Education
1974-1982 UCLA Ph.D History of Religions
1970-1974 UCLA B.A. History
LANGUAGE COMPETENCY
French (speak, read, write)
Russian (speak, read, write)
Hebrew (speak, read, write)
Yiddish (read, write)
Polish (speak, read)
Spanish (read)
Publications
Books
Freedom from Ideology: Secrecy in Modern Expression (New York: Garland Press, 1987)
Nine Talmudic Readings by Emmanuel Lévinas, trans. and with an introduction by Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)
Jews and Christians on Time and Eternity: Charles Péguy's Portrait of Bernard-Lazare (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998)
Haim Sloves—Judischer Kommunismus in Paris, (Berlin: Philo, 2002)
Articles
"Reagan, Weizsacker et la visite au cimetière," Esprit 123:2 (1987), 87-101
"Les commentaires talmudiques de Lévinas," in Cahiers de l'Herne (Paris: Editions de l'Herne,1991),368-376
"The Secret of the Man of Forty," History and Theory 32:2 (1993) 101-118
"The Relationship of the Jewish Tradition to the Non-Jewish world in Emmanuel Lévinas' Talmudic commentaries" in Elliott Dorf, Louis Newman, eds. Post-Modern Jewish Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995), 212-218
"The Secret in History" in The Persistence of Religion: Essays in Honor of Kees W. Bolle, (Malibu: Undena Press, 1997), 127-147
"Quelques reflexions sur la religion,” Nouveaux Cahiers 128 (1997). 34-38
“Jewish Education in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” Abiding Challenges, London: Freund Publishing House, 1999), 65-100
“L’education juive dans la pensee d’Emmanuel Levinas,” Pardes 26, (1999), 195-210
“Haim Sloves and the Soviet Union: an Essay on the Jewish People in One of its Perigrinations,” in Gennady Estraikh and Michael Krutikov eds. Yiddish and the Left: Papers of the Third Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish, (Oxford: Legenda, 2001), 259-279
“Haim Sloves, the Jewish People, and a Jewish Communist’s Allegiances,” in Jewish Social Studies, 9:1, (2002), 95-142
“Das Judentum, das Judische Volk und der Staat—Levinas’s talmud-Kommentar “Judentum und Revolution,” Im Gesprach 5 (2002), 13-24
“The Notion of Time in Andre Neher’s “Essence du Prophetisme,” in Eternity in Times of Change: Andre Neher and French Jewish Thought after the Shoa (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2003)
"The Little Man with the Burned Thighs: Levinas's Biblical Hermeneutic," in Levinas and Biblical Studies , (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2003) 33-48
“Baruch fun Amsterdam,” Perspectives, n. 10 (2003) 113-125
“Spinoza Among the Jewish Communists,” Modern Judaism, 24:1 (2004) 1-35
“The State and the Jews: Reflections on Difficult Freedom”, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 14:1-2 (2006), 109-130
“Levinas and Politics: Response to Augusto Ponzio,” in Subject Matters, 3:1 (2006), 121-127
“Homens Mapole: Hope in the Immediate Post War World,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 98:3 (2008) 355-388
“Le people juif dans Notre jeunesse,” Le Porche 26: 43-46 (Avril 2008)
“Jews, Judaism, and the State: A Reading of Judaism and Revolution” in “Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought,” (Springer, 2009) 91-108
“Between Sacred and Secular: Yiddish Theater in the Immediate Post War World,” AJS Journal 32:2 (2008) 366-388
“The Bible in Levinas’s Talmudic Readings,” forthcoming in Biblical Hermeneutics (Leuven-Dudley: Peeters, 2009)
Reviews
"Saul Friedlander's 'Reflections of Nazism,'" Annals of Scholarship, 3:3 (1985) 118-123
"Geoffey Hartman ed. Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective," Religion 18 (1988)
"Emmanuel Lévinas' Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism," Religious Studies Newsletter, 18:2 (1992)
"Jill Robbins' Prodigal Son/Elder Brother: Interpretation and Alterity on Augustine, Petrarch, Kafka, Lévinas," SubStance, 70 (1993), 122-125
"Susan Handleman's Fragments of Redemption--Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Lévinas," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 52:1(1994) 192-195
"J. Andrew Bernstein's Progress and the Quest for Meaning," review essay for History and Theory, 33:3 (1994): 375-82
Claude Schumacher, ed. Staging the Holocaust: The Shoa in Drama and Performance, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14:1(2000), 111-115
Emmanuel Levinas, Unforeseen History, in Shofar 23:4 (2005), 170-172
“Remembering the Western History of Forgetting: An Idea of Europe,” review essay of Harald Weinrich’s Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting, for History and Theory 45:3 (2006), 416-423
Presentations
Selected Papers Read
"Franz Rosenzweig and the Historian of Religions: The Search for a Viable Hermeneutic." International Conference on Franz Rosenzweig.
"Aspects de la pensée de Franz Rosenzweig," Paris, October 7, 1987
"Authority in the Gospel of Matthew." Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, October 8, 1987
"Emmanuel Lévinas' Hermeneutic.”Philosophy of Religion Circle. Temple University, October 12,1988; UCLA History Department, April 24, 1989.
"Eric J. Sharpe's Comparative Religion: A History." Presentation at a panel discussion of the National American Academy of Religion meeting, December, 1988.
