Alon Goshen-Gottstein is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading figures in interreligious dialogue, specializing in bridging the theological and academic dimension with a variety of practical initiatives, especially involving world religious leadership. He is both a theoretician and activist, setting trends and precedents in the global interfaith arena. He is the founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute (formerly the Elijah School for the Study of Wisdom in World Religions), and its rich website is testimony to his many and varied activities.

A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem. Ordained a rabbi in 1977, he received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1986 in the area of Rabbinic thought. From 1989 to 1999, he was a member of the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Studies, Jerusalem, where he also served as director for interreligious affairs.

Stanford University Press published his The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha ben Abuya and Eleazar ben Arach in 2000, and the Littman Library published his co-edited volume Jewish Theology and World Religions. His Beyond Idolatry – The Jewish Encounter with Hinduism is to appear shortly. Several other collective research projects and edited volumes complement more than fifty articles, published in such scholarly journals as Harvard Theological Review, Journal for the Study of Judaism, Journal of Literature and Theology, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Ecumenism, and Studies in Interreligious Dialogue.