Isaac Breuer’s Anti-Liberal Legal Theory and the Politicization of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy with Itamar Ben-Ami moderated by Shaul Magid

Isaac Breuer’s Anti-Liberal Legal Theory and the Politicization of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy
Itamar Ben-Ami
moderated by Shaul Magid
This talk centers on the early writings of Isaac Breuer (1910-1917), arguing that Breuer’s radicalization of neo-Kantian legal theory anchors his revolutionary call to politicize Jewish Orthodoxy. I suggst that neo-Kantianism – normally associated with liberal or social democratic politics – was given a thoroughly anti-liberal reading by Breuer that led to an anti-liberal Orthodox politics. While the rise of non-Zionist political Orthodoxy is often regarded as an obsolete traditionalism unattuned to the nature of mass politics, Breuer’s politicization of Orthodoxy reveals a coherent anti-liberal political and legal theory that addresses the aporias of the democratic age.