Tradition is often described, in the words of Karl Mannheim, as a “tendency to cling to the past and a fear of innovation.” Religion, in turn, is frequently portrayed as a bastion of traditionalism and conservatism. This lecture will explore how some nineteenth-century thinkers challenged this binary, arguing instead that tradition could itself be a vehicle of progress and an embrace of modernity.

In the Jewish world, the Italian rabbi Benamozegh paved the way for interreligious dialogue after the Second World War. In Islam, the political leader and Sufi Abd el-Kader—who resisted the French conquest of Algeria—likewise understood tradition as a mode of coexistence, fully in tune with the spirit of their times.

Clémence Boulouque is the Carl and Bernice Witten Associate Professor in Jewish and Israel studies. She received her PhD in Jewish Studies and History from New York University in 2014 and took postdoctoral training at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania. Her interests include Jewish thought and mysticism, intellectual history and networks with a focus on the modern Mediterranean and Sefardi worlds, as well as the intersection between religion and psychoanalysis.

Prior to resuming her studies at NYU, Clémence Boulouque worked as a literary and movie critic in Paris. A novelist and essayist in her native France, she published Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh's Jewish Universalism (Stanford University Press, 2020) and On the Edge of the Abyss: the Jewish Unconscious before Freud (Chicago University Press, 2025). She is the co-editor of the Stanford Studies in Jewish Mysticism series.