Samuel J KesslerFaculty

Dr. Kessler is Assistant Professor of Religion and Åke and Kristina Bonnier Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion.

He received his BA in History from New York University and MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

His scholarship focuses primarily on nineteenth-century religious responses to modernity, though he works on topics ranging across Judaism, Central European History, postmodern theory, Holocaust, and twentieth-century literature.

He has taught widely in Jewish religion and culture, both in the classroom and community. You can find a selection of his syllabi here and his community engagement here as well as on Sepharia. Anyone in the community with questions about Judaism is encouraged to contact him. 

Dr. Kessler's first monograph, The Formation of a Modern Rabbi: The Life and Times of the Viennese Scholar and Preacher Adolf Jellinek (Brown Judaic Studies, 2022) examines the history and development of the modern rabbi, the impact of Wissenschaft des Judentums on scholarship and religion, and the importance of urbanization in Jewish communal transformation in nineteenth-century Central Europe. 

With Dr. George Y. Kohler (Bar-Ilan), he has an edited volume, Modern Jewish Theology: The First One Hundred Years, 1835-1935 (Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska, 2023), which is the first comprehensive collection of Jewish theological ideas from the pathbreaking nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing how modern Jewish theology developed in concert with broader trends in Jewish intellectual and social modernization.

Dr. Kessler's most recent publications include:

• “‘My Program is Still Broader Than the Sea:’ The Scholem-Heschel Correspondence, 1940-1953,” New German Critique 148, vol. 50, no. 1 (February 2023): 179-210. (Co-authored with Emanuel Fiano [Fordham].)
• “‘Let There Be No Strife Between Me and You’: On the Relationship Between Judaism and Christianity in an 1859 Sermon by Adolf Jellinek,” in Religious Knowledge and Positioning, ed. David Käbisch, Christian Wiese, and Kerstin von der Krone (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023).
• “‘My Father’s Face:’ Judaism, God, and Ritual Practice in Philip Roth’s Nemesis, Indignation, and Everyman,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 41, no. 1 (2022): 34-59. 

(Links to all his published papers are available here.)

With Dr. Timothy Parrish (UC Davis), he edited a Special Issue of Philip Roth Studies (18.1 Spring 2022) on the theme of "Roth and Judaism."

In addition, he has authored numerous book reviews for, among others, the Journal of Austrian Studies and German Studies Review. A response to Thomas A. Lewis's Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion and Vice Versa appeared on Syndicate.  

He is an Advisory Board member of the Center for Sermon Studies based at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, as well as an Editorial Board member of its referred journal, Sermon Studies. 

You can find a copy of his most recent CV here and more of his work on Academia.edu. 

[Updated January 2024.]

Courses Taught