Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century

"Textual Reasoning" is the name a family of contemporary Jewish thinkers has given to its overlapping practices of Jewish philosophy and theology. This collection represents the most public expression to date of the shared work, over a period of 12 years, of this society of "textual reasoners." Although the movement of textual reasoning is diverse and pluriform, it is characterized at bottom by the pursuit of the claim that there are significant affinities between Jewish forms of reading and reasoning and postmodern thought. These affinities are presently being pursued by scholars throughout Jewish studies, in fields such as Bible, Talmud, Midrash, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah and the Jewish penomenology of Rosenzweig and Levinas among others. As the essays here convey, the work of these scholars has stimulated a lively and creative re-engagement with the philosophical dimensions of Jewish texts and, even more, the textual dimensions of Jewish reasoning. In large part this new energy has come from a conception of the postmodern as a place where some of the most distinctive features of Jewish reasoning can be elucidated as well as challenged. Nancy Levene is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Williams College. Peter Ochs is Edgar M Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia.