The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) is pleased to announce that Dr. Deena Aranoff will be recognized as the 2025 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer this November.
BERKELEY, CA – May 20, 2025 – The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) is pleased to announce that Dr. Deena Aranoff will be recognized as the 2025 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer this November.
Dr. Aranoff serves as the Faculty Director of the GTU’s Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies, Chair of the Sacred Texts and their Interpretation Department, and member of the Core Doctoral Faculty. 2025-2026 will approach her twentieth year as a faculty member at the GTU, where she has helped shape the academic lives of students who have gone on to become influential scholars, educators, and faith leaders. Her teaching and scholarship reflect the GTU’s commitment to academic rigor, interreligious engagement, and public scholarship.
Each November, the GTU faculty honors a distinguished professor who embodies the high scholarly standards, excellence in teaching, and commitment to ecumenism that define the GTU. Members of the GTU faculty submit nominations to the Council of Deans, which selects the lecturer.
Upon learning of the honor, Dr. Aranoff reflected:
As I consider the lecture, I ask myself: what ideas, conceptual frameworks—what aspects of human experience and its religious dimensions—deserve our attention at this critical time? The GTU has never shied away from scholarship that addresses the lived aspects of religion. Its tagline—‘where religion meets the world’—marks its commitment to research that intertwines with life itself and, ideally, serves to sustain life. I consider the honor of this lecture to be a challenge: How can scholarship speak to the crisis of our time?
Dr. Aranoff’s research explores the formation of Jewish culture throughout history, with particular attention to household life and the maternal relation in the transmission of religious identity. Her forthcoming book, Mother’s Milk: Essays on Child-Rearing, the Household, and the Making of Jewish Culture (Indiana University Press, September 2025), offers a groundbreaking view into how domestic life shapes enduring religious and cultural frameworks. She argues that some of the most vital aspects of Jewish practice are born from the everyday household experiences—especially early childhood education and care.
Dr. Aranoff’s current research explores the themes of illness and healing in Jewish culture. This new direction is the latest iteration of her broader interest in the lived dimensions of religious life. Her scholarship is informed by a deep concern for the contemporary moment. She describes our time as marked by a widespread social, emotional, and mental crisis: “So many people are stuck in prolonged states of fear and anger; fixed in postures of domination or resistance. How can we make our way through the gridlock of this time?” Among the many ways Dr. Aranoff addresses these issues in her scholarship is by emphasizing care for one another and exploring the essential role of family relationships. She also maintains that the academic art itself—namely, its capacity for rigorous and careful description and analysis of phenomena—can help restore some common ground that we can stand on together.
The 2025 Distinguished Faculty Lecture will take place on November 18, 2025.
