Rabbi Wayne Allen

Born and raised in New York City and currently a resident of Toronto, Rabbi Wayne Allen has blended a career of service to the Jewish community as an ordained rabbi with his academic pursuits.  Rabbi Allen is recognized as an expert both in Jewish law and in 18th century British moral philosophy.  The books he has written and those he has edited are distinguished by the inclusion of philosophical analysis and historical context, adding an extra dimension to the more traditional forms of responding to questions on Jewish practice.  He is a panelist for Jewish Values On-line, an Internet site devoted to providing authoritative answers to questions on Jewish life.

Rabbi Allen has traveled extensively and has led groups to Europe and Israel, lecturing beforehand on the history of the communities to be visited.  He has served as a faculty member at the American Jewish University where he taught Jewish law, at California State University Long Beach where he taught the History of Modern Jewish Thought and Zionism, and at the University of Waterloo where he taught Theology After the Holocaust.  He has also been invited as a guest lecturer at York University in Toronto and at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Allen has served as a scholar-in-residence at synagogues in St. Louis and Ottawa and currently teaches at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto where he serves as chairman of the Rabbinics Department.

Samples of Rabbi Allen’s teaching are accessible on his website, www.rabbiwayneallen.ca.

Rabbi Allen's published books, available from the UTJ Bookstore are:

• Perspectives on Jewish Law and Contemporary Issues (2009)
• Further Perspectives on Jewish Law and Contemporary Issues (2011)
• Prescription for An Ailing World (2017)
• The Cantor From The Mishnah To Modernity (2019)
• Thinking about Good and Evil: Jewish Views from Antiquity to Modernity (2021)