Amos Funkenstein

Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) was an American-Jewish historian of Jewish history. Funkenstein's work encompassed several disciplines.

Biography Funkenstein was born into an Orthodox family in Mandatory Palestine and was childhood friends with Adin Steinsaltz. Funkenstein, like Baruch Spinoza, was considered heretical.

In 1967, he started his career as a history professor at UCLA, where David Biale was among his graduate students and teaching assistants, Biale recalled that Funkenstein favored originality, preferring to be "bold and wrong" than "boring and right."

Funkenstein wrote seven books in English, German, Hebrew and French, and over 50 articles, and was said to have a photographic memory, reciting lengthy passages memorized in Greek and Latin from books he had long ago read. He died of lung cancer in November 1995 at age 58, survived by his wife Esti and two children, Jakob and Daniela.

+ Recipients of the Amos Funkenstein Prize Year Degree Student Name Title Advisor(s) 2025 PhD Thesis Maya Roman The Normative Mind Prof. Menachem Fisch 2025 MA Thesis Eyal Yair Hacohen Hegelian Critique and the Challenge of the Climate Crisis Dr. Naveh Frumer 2024 PhD Thesis Aviram Sariel Controversies and Enlightenment: Gnostic Elements in Leibniz’s Philosophy The late Prof. Marcelo Dascal, Prof. Yosef Schartz 2023 PhD Thesis Kati Kish Bar-On Living with contradiction: Testing models of framework transitions through Brouwer’s intuitionism Prof. Menachem Fisch, Prof. Leo Corry 2022 PhD Thesis Mickey Peled Conjecturing Beliefs: Abductive Inference in Monetary Policymaking Prof. Moshe Zuckerman, Prof. Itzhak Gilboa 2021 MA Thesis Tuval Klein Marie Curie: Biographical Constructions of a Scientific Heroine Prof. Jose Bruner, Dr. Snait Gissis 2020 MA Thesis Noga Shlomi The Tacuinum Sanitatis. Practices of Collecting and Presenting Medical Knowledge Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Prof. Yossi Schwartz, Prof. Matteo Valleriani 2019 MA Thesis Ahuviya Goren Rabbi Moshe Hefetz and his Book Melekhet Makhshevet: Science, Theology and Skepticism in Early Modern Venice Prof. Yossi Schwartz 2018 MA Thesis Zvi Hasnes Beninson Statistical Considerations for Rethinking the Historiography of Ancient Greek Astronomy Dr. Ido Yavetz, Prof. Matteo Valleriani 2017 MA Thesis Ayal Hayut-man Perceptions of the Torah in Medieval Jewish Hermeneutics – a Comparative Study of Ibn Ezra, Maimonides and Nahmanides Prof. Yossi Schwartz 2016 PhD Thesis Gal Hertz Karl Kraus: Language, Society and the Rise of the Media-Technology Prof. Adi Ophir, Prof. Daniel Dor 2015 PhD Thesis Chaim Shulman A Tale of Three Thirsty Cities: The Innovative Water Supply Systems of Toledo, London and Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century Prof. Benjamin Arbel 2015 MA Thesis Dikla Bytner A few Thoughts concerning Leibniz's Odd Though Prof. Rivka Feldhay 2014 PhD Thesis Amir Teicher ’Social-Mendelism’: The Effects of Mendel’s Theorems on the Formation of Human Sciences in Germany, 1900-1936 Prof. Eva Jablonka, Prof. Shulamit Volkov 2013 MA Thesis Yigal Liverant The Order of the Symbol: Joseph De Maistre's Considerations of the Symbolic Representation as Major Element in the Political Life Prof. Moshe Zuckerman 2011 PhD Thesis Leon Jacobowitz Efron Dante Alighieri the Secular Theologian: Reception, Authority and Subversion 1320-1483 Prof. Yossef Schwartz, Prof. Peter S. Hawkins 2010 PhD Thesis Michael Elazar Honorè Fabri and the history of Mechanics Prof. Rivka Feldhay 2009 PhD Thesis Ariel Furstenberg The Languages of Talmudic Discourse: A Philosophical Study of the Evolution of Amoraic Halakha Prof. Menachem Fisch 2008 PhD Thesis Roy Wagner A Post-Structural Reading of a Logico-Mathematical Text Prof. Adi Ophir, Prof. Anat Biletzki 2007 MA Thesis Eran Tal On Scientist's Use of Tools: The Limits of the Sociological Approach Prof. Gideon Freudenthal 2006 MA Thesis Ayelet Ibn Ezra Reflexive Thinking in the Divine Realm and in Human Thinking in the Writings of Alberus Magnus Prof. Yosef Schwartz 2005 MA Thesis Gali Schapira The Principle of Spatial Continuity between "Imaginary" and "Real" Territories in the Geographical Conception of the Earth's Confines in Homerus' and Hesiod's Poetry Prof. Irad Malkin 2004 MA Thesis Naama Akaviah The Case Of Ellen West: Between Psychotherapy & Existentialism Prof. Jose Brunner 2003 PhD Dissertation Hagar Smilanski Dreams, Medicine And Therapy In The Middle Ages – The Theory Of Dreams In Islamic And Jewish Culture Prof. Ron Barkai 2002 MA Thesis Michal Givoni Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon: A Moral Domain Prof. Adi Ophir 2001 MA Thesis Galia Uri-Asseo King Of Desires: Blaise Pascal On Nature, Illusion And Domination Prof. Yossi Mali 2000 MA Thesis Oded Schechter The Law Of Determinability: Maimon After Leibniz and Kant and Before Hegel Prof. Gideon Freudenthal 1999 PhD Dissertation Shlomo Sela Astrology and Biblical Exegesis in Abraham Ibn Ezra's Thought Prof. Ron Barkai

Publications