Schacter, the son of Pnina Gewirtz Schacter and Rabbi
Herschel Schacter, grew up in New York City's Bronx neighborhood. Schacter holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages from
Harvard University and received
rabbinic ordination from
Yeshiva Torah Vodaas in 1973. He graduated from
Brooklyn College in 1973. He lives in
Teaneck, New Jersey. According to
Jacob Katz, Schacter's thesis, "Rabbi
Jacob Emden: Life and Major Works" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1988), "supplanted" Mortimer J. Cohen's 1937 book
Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy, as the most authoritative source on Emden. Schacter is an historian of intellectual trends in Orthodox Judaism. Schacter is regarded as following "the ideological tradition" of
Joseph B. Soloveitchik. He became Rabbi of the prestigious
Jewish Center in Manhattan in 1981. a position he held until 2005, when he left to become Senior Scholar and University Professor at
Yeshiva University's new
Center for the Jewish Future (initially called the
Center for the Jewish People). ==Published works==