conventions.pdf

Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, 2010

The Marrano Way. Between Betrayal and Innovation, 2022

There is one remarkable moment in Levinas' Talmudic readings that powerfully manifests the ambivalence inherent to all modern readings of tradition. At that moment, which is either explicit or implicit in all modern reading projects, the modern does not just define itself as a break with tradition, as outsider, but this break is performed rather as a return to the origin of tradition, with which tradition itself would be the break, such that the modern, breaking with this break, arises and asserts itself as the real, albeit hidden tradition. The outside is the real inside. In this manner, modernity asserts itself as the authentic tradition: an operation carried out paradigmatically by and as historiography. This essay reconstructs the ambivalent dynamics of an outsider hermeneutics in Levinas' Talmudic readings in the lights of the Marrano hypothesis. I wish to claim that Levinas is writing not only, in his philosophical writings, as a "philosophical Marrano": a converso to philosophy who embraces modernseemingly abstractphilosophical idiom, but secretly confronts it with the language of hisseemingly abandoned-Jewish tradition. 1 In addition, in his Jewish or Talmudic writings, Levinas may also be described as a "Talmudic Marrano", namely as immersing himself in the rabbinic language in view of confronting it with the philosophical tradition. The ambivalence arises from the simultaneous operation of positing a border between two sides, inside and outside: between what belongs and what does not belong to the Talmudic tradition, specifically between Talmud and philosophyand at the same time, by using the notion of hidden or concealed tradition, of converting the respective values of the two sides, turning them inside out, such that the outside becomes the inside, and the inside the outside. This potential conversion is a structural risk not only of any modern return to tradition, but more broadly of any attempt to access a thought or a discourse as other. This means that appropriation of otherness may arise not only from asserting identity, but perhaps even more so from the logic of difference.

Jewish Historiography Between Past and Future: 200 Years of Wissenschaft des Judentums, 2019

Judaica; Beiträge zum Verstehen des Judentums 27, pp. 3 - 40, 2011

Duquesne Law Review, 2003

The book, The Jewish Political Tradition,' represents an undertaking of monumental proportion. This first book is over 500 pages long and is presented as only volume I of a projected four volumes. The subject of this first volume is Authority, to be followed by volumes devoted to Membership, Community and Politics in History. The book is sprawling in its scope. The editors, Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum and Noam J. Zohar, have assembled a vast array of short vignettes, mostly from classical Jewish sources. They then arranged these fragments according to ten headings and numerous subtopics. The editors also added short commentaries by well-known writers-people like Michael Sandel, Hilary Putnam, David Hartman, Suzanne Stone and Walzer himself. The result is not a unified investigation into the Jewish political tradition, nor could it have been. An overall theme does emerge in the book, however, though that theme is not really the Jewish political tradition. Instead, the editors overwhelmingly emphasize the authority of the rabbinic tradition in Judaism-the Talmud, commentaries on the Talmud, medieval sources committed to the Talmudic tradition and a smattering of voices of 1 9 th century reform. Spinoza makes an appearance, but there is nothing here of Marx, Levinas or Freud, let alone Sartre or Derrida. Walzer candidly acknowledges this editorial choice, claiming that the editors wanted voices that refer to one another in an unfolding tradition-"intertexuality"-informed by the shared experience of gentile rule.' This gives the book the feel of a unified point of view. The topics and discussions reflect the editors' emphasis upon the rabbinic tradition. The book examines the issue of authority, beginning with authority of the Covenant; of reason versus revelation; of the Kings of Israel; of the Priests; of the Prophets; of the

MAKE Literary Magazine, 2014

Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness: Identities--Encounters--Perspectives: , 2007

Jewish History, 1996