Tag Archives: aesthetics

(Esther) Rashi (Aesthetic Judaism)

Posted on March 17, 2022 by zjb

This might be my misimpression, but what seems to have most caught Rashi’s eye in his commentary to the book of Esther was not so much the vindication of Israel and the political violence that close the text, but rather … Continue reading →

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(Jews Love Hanukah) Sensible Excess (Maimonides)

Posted on December 14, 2020 by zjb

Jews love Hanukah, but not because of the story. The story itself has 2 sides. The one relates to Jews and Syrian-Greeks (and between Jews and Jews) (or Judeans if you prefer). The other relates to God and the Hanukah … Continue reading →

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(Ugly Mugs) Aesthetic Philosophy Fab 4

Posted on September 14, 2020 by zjb
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Rational Religion and Aesthetic Philosophy (Maimonides)

Posted on September 10, 2020 by zjb

Was it a gentle, gnostic melancholy? A critical theorist and colleague friend who I am positive is “definitely not religious” makes an offhand comment in the early months of the pandemic about “the cruelty of nature.” The anthropomorphism caught my … Continue reading →

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(Moses & Israel & Monuments) The Political Theology of Deuteronomy (Hertz Commentary)

Posted on August 21, 2020 by zjb

  The introduction to the last book of the Pentateuch in the iconic Hertz Pentateuch commentary (1936) comes as something of a surprise, maybe. Of course, there are those banner lines from this biblical book, its anthem, the Shema Yisroel, … Continue reading →

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(Art & Artifice of Religion) Lishna de-Rabbanan (Aharon Lichtenstein)

Posted on April 26, 2020 by zjb

  Yitz Landes posted here at Twitter this translation of a bit from Aharon Lichtenstein touching upon [1] art, artifice, and artificiality of the type of literary style in (Jewish) religion intentionally removed from lived social contexts and cultural surroundings, … Continue reading →

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Religion is Not Essential (Coronavirus)

Posted on April 13, 2020 by zjb

Whose labor is essential? Whose labor is not essential? That’s the question. In modernization/secularization theory a lot of ink gets spilled about the public sphere in relation to the religious sphere. There’s the notion contested this way and that way … Continue reading →

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Plague Discipline & Dance of Death (Foucault)

Posted on April 3, 2020 by zjb

Throwing up my hands, re-reading after many years the famous chapter on Panopticism in Foucault’s classic study Discipline and Punish, first published in France in 1975. Readers today, responding to the Coronavirus, have already noted that plague quarantines and other … Continue reading →

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Visual Cues for Jewish Philosophy (Contemporary Art After the Realism of Revelation & Redemption of German Expressionism)

Posted on December 18, 2019 by zjb

After “revelation and redemption” in the modern German Jewish thought of Buber and Rosenzweig came “authority and law.” Both traded upon the idea of overwhelming power, with strong commitments to the idea of “realization,” i.e. “realized presence,” But somewhere, “the  … Continue reading →

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(Levantine) Aesthetic Judaism (Lucette Lagnado)

Posted on May 30, 2017 by zjb

Memoir is an unusually interesting genre for the study of modern religion and modern Judaism. Casting about for material that would expand the contours of my mid-level class last semester (spring 2017) on American Judaism I finally got around to … Continue reading →

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