The title of political theorist Alan L. Mittleman's captivating new book is drawn from the patriarch Jacob's blessing to his children and grandchildren. The blessing contains the promise that Judah will become a royal house, perhaps forever. Kings, of course, ceased in Israel, but politics did not. Regime replaced regime. National independence was compromised and lost, regained and lost again. Yet the attention to things political was never lost. Old texts were applied to new political realities. Political awareness and thought, constantly transformed and adapted to new historical exigencies, persisted among the Jews. In The Scepter Shall Not Depart from Judah, Mittleman looks at some of the central problems of political philosophy—such as fundamental rights and the common good—from the point of view of rabbinic Judaism. At the same time, he considers conceptual issues in Judaism—such as covenant and tradition—from the perspective of political philosophy. Mittleman's sources range from the ancient rabbis to contemporary political theorists, making this volume an important one for courses and research in both Jewish studies and political theory.
Alan Mittleman is director of the the Tikvah Institute for Jewish Thought, as well as professor of Jewish Philosophy at The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. As director of the Tikvah Institute, he develops programs and courses that promote constructive Jewish philosophy.
Dr. Mittleman is the author of five books: Between Kant and Kabbalah (SUNY Press, 1990), The Politics of Torah (SUNY Press, 1996), The Scepter Shall Not Depart From Judah (Lexington Books, 2000) Hope in a Democratic Age (Oxford University Press, 2009) and a Short History of Jewish Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell). He is also the editor of Uneasy Allies: Evangelical and Jewish Relations (Lexington Books, 2007), Jewish Polity and American Civil Society (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Jews and the American Public Square (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), and Religion as a Public Good (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). His many articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in such journals as Harvard Theological Review, Modern Judaism, the Jewish Political Studies Review, the Journal of Religion, and First Things. He is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism. Dr. Mittleman's current project is a book on human nature in Jewish thought.
From 2000 to 2004, Dr. Mittleman served as director of the major research project "Jews and the American Public Square," which was initiated by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Under his direction, the project produced two national surveys of Jewish attitudes on public affairs, four volumes comprising forty scholarly essays, and fifteen conferences around the United States. He is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship and served as guest research professor at the University of Cologne (1994 and 1996). He has lectured widely in Germany in the course of more than fifty trips to that country. Dr. Mittleman also received a Harry Starr Fellowship in Modern Jewish History from Harvard University's Center for Jewish Studies (1997).
Dr. Mittleman has been an active participant in interfaith dialogue throughout his career and has been interviewed by Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and USA Today, among other periodicals, and has appeared on Fox News. He was also part of a leadership delegation that met with Pope John Paul II and has lectured at the Gregorian University in Rome. During the bicentennial of the US Constitution, Dr. Mittleman spoke on the meaning of religious liberty for American Jews in the chambers of the US Senate. He served on the Advisory Board of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In 2007, he was visiting professor of Religion at Princeton University.
Dr. Mittleman is an enthusiastic fly fisherman. He lives near a trout stream where he tries to fish 52 weeks of the year.
