2 of 2 - Positive Jewish Attitudes Toward Christianity

[James and Terry Hamilton]

2 of 2 - Positive Jewish Attitudes Toward Christianity

http://www.yorku.ca/human/faculty/lawee.html

Professor Lawee teaches in Humanities and Religious Studies. In the 2005-2006 year he will be teaching HUMA 2850 9.0 "The Jewish Experience: Symbiosis and Rejection" and HUMA 4811 3.0 "Golden Age? The Jews in Muslim and Christian Spain" as well as HUMA 6210 3.0 "Faith and Politics in the Middle Ages."


Professor Lawee is a Contributor to the website (eventually to be a Hyper-Textbook) "Medieval Spains: Antiquity to the New World," an initiative sponsored by Stanford University's Humanities Laboratory.

Eric Lawee's primary research interests lie in the area of medieval and early modern Judaism and Jewish history, with an emphasis on intellectual history. His broader scholarly enthusiasms include the medieval Latin West, Muslim Spain, and political thought -- ancient and medieval especially. Much of his research has focussed on Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508), a courtier in three major European centres (Portugal, Spain, Italy) who stands out as one of Judaism's leading scholars at the turn of the sixteenth century. Among Professor Lawee's
studies of Abarbanel are an article that appeared in Viator (see below) which was co-recipient of the 1997 Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize of the Medieval Academcy of America (for a first article in the field of medieval studies judged to be of outstanding quality). His book "Isaac Abarbanel's Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue" won a Canadian Jewish Book Award for 2001 in the area of Biblical and Rabbinic Scholarship and it was a Finalist for a National Jewish Book Award (USA) for 2001 in the area of Scholarship.

"As a scholar and teacher I seek to explore the mystery of the human soul. My main 'data' are the lives, thoughts, and actions of people who lived in the Middle Ages -- mostly Jews but Christians and Muslims as well. I look back not to a flattened past but to one that is typically strange, at times attractive and at times repellent. My main research and teaching foci are medieval and early modern Judaism, the complexities and diversity of which I find fascinating. My interest in this subject is not merely antiquarian. Understanding religious thought
and practices of the past enables us better to clarify the important alternatives that confront the human soul in the present. Clarification of these alternatives is, as I understand it, the ultimate goal of scholarship and liberal education."