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Rachel
Werczberger

Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College
Albert J. Wood Endowed Visiting Scholar

Bio

Rachel Werczberger is a senior lecturer in the Behavioral Sciences and Social Work Department at Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College. She is an anthropologist of Judaism focusing on contemporary expressions of Jewish identity in Israel. Her research has resulted in over twenty-one articles published in leading peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. In 2019, she received the Best Article Award from the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR). Werczberger and her colleague, Shlomo Guzman-Carmeli were awarded a personal research grant from the Israel Science Foundation for their study, "Lived Judaism in Israel: Religious and Spiritual Experiences in a Changing Society." She is a former fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

Selected publications

  • Jewish Revivals Inside Out: The Remaking of Jewishness in a Transnational Age, edited with D. Monterescu (Wayne State University Press, 2022).
  • Jews in the Age of Authenticity: Jewish Spirituality Renewal in Israel (Peter Lang, 2016)

Fellowship

2025–2026
New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life: Cultural Expansions, Encounters, and Experiments

Exploring the many ways that Jewishness is expressed and contested across geographies of the contemporary moment.

2020–2021
America’s Jewish Questions

Delving into some of the most pressing debates within US history and Jewish history, and examining vital questions shaping Jewish cultural studies, literary theory, and social scientific inquiry

2015–2016
Jews Beyond Reason: Exploring Emotion, the Unconscious, and Other Dimensions of Jews' Inner Lives

Exploring aspects of internal life that lie beyond reason—emotions and feelings, the unconscious, sensation, imagination, impulse, intuition, and the nonrational dimensions of reason itself.