Biography of Reuven Firestone
Reuven Firestone was born in Santa Rosa, California in 1952 and educated at Antioch College, the Hebrew University, Hebrew Union College where he received his M.A. in Hebrew literature in 1980 and Rabbinic Ordination in 1982, and New York University where he received his Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies in 1988.
From 1987 to 1992, he taught Hebrew literature and directed the Hebrew and Arabic language programs at Boston University. In 1992 he was awarded the Yad Hanadiv Research Fellowship at the Hebrew University, where he spent the year conducting research on holy war in Islamic tradition.
In 2000, Professor Firestone was awarded a fellowship for independent research from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his research on holy war in Judaism, and was chosen to be a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies and the University of Pennsylvania in 2002. Since 1993 he has served as associate and then full professor of Medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, where he directs the Edgar J. Magnin School for Graduate Studies.
Professor Firestone authored the books, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis (SUNY Press), Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford University Press), Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Judaism for Muslims (Ktav), and dozens of articles on Judaism, Islam, and comparative studies between Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
His articles appear in The Journal of Semitic Studies, The Journal of Near Eastern Studies, The Journal of Religious Ethics, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, The Journal of Jewish Studies, Jewish Quarterly Review, Judaism, Studia Islamica, The Muslim World, The Encyclopaedia of Islam and The Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an.
Having traveled extensively in the Middle East, Reuven Firestone served on the international "Voice of Peace" radio project, lived on an Israeli kibbutz where he worked in the dairy for two years, and has been involved in a variety of committees and commissions exploring Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Arab relations in the United States.
In addition to his academic and community work, Reuven enjoys living in Los Angeles with his wife Ruth H. Sohn, a rabbi, teacher and writer, and his three children, Rachel, Noam, and Amir. He continues to enjoy playing klezmer and Eastern European folk music on his accordion and is an avid outdoorsperson and gardener.
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