Arthur Eyffinger (1947) holds a PhD in classics from Amsterdam University (1981). From 1970-1985 he was a research fellow of the Grotius Institute of the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; subsequently, he became head librarian of the International Court of Justice of the UN in The Hague. Upon his retirement in 2002, he launched Judicap, a center for publications and presentations in the domains of international law and peace studies. Dr. Eyffinger is a cofounder of the Grotiana Foundation (1980) and published extensively on the life and works of Hugo Grotius, on Dutch seventeenth-century issues, and on the history of internationalism and the international courts in The Hague. Among his current projects are a biography of the Russian internationalist F.F. Martens and an edition of Latin poetry by Hugo Grotius on behalf of the Huygens Institute in The Hague. [close]

Gordon Schochet is a professor of political science at Rutgers University and a founder and codirector of the Center for the History of British Political Thought at the Folger Shakespeare Library. He received his AB and MA degrees from Johns Hopkins University and his PhD from the University of Minnesota. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and has held several other fellowships. Author of Patriarchalism in Political Thought (Blackwell, 1975; 2nd ed., 1988), Rights in Contexts (2006), From Reformation to Revolution: Western Political Thought in the Early Modern Period (forthcoming), and numerous articles on political philosophy and its history, his current research and writing deals with the political thought of Hobbes, Locke, Filmer, and Mandeville, politics and patriarchy, religious liberty, Western concepts of conscience, and Hebraism in early modern political and legal philosophy. [close]

Meirav Jones is an associate fellow in the Institute for Philosophy, Politics and Religion, and spearheads the Shalem Center's Project on Jewish Ideas in the West. She is also associate editor of Hebraic Political Studies <www.hpstudies.org> , Shalem's peer-reviewed journal, launched in 2005, that uncovers the Jewish political tradition and examines its place, alongside the traditions of Greece and Rome, in political history and the history of political thought. In August 2004, Jones organized Shalem's first international academic conference entitled Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Political Thought. In December 2006 she ran an additional conference exploring political Hebraism from biblical times to the present that was attended by over 100 scholars and graduate students from 10 countries. Jones holds a BA in political science and philosophy and an MA in political science from the Hebrew University. She is currently pursuing a doctorate on the topic "The Image of Israel and the Development of Political Ideas in England 1640-1660." [close]

Silvia Berti is a professor of history at the University of Rome – La Sapienza. Her work focuses on European antichristian attitudes, with an emphasis on Spinozism in clandestine literature and the co-presence of Jewish thought, Huguenot and Jansenist opposition in the ‘Radical Enlightenment’. Her publications include Trattato dei tre impostori. La vita e lo spirito del Signor Benedetto de Spinoza (French-Italian critical edition with introduction, translation and commentary by Silvia Berti, preface by Richard H. Popkin, Torino: Einaudi, 1994); and A. Momigliano, Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism (with introduction and notes by Silvia Berti, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994); as well as articles in various journals, including the Journal of the History of Ideas, the Jewish Studies Quarterly, and Rivista storica italiana. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (Philadelphia) (1999-2000), the Folger Shakespeare Library (1995-96), and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University (1993-94). [close]

Hans Blom is a professor of social and political philosophy at Erasmus University. He has also taught at Cambridge University, the University of Buenos Aires, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His edited works include Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment (Toronto, 2006); Grotius and the Stoa (Van Gorcum, 2004); Hobbes: The Amsterdam Debate (Olms, 2001); and Sidney: Court Maxims (Cambridge, 1996). He is editor in chief of the journal Grotiana. [close]

Rémi Brague, a former research fellow at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, was also a visiting professor at Penn State and at Boston University. He is author of the international best seller Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (St. Augustine's Press, 2002) (originally published in French in 1992, 1993, 1999, and subsequently translated into fourteen languages). His translated works include: L. Strauss, Maïmonide (P.U.F., 1988); S. Pinès, La Liberté de philosopher (Desclée De Brouwer, 1997); Maimonides, Traité de logique (Desclée De Brouwer, 1996); and Maimonides, Traité d éthique (Desclée De Brouwer, 2001). His original works include: Aristote et la question du monde. Essai sur le contexte cosmologique et anthropologique de l'ontologie (P.U.F., 1988); The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought (Chicago, 2003) (originally published in French in 1999 and 2003; also available in German, Italian, and Portuguese); Introduction au monde grec (La Transparence, 2005); and La Loi de Dieu: Histoire philosophique d'une alliance (Gallimard, 2005), with translations in English, Italian, and Portuguese. [close]

