Daniel Landes


Rabbi Daniel Landes is the former Director of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and New York City.

Biography

Born in Chicago, Landes studied in Chicago with Rabbi M.B. Sacks, the Menachem Tzion; in Israel with Reb Aryeh Levin, Zvi Yehuda Kook, and the Chief Rabbi R. Avrum Shapiro. In New York. Landes studied with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik; and in Los Angeles with Din R. Shmuel Katz.
Landes was a founding Faculty member of The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and of Yeshiva of Los Angeles. He was also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at Loyola Law School. Landes taught for the Wexner Foundation for over 20 years.
Landes came to Pardes in 1995 as Director and has been active in creation of advanced Talmud classes, Bekiut Talmud, the Fellows, PEP, the Kollel, the Executive Seminar Programs, the annual Blaustein and Brettler Scholar Series, Pardes USA and strengthening of the Pardes Beit Midrash. Landes was the first Rabbi to be invited by Indonesia to speak publicly.
Pardes announced in July 2016, that "fter 21 years of dedicated service to Pardes, Rabbi Daniel Landes will be leaving at the end of the summer."
Rabbi Daniel Landes is director of YASHRUT, having founded the institute in 2018 to build civil discourse through a theology of integrity, justice, and tolerance. YASHRUT includes a semikhah initiative as well as programs for rabbinic leaders. Landes has ordained forty-three rabbis during his career, seven of which received semikhah from Landes under the auspices of YASHRUT in 2019.
In 2019 in Jerusalem Rabbi Landes ordained Daniel Atwood; Atwood thus became the first openly gay Orthodox person to be ordained as a rabbi.

Publications

Landes and his wife Sheryl Robbin, a social worker and author, write on Biblical and ethical issues.