 After graduating from Harvard in 1953, Neusner spent a year at the University of Oxford.Neusner then attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained as a Conservative Jewish rabbi.After spending a year at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he returned to the Jewish Theological Seminary and studied the Talmud under Saul Lieberman, who would later write a famous, and highly negative, critique of Neusner's translation of the Jerusalem Talmud.