Daniel Judah Lasker (born April 5, 1949) is an American-born Israeli scholar of Jewish philosophy. As of 2017, he is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Jewish thought at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Daniel Judah Lasker (born April 5, 1949) is an American-born Israeli scholar of Jewish philosophy. As of 2017, he is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Jewish thought at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Born on April 5, 1949, in Flint, Michigan, United States, to Arnold and Miriam Lasker, he grew up in Orange, New Jersey, where his father served as a congregational Rabbi. As a teenager he was active in USY and served as chapter head and on the regional board. He received his B.A., M.A. and PhD from Brandeis University, all in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, he also was a visiting research student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His dissertation was advised by Alexander Altmann and is titled "Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages".
He married Debbie (Debora) Dworkin in 1973. They have five children. In 1978 he made Aliyah to Beer Sheva, Israel, where he still lives.
Lasker served as a faculty member in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (1978–2017) and as of 2017 is a professor emeritus. He served as department chair and was the incumbent of the Norbert Blechner Chair of Jewish Values. His main field of research and teaching is Medieval Jewish philosophy.
He has taught as well at Yale University, Princeton University, Ohio State University, University of Toronto, Yeshiva University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, Boston College, Queens College, Ahva College, Kirkland College, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Gratz College.
He also served as the vice president of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies which is housed at the Ben Zvi institute, [1] Jerusalem.
His areas of interest are medieval Jewish philosophy (including the thought of Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Hasdai Crescas), the Jewish-Christian debate, Karaite Judaism , and other issues in Jewish theology and law. His first book, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity (1977; second edition, 2007), details the use of philosophy in the medieval Jewish critique of Christianity. His most recent book, co-authored with Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis and David Sklare, is Theological Encounters at a Crossroads: A Preliminary Edition of Judah Hadassi’s Eshkol ha-kofer, First Commandment, and Studies of the Book’s Judaeo-Arabic and Byzantine Contexts (2019). This book serves as a partial edition and translation of a twelfth-century Karaite book of commandments and theology. His other books are an edition and translation of Hasdai Crescas’ Refutation of the Christian Principles (1990, 1992); (with Sarah Stroumsa), The Book of Nestor the Priest (1996), which presents the texts and translations of the earliest extant Jewish anti-Christian polemic, written in Judaeo-Arabic and then translated into Hebrew; From Judah Hadassi to Elijah Bashyatchi: Studies in Late Medieval Karaite Philosophy (2008), which describes developments in Karaite philosophy from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries in the Byzantine Empire He has also co-edited a jubilee volume and three conference proceedings and authored over 250 other publications.
Lasker's publications in the field of Jewish-Christian polemics have emphasized the extent to which the critique of Christianity is an integral part of Jewish theological self-definition. Thus, in those Jewish communities in which Jews engaged in rational speculation - the Islamic east, Iberia, Southern France, and Italy - arguments against Christianity were a regular part of their discussions. Among the important thinker-polemicists from these areas were Saadia Gaon, Moses Nahmanides, Hasdai Crescas, Joseph Albo, and Isaac Abravanel. In contrast, northern European Jewish communities, which generally eschewed rationalism, rarely wrote specifically anti-Christian treatises. Only under extreme stress did Jews in northern Europe write specifically polemical compositions, and their works were concentrated on exegesis and not theology. Lasker's conclusion is that, in contrast to the accepted historiographical narrative, Jewish anti-Christian polemical activity is not necessarily a response to Christian missionary pressure; the medieval Jewish critique of Christianity is much more complex than that. In addition, a full understanding of medieval Jewish philosophy requires attention to the interreligious polemical motives behind the philosophical discussions.
Lasker's studies of Karaism and Karaite philosophy have demonstrated the close connection between Karaite and Rabbanite Jewish thought. By publishing articles which survey Karaite intellectual achievements from the tenth to nineteenth centuries, he has shown that Karaite thought has been as dynamic as Rabbanite thought. Starting at the end of the thirteenth century, Karaite authors were greatly influenced by Maimonides and incorporated many of his theological insights into their work. Thus, Lasker has challenged the view that Karaites remained loyal to the Kalam theology of the earliest Karaite thinkers such that Karaism and Karaite thought are unchanging and static. The interplay between Rabbanite and Karaite thought continued into the nineteenth century in eastern Europe before the Karaite communities there until the twentieth century when these communities began to deny their connection to Judaism .
Jewish philosophy includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern Haskalah and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves.
The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, intermittently, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
Harry Austryn Wolfson was an American scholar, philosopher, and historian at Harvard University, and the first chairman of a Judaic Studies Center in the United States. He is known for his seminal work on the Jewish philosopher Philo, but he also authored an astonishing variety of other works on Crescas, Maimonides, Averroes, Spinoza, the Kalam, the Church Fathers, and the foundations of Western religion. He collapsed the artificial barriers that isolated the study of Christian philosophy from Islamic philosophy and from Jewish philosophy. Being the first Judaica scholar to progress through an entire career at a top-tier university, in Wolfson is also represented the fulfillment of the goals of the 19th-century Wissenschaft des Judentums movement.
