Elli Fischer is an independent writer, translator, and rabbi. Previously, he was the JLIC rabbi and campus educator at the University of Maryland. He holds BA and MS degrees from Yeshiva University, rabbinical ordination from Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, and is working toward a doctorate in Jewish History at Tel Aviv University.
He is a founding editor of The Lehrhaus, a web magazine of contemporary Jewish thought. His original writing has appeared in Commentary, Moment, Jewish Review of Books, Mosaic, the Journal of Halakha and Contemporary Society, and other print and online publications, and he often writes for the New York Jewish Week. Among the issues he writes about are religion and politics in Israel; the interplay between legal and nonlegal elements of the Talmud; Jewish religious culture; and Central European Jewish History. He is the translator of By Faith Alone: The Story of Rabbi Yehuda Amital and the editor of Rabbi Eliezer Melamed’s Peninei Halakha series in English. Originally from Baltimore, he currently resides in Modiin, Israel, with his wife and four children.