Non-Resident Scholar
The Jewish Theological Seminary
Alan Mittleman Vitae
Email Alan Mittleman
Homepage

Alan Mittleman is  the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the author, most recently, of Human Nature and Jewish Thought: Judaism’s Case for Why Persons Matter (Princeton University Press, 2015). His current project, also for Princeton University Press, is Holiness and Violence in Judaism: A Philosophical Investigation.
Dr. Mittleman is the author of five other books: Between Kant and Kabbalah (SUNY Press, 1990), The Politics of Torah (SUNY Press, 1996), The Scepter Shall Not Depart From Judah (Lexington Books, 2000) Hope in a Democratic Age (Oxford University Press, 2009) and A Short History of Jewish Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). He is also the editor of Uneasy Allies: Evangelical and Jewish Relations (Lexington Books, 2007), Jewish Polity and American Civil Society (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Jews and the American Public Square (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), and Religion as a Public Good (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He is currently editing Holiness in Jewish Thought (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). His many articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in such journals as Harvard Theological Review, Modern Judaism, the Jewish Political Studies Review, the Journal of Religion, and First Things. He is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism.
Dr. Mittleman served as professor of Religion at Muhlenberg College from 1988 to 2004. Prior to his career in academia, he served on the national staff of the American Jewish Committee. From 2000 to 2004, Dr. Mittleman served as director of the major research project “Jews and the American Public Square,” which was initiated by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Under his direction, the project produced two national surveys of Jewish attitudes on public affairs, four volumes comprising forty scholarly essays, and fifteen conferences around the United States. He is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship and served as guest research professor at the University of Cologne (1994 and 1996). He has lectured widely in Germany in the course of more than fifty trips to that country. Dr. Mittleman also received a Harry Starr Fellowship in Modern Jewish History from Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies (1997). He was a visiting professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University in 2007. He is the recipient of a Herzl Fellowship from the Herzl Institute of Jerusalem, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
Dr. Mittleman has been an active participant in interfaith dialogue throughout his career and has been interviewed by Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and USA Today, among other periodicals, and has appeared on Fox News. He was also part of a leadership delegation that met with Pope John Paul II and has lectured at the Gregorian University in Rome. During the bicentennial of the US Constitution, Dr. Mittleman spoke on the meaning of religious liberty for American Jews in the chambers of the US Senate. He served on the Advisory Boards of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the John Templeton Foundation.
Dr. Mittleman holds a BA (magna cum laude) from Brandeis University and an MA and PhD (with distinction) from Temple University. He lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. An enthusiastic fly fisherman, he lives near a trout stream where he tries to fish 52 weeks of the year.