Rubin, Abraham
Senior Fellow: May–July 2023
Research Project: Autobiographies of Conversion and Apostasy as Narratives of Modern Jewish Scepticism
This project explores the autobiographical writings of Central European Jews who converted to Christianity and Islam in the first half of the twentieth century. It asks how such figures articulated the meaning of their conversion and how they forged their religious identity in relation to their Jewish background. The figures that comprise this study can be designated as radical Jewish sceptics in that their conversion narratives are constructed around the moral criticism and intellectual doubt that they express towards Judaism. This study contributes to scholarship on Jewish scepticism in two ways: firstly, by introducing historical figures who are not traditionally regarded as “Jewish thinkers” into the discussion and thus broadening our understanding of the phenomenon of Jewish scepticism to include thinkers who did not self-identify as Jews, and secondly by exploring the narrative and literary dimensions of religious scepticism in order to trace the ways that different expressions of theological doubt are harnessed to tell the story of a life and give shape to autobiographical narrative.
Abraham Rubin is an assistant professor at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton.