Deborah Barer is Associate Professor of Ancient Judaism at Towson University, where she teaches in the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies as well as the graduate program in Jewish Studies. Her research explores rabbinic approaches to decision-making and their application to modern life. Deborah is passionate about the ways that entering into conversation with classical sources can open up new perspectives on contemporary questions.
Deborah lives in Washington DC with her husband, Benjamin, and their two children.
Publications
- “Rabbinic Literature.” In Jewish Virtue Ethics, edited by Geoffrey Claussen, Alex Green and Alan Mittleman, 51-64. SUNY Press, 2023.
- “Jewish Ethics and the Hebrew Bible.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Hebrew Bible and Ethics, edited by Carly Crouch, 291-305. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
- “Ethics and Halakhah: Reframing the Question.” Journal of Jewish Ethics 5, vol. 2 (2019): 180-206.
- “Law, Ethics, and Hermeneutics: A Literary Approach to Lifnim Mi-Shurat Ha-Din.” The Journal of Textual Reasoning 10, no. 1 (2018).
- “Reading Midrash as Theological Practice.” In Religious Studies and Rabbinics, edited by Elizabeth Shanks Alexander and Beth Berkowitz, 82-104. Routledge, 2017.
