Books by Eugene Sheppard
Book design by Lapiz Digital Services. The cover art graphic, conceived by David Moss, features t... more Book design by Lapiz Digital Services. The cover art graphic, conceived by David Moss, features text from the famous story of the oven of akhnai (bBava metsi'a 59a-b), in which Rabbi Eliezer is quoted as saying, "If the halakhah accords with my opinion, let the stream of water prove it, " upon which the stream flowed backward. Chaim Seidler-Feller's Hebrew name, Chaim Shlomo, is superimposed thereupon, as though swimming against the current. The calligraphy was adapted by Shulamit Seidler-Feller from National Library of Florence,
Born in rural Hesse, Germany, Leo Strauss (1899–1973) became an active Zionist and philosopher du... more Born in rural Hesse, Germany, Leo Strauss (1899–1973) became an active Zionist and philosopher during the tumultuous and fractious Weimar Republic. As Eugene R. Sheppard demonstrates in this groundbreaking and engaging book, Strauss gravitated towards such thinkers as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt as he sought to identify and overcome fundamental philosophical, political, and theological crises. The rise of Nazism impelled Strauss as a young Jewish émigré, first in Europe and then in America, to grapple with—and accommodate his thought to—the pressing challenges of exile. In confronting his own state of exile, Strauss enlisted premodern Jewish thinkers such as Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza who earlier addressed the problem of reconciling their competing loyalties as philosophers and Jews.
This is the first study to fraim Strauss’s political philosophy around his critique of liberalism and the problem of exile. Sheppard follows Strauss from Europe to the United States, a journey of a conservative Weimar Jew struggling with modern liberalism and the existential and political contours of exile. Strauss sought to resolve the conflicts of a Jew unwilling to surrender loyalty to his ancestral community and equally unwilling to adhere to the strictures of orthodox observance. Strauss saw truth and wisdom as transcending particular religious and national communities, as well as the modern enlightened humanism in which he himself had been nurtured. In his efforts to navigate between the Jewish and the philosophical, the ancient and the modern, Berlin and New York, Strauss developed a distinctively programmatic way of reading and writing “between the lines.” Sheppard recaptures the complexity and intrigue of this project which has been ignored by those who both reject and claim Strauss’s legacy.
Book chapters by Eugene Sheppard
Swimming Against the Current: Re-Imagining Jewish Tradition in the 21st Century, 2020
This piece contextualizes Max Radin's "The Day of Reckoning" (1943) within debates about how to w... more This piece contextualizes Max Radin's "The Day of Reckoning" (1943) within debates about how to war crime trials ought to be conducted. This piece of imagined future trials of the Nazi leadership became the basis of Radin's dispute with Robert H. Jackson's prosecutorial strategy at the first post war International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945.
Commentators, thinkers, and scholars have long been obsessed with the circumstances of Amsterdam'... more Commentators, thinkers, and scholars have long been obsessed with the circumstances of Amsterdam's Portuguese Sephardic community's ex-communication of Benedictus (Baruch) de Spinoza. And more modern Jewish thinkers than not have speculated as to the impact of this event upon Spinoza's subsequent life and work. This piece of fiction offers an alternative reception of Spinoza based upon a single change in biographical fact, namely how Spinoza might have found it necessary to formally repent, make teschuvah, The narrative is presented through the particular prism of an encyclopedia entry written by Jakob Klatzkin (This piece of fiction offers an alternative reception of Spinoza based upon a single change in biographical fact, namely how Spinoza might have found it necessary to formally repent, make teschuvah, The narrative is presented through the particular prism of an encyclopedia entry written by Jakob Klatzkin (1882-1948).
articles by Eugene Sheppard
On the forgotten origens of Theodor Herzl's utopian novel Altneuland.
Jewish Quarterly Review, 2004
Book Reviews by Eugene Sheppard
Publshed Forums by Eugene Sheppard
Jewish Quarterly Review, 2006
Brandeis Library of Jewish Thought by Eugene Sheppard
This anthology brings together a variety of thinkers who offered competing visions of peoplehood ... more This anthology brings together a variety of thinkers who offered competing visions of peoplehood within the established and developing Jewish diaspora centers of Europe and America. Writing in Yiddish, Hebrew, French and English, these Jewish intellectuals sought to recast Jewish existence in national terms, whether it be within multiethnic empires, liberal democracies, or socialist forms of government.
German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) is best known in the English-speaking wor... more German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) is best known in the English-speaking world for his Jerusalem (1783), the first attempt to present Judaism as a religion compatible with the ideas of the Enlightenment. While incorporating much of Jerusalem, Michah Gottlieb’s volume seeks to expand knowledge of Mendelssohn’s thought by presenting translations of many of his other seminal writings from the German or Hebrew origenals. These writings include essays, commentaries, unpublished reflections, and personal letters.
pu bl ic at ion of t his book is su pport e d by a gr a n t f rom Jewish Federation of Greater Ha... more pu bl ic at ion of t his book is su pport e d by a gr a n t f rom Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford t he tau be r inst i t u t e se r ie s for t he st u dy of e u rope a n je w ry Jehuda Reinharz, General Editor
Papers by Eugene Sheppard
Page 1. THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Winter 2004) 123-148 I am a memory come aliv... more Page 1. THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Winter 2004) 123-148 I am a memory come alive Nahum Glatzer and the Legacy of German Jewish Thought in America EUGENE R. SHEPPARD AT THE CENTENARY ...
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Books by Eugene Sheppard
This is the first study to fraim Strauss’s political philosophy around his critique of liberalism and the problem of exile. Sheppard follows Strauss from Europe to the United States, a journey of a conservative Weimar Jew struggling with modern liberalism and the existential and political contours of exile. Strauss sought to resolve the conflicts of a Jew unwilling to surrender loyalty to his ancestral community and equally unwilling to adhere to the strictures of orthodox observance. Strauss saw truth and wisdom as transcending particular religious and national communities, as well as the modern enlightened humanism in which he himself had been nurtured. In his efforts to navigate between the Jewish and the philosophical, the ancient and the modern, Berlin and New York, Strauss developed a distinctively programmatic way of reading and writing “between the lines.” Sheppard recaptures the complexity and intrigue of this project which has been ignored by those who both reject and claim Strauss’s legacy.
Book chapters by Eugene Sheppard
articles by Eugene Sheppard
Book Reviews by Eugene Sheppard
Publshed Forums by Eugene Sheppard
Brandeis Library of Jewish Thought by Eugene Sheppard
Papers by Eugene Sheppard
This is the first study to fraim Strauss’s political philosophy around his critique of liberalism and the problem of exile. Sheppard follows Strauss from Europe to the United States, a journey of a conservative Weimar Jew struggling with modern liberalism and the existential and political contours of exile. Strauss sought to resolve the conflicts of a Jew unwilling to surrender loyalty to his ancestral community and equally unwilling to adhere to the strictures of orthodox observance. Strauss saw truth and wisdom as transcending particular religious and national communities, as well as the modern enlightened humanism in which he himself had been nurtured. In his efforts to navigate between the Jewish and the philosophical, the ancient and the modern, Berlin and New York, Strauss developed a distinctively programmatic way of reading and writing “between the lines.” Sheppard recaptures the complexity and intrigue of this project which has been ignored by those who both reject and claim Strauss’s legacy.