Dr Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz

After starting work as Assistant Librarian of the Israel Antiquities Authority I became a specialist archaeological translator and editor, and worked with several museums, including the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem and the Israel Museum. After moving back to the UK, I worked as an academic copyeditor and began to teach courses on Jewish history and classical literature in informal adult education. I completed a PhD in anthropology and Jewish studies, and have since lectured at five universities, including Cambridge and Oxford, and most recently have held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester. I continue to teach in the Jewish community and elsewhere, and am involved in interfaith dialogue, having worked as a Scriptural Reasoning facilitator for many years.

Qualifications

BA (Hons)	1980	University of Cambridge
MA	1986	Hebrew University of Jerusalem
PhD	2016	University College London

Roles

Teaching

I have taught a variety of courses on Jewish studies at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, SOAS, Middlesex and King’s College London (2014-2021). Since 2005 I have taught a variety of informal adult education courses on Jewish subjects, at London School of Jewish Studies, at different synagogues and Jewish community centres, and in interfaith contexts, e.g. an interfaith training session for Church of England ordinands, Besley Bridge, UK (2016) and at the Muslim College in Ealing (2014).

Church experience and background

I received Orthodox Jewish rabbinic ordination in 2021, one of the first women to do so.

Research interests and supervision

Research interests

My research focuses on the contemporary British Jewish community, examining different facets of it from an anthropological/ethnographic perspective. My current project investigates the history and significance of Limmud, the Jewish educational charity that has evolved from an educator’s conference in 1980 to a worldwide movement today. As part of this I am helping to set up and organize a Limmud Archive, which will house both the documentation I have collected and over 100 of the interviews I have conducted. A book contract has already been secured for the publication of the project’s results. My previous project was an examination of the relationship between rabbinic expectations and women’s everyday practice regarding the dietary laws (kashrut), which will be published as ‘Transmission, Mimesis, and Gender: Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction” in the Light of Jewish Women’s Kashrut Practices’, in Nicola Slee, Dawn Llewellyn, Kim Wasey and Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz (eds.), Female Faith Practices: Qualitative Research Perspectives (Taylor & Francis/Routledge: Explorations in Practical, Pastoral and Empirical Theology Series, 2023); and my first project was an exploration of the religious lives of Orthodox Jewish women in the UK (published as a book, Challenge and Conformity: The Religious Lives of Orthodox Jewish Women). I have presented my research at conferences in the UK (including at the Symposium for Faith Lives of Girls and Women at the Queen’s Foundation) and abroad (this year, at the Oxford Summer Institute for Contemporary Judaism and at the BIAJS Annual Conference).

Supervision areas and level

I have supervised a thesis for the MSt Study of Religions (Oxford) in 2016

Publications

Books

• Challenge and Conformity: The Religious Lives of Orthodox Jewish Women, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2021
• Contract signed (2022) with the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization for a second book, provisionally titled One Step Further on Your Jewish Journey: An Oral History of Limmud Conference (in preparation, provisional publication date 2024/2025)

Journal articles and chapters

• ‘Transmission, Mimesis, and Gender: Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction” in the Light of Jewish Women’s KashrutPractices’, in Nicola Slee, Dawn Llewellyn, Kim Wasey and Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz (eds.), Female Faith Practices: Qualitative Research Perspectives (Taylor & Francis/Routledge: Explorations in Practical, Pastoral and Empirical Theology Series; provisional publication date 2023).
• ‘Mishlei – Proverbs: Weaving the Web of Wisdom’, European Judaism, 54 (2021), 45-53.
• ‘Response to Professor Melissa Raphael, ‘The Impact of Gender on Jewish Religious Thought: Exemplar: Jewish Feminist Theology’, Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies, 13 (2019), 36-38.

Selected books I have translated from Hebrew:

• Shaul Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century: Creating a Tradition of Learning (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012)
• Ze’ev Weiss, Ehud Netser, Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris (Israel Museum exhibition catalogue, 1996)

Edited book:

• Nicola Slee, Dawn Llewellyn, Kim Wasey and Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz (eds.), Female Faith Practices: Qualitative Research Perspectives (Taylor & Francis/Routledge: Explorations in Practical, Pastoral and Empirical Theology Series; provisional publication date 2023).