Dear Divinity School community,

I write with the sad news that our beloved colleague and dear friend Paul Mendes-Flohr, Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Thought in the Divinity School and College, passed away October 24 at the age of 83. He is survived by his beloved wife Rita and their children and grandchildren. The funeral was held on October 25 in Jerusalem.

Paul Mendes-Flohr was born in New York on April 17, 1941. He earned his BA at Brooklyn College in 1964 and PhD from Brandeis in 1972. After a year of teaching at McGill, he began a most distinguished career at the Hebrew University in 1973. He visited UChicago several times in the 1990s before joining our faculty full time in 2000, where he was a constant presence in the hallways of Swift until his retirement in 2018.

Paul was a leading scholar of intellectual history in modernity, Jewish philosophy and religious thought, German intellectual history, and the history and sociology of intellectuals. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the author of some 300 articles and occasional pieces and more than 70 edited volumes and monographs, including the magisterial 2019 biography Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent. Paul was indeed the pioneering scholar of Buber and also a leading proponent of Buber’s philosophy of I and Thou, ideas about dialogical relationship that Paul embodied so well in every aspect of his life.

Paul was devoted to his students, always available to converse with, console and encourage them in his Swift Hall and Regenstein offices, around campus and in his Hyde Park apartment. In Jerusalem, Paul and Rita welcomed all visitors into their warm home with extraordinary graciousness. Paul's generosity was legendary, his humor irresistible, his laugh infectious. He will be missed by so many who loved him.

May his memory forever be a blessing.

James T. Robinson
Dean of the Divinity School

See also the University’s obituary.