Shalom Rosenberg

Abstract

Abstract Shalom Rosenberg (b. 1937) was, until his retirement in 2005, professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He emigrated to Israel from Argentina as a teenager and did his undergraduate and graduate studies at Hebrew University, specializing in medieval Jewish philosophy. He received his doctorate in 1974 for a dissertation on “Logic and Ontology in Jewish Philosophy in the Fourteenth Century.” In addition to his regular teaching appointments at Hebrew University, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard; the Universidad Ibero-America in Mexico; the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil; and the Urbaniane in Vatican City, Rome. His academic research has centered around three issues: (1) the history of logic in Hebrew medieval sources; (2) the relationship between modern philosophy and Jewish thought especially as this bears on notions of revelation; and (3) the relationship between religion and ethics within the Jewish tradition. In addition, he has been involved in educational activities that seek to integrate the texts and values of medieval and modern Jewish thought into the wider Israeli cultural mainstream. He has written and edited several volumes that address this significant social issue. The essay “The Holocaust: Lessons, Explanation, Meaning,” first presented at a conference sponsored by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in Ashkelon, Israel, in 1999, represents a very personal response by Shalom Rosenberg to the philosophical and theological issues raised by the Shoah. As he understands these matters, a personal response is the only appropriate stance given what he perceives as the “sacred” character of “the memory of the Holocaust.” Rosenberg feels strongly that using the Holocaust in any way, or deriving any sort of”lessons” from it, whether political, philosophical, or otherwise, constitutes a profane act.