The Andre Neher Institute brings together faculty and student scholars from the Robert M. Beren College to study in depth the writings of Rabbi Professor Andre Neher, the little known but outstanding French philosopher and educator who shaped the spiritual character of France’s large Jewish community in the generation after the Holocaust.
The colleague of Emmanuel Levinas and Leon Ashkenazi, Andre Neher’s philosophy is based upon bridging the gap between the human and the divine, between philosophy and religion. and between being a rational person and a person of faith. “From the tension, the opposition, the polarization, from what our eyes see as absurd, even the Holocaust—the Jewish challenge of Jerusalem and the challenge of the bridge awaits and calls to you: to join, to cooperate, to unite” (Andre Neher, “Can two walk together, unless they be agreed?”)
The primary focus of the Institute’s studies is on the interpersonal relationships between Jews and the relations between Jews and Gentiles, particularly as pertains to contemporary living in the modern state of Israel.
