The Contributors

YONATAN Y. BRAFMAN (Ph.D., Columbia University, 2014) is Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics and Director of the Program in Jewish Ethics at the Jewish Theological Seminary. His research focuses on the study of Jewish law in the context of contemporary moral, legal, and political philosophy as well as critical social theory. He is the author of the essays “Practical Jewish Thought and the Sociality of Jewish Reasons,” Jewish Studies Quarterly (2017) and “Towards a Neo-Haredi Political Theory,” Journal of Religion and Violence (2017) and the co-editor (with Leora Batnitzky) of Jewish Legal Theories: Writings on State, Religion, and Morality (2017).

SAMUEL HAIM BRODY (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2013) is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on the intersections of modern Jewish thought with other discourses, including philosophy, political theory, political economy, academic knowledge, and other religious traditions. He is the author of Martin Buber’s Theopolitics (2018) as well as editor or co-editor of two volumes of Martin Buber Werkausgabe, Band 15 (Schriften zum Messianismus) and Band 21 (Schriften zur Zionistischen Politik und zur jüdisch-arabischen Frage).

ELLIOT N. DORFF (Rabbinic Ordination, Jewish Theological Seminary, 1970; Ph.D., Columbia University, 1971) is the Rector and Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy at American Jewish University, and Visiting Professor at UCLA School of Law. His primary areas of interests are ethics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of religion. His books include Knowing God: Jewish Journeys to the Unknowable (1992), Matters of Life and Death: A Jewish Approach to Modern Medical Ethics (1998), and For the Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law (2007).

CASS FISHER (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2005) is Associate Professor in Religious Studies at the University of South Florida. His research focuses on rabbinic theology and modern Jewish thought, to which he brings resources from both continental and analytic philosophy. His first book, Contemplative Nation: A Philosophical Account of Jewish Theological Language (2012), presents a new model for understanding Jewish theology that emphasizes the multiple forms and functions of Jewish theological language and grounds theological reflection within religious practice. He currently works on the monograph As If it Could Be Said: Realism, Reference, and the Limits of Jewish Theological Language, parts of which have recently appeared in Harvard Theological Review and AJS Review.

AUBREY L. GLAZER (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 2005) is Director of Panui, an open contemplative space for researching, reflecting, and teaching Jewish mysticism in a dynamic authentic way to build conscious, compassionate community. Dr. Glazer also serves as Senior Rabbi of Shaare Zion, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and teaches Zohar in the Philosophy Circle of Lehrhaus. His publications on contemporary Jewish philosophy and spirituality include: A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking: Critical Theory after Adorno as Applied to Jewish Thought (2013), Mystical Vertigo: Contemporary Kabbalistic Hebrew Poetry Dancing over the Divide (2013); Tangle of Matter & Ghost: Leonard Cohen’s Post-Secular Songbook of Mysticism(s) Jewish & Beyond (2017), and God Knows Everything Is Broken: Bob Dylan’s Gnostic Mysticism Songbook (forthcoming).

LENN E. GOODMAN (Ph.D., Oxford University, 1968) is Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He writes on Jewish, Islamic, and general philosophy. His most recent books include Judaism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (2016), Religious Pluralism and Values in the Public Sphere (2014), and Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself (2008), which is based on his Gifford Lectures delivered in 2005. With his colleague, Phillip Lieberman, he is currently engaged in a new translation and commentary of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed.

WARREN ZEV HARVEY (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1973) is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of more than 150 studies on medieval and modern Jewish philosophy, including Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Cresacs (1998) and “Jewish Philosophy for Tomorrow: Post Messianic and Post-Lachrymous,” in Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes (2014). He is an EMET Prize Laureate in the Humanities (2009).

AARON W. HUGHES (Ph.D., Indiana University, 2000) holds the Philip S. Bernstein Chair of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. His recent publications include: Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism (2014), Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast (2016), and Shared Identities: Medieval and Modern Imaginings of Judeo-Islam (2017). Along with Hava Tirosh-Samuelson he is the co-editor of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers.

