Rabbi Naftali Rothenberg is a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (since 1994), where he is editor of Identities, Journal for Jewish Culture & Identity and Director's Consultant for Project Development. He also serves as the Rabbi and spiritual leader of Har Adar, a Jerusalem suburb town, where he resides with his family.

Among his previous roles at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute he served as chair of the Center for Tolerance Education (1997-2006), co-chair (with Prof. Eliezer Schweid) of the Framework for Jewish Thought and Identity (1994-2004), and Jewish Culture and Identitychair (2004-2014).

His main fields of research are: The wisdom of love; political philosophy; philosophy of the halakha; democratic education.

He has published numerous articles and 12 books, among them:

Beloved Doe: The Wisdom of Love, Tel Aviv: Yediot Books, 2004 (Hebrew)

The Wisdom of Love—Man, Woman & God in Jewish Canonical Literature, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009

Naftali Rothenberg is the 2011 laureate of the Liebhaber Prize for the encouragement of religious tolerance in Israel.