Rabbi Dr Wendy Zierler discusses the anthropological importance of skin and the unlikely connection between skin affliction and the messiah.  Rabbi Wendy Ilene Zierler, Ph.D., is Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at HUC-JIR in New York. Prior to joining HUC-JIR she was a Research Fellow in the English Department of the University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. and her M.A. from Princeton University; her B.A. from Stern College of Yeshiva University; and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.  In June 2021, she received rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva Maharat. She is the author of Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation (SUNY Press, Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, 2017) and of And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Hebrew Women’s Writing (Wayne State UP, 2004), as well as many articles in the fields of Jewish literature, and Jewish Gender Studies.