Our Rabbi

MOSHE Z. SOKOL Ph.D., has been the Morah D' Asrah and Rabbi of the Yavneh Minyan of Flatbush since 1990. He is presently the Dean of the Lander College for Men, a division of Touro College.  He has served Touro College in various administrative capacities, including founding and directing the Graduate School of Jewish Studies and a collaborative medical program with the Technion in Israel. He has also served as Senior Program Officer at the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, where he traveled around the world organizing seminars and educational programs.

Rabbi Sokol received semicha from the Israel Torah Research Institute (ITRI) in Jerusalem followed by two years of post-semicha study at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath.

Rabbi Sokol received his Doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Thyssen Foundation Research Fellow.   His undergraduate work was done at Brooklyn College where he graduated summa cum laude and phi beta kappa.

Rabbi Sokol has written or edited four books and published over two dozen essays on ethics and Jewish Studies in major British, American and Israeli journals, and lectured at conferences around the world.

As a member of the steering committee for the Orthodox Forum, Rabbi Sokol has chaired three conferences. He also serves as Fellow of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy and Chair of its annual meeting at the Association for Jewish Studies. The Rabbi is also a member of the Rabbinical Council of America and the Vaad HaRabbonim of Flatbush.

Some of Rabbi Sokol's writings:

Editor of Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, Jason Aronson publishers, 1992.

Editor of Engaging Modernity: Rabbinic Leaders and the Challenge of the Twentieth Century, Jason Aronson publishers, 1997.

Editor of Tolerance, Dissent, and Democracy: Philosophical, Historical, and Halakhic Perspectives, Jason Aronson publishers, 2002.

“Maimonides on Joy”,  in Maimonides and His Time, ed. Lenn E. Goodman, SUNY Press, 2009 

“Elements of Romanticism in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik”, Fall 2011,  Modern Judaism, Cambridge University Press    

Judaism Examined: Essays in Jewish Philosophy and Ethics, Touro College Press, 2013

Text of Shabbat Vayera sermon, November 11, 1995