German-Jewish Intellectuals in the Age of Hyphenated Identities

The advent of Emancipation turned European Jews into harbingers of hyphenated identities (British-Jew, Jewish-American, German-Jew etc.). Modern Jewish intellectuals were therefore goaded into exploring the potential of ideas and knowledge caught in the interim space between national and religious/ethnic identities signified by the hyphen. For German-Jewish intellectuals, this included attempts to hew new insights from traditional lore. The project examines several such attempts to recast the Jewish condition in the modern age as an empowering, enriching and edifying experience. Each article is dedicated to a creative interpretation that recasts Jewish theology as a conceptual framework within which identity conflicts and epistemological doubts may be worked on, and perhaps overcome.

Research Projects: 

  1. Time as Space and Space as Time: Walter Benjamin’s Urban Reflections as a Form of Secular Mysticism

  2. The Orientalizing Jew: Martin Buber between East and West 

  3. Meeting the Eternal Thou at the Corner Shop: Reflections on the Role of the Intellectual Historian in light of Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent.