Samuel
Brody
Research Topic
Jewish Thought and Political Economy
Bio
Samuel Hayim Brody is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2013, and previously taught there and at the University of Cincinnati. Professor Brody researches and teaches on subjects in modern Jewish thought, especially as it relates to political thought. His first monograph, This Pathless Hour: The Theopolitics of Martin Buber from Weimar Germany to Mandate Palestine, is forthcoming from Indiana University Press. The book focuses on the concept of “theopolitics” in Buber’s biblical writings, examining the concept’s roots in German anarchism, its deployment against Carl Schmitt and political theology, and its pervasive presence as a hermeneutic key to Buber’s understanding of biblical faith, as well as its application to the contemporary Zionist project and to Buber’s notorious bi-nationalism. Brody previously served as editor of volume 15 in the current German edition of Buber’s collected works, the Martin Buber Werkausgabe, entitled Schriften zum Messianismus (2014). Having been struck by the frequency with which Buber, like many other modern Jewish thinkers, proclaims that Judaism is concerned with “not constitution of cult and custom only, [but] also of economy and society,” Brody now plans a new research project on the relationships between Jewish thought and political economy.
