Lawrence Kelemen is an Orthodox rabbi and international lecturer. He is an author of several books, including Permission to Believe (Targum Press, 1990), Permission to Receive (Targum Press, 1994), To Kindle A Soul (Leviathan Press/Targum Press, 2001), and he is the translator of the classical text of ancient pedagogical theory, "Planting and Building" (Feldheim Press, 1999). In 2009 he founded the International Organization of Mussar Vaadim, an international network of self-help groups dedicated to character development. As of 2014, the IOMV represented more than two dozen organizations in Israel and the USA. In 2014, he founded the Center for Kehilla Development, an Israel-based rabbinic training program for English-speaking Torah scholars.

Kelemen was awarded an undergraduate degree by UCLA and did graduate studies at Harvard.

He worked as a downhill skiing instructor and as the news director and anchorman for a California radio station, and then traveled to the Middle East to conduct what he refers to as "12 years of post-graduate field research."

For many years he had given weekend seminars to parents, teachers, and university students in North and South America, Europe and the Middle East.

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Kelemen also offers a perspective ^[2] on the Argument from religious experience. Kelemen's perspective examines the theological implication of the Mt. Sinai event, an interaction between the creator of the Universe and the Jewish people purported to have taken place in the ancient past by Judeo-Christian scripture.