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Dr Michael Fagenblat, Senior Lecturer

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The Open University of Israel Department of History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies 1 University Road, P. O. Box 808, Raanana 4353701

Born:1972

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academia.edu

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Continental philosophy, phenomenology, modern Jewish thought, philosophy of religion

10/2015-
Senior Lecturer, The Open University of Israel, Department of History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies
07/2012-
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Monash University
2012-2015
Senior Lecturer in General and Jewish Philosophy, Shalem College, Jerusalem
2013
Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Bard College Al-Quds University, Abu Dis
2010-11
Senior Lecturer, School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University
2004-09
Lecturer, School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University
1999-2000
Golda-Meir Post-Doctoral Fellow, Hebrew University, Jerusalem (sponsor: Professor Moshe Halbertal).
1999-2003
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Shalom Hartman Institute
1995-99
Doctorate (PhD), Monash University, How Is Ethics Possible? A Critical Evaluation of Emmanuel Levinas’ Critique of Heidegger. Supervisor: Professor Kevin Hart, now Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies at the University of Virginia .
1994
Honours (First Class) in Philosophy, Monash University
1990-93
Bachelor of Arts, Monash University

2017  Visiting Fellow, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania

2016  ISF Grant No. 698/16, Analysing Levinas: Second-Person Normativity and the Metaphysics of Mind, 360,000 ILS. over three years.

2012  Lady Davis Fellowship, Department of Philosophy/Department of Jewish Thought, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, $11,500 USD

2012  Shortlisted for the Goldstein-Goren Award for the Best Book in Jewish Thought, 2010-2012 for A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism; Series Cultural Memory in the Present, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010 

2011-12  John Templeton Fellowship in Philosophical Theology, $15,000 USD

2009  Monash University Arts Faculty Grant: “Interdisciplinary Teaching Initiative” (team leader), $4,300 AUD

2009  Monash University International Strategic Initiative Grant: “Internationalizing Interreligious Studies” (team leader), $10,000 AUD

2008  Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, Monash University

2004-6  Category 3 (Australian Research Criteria) Industry Grant Funding, for Darsheini Community Learning on behalf of Monash University, $95,114 AUD

2002-04  Jerusalem Fellow, Mandel Leadership Institute, Jerusalem

2000-01  Golda-Meir Post-Doctorate Fellowship, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

1995-1998  Australian Postgraduate Award, full-time

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A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010; Cultural Memory in the Present). • Shortlisted for the Goldstein-Goren Award for the Best Book in Jewish Thought, 2010-2012

Edited volumes

Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017)

New Under the Sun: Jewish Australians on Religion, Politics and Culture (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2006). With Melanie Landau and Nathan Wolski

“Manifest Glory: Phenomenological Indications from the Hebrew Bible.” Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy; Special Issue on “Philosophy and the Bible,” 54:4 (2015), pp. 497-511.

“Frankism and Frankfurtism: historical heresies for a metaphysics of our most human experiences,” Bamidbar: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 2014:1, pp. 21-55.

“The Passion of Israel: the True Israel according to Levinas, or Judaism as “a category of being”.” Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy 54:3 (2015), pp. 297-320

“The Thing That Scares Me Most: Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and the Return to Zion,” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 14:1 (Fall 2014), 9-24. Translated into Italian in Kasparhauser: Rivista di cultura filosofica 4:12, Special Issue on Heidegger e il nazismo 2.0: Fine del racconto heideggerian, Nov. 2015, 41-72.

“Liturgy, sovereignty, or idolatry? On recent work in political theology,” Political Theology 15:3 (May 2014), 270-78.

“Which Other?” Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 18:4 (2012), 57-77

“Response to Annette Aronowicz,” AJS Review (Spring 2011), 35: 115-124.

“The Apology, the secular and the theological-political,” Dialogue: Journal of the Social Sciences in Australia 27: 2 (2008), 16-32.

“Levinas and Maimonides: From Metaphysics to Ethical Negative Theology,” Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy 16: 1 (2008), 95-147.

“Ethics and Halakhah in Levinas,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 26: 4 (2008), 97-119.

“Back to the Other Levinas: Reflections Prompted by Alain P. Toumayan’s Encountering the Other” Colloquy 10 (2005), 298-313.