Karaite Judaism or Karaism is a Jewish religious movement characterized by the recognition of the written Tanakh alone as its supreme authority in halakha and theology. Karaites believe that all of the divine commandments which were handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah without any additional Oral Law or explanation. Unlike mainstream Rabbinic Judaism, which regards the Oral Torah, codified in the Talmud and subsequent works, as authoritative interpretations of the Torah, Karaite Jews do not treat the written collections of the oral tradition in the Midrash or the Talmud as binding.
Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas was a Spanish-Jewish philosopher and a renowned halakhist. Along with Maimonides ("Rambam"), Gersonides ("Ralbag"), and Joseph Albo, he is known as one of the major practitioners of the rationalist approach to Jewish philosophy.
Or Adonai, The Light of the Lord, is the primary work of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, a Jewish philosopher. As some Jews prefer to not use even the respectful title Adonai (Lord) other than in prayer, the book is sometimes called Or Hashem in verbal usage to avoid mentioning even this title of God directly.
Petrus Alphonsi was a Jewish Spanish physician, writer, astronomer and polemicist who converted to Christianity in 1106. He is also known just as Alphonsi, and as Peter Alfonsi or Peter Alphonso, and was born Moses Sephardi. Born in Islamic Spain, he mostly lived in England and France after his conversion.
Aaron ben Joseph of Constantinople, was an eminent teacher, philosopher, physician, and liturgical poet in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
Judah ben Elijah Hadassi was a Karaite Jewish scholar, controversialist, and liturgist who flourished at Constantinople in the middle of the twelfth century. He was known by the nickname "ha-Abel," which signifies "mourner of Zion." Neubauer thinks that "Hadassi" means "native of Edessa"
Profiat Duran, full Hebrew name Isaac ben Moses haLevi) was a Jewish apologist/polemicist, philosopher, physician, grammarian, and controversialist in the 14th century. He was later sometimes referred to by the sobriquet Efodi (האפודי) through association with his two grammars entitled Ephod. After being forcibly converted to Christianity in 1391, he also appears in official records under his Converso name Honoratus de Bonafide. After escaping Spain, he returned to practicing Judaism openly and wrote several works including polemics against Christianity and grammar.
Isaac Husik was a Jewish historian, translator, and student of philosophy, one of the first three individuals to serve as official faculty at Gratz College in Philadelphia.
Ephraim Deinard (1846–1930) was a Hebrew bookman. He was a bookseller, bibliographer, publicist, polemicist, historian, memoirist, author, editor, and publisher. He produced some 70 volumes whose subjects range from Jewish history and antiquities, to treatises against Hasidism, Christianity, and Communism, parodies, medieval and modern Hebrew literature, Jewish religion, and especially booklore.
Abner of Burgos was a Jewish philosopher, a convert to Christianity and a polemical writer against his former religion. Known after his conversion as Alfonso of Valladolid or "Master Alfonso."
Moses ha-Kohen de Tordesillas was a Spanish Jewish controversialist of the fourteenth century.
Jewish Kalam was an early medieval style of Jewish philosophy that evolved in response to Kalam in Islam, which in turn was a reaction against Aristotelianism.
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Muhammad Tabrizi was a thirteenth-century Persian Muslim writer, known for his Arabic commentary on the twenty five propositions at the beginning of Book II of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, on which Maimonides then based his proof of the existence, unity and incorporeality of God. The propositions, derived from Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, were merely summarised by Maimonides; Tabrizi gives a detailed discussion of them, based on the work of Arabic authors. It is the earliest known commentary on a part of the Guide.
The Book of Nestor the Priest, originally titled Account of the Disputation of the Priest or its Hebrew textual avatar Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer is thought to be the earliest surviving anti-Christian Jewish polemic. The original version of the book was written in Judeo-Arabic and also a translation to Hebrew which confused an opening quote from Nestorius with the name of the author of the book, who is actually unknown. It cites extensively and critically from the New Testament and Church sources. The title komer (כומר) describes a Christian priest, rather than a kohen or Jewish priest. The text is written as the story of a Christian priest who converted to Judaism and wrote a critical account of the fundamental Christian doctrine regarding the nature of Jesus and the Trinity.
Jewish polemics and apologetics in the Middle Ages were texts written to protect and dissuade Jewish communities from conversion to Christianity, or more rarely to Islam. The terms polemics and apologetics may be distinguished but may also be considered somewhat subjective. A smaller number of proselytizing text also exists intended to convert Christians, or more rarely Muslims, to Judaism. However, the vast majority of Jewish polemical literature was written in response to Christian polemical writings and with a permanent reference to Christian arguments.
The Constantinopolitan Karaites or Greco-Karaites are a Karaite community with a specific historical development and a distinct cultural, linguistic, and literary heritage stemming from their residency in the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. There are numerous commonalities between the community and the Rabbinical Romaniote Jews.
Shalom Sadik is a scholar of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages. He is a member of the Jewish Thought Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and has published articles and books on the subject. He has been honored with various academic awards in recognition of his work, which focuses on topics such as free will, the philosophy of Maimonides, the philosophy of the Jewish Apostate in Spain and natural-Law.
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