Rabbi David Fox Sandmel
CTU Faculty
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
David Fox Sandmel serves as Director of Life-Long Learning at Temple Sholom in Chicago and is Crown-Ryan Professor of Jewish Studies at the Catholic Theological Union. From 1998-2001, he served as the Jewish Scholar at the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies in Baltimore. There, he directed the National Jewish Scholars Project, a major initiative to promote a new discussion within the Jewish community and between Jews and Christians about the differences and similarities between the two traditions. As part of the project, Rabbi Sandmel coordinated the publication of “Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity,” a groundbreaking event that generated international attention in the interfaith community and wide media coverage.
He is the co-editor of Christianity in Jewish Terms (Westview, 2000), to which he has also contributed an essay. In addition, he is the lead editor of Irreconcilable Differences? A Learning Resource for Jews and Christians (Westview Press, 2001), a study and discussion guide that focuses on core theological issues on the boundary between Judaism and Christianity. Rabbi Sandmel is the founding rabbi of Congregation Bet Ha’am in Portland, Maine, and has served congregations in Cleveland and Chicago.
Rabbi Sandmel is also involved in Jewish-Muslim dialogue and in the tri-lateral dialogue between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He is a member of Rabbis and Imams for Peace and attended the Second International Congress of Rabbis and Imams for Peace in Seville, Spain in 2005. He team teaches a course at CTU with a Roman Catholic and an Imam on the Abrahamic faiths.
Rabbi Sandmel received his Bachelor of Arts, with honors, in Jewish Studies from the Ohio State University and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. He completed his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied the history and literature of Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-Roman world.
Rabbi Sandmel lectures widely on contemporary issues in Jewish-Christian relations and foundations of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Association for Jewish Studies, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). He chairs the CCAR Committee on Interfaith Activities and is the CCAR Representative to the Joint UAHC-CCAR Commission on Interfaith Relations, the National Council of Synagogues, and IJCIC (The International Jewish Committee on Interfaith Consultations).
