“Reflections on Tzelem and Human Reconciliation”

———————

Ephraim Meir is Professor emeritus of Modern Jewish Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University and President of the Internationale Rosenzweig-Gesellschaft.

From 2009 until 2017, he was the Levinas guest Professor for Jewish Dialogue Studies and Interreligious Theology at the Academy of World Religions, University of Hamburg. From August until December 2018 he was a research fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton. For a few months in 2021 and 2022 he was a research fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, South Africa.

Among his latest works: Dialogical Thought and Identity. Trans-Different Religiosity in Present Day Societies (2013), Interreligious Theology. Its Value and Mooring in Modern Jewish Philosophy (2015; German version 2016; Hebrew version 2022), Old-New Jewish Humanism (2018), Faith in the Plural (2019), The Marvel of Relatedness (2021) and Gandhi and Jewish Philosophers. Trans-different Encounters (2024).

For more information, see https://www.ephraimmeir.com

“Iḥsān, Catharsis, and the Trilogy of the Soul”

———————

Atif Khalil is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Religion at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada), where he has been teaching for more than fifteen years. He is the author of Repentance and the Return to God: Tawba in Early Sufism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018), and numerous academic articles on the mystical, ethical, and philosophical dimensions of Islam. He is also co-editor of In Search of the Lost Heart (Albany: SUNY, 2012), Mysticism and Ethics in Islam (Beirut: AUB Press, 2022), and I of the Heart (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). At present, he is writing a monograph on the mystical ethics of Ibn ‘Arabi and another one on the theory and practice of dhikr. Before moving to Lethbridge, he was actively involved in Toronto in co-facilitating programs with Rabbi Aubrey Glazer to foster better understanding between local Jewish and Muslim communities around themes common to the Judeo-Islamic tradition.

“Tzelem in the Hebrew Bible.”

———————

My research interests span the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism. I combine traditional historical, literary, and philological approaches with newer methods from cultural anthropology and cognitive linguistics, as well as intersectional, sensory, and somatic analyses. Most of my research and writing aims to interpret ancient Jewish wisdom literature. I am particularly interested in how ancient Jewish sages inculcated wisdom bodily in their students by educating the senses and thereby constructing a sensorium. My current monograph Wisdom in the Flesh aims precisely to describe such a moment in the cultural history of the senses by taking the book of Proverbs as a case study. In addition, I am currently writing a commentary (with Matthew Goff) on the Wisdom of Ben Sira for the Illuminations Commentary Series.

“Intentional Orientation, Consequences and Iḥsān: An Examination of Islamic Moral Philosophical Theories.”

———————

Fatma Akan Ayyıldız is a research assistant at the Chair of Islamic Law at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. After graduating from high school in Berlin, she studied Islamic Theology at Marmara University in Istanbul, followed by a master`s degree in Systematic Theology (kalām). In the years 2020 to 2022 she was part of the research group "Wege zu einer Ethik", a joint project with Goethe University in Frankfurt. She is currently working on her doctorate at Humboldt-Universität on Ṭāshkubrīzādeh`s and Munajjimbāshī`s commentaries on ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī`s ethical treatise.

“B’tselem Elohim: Ground for Inclusionary Covenantal Commitments”

———————

Professor Marcia Pally teaches at New York University and held the Mercator Professorship in the Theology Faculty of Humboldt University, Berlin, where she is now an annual guest professor. Her most recent books are White Evangelicals and Right-wing Populism: How Did We Get Here?; From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen; and Commonwealth and Covenant: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality. Commonwealth and Covenant was selected by the United Nations Committee on Education for Justice for worldwide distribution and was nominated for a Grawemeyer Award in religion. She was a Fellow at the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton in 2019-2020 and was twice a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin. Prof. Pally has been a columnist and contributor to U.S. and European periodicals, including Religion News Service, Religion and Ethics, Commonweal, The New York Times, The Guardian, die Zeit, and Südduetsche Zeitung, among others.

Chair

———————

Associate Professor, Diretor of Graduate Admissions and MA Programs

University of Virginia

“Exploring Iḥsān in Islamic Mystical Exegesis: A Study on Isrāʾīliyyāt Contributions.”

———————

“Tzelem in Rabbinic Literature.”

———————

Professor of Religious Studies

University of Virginia

Chair

———————

“Image in Maimonides’s Epistle to Yemen.”

———————

Assistant Professor, Mellon Fellow, Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures

University of Virginia

“Isaac Israeli’s Conception of Iḥsān and Tzelem in his Philosophical Thought.”

———————

Chair

———————

Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Israel Institute Faculty Fellow

University of Virginia

“Ethical considerations regarding iḥsān.”