"The World Historical and the Jew in Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry." Southwest Conference on Foreign Language and Literatures, Rollins College, February 23, 1990.
"The Relationship of the Jewish Tradition to the non-Jewish World in Emmanuel Lévinas' Talmudic Commentaries." Workshop on Jewish Education at the Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, Jerusalem, July 18, 1991.
"Charles Péguy and the Hermeneutic of the History of Religions." UC Santa Barbara, Religious Studies Department, March 6, 1991.
"Emmanuel Lévinas -- Philosopher and Talmudist." St. John's University, Minnesota, Philosophy Department, April 8, 1991.
"Emmanuel Lévinas' Approach to Talmud." Berkeley School of Law, Robbins Collection, April 18, 1991.
"Gabriel Garcia Marquez' No One Writes to the Colonel: Where in the World is Religion?" History of Religions Circle, Los Angeles, May 5, 1991.
Two talks on Lévinas focusing on his Talmudic commentary, "As Old as the World?" Kehilla Institute, Los Angeles, March 4, 11, 1991.
"Lévinas on Revelation." Rabbi Shmuel Miller's congregation, Los Angeles, May 18, 1991.
Two talks on Jewish tradition.
- Rabbinic Midrash on Moses, April 9, 1992.
- The Baal Shem Tov as Mystic, October 8, 1992, Quest, Lancaster.
Panel discussant on religion and politics. Europe-American Conference, American Council of International Leadership, Dec. 1, 1992.
On Emmanuel Lévinas, Williams College, May 5, 1993.
"Three talks on Charles Péguy, Bernard-Lazare and the Dreyfus Affair." Kehilla Institute, April 25, May 2, May 9, 1994.
Two talks on Emmanuel Lévinas and Franz Rosenzweig -- on Jewish education. Mifgash, April 21, October 14, 1994.
"Toward the Other," Hebrew Union College, January 11, 1995.
"On Education," Symposium on the Curriculum at Franklin & Marshall College, August 23, 1995.
Three talks on Levinas to Birmingham Jewish Reading group, December 20, 1998, Birmingham, Alabama
“The Notion of Time in Andre Neher’s Essence du Prophetisme,” conference on Andre Neher, Jerusalem, Jan. 1999
“Emmanuel Levinas on Jewish Education,” Conference on :Operative Communities? The Jewish Question in France from Durkheim to Levinas," University of Pennsyvania, May 7,1999
“Jews and Christians on Time and Eternity,” Cercle de l’amitie Charles Peguy, Paris, Jan 30, 2000
“As Old as the World,” talk on Levinas at the Ecole des langues orientales, Paris VII, Feb. 7, 2000
“Haim Sloves and the Soviet Union,” conference on “Yiddish and the Left,” Oxford, England, July 4-5, 2000
“The Vexed Relations between Particular and Universal: an Eastern European Jewish Communist in Paris,” Franklin and Marshall Dewey Prize lecture, October, 2000; the Denkbar, November 2000, Frankfort, Germany
“Spinoza among the Jewish Communists,” Ha-Atelier, workshop for Jewish Studies, January 13, 2002, Berlin, Germany; Feb. 14, Shaarey Shamaim congregation, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
“The Temptation of Temptation,” Levinas Reading Group, Cambridge, MA, May 6, 2002
“Jews, Judaism and the State—a commentary on Levinas’s ‘Judaism and Revolution,’ International conference on Emmanuel LevinasHebrew University, May 22, 2002
“Levinas’s Approach to Talmud,” Tenth Biannual Conference of the Jerusalem Fellows, Jan. 5, 2003, Jerusalem
“The Luftmenschen: Jewish Communists in Space,” conference on “Sacred Groundings” of the ASSR, (the American Society for the Study of Religion) April 27, 2003
“Reflections on Teaching The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Association for Jewish Studies, December 21, 2003
“Damages Due to Fire,” Penn State Colloquium on Emmanuel Levinas, March 21, 2004
“The Idea of the Prophet in Charles Peguy’s “Notre Jeunesse,” April 19, 2005, colloquium on French Poets and the Bible, State University of St. Petersburg, Russia
“How to be Modern in Yiddish—Haim Sloves’s ‘Homens Mapole,” July 16, 2005, Mifgash, Los Angeles
“Homens Mapole:” Yiddish Theater in the Immediate Post-War Period’,” December 19, 2005, Association for Jewish Studies, Washington D.C.
“Politics in the Talmudic Readings,” Levinas, Ethique, Politique, philosophie dans le siecle a venir, Strasbourg/Freiburg, Parlement des Philosophes, Feb. 14, 2006
“Haim Sloves’s ‘Homens Mapole,’”: The Merging of Communist and Jewish Aspirations in the Immediate Aftermath of the War, conference on Yiddish Theater Revisited, University of Washington, Seattle, May 9, 2006
“The Yiddish Kotsk, Reflections on Inwardness,” conference on “Abraham Joshua Heschel. Philosophy and inter-religious dialogue: between Poland and America,” University of Warsaw, Poland, June 25, 2007
“The Bible in Levinas’s Talmudic Readings,” conference on ”Responsibility, God and Society. Theological Ethics in Dialogue,” Leuven, Belgium, May 8, 2008
“Response to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Reflexions sur la question juive,” conference on “The Jew in Post War French Philosophy,” UCLA, Dec. 7, 2008,