What pro­pels the forces of change in Jew­ish life? A typ­i­cal answer to that kind of ques­tion might look at sys­temic eco­nom­ic, social, and ide­o­log­i­cal fac­tors. Adam Ferziger, a pro­fes­sor at Bar-Ilan Uni­ver­si­ty in Israel, has tak­en a refresh­ing­ly dif­fer­ent approach. He writes about key indi­vid­u­als — most­ly Amer­i­can rab­bis — who have had a last­ing effect in their own ways on Jew­ish life in Israel. 

The cen­ter­piece of this col­lec­tion of essays, a fifty-page chap­ter called ​“Pio­neers and their Insti­tu­tions,” high­lights the path­break­ing work of eight inno­va­tors who found­ed endur­ing insti­tu­tions. All of them are very much worth know­ing about. They include Rab­bi Shlo­mo Riskin, who led sev­en­ty Amer­i­can fam­i­lies to set­tle in Efrat, on the West Bank in Israel, and the late Rab­bi David Hart­man, whose Shalom Hart­man Insti­tute con­tin­ues to be a meet­ing place for Jew­ish lead­ers of every stripe. 

In the field of women’s edu­ca­tion, Rab­ban­it Mal­ka Bina found­ed the Women’s Insti­tute for Torah Stud­ies, serv­ing women of all ages; Rab­ban­it Chana Henkin cre­at­ed Nish­mat, a sim­i­lar insti­tu­tion aimed specif­i­cal­ly at col­lege-age women. And Rab­bi Chaim Broven­der found­ed an express­ly Ortho­dox yeshi­va for women.

The remain­ing three fig­ures are inno­v­a­tive Torah author­i­ties. Rab­bis Aharon Licht­en­stein and Nachum Eliez­er Rabi­novitch argued that Jew­ish wis­dom could also be found out­side tra­di­tion­al texts; Rab­bi Daniel Trop­per helped cre­ate new edu­ca­tion­al path­ways in Israel. These lat­ter top­ics may be of espe­cial inter­est to Ortho­dox read­ers, but all of these inno­va­tions are described in a con­ver­sa­tion­al style which cap­tures the pio­neers’ per­son­al­i­ties while demon­strat­ing their impact on Israeli Jew­ish life. 

Oth­er chap­ters look at oth­er key issues con­cern­ing Jew­ish life in Israel, such as chang­ing atti­tudes toward the Reform move­ment, Ortho­dox fem­i­nism, Bib­li­cal schol­ar­ship, and online Jew­ish edu­ca­tion. The exten­sive bib­li­og­ra­phy is also a won­der­ful ref­er­ence for fur­ther read­ing. Agents of Change will be of great inter­est to any read­er who is deeply engaged with Israel and/​or Jew­ish reli­gious observance.