Tag Archives: death

Varieties of Haredi Theological Response to Coronavirus

Posted on May 13, 2020 by zjb

Waiting to see primary sources, but here’s a quick review of Haredi response in Israel to the Coronovirus with multiple links. Some of it is standard reward/punish. The pandemic is caused by lax Torah study, the sexual immodesty of women, … Continue reading →

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(Dys-Functionalist Theory of Religion) Lag Ba’Omer Coronavirus (Dying for God)

Posted on May 11, 2020 by zjb

Going back to Durkheim, sociologists of religion who assume a functionalist interpretation of religion look to religion and ritual as something that brings and holds a society together, regenerates it. A dys-functionalist approach to the study of religion and ritual … Continue reading →

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Care for a Corpse (Gemilut Chasadim) Flowers (Cornovirus)

Posted on May 10, 2020 by zjb

Readers of ethics and Jewish ethics, in particular, should recognize in the remarkable story about this woman and this powerful act of caring for a corpse one of the greatest acts of kindness marked in rabbinic sources that one person … Continue reading →

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Foucault & Maimonides (Coronavirus)

Posted on April 24, 2020 by zjb

The Coronovirus pandemic keeps bringing me back as a go-to to Foucault (always under the influence of colleague and friend Gail Hamner) and to Maimonides (at the suggestion of colleague and friend Bill Plevan who recommended reading Hilkhot Deot). Foucault … Continue reading →

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(Foucault) The Birth of The Clinic (Reading Notes)

Posted on April 21, 2020 by zjb

In the spirit of the day I’m including text on epidemic consciousness, medical fields, the medical gaze, death and the human. Below are more or less chapter by chapter reading-notes cribbing directly from the primary text, Foucault’s The Birth of … Continue reading →

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(Not a Symbol) Bright Menorah Fresco in Dark Place (Catacomb Vill Torloni)

Posted on October 17, 2018 by zjb

Apart from providing some historical background information, the best thing about this article in Haaretz which you can read here about the restoration work on the Jewish catacomb  in Villa Torloni concerns the conflict and compromise between the religion and … Continue reading →

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(Deleuze) Difference & Repetition Reading Notes and A Few Critical Remarks

Posted on September 13, 2017 by zjb

Open to your correction and emendation, here’s a rough outline with some added critical notation to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Too important a text to gloss, I decided with this one to go chapter by chapter. My basic understanding was … Continue reading →

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(Abstract Bodies) Balls or Columns or Cubes (Resurrection) (Maimonides)

Posted on July 10, 2017 by zjb

With characteristic confidence, Maimonides is here arguing against what he assumes is the false, nay absurd, notion that human souls would have bodies in the world to come. He thinks the world to come is entirely without nature and natural … Continue reading →

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Resurrection (Deleuze)

Posted on May 10, 2017 by zjb

These comments about seed, life, the rational soul, death, animal soul, and resurrection caught my attention while reading Deleuze reading Leibniz. For the sake of clarity, I broke up what is a single paragraph into 2 parts. What catches the … Continue reading →

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(Resurrection) Transhumanism (Steven Schwartzschild

Posted on May 9, 2017 by zjb

Forget rationalism, moral radicalism, or “the political.” Messianism entails nothing if not a “philosophy of life,” the resurrection of the dead, the creation of New Man or Extreme Man.  Viewing it from this perspective, I suspect that the esoteric doctrine … Continue reading →

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