Judaism, Monotheism, and the Political

Panelists will pay particular attention to an analysis of the biblical account of Mosaic monotheism and the impact of this account upon the openness of the Judaic legal tradition. Panelists will use these analyses to respond to recent challenges to Jewish particularity within contemporary political philosophy.

 PANELISTS

Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona College), Brian Britt (Virginia Tech), Martin Kavka (Florida State University), Zachary Braiterman (Syracuse University), Jerome Copulsky (Goucher College), Randi Rashkover (George Mason University)

Oona Eisenstadt

Oona Eisenstadt is Fred Krinsky Professor of Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Pomona College. Her research interests include modern Jewish thought and Jewish political philosophy with a particular emphasis on the work of Emanuel Levinas. Professor Eisenstadt is the author of Driven Back to the Text: The Premodern Sources of Levinas's Postmodernism (Duquesne University Press, 2001)

Brian Britt

Brian Britt is Professor and Director of Religious Studies in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Tech. His research on literary and theoretical approaches to the Bible combines the analysis of biblical texts with questions of contemporary culture. In addition to articles in biblical and religious studies journals, his work includes two books: Walter Benjamin and the Bible (Continuum, 1996, Edwin Mellen Press 2003), and Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text (Sheffield/Continuum 2004). He is currently working on biblical curses and their modern legacy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Martin Kavka

Martin Kavka is Associate Professor of Religion at Florida State University, where he teaches courses in Jewish studies and philosophy of religion.  He is the author of Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, 2004), which won the 2008 Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies, and the co-editor of Tradition in the Public Square: A David Novak Reader (Eerdmans, 2008, with Randi Rashkover) and Saintly Influence: Edith Wyschogrod and the Possibilities of Philosophy of Religion (Fordham, 2009, with Eric Boynton).

Jerome Copulsky

Jerome E. Copulsky is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Director of Judaic Studies at Goucher College.  He holds degrees from Wesleyan, Columbia, and the University of Chicago.   His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in such places as The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, Nextbook, Religion Dispatches, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, The Journal of Religion, Politics and Religion, Perspectives on Political Science, Zeek, and Azure.

Randi Rashkover

Randi Rashkover is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Jewish Studies at George Mason University. Dr. Rashkover's areas of expertise include Jewish philosophy, Jewish-Christian Relations and Jewish political thought. She is the author of Revelation and Theopolitics: Barth, Rosenzweig and the Politics of Praise (T&T Clark, 2005). She is co-editor along with C.C. Pecknold of Liturgy, Time and the Politics of Redemption (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 2006) and co-editor with Martin Kavka of Tradition in the Public Square: A Novak Reader (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 2008). Currently she is finishing a manuscript entitled, Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics. 

Zachary Braiterman

Zachary Braiterman is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought at Syracuse University. Professor Braiterman works in the field of modern Judaism, specializing in the 20th century. Professor Braiterman is the author of (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton University Press, 1998) and The Shape of Revelation: Aesthetics and Modern Jewish Thought (Stanford University Press, 2007).