Rabbi Joshua Feigelson: Asking the Big Questions

What is the power of questions? Rabbi Feigelson discusses how the right kind of questions can unlock conversation and community. Rabbi Joshua Feigelson is the Dean of Students at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Prior to joining the Divinity School, Feigelson founded and served as Executive Director of Ask Big Questions, a social startup venture of Hillel International dedicated to improving civic learning and engagement through reflective conversations about questions that matter to all human beings. Under Feigelson’s leadership, the Ask Big Questions initiative helped over 300,000 people on 175 college campuses and in dozens of communities around the world to connect, understand, and trust one another, and won the inaugural Lippman-Kanfer Prize for Applied Jewish Wisdom. From 2005-2011, Feigelson served as Campus Rabbi at Northwestern University Hillel, where he was named one of the top 12 people to know on campus by the Daily Northwestern. While at Northwestern, Feigelson earned a PhD in Religious Studies; his academic interests include the intersection of American religion and higher education, with particular interest on the relationship between American Jewish life and American colleges and universities. The author of several book chapters and journal articles, Feigelson has been a keynote presenter and lecturer at numerous conferences, served on faculty for programs of a range of foundations and institutes, and been a scholar-in-residence at synagogues throughout North America.