“Lacking all Interest: Levinas, Leibowitz and the Pure Practice of Religion,” Harvard Theological Review, 97: 1 (2004), 1-32.

“Rage Against Order: On Recent Work by Jean-Luc Marion,” Verse, 20: 2 & 3 (2003), 188-196.

“Il y a du quotidian: Levinas and Heidegger on the self,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 28: 5 (2002), 578-604

“Delineations: Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity,” Introduction to Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity, ed. M. Fagenblat (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017); .

“A passion for non-knowing true oneness: Derrida and Maimonides on God—and Jew, perhaps,” Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity, ed. M. Fagenblat

“ “Heidegger” and the Jews,” in Reading Heidegger's Notebooks 1931-1941, eds. Jeff Malpas and Ingo Farin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 145-168.

“Fraternal Existence: on the phenomenological crossing of Judaeo-Christianity,” in Is There a Judaeo-Christian Tradition?, eds. Anya Toposki and Emmanuel Nathan (Berlin: De Gruyer, 2016), 185-207.

“Levinas, Judaism, Heidegger,” Traces of Judaism in Contemporary Thought, eds. Agata Bielik-Robson and Adam Lipszyc (London: Routledge, 2014), 51-63.

“The Ethics of Creation: biblical and post-metaphysical views,” in Ethics and Monotheism: Historical and Contemporary Intersections among Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 107-140.

‘The Concept of Neighbor in Jewish and Christian Ethics,” in Jewish Annotated New Testament, eds. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Brettler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 540-44 [revised and expanded version, 2016].

with Nick Trakakis, “Emmanuel Levinas,” in J. Mullarkey and B. Lord, eds., Continuum Companion to Continental Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2009), 311-13.

with M. Landau and N. Wolski, “Will the Centre Hold?” New Under the Sun: Jewish Australians on Religion, Politics and Culture (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2006), 3-16

with N. Wolski, “Revelation Here and Beyond: Buber and Levinas on the Bible,” Dialogue and Difference: Levinas and Buber, eds. P. Atterton, Matthew Calarco and Maurice Friedman (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004), 157-78.

2015  .““Heidegger, Nietzsche and the Jews,” workshop on “Nietzsche and the Jews”  organize by Prof. Vivian Liska, Hebrew University, June 2015..

2014  “Naturalized Theological Realism: A Jewish Approach,” Cambridge University conference on ‘Jewish Studies as Philosophy: Beyond Historicism and Sociology?, 23-25 March, 2014.

2014  “The Passion of Israel: Levinas’ Philosophical account of Judaism and the ‘True Israel’,” Seminar for the Harvard Divinity School and the Centre for Jewish Studies, Harvard University, March 3, 2014.

2014  “Kaplan’s Theological Naturalism,” ‘Mordecai Kaplan Conference,’ Georgetown University, March 1-2, 2014.

2014  “The Voice Where It Is: On Human Rights and Judaism, as it were,” Workshop on “Alterity and Postcolon: Levinas and Glissant,” University of Cape Town, February 11-13, 2014.

2013  “Retrieving the Agent Intellect,” World Congress of Jewish Studies, August 2013

2013  “Frankism and Frankfurtism,” Critical Theory and Jewish Thought Workshop, May 2013, Nottingham University, U.K.

2013  “The Death of Man and the Resurrection of God,” [in Hebrew], Tel Aviv Museum, 1 March 2013

2012  “Derrida and Maimonides on the experience of negative theology,” Australian Philosophy of Religion Association, ACU Melbourne, 22 June 2012

2012  “Destroyer of the Wisdom of the Wise: Levinas’s Political Theology,” 3 May, 2012, Haifa University, Department of Political Science and Department of Jewish Thought; May 8, 2012, Hebrew University, Department of Jewish Thought; May 21, 2012, Ben-Gurion University, Department of Jewish Thought.

2012  “Levinas’s Kehre,” Tel Aviv University, Department of Philosophy, 18 April, 2012; Hebrew University, Department of Philosophy, December 2012.

2011  “The experience of negative theology,” AJS 2011, Washington DC

2011  “Kavod: Phenomenological Metaphysics in the Hebrew Bible,” Philosophical Investigation of the Hebrew Bible, Talmud and Midrash, Shalem Center, Jerusalem, June 26-30, 2011.

