Overview

The Undivided Heart presents a history of legal and moral thought in Jewish civilization from the earliest times until 200 CE. It discusses Israelite wisdom literature, biblical law collections, the prophets, works of the Hellenic Jewish Diaspora, the apocrypha, apocalypses, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Mishnah, and it compares the moral teaching of the Pharisees/tannaim, the Essenes, and Jesus of Nazareth. Among the book's important insights is that ancient Israel experienced a fundamental moral change, from people esteeming qualities and conduct having competitive value to people esteeming qualities and conduct having cooperative value. These newly esteemed qualities and conduct were, moreover, not originally justified as being commanded by God but as promoting the nation's well-being. Another important insight concerns Jeremiah's belief that human beings would not be righteous until given a ""single heart."" Although Jeremiah is typically understood as envisioning the end of free will, this book argues that Jeremiah was actually envisioning the integration of human desires and emotions, and that a ""single heart"" is better translated an ""undivided heart."" The notion of an undivided and a divided heart was used throughout the Second Temple period to explain, respectively, moral rectitude and moral failure.

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Zachary Alan Starr is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at SUNY, Suffolk where he has taught since 2005. He studied philosophy, religion, the history of ideas, and Jewish thought at Colgate University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He also holds a law degree from the Maurice A. Deane School of Law of Hofstra University. Starr received his BA, magna cum laude with high honors in philosophy and religion from Colgate. At Colgate he was awarded membership into Phi Beta Kappa and was named an Austen Colgate scholar (the highest honor given by Colgate for exceptional academic achievement). While at Colgate he was granted a full scholarship to spend his senior year at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem studying the Hebrew Bible and Jewish thought. Although he was accepted into The Hebrew University's graduate program in The History of Jewish Thought, Starr decided to return to the United States to study with Alasdair MacIntyre, who then taught moral philosophy and the history of ideas at Brandeis University. In addition to taking numerous courses and graduate seminars with Professor MacIntyre, Starr studied with Henry David Aiken, William A. Johnson, and Alexander Altmann. While at Brandeis, Starr was a Teaching Fellow in the Philosophy Department. When Professor MacIntyre decided to leave Brandeis, Starr decided to leave Brandeis as well. Brandeis did award him, however, an MA in Philosophy. Starr then attended the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. Being in Philadelphia, Starr applied to and was accepted into the graduate program in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. In a letter supporting his application, Professor MacIntyre wrote that Starr ""was a first-rate graduate student in philosophy who was able to combine his philosophical and historical interests in a creative way."" Starr was the only student in his entering class at Penn to pass qualifying examinations in both logic and the history of philosophy. Ultimately, Starr decided to forgo his rabbinic and academic pursuits in order to attend law school. Starr then attended The Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. While at Hofstra, Starr served as an Associate Editor of the Hofstra Law Review and published a law review article on class action litigation. After clerking for New Jersey Superior Court justices Martin Haines and Victor Friedman, Starr went on to practice law for twenty-five years, establishing his own boutique law firm, Starr & Holman, LLP, specializing in class actions and other complex litigation. He also published several law review articles and taught at New York Law School. In 2005 Starr dissolved his law firm and resumed his full-time study of moral and legal philosophy and Jewish thought. He began to teach philosophy and Jewish thought at the State University of New York, Suffolk, which is near his home in East Quogue, New York. In 2010 the National Endowment for the Humanities designated him a NEH Summer Scholar for his participation in the NEH Summer Seminar entitled ""Free Will and Human Perfection in Medieval Jewish Philosophy."" In or about 2015, Starr began to focus on writing a history of Jewish thought. This focus resulted in the 2020 publication of Toward a History of Jewish Thought: The Soul, Resurrection, and the Afterlife which recounts the development of Jewish ideas about the soul, resurrection, and the afterlife from biblical times to the present. Since publication of Toward a History of Jewish Thought, Starr has devoted himself to writing The Undivided Heart; Law, Morality, Human Nature, and Ethical Theory in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism, which work may be seen as a continuation of his interest in writing a history of Jewish thought.

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