Rebecca Alpert was born April 12, 1950 in Brooklyn, New York to Sylvia and Irving Trachtenberg. She attended Erasmus High School and Barnard College before getting her Ph.D. in religion at Temple University and her Rabbinical training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in Wyncote, outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her specialization is in American and especially Jewish American religious history, and she focuses on issues related to gender, sexuality and race. Her thinking about many of these issues was shaped by her teachers who included Elaine Pagels and Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.

After graduation, Alpert worked on a contractual basis with a number of synagogues in the U.S.A. and Canada. In this capacity she was among a handful of the first generation of congregational women rabbis. During this time she also taught courses in Holocaust Studies at Rutgers University and was the Dean of Students at the RRC until 1987. Thereafter she served in several capacities at Temple University: as Director of Adult Programs, Director of the Program in Women's Studies, and finally a faculty member in the departments of religion and women's studies.

Alpert's research has focused on explaining and expounding the Reconstructionist tradition, the place of gays and lesbians in Jewish religious history and she is currently writing on the relationships between Jews, blacks and sports during the years 1930-1950. She has also edited several volumes and published articles on a wide range of topics including sexuality in Judaism, the definition of who is Jewish and who is not, gay liberation theology, and Jackie Robinson. She has lectured at a number of colleges and universities, including Columbia, UPenn, Princeton and Swarthmore and is an active public intellectual who writes for mainstream publications and frequently speaks at rallies and on panels in the Philadelphia region and beyond. Alpert is also a passionate teacher and the recipient of Temple's College of Liberal Arts distinguished teaching award. She has recently taught courses on religion in American public life, Jews, America and sports, and sexuality in world religions.

• Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the

Transformation of Tradition (Columbia University Press, 1997)

• Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach with Jacob Staub, (Reconstructionist Press, 1985 and rev.ed. 2000)
• Whose Torah?: A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism (The New Press, 2008)
• Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation, editor, with Sue Elwell and Shirley Idelson, (Rutgers University Press, 2001)
• Voices of the Religious Left: A Contemporary Sourcebook, editor (Temple University Press, 2000)