Paul Mendes-Flohr, preeminent scholar of modern Jewish thought, 1941-2024

Prof. Emeritus Paul Mendes-Flohr, a leading University of Chicago scholar of intellectual history in modernity, modern Jewish thought and German-Jewish intellectual life, died Oct. 24 at the age of 83.

Mendes-Flohr, the Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Thought at the Divinity School, was a foundational figure in the analysis of 19th- and 20th-century Jewish thinkers; several of his edited anthologies and translations are standard textbooks in the field. He was particularly known for his work on the intellectuals and lecturers Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig.

“I think his reading and writing transformed the field in a way we will be unpacking for another generation,” said Ben Sax, PhD’08, Mendes-Flohr’s former student and a longtime friend and collaborator, now with the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies.

Colleagues remembered Mendes-Flohr for his warm and generous relationships with students and collaborators, and for his advocacy for peace and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

Asking big questions

Born Paul Flohr in New York in 1941, he was influenced by his upbringing as the child of hard-working Jewish immigrant socialists. He earned his BA at Brooklyn College in 1964 and Ph.D from Brandeis in 1972. Upon marrying artist Rita Mendes in 1970, he added her last name to his.

He taught at the Freie Universität Berlin and McGill University before moving to Hebrew University in Israel, where he served as the longtime director of the Franz Rosenzweig Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History. He joined the University of Chicago in 2000, spending half the year in Chicago and half in Jerusalem until his retirement in 2018.

Mendes-Flohr encountered the works of German-Jewish philosophers Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig through his dissertation research with Nahum Glatzer, one of Buber’s former students, and Alexander Altmann. He spent the rest of his life analyzing the rise and shape of 20th-century Jewish thought, exploring religion and secularity in a dialogue around the crisis of modernity. He documented Jewish assimilation into Europe, the rise of the secular understanding of the self and early Zionism.

Mendes-Flohr was particularly drawn to Buber for the import he placed on dialogue.

“The idea of dialogue marked Paul’s approach as a scholar,” said Assoc. Prof. Na’ama Rokem, a longtime friend and colleague at the Divinity School. “As an intellectual historian, he was in conversation with these thinkers—entering dialogues with them and with other sources. He loved co-teaching courses because he was modelling what dialogue meant.”

This approach inspired how many modern scholars operate in other disciplines, colleagues said.

Mendes-Flohr translated a collection of primary texts as The Jew in the Modern World, first released in 1980, which is used in countless introductory courses around the world as essential reading.

In all, he authored some 300 articles in multiple languages and more than 70 edited volumes and monographs. Other well-known works include A Land of Two Peoples: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (first edition 1983), itself translated into many languages; German Jews: A Dual Identity (1999); and the well-reviewed 2019 biography Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent.

A longtime resident of Israel, he was also known as a prominent voice for reconciliation and dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian citizens.

“His whole being was suffused with an effort to genuinely engage with everyone he encountered, while his research and teaching focused on communicating, and making usable, what he had learned from the German Jewish writers he not only respected but loved,” said Leora Auslander, the Arthur and Joann Rasmussen Professor in the Departments of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity and History, and a longtime friend of Mendes-Flohr.

Transformational dialogue

Friends, students and colleagues spoke of Mendes-Flohr’s “beautiful writing” and “irreverent” sense of humor, but most of all his enduring kindness, integrity and generosity.

“Paul was devoted to his students, always available to converse with, console, and encourage them in his Swift Hall and Regenstein offices, around campus and in his Hyde Park apartment,” said James T. Robinson, dean of the Divinity School. “Paul’s generosity was legendary, his humor irresistible, his laugh infectious. He will be missed by many.”

His willingness to engage wasn’t limited to academic colleagues; friends spoke of walking down 57th Street with Mendes-Flohr and encountering many people who knew him—and that each person received the same attentive and genuine audience.

“Paul really embodied the idea that when you encounter someone else, you have a responsibility to be in dialogue with them—that encountering others is the most important thing you can do as a human,” said Rokem.

“In our classrooms and in our writing, you’re always going to see some element of who he was. Not because we’re purposefully trying to emulate him, but because we were in dialogue with him, and that dialogue was transformational,” said Sax. “There was this ineffable quality about him that made you want to be the best version of yourself. And you can’t teach that by saying it.”

Mendes-Flohr was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; his awards included the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation prize and the Guggenheim Fellowship.

He is survived by his wife Rita, to whom he was married for more than 50 years; children Inbal and Itamar; and grandchildren Eden, Enosh, Tuval and Avigail.