Paul Mendes-Flohr
Office: Swift Hall 306 E
Tel: (773) 702-5084
Email: prmendes@midway.uchicago.edu
Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the Divinity School; also in the Committee on Jewish Studies; Associate Faculty in the Department of History
Ph.D. (Brandeis University)
As an undergraduate I majored in intellectual history and philosophy. Since at the time - the early 1960s - there were few Jewish Studies programs in the U.S.A., my interest in the field was stimulated by extra-curricula considerations. In a word, I simply wanted to be an educated Jew. Thus parallel to my university studies I attended a yeshiva to study classical texts and also sought to deepen my knowledge of the liturgy and ritual. I should add that my interest was primarily cultural, for I felt it was my responsibility to acquire a sound knowledge of my multilayered heritage. It was only upon earning my B.A. that the Jewish Studies program at Brandeis University was brought to my attention. I immediately applied. The rest is history.
I came to the University of Chicago in 2000 after have taught for close to thirty years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although I still maintain my home in Jerusalem and my ties to the Hebrew University, I was drawn to the University of Chicago because of the unique setting it has provided Jewish Studies. The integration of Jewish Studies within the Divinity School allows for the interdisciplinary and, indeed, infer-faith approach that is unduplicated anywhere else. In purely academic terms, the training the students receive at the Divinity School in the cognate disciplines of theology, the philosophy of religion, and the history of religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) ensures that their study of the history of Judaism will be nurtured by a rich variety of cognitive and methodological perspectives. It is privilege both for the faculty and the students to pursue Jewish Studies at the Divinity School. The larger community of learning at the University of Chicago, which energetically encourages interdisciplinary conversation, has also enhanced the unique quality of Jewish Studies here.
As an intellectual historian with a particular interest in German-Jewish cultural history I have particularly enjoyed the collegial exchange with members of the German and History departments. I have also engaged in fruitful collaborations with colleagues in the philosophy department. In fact, the Committee on Jewish Studies is comprised of scholars from perhaps a dozen different departments throughout the university, from Near Eastern languages to Musicology, from political science to philosophy, from history to German, from theater to cinema studies. Jewish Studies are, therefore, well embedded in the intellectual landscape of the University of Chicago. This is reflected in the fact that we have many courses that are co-taught by faculty from different disciplines. Next year, for instance, I will teach a seminar with Professor Eric Santner of the German department on "Messianism and Modernity." Last year, I taught a course with David Tracy, a professor Christian theology, on Levinas and Rosenzweig - two twentieth Jewish religious philosophers. I also taught a course together with Martin Riesebrodt, a professor at the Divinity School and in the Department of Sociology, on the sociologists Georg Simmel and Max Weber in which examined their writings on religion and modernity. In the near future I hope to co-teach courses on post-modern images of St. Paul, and the phenomenology of tradition.
I also believe my scholarship has benefited from the interdisciplinary ethos of the University of Chicago. I trust this impulse will be reflected in two books I intend to complete in the coming summer, one on post-traditional Jewish identities, and another on Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber.