Alan Mittleman

Biography

BA (magna cum laude), Brandeis University; MA and PhD (with distinction), Temple University

Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Emeritus Professor of Jewish Philosophy

Alan Mittleman’s teaching focuses on the intersection between Jewish thought and Western philosophy in the fields of ethics, political theory, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of eight books and the editor or co-editor of six.

His many articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in such journals as Harvard Theological Review, Modern Judaism, Jewish Political Studies Review, and Journal of Religion. He is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism, The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, The St. Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology among other reference works.

Dr. Mittleman is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship and served as guest research professor at the University of Cologne (1994 and 1996). He is a Senior Fellow of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Hamburg. He has lectured widely in Germany in the course of more than 50 trips to that country. Dr. Mittleman also received a Harry Starr Fellowship in Modern Jewish History from Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies (1997). He was a fellow of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, a grantee of the Theology of Joy and the Good Life project at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and a Fellow of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served on the advisory boards of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the John Templeton Foundation, and on the academic board of the Ethikon Foundation.
Dr. Mittleman has been an active participant in interfaith dialogue throughout his career, and has been interviewed by Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and USA Today, among others. He was also part of a leadership delegation that met with Pope John Paul II, and he has lectured at the Gregorian University in Rome. During the bicentennial of the US Constitution, Dr. Mittleman spoke on the meaning of religious liberty for American Jews in the chambers of the US Senate. In 2007, he was visiting professor of religion at Princeton University.

Publications

• Absurdity and Meaning in Contemporary Philosophy and Jewish Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
• Holiness in Jewish Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Does Judaism Condone Violence?: Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.
• Human Nature & Jewish Thought: Judaism’s Case for Why Persons Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
• A Short History of Jewish Ethics: Conduct and Character in the Context of Covenant. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
• Hope in a Democratic Age: Philosophy, Religion, and Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Uneasy Allies?: Evangelical and Jewish Relations. Editor, with Byron R. Johnson and Nancy Isserman. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.
• Religion as a Public Good: Jews and Other Americans on Religion in the Public Square. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
• Jewish Polity and American Civil Society: Communal Agencies and Religious Movements in the American Public Sphere. Editor, with Robert Licht and Jonathan D. Sarna. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
• Jews and the American Public Square: Debating Religion and Republic. Editor, with Jonathan D. Sarna and Robert Licht. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
• The Scepter Shall Not Depart from Judah: Perspectives on the Persistence of the Political in Judaism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000.
• The Politics of Torah: The Jewish Political Tradition and the Founding of Agudat Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.
• Between Kant and Kabbalah: An Introduction to Isaac Breuer’s Philosophy of Judaism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.

Research

Dr. Mittleman focuses on the intersection between Jewish thought and Western philosophy in the fields of ethics, political theory, and metaphysics.