The Joseph Carlebach Institute

Since its founding in March 1992, the Joseph Carlebach Institute for Research into Religious Jewish Thought in Germany has operated at Bar-Ilan University in memory of Chief Rabbi Dr. Joseph Carlebach, a leading figure in German and European Jewry before and during the Holocaust.

The JCI has earned international recognition for its interdisciplinary research projects, scholarly publications, and community engagement in the fields of Jewish education, culture, and communal life.

The Institute maintains a close cooperative relationship with the University of Hamburg-particularly with the Joseph Carlebach Workgroup and the Institute for the History of the German Jews.
This partnership launched a long-term academic program centered on eleven international Carlebach Conferences. Held alternately in Hamburg and at Bar-Ilan University between 1992 and 2017, these conferences explored major themes in German-Jewish scholarship, Orthodox education, liturgy, communal leadership, and Jewish intellectual history.

Leadership

From 1992 to 2015, Prof. Dr. Miriam Gillis-Carlebach, the founder of the JCI, served as Head of the Institute. In 2015, Prof. Dr. George Yaakov Kohler assumed the directorship.

'It is my vision to develop the Carlebach Institute into a modern research institution that explores the largely untrodden field of Jewish theology, and the academic approach to Judaism as a religion, in the spirit of Rabbi Joseph Carlebach.'   Prof. George Y. Kohler.

See also: The JCI Flyer