This paper describes the practice of rabbinic Torah-Study in Pragmatist epistemological terms. Pragmatists describe the quest for knowledge as a process in which we interpret our experiences and thereby construct an idea of our reality. This description creates or generates a tension between the constructive aspect of the knowledge quest and the idea of an independent reality. The paper argues that Pragmatism shares this tension, as well as the hermeneutical and pragmatic method for overcoming it, with the rabbinic concept of (...) "Torah Study." This association is illustrated through a close reading of a Midrash on the first verse of the Biblical "Woman of Valor" song. (shrink)

In his early teaching, from the 1920s through the 1950s, Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994) stands out as one of the most fascinating religious Zionist thinkers. He strives to establish a Jewish democratic state whose democratic aspects will be channeled toward the establishment of an exemplary society, one that can express its religious roots within a modern democratic context. Leibowitz thus attaches enormous importance to democracy in terms of both its political components and its modern Orthodox aspirations. In this respect, he is (...) the most radical spokesman of the Neo-Orthodox notion of Torah with Derekh Eretz , as translated into religious-Zionist terms. (shrink)

Honoring the divine is central to Maimonides' ethical and religious phenomenology. It connotes the recognition of radical divine incommensurability and points to the hard limits of human ability to know God. Yet it also signals the importance of philosophical speculation within those limits, indicating the intellectual and ethical telos of human life. For Maimonides, to honor or show kavod to God is closely related to the meaning of the divine glory (also known as kavod ) that Moses demands to see (...) in Exodus 33. Moses' demand to see the kavod is usually interpreted as a quest for some visible sign of God's presence or, at least, for a created light whose existence could testify to the authenticity of Moses' prophecy. Maimonides is alone among early interpreters in treating Exodus 33 as a parable of the philosophical quest to apprehend divine uniqueness, which leads first to negative theology and then to imitatio Dei . This article argues that the theme of divine kavod links Maimonides' philosophical, literary, and even medical concerns with his practical religious teaching, and connects the Guide of the Perplexed with his other legal and interpretive works. Maimonides' consistent fascination with Exodus 33 helps to organize his reflections on human perfection, ethics, and the relationship between idolatry and everyday religious language, distinguishing him from dominant trends in both Judaeo-Arabic and later kabbalistic thought. (shrink)

After an initially sympathetic reading of Maimonides, Levinas develops an ambivalent attitude toward the Great Eagle, whom he views as a champion of intellectualist Judaism. Nevertheless, insights from the early engagement with Maimonides are carried forth into the central claims of Totality and Infinity regarding freedom, creation, particularity and transcendence. Levinas' arguments are directed at Heidegger but can also be seen as a phenomenological repetition of the medieval dispute about the eternity of the world. Later, Levinas continues this engagement with (...) Maimonides by transforming the latter's negative theology into what I call ethical negative theology. (shrink)

Joseph Gikatilla's early works, composed during the 1270s, have been understood by many scholars as a fusion of Kabbalah and philosophy—an approach that he abandoned in his later compositions. This paper argues that Gikatilla's early works are in fact consistent with his later works, and that the differences between the two can be explained by the polemical engagement during his early period with Jewish philosophy and Christian missionizing. By subtly drawing Jewish students of philosophy away from Aristotelian speculation and towards (...) Kabbalah, Gikatilla sought in his early works to lay the foundation for an understanding of Judaism based on kabbalistic mytho-poesis and ecstatic mystical experience. (shrink)

Whereas some of the critics of Hermann Cohen's strictly rational foundation of religious consciousness promoted a turn to subjectivism, others endorsed an ethicotheology while seeking to revise the "Religion of Reason." Among the latter was the Ukrainian-born social philosopher David Koigen (1877-1933), author of Der moralische Gott. Eine Abhandlung über die Beziehungen zwischen Kultur und Religion/The Moral God: An essay on the relations between culture and religion (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1922). This article examines Koigen's reevaluation of Jewish monotheism as a (...) culture-forming religion (Kulturreligion) grounded in a religious ethos which integrates the rational will, ethics and emotion. (shrink)