Leora Batnitzky
Leora Faye Batnitzky is an American philosopher and the current Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies at Princeton University. Her research interests include religion, modern Jewish thought, hermeneutics, and contemporary legal and political theory. She served as Chair of the Department of Religion from 2010 to 2019 and currently serves as Director of Princeton's Program in Judaic Studies. Batnitzky is the editor of the The Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies.
Batnitzky has been called "the most incisive and remarkable scholar of modern Jewish thought of our time," and is considered to have introduced a paradigm shift to academic political theology, Zionism, and Judaic Studies. She is recognized as the leading scholar of Leo Strauss.
How Judaism Became a Religion was named by The Forward as one of the most important books to read to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She has published in popular journals on Jewish-Catholic relations.
Personal life
Batnitzky married Robert Lebeau, the son of Rabbi William H. Lebeau, in 1990. Her mother taught Judaic studies at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in Overland Park, Kansas. Her father-in-law was the vice chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Batnitzky is a descendant of a line of prominent European rabbis.Books
- The Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies,..
- Jewish Legal Theories: Writings on Religion, State and Morality,..Institutionalizing Rights and Religion: Competing Supremacies..The Book of Job: Ethics, Aesthetics and Hermeneutics,..How Judaism Became a Religion..Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation..Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered..