Daniel Weiss

Kurzbiografie

Daniel H. Weiss took up his post in the Divinity Faculty in 2010, after previously teaching at the University of Virginia and at Oberlin College. He earned his PhD at the University of Virginia, after having received his Bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Masters of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School.

Subject area and speciality

Philosophy of Religion specialists:

Modern Jewish religious thought and philosophy (esp. Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas)
Theories and practices of interreligious dialogue and communication
The (contested) relationship between scripture and philosophy, both in the Jewish intellectual tradition and more generally
Aspects of ethics, hermeneutics and theopolitics in classical rabbinic literature

Religious Studies specialists:

Modern Jewish religious thought and philosophy (esp. Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas)
Theories and practices of interreligious dialogue and communication
The (contested) relationship between scripture and philosophy, both in the Jewish intellectual tradition and more generally
Aspects of ethics, hermeneutics and theopolitics in classical rabbinic literature

Jewish studies specialists:

Modern Jewish thought and philosophy
Literary, ethical, and philosophical approaches to biblical and rabbinic literature
Judaism and interfaith relations

Research Supervision

Topics of current and recent postgraduate supervision:

Reconceiving notions of Orthodoxy and Modernity in Modern Jewish Thought
Engaging critiques of Levinas's conception of the Other
Joseph Soloveitchik and inter-faith dialogue
Elijah del Medigo and Averroistic epistemology
Levinas, the Cartesian infinite, and first philosophy
The status of 'philosophy' in the thought of Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Augustine and Levinas on the ethical significance of time

Teaching

World Religions in Comparative Perspective (A7)
Introduction to Judaism (B14)
Judaism II (C8)
MPhil and Doctoral supervision
Judaism and Philosophy (D2c)

Kurzbibliografie

Books and Edited Volumes

Talmud and Christianity: Rabbinic Judaism after Constantine, special double issue of Jewish Studies Quarterly 25.3 and 25.4 (2018). Edited by Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Daniel H. Weiss, and Holger Michael Zellentin.
Purity and Danger Now: New Perspectives. Edited by Robbie Duschinsky, Simone Schnall, and Daniel H. Weiss (Routledge: London, 2016).
Paradox and the Prophets: Hermann Cohen and the Indirect Communication of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Articles

‘Marranism as Judaism as Universalism: Reconsidering Spinoza.’ Religions 10.3, 168 (March 2019). (link)
‘The Christianization of Rome and the Edomization of Christianity: Avodah Zarah and Political Power.’ Jewish Studies Quarterly 25.4 (November 2018), 394-422.
‘Born into Covenantal Salvation? Baptism and Birth in Early Christianity and Classical Rabbinic Judaism.’ Jewish Studies Quarterly 24.4 (December 2017), 318-388.
‘Aquinas's Opposition to Killing the Innocent and its Distinctiveness within the Christian Just War Tradition.’ Journal of Religious Ethics 45.3 (September 2017), 481-509.
‘Ethics Without Substances: Foucault, Mishnaic Ethics, and Human Ontology.’ Telos 179 (Summer 2017), 135-156. (Co-authored with Robbie Duschinsky).
‘Scriptural Reasoning and the Academy: The Uses and Disadvantages of Expertise and Impartiality.’ Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, 16.1 (June 2017).
‘Impurity without repression: Julia Kristeva and the biblical possibilities of a non-eliminationist construction of religious purity.’ In Purity and Danger Now: New Perspectives, eds. Robbie Duschinsky, Simone Schnall, Daniel H. Weiss (London: Routledge, 2016), 205-220.
‘Purity and the West: Christianity, Secularism, and the Impurity of Ritual.’ In Purity and Danger Now: New Perspectives, eds. Robbie Duschinsky, Simone Schnall, Daniel H. Weiss (London: Routledge, 2016), 181-204. (Co-authored with Holger Zellentin)
‘“But Mordecai Bowed Not, Nor Did Him Reverence”: The Book of Esther’s Challenge to ‘Secular’ and to ‘Religious’ Jewish Identities.' Journal of Textual Reasoning 9.1 (September 2016).
‘A Nation without Borders?: Modern European Emancipation as Negation of Galut.’ Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 34.4 (Summer 2016), 71-97.
'Hermann Cohen.' In Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies, ed. Naomi Seidman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). (Co-authored with Paul Nahme)
'Walter Benjamin and the Antinomianism of Classical Rabbinic Law.' Bamidbar: Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4.1 (2015), 56-78.
'Theology and Development: Christian and Jewish Approaches.' In The Routledge Handbook of Religions and Global Development, ed. Emma Tomalin (Routledge, 2015), 53-67. (Co-authored with Stephen Plant.)
'John Howard Yoder, Classical Rabbinic Judaism, and the Renunciation of the Sword: A Reappraisal.' Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, 13.2 (November 2014).
'Embodied Cognition in Classical Rabbinic Literature.' Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 48.3 (September 2013), 788-807.
'The Fruits of Contradiction: Evolution, Cooperation and Ethics in an Inter-Religious Context.' Studies in Christian Ethics, 26.2 (May 2013), 186-195.
'Direct Divine Sanction, the Prohibition of Bloodshed, and the Individual as Image of God in Classical Rabbinic Literature.' Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 32.2 (Fall/Winter 2012): 23–38.
'Reasoning from out of Particularity: Possibilities for Conversation in Theological Ethics.'Studies in Christian Ethics 25.2 (May 2012), 236-243.
'Just Peacemaking and Ethical Formation in Classical Rabbinic Literature.' The Conrad Grebel Review 30.1 (Winter 2012), 76-95.
'A Dialogue between Philosophy and Scripture: Rereading Hermann Cohen through Bakhtin.' The Journal of Religion 90.1 (January 2010). 15-32.
'The (odd) deixis of 'you' in rabbinic prayer.' Journal of Textual Reasoning 5.1 (December 2007).

Forschungsinteressen

Dr Weiss's research interests, with a focus in the study of Judaism and in philosophy of religion, include:

Modern Jewish religious thought and philosophy (esp. Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas)
Theories and practices of interreligious dialogue and communication
Relations between Jewish and Christian philosophical theology and ethics
The (contested) relationship between scripture and philosophy, both in the Jewish intellectual tradition and more generally
Aspects of ethics, hermeneutics and theopolitics in classical rabbinic literature

In addition, Dr Weiss is actively involved in the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme and in Scriptural Reasoning.