Martin
D. Yaffe received his B.A. with honors in philosophy from
University of Toronto and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Claremont Graduate
School, and is currently an associate professor of philosophy and religion
studies at the University of North Texas. He has also taught at Tel Aviv
University in Israel. Yaffe's special interests are classical political
philosophy and Jewish thought. He is author of Shylock and the Jewish
Question (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) and co-translator of
St. Thomas Aquinas' Literal Exposition on the Book of Job (Scholars
Press, 1989). Yaffe is currently completing a translation of Benedict
Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the philosophical
founding-document of modern Judaism, and is also compiling an anthology of
essays on Judaism and environmental ethics.