Download or read book The Sacred Power of Language in Modern Jewish Thought written by Shira Wolosky and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-07-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judaic cultures have a commitment to language that is exceptional. Language in many form – texts, books and scrolls; learning, interpretation, material practices that generate material practices – are central to Judaic conduct, experience, and spirituality. In this Judaic traditions differ from philosophical and theological ones that make language secondary. Traditional metaphysics has privileged the immaterial and unchanging, as unchanging truth that language can at best convey and at worst distort. Such traditional metaphysics has come under critique since Nietzsche in ways that the author explores. Shira Wolosky argues that Judaic traditions converge with contemporary metaphysical critique rather than being its target. Focusing on the work of Derrida, Levinas, Scholem and others, the author examines traditions of Judaic interpretation against backgrounds of biblical exegesis; sign-theory as it recasts language meaning in ways that concord with Judaic textuality; negative theology as it differs in Judaic tradition from those which negate language itself; and lastly outline a discourse ethics that draws on Judaic language theory. This study is directed to students and scholars of: Judaic thought, religious studies and theology; theory of interpretation; Levinas and other modern Jewish philosophical writers, placing them in broader contexts of philosophy, theology, and language theory. It is shown how Jewish discourses on language address urgent problems of value and norms in the contemporary world that has challenged traditional anchors of truth and meaning.
Download or read book Choices in Modern Jewish Thought written by Eugene B. Borowitz and published by Behrman House, Inc. This book was released on 1995 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish philosophy responds to the challenges of today's world. By studying the ideas of great contemporary thinkers, readers will achieve a rich understanding of our contemporary spiritual needs.
Download or read book A Best Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era written by David B. Ruderman and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of a single book sheds light on the beginnings of modern Jewish thought In 1797, in what is now the Czech Republic, Pinḥas Hurwitz published Book of the Covenant. Nominally an extended commentary on a sixteenth-century kabbalist text, Pinḥas’s publication was in fact a compendium of scientific knowledge and a manual of moral behavior. Its popularity stemmed from its ability to present the scientific advances and moral cosmopolitanism of its day in the context of Jewish legal and mystical tradition. Describing the latest developments in science and philosophy in the sacred language of Hebrew, Hurwitz argued that an intellectual understanding of the cosmos was not at odds with but actually key to achieving spiritual attainment. In A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era, David Ruderman offers a literary and intellectual history of Hurwitz’s book and its legacy. Hurwitz not only wrote the book, but also was instrumental in selling it, and his success ultimately led to the publication of more than forty editions in Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish. Ruderman provides a multidimensional picture of the book and the intellectual tradition it helped to inaugurate. Complicating accounts that consider modern Jewish thought to be the product of a radical break from a religious, mystical past, Ruderman shows how, instead, a complex continuity shaped Jewish society’s confrontation with modernity.
Download or read book The Name of God in Jewish Thought written by Michael T Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most powerful traditions of the Jewish fascination with language is that of the Name. Indeed, the Jewish mystical tradition would seem a two millennia long meditation on the nature of name in relation to object, and how name mediates between subject and object. Even within the tide of the 20th century’s linguistic turn, the aspect most notable in – the almost entirely secular - Jewish philosophers is that of the personal name, here given pivotal importance in the articulation of human relationships and dialogue. The Name of God in Jewish Thought examines the texts of Judaism pertaining to the Name of God, offering a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. The book begins with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, travelling through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement – and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th and 21st Century. This investigation will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis depends on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God. Providing a comprehensive description of historical aspects of Jewish Name-Theology, this book also offers new ways of thinking about subjectivity and ontology through its original approach to the nature of the name, combining philosophy with text-critical analysis. As such, it is an essential resource for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion.
Download or read book Hebrew Language and Jewish Thought written by David Patterson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-09 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the idea that Jewish thought is distinguished by concepts and categories rooted in Hebrew.
Download or read book Contemplative Nation written by Cass Fisher and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-11 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemplative Nation challenges the long-standing view that theology is not a vital part of the Jewish tradition. For political and philosophical reasons, both scholars of Judaism and Jewish thinkers have sought to minimize the role of theology in Judaism. This book constructs a new model for understanding Jewish theological language that emphasizes the central role of theological reflection in Judaism and the close relationship between theological reflection and religious practice in the Jewish tradition. Drawing on diverse philosophical resources, Fisher's model of Jewish theology embraces the multiple forms and functions of Jewish theological language. Fisher demonstrates the utility of this model by undertaking close readings of an early rabbinic commentary on the book of Exodus (Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael ) and a work of modern philosophical theology (Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption). These readings advance the discussion of theology in rabbinics and modern Jewish thought and provide resources for constructive Jewish theology.
