Living Law

Professor Bruce Rosenstock (1951–2023), passed away on the morning of January 5, 2023 after a long battle with cancer. A passionate activist for justice, equality, and pluralism, Professor Rosenstock taught at the University of California, Davis and at Stanford University before joining the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign faculty in 2002. Professor Rosenstock was the author of numerous wellreceived books on political theology and modern Jewish philosophy, including New Men: Conversos, Christian Theology, and Society in Fifteenth-Century Castile (2002), Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig , and Beyond (2010), and Transfinite Life: Oskar Goldberg and the Vitalist Imagination (2017). Most recently, Rosenstock was at work on a book titled “Hegel and the Holocaust,” an exploration of four thinkers who have attempted to respond to the Holocaust in the terms of Hegel’s philosophy. An inspiring teacher, Rosenstock was a longtime member of the Executive Committee in the Program in Jewish Culture and Society and served as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Religion.