Rabbi David Ellenson, a scholar who wrestled with the interplay of tradition and modernity in Judaism,, and who shaped a generation of Reform rabbis as a teacher and later as the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, died on Dec. 7 at his home in Manhattan. He was 76.

He taught for more than 40 years at the Reform seminary, which trains rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators on four campuses: in New York, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Jerusalem. He forged important academic and intellectual alliances across the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist branches of Judaism. The question that animated his life was: How does the Jewish religious tradition adapt, transform and resist the powerful forces of modernity?

Rabbi Ellenson wrote seven books and more than 300 articles and reviews. His book, After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (2005) won the 2006 National Jewish Book Award as the outstanding book on Jewish thought.