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. He has also written on medieval and modern figures such as Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, 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)

• "Can God Reject the Jewish People? Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, Supersessionism, and Modern Jewish Thought," Journal of Textual Reasoning (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
• "Poetry, Music, and the Limits of Harmony: Mendelssohn’s Aesthetic Critique of Christianity,” in Sara Levy’s World: Bach, Gender, and Judaism in Enlightenment Berlin, eds. Nancy Sinkoff and Rebecca Cypess, Eastman Studies in Music (University of Rochester Press), 122-146
• “Worlds to Come Between East and West: Immortality and the Rise of Modern Jewish Thought,” in Olam Ha-zeh v’Olam Ha-ba: This World and the World to Come in Jewish Belief and Practice, ed. Leonard Greenspoon, Studies in Jewish Civilization (Purdue University Press), 171-195
• “Is God Eternal? Revisiting Mendelssohn and Rosenzweig on Reason, Revelation, and the Name of God,” Modern Theology 33.1 (2017): 69-91
• Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017)
• "Law, Ethics, and the Needs of History: Mendelssohn, Krochmal, and Moral Philosophy,” Journal of Religious Ethics 44.2 (2016): 352-377
• "Civic Freedom out of the Sources of Judaism: Mendelssohn, Maimonides, and Law’s Promise,” Journal of Jewish Ethics 2.1 (2016): 86-111
• "Anarchy and Law: Mendelssohn on Philosophy and Judaism,” in Moses Mendelssohn: Enlightenment, Religion, Politics, Nationalism, eds. Charles Manekin and Michah Gottlieb (University Press of Maryland, 2015), 237-273
• “Spinoza, Maimonides and the Politics of Prophecy,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 21.1 (2014): 67-98
• “‘Finden Sie mich sehr amerikanisch?’: Jacob Taubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 57 (2012): 187-210
• “Moses Mendelssohn,”  Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies, ed. David Biale (Oxford University Press, 2012)
• Selections from the writings of Moses Mendelssohn (Hebrew), in Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Judaism, Christianity, and the Bible, ed. Michah Gottlieb, trans. Allan Arkush, Curtis Bowman, and Elias Sacks, Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought (Brandeis University Press, 2011); Finalist for 2011 National Jewish Book Award

Affiliations

• Jewish Studies
• Center for Asian 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