Video: List Lecture: “Forging the Monotheistic Triangle: Jews, Arabs, Christians and the Promises of European Modernity”

In this year’s List Lecture, Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College) examined how Jews, Arabs, and Christians engaged the promises of European modernity in the nineteenth century. Focusing on parallel moments of optimism and eventual disillusionment, the lecture explored how Jewish and Arab intellectuals embraced—and were ultimately excluded from—the universal ideals of Enlightenment thought. Heschel also invited a reconsideration of the deeper motivations shaping these communities as they imagined their place in a modern world.

Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and a scholar of Jewish and Protestant thought, biblical scholarship, and antisemitism. Her many publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus and The Aryan Jesus, as well as the recent The Woman Question in Jewish Studies (co-edited with Sarah Imhoff, 2025).