Distinguished scholar plans to build bridges in tenure at ASUSamuelson wants to spur dialogue between scientific, religious scholarsRANDI BAROCAS
|
 Norbert Samuelson, the new Harold and Jean Grossman chair of Jewish studies at Arizona State University, hopes to make the university home for the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, a group he founded that brings together the world's leading Jewish thinkers. ASU photo |
The new endowed position, which was announced by ASU in April 1997, will begin this month.
Joel Gereboff, director of Jewish Studies at ASU, says Samuelson was chosen for the position because of his "outstanding reputation in the field of Jewish thought, philosophy and theology."
A graduate of Northwestern University who went on to receive a master's degree in Hebrew letters from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and a Ph.D. from Indiana University, Samuelson brings a vast and distinguished body of knowledge and experience to ASU's Jewish studies program. Author of seven books and more than 90 academic articles in the field of Jewish philosophy, he is a person "of great significance," says Gereboff, who served on the selection committee that tapped Samuelson for his new position.
"From a programmatic point of view, he complements the existing faculty well by enriching our offerings in the area of Jewish intellectual history," Gereboff says.
A former religion professor at Philadelphia's Temple University, Samuelson says he hopes to accomplish three main goals in his new position. His primary objective, he says, is to give a permanent home to the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, an organization he founded that unites about 100 of the world's leading philosophers in Jewish thought. Samuelson presently serves as the academy's secretary-treasurer.
Samuelson says he plans to set up dialogues between key people in the sciences, including "biology, physics, astronomy, artificial intelligence, cosmology and (medicine)," and religionists and philosophers.
Such dialogue between scientists and those who study religion is crucial to help break down "the stereotype that the two fields are incompatible," he says.
"Most scientific work has been done by committed religious people," Samuelson says. "The perception that there is an inherent conflict between religion and science distorts the history of the relationship between the two."
Meeting of the minds
Establishing the academy's home base at ASU will provide the university with the opportunity to host the academy's annual meetings, Samuelson says. Judaism and science will be the focus of the first academy meeting at ASU, set for February 1999, which Samuelson says will bring some of the world's leading philosophers to the community to share and exchange thoughts.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the topic is predetermined. Exploring the relationship between religion and science is Samuelson's passion, as well as his second objective at ASU.
To achieve that end, Samuelson plans to create a center for science and religion at ASU "where people trained in religion can come and do some basic study in science, and people who are trained in science can come and do some basic study in religion."
It is hoped, Gereboff says, that Samuelson will bring together at ASU both scientists and humanities scholars to spur national and international discussions on the relationship between religion and science.
"The problem of the religionists is that they have very little background in science. And conversely, the people with a background in science have very little knowledge of religion," Samuelson explains. "There already is a market for (this kind of cross-over study). We just need the facilities for it."
The center he proposes will enable students majoring in chemistry, for example, to receive a minor in Judaica, or a biology minor to also study Indian religion.
"There are a lot of students who have those kinds of interests, and there is structurally nowhere for them to do that because the (subjects) are so isolated from each other," Samuelson says.
Aside from opening the gates that will allow the meshing together of science and religion
Settling in
With so much on his plate as a newcomer to the Valley, Samuelson has numerous issues to contend with outside the realm of university life, among them, which congregations to join.
A resident of the Philadelphia area for 25 years, Samuelson says he enjoyed membership in a close-knit Jewish community, and that he hopes to find a similar structure intact in the Valley.
While he was raised in a "totally secular home," Samuelson says, he wants to join a Reform congregation because he considers himself a Reform Jew, but that he most likely will "end up belonging to at least two (congregations)."
He comes to the Valley with Hava Tirosh Samuelson, whom he recently married.
At ASU she will teach Jewish and European intellectual history. Tirosh Samuelson most recently taught at Indiana University in Bloomington, where her husband says she has established a name for her work on Jewish feminism and mysticism.
