Sam Lebens

Sam Lebens, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Lebens was awarded his doctorate by the University of London in 2010 for his thesis on Bertrand Russell’s ill-fated Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement. His thesis research lead Lebens into various areas of study, including early analytic philosophy, realism and nominalism regarding universals, the metaphysics and epistemology of logic, and the philosophy of language. Since completing his PhD, Lebens has been living in Israel with his wife and children, and has been concentrating on classical Talmudic study in Rabbinical Seminaries. He comes to the Herzl Institute with the hope of combining his philosophical and Rabbinical education, focusing on the semantics and metaphysical commitments of narrative, as it pertains to Biblical and Rabbinical narratives, and on Talmudic approaches to the philosophy of time. Lebens is the chairperson of the newly formed Association for the Philosophy of Judaism (www.theapj.com).

Miryam Brand

Miryam Brand, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Brand is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies at Brown University, and holds a Ph.D. in Bible and Late Antiquity from New York University. Her book, Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and Its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature, is scheduled for publication in 2012 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, and her introduction and commentary on 1 Enoch will be published in the forthcoming volume The Lost Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Outside of Scripture, ed. Louis Feldman, James Kugel, and Lawrence Schiffman (New York: Jewish Publication Society).

Shmuel Trigano

Shmuel Trigano, Senior Fellow
Shmuel Trigano is Professor of Sociology of Religion and Politics at the University of Paris. He has published 18 books and edited numerous others in the fields of Jewish and Jewish Political Philosophy, Identity, Modernity, Contemporary Judaism, French Jewry, Sociology of Religion and Politics. His publications include The Democratic Ideal and the Shoah: The Unthought in Political Modernity (SUNY Press, 2009; Ben Gurion University Press, 2010 [Hebrew]);Philosophy of the Law (Shalem Press, 2012); andJudaism and the Spirit of the World (Grasset, 2011 [French]). He is also Founding Director of the College of Jewish Studies at the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris, and Founding Editor of two journals: Pardès: A European Journal of Jewish Studies and Culture and Controverses, a journal of political ideas.