You are invited to join us for the inaugural Camille and Sandy Kress Lecture at the Chai House. These lectures will explore themes and paths within Jewish ethics, biblical wisdom and current events. We hope you can join us.

When Life Hurts: The Bible's Explorations of Pain and Suffering.

Including but not limited to the book of Job.

Complimentary RSVP Here

J.J. Kimche is a founding faculty member at the University of Austin, Texas (UATX), where he serves as Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy. An Englishman by upbringing and an intellectual historian by training, his work explores the fertile intersections of European philosophy, Jewish thought, and the evolving trajectory of religious ideas in the modern West. His scholarship ranges the Haskalah to philosophies of history and mysticism, with current research focused on how enlightenment thinkers across traditions grappled with the Problem of Evil. He spent much of his adult life in Israel, where he pursued advanced Jewish studies at Yeshivat Har Etzion and served in the 101st Division of the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade.

Kimche holds a B.A. from Shalem College and a Ph.D. from Harvard where he studied nineteenth-century religious scholarship and the intertwined worlds of Protestant Hebraism, biblical criticism, and the Jewish Enlightenment. He has taught widely at Harvard, Brandeis, MIT, The Shalom Hartman Institute, and in traditional Yeshivot and his work appears in leading Jewish Studies Journals as well as publications like first things, City Journal, and the Wall Street Journal. He is also the host of the Podcast of Jewish Ideas.