MAIMONIDES AND THE VISUAL IMAGE AFTER KANT AND COHEN

New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, 2024

In this essay, I take up the relationship between monotheism and idolatry identified by Elliot Wolfson through an exploration of imagination and sensation — particularly vision and prophetic envisioning — in Moses Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed. Wolfson's and Edith Wyschogrod's attunement to the complex interplay of the imagination and the body allow us to see how Maimonides uses decidedly visual imagery to gesture beyond the visual, a dynamic later reflected in Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenology.

De-Gruyter and Hebrew University Magnes Press Jerusalem, 2018

This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.

_Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image_, 2022

Incomprehensible Certainty presents a sustained reflection on the nature of images and the phenomenology of visual experience. Taking the “image” (eikōn) as the essential medium of art and literature and as foundational for the intuitive ways in which we make contact with our “lifeworld,” Thomas Pfau draws in equal measure on Platonic metaphysics and modern phenomenology to advance a series of interlocking claims. First, Pfau shows that, beginning with Plato’s later dialogues, being and appearance came to be understood as ontologically distinct from (but no longer opposed to) one another. Second, in contrast to the idol that is typically gazed at and visually consumed as an object of desire, this study positions the image (eikōn) as a medium whose intrinsic abundance and excess reveal to us its metaphysical function, namely, as the visible analogue of an invisible, numinous reality. Finally, the interpretations unfolded in this book (from Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene via Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa to modern writers and artists such as Goethe, Ruskin, Turner, Hopkins, C zanne, and Rilke) affirm the essential complementarity of image and word, visual intuition and hermeneutic practice, in theology, philosophy, and literature. Like Pfau’s previous book, Minding the Modern, Incomprehensible Certainty is a major work. With over fifty illustrations, the book will interest students and scholars of philosophy, theology, literature, and art history.

While Maimonides reread his sources to reconcile biblical and rabbinic texts with the demands of reason, Hermann Cohen, in his construction of a "religion of reason," rereads Maimonides' rereadings of those very same texts. Maimonides' Judaism often bridges the sources toward Cohen's religion of reason by providing a philological anchor that nudges a term or verse now viewed through a more modern historical and evolutionary lens toward its ultimate reason-infused meaning. This paper will explore a hitherto neglected feature of their oeuvres that unites Maimonides and Cohen as much as it distinguishes them: the "Jewishness" shared by both, as evident in the most Jewish of all exercises that suffuses both their works, biblical and midrashic exegesis. Their exegetical nets are systematically cast widely throughout the breadth of the Hebrew Bible, but more often than not they offer highly discrepant readings of the same passage or prooftext. Cohen's referencing of many of the same sources appeals to their Maimonidean rationalist refurbishment, but at the same time often places them in combative discourse in order to subvert and reorient Maimonides' exegesis. The notions of divine names, the "image" (tselem) of God, "nearness" to God, and divine "glory" (kavod ) are closely examined to demonstrate this intertextual relationship between these two seminal Jewish thinkers. While Cohen may be misreading Maimonides' rereading of scripture, he remains a true hermeneutical disciple in his exegetical restructuring and realignment of scripture. Cohen's programmatic exegetical idealization of Maimonidean prooftexts to reconstruct a new Kantianized God forms a common ground of discourse with Maimonides that traverses seven centuries of a quintessential Jewish enterprise.

2003

This paper studies the "eye" as a religious phenomenon from the multiple traditions of ancient Egypt compared with rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity using a semiotic approach based upon the theories of Umberto Eco. This method was chosen because the eye is a graphic as well as a linguistic sign which both express religious concepts. Generally, the eye represented an all-seeing and omnipresent divinity. In other words, the god was reduced to an eye, whereby the form of the symbol suggests a meaning to the viewer or religious practitioner. In this manner the eye represented the whole body of a deity in Egyptian and the power of a discerning God in rabbinic texts. By focusing upon the semantic aspect of the eye metaphor in both Egyptian and rabbinic texts two religious traditions of the visually perceivable are analyzed from a semiotic perspective.

2023

The Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles that seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies. Contributions to the Review place special thematic emphasis on scepticism within Jewish thought and its links to other religious traditions and secular worldviews. The Review is interested in the tension at the heart of matters of reason and faith, rationalism and mysticism, theory and practice, narrativity and normativity, doubt and dogma. Jeremy Phillip Brown, "What Does the Messiah Know? A Prelude to Kabbalah’s Trinity Complex" Libera Pisano, “'The Last German Jew': A Perspectival Reading of Franz Rosenzweig’s Dual Identity through His Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute" Jeffrey G. Amshalem, “'The Divine Philosopher': Rebbe Pinhas of Korets’s Kabbalah as Natural Philosophy" Maria Vittoria Comacchi, "Questioning Traditions Readings of Annius of Viterbo’s Antiquitates in the Cinquecento: The Case of Judah Abarbanel" Jonatan Meir, "'Bordering Two Worlds': Hillel Zeitlin’s Spiritual Diary" Rebecca Kneller-Rowe, "Scepticism in Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes (Peruš Qohelet)" Isaac Slater, "The Forgotten Branch Mediators of Philosophical Knowledge in Eastern European Jewish Thought" Michela Torbidoni, "Spinoza’s Moral Scepticism An Overview of Giuseppe Rensi’s Interpretation" Guido Bartolucci, "Mobility and Creativity David de’ Pomis and the Place of the Jews in Renaissance Italy" Tamir Karkason, "The Language of Truth The Śefat Emet Association (Salonica 1890) and Its Taqqanot (Bylaws)"

