Re-reading these thinkers alongside classical rabbinical responses to the violence carried out by God and people, Weiss highlights their (hitherto unperceived) politics and their radical Jewishness.

This event marks the launch of the book Modern Jewish Philosophy and the Politics of Divine Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Modern Jewish philosophy and the politics of Divine Violence brings to light striking political aspects of the writings of the modern Jewish philosophers, who have often been understood as non-political. In addition, Weiss shows how the four modern thinkers are more radical and more shaped by Jewish tradition than has previously been thought. Taken as a whole, Weiss' book argues for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between Judaism and politics, the history of Jewish thought, and the ethical and political dynamics of the broader Western philosophical tradition