Michah Gottlieb

Associate Professor of Jewish Thought & Philosophy

Teaching and Scholarship

What would you like prospective grad students to know about you, your teaching, and your scholarship?
I research Modern Jewish Thought and Philosophy. I’m interested in modern Jewish philosophers from Spinoza through Levinas as well as the rise of major Jewish philosophies/ideologies in Germany and America: Haskalah, Wissenschaft des Judentums, Neo-Orthodoxy, Reform, Positive-Historical Judaism, and Zionism. Philosophical analysis and intellectual history are the primary approaches I employ, centered on close readings of primary texts. I also use incorporate other methods including social and cultural history, literary approaches, gender analysis, etc.

What types of undergraduate courses do you teach and why might students be interested in these classes?
Courses I teach include: *Living the Good Life: Greek and Jewish Perspectives*; *Spinoza and Jewish Philosophy*; *Modern Jewish Philosophy* and *American Jewish History.* In these courses we explore big questions: What does it mean to live well? How does one achieve this? What role do knowledge/insight, community, morality, and peace of mind, play in promoting well-being? In what ways does religion promote or inhibit good living?

BIO

Michah Gottlieb is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought. He has a PhD in Philosophy from Indiana University, an MA in Kabbalistic literature from NYU, and a BA in Philosophy from McGill University.

Professor Gottlieb’s research centers on modern Jewish thought from Spinoza to Levinas with a particular focus on German Jewish thought. He’s particularly interested in questions of ethics and politics. Professor Gottlieb has published dozens of articles and several books including: The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle-Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise (Oxford University Press, 2021); Faith, Reason and Politics: Essays on the History of Jewish Thought (Academic Studies Press, 2013), and Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological-Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Prior to coming to NYU in 2006, Professor Gottlieb taught at Brown University. He has held fellowships at the University of Hamburg, Princeton University, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book The Jewish Reformation was awarded the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize in the History of Jewish Diaspora by the American Historical Association.

Education

Indiana University, PhD 2003; New York University, MA 1997

Areas of Research/Interest

Modern Jewish Thought and Philosophy, German Jewish Thought and Culture

Fellowships/Honors

Senior Fellow, Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Hamburg (2019)
Tikvah Research Fellow at Princeton University (2010-2011)
Fellow at the NYU Humanities Initiative (2009-2010)
Yad Hanadiv Fellowship at Hebrew University (2006-2007)

Authored Books

Edited books

Selected Articles

“Does Judaism Require Belief?: Moses Mendelssohn and a Forgotten Nineteenth-Century German Jewish Debate” Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Study, forthcoming

“The Study of Scripture and the Study if Nature: Spinoza and Modern Jewish Thought” in Spinoza and Modern Jewish Philosophy (ed. Michael Rosenthal), in press

“Two Paths of German Jewish Philosophy: Moses Mendelssohn and Franz Rosenzweig” in Journal of the Kyoto Associate of Jewish Thought no. 10 (in Japanese), in press

“Why Moses Mendelssohn Matters: Lessons for Minorities” in Studies on Jewish Life and Culture (published by the Japan Society for Jewish Studies) No. 33 (2019) (In Japanese), in press

“Samson Raphael Hirsch and Scientific Pluralism” in Special Edition of DAAT (edited by George Y. Kohler, Andreas Braemer, and Thomas Meyer, in press

“Distinctiveness and Diaspora in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Thought” in Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora (ed. Hasia Diner), in press

“Scripture and Separatism: Politics and the Bible Translations of Ludwig Philippson and Samson Raphael Hirsch” in Deutsch-jüdische Bibelwissenschaft – Historische, exegetische und theologische Perspektiven (eds. Daniel Vorpahl, Sophia Kähler, Shani Tzoref), 2019

“Orthodoxy and the Orient: Samson Raphael Hirsch on the Location of Judaism” in Modern Jewish Scholarship on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an (eds. H. Gafni, H. Harif, D. Saltzer, S. Schorch), 2019

“Spinoza’s Baffling View of Biblical Morality” in Explorations in Jewish Religious and Philosophical Ethics, (eds. Curtis Hutt, Berel Lerner, and Halla Kim), 2018

“Oral Letter and Written Trace: Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Defense of the Bible and Talmud”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 2016

“Moses Mendelssohn’s Humanism” in Contention, Controversy and Change:  Evolutions and Revolutions in the Jewish Experience (eds. Simcha Fishbane and Eric Levene), 2016. 

“The Limits of Liberty: Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn on Censorship” in Moses Mendelssohn: New Perspectives (eds. M. Gottlieb and C. Manekin), 2015. 

“The Jewish Bible on the Eve of Modernity” in The Book of Books: Biblical Canon, Dissemination and Its People (eds. L. Schiffman, Jerry Pattengale, Filip Vukosavovic), 2013 

“Recent Work on Moses Mendelssohn in English” in Faith, Reason Politics: Essays on the History of Jewish Thought (Academic Studies Press, 2012), 230-255

“Leo Strauss on Lessing’s Spinozism,” in Festschrift for Paul Mendes-Flohr (eds. C. Wiese and M. Urban), 2012 

“Moses Mendelssohn and the Project of Modern Jewish Philosophy” in Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Judaism, Christianity, and the Bible (ed. M. Gottlieb), 2011 

“Between Judaism and German Enlightenment: Recent Work on Moses Mendelssohn in English” Religion Compass, 2010 

“Aesthetics and the Infinite: Moses Mendelssohn on the Poetics of Biblical Prophecy” in New Directions in Jewish Philosophy, (eds. Elliot Wolfson and Aaron Hughes), 2010

“Counter-Enlightenment in a Jewish Key: Anti-Maimonideanism in Nineteenth Century Neo-Orthodoxy” in The Cultures of Maimonideanism, (ed. James Robinson), 2009

“Mysticism and Philosophy” in Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity Through the Seventeenth Century, 2009 

“Publishing the Moses Mendelssohn Jubiläumsausgabe in Weimar and Nazi Germany” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 2008 

“Spinoza’s Method(s) of Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered” Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2007

“Mendelssohn’s Metaphysical Defense of Religious Pluralism” The Journal of Religion, 2006

Editorships

Co-editor (with Jonathan Schorsch), Palgrave Series on Jewish Thought and Philosophy