research overview
- Sacks’s research focuses on Jewish thought and philosophy of religion, along with related fields such as religious ethics, Jewish-Christian relations, theories of religion, religion and politics, and hermeneutics. His first book, “Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism” (Indiana University Press, 2017) explores the account of Jewish practice in the Hebrew and German writings of Moses Mendelssohn, the Enlightenment philosopher generally seen as the founder of modern Jewish thought. Sacks is currently working on a project on Nachman Krochmal, modernity’s leading Eastern European Jewish thinker, including producing (with Lawrence Kaplan) the first English translation of Krochmal's Hebrew magnum opus 'The Guide of the Perplexed of the Time' (under contract with Yale University Press). Sacks’s recent and forthcoming articles explore medieval and modern thinkers such as Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Krochmal, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Jacob Taubes. Sacks also serves as a translator for a new English edition of Mendelssohn’s writings, along with an anthology of responses to Spinoza.
