Ori Werdiger

• BA, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• PhD, University of Chicago

Ori completed his PhD at the University of Chicago in 2021. His dissertation examined the postwar thought of Jacob Gordin (1896-1947), a Russian-Jewish neo-Kantian philosopher, and his disciple, Léon Askenazi (1922-1996), a North African kabbalist and prominent spiritual leader of Francophone Jewry in the twentieth century. In addition to shedding new light on a lesser-known strand in modern Jewish thought, the dissertation rehabilitated Gordin into interwar neo-Hegelianism, and located Askenazi’s post-Gordinian and kabbalah-informed interventions within French existentialist and structuralist discourses.

At Toronto, Ori’s current project considers the reception and appropriation of early modern Jewish philosophy in twentieth-century Jewish thought. In particular, it investigates the canonization and de-canonization of past Jewish philosophers, such as Spinoza and Maimonides, among the thinkers of the Paris School of Jewish Thought (École de pensée juive de Paris).

For more information about Ori’s work, see his page on Academia.

Continental Philosophy, Epistemology, History of Philosophy, Jewish Philosophy