About

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author and writer.  She was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of ten “rabbis to watch,”  as one of 21 “faith leaders to watch” by the Center for American Progress, by the Forward as one of the top 50 most influential women rabbis, has been a Washington Post Sunday crossword clue (83 Down) and called a “wunderkund of Jewish feminism” by Publishers Weekly.  Her newest book, on applying an ancient framework of repentance and repair to the contemporary public square, to institutions, and to national policy is due from Beacon Press in 2022.  She has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, Time, Newsweek, and many other publications, and contributes regularly to The Washington Post and The Forward.  She has been featured on NPR a number of times, as well as in The Atlantic, USA Today, NBC News, CNN, MTV News, Vice, Buzzfeed News, Upworthy, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, Al Jazeera America, Reese Witherspoon’s podcast How It Is, and elsewhere.

She is the author of seven books; Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting (Flatiron Books), which a the National Jewish Book Award finalist and PJ Library Parents’ Choice selection; Surprised By God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion (Beacon Press), nominated for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature and a Hadassah Book Club selection. Her other books include The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (NYU Press), Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seal Press), and, with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, three books for the Jewish Publication Society’s Jewish Choices/Jewish Voices series: Sex and Intimacy, War and National Security, and Social Justice. 

She serves as Scholar in Residence at the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW).  Before her ordination from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in 2008, she worked as a freelance writer, and has in the years since also served as rabbi and educator at Tufts and Northwestern Universities, for Hillel International, for the dialogue project Ask Big Questions and Avodah, an organization dedicated to creating leaders for economic justice. She lives in the Chicago area with her spouse and three children.