Orr

Scharf

The Open University of Israel

Ruth Meltzer Fellowship

Research Topic

The Dark Side of Theo-Politics: Martin Buber's Conception of Gnosis as Radical Evil

Bio

Dr. Orr Scharf is a post-doctoral fellow at the Open University of Israel. He holds a bachelor of music degree from The University of Melbourne, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from The University of Haifa. His dissertation, Thinking in Translation: Scripture in the Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, written under the supervision of Prof. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Prof. Daniel Statman is forthcoming from De Gruyter academic publishers. He is editor of Vorlesungen zu Judentum und Christentum (Lectures on Judaism and Christianity), volume 5 in the Martin Buber Werkausgabe. In his research Dr. Scharf explores the cross-fertilization of ideas and methodologies between Jewish thinkers and modern thought. He is particularly interested in the ways in which the traditional sources of Judaism have informed the discourse on modernity—its challenges, prospects and shortcomings. He has published articles on Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and the modern reception of Flavius Josephus, among others. His publications also include scholarly translations of monographs such as a biography of Hayim Nachman Bialik's by Prof. Avner Holtzman, published by Yale University Press, Yochanan Muffs' The Personhood of God (Hebrew), and Tractate Sotah (in collaboration with Prof. Ishay Rosen-Zvi) for the forthcoming Oxford Mishnah.

Fellowship

2016–2017

Political Ramifications: Expanding Jewish Political Thought

Asking if and how Jewish history, culture, and experience offered new paradigms with which to engage the political—and, conversely, how mainstream political theories might expand Jewish studies in new and productive directions.