Leora Faye Batnitzky (born 1966) is an American philosopher and the current Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies at Princeton University. Her research interests include religion, modern Jewish thought, hermeneutics, and contemporary legal and political theory. Batnitzky also serves as Princeton's Clerk of the Faculty as of 2025. She served as Chair of the Department of Religion from 2010 to 2019 and Director of Princeton's Program in Judaic Studies until 2025. Batnitzky is the editor of The Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies.The Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies, Princeton University Press. Accessed 20 November 2025.
Batnitzky has been called "the most incisive and remarkable scholar of modern Jewish thought of our time," and is considered to have introduced a paradigm shift to academic political theology, Zionism, and Judaic Studies., Reviewed Work: How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought print edition, Daniel H. Weiss. Accessed 9 March 2023; Reviewed Work: How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought, The Jewish Quarterly Review, Jeffrey Bernstein. Accessed 9 March 2023; Reviewed Work: How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Emily Filler. Accessed 9 March 2023; How Judaism Became a Religion, Book Review, Samuel Moyn. Accessed 9 March 2023 She is recognized as the leading scholar of Leo Strauss.Leo Strauss, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 9 March 2023.
How Judaism Became a Religion was named by The Forward as one of the most important books to read to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.What books should Jared Kushner have read about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?, The Forward. Accessed 9 March 2023. She has published in popular journals on Jewish-Catholic relations and in major media on questions of Jewish identity and ethnicity.The Holocaustum of Edith Stein Liberties Journal. Accessed 9 May 2023. The New York Times, 13 August 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/us/california-jewish-ethnic-identity.html
Personal life Batnitzky married Robert Lebeau, the son of Rabbi William H. Lebeau, in 1990. Her mother taught Judaic studies at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in Overland Park, Kansas. Her father-in-law was the vice chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.Leora Batnitzky Weds in Kansas, The New York Times. Accessed 9 March 2023. Batnitzky is a descendant of a line of prominent European rabbis.Noteworthy Jewish Descendants of Mariampole and Vicinity, University of Washington Press. Accessed 9 March 2023.
Books The Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies, (Princeton University Press, 2025). . Jewish Legal Theories: Writings on Religion, State and Morality, (Brandeis University Press, 2018). . Institutionalizing Rights and Religion: Competing Supremacies (Cambridge University Press, 2017). . The Book of Job: Ethics, Aesthetics and Hermeneutics, (De Gruyter Press, 2014). . How Judaism Became a Religion (Princeton University Press; 2011). . Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation (Cambridge University Press, 2006). . Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (Princeton University Press, 2000). .
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