Lernen

From Saris to Tumtum, the Talmud fearlessly confronts Jewish legal attitudes towards a variety of embodiments

Review of Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic LiteratureMax K. StrassfeldUniversity of California Press, 2022 Bereshit 1:27 could hardly be clearer: “Male and female he created them.”  Except that Eve hadn’t yet been created, which means that Adam, like God, was androgynous? Such matters understandably occupied the rabbis, then and now.   There are dozens of references to eunuchs and androgynes in the Talmud, all of which productively challenge the very idea of clarity when … [Lees verder]

Religie en filosofie

Knowing Ourselves, Knowing God, Knowing Maimonides

In part 1 Jonathan Gill introduced a profound debate on Orthodox Thinkers on authentic belief in a modern world, in his review of the recently published essays in Strauss, Spinoza, and Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith. Difference between knowing and believing The much contested problem of the difference between knowing and believing, or, if we prefer, between philosophy and rationality on the one hand and religious faith and belief on the other, is … [Lees verder]

Lernen

Orthodox Jewish thinkers on authentic religious belief in the modern world

In recent years the Jewish background of the French essayist Michel de Montaigne has attracted increasing attention, and rightly so. His motto, “que sais-je?” or “what do I know?”  perhaps better translated as “what do I really know?” or even better yet “how do I know?”  ‘How do I know’ goes to the heart of the way Jews have wrestled with their identities, morally and politically, not to mention religiously, long before Ja’akov went mano … [Lees verder]

Opinie

“There where I live, there is my homeland”

What is more Jewish than the figure of the Jewish heretic? Are we not named after someone who wrestled with the divine? Then why do we vilify and not celebrate those who doubt, resist, defy, and question?  Perhaps because Jewish heretics tend to come in two deliciously forbidden flavors, the charlatan (Sabbati Tzvi) and the saint (Spinoza), and the authorities would have us believe that they are the same, or at least equally suspect.  Both … [Lees verder]