Reclaiming the Wicked Son

Stephen Stern is the Chair of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College where he is an Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies.Steven Gimbel is a Philosophy Professor and Jewish Studies affiliate at Gettysburg College.

"Steven Gimbel and Stephen Stern have taken on one of the major challenges in Jewish Studies: how does one read the outliers, those thinkers who contentious approaches both challenged and restructured Jewish Studies as a transdisciplinary field? From Karl Marx to Ayn Rand, from Peter Singer to Judith Butler, the authors frame the debates and innovations of a range of major Western thinkers both in terms of their affiliation with and alienation from their own sense of Jewishness. An important and readable coming-to-terms with the uncomfortable edges of modern Jewish thought" — Sander L. Gilman, Author of I Know Who Caused COVID-19: Xenophobia and Pandemics.

• Introduction: Reclaiming the Wicked Son; 1. Karl Marx and Materialistic Messianism; 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein and Neo-Talmudic Thought, 3. Ayn Rand and the Hassidic Courts; 4. Peter Singer: The Amos of Animals; 5. Judith Butler and Orthopraxy; 6. Noam Chomsky, Kabbalist; Conclusion: Re-Membering the Tribe; Bibliography; Index