Alan Mittleman

Biography

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

Alan Mittleman is Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at The Jewish Theological Seminary. His teaching focuses on the intersection between Jewish thought and Western philosophy in the fields of ethics, political theory, and metaphysics.

His many articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in such journals as Harvard Theological Review, Modern Judaism, Political Theology, Jewish Political Studies Review, Journal of Religion, and First Things.He is a contributor to the Cambridge Companion to American Judaism and to The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Dr. Mittleman’s two most recent books are Does Judaism Condone Violence? Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Holiness in Jewish Thought (Oxford University Press, 2018). His current project is a book on the meaning of life in contemporary philosophical literature and Jewish thought.

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 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 and is a current recipient of grants from the Theology of Joy and the Good Life project at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and from the Jack Miller Center. He has served on the advisory boards of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the John Templeton Foundation. He currently serves 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

• 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.