{"title":"Midrash, Myth, and Bakhtin's Chronotope: The Itinerant Well and the Foundation Stone in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer","authors":"R. Adelman","doi":"10.1163/105369909X12506863090431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/105369909X12506863090431","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout the midrash Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer ( PRE ), motifs are recycled to connect primordial time to the eschaton. In this paper, I read passages on the well “created at twilight of the Sixth Day” in light of Bakhtin's notion of “chronotope” (lit. time-space). The author of PRE disengages the itinerant well from its traditional association with the desert sojourn and links it, instead, to the foundation stone of the world ( even shtiyah ) at the Temple Mount. The midrash reflects the influence of Islamic legends about the “white stone” around which the Dome of the Rock was built (ca. 690 C.E.). Over the course of the discussion, PRE is understood in terms of the genre “narrative midrash” and compared to classical rabbinic literature in order to illustrate changes in both form and content arising from the author's apocalyptic eschatology.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77446493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Matter of Language: The Creation of the World from Letters and Jacques Lacan's Perception of Letters as Real","authors":"Tzahi Weiss","doi":"10.1163/147728509X448993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/147728509X448993","url":null,"abstract":"Jewish texts from Late Antiquity, as well as culturally affiliated sources, contain three different traditions about the creation of the world from alphabetic letters. This observation, which contradicts the common assumption that the myth of creation from letters stems from the holiness of the Jewish language, calls for comparative study. A structural approach to the letter as a founding ontological element is corroborated by the ancient Greek word stoicheion (στoιχeιoν), which refers to both physical foundations and alphabetic letters. To analyze this attitude to the letter in the ancient world, I draw on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, which addresses the question of the letter in the framework of human discourse. I use Lacan's concepts to describe and illuminate the inherent connection between letters and the very foundations of the world.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2009-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81465501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abraham Joshua Heschel's Theology of Judaism and the Rewriting of Jewish Intellectual History","authors":"Reuven Kimelman","doi":"10.1163/105369909X12506863090512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/105369909X12506863090512","url":null,"abstract":"Abraham Joshua Heschel's oeuvre deals with the continuum of Jewish religious consciousness from the biblical and rabbinic periods through the kabbalistic and Hasidic ones with regard to God's concern for humanity. The goal of this study is to show how such a “Nachmanidean” reading has partially displaced the discontinuous “Maimonidean” reading promoted by Yehezkel Kaufman, Ephraim Urbach, and Gershom Scholem. The result is that Heschel's understanding of the development of Jewish theologizing is more influential now than it was during his lifetime. This study traces the growth of that development and explores how Heschel became the scholar-theologian who most succeeded in bridging the gap between scholarship and constructive theology.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84364331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reclaiming the Prophets: Cohen, Heschel, and Crossing the Theocentric/Neo-Humanist Divide","authors":"Robert Erlewine","doi":"10.1163/105369909X12506863090477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/105369909X12506863090477","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, I examine Hermann Cohen's and Abraham Joshua Heschel's respective accounts of the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible, which contend with the Protestant biblical criticism of their day. Their accounts of the prophets are of central significance for their philosophies of Judaism, which mirror and oppose each other. This Auseinandersetzung addresses the often neglected topic of Jewish responses to German-Protestant biblical criticism and stresses the cogency of Heschel's thought. Additionally, examining Cohen and Heschel together problematizes the polarization between theocentrism and neo-humanism currently dominating the landscape of modern Jewish thought.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88821810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Refuting the Yetzer: The Evil Inclination and the Limits of Rabbinic Discourse","authors":"Ishay Rosen-Zvi","doi":"10.1163/105369909X12506863090396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/105369909X12506863090396","url":null,"abstract":"Rabbinic literature contains several examples of a manner of silencing impious arguments that is usually identified only with later forms of piety, namely, ascribing the arguments to the evil inclination ( yetzerhara ). Arguments attributed to the yetzer represent serious discursive threats against rabbinic doctrine, marking fundamental problems in both its legal and nonlegal (aggadic) parts. Identifying a question or refutation as belonging to the yetzer automatically invalidates it. By ascribing arguments to the yetzer , the rabbis prevent their audience from actually engaging them, thus marking the limits of rabbinic dialogism.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85922311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Alpine Limits of Jewish Thought: Leo Strauss, National Socialism, and Judentum ohne Gott","authors":"W. Altman","doi":"10.1163/147728509X448975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/147728509X448975","url":null,"abstract":"Writing in 1935 as \"Hugo Fiala,\" Karl Lowith not only connected Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt to an apparently contentless \"decisionism\" but drew attention to the fact that his correspondent Leo Strauss (1899–1973) had attacked Schmitt—like Heidegger an open Nazi since 1933— from the Right in 1932. In opposition to the views of Peter Eli Gordon, Heidegger's bellicose stance at the Davos Hochschule of 1929 is presented as \"political\" in Schmitt's sense of the term while Strauss's embrace of Heidegger, never regretted, showed that he ceased to be Nietzsche's \"Good European\" in his thirtieth year. A more significant \"change of orientation\" is revealed in Strauss's 1932 version of the \"second cave,\" a pseudo-Platonic image of Verjudung . Revelation had disrupted a nihilistic \"natural ignorance\" that could only be reversed by an elite's secret decision for a self-contradictory content: only an atheistic religion provides a post-liberal solution to \"the theological-political problem.\"","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79081863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kabbalah in a Literary Key: Mystical Motifs in Zechariah Aldāhirī's Sefer hamusar","authors":"A. Tanenbaum","doi":"10.1163/147728509X448984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/147728509X448984","url":null,"abstract":"Zechariah Aldāhirī's maqāma collection, Sefer hamusar (Yemen, c. 1580), is a literary work modeled on the Arabic Maqāmāt of al-Harīrī and the Hebrew Tahkemoni of Alharizi. Although largely fictional in nature, the work offers intriguing evidence of the transmission of kabbalistic thought to Yemen in the sixteenth century. This paper argues that Aldāhirī exploited the text's lighthearted belletristic framework to bring kabbalistic theosophy, literature, and liturgical customs to the attention of a largely uninitiated public in Yemen. But Aldāhirī also conveys an ambivalence towards his project when he parodies the new taste for kabbalistic learning by embedding mystical ideas in complex narratives.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86459676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Honoring the Divine as Virtue and Practice in Maimonides","authors":"Don Seeman","doi":"10.1163/105369908786611523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/105369908786611523","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77626844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Contemporary Relevance of Maimonides (1935)","authors":"E. Lévinas","doi":"10.1163/105369908785822142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/105369908785822142","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84252473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Levinas and Maimonides: From Metaphysics to Ethical Negative Theology","authors":"M. Fagenblat","doi":"10.1163/105369908785822133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/105369908785822133","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87963769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}