Annette Böckler

Annette Mirjam Boeckler (born June 26, 1966) is a German scholar of Judaism, who worked as headlibrarian and senior lecturer for liturgy and biblical interpretation at Leo Baeck College in London, and a writer and translator in the Jewish subject area. She succeeded Michel Bollag as head of the department of Judaism at ZIID in Zurich (institute for interreligious dialogue)/ formerly the Zürcher Lehrhaus. She translated Seder haTefillot, the first liberal Jewish prayerbook after the Shoah in Germany, and is the translator and editor of the German edition of the W. Gunther Plaut's Torah commentary.

She studied Bible, Jewish Studies, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Tübingen, Bern, Bonn and Cologne and concluded her studies in 1993 with the first ecclesiastical exam, which was the standard qualification for the end of theological studies in Germany at the time. In March 1995 she passed the second ecclesiastical exam which covers educational and management courses of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and was an important degree also for an academic career in German theology at the time. Until September 1998 she worked as lecturer for Bible at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal. In February 2000, she did a doctorate in the field of Old Testament on "God as father" (Guetersloh, 2nd edition, 2002). Due to her involvement in the rebuilding of liberal Judaisn in German she decided not to pursue her academic career in Theology, which in Germany at the time was bound to the protestant or catholic denominations, but in 2001 she converted to Judaism with a Beit Din from the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

From 2000 until 2002 she was the editorial consultant of the Juedische Verlagsanstalt Berlin. From 2003 until 2004 she was a member of the teaching staff at the Abraham-Geiger-Kolleg rabbinical seminary in Potsdam. In 2004 she decided to leave Geiger College and took up the temporary position as research associate for Bible and Jewish exegesis at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg which she held until 2007. Her fields of research are literary analysis of Bible texts and the reception of the Bible in Jewish liturgy. During this time she began her study of chazzanut with Cantor Marcel Lang, which she later pursued with further cantorial teachers in London, mostly from masorti/conservative Judaism. Form 2007-2017 she taught Parshanut (Jewish biblical commentaries) and Traditional and Progressive Jewish Liturgy at Leo Baeck College London. Following the Brexit vote in the UK she accepted an invitation to lead the Jewish department of ZIID as successor of Michel Bollag. She received Rabbinical training from Leo Baeck College London and the Levisson Institute Amsterdam, but decided not to become a rabbi in Germany. She is affiliated with masorti/conservative Judaism.

She is one of the translators of the Jewish liberal prayerbook "Seder haTefillot" (Guetersloh, 1997). She also translated and edited Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut's Torah commentary (Guetersloh 1999–2004). She was one of the editors of the annual German Jewish calendar "Durch das juedische Jahr" before Irith Michelsohn (Author), Paul Yuval Adam (Author) and Alexander Lyskovoy (Author). This calendar has been published by the Juedische Verlagsansstalt Berlin since 2001.