Norbert Samuelson - Washington, D.C. - 2003

March 2003

Norbert M. Samuelson - Jewish Thought

Norbert M. Samuelson is the Grossman Chair of Jewish Studies at Arizona State University in the Department of Religious Studies. He is an internationally renowned scholar of Jewish philosophy, who is the author of seven books and over 200 articles, and the co-editor of three collected volumes of essays. He is the founder and secretary of the Academy of Jewish Philosophy.

Professor Samuelson taught three limudim sessions. The following is an outline:

Session	Title
1	Intellectual History Recent studies in medieval Jewish philosophy, with a special emphasis on Halevi, Maimonides, and Spinoza Recent studies in modern Jewish theology, with a special emphasis on Spinoza and Rosenzweig
2	Constructive Jewish Philosophy Issues of Judaism and science from physics, genetic biology, evolutionary psychology, and the cognitive sciences Issues of Judaism and ethics, with a special emphasis on postmodernism
3	Constructive Jewish Theology New approaches to Jewish philosophical theology, especially feminist and spiritualist New approaches to Jewish political theology, especially ecological and zionist

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Scholars' Bios

Professor Norbert Samuelson's scholarship focuses on Jewish philosophy and theology. In the early part of his career, he wrote primarily on medieval Jewish philosophy. His pioneer work on a fourteenth century Jewish philosopher, Levi Ben Gershom (Gersonides) -- Gersonides on God's knowledge (1977) --propelled the hitherto little known thinker to the forefront of modern scholarship on medieval Jewish philosophy. Prof. Samuelson's critical edition and exposition of Abraham ibn Daud's Exalted Faith (1986) articulated the main themes of medieval Jewish Aristotelianism. From medieval philosophy, Prof. Samuelson moved to modern Jewish philosophy. He published An Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy (1989) that is used in many courses in American colleges. The book was translated into German and published there in 1995, where Prof. Samuelson is well known. Going beyond the history of modern Jewish philosophy, Prof. Samuelson authored three major constructive philosophico-theological works: The First Seven Days: A Philosophical Commentary on the Creation of Genesis (1992), Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation (1994), and Revelation and the God of Israel (2002). These works brought Jewish thinkers to focus on the interplay between science and religion and showed how the biblical text could be better understood in the light of contemporary physics and the life sciences. Of the modern thinkers, Prof. Samuelson favors Franz Rosenzweig, the most original and influential German-Jewish philosopher. Most recently Prof. Samuelson published A Users' Guide to Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption (1999), which will make the rather difficult text of Rosenzweig more accessible to contemporary readers.

Professor Samuelson has been active in the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Jewish Studies, the American Theological Society, the American Philosophical Association, Metanexus, and the International Society for Science and Religion. In these organizations he has articulated a distinctly Jewish way of doing philosophy and demonstrated how to think creatively and precisely about the interface of reason and faith.

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