Monthly Archives: July 2021

Spinoza Death Mask (Archive)

Posted on July 30, 2021 by zjb

This spectacular image was recently discovered in a box in an archive in a library at Columbia University, about which you can read here in this write-up by Marianna Najman-Franks (Barnard ’22). She found the death mask while working through … Continue reading →

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You Saw An Image (Surrealist God)

Posted on July 29, 2021 by zjb

The Bahir plays with that biblical icon of the modern iconoclastic tradition that is sometimes translated into English as “you saw no manner of image” (kal-temunah) (Deut. 4:15). The Bahir says, “You saw an image, not an entire image” (temunah … Continue reading →

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(Mystical) Bergson (Matter and Memory)

Posted on July 27, 2021 by zjb

(Mystical) Bergson (Matter and Memory) The standard line about Henri Bergson in Matter and Memory is about perception in relation to time and memory. Subjective perception, i.e. perception understood from the point of view of the subject, is the way … Continue reading →

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Jewish Socialism (Abba Kovner)

Posted on July 25, 2021 by zjb

Responding with gravitas to a recent online piece of petty Jewish politics, historian David Myers posted something online and there was this picture there of Abba Kovner and his partisan comrades. I went immediately to Dina Porat’s biography The Fall of … Continue reading →

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(Rashi) Anti-theodicy (Tisha B’Av)

Posted on July 19, 2021 by zjb

The through-line in Rashi’s commentary to Lamenations is that, yes, the people sin, but that God is responsible for the calamity, for what we today call anti-Semitism, for the human inclination to sin, for setting up a barrier between God … Continue reading →

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(Bergson) (Talmud)

Posted on July 6, 2021 by zjb

Such is the primary and the most apparent operation of the perceiving mind: it marks out divisions in the continuity of the extended, simply following the suggestions of ourrequirement and the needs of practical life. But, in order to divide … Continue reading →

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