Download or read book I L Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), the father of modern Yiddish literature, was a master storyteller and social critic who advocated a radical shift from religious observance to secular Jewish culture. Wisse explores Peretz’s writings in relation to his ideology, which sought to create a strong Jewish identity separate from the trappings of religion.
Download or read book Speaking Writing of God written by Michael Oppenheim and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking/Writing of God explores the manner in which religious language develops in answer to the challenges and promise of three features of the life with others: the encounter between persons, the quest by Jewish women to be accepted—including their distinctiveness/otherness as women—as full participants in Jewish communal life, and the dialogue between Jews and non-Jews. Although a major stream of modern Jewish philosophy has focused on the transcendent dimension of the relationship between persons, this book studies the contribution of feminist Judaism to modern Jewish philosophy and the impact of religious pluralism on Jewish religious life and thought.
Download or read book Between Religion and Reason Part I written by Ephraim Chamiel and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present book is a sequel to Ephraim Chamiel’s two previous works The Middle Way and The Dual Truth—studies dedicated to the “middle” trend in modern Jewish thought, that is, those positions that sought to combine tradition and modernity, and offered a variety of approaches for contending with the tension between science and revelation and between reason and religion. The present book explores contemporary Jewish thinkers who have adopted one of these integrated approaches—namely the dialectical approach. Some of these thinkers maintain that the aforementioned tension—the rift within human consciousness between intellect and emotion, mind and heart—can be mended. Others, however, think that the dialectic between the two poles of this tension is inherently irresolvable, a view reminiscent of the medieval “dual truth” approach. Some thinkers are unclear on this point, and those who study them debate whether or not they successfully resolved the tension and offered a means of reconciliation. The author also offers his views on these debates. This book explores the dialectical approaches of Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Samuel Hugo Bergman, Leo Strauss, Ernst Simon, Emil Fackenheim, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, his uncle Isaac Breuer, Tamar Ross, Rabbi Shagar, Moshe Meir, Micah Goodman and Elchanan Shilo. It also discusses the interpretations of these thinkers offered by scholars such as Michael Rosenak, Avinoam Rosenak, Eliezer Schweid, Aviezer Ravitzky, Avi Sagi, Binyamin Ish-Shalom, Ehud Luz, Dov Schwartz, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Lawrence Kaplan, and Haim Rechnitzer. The author questions some of these approaches and offers ideas of his own. This study concludes that many scholars bore witness to the dialectical tension between reason and revelation; only some believed that a solution was possible. That being said, and despite the paradoxical nature of the dual truth approach (which maintains that two contradictory truths exist and we must live with both of them in this world until a utopian future or the advent of the Messiah), increasing numbers of thinkers today are accepting it. In doing so, they are eschewing delusional and apologetic views such as the identicality and compartmental approaches that maintain that tensions and contradictions are unacceptable.
Download or read book The Divine in Modern Hebrew Literature written by Neta Stahl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrating the pervasive presence of God in modern Hebrew literature, this book explores the qualities that twentieth-century Hebrew writers attributed to the divine, and examines their functions against the simplistic dichotomy between religious and secular literature. The volume follows both chronological and thematic paths, offering a panoramic and multilayered analysis of the various strategies in which modern Hebrew writers, from the turn of the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century pursued in their attempt to represent the divine in the face of metaphysical, theological, and representational challenges. Modern Hebrew literature emerged during the nineteenth century as part of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) movement, which attempted to break from the traditional modes of Jewish intellectual and social life. The Hebrew literature that arose in this period embraced the rebellious nature of the Haskalah and is commonly characterized as secular in nature, defying Orthodoxy and rejecting God. Nevertheless, this volume shows that modern Hebrew literature relied on traditional narratological and poetic norms in its attempt to represent God. Despite its self-declared secularity, it engaged deeply with traditional problems such as the nature of God, divine presence, and theodicy. Examining these radical changes, this volume is a key text for scholars and students of modern Hebrew literature, Jewish studies and the intersection of religion and literature.
Download or read book Heidegger and Jewish Thought written by Elad Lapidot and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents Jewish thought as a new perspective for perceiving and examining Heidegger's philosophy in relation to the Western intellectual tradition, offering new and constructive directions for the current Black Notebooks debate and featuring work by the leading authors of that debate.
