Menachem Fisch



Professor emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science, Tel Aviv University

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
July 2013; October 2016−August 2017; beginning 2018 (non-resident senior fellow)

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
Forum for the Study of Interreligious Dynamics at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften (with Christian Wiese)

Scholarly profile of Menachem Fisch


Menachem Fisch is Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science nd Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Menachem Fisch has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on confirmation theory and rationality, on the theology of Talmudic literature, and the philosophy of Talmudic legal reasoning. His current work explores the limits of normative self-criticism, the Talmud's dispute of religiosity, the possibilities of articulating a pluralist political philosophy from within the assumptions of halakhic Judaism, and the historiography of scientific framework transitions. He has held visiting research positions at Queen’s College, Oxford; Trinity College, Cambridge; The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; the Dibner Institute for Advanced Study in the History of Science and Technology, MIT; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Collegium Budapest, and the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg. In 2016 he was awarded the Humboldt Research Prize, and, in 2017, an Honorary Doctorate at Goethe University.
A volume dedicated to his work, entitled Menachem Fisch. The Rationality of Religious Dispute was published in 2016 at the Brill Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers.

Webpage at Tel Aviv University:
Further information about Menachem Fisch can be found here.

Selected publications:
  1. Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living, Waco TX: Baylor University Press, (forthcoming, 2023). (with Debra Band)
  2. »The Trading Zones of Interreligious Studies: A Prolegomena of Sorts to The Dialogcal Turn«, in M. Fisch, H. Schulz and S. Voght (eds.), Pathways into German Jewish Intellectual and Religious History: Studies in Conversation with Christian Wiese, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter (forthcoming, 2023).
  3. »The Aqedah and the Fall: Contrasting Paradigms of Rabbinic Religiosity«, in J-P. Fortin and H. Schulz (eds.), Aqedah: The Binding of Isaac (Gen 22) as a Challenge for the Rationality of Religion in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter (forthcoming, 2022).
  4. »The Value of Idolatry«, in A. Goshen-Gottstein (ed.), Idolatry: A Contemporary Conversation (forthcoming), Cambridge MA: Academic Studies Press, (forthcoming, 2022).
  5. »Epistemic Humility, or What Political Theory can Learn from Talmudic Judaism«, in H. Schulz, M. Fritz and R. Barth (eds), Stolz und Demut. Zur emotionalen Ambivalenz religiöser Positionierungen, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, (forthcoming, 2022).
  6. »Prophecy (and its Rationality) in Talmudic Dispute«, in H. Schulz (ed.), A Mouthpiece For God: Prophecy and Reason in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, (forthcoming, 2022).
  7. Dialogues of Reason: Science, Politics, Religion (The Dagmar Westberg Lectures 2020, with Responses by Julie E. Cooper, Lorraine Daston, Paul Franks, Suzanne Last Stone, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Thomas M. Schmidt, Claudia Welz, and Christian Wiese), Wuerzburg: Echter Verlag, (forthcoming, 2022).
  8. The Enemy Within: Political Zionism and its Faithful Adversaries (Hebrew), Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2021.
  9. »The Relevance of Talmudic Judaism to Modern Philosophy«, in A. Deeg, J. J. Krause, M. Mordhorst-Mayer and B. Schrӧder (eds.), Dialogische Theologie. Beitrӓge zum Gesprӓch zwischen Juden und Christen und zur Bedeutung rabbinischer Literatur, Studien zu Kirche und Israel Neue Folge, band 14, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 265-285, 2020.
  10. »Talmudic Commentary and the Problem of Normative Self-Critique«, Geschichte der Philologien, 57/58, 27-43, 2020.
  11. »Bossy Matrons and Forced Marriages: Talmudic Confrontationalism and its Philosophical Significance«, in: Open Philosophy, 3, 335-348, 2020.
  12. »The Tragic Paradox of Political Zionism«, in: Telos, 192, Fall, 29-39. 2020.
  13. »The Talmudist Enlightenment: Talmudic Judaism’s Confrontational Rational Theology«, in special issue on Contemporary Jewish Perspectives on Divine Hiddenness, Religious Protest, in: European Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 12(2), 37-63, 2020.
  14. »God’s Word and the Languages of Man: The Wisdom of Solomon and the Birth of Midrash«, in G. Schreiber (ed.), Interesse am Anderen: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Religion und Rationalität. Für Heiko Schulz zum 60, Berlin und Boston: De Gruyter, 369-382, 2019.
  15. »Gulliver and the Rabbis: Counterfactual Truth in Science and the Talmud«, in: Religions, 10(3), 228, 2019. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10030228
  16. »Job and the Bible’s Theo-Political Divide«, in: Religions, 10(1), 33, 2019. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10010033
  17. »Faith Reason and Dialogue: Science’s Great Debt to Christianity and Potential Debt to Judaism – A Response to Y. Gingras, in: Science and Religion: An Impossible Dialogue, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017«, Metascience, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-019-00388-z
  18. Covenant of Confrontation: A Study of Non-Submissive Religiosity in Rabbinic Literature (Hebrew), Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2019.
  19. »Ambivalence as a Jewish Value«, Tablet Magazine, 17 September, 2017.
  20. »Judaism and the Religious Value of Diversity and Dialogue: Drafting a Jewish Response to Nostra Aetate«, in S. Alkier, M. Schneider, C. Wiese (Hg.), Diversität - Differenz - Dialogoizität: Religion in Pluralen Kontexten, Berlin und Boston: de Gruyter, 375-392, 2017.
  21. »Deciding by Argument versus Proving by Miracle: The Myth-History of Talmudic Judaism’s Coming of Age«, in: Toronto Journal of Theology, 33(1), 103-127, 2017.
  22. Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency, University of Chicago Press: 2017.
  23. Menachem, Fisch: The Rationality of Religious Dispute, edited by H. Tirosh-Samuelson & A.W. Hughes, Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers, vol.18, Leiden: Brill, 2016.
  24. »Religious Self-critique in the Trusted Presence of Others«, in R. Kronnish (ed.), Voices for Interreligious Reconciliation in Israel, Paulist Press, (with Peter Pettit), 202-213, 2015.
  25. »Criticism From Within versus Criticism From Without – My Debt to Yemima« (Hebrew), in: Iyyun – The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, 64, 160-171, 2015.
  26. »Babbage's Two Lives«, in: British Journal for the History of Science, 47(1), 95–118, 2014.
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