As common opinion has it, the Wissenschaft des Judentums had little affinity with art and aesthetics. This article begins by relating this lack of 'visual antenna' to the movement's original national-philological orientation. By scrutinising relevant passages from the writings of hard-core Wissenschaftler such as Leopold Zunz, Michael Sachs, Moritz Steinschneider, David Henriques de Castro and David Kaufmann, it then explores how traditional Jewish philologists coped with art and the visual when confronted with the non-textual, supranational dimensions of Jewish material culture, which became more and more prominent as the nineteenth century drew to a close.

The Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles that seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies. Contributions to the Review place special thematic emphasis on scepticism within Jewish thought and its links to other religious traditions and secular worldviews. The Review is interested in the tension at the heart of matters of reason and faith, rationalism and mysticism, theory and practice, narrativity and normativity, doubt and dogma. General editor Giuseppe Veltri (Universität Hamburg) Editorial Board Jonathan Garb (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Racheli Haliva (Universität Hamburg) Yehuda Halper (Bar-Ilan University) Warren Zev Harvey (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, emeritus) Christine Hayes (Yale University) Yitzhak Y. Melamed ( Johns Hopkins University) Stephan Schmid (Universität Hamburg) Josef Stern (University of Chicago, emeritus) Sarah Stroumsa (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, emerita) Irene E. Zwiep (Universiteit van Amsterdam

This then, was the man, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the Rambam. To recall him means to raise a question, a question that is directed to ourselves.'' With these words, 8i-year-old Rabbi Leo Baeck concluded his lecture, delivered in Dusseldorf on July 7, 1954, to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the death of Maimonides. The Rambam's writings, he explained to his audience, had unified the Jewish people, pointing them toward a life of science and morality. To Baeck, by pairing true Judaism with altruistic humanism Maimonides's personality had foreshadowed the open mindset of Reform Judaism. Thus, through his life and work, the medieval halakhist-philosopher had provided intellectual, social, and religious guidance for the present-day Jew. Written in 1954, Baeck's portrait was but one in a long line of modern reinterpretations of'Maimonides: The Man, His Work and His Impact,' as the title of the lecture went. In postwar Germany, however, it became a unique gesture of Jewish-German rapprochement. It is this rich reception history, with its ever-shifting needs and agendas, that will briefly concern us here. Our starting point is the Berlin Haskalah, the German-Jewish Enlightenment that brought a revaluation of Maimonides, after a dip in recognition that roughly coincided with the gap between the Sabbioneta (1553) and Jessnitz (1742) editions of the Guide of the Perplexed. At the time, the Jewish commercial elite in Prussia faced what seemed a disruptive dilemma: should they accept the recent invitation to 'civic improvement' and join the Enlightenment project of progress and profit? Or should they stay with the Jewish corporate nation and continue its ancient traditions? Also, in shul and in school, should they choose the universal religion of reason over the faith of their fathers, and introduce secular knowledge, indispensable for participating in gentile society, at the cost of rabbinic learning? Torat ha-Shem or Torat ha-Adam?-that was the question in 1780s Berlin. Most maskilim, if not all, preferred accommodation over rupture and thus opted for integrating the two conflicting paradigms. When trying to fit their innovations into the Jewish continuum, many turned to Maimonides for help. In 1786, Shimon Berz published a biography that portrayed the Rambam as an advocate of secular studies, freedom of conscience, equal rights, and tolerancein short, as an early prototype of the Berlin maskil. In 1761, Mendelssohn himself issued an annotated version of the master's Treatise on Logic in an attempt to spread the latest ideas on the relation between language and thought. Thirty years later Solomon Maimon completed Giv'at ha-Moreh, a Hebrew introduction to Kantian philosophy disguised as a commentary on the first book of the Guide. New wine poured into time-honed wineskins; needless to say, this was no sign of intellectual weakness, but a conscious, deliberate tactic. Modern scholars have contemplated the irony that maskilim identified with medieval thinkers at a time when the gentile Enlightenment was propagating a clean break with the past, 'imagine a lapsed Catholic philosophe,' Abraham Socher has written, 'utterly rejecting the worldly and doctrinal authority of the Church while taking the pen name "Aquinas."''' Socher's is a crucial observation: the Enlightenment was all about moving forward.