CLAIRE E. KATZ (Ph.D., University of Memphis, 1999) is the Murray and Celeste Fasken Chair in Distinguished Teaching and Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on the social, political, and ethical themes found at the intersection of philosophy, gender studies, and Jewish studies, and on the significance of teaching philosophy to pre-college students. She is the author of Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca (2003); Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism (2012); and An Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy (2013).

MARTIN KAVKA (Ph.D., Rice University, 2000) is Professor of Religion at Florida State University, where he teaches courses in Jewish studies and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy (2004), which was awarded the first Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Philosophy and Jewish Thought by the Association for Jewish Studies (2008), and the co-editor of five books, including Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology (2014), as well as the co-editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics.

STEVE KEPNES (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1983) is Professor of the Study of World Religions and Jewish Studies and Director of Chapel House at Colgate University. He is the founding member of the Society of Scriptural Reasoning, which focuses on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim dialogue based on group readings of Scripture. Kepnes is the author of seven books including The Future of Jewish Theology (2013), Jewish Liturgical Reasoning (2007), and The Text as Thou: Martin Buber’s Dialogical Hermeneutics and Narrative Theology (1992). Kepnes is also the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology (forthcoming).

PAUL E. NAHME (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 2013) is the Dorot Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. His research focuses on questions of race, religion, secularism, and identity in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Jewish thought. His essays have appeared in Harvard Theological Review, Political Theology, and Modern Theology, and his forthcoming book, Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism: The Enchantment of the Public Sphere, will be published by Indiana University Press in 2019.

RANDI RASHKOVER (Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2000) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University. Rashkover is the author of Revelation and Theo-Politics: Barth, Rosenzweig, and the Politics of Praise (2005) and Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics (2011). She is also the co-editor (with Martin Kavka) of Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology (2014). She currently works on a new book project, Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theo-Political Problem, which examines the impact of the scientific revolution on modern and Christian thought.

HEIDI M. RAVVEN (Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1984) is the Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies at Hamilton College. Ravven is a Spinoza scholar who in 2005 received an unsolicited grant from the Ford Foundation ($500,000) to write a book rethinking ethics. It was published as The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of the Free Will (2013). She has also published essays on Spinoza’s philosophy, focusing on Spinoza and affective neuroscience and Spinoza and Maimonides. Her current research is a new book project, Spinoza and the Remaking of American Civil Religion.

ELIAS SACKS (Ph.D., Princeton University, 2012) is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Associate Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on Jewish thought, philosophy of religion, religion and politics, religious ethics, and theories and methods in the study of religion. He is the author of Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (2016) as well as essays on medieval and modern thinkers, including Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Jacob Taubes.

ALEX SZTUDEN (J.D., Columbia Law School, 1996; M.A., Fordham University, 1999) is the winner of the Joel and Jeanne Novak Prize in Jewish Thought, awarded by Shalem College in 2015 and the Templeton Fellow at the Herzl Institute (2015–2017). He is the Co-founder and Director of Brainfuse, Inc., a provider of online tutoring services to libraries, colleges, and schools, and he has taught philosophy at Fordham University. His essays include: “Naturalism within the Limits of Theism,” Da’at: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Kabbalah (2016), which won the Joel and Jeanne Novak Prize for Best Essay in Jewish Thought; “Grief and Joy in the Writings of Rabbi Soloveitchik, Tradition, Part I (2010), Part II (2011), Part III (2012); and “Behaviorism and the Unity of Knowledge, Love, and Action in Halakhic Man,” Torah U-Madda Journal (2012–2013).

HAVA TIROSH-SAMUELSON (Ph.D., Hebrew University, 1978) is Regents’ Professor of History, Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism, and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Arizona State University. She focuses on Jewish intellectual history, religion, science and technology, and religion and ecology. She is the author of Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being (2003) and the editor of eight volumes, including Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life: The Legacy of Hans Jonas (2008) and Perfecting Human Futures: Transhumanist Visions and Technological Imaginations (2016). Tirosh-Samuelson is the Editor-in-Chief of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers.