Baruch Schwartz was born in Philadelphia. He received his undergraduate degrees from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1976). After after making aliya, he received his MA (1981) and PhD (1988) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has taught at Tel-Aviv University, at Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheba, at Gratz College in Philadelphia, at the Leo Baeck College in London, at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, at the Schechter Institude of Judaic Studies, at the University of Sydney, Australia, at the University of California, Davis and and at Harvard University, and he was the Leo Horvitz Scholar in Residence in Houston, Texas in 1993. He is currently teaching in the department of biblical studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research centers on Biblical religion and law, the Torah, classical prophetic literature and medieval biblical exegesis. He is the author of The Holiness Legislation (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999) and of the commentary on Leviticus in The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). He has also published numerous scholarly articles on biblical topics. His lecture will center on the question of whether a sincere, religious commitment to traditional Judaism can be reconciled with the non-Mosaic origin of the Torah.