Talmudic Readings Research Articles

"Extreme Attention to the Real": Levinas and Religious Hermeneutics

One important area of Levinas's Jewish thought consists in his Talmudic readings. Over the course of many years, he developed an approach to the reading of Talmud that relies, implicitly and explicitly, on various hermeneutical principles. A fundamental characteristic of rabbinic reading, according to Levinas, is "extreme attention to the Real," the complexity of both human nature and the many concrete situations to which human beings must respond. This essay uses one of the Talmudic readings as a springboard for an exploration of the hermeneutics that are at work in Levinas' approach, including, in this case, his own very real relationship to and disappointment with his teacher, Martin Heidegger.

Is There a Warrant for Levinas's Talmudic Readings?

AbstractLevinas's Talmudic readings have played an important role in defending the claim that the discipline of modern Jewish philosophy cannot be reduced to a list of assimilationist thinkers. This article argues that this claim is defendable, but only if the premise of the claim ceases to be the content of Levinas's Talmudic readings: "The Temptation of Temptation" wrongly takes its sugya as representative of Judaism as a whole, the differing mathematical calculations between Levinas and the sugya he treats in "The Pact" suggest that the Talmud assumes a Rousseauian amour-propre, and "And God Created Woman" implies that Jewish ethics is not opposed to Jews' assimilation. I instead suggest that Levinas's Talmudic readings serve to promote the fecundity of Judaism; it is only through such "bad" readings that historical determinism can be conquered, and a messianic future becomes possible.

The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Levinas Zahi Zalloua Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. xxx + 293 pp. There are no other editors better equipped to edit this book on Levinas in the well-known Cambridge Companion series. Simon Critchely and Robert Bernasconi have been some of the most attentive readers of Levinas, at once appreciative and rigorously critical of his work. Critchley gives a very accessible introduction to Levinas, focusing on some of the philosopher's key terms and loaded expressions (totality, infinity, "ethics as first philosophy," etc.). Critchley also calls attention to what he appropriately calls the "deconstructive turn" (18) in Levinas, a turn provoked in large part by Derrida's influential critique of Levinas's Totality and Infinity in "Violence and Metaphysics," in which he reproaches the latter for still using the language of ontology all the while claiming to be operating outside of it. As Critchley reminds us, the Levinas of Otherwise than Being becomes far more alert to the ways in which the ethical can take place with philosophical discourse: how the said (the refying of the ethical saying) can be perpetually un-said and re-said. Hilary Putnam discusses Levinas's relationship to Judaism, exploring, for instance, how the figure of the Jew (the Other par excellence) occupies an exemplary status in Levinas's ethics, how "in essence, all human beings are Jews" (34). Catherine Chalier's article also addresses the question of religion in Levinas, but from the perspective of his perplexing, and often ignored, Talmudic readings. She makes a compelling case for the importance of these readings to an understanding of Levinas, of a Levinas, to be sure, irreducible to the title of either (Greek) philosopher or Talmudic scholar. Berhard Waldenfels tackles the ambiguous and fleeting meaning of the face (visage) in Levinas. Rudolf Bernet revisits Levinas's powerful critique and appropriation of Husserl's phenomenological project. John Llewelyn and Edith Wyschogrod discuss Levinas's understanding of language; Llewelyn situates Levinas within his intellectual milieu, a milieu dominated by structuralism and a Heideggerian understanding of language, while Wyschogrod explores how Levinas's use of language frustrates any reduction to propositional statements, and its ultimate significance for his account of alterity. Related to the question of language and representation is Levinas's ambivalent [End Page 357] attitude towards the concepts of art and poetry—the subject of Gerald Bruns article. Paul Davies and Richard Bernstein examine the problematic of theodicy in Levinas—the former tying theodicy to sincerity, the latter to evil (Kant is in the background of both pieces). Stella Sanford, by far the most polemical author of the collection, is determined to discredit Levinas as an important philosopher for feminism. While feminist criticism of Levinas is nothing new (Irigaray, Chanter), Sanford is unfortunately not interested in engaging Levinas in a dialogue with feminism. Rather, she tirelessly insists that Levinas's complex notion of the "feminine" is inadequate for the aims of feminism, failing to free itself from the Western economy of the Same. Robert Bernasconi, for his part, takes up the difficult task of explaining Levinas's idea of "substitution," speculating on the kind of question(s) that might be seen as informing or motivating the latter's enigmatic thinking. In this eloquently written essay, Bernasconi moves back and forth from a reading of Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being in order to better locate the ethical moment, to better attest to the meaning of "substitution." While the earlier Levinas squarely situates the ethical encounter in the actual or concrete encounter with the Other, the latter Levinas, according to Bernasconi, avoids the potential (mis)reading that could arise from such account: that prior to the ethical situation the self was already full constituted. But by developing his idea of substitution—along with the infinite irresponsibility that entails—Levinas, still on Bernasconi's reading, argues that one's possibility of "substitution for others" (247) is a way to account for primordial openness to alterity that precedes, so to speak, the empirical encounter with the Other, shedding some light on the problem of deduction (the vexed and contested move from the transcendental to...

