Dr. Tomer Persico is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Rubinstein Fellow at Reichman University and a a Senior Research Scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Between 2018 and 2021 he was the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. His fields of expertise include contemporary spirituality, Jewish modern identity, Jewish renewal, and forms of secularization and religiosity in Israel. His first book, The Jewish Meditative Tradition (Hebrew) was published by Tel Aviv University Press in 2016, and his second book, In God's Image: Selfhood, Freedom and Equality (Hebrew) was published by Yedioth in 2021, and will be published by NYU Press. Persico is an activist for freedom of religion in Israel, writes the most popular blog in Hebrew on religion, and has written hundreds of articles on these subjects for popular media.