David Zvi Epstein

University of Toronto

Track 1: Seminar Leader Leora Batnitzky

David Zvi Epstein (University of Toronto) has just completed his BA at the University of Toronto, where he has become increasingly interested in the nature of religious law. He has written his undergraduate thesis on the canonization of Muslim law and Muslim language in the first three centuries of of the Islamic period. He will continue his analysis of both Jewish and Islamic law as a doctoral student in the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations this fall. A poet at heart, his broad goal is to create language for robust religious discourse in this age. Towards this goal, he has created Adashot, a new form of Jewish learning yielding a true synthesis of Jewish and non-Jewish themes. Last summer, he attended Yeshivat Hadar with his wife-to-be (as of June 2010, just "wife" is fine).