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About Prof. Sacks:

Elias Sacks joined the ɫ�����ֱ�� faculty in 2012, and works on the Jewish tradition, religious thought, and theories and methods in the study of religion. After receiving his A.B. from Harvard University and studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he earned an M.A. in Religion from Columbia University (2007) and a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University (2012). His research focuses on the modern period, with particular areas of interest including Jewish thought, Jewish-Christian relations, philosophy of religion, religion and politics, hermeneutics, and religious ethics. His first book,  (Indiana University Press, 2017), offers a far-reaching reassessment of the account of Jewish practice developed by Moses Mendelssohn, the eighteenth-century philosopher generally seen as the founder of modern Jewish thought. Sacks is currently working on a second book on the nineteenth-century thinker Nachman Krochmal, one of modernity’s first Eastern European Jewish philosophers. He has also written on medieval and modern figures such as Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Jacob Taubes, and published some of the first English translations of Mendelssohn’s Hebrew works in a  (Brandeis University Press, 2011, finalist for the National Jewish Book Award). 

Sacks is the Modern Judaism editor for the  (De Gruyter), and is involved in grant-funded projects on Jews of color in the United States and . He holds leadership positions in the Association for Jewish Studies and Society of Jewish Ethics, and previously served as Director of The Jewish Publication Society.

Areas of Research Related to Jewish Studies:

Jewish thought, Moses Mendelssohn, Nachman Krochmal, Jewish-Christian relations, philosophy of religion, religion and politics, hermeneutics, and religious ethics

Courses: 

• God (FYSM 1000)
• Religion, Ethics, and Politics (RLST 2400)
• Judaism (RLST/JWST 3100)
• God and Politics (RLST/JWST 4170-5170)
• Is God Dead? (RLST/JWST 4180-5180)
• Love & Desire (RLST/JWST 4190-5190)
• Topics in Judaism: Bible in Judaism and Christianity (RLST/JWST 4260-5260)
• Introduction to the Academic Study of Religion (RLST 6830)
• Capstone in Jewish Studies (JWST 4000)
• Undergraduate Independent Study (RLST 4840/JWST 4900)
• Graduate Independent Study (RLST 5840/RLST 6840/JWST 5900)

Recent and Forthcoming Publications (Selected):

“Can God Reject the Jewish People? Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, Supersessionism, and Modern Jewish Thought,” Journal of Textual Reasoning (forthcoming)

“Moses Mendelssohn,” in Jewish Virtue Ethics, eds. Geoffrey Claussen, Alex Green, and Alan Mittleman (SUNY Press, 2023), 241-254

“Modes of Interpretation in Jewish Ethics,” in Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, 3 vols., eds. William Schweiker, Maria Antonaccio, Elizabeth Bucar, and David Clairmont (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), 2:831-840

“Liturgical Counter-Symbols: Jacob Taubes, Franz Rosenzweig, and the Politics of Redemption,” Rosenzweig Jahrbuch 12 (2021): 127-141

“Exegesis and Politics Between East and West: Nachman Krochmal, Moses Mendelssohn, and Modern Jewish Thought,” Harvard Theological Review 114.4 (2021): 508-535

“The Promise and Perils of Perplexity: Jewish Philosophy and Public Culture, Yesterday and Today,” in The Future of Jewish Philosophy, volume 21 of The Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, eds. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron Hughes (Brill, 2018), 79-97

“Poetry, Music, and the Limits of Harmony: Mendelssohn’s Aesthetic Critique of Christianity,” in Sara Levy’s World: Bach, Gender, and Judaism in Enlightenment Berlin, eds. Nancy Sinkoff and Rebecca Cypess, Eastman Studies in Music (University of Rochester Press, 2018), 122-146

“Worlds to Come Between East and West: Immortality and the Rise of Modern Jewish Thought,” in Olam Ha-zeh v’Olam Ha-ba: This World and the World to Come in Jewish Belief and Practice, ed. Leonard Greenspoon, Studies in Jewish Civilization (Purdue University Press, 2017), 171-195

Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017)