Dr. Alyssa Gray

Dr. Alyssa Gray is the Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics and Professor of Codes and Responsa Literature at HUC-JIR in New York. She received her PhD with distinction in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and also earned an LLM in Mishpat Ivri (Jewish law) from the Hebrew University Faculty of Law. She is a graduate of Barnard College (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and earned a JD from the Columbia University School of Law, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Dr. Gray researches and writes on the development of Talmudic literature and the history of Jewish law. She is the author most recently of Charity in Rabbinic Judaism: Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), and of A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah (Brown, 2005), soon to be re-released digitally in a second edition with a new retrospective preface. She has also published numerous shorter studies on topics such as Jewish liturgy, wealth, poverty, and charity in Jewish law and tradition, Talmudic redaction, and the application of legal and literary theory to the study of medieval Jewish legal works. She has been a visiting professor at Yale University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. She has also lectured in a variety of other academic and non-academic settings, including Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University, Colby College, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Florida Atlantic University, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Freehof Institute for Progressive Halakhah, Limmud UK, the World Union for Progressive Judaism, the Masorti movement in Latin America, and the Union for Reform Judaism. Dr. Gray also sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Jewish Ethics and of HUC Press.