EliasSacks

  • Associate Professor
  • RELIGIOUS STUDIES
  • JEWISH STUDIES
Address

Office:Eaton Humanities 286

Office Hours

In-person: Thursdays 11:30 am - 1 pm MT or by appointment (Eaton Humanities 286)

Zoom Office Hours:Wednesdays 2-3 pm MT or by appointment ()

Access Elias Sack's CV Here

Ҵýƽ Prof. Sacks:

Elias Sacks joined the University of Colorado Boulder faculty in 2012, and works on the Jewish tradition, religious thought, and theories and methods in the study of religion. After receiving his A.B. from Harvard University and studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he earned an M.A. in Religion from Columbia University (2007) and a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University (2012). His research focuses on the modern period, with particular areas of interest including Jewish thought, Jewish-Christian relations, philosophy of religion, religion and politics, hermeneutics, and religious ethics. His first book,(Indiana University Press, 2017), offers a far-reaching reassessment of the account of Jewish practice developed by Moses Mendelssohn, the eighteenth-century philosopher generally seen as the founder of modern Jewish thought. Sacks is currently working on a second bookon the nineteenth-century thinker Nachman Krochmal, one of modernity’s first Eastern European Jewish philosophers.He has also written on medieval and modern figures such as Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Jacob Taubes, and published some of the first English translations of Mendelssohn’s Hebrew works ina(Brandeis University Press, 2011, finalist for the National Jewish Book Award).

Sacks is the Modern Judaism editor for the(De Gruyter), and is involved in grant-funded projects onJews of color in the United Statesand. He holds leadership positions in the Association for Jewish Studies and Society of Jewish Ethics, and previously served as Director of The Jewish Publication Society.

Areas of Research Related to Jewish Studies:

Jewish thought, Moses Mendelssohn, Nachman Krochmal, Jewish-Christian relations, philosophy of religion, religion and politics, hermeneutics, and religious ethics

Courses:

  • God (FYSM 1000)
  • Religion, Ethics, and Politics (RLST 2400)
  • Judaism (RLST/JWST 3100)
  • God and Politics (RLST/JWST 4170-5170)
  • Is God Dead? (RLST/JWST 4180-5180)
  • Love & Desire (RLST/JWST 4190-5190)
  • Topics in Judaism: Bible in Judaism and Christianity (RLST/JWST 4260-5260)
  • Introduction to the Academic Study of Religion (RLST 6830)
  • Capstone in Jewish Studies (JWST 4000)
  • Undergraduate Independent Study (RLST 4840/JWST 4900)
  • Graduate Independent Study (RLST 5840/RLST 6840/JWST 5900)

Recent and Forthcoming Publications (Selected):

“Can God Reject the Jewish People? Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, Supersessionism, and Modern Jewish Thought,”Journal of Textual Reasoning(forthcoming)

“Moses Mendelssohn,”inJewish Virtue Ethics, eds. Geoffrey Claussen, Alex Green, and Alan Mittleman (SUNY Press, 2023), 241-254

“Modes of Interpretation in Jewish Ethics,”inEncyclopedia of Religious Ethics, 3 vols., eds. WilliamSchweiker, Maria Antonaccio, Elizabeth Bucar, and David Clairmont (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), 2:831-840

“Liturgical Counter-Symbols: Jacob Taubes, Franz Rosenzweig, and the Politics of Redemption,”Rosenzweig Jahrbuch12 (2021): 127-141

“Exegesis and Politics Between East and West: Nachman Krochmal, Moses Mendelssohn, and Modern Jewish Thought,”Harvard Theological Review114.4 (2021): 508-535

“The Promise and Perils of Perplexity: Jewish Philosophy and Public Culture, Yesterday and Today,” inThe Future of Jewish Philosophy, volume 21 ofThe Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, eds. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron Hughes (Brill, 2018), 79-97

“Poetry, Music, and the Limits of Harmony: Mendelssohn’s Aesthetic Critique of Christianity,” inSara Levy’s World: Bach, Gender,and Judaism in Enlightenment Berlin, eds. Nancy Sinkoff and Rebecca Cypess, Eastman Studies in Music (University of RochesterPress, 2018), 122-146

“Worlds to Come Between East and West: Immortality and the Rise of Modern Jewish Thought,” inOlam Ha-zeh v’Olam Ha-ba:This World and the World to Come in Jewish Belief and Practice, ed. Leonard Greenspoon, Studies in Jewish Civilization (Purdue University Press, 2017), 171-195

Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism(Indiana University Press, 2017)