Alan Levenson is Schusterman/Josey Chair of Jewish History at the University of Oklahoma and director of Judaic and Israel Studies. He is the author of The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible: How Scholars in Germany, Israel, and America Transformed an Ancient Text (2011); Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany, 1871–1932 (2004); An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers: From Spinoza to Soloveitchik (2006); and Joseph: Portraits through the Ages (2016). He also edited The Wiley-Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism.
Ever since early Islam, Jews have been dubbed the people of the book. The title stuck in European lands too, a deferential nod to the role of the Hebrew Bible in the Western canon, the breadth of Jew...
Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe / Photo by Phillip Kalantzis Cope / Flickr
In the wake of the October 27 mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the U...