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Prof. Dr. David B. Ruderman

Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History, University of Pennsylvania

Humboldt Research Award-Fellow at the Martin-Buber-Chair and the Institute for Jewish Studies (2016–2019, each summer semester)

Email: ruderman@sas.upenn.edu

Academic Interests

  • Interactions between Jewish thought and scientific discoveries in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period
  • Jewish culture in Early Modern Europe, especially the Jewish Enlightenment in England

Current Research Project

  • Missionaries, Meshummadim [apostates], and Maskilim: An Entangled History of Christians, Jews and Those In Between in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Selected Publications

  • A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinḥas Hurwitz and its Remarkable Legacy, University of Washington Press (2014)
  • Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History, Princeton University Press (2010)
  • Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's Construction of Modern Jewish Thought, Princeton University Press (2000)
  • Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, Yale University Press (1995)
  • Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician, Harvard University Press (1988)
  • The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham B. Mordecai Farissol, Hebrew Union College Press (1981)

Selected recent Fellowships and Awards

2016-2019          Humboldt Research Award-Fellow at the Martin-Buber-Chair and the -Institute for Jewish Studies (each summer semester)
2015            First Scholar-in-Residence at the Jewish Historical Society of England
2015 Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University, Budapest
2014 Visiting Professor at the Graduiertenkolleg „Theologie als Wissenschaft“, Goethe University, Frankfurt
2013 Guest Professor at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
2012 Guest Professor „Wissenschaft und Judentum“ at the ETH Zurich
2011 German Transatlantic Program Fellow at the American Academy of Berlin

For further information on David B. Ruderman and his work, see:

Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, eds. Richard Cohen, Natalie Dohrmann, Adam Shear, and Elhanan Reiner, Hebrew Union College Press (2014)

or visit:

http://www.history.upenn.edu/people/faculty/david-b-ruderman