People
Michael A. Signer
Abrams Professor in the Department of Theology and a Senior Fellow of the Medieval Institute
(B.A., UCLA, 1966; M.A., Hebrew Union College, 1970; Rabbinic Ordination, Hebrew Union College, 1970; Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1978)
Profile
Rabbi Signer is Director of the Notre Dame Holocaust Project—an interdisciplinary faculty group that designs educational opportunities for students to engage in the study of the Shoah. Since 1998 he has been co-chair of the Joint Commission on Interreligious Affairs of the Reform movement.
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1992, Rabbi Signer served as Professor of Jewish History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles from 1974-1991. At the College-Institute he taught courses in Jewish History, Jewish Liturgy and Jewish Biblical Commentaries. In 1995 Signer received a Doctor of Divinity honoris causa from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
His interest in interreligious affairs began during his doctoral studies at the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto where he wrote his dissertation on Andrew of St. Victor, a twelfth-century Christian Hebraist, under the direction of Rev. Leonard E. Boyle, OP. When he arrived in Los Angeles, he participated in the Priest-Rabbi dialogue and was one of the founders of the St. John's Major Seminar-Hebrew Union College academic exchange. He taught Bible courses at St. John's Seminary where priests for the Los Angeles Archdiocese are trained. In addition to developing that program, he organized a series of retreats for seminary faculty from Jewish, Catholic and Protestant institutions in California. He has taught at the Institut Kirche und Judentum at Alexander von Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Catholic Theology Faculty in the University of Augsburg. In addition, he was American Jewish Committee Scholar at Catholic Institutions of Higher Education in Poland at Warsaw, Lublin, Wroclaw, and Poznan. After the initial experience in Poland, he has organized international seminars at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer in Auschwitz and the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow.
Rabbi Signer is the author and editor of five books on topics that range from Medieval Latin biblical commentaries to contemporary Jewish-Christian relations such as Humanity at the Limit: The Impact of the Holocaust Experience on Jews and Christians; Memory and History in Judaism and Christianity; Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe. He is one of the four authors of Daberu Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity. He has written articles for the Oxford Dictionary of Judaism, the Encyclopedia of Medieval France, and the Encyclopedia of St. Augustine.
Contact
248 Malloy Hall
574-631-7635
Michael.A.Signer.1@nd.edu