Uriel Aiskovich, M.A.

Doctoral Researcher and Research Assistant

Chair: Jewish Religious and Intellectual History

Campus Am Neuen Palais / House 15, Room 1.06

E-mail: aiskovich@uni-potsdam.de

Consultation hours: Please arrange an appointment by e-mail, specifying your preferred medium (in-person, Zoom, etc.).

Research

Uriel Aiskovich is a doctoral candidate at the School of Jewish Theology, University of Potsdam, where he works under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jonathan Schorsch (University of Potsdam) and Prof. Dr. Frederek Musall (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg). His dissertation, Digital Games as Tools for Ethical Learning, Identity Formation, and Intercultural Dialogue in Contemporary Jewish Education, investigates how commercial and independent digital games can function as pedagogical media within contemporary Jewish educational contexts.

The project develops a critical framework for analyzing digital games not as transparent instruments of instruction but as culturally mediated texts that require sustained interpretive engagement. Drawing on traditions of Jewish dialogical learning — machloket, elu v’elu, and hevruta — alongside critical pedagogy and game studies, the research argues that digital games, including titles with ambivalent or culturally complex representations of Jewishness, can serve as productive sites for ethical reflection, identity formation, and intercultural dialogue when appropriately facilitated. Particular attention is given to the gap between purpose-built educational games and the pedagogical possibilities latent in commercially produced titles, a distinction that remains underexplored in the existing literature on religion and digital media.

The research is supported by an Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk (ELES) doctoral fellowship.

Research interests: Digital games and religion; game-based learning; Jewish education; critical thinking and dialogical pedagogy; intercultural dialogue; identity formation; media representation of minority cultures; Frankfurt School critical theory and Jewish thought; educational applications of interactive media.

Coordination

Jewish Activism Summer School (JASS), University of Potsdam

Since August 2024, Uriel Aiskovich has served as Research Assistant at the School of Jewish Theology, where he is responsible for the development, planning, and coordination of the Jewish Activism Summer School (JASS). JASS brings together students and practitioners engaged with questions of Jewish identity, activism, and pluralism in a European context, offering an intensive interdisciplinary format at the intersection of Jewish learning and civic engagement.

Academic Background

Uriel Aiskovich holds a Master of Arts in Jewish Theology from the University of Potsdam and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (Cum Laude) from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Senior Experiential Jewish Education from M² – The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education. Before joining the University of Potsdam, he served as Lecturer in Philosophy and Methods of the Social Sciences at UBA and as Lecturer in Political Theory at the Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales (UCES), both in Argentina.

Publications

Aiskovich, Uriel. “La fuerza no está en los cielos: conversaciones entre Milei y los maestros del Talmud.” In Las fuerzas del cielo. Argentina, Milei y los judíos, coordinated by Raanan Rein and Pablo Méndez Shiff. Buenos Aires: Milena Caserola, 2024. ISBN 978-987-8392-91-3.

Pittaluga, Mariana, and Uriel Aiskovich. Puño y Letra: un cruce interdisciplinario entre Poder y Caligrafía. Co-edition: Experimenta Libros (Madrid) / Wolkowicz Editores (Buenos Aires), 2021. ISBN 978-84-18049-57-6 / 978-987-4117-66-3.

Aiskovich, Uriel. "Pragmatismo y Judaísmo. Fuentes talmúdicas de la filosofía pragmática." Diversidad 4, Año 3 (junio 2012): 1–19. ISSN 2250-5792.

Forthcoming

Aiskovich, Uriel. "Stepping Into Another's World: Digital Games, Critical Thinking, and Educational Possibilities in Contemporary Jewish Education." In Religiöse Bildung und Künstliche Intelligenz [Religious Education and Artificial Intelligence], Band VI. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, forthcoming 2026.

Aiskovich, Uriel. "Erich Fromm and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Thought in Argentina: Reception and Influence within the Jewish Community (1940s–1990s)." Fromm Forum (English Edition). Tübingen: Internationale Erich-Fromm-Gesellschaft, forthcoming.