Tag Archives: Jewish Philosophy

Ethics ex Nihilo (Inventing Jewish Ethics)

Posted on February 8, 2022 by zjb

Published by the good people at the Journal for Jewish Ethics where I argue that modern Jewish ethics is a lot like an AMC Gremlin: About longer arcs of Jewish tradition, there is simply too much to say in these … Continue reading →

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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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Anti-Black & White in Jewish Texts (Abraham Melamed)

Posted on April 15, 2021 by zjb

Abraham Melamed’s The Image of the Black in Judaism was first published in Hebrew in 2002 and then translated into English in 2003. While the title does little to recommend itself and the theoretical apparatus is dated, the data are … Continue reading →

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(Zombies) Animated Jewish Philosophers

Posted on February 28, 2021 by zjb

Animated Moses Maimonides. pic.twitter.com/78oAQcskLz — Dov (@drnelk) February 28, 2021 The Socrates of Berlin, Moses Mendelssohn pic.twitter.com/2chJwtjwfS — Dov (@drnelk) February 28, 2021   I wonder if something not similarly ghostly, ghastly, machinic is at work in the tricks played … Continue reading →

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(HAZMAT) Haredi Jewish Studies (Coronavirus)

Posted on October 18, 2020 by zjb

  In the opening months of the viral pandemic, there were posts at sites like the blog run by the Katz Center for Jewish History relating to setting the pandemic in historical and philosophical context. There has been lively back … Continue reading →

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The God Is In The Details

Posted on September 25, 2020 by zjb

Here at Wikipedia: The idiom, “God is in the detail” has been attributed to a number of different individuals, most notably to German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) by The New York Times in Mies’s 1969 obituary; however, it is generally … Continue reading →

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(Against Submission) Alan Brill reviews/interviews Aaron Koller- Unbinding Isaac

Posted on July 20, 2020 by zjb

Originally posted on The Book of Doctrines and Opinions::
I repeatedly hear from a generation of Modern (or Centrist) Orthodox youth, who grew up at the end of the twentieth century, that they were told that Torah Judaism is about…

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Pandemics, Plagues, and Jewish Thought (Jewish Quarterly Review) (Coronavirus)

Posted on April 7, 2020 by zjb

Theological and philosophical reflections on pandemic and plague here at Jewish Quarterly Review, including Tamar Ross, Martin Kavka, Randi Rashkover, Aryeh Cohen, Laura Levitt, and Zachary Braiterman. A funny little set. Of a piece, these modest little blogposts thread together … Continue reading →

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Jewish Thought At The 2019 Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award

Posted on January 15, 2020 by zjb

At a time when so many of us worry about the future of reading, the future of books, and the future of university scholarship and the humanities, this type of community recognition is a ray of light. You can see … Continue reading →

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(Right Size to Survive) Academic Publishing (Jewish Studies & Gary Dunham at Indiana University Press)

Posted on December 19, 2019 by zjb

I learned this year at the Association for Jewish Studies conference from Gary Dunham, director of Indiana University Press something about academic publishing in today’s market climate. Picking up on a question that a colleague and friend asked him and … Continue reading →

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