A Sceptical Jew. Richard H. Popkin’s Private Republic of Letters

Jeremy D. Popkin is the William T. Bryan Chair of History at the University of Kentucky (emeritus). He is the son of Richard H. Popkin and the author of A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution (2019), along with numerous other books on French history, life-writing, and the Haitian Revolution. Asher Salah, Ph.D. (2004), is a professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His scholarship deals with Jewish literature in early modern Italy, Sephardic studies, and Jewish cinema in the Mediterranean area. Among his publications are La Republique des Lettres: Rabbins, écrivains et médecins juifs en Italie au XVIIIe siècle (2007). Giuseppe Veltri is a professor of Jewish philosophy and religion at Universität Hamburg, where he is also the director of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies. Among his publications are Il Rinascimento nel pensiero ebraico (2020), editions and translations of Simone Luzzatto’s Discourse on the State of the Jews (2019, with Anna Lissa) and Socrates, or On Human Knowledge (2019, with Michela Torbidoni), L’ebraismo come scienza: Cultura e politica in Leopold Zunz (2019, with Libera Pisano), and Alienated Wisdom: Enquiry into Jewish Philosophy and Scepticism (2018).

Foreword and Acknowledgments

 Asher Salah

Part1 Essays



1 The Jewish Lives of Richard Popkin

 JeremyD. Popkin



2 The Rabbi and the Sceptic: Richard Popkin’s Correspondence with Judah Goldin

 Asher Salah



3 The “Marrano Conspiracy”: On Richard Popkin, Jewish Scepticism, and an Unknown Text on Zindīḳ by Pietro Pomponazzi

 Giuseppe Veltri and Guido Bartolucci



Part2 Texts



4 “On Judaism and Jewish Studies”: Interview of Richard Popkin

 Matt Goldish



5 Richard H.Popkin (1923–2005) and Judah Goldin (1914–1998): Correspondence



6 Richard Popkin’s Discoveries of Judaism: Selections from His Letters, with an introduction by Jeremy D.Popkin

 JeremyD. Popkin



Index of names