Prof. Menachem Lorberbaum
35 teaching hours, equivalent to 6 ECTS
Menachem Lorberbaum is Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. He chaired the Graduate School of Philosophy and the Department of Jewish Philosophy at TAU (2004) and was the founding chair of the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies (2004-2008). A founding member of the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, Prof. Lorberbaum headed its Bet Midrash program.
Prof. Lorberbaum has published a study of Hassidism as a model of Jewish religious revitalization in early modernity, Before Hassidism (Bialik Institute 2022). His work in first-order Jewish Theology, I Seek thy Countenance was published by Carmel, Bar-Ilan and the Hartman Institute (2021). He is author of Politics and the Limits of Law (Stanford 2001; Hebrew: 2006) and We are Dazzled by His Beauty (Hebrew, Ben Zvi Institute 2011). Together with Professors Michael Walzer of Princeton and Noam Zohar of Bar-Ilan he is a senior editor of the Jewish Political Tradition series (vol 1 “Authority,” Yale University Press 2000, Hebrew: 2007; vol. 2 “Membership,” Yale University Press 2003, Hebrew: 2018; vol. 3 “Community,” Yale University Press 2018). He is editor of the new and first complete Hebrew translation of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (Shalem 2009).
Creating Medieval Jewish Philosophical Theology will focus on the transformative internalization of Hellenistic science in Rabbinic religious self-understanding. The hub of our discussion will be the emergence of systematic philosophy among Jewish authors in the Middle Ages in the Islamicate world, centring on Baghdad, al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) and Fustat (old Cairo). Beginning with Saadyah Gaon, continuing with Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi and concluding with Moses Maimoindes, this course will present and analyse the fundamental questions dealt by Jewish philosophers, the way they negotiated and implemented trends in parallel and surrounding cultures, and the impact they had on the development of new forms of Jewish religiosity. Special attention will be given to the impact of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, mediated to the Arab speaking world, on the emergence of medieval Jewish philosophy.
