Sorkin, David 1953–

(David J. Sorkin, David Jan Sorkin)

PERSONAL:

Born September 22, 1953, in Chicago, IL; son of Sidney (a teacher) and Shirley (a secretary) Sorkin; married Shifra Sharlin, December 19, 1976; children: Phoebe, Gideon, Isaac, Naomi. Education: University of Wisconsin—Madison, B.A. (with honors), 1975; University of California, Berkeley, M.A., 1977, Ph.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Madison, WI. Office—Department of History, 3211 Mosse Humanities, 455 North Park St., University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, WI 53706. E-mail—djsorkin@wisc.edu.

CAREER:

Brown University, Providence, RI, assistant professor of Judaic studies, 1983-86; Oxford University, Oxford, England, began as junior fellow, became lecturer at St. Antony's College and Centre for Post-graduate Hebrew Studies, 1986-92; University of Wisconsin—Madison, Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies, 1992—, director of Center for Jewish Studies, 1993-98, director of Institute for Research in the Humanities, 2003-07, chair of George L. Mosse Exchange Program, 1999—, Vilas associate, 1994-96. University of Munich, C.H. Beck Lecturer, 1991; Indiana University—Bloomington, Bronstein Lecturer, 1993; Connecticut College, Reinfeld Lecturer, 1997; Manchester University, Sherman Lecturer, 1997; Emory University, Stein Memorial Lecturer, 1997; University of Pennsylvania, Meyerhoff Lecturer, 1998; University of California, Los Angeles, Popkin Lecturer, 2000; guest lecturer at universities in the United States and abroad, including Ohio State University, Princeton University, College of William and Mary, University of Toronto, University of Leiden, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and Bar-Ilan University. Leo Baeck Institute, London, England, member of executive committee, 1989-92; École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, director of studies, 1990. Member of editorial board, Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 1990-94, and Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 1992—.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, Association for Jewish Studies (member of executive board, 1995—), American Academy for Jewish Research, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Maimonides Award, Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, 1974; Joel H. Cavior Literary Award for history, Present Tense, 1988, for The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840; British Academy grant, 1991; fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1994-95, Max Planck Institut für Geschichte, 1998, and All Souls College, Oxford, 2003; Littauer Foundation grant, 1999; National Jewish Book Award, 2003, for Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies; Guggenheim fellowship, 2005-06.

WRITINGS:

The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor, with Frances Malino, and contributor) From East and West: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870, Basil Blackwell (Oxford, England), 1990, published as Profiles in Diversity: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1996.

The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought, Vallentine Mitchell (London, England), 2000.

(Editor, with Shmuel Feiner, and contributor) New Perspectives on the Haskalah, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (London, England), 2001.

(Associate editor, with Jeremy Cohen) Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

(Under name David J. Sorkin; editor, with Stanley G. Payne and John S. Tortorice) What History Tells: George L. Mosse and the Culture of Modern Europe, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2004.

The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Reasonable Belief, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2008.

Contributor to books, including Assimilation and Community in European Jewry, 1815-81, edited by Jonathan Frankel and Steven Zipperstein, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992; The Jewish Enigma: AnEnduring People, Open University (Milton Keynes, England), 1992; Comparing Jewish Societies, edited by Todd Endelman, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1997; and The Illustrated History of the Jewish People, edited by Nicholas deLange, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1997. General editor, "Jewish Society and Culture," Basil Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1990-96, and "Jewish Communities of the Modern World," University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1998—. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Modern Judaism, Journal of the History of Ideas, New German Critique, Journal of Jewish Studies, and Jewish Social Studies.