Eli Schonfeld | Shalem College (original) (raw)
Books by Eli Schonfeld
De Gruyter, 2024
As a Jew, Kafka received nothing in inheritance from his father. Nevertheless, throughout his œuv... more As a Jew, Kafka received nothing in inheritance from his father. Nevertheless, throughout his œuvre, subtly, remnants of Jewish words can be deciphered. Hence, the question at the heart of this book: what remains when what’s left is a “nothing of Judaism” (Letter to the Father)? This question necessitates a philosophical and Jewish reading of his work, prompting a reconsideration of the intricate relationships between the Jew and the West and the Jew and modernity. Thus, this book proposes an examination of Kafka's oeuvre to uncover what remains Jewish therein — at the heart of Europe, amidst modernity — where nothing remains: the enigma of the Letter.
![Research paper thumbnail of האפולוגיה של מנדלסון: הולדת הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית [The Apology of Mendelssohn: The Birth of Modern Jewish Philosophy]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/61012477/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](הוצאת כרמל, 2019
מתוך גב הספר האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מציע בחינה חדשה של המחשבה היהודית המודרנית מתוך עיון באחת הדמוי... more מתוך גב הספר
האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מציע בחינה חדשה של המחשבה היהודית המודרנית מתוך עיון באחת הדמויות הבולטות שעיצבוה – משה מנדלסון. האם ניתן ליישב בין רעיון הנבחרוּת היהודית ובין אידאל האוניברסליות הפילוסופית מבלי לוותר לא על היהדות ולא על הפילוסופיה? האם בתקופתנו עוד ניתן לחשוב באופן משמעותי את התגלות האל, ויותר מזה את מצוות האל? אלי שיינפלד מציע מחשבה חדשה על אודות השאלות הללו מתוך קריאה צמודה של ירושלים – יצירת המופת של מנדלסון – ולאור הביקורת הפונדמנטלית על היהדות כפי שנוסחה על ידי שפינוזה במאמר תיאולוגי מדיני. המחבר טוען שבירושלים מנדלסון מנסח את התשובה הפונדמנטלית הראשונה לביקורת של שפינוזה על היהדות, ובכך הוא הופך לאבי הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית
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אך בצד הניסיון לנסח מחדש את התשובה של מנדלסון – בשפתם של הוסרל, היידגר וסארטר, בעקבות מחשבתם היהודית של פרנץ רוזנצווייג ועמנואל לוינס, וכן מתוך נאמנות להוראתו של מורו בני לוי – מחבר הספר מבקש גם לאתגר את מחשבת מנדלסון, ואת המחשבה היהודית המודרנית בכלל, מבפנים: האם הכול ניתן לתרגום לשפה האוניברסלית של הפילוסופיה? האם לא אובד דבר מה, באופן בלתי נמנע, במעבר מן הסינגולרי לאוניברסלי, במעבר מן הפסוק אל הלוגוס? והאם מחשבת מנדלסון מסוגלת להיות נאמנה עד הסוף לחכמה היהודית, לחכמת החכמים? האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מבקש לשאול את השאלות האמורות ולדרוש ממנדלסון תשובות עליהם, אף אם במחיר חשיפת גבולות
הפילוסופיה היהודית שלו; גבולות שאינם אלא, אולי, גבולות הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית.
האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מציע גניאולוגיה של הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית, שבהבנתה טמונה האפשרות להבין את היהודי המודרני, כלומר את עצמנו.
![Research paper thumbnail of קלמאן רוסה - הממשי וכפילו: מסה על האשליה (תרגום ואחרית דבר: אלי שיינפלד) [Translation and Afterword of Clement Rosset, The Real and its Double: An Essay on Illusion]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/61643768/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](הוצאת כרמל (פרשנות ותרבות: סדרה חדשה, תרגומים), 2019
האם אנו רואים את מה שאנו רואים? האם אנו מסוגלים לשאת את הממשי כשהוא מופיע מולנו, בפשטותו הערומה? ... more האם אנו רואים את מה שאנו רואים? האם אנו מסוגלים לשאת את הממשי כשהוא מופיע מולנו, בפשטותו הערומה? למעשה, אין דבר שברירי יותר מן הכושר האנושי להכיר בממשות, לקבל ללא סייג את צו הממשי. שכן ברגע שהממשי מתגלה כמעיק, במקום להתמודד עמו אנו משלים את עצמנו. אנו משלים את עצמנו ביחס לעתידנו, כאשר העתיד מאיים. אנו משלים את עצמנו ביחס לעולם, כאשר העולם אינו מסביר פנים. ואנו משלים את עצמנו ביחס לעצמנו כי, בסופו של דבר, אנו מי שאנו ותו לא. וכך אנו מייצרים לעצמנו כפילים, אנו מכפילים את הממשי כדי לא לראות את שתמיד ראינו. אך הכפיל לא יתממש, וכשהממשי יתממש, הכפיל יימחק, ואנו, בניגוד לכל היגיון, נופתע.
