Danya Ruttenberg


Danya Ruttenberg is an American rabbi, editor, and author. She has been called "the Twitter rabbi" for her social media presence. She lives in Chicago.
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Biography

Ruttenberg's family attended a synagogue affiliated with Reform Judaism in Chicago growing up, and she describes herself as having been an atheist around that time. Ruttenberg later affiliated with Conservative Judaism.
When Ruttenberg was in college, her mother died of breast cancer. Her mother's death prompted Ruttenberg to rethink her relationship with religion and practice Jewish mourning rituals, which she said helped her "make friends with Judaism, to be open to it". In 2008, she published a memoir about her spiritual awakening entitled Surprised by God: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Religion.
She was ordained as a rabbi in 2008 by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, American Jewish University's rabbinical seminary, in Los Angeles, California.
She served as the senior Jewish educator at Tufts University Hillel beginning in May 2009, and went on to be the campus rabbi at Northwestern University Hillel and director of education for the campus dialogue program Ask Big Questions. She was Rabbi-in-Residence for the community service group Avodah in 2019.
On the evening of February 6, 2017, Ruttenberg and 18 other rabbis associated with Jewish human rights organization T'ruah were arrested while protesting the Trump travel ban outside of Trump Tower. She described her arrest as a "profoundly holy experience" and compared it to the sacrifices offered at the Temple in Jerusalem.
In 2020, she became Scholar-in-Residence for the National Council of Jewish Women. While at the NCJW, she launched Rabbis for Repro, a Jewish reproductive rights group.
In 2021, she wrote an open letter condemning attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of Steven M. Cohen after his 2018 departure from Stanford University over sexual harassment. The letter was signed by 500 rabbis. In 2023, she and several other former students of the Ziegler School sent a letter to the Rabbinical Assembly regarding sexism, homophobia, and sexual harassment at the school. The letter asked for an investigation and a change in leadership.
In July 2024, she announced that she had disaffiliated from Conservative Judaism and was in the process of joining a different rabbinical association.

Awards and honors

Writer

On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World Nurture the Wow
  • ''Surprised by God''

Editor

Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: War and National Security with Elliot Dorff Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Sex and Intimacy with Elliot Dorff Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Social Justice with Elliot Dorff The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism Lilith, contributing editorWomen in Judaism, contributing editor

Contributor

Book chapters Ruttenberg has written include:
  • Priority Lists: A Dialogue on Judaism, Feminism, and Activism, with Rebecca Alpert in Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice
  • The Hermenuetics of Curiosity: On Reclamation, in New Jewish Feminism
  • Fringe Me Up, Fringe Me Down: On Getting Dressed in Jerusalem, in Bitchfest: 10 Years of Writing From the Pages of Bitch Magazine
  • Towards a New Tzniut, in Yentl's Revenge
Ruttenberg has also published pieces in The Atlantic, The Forward, The Huffington Post, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Kveller, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Sojourners, Tablet Magazine, and The Washington Post, and other publications.