2010  “Levinas, Judaism, Heidegger.” Krakow, Poland, conference on Traces of Judaism in Contemporary Thought, October 4-6, 2010. Also presented to the Philosophy Seminar of the Australian Catholic University, November 1, 2010.

2010  "Maimonides: Law and Philosophical Education," Symposium on "The Twelfth-Century Renaissance: People, Texts, Ideas," May 14, 2010

2009  "The Ethics of Creation" Conference on "The Bible and Philosophy" at the Shalem Centre, Jerusalem, October 25-28, 2009

2009  "Ethical Creatureliness," conference on "The Limits of the Human: Philosophical, Historical and Ecological Perspectives," 2-4 September 2009

2009  "Levinas, Paul and the Law," Australian Association of Jewish Studies annual conference, 15-16 February, 2009, University of New South Wales, Sydney. 

2007  "The Metaphysics of Creation," Annual Conference of the Australian Society for Continental Philosophy, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 5-8 December 2007

Between Levinas and Heidegger. SUNY Press, 2014. Eds. John E. Drabinksi and Eric S. Nelson, Notre Dame Philosophical Review 2015.02.12, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/55699-between-levinas-and-heidegger/

The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1916. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. By Pawel Maciejko, Common Knowledge 21:1 (2014), 104-05.

The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology, by Simon Critchley, Common Knowledge 19:3 (2013), 565-566.

The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox of Dialectic, by Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank, ed. Creston Davis, Common Knowledge 19:1 (2013), 136-37.

Confronting Vulnerability: The Body and the Divine in Rabbinic Ethics, by Jonathan Schofer, H-Net (2013).

Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider, by James A. Diamond, Journal of the History of Philosophy 48:2 (2010), 240-41.

The Unthought Debt: Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage, by Marlène Zarader, Common Knowledge 15:3 (2009), 507-8.

Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein, by Hilary Putnam, Common Knowledge 15: 2 (2009), 218.

Maimonides and Mysticism, by Menachem Kellner, Speculum 83: 4 (2008), pp.1016-17.

Maimonides on the Origins of the World, by Kenneth Seeskin, Speculum 82: 1 (2007), 236-37.

Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works, by Herbert A. Davidson, Speculum 81: 3 (2006), 831-32.

Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed, by James A. Diamond, Speculum 80:4 (2005), 1263-1264.

Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn”: The French Debate, by D. Janicaud et al, Common Knowledge 10: 2 (2004), 354-355.

Being Singular Plural, by Jean-Luc Nancy, Common Knowledge, 8: 1 (2001).

Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, by Martin Heidegger, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78: 2 (2000).

Translation of Emmanuel Levinas, “The Contemporary Relevance of Maimonides (1935),” Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy 16:1, 91-94 (from French).

“The Thing that Scared Me Most Was When My Enemy Came Close,” on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and Jewish Thought, Haaretz, Culture & Literature section, 31 May 2014, pg 1 & 4 [Hebrew];

“Footnotes to Footnote,” On the Israeli film Footnote. Jewish Ideas Daily (Online), March 2, 2012.

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  • 2016  Miriam Benedikt, “Anti-Christian Polemic in Midrash Psalms,” PhD (main supervisor, co-supervisor Associate Prof. Peter Howard). Awarded February 2016.
  • 2013  Janine Luttick, “Purity, Anti-Judaism, and Contemporary Exegesis of the New Testament” M.A. thesis. Main supervisor (co-supervisor Ass. Prof. Peter Howard.) Awarded with High Distinction, March 2013.
  • 2012  Ohad Kozminsky, “The Ramifications of Testimony: the Struggle for the Truth in Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption”. MA thesis. Associate supervisor (main supervisor: Prof. Andrew Benjamin). Awarded with High Distinction, November 2012.
  • 2011  Severin Staalesen, “Finding a Place for Nature in the Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas,” Hons. thesis awarded High Distinction (2011)
  • 2009  Andrew Carter, “The Sense of Passion: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Gospel of John,” Hons. thesis awarded summa cum laude (2009) 
  • 2008  Yvonne Fein, “King David in the midrash: between messianism and misogyny,” M.A. awarded with High Distinction (2008) (co-supervised with Prof. Barbara Caine)