Burton L. Visotzky

BURTON L. VISOTZKY serves as the Nathan and Janet Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he joined the faculty upon his ordination as rabbi in 1977. He has served as a dean of The Graduate School, as the founding rabbi of the egalitarian worship service of the Seminary Synagogue, and as the director of the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies at JTS. Dr. Visotzky has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and a life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, as well as a visiting faculty member at, among others, Union Theological Seminary, Princeton University, and the Russian State University of the Humanities in Moscow. Rabbi Visotzky served as the Master Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome during the spring of 2007. With Bill Moyers, Visotzky developed ten hours of television for PBS on the book of Genesis, serving as consultant and a featured on-screen participant. The series, Genesis: A Living Conversation, premiered in October, 1996. He was also a consultant to Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks for their 1998 film, Prince of Egypt. He is active in Jewish–Christian–Muslim dialogue internationally, in capitals such as Washington, Warsaw, Rome, Cairo, Doha, Qatar (where he was in the first group of Jews invited to dialogue by the Emir), and Madrid (where he was in the first group of Jews invited by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia). Rabbi Visotzky is active as a lecturer and scholar-in-residence throughout North America, Europe, and Israel.