Stokes Hall 411N
Telephone: 617-552-8492
Email: ruth.langer@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0001-6862-3966
Ruth Langer is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Boston College, its Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Director of its Center for Christian-Jewish Learning. She received her Ph.D. in Jewish Liturgy in 1994 and her rabbinic ordination in 1986 from Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Her scholarship addresses two primary areas: the development of Jewish liturgy and ritual from antiquity to today; and Christian-Jewish relations. Her book, Cursing the Christians?: A History of the Birkat HaMinim (Oxford University Press, 2012), combines these two interests, tracing the transformations of a Jewish prayer that was, until modernity, a curse of Christians. Several articles similarly trace the history of other prayers that were objects of Christian censorship, including the aleynu.
She is also author of To Worship God Properly: Tensions between Liturgical Custom and Halakhah in Judaism, published in 1998 (Hebrew Union College Press). This book examines the interplay between liturgical law and custom in the medieval world, investigating the tensions between rabbinic dictates and the actual practices and understandings of the community. She also published Jewish Liturgy: A Guide to Research (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), an annotated bibliography of over 1000 entries of English-language studies of Jewish liturgy accessible to those from outside the Jewish Studies world. She also co-edited Enabling Dialogue About the Land: A Resource Book for Jews and Christians (Paulist Press, 2020) and Liturgy in the Life of the Synagogue (Eisenbrauns, 2005). She has also published over 100 articles.
Books
Enabling Dialogue about the Land: A Resource Book for Jews and Christians, ed. Philip Cunningham, Ruth Langer, Jesper Svartvik (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Stimulus/Paulist Press, 2020).
Jewish Liturgy: A Guide to Research (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
Cursing the Christians?: A History of the Birkat HaMinim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Articles
“The Early Medieval Emergence of Jewish Daily Morning Psalms Recitation, Pesuqe de-Zimra,” in The Power of Psalms in Post-Biblical Judaism: Liturgy, Ritual and Community, ed. Claudia Bergmann, Tessa Rajak, Benedikt Kranemann, and Rebecca Ulrich (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2023), 222-240.
“Turning to Jerusalem from the Exile: Jewish Liturgy’s Engagement with the Diaspora,” in Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora, ed. Hasia Diner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 55-72, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190240943.013.13
“Jewish Liturgy During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Vignettes from Boston Suburbs,” Contemporary Jewry 41, no. 1 (2021): 23-37; June 15, 2021, on line, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-021-09363-5
“Rabbis, Nonrabbis and Synagogues in Roman Palestine: Theory and Reality,” in Synagogues in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: Archaeological Finds, New Methods, New Theories, ed. Lutz Doering and Andrew R. Krause, in co-operation with Hermut Löhr; Ioudaioi 11 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 253-276. https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666522154
“Israel in Jewish Theologies: A Schematic Overview,” in Enabling Dialogue about the Land: A Resource Book for Jews and Christians, ed. Philip Cunningham, Ruth Langer, and Jesper Svartvik (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Stimulus/Paulist Press, 2020), 43-62.
“Re-Examining the Early Evidence for Rabbinic Liturgy: How Fixed Were Its Prayer Texts?” with Richard S. Sarason, in On Wings of Prayer: Sources of Jewish Worship; Essays in Honor of Professor Stefan C. Reif on the Occasion of his Seventy-fifth Birthday, Nuria Calduch-Benages, Michael W. Duggan, and Dalia Marx, eds., Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies 44 (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2019), 203-231, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110630282-014.
“Prophetic Universalism and Particularism in Jewish Liturgy,” in Righting Relations after the Holocaust and Vatican II: Essays in Honor of John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, ed. Elena G. Procario-Foley and Robert A. Cathey (New York, Mahwah NJ: A Stimulus Book, Paulist Press, 2018), 253-269.