Center for Religion & Civic Culture

Reuven Firestone is Professor of Medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles and senior fellow at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. An ordained rabbi (HUC 1982), he received the Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies from New York University in 1988. From 1987 to 1992, he taught Hebrew literature and directed the Hebrew and Arabic language programs at Boston University, and has taught at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles since 1993. Firestone is the author of Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis (SUNY Press, 1990), Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford University Press, 1999), Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Judaism for Muslims (Ktav, 2000), Jews, Christians, Muslims in Dialogue: A Practical Handbook, with Leonard Swidler and Khalid Duran (Twenty-Third Publications, 2007), and Introduction to Islam for Jews (Jewish Publication Society, 2008). He is currently completing a book tracing the revival of holy war in modern Judaism, and a study of the religious notion of chosenness ("election") in monotheistic religions. He has been awarded major grants from the Yad Hanadiv Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Fulbright Foundation. His articles appear in numerous journals, including The Journal of Semitic Studies, The Journal of Near Eastern Studies, The Journal of Religious Ethics, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, The Journal of Jewish Studies, Jewish Quarterly Review, Judaism, Studia Islamica, The Muslim World, The Journal of Ecumenical Studies, The Encyclopedia of Islam, The Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, and the Encyclopedia of Religion. In addition to traveling extensively in the Middle East, Firestone served on the international "Voice of Peace" radio project and has been involved in a variety of committees and commissions exploring Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Arab relations.