Event

21st Annual Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture in Judaic Studies

Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe: Twenty-Five Years Later 

David B. Ruderman

In this lecture, Ruderman will revisit his seminal text Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (Yale University Press). Asking new questions and suggesting new applications for the history of science, Ruderman will expand the scope of his monograph's pertinence and chart the field's growth since his work's publication nearly 25 years ago.

Ruderman is the author of numerous books on the history of science, including The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham b. Mordecai Farissol (Hebrew Union College Press), for which he received the National Jewish Book Award in history in 1982, as well as Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Harvard University Press), and A Valley of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham Ben Hananiah Yagel(University of Pennsylvania Press). Click here for a full list of Ruderman's works. 

Ruderman holds a PhD in Jewish History from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in addition to a rabbinical degree from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He served as the Ella Darivoff Director of the Katz Center from 1994 to 2014 and is currently the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Penn, he was the Frederick P. Rose Chair of Jewish History at Yale University (1983–94) and the Louis L. Kaplan Chair of Jewish Historical Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (1974–83). At both institutions, he was instrumental in establishing Judaic studies programs.

Lecture Series:  Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture Series in Judaic StudiesOpen to the public Sponsors:  Jewish Studies Program, and Department of History