Leon Wieseltier
Literary Editor, The New Republic
Foerster Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul
October 24, 2012 — 4:10 PMInternational House Auditorium — 2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley
About Leon Wieseltier Leon Wieseltier is a well-known American writer, critic, and longstanding literary editor of The New Republic. Since the beginning of his tenure in 1983, he has published many influential articles in The New Republic and many other publications. For … Continued
International House Auditorium - 2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley Berkeley Graduate Lectures [email protected] false MM/DD/YYYYAbout Leon Wieseltier
Leon Wieseltier is a well-known American writer, critic, and longstanding literary editor of The New Republic. Since the beginning of his tenure in 1983, he has published many influential articles in The New Republic and many other publications. For many years he has written the weekly and widely read “Washington Diarist” and is the author of several critically acclaimed volumes, including Against Identity (1996) andNuclear War, Nuclear Peace (1983). His latest work, Kaddish (1998), a meditation on mortality, mourning, and the Jewish tradition, was highly praised and won the National Jewish Book Award and was translated into eight languages. Wieseltier has also published a number of translations of the works of Yehuda Amichai and other modern Hebrew poets in The New Republic, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. More recently, he edited and introduced a volume of Lionel Trilling’s works titled The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (2009).
Wieseltier was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1952. He attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn as a child and later studied at Columbia University, Oxford University, and Harvard University. Following his work as a graduate student in Jewish history at Harvard, he was elected to Harvard’s Society of Fellows and was a member from 1979-1982. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Jewish Review of Books.