Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought

Paul Levertoff was born in 1878 in the town of Orsha, Belarus to a family of Chabad Hasidim. After a traditional upbringing, he was sent to learn at the Volozhin Yeshiva in Lithuania, headed by Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin. Upon completing his studies there, he decided to broaden his secular education, at the University of Konigsberg in city of Konigsberg, then renowned as a center of German culture. It was there, in 1895, that he embraced Christianity, without relinquishing the Jewish faith. Much like the long line of converts before him, he immediately found himself working for various missionary societies in London. However, his missionary approach proved to be innovative, consisting of more intellectual work with the educated Jews of his generation, while abandoning the old method of dispensing help to the needy members of the poor, weaker strata of the Jewish population. As part of this intellectual activity, he translated masterpieces, published books and research studies in Modern Hebrew, German, and English, and engaged in dialogue with writers such as Martin Buber, Sholem Asch, Yosef Haim Brenner, and Hillel Zeitlin. Alongside all this activity, he established a new kind of Christian-Jewish church in London, which allowed Jews adhering to the Christian faith to meet other people with shared beliefs, and to even participate in an adapted liturgy.

The Confessions of Saint Augustine, here translated into Hebrew from Latin by Paul Philip Levertoff, is considered one of the most influential masterpieces of European literature, modern philosophy, and Western culture in general. Before us lies the spiritual autobiography of Augustine, the hedonist in pursuit of pleasure who became a visionary saint. It is an expression of the man in search of God who did not find what he sought in the world of philosophy or the academy. The estranged and wandering Augustine, yearning after tranquility and rest, finally finds his place of repose in God – not through critical contemplation but through an existential-mystical experience. The first Hebrew translation, by the convert Paul Philip Levertoff (1878-1954), was composed under the influence of the early writings of Martin Buber. Levertoff, a quintessential Hebrew author, could be seen as one of the younger members of the circle of Yosef Hayyim Brenner, Uri Nissan Gnessin, and Gershon Shoffman. However, after he converted to Christianity, he was rejected and forgotten. Nevertheless, his influence on Jewish thinkers like Hillel Zeitlin, Brenner, and Rabbi Binyamin was significant. In his translation, Levertoff wanted to present the modern Jew with a way to search after God in places which were invisible to philosophers, as well as to influence the formation of a new Jew; a Jew who, alongside the Hasidic tsaddik, could receive religious inspiration even from a Christian saint. The introduction to the book locates the translation in its historical and literary contexts, and views it as an expression of contemporary intellectual trends related to Orientalism and mysticism. The tension in the text between the Christian original and the Jewish translation give it a unique literary potential and opens a fascinating window onto the world of Jewish thought at the beginning of the 20th century.


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The notion of consciousness change as a political concept has re-emerged as a central issue in recent Israeli political discourse in diverse and seemingly remote groups. The following is a study of some of the contexts and implications of according primacy to consciousness change in political thought, through the tensions between the highly individualistic character of this discourse and its collective language and aims. I focus on one study case, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, a key figure in both extreme settler groups and current New Age Hassidic revival. Analyzing his political writings, I explore his notion of consciousness as the true place of politics. Finally I return to the question of the context in which Rabbi Ginsburgh’s binding of the political to consciousness should be read, and propose liberal individualism, and the direct line it draws between the individual’s consciousness and that of the state, as an alternative hermeneutical perspective.