Sara S. Lee

Professor Sara S. Lee was the Director of the Rhea-Hirsch School of Education at the Los Angeles, CA campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion from 1980-2007. She served as Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Jewish Education from 2007-2012 teaching a variety of courses such as Sociology of Jewish Education, Curriculum and Organizational Development. She has served as a consultant to schools and organizations and lectured extensively on Jewish Education, and has written articles for The Jewish Principal’s Handbook, Religious Education, and Jewish Education.

Sara served as a member of the Wexner Foundation Graduate Fellowship Committee and as a vice chair of the URJ Commission on Lifelong Jewish Learning. She served the Project Director for the Hebrew Union College Mandel Fellows Program from 2007-2012 and currently serves as faculty for their Mandel Initiative for Visionary Leadership.

Her research interests include Jewish institutional transformation, interreligious education, approaches to leadership of Jewish religious institutions, and the impact of American religion on Jewish religious life and institutions.

Sara has edited three books: A Congregation of Learners (with Isa Aron and Seymour Rossel); Touching the Future: Mentoring and the Jewish Professional (with Michael Zeldin); and Communities of Learning: A Vision for the Jewish Future.

With Dr. Mary C. Boys of Union Theological Seminary, Sara edited a special issue of Religious Education, “Religious Traditions in Conversation”. She also co-authored Christians and Jews in Dialogue: Learning in the Presence of the Other with Dr. Boys in 2006. The Lilly Endowment awarded Sara and Dr. Boys a grant in 1992 to support a colloquium for Catholic and Jewish educators, and a second grant in 1996 for the study of pluralism and particularism in religious education.

She is a past president of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education (APRRE), and received the Distinguished Merit Citation from the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

She was awarded the Sara and Samuel Rothberg Prize in Jewish Education by Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1997, Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1999, Pras HaNasi, the President’s Award for Distinguished Leadership of Jewish Education in the Diaspora in 2005, and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Hebrew Union College in 2012.

Sara was born in Boston, M.A. She received her B.A. in Social Relations from Radcliffe College, an M.A. in Jewish Education from Hebrew Union College, and an M.S. in Education from University of Southern California.