Hadar Aviram has spent two careers asking the same question from opposite ends of history: what does it mean to lock a person away, and who decides? For over two decades she has studied criminal justice and incarceration as a law professor, litigated on behalf of incarcerated people, and written extensively on the machinery of modern punishment. Now, as a second-career rabbinical student in Hebrew Union College's inaugural Virtual Pathway cohort, she has turned that same lens on the Hebrew Bible - tracing the carceral stories of Joseph, Esther, Daniel, Samson, and Jeremiah to show that the anxieties of confinement are far older than the modern prison. The two pieces below trace this path: a conversation about what brought her, mid-career, to the rabbinate, and an essay drawn from her new book, Behind Ancient Bars: Narratives of Incarceration in the Hebrew Bible (UC Press, 2026).

"The Program is a Marvel": Inaugural Cohort Member Hadar Aviram on the Virtual Pathway

A profile of Aviram's path into Hebrew Union College's inaugural Virtual Pathway cohort - from a childhood spent studying Talmud with her father, through two decades as a law professor and prison-rights advocate, to a program that finally let her pursue ordination without uprooting her life, her partner, and her son in San Francisco.

Behind Ancient Bars

Drawing on her new book from UC Press, Aviram argues that incarceration is not a modern invention: Joseph, Esther, Daniel, Samson, and Jeremiah all pass through confinement facilities run by imperial power. Centered on the story of Daniel's food protest in Babylon, the essay shows how the Bible treats the prison cell not as a site of meaningless suffering, but as a crucible of leadership.