Download or read book Winged Words Benjamin Rosenzweig and the Life of Quotation written by Benjamin E. Sax and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-07-24 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the role of quotation in modern Jewish thought. Weaving back and forth from Benjamin to Rosenzweig, the book searches for the recovery of concealed and lost meaning in the community of letters, sacred scripture, the collecting of books, storytelling, and the life of liturgy. It also explores how the legacy of Goethe can be used to develop new strata of religious and Jewish thought. We learn how quotation is the binding tissue that links language and thought, modernity and tradition, religion and secularism as a way of being in the world.
Download or read book Believing and Its Tensions written by Rabbi Neil Gillman, PhD and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-07-13 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate and candid examination of the changing nature of belief and where it can lead us—from the life experience of one of Judaism's leading thinkers. For over five decades, Rabbi Neil Gillman has helped people think through the most challenging questions at the heart of being a believing religious person. In this intimate rethinking of his own theological journey he explores the changing nature of belief and the complexities of reconciling the intellectual, emotional and moral questions of his own searching mind and soul. If what we have in recognizing, speaking of and experiencing God is a wide-ranging treasury of humanly crafted metaphors, what, then, is the ultimate reality, the ultimate nature of God? What lies beyond the metaphors? If humanity was an active partner in revelation—if the human community participated in what was revealed and gave it meaning—what then should be the authority of Jewish law? How do we cope—intellectually, emotionally and morally—with suffering, the greatest challenge to our faith commitment, relationship with God and sense of a fundamentally ordered world? Death is inevitable but why is it built in as part of the total life experience?
Download or read book A Touch of the Sacred written by Eugene B. Borowitz and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Powerful, soul-strengthening musings from the leading theologian of liberal Judaism. "Too often, books on religion are written either primarily for the head or for the heart--as if thinking people don't also feel intuitively, and spiritual types never think much at all. Bosh! Here is our special mix for you.... It is our hope that these pieces will serve as unique windows into Judaism--in bite-size, sacred 'touches'." --from the Introduction For the first time, Dr. Eugene Borowitz, the "dean" of liberal Jewish theologians, opens his heart as well as his mind as he talks about the mix of faith and doubt, of knowing and not-knowing--the elements of Jewish belief--in an easily accessible style. In these pages, Borowitz shares with you his rich inner life, which draws from both the rational and mystical Jewish thought that have inspired two generations of rabbis, cantors, and educators, and will now inspire you. With him, you will explore: Seeking the Sacred One Doing Holy Deeds Creating Sacred Community Reading Sacred Texts Thinking about Holiness Learning from Holy Thinkers and much, much more...
Download or read book How Judaism Became a Religion written by Leora Batnitzky and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-11 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new approach to understanding Jewish thought since the eighteenth century Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality—or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period—and why Jewish thinkers have fought as well as championed this idea. Ever since the Enlightenment, Jewish thinkers have debated whether and how Judaism—largely a religion of practice and public adherence to law—can fit into a modern, Protestant conception of religion as an individual and private matter of belief or faith. Batnitzky makes the novel argument that it is this clash between the modern category of religion and Judaism that is responsible for much of the creative tension in modern Jewish thought. Tracing how the idea of Jewish religion has been defended and resisted from the eighteenth century to today, the book discusses many of the major Jewish thinkers of the past three centuries, including Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Zvi Yehuda Kook, Theodor Herzl, and Mordecai Kaplan. At the same time, it tells the story of modern orthodoxy, the German-Jewish renaissance, Jewish religion after the Holocaust, the emergence of the Jewish individual, the birth of Jewish nationalism, and Jewish religion in America. More than an introduction, How Judaism Became a Religion presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought.
Download or read book Speaking Silences written by Andrew V. Ettin and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The loss of a public voice has implications for both the dominant and the dominated culture.
Download or read book In Speech and in Silence written by David J. Wolpe and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 1992 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Blessed be God Who spoke, and the world came into being." In the Jewish tradition, the world is created by words. Judaism ascribes an almost mystical power to language. Indeed, the central sacred object in Judaism is the book, the Torah. Words form a pathway between people and God. And yet, if words are the avenue of spirituality, silence is the destination. Silence signals our connection to the sublime. When we feel so deeply that words fail us, we are as close to God's presence as it is possible for humankind to be. Now, in a deeply moving series of meditations, David Wolpe explores how each of us can use the complexity of language and the simplicity of silence to reach toward God. Writing with the same mastery of sources that so distinguished his first book and with the same beauty of language that made that work a joyful and powerful experience, Rabbi Wolpe brings his compassionate intelligence to bear on a subject as ancient as the tradition that embraces it and as modern as our universal need to connect.
