegesis, theology and narrative.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Unshackling our Interpretive Practices: Rereading Rabbinic Slavery, with Marjorie Lehman, Sources, Spring 2025.
“Turn It and Turn It Again: The Talmud, Ethics, and #MeToo,” Journal of Textual Reasoning 15:1, March 2024.
“The Talmud Today,” in The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21^st Century, 2023.
Race, Religion and American Judaism: Research and Resources for Studying the multicultural, multiracial realities of Jewish life.
Is the Talmud Racist? Part of the “Jews, Race, and Religion” lecture series, co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Ethics and the University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, February 2021.
“Talmudic Ethics with Beruriah: Reading with Care.” Journal of Textual Reasoning. Volume 11, Number 1, May 2020
“Against Apocalyptic Ethics” Evolve, 2020

Jewish Ethics, #MeToo, and Crowd-Sourced Responsa

September 26, 2018

In 5778, the hashtags #TimesUp #MeToo #GamAni sparked a broad communal conversation about abuses of power on the part of individuals and institutions, within and beyond the Jewish community. The year brought revelations of misconduct among celebrities and government officials, and in Jewish schools, organizations, and synagogues. Now, powerful people who abuse their power are being held accountable, and this is a development that is welcome and long overdue. That doesn’t mean it is easy.

Rabbi Mira Wasserman, Ph.D.

Jewish Ethics, #MeToo, and Crowd-Sourced Responsa

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