The late great historian and scholar Amos Funkenstein excavated the Jewish foundations beneath the Western tradition
Alan Mittleman’s new study of Jewish philosophy ‘boils Bible stories and brain science into the message that there’s something holy in everything and everyone’—but can reason and faith coexist?
An auction house recently sold a letter typed by Albert Einstein to a New York mazto-maker, in which the theoretical physicist showed some love for unleavened bread
A symposium in Amsterdam discussed the merits—for and against—lifting the herem on Baruch Spinoza
The new book ‘Fictions of Conversion’ explores how religious transformation influenced early modern England
British writer Olaf Stapledon, author of the lost 1937 sci-fi masterpiece Star Maker, was perhaps Baruch Spinoza’s greatest 20th-century disciple
A new Modigliani biography tries to undo the painter’s reputation for drunken excess and bolster his standing as a serious artist
Part 1 of 3: Returning to Amsterdam, scene of my post-college-crisis memoir, Everything Is Going To Be Great, to explore its Jewish history
A former student remembers a seminar with Chaim Grade—and how it changed his life
Tropper’s powerful ex-sponsor, a ‘Jersey Shore’ haftorah, and more
Rebecca Goldstein discusses Spinoza, the ‘New Atheists,’ and the biggest question of all
Hobbes classic gets its first full Hebrew translation
The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
Were Marranos the first of the moderns?
Baruch Spinoza inspired Rebecca Goldstein. So why is she out to betray him?
Haunted by ghosts, Jacques Derrida’s writings confounded the march of time