Featured image
The latest feature in the Leo Baeck Institute’s Meet the Fellows series introduces Daniel Hershkowitz, whose research examines modern German-Jewish thought and its intersection with wider philosophical trends.
Can you briefly describe your doctoral research project for a non-specialist audience? What inspired you to pursue this topic?
In my doctorate research project I examined the rich, intense, and persistent Jewish engagement with one of the most important and controversial modern philosophers, Martin Heidegger. Contextualizing this encounter within wider intellectual, cultural, and political contexts, I outline the main patterns and the diverse Jewish responses to Heidegger. I show that through a dialectic of attraction and repulsion, Jewish thinkers developed a version of Jewishness that sought to offer the way out of the overall crisis plaguing their world, a crisis which was embodied, as they saw it, in Heidegger’s life and thought. Neither turning a blind eye to Heidegger’s antisemitism nor using it as an excuse for ignoring his philosophy, they wrestled with his existential analytic and what they took to be its religious, ethical, and political failings. Ironically, Heidegger’s thought proved itself to be fertile ground for reconceptualizing what it means to be Jewish in the modern world. My doctorate came out in book form as Heidegger and his Jewish Reception with Cambridge University press in 2021.
How does your current work engage with wider themes or ongoing debates in your academic field?
I recently published a book on Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, in which I argue that while scholars tend to assume that this work is basically about Judaism and its sections on Christianity are peripheral to its overarching claim, in reality it is a work that does not only affirm both religions but draws profoundly on both traditions, too. When this is taken into account, it is best to think of his thought as ‘Judeo-Christian’. One of the claims I make is that just as it is expected for scholars of medieval Jewish thought to be familiar with Islamic thought, so knowledge of Protestant thought is crucial for sound scholarship on modern German-Jewish thought.
How has the LBI fellowship influenced your research and academic progress?
The German-Jewish intellectual world and its interface with philosophical and religious traditions, in its historical and political context, continues to fascinate me. The themes, works, and thinkers that I studied during my Leo Baeck fellowship are still very much part of my scholarly work. In addition, through the fellowship, I met peers who are now friends and colleagues.
If you could share one insight or piece of advice with future researchers interested in German-Jewish studies, what would it be?
There is no exaggerating the importance of language study and of reading widely, beyond one’s immediate sub-field. Doing so can really enrich one’s scholarship.
Daniel M. Hershkowitz is Associate Professor in Judaic Studies at Duke University.
