Carol Harris-Shapiro

Who is Carol Harris-Shapiro?

Carol Harris-Shapiro is a lecturer at Temple University in the Intellectual Heritage Department. She has written a controversial book on Messianic Judaism, a belief system considered by most Christians and Jews to be a form of Christianity, adhered to by groups that seek to combine Christianity and Judaism.

She received her rabbinical ordination at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1988, and religiously affiliates with Reconstructionist Judaism. She received a Ph.D. in religion from Temple University in 1992. In the past she has taught at Villanova University, La Salle University, Philadelphia University, Rosemont College, and Gratz College.

She looks at religion from a sociological standpoint, and sees that although Jewish community as a whole accepts Secular Humanistic Jews and Jewish Buddhists as still being "in the fold," Messianic Jews are considered to be heretics. It was this puzzle in the behavior of the Jewish community—accepting atheist and Buddhist Jews, while rejecting Jews practicing Christianity—that led her to explore the Messianic Jewish community in a focused ethnographic study and to think through the issue of legitimacy surrounding Messianic Judaism.