Kenneth Hart Green

Background

Kenneth Hart Green was born on March 13, 1953, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is the son of Patrick Hart Green, a businessman, and Freda (Gusen) Green, a library technician.

Education

Green received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy and Jewish Studies from the University of Toronto in 1977. He obtained Master of Arts degree in Jewish Philosophy at the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from the Brandeis University in 1982. Finally, seven years later, he earned Doctor of Philosophy degree at the same department.

Career

Green started his career in 1986, working for a year as a lecturer at the Division of Humanities at the York University in Toronto, Ontario. Then he moved to the University of Toronto. During period 1987-1991 he held the same position at the Department for the Study of Religion there. He became an assistant professor at the department for the Study of Religion, for 4 years from 1991. And from 1995 till 2014 Green worked as an associate professor at the same educational institution.

During his long career, Green has published numerous books. His first book Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss, attempts to clarify the philosophical and political thought of that much-discussed philosopher who died in 1973. Green also edited a volume of Strauss’s own essays and lectures, fittingly titled Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures, which was issued in 1997.

The volume Jew and Philosopher examines the way in which Strauss’s “Jewish heritage” influenced his philosophic thought, and discusses also how his interpretation of the work of Maimonides (a medieval Jewish rabbi and Platonic philosopher) helped him evolve his beliefs about the relationship between revealed religion and philosophy in the Greek tradition.

Currently, Green has worked as a visiting lecturer at such universities as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Chicago and the Emory University. He has published essays on Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem and Emil Fackenheim.

Achievements

• Green received the Hans Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Award for Best Dissertation in 1991. He won the Dean’s Excellence awards from the faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, in 1993 and 1997. In 2012 Green earned 25-Year Long Service Award from the University of Toronto. A year later he obtained Dean’s Excellence Award from the faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto.
  
  He also had several research grants.
  
  

Membership

Green is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Association for Jewish Studies and the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion.

Connections

Green married Sharon Mintz. They had 3 children - Alexander, Daniel and Jonathan.

Father:

Patrick Hart Green

Mother:

Freda (Gusen) Green

Wife:

Sharon Mintz

She is a university lecturer in Hebrew and Yiddish literature.

Son:

Alexander Green

Son:

Daniel Green

Son:

Jonathan Green