Matt Goldish holds the Samuel M. and Esther Melton Chair in Jewish History as a professor of history at Ohio State University. He earned his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles (1986), and his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1996). Professor Goldish is the author of Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton (Kluwer - International Archives of the History of Ideas, 1998) and The Sabbatean Prophets (Harvard, 2004). His current projects include: "Jewish Questions: Sephardic Life, 1492-1750," a history and text reader to appear with Princeton University Press and The Jewish History Media Project, a group creating high-quality educational films about Jewish history. [close]

Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History and chair of the Council of Humanities at Princeton University, and Directeur d'Études Associées at EHESS. He joined the Princeton History Department in 1975 after earning his AB (1971) and PhD (1975) in history from the University of Chicago and spending a year at University College, London, where he studied with Armaldo Momigliano. His numerous publications include Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation (Harvard, 2001); Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (Harvard, 2001); Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Harvard, 1999); Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford, 1993); and Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in the Age of Science, 1450-1800 (Harvard, 1991). He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1989), the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1993), the Balzan Prize for History of Humanities (2002), and the Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award (2003). [close]

Steven Grosby is a professor of religion at Clemson University. He is the author of Biblical Ideas of Nationality (Eisenbrauns, 2002) and Nationalism-a Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005). He is also editor of The Virtue of Civility (Liberty Fund, 1997) and The Calling of Education (Chicago, 1997); coeditor of the four-volume Nationality and Nationalism (I.B. Tauris, 2004); and editor and translator of Hans Freyer, Theory of Objective Mind (Ohio, 1999). His numerous articles have appeared in such journals as Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, History of Religions, Journal for the Social and Economic History of the Orient, European Journal of Sociology, and Nations and Nationalism. [close]

Moshe Halbertal is a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at the Hebrew University and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He has also taught at Harvard Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the New York University School of Law. He is the author of Idolatry (coauthored with Avishai Margalit) and People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority, both published by Harvard University Press. His other books include Interpretative Revolutions in the Making and Between Torah and Wisdom: R. Menachem ha-Meiri and The Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence, both published in Hebrew by Magnes Press. His last book published in Hebrew is Concealment and Revelation: The Secret and Its Boundaries in Medieval Jewish Thought (Yeriot, 2001). In 1999, Professor Halbertal was the first recipient of the newly instituted Bruno Prize established by the Rothschild Foundation, and his subsequent distinctions include the Goren Goldstein award for the best book in Jewish thought in the years 1997–2000. [close]

Yoram Hazony is the founder and former president of The Shalem Center, where he is currently a senior fellow. He is the author of The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther (Shalem Press, 2000) and The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (New Republic/Basic Books, 2000). His essays have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, The New Republic, Commentary, and Azure. He received his BA from Princeton University and his PhD from Rutgers University, and served as a member of the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and seven children. [close]

Jonathan Jacobs is a professor of philosophy at Colgate University in New York. He is author of several books including Choosing Character: Responsibility for Virtue and Vice (Cornell, 2001), Dimensions of Moral Theory: An Introduction to Metaethics and Moral Psychology (Blackwell, 2002), and Aristotle's Virtues: Nature, Knowledge, and Human Good (Peter Lang, 2004). He has written widely on moral psychology and metaethics, as well as on topics and figures in medieval philosophy (chiefly Maimonides and Aquinas). He has served as director of the Division of the Humanities at Colgate University and he is a life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. He has been John MacMurray Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at the University of St. Andrews. [close]

Leon R. Kass, MD, PhD, is Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago, and Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. He has been engaged for more than 30 years with ethical and philosophical issues raised by biomedical advance, and, more recently, with broader moral and cultural issues. His numerous books and articles include: Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs (Free Press, 1988); The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (Chicago, 1994); The Ethics of Human Cloning (American Enterprise Institute, 1998, with James Q. Wilson); Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying (Notre Dame, 2000, with Amy A. Kass); Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (Encounter Books, 2002); and The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003). Dr. Kass is married to Amy Apfel Kass; the Kasses have two married daughters and four young granddaughters. [close]

Aaron L. Katchen is the author of Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis: Seventeenth Century Apologetics and the Study of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah (Harvard, 1984). He has curated many exhibitions and is co-editor of Christian Hebraism: The study of Jewish culture by Christian scholars in medieval and early modern times. Proceedings of a Colloquium and Catalogue of an Exhibition arranged by the Judaica Department of the Harvard College Library on the Occasion of Harvard's 350th Anniversary Celebration (Harvard University Library, 1988). He is the former executive director of the Association for Jewish Studies. [close]

