After gaining her doctorate in philosophy with a thesis on Jewish philosophical historiography, Esther I. Seidel (born in Düsseldorf in 1952) lectured at Düsseldorf University, Germany, before training liberal rabbis in philosophy at the Leo Baeck College in London for about twenty years. She has been teaching courses on Wissenschaft des Judentums and Maimonides, both at the Abraham Geiger Kolleg, Potsdam, and at Shandong University (Jinan, China), where she was twice invited to lecture as a visiting professor. Her main areas of research are on Maimonides, Spinoza, Jews from Portugal and, in particular, Wissenschaft des Judentums, including the history of the two pre-war rabbinical colleges in Germany with regard to their roots in German philosophical thought.