Marcus Mordecai Schwartz currently serves as the Director of the Beit Midrash of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In that role he also heads the Nishma summer program. Additionally, he is an assistant professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, and the research coordinator for the Center for Pastoral education at JTS. Rabbi Schwartz is recipient of rabbinical ordination, a Ph.D. and an MA specializing in Talmud, as well as a Master of Philosophy degree from The Jewish Theological Seminary. He was a recipient of the prestigious Saul Lieberman Fellowship for Talmud and Rabbinic graduate studies.He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at JTS, Rutgers University, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, as well as Hebrew Union College/ Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. His articles have appeared in the Hebrew Union College Annual, the New Encyclopedia Judaica and the Cambridge Dictionary of the Jewish Religion.  His most recent publication, “As They Journeyed from the East: The Nahotei of the Fourth Century and the Construction of the Rabbinic Diaspora,” assesses the activity of the Nahotei, an important group of migrating talmudic rabbis. His new book, on the effect of tradition from the Land of Israel on the composition of the Babylonian Talmud, forthcoming from Mohr-Siebeck Academic Publishers, is entitled Rewriting the Talmud: Bavli Rosh Hashanah under the Influence of the Holy Land.