Elias Sacks

Ph.D., Princeton University, 2012

Research Interests: 

Judaism, religious thought, religion and politics, theories and methods, religious ethics

Primary Teaching Areas and Opportunities for Student Supervision

• Jewish thought, history, and exegesis
• Jewish-Christian relations
• modern philosophy and theology
• religion, ethics, and politics
• theories and methods

Overview

Elias Sacks joined the University of Colorado Boulder faculty in 2012, and works on the Jewish tradition, religious thought, and theories and methods in the study of religion. After receiving his A.B. from Harvard University and studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he earned an M.A. in Religion from Columbia University (2007) and a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University (2012). His research focuses on the modern period, with particular areas of interest including Jewish thought, Jewish-Christian relations, philosophy of religion, religion and politics, hermeneutics, and religious ethics. His first book, Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), offers a far-reaching reassessment of the account of Jewish practice developed by Moses Mendelssohn, the eighteenth-century philosopher generally seen as the founder of modern Jewish thought. Sacks is currently working on a second book on the nineteenth-century thinker Nachman Krochmal, one of modernity’s first Eastern European Jewish philosophers. With Lawrence Kaplan, Sacks is currently producing the first English translation of Krochmal’s Hebrew magnum opus, The Guide of the Perplexed of the Time (Moreh Nevukhei Ha-zeman), for the Yale Judaica Series, a joint initiative of the Yale University Jewish Studies Program and Yale University Press. He has also written on medieval and modern figures such as Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Jacob Taubes, and published some of the first English translations of Mendelssohn’s Hebrew works in a new edition of the thinker's writings (Brandeis University Press, 2011, finalist for the National Jewish Book Award). 

Sacks is the Modern Judaism editor for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (De Gruyter), and is involved in grant-funded projects on Jews of color in the United States and debates about Jewish inclusion in modern Europe. He holds leadership positions in the Association for Jewish Studies and Society of Jewish Ethics, and previously served as Director of The Jewish Publication Society.

Recent and Forthcoming Publications (Selected)

• Nachman Krochmal, The Guide of the Perplexed of the Time (Moreh Nevukhei Ha-zeman), translated, introduced, and annotated with Lawrence Kaplan, Yale Judaica Series (Yale University Press, under contract)
• “The Limits of Continuity: Nachman Krochmal and the Case for Philosophy,” in Cultures of Continuity, eds. Ufuk Topkara and Asher Biemann (De Gruyter, forthcoming)
• "Can God Reject the Jewish People? Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, Supersessionism, and Modern Jewish Thought," Journal of Textual Reasoning (forthcoming)
• “Do Jews Believe in God?,” “Was Paul Jewish?” in Judaism in 5 Minutes, ed. Sarah Imhoff (Equinox, forthcoming)
• "Moses Mendelssohn," in Jewish Virtue Ethics, eds. Geoffrey Claussen, Alex Green, and Alan Mittleman (SUNY Press, 2023), 241-254
• "Modes of Interpretation in Jewish Ethics" in Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics, 3 vols., eds. William Schweiker, Maria Antonaccio, Elizabeth Bucar, and David Clairmont (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), 2:831-840
• "Liturgical Counter-Symbols: Jacob Taubes, Franz Rosenzweig, and the Politics of Redemption," Rosenzweig Jahrbuch 12 (2021): 127-141
• "Exegesis and Politics Between East and West: Nachman Krochmal, Moses Mendelssohn, and Modern Jewish Thought," Harvard Theological Review 114.4 (2021): 508-535
• "The Promise and Perils of Perplexity: Jewish Philosophy and Public Culture, Yesterday and Today," in The Future of Jewish Philosophy, volume 21 of The Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, eds. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron Hughes (Brill, 2018), 79-97
• Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017)

Affiliations

• Jewish Studies

Courses

• FYSM 1000 (first-year seminar): God
• RLST 2400: Religion, Ethics, and Politics
• RLST/JWST 3100: Judaism
• RLST/JWST 4170-5170: God and Politics
• RLST/JWST 4180-5180: Is God Dead?
• RLST/JWST 4190-5190: Love & Desire
• RLST/JWST 4260-5260: Topics in Judaism: Bible in Judaism and Christianity
• RLST 6830: Introduction to the Academic Study of Religion
• JWST 4000: Capstone in Jewish Studies
• RLST 4840 / JWST 4900: Undergraduate Independent Study
• RLST 5840 / RLST 6840 / JWST 5900: Graduate Independent Study