THE RABBI SIDNEY H. BROOKS LECTURE

Guest Speaker: Gilya Gerda Schmidt

Dr. Gilya Gerda Schmidt is Professor and Head of the Department of Religious Studies, and Chair of the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies, at the University of Tennesee. Dr. Schmidt is an expert in the thought of Martin Buber, the influential Jewish philosopher and theologian who wrote such works as I and Thou, Moses, and Between Man and God.

Dr. Schmidt’s writings on Buber include the monograph Martin Buber's Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal 1898-1909, as well as her edited translation The First Buber: The Youthful Zionist Writings of Martin Buber. Dr. Schmidt has also translated Ninety-Two Poems and Hymns of Yehuda Halevi, and has edited and translated volumes on Jewish artists and Schleiermacher, among other topics.

She was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Religion with a concentration in Judaism and her M.A. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Schmidt’s research and teaching focuses on European Jewry, Zionism, Holocaust, Israel, European Intellectual History, Women in Judaism, and Modern Jewish Thought. She has received numerous honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for research on Zionism at Columbia University in New York.
 

Brooks Lecture