Jewish Studies Commons^™

'Like Iron To A Magnet': Moses Hayim Luzzatto's Quest For Providence, David Sclar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a biographical study of Moses Hayim Luzzatto (1707-1746 or 1747). It presents the social and religious context in which Luzzatto was variously celebrated as the leader of a kabbalistic-messianic confraternity in Padua, condemned as a deviant threat by rabbis in Venice and central and eastern Europe, and accepted by the Portuguese Jewish community after relocating to Amsterdam. Using unpublished archival documents and manuscripts, as well as rare printed books, I seek to reconcile the seemingly incompatible aspects of Luzzatto as 'heretic' and 'hero.'

Chapter one sets the tone for the dissertation by analyzing the original version of …

Reorienting American Liberal Judaism For The Twentieth Century: Stephen S. Wise And The Early Years Of The Jewish Institute Of Religion, Shirley Idelson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores how Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and supporters from the Free Synagogue and elsewhere sought to reorient American liberal Judaism by establishing the Jewish Institute of Religion (JIR) in the early 1920s. They believed the leaders of the Reform movement at that time were reluctant to relinquish an outmoded approach that had lost relevance in light of a new demographic reality whereby over a million Eastern European Jews now living in New York were becoming the dominant presence in American Jewish life. The JIR founders attributed this to Reform's having become insular, unresponsive to pressing social issues, overly …

Reviving Enlightenment In The Age Of Nationalism: The Historical And Political Thought Of Hans Kohn In America, Brian Matthew Smollett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation critically engages the thought of Hans Kohn (1891-1971). One of the most prominent theorists of nationalism in the twentieth century, Kohn has primarily been studied as an anti-statist Zionist thinker and as the originator of a Western-Civic/Eastern-Ethnic "dichotomy" of national development. This work takes a different approach by analyzing the matrix of tension between particularism and universalism in his mature, American thought. I argue that Kohn, especially in response to the crisis of fascism, used history to search for a balance within this perennial tension. His historical analyses, very much tied to his time and context, led him …