Abraham and the Flaneur

But to lose oneself in city-as one loses oneself in forest-that calls for quite different schooling. Then, signboards and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to wanderer like cracking twigs under his feet in forest, like startling call of bittern in distance, like sudden stillness of clearing with lily standing erect at its centre.1 As I read Levinas's Talmudic reading Judaism and Revolution21 wondered to myself as I came upon discussion of cafe as context of one of great dangers of modern life, just what this might mean. My initial response was to think that such condemnation of one of my favorite social contexts must simply be manifestation of Levinas's deep desire to stay close to Talmudic texts he was analyzing. However, after overcoming this initial surprise, I wondered what it was that Levinas was really getting at here and more to point what he was trying to say about modernity by asserting that cafes have become an integral part of modern life, that they were indeed the realization of form of (JR, 112) that is ours and finally, that they are expressive of a category essential to western being (ibid.) At center of this essay is my desire to explore this question in little more depth. In order to do this I will engage Levinas's analyses of relationship between interiority of dwelling and exterior (in this case urban exterior) that is site of cafe, with those of Walter Benjamin.3 In analyses of Benjamin and Levinas we find two closely related and yet also in certain respects opposed analyses of relationship between private, interior space and exterior space with which it is inextricably interwoven. We have in both Levinas and Benjamin accounts of distinction between constructed interiority and an exterior public field of exchange over and against which it is understood,4 and indeed we even have discussions of cafe as form of life that is to be found in this exterior public realm. Insofar as Benjamin's account is an account of modernity, we also have in this sense an interesting and useful way of both contextualizing and critically engaging with Levinas' largely historical phenomenological categories. In these senses there is strong agreement between two accounts. However there is also some disagreement between their respective analyses. This disagreement centers primarily upon question of how interiority, or to use Levinas's language, totality, is brought into question. In both cases it is through rupturing of borders or boundaries and bringing into question of subjective mastery, however in one of our two thinkers (Levinas) it is via border crossing that goes from exterior into interior and in other (Benjamin) via crossing that goes from interior out to exterior.5 Perhaps central question which comparison of these two thinkers raises for me is that of who interiorizing subject is and where he or she is located in social and historical terms? In attempting to address this question what I will argue is that we can productively read Benjamin's account as providing more concrete historical and social context for some of categorial structures to be found in Levinas's early and middle analyses of relation between self and other and hence also between interior and exterior. Needless to say this critical response to Levinasian analyses also brings into question to some extent radical anti-subjectivism of Levinasian account of self as well. Levinas: The Invitation to Come In In this first section I will briefly recount some of themes of Levinas' reflections and in particular I will try to draw out Levinas's often only implicit hopes and fears about forms of life characteristic of city itself, as one of most exemplary of modern life contexts. …

The Philosophy of the Talmud (review)

New York: Routledge, 2002. 240 pp. $85.00. After demise of modern paradigms of rationality, can we still speak of rationality of our religion? If so, where is its rationality to be found? Many philosophers of religion today offer either of two contrary answers: either no, because we cannot speak of rationality in any general sense at all, or no, because religion is extra- or sub-rational. According to a romantically orthodox position, Judaism is an extra-rational religion, because our sages deliver a divine message whose authority and meaning cannot be gainsaid by any recognizable standard of rationality. According to a skeptically postmodern position, Judaism is sub-rational, because it is constituted by political, economic, and psycho-social phenomena that cannot be reduced to any sets of rational principles. In The Philosophy of Talmud, Hyam Maccoby introduces an answer that is far more promising than any of these: that, while we may recognize no humanly constructed, universal rationality, Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrashic collections display indigenous patterns of rationality. This is a rationality that emerges from out of rabbinic argumentation itself, rather than as judged by criteria imported from classical Greece, 19(th) century Germany, or other, contrasting sources of rational practice. These various rationalities are not merely self-enclosed, however; rabbinic thinking can import patterns of rationality learned from Greece, and vice-versa. Maccoby therefore calls his study of rabbinic rationality the philosophy of Talmud: it is philosophy, way Greek thinking is philosophy, except that its logic and conditions of truth and falsity may differ from those of Greek philosophy. One of Great Britain's most active author/editors in rabbinic thought, Maccoby writes many books, and he tends, in each one, to offer only one facet of a larger project. The same is true of this book. Here, he collects classes of rabbinic sugyot that illustrate various patterns of rabbinic rationality. Learning these patterns, a student of Talmud should be prepared to debate major philosophic issues of our day from out of a distinctly rabbinic perspective. Within limits of this book, however, Maccoby does not also illustrate what such a student's philosophic approach would look like in any significant detail. For most part, moreover, he does not attempt to justify his manner of collecting those classes of sugyot within terms of recent Talmudic scholarship. These are not oversights of Maccoby's, however; he has simply chosen to offer just this much within this book, inviting readers to wait for next book to see how his Talmudic readings engage philosophic debates of day. Within these limits, we should be encouraged by what Maccoby has begun. In Michael Wyschogrod's felicitous words (in The Body of Faith, 1996), we should no longer locate rationality in artificial coherence of vast systems of thought but locate it, instead, in brightness that graces those of our everyday judgments that hit mark, or that enhance virtues we associate, in rabbinic terms, with light of Torah. …

