Rabbi David Fox Sandmel, PhD, is currently President of the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ) and chair emeritus of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC). From 2014-2022 he was Senior Advisor on Interreligious Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). From 2001-2014 he held the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
He completed his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied the history and literature of Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-Roman world and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. While he served as the Jewish Scholar at the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies in Baltimore (from 1998-2001; now the Institute for Islamic-Christian-Jewish Studies), he co-edited the influential volumes Christianity in Jewish Terms (2000) and Irreconcilable Differences? A Learning Resource For Jews And Christians (2001). He also coordinated the publication of the historic statement, “Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity.”
Rabbi Sandmel lectures and publishes widely on contemporary issues in Jewish-Christian relations, Jewish-Muslim relations, religion in contemporary society, and the foundations of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. He contributed the commentary on First Thessalonians to the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2011, second edition 2017). A tireless promoter of interreligious relations, he has also participated in the "World Forum for Peace in Muslim Societies" in Abu Dhabi and is a founder member of IJMA – the Inter Jewish Muslim Alliance.
