News

24.02.2023

Judaic Studies expert Peter Ochs to receive Lucas Prize

Co-founder of interpretation through dialogue draws religions into conversation ‒ Junior Award goes to historian Johanna Jebe

Portrait of Peter Ochs — Awardee Peter Ochs

The University of Tübingen’s Faculty of Protestant Theology has announced that this year’s Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize will go to Peter Ochs, a professor of Modern Judaic Studies. The faculty thus pays tribute to his services to the dialogue between Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Ochs has significantly contributed to the development and dissemination of the Scriptural Reasoning method.

It pursues the goal of reconciliation between followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam via joint reading and discussion of the respective holy scriptures - thereby motivating them to act together. The interpretation of the holy scriptures through dialogue promotes understanding and acceptance of the respective religious traditions. For Ochs, this mutual understanding is the basis of interreligious reconciliation.

The award will be presented on

Tuesday, 9 May 2023, 5:15 pm in the University of Tübingen.
Festsaal ballroom (Neue Aula Building,
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, 72074 Tübingen).

The public and representatives of the media are welcome.

Peter Ochs (born 1950) was Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia from 1997-2021 and has been Professor Emeritus since 2022. He is a co-founder of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning and of the Children of Abraham Institute, which are committed to dialogue among members of the Abrahamic religions. He has been noted for numerous influential publications in the fields of Judaic Studies, Jewish philosophy and theology, (post-)modern philosophy, and interreligious dialogue and peacebuilding.

In addition to his broad and interdisciplinary scholarly activities, Ochs has also been active in policy advocacy for the U.S. State Department on the topics of religion and foreign policy, and religion and violence. In his work, Ochs not only provides a theoretical framework for interreligious understanding, but also actively works to achieve this goal in practice.

The jury said that Ochs thus fulfilled the objectives of the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize in an outstanding way in his academic and personal work. The Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize goes to individuals whose academic work has made a major contribution to greater tolerance and better relations between people and nations and has helped to promote a philosophy of tolerance. The Leopold Lucas Prize honors the memory of the Jewish rabbi and scholar Dr. Leopold Lucas, who died at Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943. The Prize was endowed by his son, Franz D. Lucas, in 1972.

It is awarded in his memory each year by the University of Tübingen’s Faculty of Protestant Theology. The prize is endowed with 50,000 euros.

Leopold Lucas Prize for Junior Researchers

This year’s Lucas Prize for early-career researchers goes to historical researcher Dr. Johanna Jebe for her doctoral thesis on writings by Carolingian monks, “Regeln, Schrift Correctio - Karolingerzeitliche Entwürfe von Mönchtum im Spiegel der Schriftproduktion aus St. Gallen und Fulda.” In the thesis, Jebe evaluates the medieval manuscripts through an innovative combination of the history of knowledge, the history of material textual cultures, and sociological theories of practice, and paints a new, fascinatingly multifaceted picture of monasticism and the Carolingian renewal movement in the 8th and 9th centuries. The prize comes with 20,000 euros.