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I argue that the thinking of Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) is still reflected in the practices of contemporary Jewish educators: despite the understandable obsolescence of his "transcendental idealism" in academic philosophy, Cohen’s focus on Jewish practice as a form of care for the self anticipates the most important trends in philosophy, and in Jewish thought and education today. The last third of this paper considers the work of philosopher Charles Taylor as a demonstration of the ways in which Cohen's approach lives on -- however transformed by phenomenology's turn to experience -- in one of our most compelling thinkers. This piece appeared both in Hermann Cohen's Ethics, Brill, 2006, edited by Robert Gibbs, and The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 2005

In light of attacks on liberal education by partisans of on-line innovations, the author re-articulates the meaning and purpose of the higher education enterprise.

This sheet (pedagogical materials) illustrates my backwards design approach to introducing a Hasidic Master (e.g. Maggid of Mezrich) and their reading of the God-Israel relationship. First, the learners have an opportunity to respond affectively, aesthetically, and cognitively to the verses at play in the Maggid's understanding; and only after their deep dive into the meanings of these texts, as experienced by them, are the Maggid's distinctive readings offered for their consideration.

In these materials, the Maggid's comments and interpretations appear following the Song of Song's text, and key Hebrew phrases from the verses already studied are resupplied for easy reference.

For those of you aware of the distinguished philosophical career of Hermann Cohen (1842 - 1918) and the absence of an intellectual biography in English, Frederick Beiser’s scholarship is a long time coming. Though Cohen scholarship has experienced a mini-renaissance in the last thirty years in the English speaking world, knowledge of Cohen, his scholarship on Kant, his activity in the Jewish community, and his battle against anti-semitism in Germany have remained largely confined to academic Jewish studies. Fortunately Beiser’s new book Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford University Press, 2018) commands a broader audience with much to offer historians, philosophers, theologians in addition to Jewish thinkers. In the course of this NBN conversation, Professor Beiser and Avi Bernstein, then Director of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Brandeis University discuss Cohen’s lifelong quest for a “religion of reason;” effort to “rescue” Kant from psychologists who had misunderstood him; hostility to Spinoza; interest in the science and math of infinitesimally small quantities; left-of-center Wilhelmine politics; his system of philosophy; unrequited love affair with German culture; and his ontological argumentation for God. Cohen’s posthumously published Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism is left largely unremarked in Beiser’s book, as the author freely admits. With humility Beiser calls on his colleagues in Jewish Studies to go more deeply than he into this “masterpiece” of Cohen’s dotage, for in his estimation the Religion of Reason contains arguments for the idea of God that remain worthy of readers even today.

Managing a unit staffed by volunteers can present significant challenges for university leaders, but by taking some simple steps it’s possible to build a model that works in the long run.

In the course of reviewing a book on philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas (1906 - 1995), I make a plea for the importance of philosophy in the field of Jewish Studies and gesture at the monumental challenges posed to those, like Hermann Cohen (1842 - 1918), who have tried to carve out a place for it

THE ‘NEW LEARNING’ IN ADULT JEWISH EDUCATION: ‘Modern Judaism’ Out of its Biblical and Philosophical Sources. Journal of Jewish Education, 65(3), 33–40.

A critical essay of recent work in Jewish thought on American Judaism, including Arnold Eisen's Taking Hold of Torah, and Eisen and Stephen Cohen's The Jew Within.

This paper outlines Hermann Cohen's picture of Jewish identity and introduces the reader to its relationship to his philosophical program. Cohen's relevance to trends and developments in Anglo-American moral philosophy (e.g. the groundbreaking book, After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntrye) provide the frame.

An edited volume of Jewish scholarly creativity representing engagement with issues and questions that were both alive in the field of academic Jewish Studies circa 1997-1999/5758-5759 and deemed worthy of broad public interest