Menachem Lorberbaum is chair of the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University and a research associate at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is the author of Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford, 2001), and coeditor with Michael Walzer and Noam Zohar of The Jewish Political Tradition, vol. 1, Authority (Yale, 2000) and vol. 2, Membership (Yale, 2003). [close]

Abraham Melamed was born in Israel in 1944. He is the director of the Center for the Study of Jewish Culture and holds the Wolfson Chair for Jewish Thought at the University of Haifa. He is the director of the Department of Jewish History and Thought and professor of Jewish philosophy, teaching medieval and early modern Jewish thoughtHis recently published books are: The Philosopher-King in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Political Thought (SUNY, 2003); The Black in Jewish Culture: A History of the Other (Haifa University and Zemorah Bitan, 2002; [English version] Routledge-Curzon, 2003); and On the Shoulders of Giants: A History of the Debate between Moderns and Ancients in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Thought (Bar-Ilan University, 2003). His latest book, The Myth of the Jewish Origins of Philosophy and Science: A History (Hebrew) was accepted for publication by Haifa University Press. Professor Melamed’s advanced course on Medieval Jewish Political Philosophy (3 volumes) for the Open University of Israel is now being prepared for publication. He lives in Zichron Yaakov, Israel, with his wife, who is a psychologist, and their three children. [close]

Peter Miller is a professor of cultural history at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. Miller is the author of The Song of the Soul: Understanding ‘Poppea’ (Royal Musical Association, 1992) with Iain Fenlon; Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 1994); Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (Yale, 2000) and various articles on the early modern Polyglot Bibles and antiquarianism. He is currently working on Peiresc’s Orient, also to be published by Yale University Press. [close]

Alan Mittleman is the director of the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies and a professor of Jewish philosophy at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Professor Mittleman is the author of three books: Between Kant and Kabbalah (SUNY Press, 1990); The Politics of Torah (SUNY Press, 1996); and The Scepter Shall Not Depart from Judah (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). He is also the editor of 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). 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; First Things; and The Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy. He is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism. He is currently writing a book on politics and hope under contract with Oxford University Press. He lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Patti, and their sons, Ari and Joel. [close]

Steven Nadler is a professor of philosophy and Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he directs the George L. Mosse/Lawrence A.Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies. His books include Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (Princeton, 1989); Malebranche and Ideas (Oxford, 1992); Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999, winner of the 2000 Koret Jewish Book Award for biography); Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind (Oxford, 2002); and Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2006). His book Rembrandt’s Jews (Chicago, 2003) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2004. [close]

David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as a professor of the study of religion and a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a founder, vice president, and coordinator of the Panel of Halakhic Inquiry of the Union for Traditional Judaism. He serves as secretary treasurer of the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York City and is on the editorial board of its journal First Things. He is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, and a member of the Board of Consulting Scholars of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. David Novak is the author of thirteen books, the latest being The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology (Princeton, 2005). His book Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory (Princeton, 2000) won the award of the American Academy of Religion for “best book in constructive religious thought in 2000.” He has edited four books and is the author of over 200 articles in scholarly and intellectual journals. [close]

Fania Oz-Salzberger is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Haifa, and the director of the Posen Research Forum for Jewish European and Israeli Political Thought at the Faculty of Law. Her books include Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) and Israelis in Berlin (Hebrew, Jerusalem: Keter, 2001; German, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001). She recently co-edited, with Eveline Goodman-Thau, the volume Das jüdische Erbe Europas (German and English, Berlin: Philo, 2005). [close]

Born in 1972, Emile Perreau-Saussine received his Diplôme (BA) from L'Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, and then studied for his PhD at L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Centre Raymond Aron), spending time as a visiting scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, and as an Olin Fellow at the University of Chicago (Committee on Social Thought). Since 2001, he has been a fellow of Fitzwilliam College, lecturing at the University of Cambridge on the history of political thought. His two latest articles, the first on Raymond Aron and Carl von Clausewitz, the second on Liberals and revolutions, have been published in Commentaire. His first book, Alasdair MacIntyre, une biographie intellectuelle. Introduction aux critiques contemporaines du libéralisme, with a foreword by Pierre Manent, was published in September 2005 by Presses Universitaires de France. [close]

John Pocock is Harry Black Professor Emeritus of History at John Hopkins University. His numerous, authoritative works include The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cambridge, 1957; reissued with a retrospect, 1987); The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975; revised edition, 2003); and the series Barbarism and Religion (Cambridge): The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon (1999), Narratives of Civil Government (2001), The First Decline and Fall (2003), and Barbarians, Savages and Empires (2005). [close]

