David Golinkin

Rabbi David Golinkin (born 1955) is President of The Jerome and Miriam Professor of Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. He assumed the Schechter presidency in 2000 and during his tenure, the number of people served by Schechter Jewish education programs has more than doubled to over 50,000 people of all ages; the institution received accreditation from Israel's Council for Higher Education; its full-time faculty doubled and its library stacks more than tripled. Golinkin led the building campaign which resulted in two new campuses in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (Neve Schechter in Neve Zedek), which are enabling Schechter to expand its programs.

A leading halakhic scholar and Conservative rabbi, Golinkin has made an invaluable contribution to the development of Jewish Law. He is the founder and director of the Institute for Applied Halakhah. He directs the Center for Women in Jewish Law, whose research and publications, especially in the area of agunot, have made a significant contribution to advancing the status of women in Jewish Law. His latest book, The Status of Women in Jewish Law: Responsa, a seminal work in the field, has made a major contribution to advancing the rights of women through the prism of Jewish law. For twenty years, Golinkin served as Chair of the Va’ad Halakhah (Law Committee) of the Rabbinical Assembly which writes responsa and gives halakhic guidance to the Masorti (Conservative) Movement in Israel.

Golinkin is the author or editor of forty-nine books, including The Status of Women in Jewish Law: Responsa (Hebrew and English editions), The Shoah Scroll, Insight Israel: The View from Schechter (2 volumes), The High Holy Days by Rabbi Hayyim Kieval, Za’akat Dalot: Halakhic Solutions for the Agunot of our Time, The Schechter Haggadah, the Hebrew edition of Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg, and The Student Struggle Against the Holocaust. He authored a column entitled “Responsa” which appeared in Moment magazine from 1990-1996. From 2000-2006 he authored a monthly email column entitled “Insight Israel” at www.schechter.edu. His current email column on that website is entitled “Responsa in a Moment”. From 2006 until today, he has published over 200 articles, responsa and sermons.

Golinkin was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia. He made aliyah in 1972, earning a B.A. in Jewish History and two teaching certificates from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received an M.A. in Rabbinics and a Ph.D. in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was also ordained as Rabbi.

• Halakhah for Our Time
• An Index of Conservative Responsa and Practical Halakhic Studies 1917-1990
• Responsa of the Vaad Halakha Volumes 1 to 6
• Be’er Tuvia
• The Responsa of Professor Louis Ginzberg
• Rediscovering the Art of Jewish Prayer
• Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards 1927-1970, Three volumes
• Ginzey Rosh Hashanah
• Responsa in a Moment (3 volumes)
• The Jewish Law Watch
• The Status of Women in Jewish Law: Responsa,(Hebrew and English editions)
• The Shoah Scroll
• Insight Israel: The View from Schechter,(2 volumes)
• To Learn and to Teach
• The High Holy Days, by Rabbi Hayyim Kieval
• Responsa and Halakhic Studies by Rabbi Isaac Klein
• Za’akat Dalot: Halakhic Solutions for the Agunot of our Time
• 'Taking the Plunge', by Rabbi Miriam Berkowitz
• Essays in Jewish Studies in Honor of Prof. Shamma Friedman
• Jewish Education for What? and other Essays by Walter Ackerman
• The Schechter Haggadah
• Legends of the Jews, by Louis Ginzberg,(Hebrew edition)
• Ask the Rabbi
• The Student Struggle Against the Holocaust
• As a Driven Leaf (Hebrew edition)
• Midrash Hadash Al Hatorah and Esther Rabbah

In addition, he authored a column entitled “Responsa” which appeared in Moment magazine from 1990-1996. From 2000-2006 he authored a monthly email column entitled “Insight Israel” at The Schechter Institutes website. His current email column on that website is entitled “Responsa in a Moment”. He has published over 200 articles, responsa and sermons.

Rabbi Monique Suskind Goldberg, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, Volume 7, p. 739