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Lawrence Kaplan

Professor Lawrence KaplanAssociate Professor

Areas of Interest:

Rabbinics, Jewish Law and Philosophy

Education:

B.A. (Yeshiva University), M.A., Ph.D. (Harvard University)

Publications:

Edited Books

Maimonides between Philosophy and Halakhah: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Lectures on the Guide of the Perplexed at the Bernard Revel Graduate School, 1950-51. Based on the notes of Rabbi Gerald (Yaakov) Homnick, Edited, Annotated, and with an Introduction by Lawrence Kaplan. Ktav Press, 2016 (256 pp.)

Essays

“Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the Origins of the Jewish Psyche,” to appear in Jewish Review of Books, forthcoming Spring 2018.

“The Purpose of the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides’ Theory of Parables, and Sceptical versus Dogmatic Readings of the Guide,” in Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism in Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Thought, Maimonides Centre for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Hamburg. De Gruyter, Berlin (forthcoming)  

“Yehezkel Kaufmann, R. Nachman Krochmal, and the ‘Anxiety of Influence,’” in Yehezkel Kaufmann and the Reinvention of Jewish Biblical Exegesis, edited by B.  Sommer, T. Staubli, and J. Jindo. Orbis Biblicus Orientalis (Academic Press Fribourg, 2017):122-146.

Response to Daniel Lasker “Polemics, Religion, and Scepticism in Judah Halevi’s Book of Kuzari”, in Yearbook 2017, Maimonides Centre for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Hamburg. De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 215-221.

“The Ethos of Submission, Union with the Spirit of the Torah, and Confronting the Challenges of the Time: R. Abraham Isaiah Karelitz, the Hazon Ish,” (in Hebrew) in The Gdoilim: Leaders who Shaped Israeli Haredi Jewry, eds. Benjamin Brown and Nissim Leon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Van Leer Institute, 2017), pp. 479-519.

“Mishneh Torah’s Structure and Meaning: A Counter Response to David Gillis” Hakirah 21 (summer, 2016): 53-59.

“Saving Knowledge” (essay on Solomon Schechter’s “Nachman Krochmal and the ‘Perplexities of the Time’’’) Jewish Quarterly Review 106:2 (spring, 2016):138-144.              

“Was Mendelssohn a Deist or a Theist? and Does It Matter?" Moses Mendelssohn: Enlightenment, Religion, Politics, Nationalism, eds. Michah Gottlieb and Charles H. Manekin (Bethesda Maryland: University Press of Maryland, 2016), pp. 169-203.

Introduction to Maimonides between Philosophy and Halakhah: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Lectures on the Guide of the Perplexed at the Bernard Revel Graduate School, 1950-51. Based on the notes of Rabbi Gerald (Yaakov Homnick) (Ktav Press, 2016), pp. 20-68.

“Further Reflections on Classification of Mishneh Torah,” Hakirah 19 (2015), pp. 29-70.

“Back to Zechariah Frankel and Louis Jacobs? On Integrating Academic Talmudic Scholarship into Israeli Religious Zionist Yeshivot and the Specter of the Historical Development of the Halakah,” Modern Jewish Studies 14:1 (2015), pp. 89-108.

“Thoroughly Modern Maimonides?” Review essay of Recent Literature on Maimonides.  Jewish Review of Books  5:3 (Fall, 2014), pp. 12-15.

“Kashrut and Kugel: Franz Rosenzweig’s The Builders,” Jewish Review of Books 5:1 (winter, 2014), pp. 41-43.

“More Nevukhe ha-Zeman,” Enzyklopadie judischer Geschichte und Kultur, Band 4 (2014) Verlag J.B. Metzler, pp. 231-235.

“Exposition as a High Art: Review Essay of Gerald J. (Ya‘akov) Blidstein, Society and Self: On the Writings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Hakirah 15 (summer, 2013), pp. 61-108

“The Ethical Theories of Rabbis Abraham Isaac Kook and Joseph B. Soloveitchik,”

Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics, eds. Jonathan Crane and Elliot Dorff (Oxford, 2013), pp. 166-185. 

Review of Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press 2013. Seforim Blog (online). November, 2013.

“Faith, Rebellion, and Heresy in the Writings of R. Azriel of Gerona,” Faith: Jewish Perspectives, eds. Avi Sagi and Dov Schwartz (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013), pp. 278-301.

“Ish ha-Halakhah,” Enzyklopadie judischer Geschichte und Kulter, Vol. 3 (2012), Verlag J.B. Metzler pp. 142-146.

“Rav Soloveitchik’s Lonely Man of Faith in Contemporary Modern Orthodox Jewish Thought,’’ (in Hebrew), Rabbi in the New World: The Influence of Rabbi J. B Soloveitchik on Culture, Education, and Jewish Thought, eds. Avinoam Rosenak and Naftali Rothenberg (Magnes Press and Van Leer Institute, 2011), 147-176

“Uncle Melech and Cousin Joey: The Search for the Absent Hero in A.M. Klein’s The Second Scroll and Mordecai Richler’s St. Urbain’s Horseman,” Failure’s Opposite: Listening to A. M. Klein, eds. Norman Ravvin and Sherry Simon (McGill-Queens, 2011), pp. 179-190, 239-242

“’The Starling’s Caw:’ Judah Halevi as Philosopher, Poet, and Pilgrim,” Review Essay of Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167-1900, Cambridge University Press, 2008; Raymond P. Scheindlin, The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimage, Oxford University Press, 2008, and Hillel Halkin, Yehuda Halevi. Next 0Book, Schocken, 2009. Jewish Quarterly Review 101:1 (2011): 97-132.  

“From Cooperation to Conflict: Rabbi Professor Emanuel Rackman, Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and the Evolution of American Modern Orthodoxy,” Modern Judaism 30:1 (Feb., 2010): 1-23.

“A Righteous Judgment on a Righteous People: Rabbi Isaac Hutner’s Implicit Theology of the Holocaust,” Hakirah 10 (2010), pp. 101-116.

Translations from Hebrew

R. Nahman Krochmal, Selections from Guide of the Perplexed of the Age in Jewish Legal Theories: Writings on State, Religion, and Morality, eds. Leora Batnitsky and  Yonatan Brafman, Brandeis Library of Jewish Thought (University Press of New England, 2018), pp. 58-64.

Yehezkel Kaufmann, Review Essay of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (with Briah Kahana) in Yehezkel Kaufmann and the Reinvention of Jewish Biblical Exegesis, edited by B.  Sommer, T. Staubli, and J. Jindo. Orbis Biblicus Orientalis (Academic Press Fribourg, 2017): 318-336.

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