Rabbi Professor Adam S. Ferziger holds the Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair for Research of the Torah and Derekh Erez Movement in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He is co-convener of the annual Oxford Summer Institute for Modern and Contemporary Judaism, University of Oxford, UK. An intellectual and social historian, Ferziger’s research focuses on religious movements and religious responses to secularization and assimilation in modern and contemporary Jewish life. He is the author or editor of eight books including: Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Orthodox Judaism – New Perspectives, edited with Aviezer Ravitzky and Yoseph Salmon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006); Jewish Denominations: Addressing the Challenges of Modernity (Jerusalem: Melton Institute/The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2012); Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), which received the 2015 National Jewish Book Award; and most recently, Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism (New York University Press, 2025), which includes a chapter on the reception of Rabbi Sacks' writings and ideas within Israeli society.

Ferziger was a recipient of Bar-Ilan’s “Outstanding Lecturer” award. He has served as a visiting scholar/fellow at: University of Pennsylvania (Katz Fellow), Rutgers University, College of Charleston (South Carolina), Wolfson College - University of Oxford, University of Sydney, University of Shandong (Jinan, China), and is invited to lecture regularly in synagogues and at public events throughout the globe.

Born in Riverdale, New York, he attended the SAR Academy and the Ramaz Upper School and studied Torah in Israel at Beit Midrash l’Torah (BMT) and Yeshivat Har-Etzion (Gush). He received his B.A., M.A. and rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University (RIETS) and his Ph.D. Summa cum laude from Bar-Ilan. Prior to embarking on a full-time academic career, he was the founding director of Bar-Ilan’s Mechina for New Immigrants and rabbi of the Beit Binyamin Synagogue in Kfar-Sava. He and his wife Dr. Naomi (nee Weiss) Ferziger moved to Israel in 1987. They brought up their family in Kfar Sava, where he was an active communal rabbi. They now live in Jerusalem.