Gary Remer is an associate professor of political science at Tulane University and was a visiting scholar at the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland in the fall of 2005. He is the author of Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (Pennsylvania State University, 1996) and coeditor of Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy (Pennsylvania State University, 2004). He has published numerous articles in journals such as Political Theory, History of Political Thought, Journal of Political Philosophy, Review of Politics, and Polity. [close]

Jason Rosenblatt is a professor of English at Georgetown University. He has also taught at Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Swarthmore College. His publications include Torah and Law in ‘Paradise Lost’ (Princeton, 1994); Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi: John Selden (Oxford, 2006); and, as coeditor,“Not in Heaven”: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative (Indiana, 1991). In addition, he has published more than two dozen essays on seventeenth-century English literature.He is under contract with W. W. Norton to edit a Norton Critical Edition of Milton’s Selected Poetry and Prose. Professor Rosenblatt’s awards include fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a past president of the Milton Society of America (1999) and recipient of its Hanford Award (1989). Professor Rosenblatt is married to Zipporah Marton, a registered nurse, and they have two children and four grandchildren. [close]

Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann is a professor at the Institute for Philosophy of the Free University of Berlin, and a founding member of the International Society for Intellectual History. His many publications include Topica universalis (Meiner, 1983); Theodizee und Tatsachen (Suhrkamp, 1988); Geschichte als absoluter Begriff (Suhrkamp, 1991); Blaise Pascal (C.H. Beck, 1999); Sinn-Welten, Welten-Sinn (Suhrkamp, 1992); Philosophia perennis (Suhrkamp 1998; English version Kluever/Springer, 2004); and Politische Theologie der Gegenaufklärung (Akademie-Verlag, 2004). [close]

Guy Stroumsa is the founding director (1999–2005) of The Center for the Study of Christianity and Martin Buber Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books include Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism (Brill, 1996; revised ed. 2005); Barbarian Philosophy—the Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Mohr Sibeck, 1999); La Fin du sacrifice: Les mutations religieuses de l’antiquité tardive (Odile Jacob, 2005); and, as coauthor, Les Juifs presentés aux chrétiens (Belles Lettres, 1998) and Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religions Canons in the Ancient World (Brill, 2003). As editor, his publications include Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions (Brill, 1995); Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge, 1998); Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions (Brill, 1999); Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (Oxford, 1999); and Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions (Oxford, 2002). [close]

Shmuel Trigano is a professor of sociology at the University of Paris-Nanterre; Elia Benamozegh European Chair of Sephardic Studies in Livorno, Italy; and a fellow at a number of institutions including the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is the founder and director of the College of Jewish Studies at the Alliance Israélite Universelle, of L’Observatoire du Monde Juif, a research center on Jewish political life, of Pardès, a European journal of Jewish studies, and of Controverses: A Journal of Ideas. He is the author of numerous books, including L’Idéal Démocratique à l’épreuve de la Shoa (Odile Jacob, 1999); Le Monothéisme est un Humanisme (Odile Jacob, 2000); L’Ebranlement d’Israël: Philosophie de l’Histoire Juive (Le Seuil, 2002); and Philosophie de la Loi, l’origine de la politique dans la Tora, (Cerf, 1991); and he is the editor of the four-volume book La société juive à travers l'histoire (Fayard, 1992–1993). [close]

Richard Tuck is Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of several books, including Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge, 1981); Hobbes (Oxford, 1989, reissued 2002); Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge, 1993); and The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, 2001). He has also edited several versions of Hobbes’ works, including The Citizen (Cambridge, 1998) and Leviathan (Cambridge, 1996) and is the editor of Grotius’ The Rights of War and Peace (Liberty Fund, 2005). Professor Tuck is on the editorial Board of Grotiana and was a founding editor of Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. He has been on the board of electors to the Sir Isaiah Berlin Chair at Oxford since 1995. [close]

Giuseppe Veltri received his PhD in 1991 from the Freie Universität Berlin. He is a professor of Jewish studies (since 1997) and the director of the Zunz Centre (since 1998) at the University of Halle in Germany. His publications on Jewish hermeneutics and philosophy include Eine Tora für den König Talmai (Mohr, 1994); Magie und Halakha (Mohr, 1997); Gegenwart der Tradition (Brill 2002); Cultural Intermediaries (University of Pennsylvania, 2004, together with David Ruderman); and Libraries, Translations, and 'Canonic' Texts: The Septuagint, Aquila and Ben Sira in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (Brill, 2006). [close]