———————

Bahattin Akyol, born and raised in Haan near Düsseldorf, is a research associate at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Graz in Austria and a lecturer at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology at Humboldt University in Berlin. He received his Bachelor's degree in Islamic Theology and Master's degree in Islamic Law from the Faculty of Theology at Marmara University in Istanbul. His doctoral thesis focuses on the ethical thought of the scholar Abū l-Ḥasan al-Māwardī. He teaches Islamic Law, Systematic Theology, and Ethics at the BIT. His studies aim to contribute to the conception of a research field "Islamic Ethics" within Islamic Theology.

“Tzelem and Imitatio Dei in Jewish Ethical Thought”

———————

Shira Billet is Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Academic Director of JTS's Hendel Center for Ethics and Justice. Prior to joining the faculty at JTS, Shira completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Judaic Studies and Philosophy at Yale University. She is currently completing a book on the Jewish German Neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen based on her 2019 dissertation from Princeton University.

Chair

———————

“The spinning wheel proclaims ‘God’!: Cultivating Iḥsān Through the Vernacular Poetry of Shah Husain.”

———————

I am a 4th year PhD student at the University of Virginia’s Religious Studies department. I received a BSc. Hon. degree in Anthropology and Sociology from Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. Broadly, I am interested in how philosophical and literary texts provide communities with resources to live a meaningful life. I am, therefore, fascinated with the role of language, both Divine and human, in dealing with questions of meaning and the human perception of the self, God and the external world. My research focuses particularly on Sufi traditions in South Asia, with a focus on the pedagogical elements of Punjabi Sufi poetry, which provide tools for spiritual and social healing, thereby teaching us how to live meaningfully.

“Image-Thinker, Symbol-Thinker: Rosenzweig, Tillich, and the Figuring of Tradition.”

———————

Research Associate and Lecturer

University of Virginia

“Desire and Image: On Overcoming Bad Faith.”

———————

Lecturer in Jewish theology, law and hermenutics at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

Chair

———————

Humboldt University of Berlin

“Framing an aesthetic mind. Navid Kermani‘s work as a pathway to an aesthetic epistemology.”

———————

Esma Ünsal received her Bachelor of Arts in Islamic Theology from the University of Ankara and her Master of Arts in Philosophy of Religion from the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Currently she is a research assistant and PhD student at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology at the professorship for Comparative Theology from an Islamic Perspective.

“What is an Image? Phenomenological Reflections.”

———————

Zachary Braiterman is Professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. He is the author The Shape of Revelation: Aesthetics and Modern Jewish Thought (Stanford University Press, 2007), (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton University Press 1998), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: The Modern Era (2012). He is currently at work finishing a new project, In the Image: Virtual Jewish Thought and Philosophical Talmud

Chair

———————

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

University of Virginia

Text Study

———————

Humboldt University of Berlin

Text Study

———————

Junior professor for Islamic fundamentals of faith, philosophy and ethics

Humboldt University of Berlin

Text Study

———————

Humboldt University of Berlin

“Reverence and Revulsion: Tombstone images at the Sabbatian Cemetery in Istanbul.”

———————

Bilkent University, Turkey

Department of Turkish Literature

Esra Almas’s research focuses on the intersections of memory studies, diaspora, and the urban imaginary. Her current project is on Jewish memories of Istanbul. Through readings that prioritize sight, sound, taste, and thought, her studies probe how Jewish lives are inscribed in the fabric of the city, shedding light on the multidirectional memory of the region.

She has worked as a translator, moderator, and organizer for PEN International, has taught at the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, and at İstanbul Şehir University. She held a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Almas is an honorary fellow at the Netherlands Institute in Turkey. She is also a part of an NEH-funded project to co-write a textbook about Jews in the Modern Middle East. During her residency at the Neubauer Collegium, she is contributing to the Quest for Modern Language Between the Mediterranean and Black Sea project, focusing on the emergence of modern Turkish language in the eyes of German-Jewish academic exiles.

Almas holds a PhD from the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. She completed her graduate degree at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and received her undergraduate degree from Bogazici University, Turkey.

“Reverence and Revulsion: Tombstone images at the Sabbatian Cemetery in Istanbul.”

———————

Jack Kugelmass is Professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He is a cultural anthropologist with a focus on the anthropology of Jewish life, especially in Poland and the United States.

“The Practice of Virtue as a Lay Theurgy? The Ontology of Moral Beauty in the Vernacular Sufi Teachings of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī (d. 1329).”

———————

Independent Scholar

Chair

———————

Associate Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy

University of Virginia