Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, current Dean of Hebrew College’s Rabbinical School, has been tapped as the next President of Hebrew College. She is the first woman elected to lead Hebrew College in the school’s history. Rabbi Anisfeld will oversee the College’s full array of campus and online programs in educational and spiritual leadership, and youth and adult learning. She will succeed Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann, who earlier this year announced his intention to step down as President at the end of the current academic year.
A graduate of Brown University, Rabbi Anisfeld was ordained in 1990 by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She joined Hebrew College in 2003, first as an adjunct faculty member and then as Dean of Students, before taking over as Dean of the Rabbinical School in the fall of 2006.
Under her stewardship as Dean, the Rabbinical School has become integral to Hebrew College’s mission to promote excellence in Jewish learning and leadership within a pluralistic environment of open inquiry, intellectual rigor, personal engagement and spiritual creativity. The School expects to ordain 13 rabbis in June 2018, bringing its total alumni community to over 100.
Prior to assuming her position at Hebrew College, Rabbi Anisfeld spent 15 years working as a Hillel rabbi at Tufts, Yale and Harvard universities. She has been a summer faculty member for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel since 1993, and is co-editor of two volumes of women’s writings on Passover. In 2015, Rabbi Anisfeld was named one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world by The Jerusalem Post. From 2011 to 2013, she was named to Newsweek‘s list of Top 50 Influential Rabbis in America.
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