Rebuilding the Feminine in Levinas's Talmudic Readings

AbstractThis study presents a reconsideration of Levinas's concept of the feminine. This reconsideration is facilitated by a philosophically informed analysis of Levinas's Talmudic readings on that subject.The innovation of this research is in its methodology, which combines the two corpora of Levinas' writings as important components of an integrated system of thought. Two main phenomena are derived here from Levinas' Talmudic readings and raise main principles of his ethics. In the heart of the discussion on Eros we find a statement of the differentiation between feminine and masculine in Levinas's thought, and its implication for gender and for the ethics of otherness. In the center of Levinas's terminology of maternity we uncover his phenomenology of pregnancy, and its ethical implication regarding responsibility to the other. The extreme responsibility committed to the other since there is a immanent conflict between parents and their child.

Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Readings: Between Tradition and Invention

This essay offers reflections on how to read Emmanuel Levinas's talmudic readings as historical documents. It suggests that existing scholarship, following the conventional wisdom and an interest in canonization, often treats these readings (as Levinas would have wanted) as supratemporal insight rather than as historical productions. The essay begins with an overview of Levinas's Jewish upbringing and training before turning to interpretations of the methodology and the substance of some of this figure's inaugural public engagements in the early 1960s with talmudic sources. The conclusion is that Levinas's improvisational novelty and creativity, hitherto underrated, appear to be too great to plausibly justify any claim that he affiliated with a normative Jewish tradition. The essay concludes by considering whether this conclusion reflects the wrong question. It is possible that Levinas meant to change what it means to affiliate with tradition in general, and the Jewish tradition in particular.

<strong>Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Readings:</strong> Between Tradition and Invention

This essay offers reflections on how to read Emmanuel Levinas's talmudic readings as historical documents. It suggests that existing scholarship, following the conventional wisdom and an interest in canonization, often treats these readings (as Levinas would have wanted) as supratemporal insight rather than as historical productions. The essay begins with an overview of Levinas's Jewish upbringing and training before turning to interpretations of the methodology and the substance of some of this figure's inaugural public engagements in the early 1960s with talmudic sources. The conclusion is that Levinas's improvisational novelty and creativity, hitherto underrated, appear to be too great to plausibly justify any claim that he affiliated with a normative Jewish tradition. The essay concludes by considering whether this conclusion reflects the wrong question. It is possible that Levinas meant to change what it means to affiliate with tradition in general, and the Jewish tradition in particular.

Facing the other: the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the key philosophers in the post-Heideggerian field and an increasingly central presence in contemporary debates about identity and responsibility. His work spans and encapsulates the major philosophical and ethical concerns of the twentieth century, combining the insights of a basic phenomenological training with the demands of a Jewish culture and its basis in the endless exegesis of Talmudic reading. His concerns and subjects are wide: they include the Other, the body, infinity, women, Jewish-Christian relations, Zionism and the impulses and limits of philosophical language itself. This collection explicates Levinas's major contribution to these debates, namely the idea of the primacy of ethics over ontology or epistemology. It investigates how, in the wake of a post-structuralist orthodoxy, scholars and practitioners in such fields as literary theory, cultural studies, feminism and psychoanalysis are turning to Levinas's work to articulate a rediscovered concern with the ethical dimension of their discipline. Stressing the largely assumed but unexplored Jewish dimension of Levinas's work, this book is an important contribution to the field of Jewish studies and philosophy.

Beyond the verse: Talmudic readings and lectures

Translator's Note Author's Note Foreword FIDELITIES 1. Demanding Judaism TALMUDIC READINGS 2. Model of the West 3. Cities of Refuge 4. Who Plays Last? 5. The Pact 6. On Religious Language and the Fear of God THEOLOGIES 7. On the Jewish Reading of Scriptures 8. The Name of God According to a Few Talmudic Texts 9. Revelation in the Jewish Tradition 10. 'In the Image of God', According to Rabbi Hayyim Volozhiner 11. Spinoza's Background ZIONISMS 12. The State of Caesar and the State of David 13. Politics After! 14. Assimilation and New Culture Notes Index.