בהשראת הוגים כמו ניטשה, ברגסון, ושופנהאואר, ודרך הספרות, הפילוסופיה והאמנות, קלמאן רוסה מציע בהממשי וכפילו: מסה על האשליה הרהור מקורי על היחס שבין הממשי, הכפיל והאשליה. רוסה מתאר בספרו את הדיאלקטיקה העדינה שבין הממשי והכפיל על כל צדדיה וחושף שהאשליה העצמית אינה תופעה שולית אלא במובנים רבים החוק הנסתר של יחסנו הבסיסי לממשות. הממשי וכפילו הוא ספר מפתיע כפי שרק הממשי עשוי להפתיע: הוא מזכיר לנו את שתמיד ידענו, ובסופו של דבר קורא לנו לחזור אל סדר ההווה, סדר הממשי, בו בלבד יכול האני להכיר את עצמו.
קלמאן רוסה (2018-1939) הוא פילוסוף בעל יצירה ענפה, ולמעלה מארבעים ספריו מהווים את אחת התרומות המקוריות ביותר למחשבה הצרפתית העכשווית. הממשי וכפילו, בו ניתן למצוא את עיקרי מחשבתו של רוסה, הוא ספרו הראשון המתורגם לעברית. לתרגום נוסף אחרית דבר מאת אלי שיינפלד.
Editions Verdier, 2018
Jérusalem, livre majeur de Moses Mendelssohn, est une apologie du Judaïsme. Apologie dans le sens... more Jérusalem, livre majeur de Moses Mendelssohn, est une apologie du Judaïsme. Apologie dans le sens de Socrate: sommé de répondre aux accusations des hommes de la cité, Mendelssohn, le "Socrate de Berlin", doit répondre de son soi. Peut-on être juif et éclairé à la fois? Le juif de Lumière est-il pensable? Peut il exister? Face à la critique moderne du judaïsme – celle qui trouve sa formulation la plus accomplit dans le Traité théologico-politique de Spinoza – Mendelssohn formule une réponse fondamentale, inaugurant ainsi la pensée juive moderne.
Entendre cette réponse nécessite une lecture attentive de Jérusalem. Inspiré par la leçon de Franz Rosenzweig et d'Emmanuel Levinas, et dans le sillage de l'enseignement de Benny Lévy, L'Apologie de Mendelssohn tente une telle lecture.
Lecture sensible au retour a Platon s'opérant discrètement dans le penser de Mendelssohn: le Platon dialoguant, celui attaché à la vérité d'existence plutôt qu'à l'exactitude mathématico-logique.
Mais lecture sensible aussi au retour à la sagesse des maitres d'Israël qui s'opère nettement au sein de Jérusalem. Sagesse qui sait penser le commandement divin non pas comme loi politique mais comme possibilité singulière d'accorder vie et vérité. Sagesse permettant ainsi de repenser le sens de l'élection d'Israël et son rapport à l'universalisme.
Mendelssohn a-t-il su rester fidèle à l'enseignement des maitres d'Israël? A-t-il pu accorder jusqu'au bout élection et universalisme? Question ultime que pose L' Apologie de Mendelssohn, permettant enfin d'examiner les limites qu'il impose a la pensee juive dans son oeuvre.
![Research paper thumbnail of פלא הסובייקטיביות: עיון בפילוסופיה של עמנואל לוינס [The Wonder of Subjectivity: An Essay on Emmanuel Levinas' Philosophy]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/56730084/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Resling Editors, Tel Aviv 2007, 2007
Papers by Eli Schonfeld
Unsettling Jewish Knowledge: Text, Contingency, Desire (editors: Anne C. Daily, Martin Kavka and Lital Levy), 2023
What is language supposed to do—and if one of the main concerns of religion is the problem of evi... more What is language supposed to do—and if one of the main concerns of religion is the problem of evil, then what is religious language expected to do—in order to address suffering in its concreteness, in its existential here and now? Answer: to console. This is the thesis I intend to defend in the following pages: religious language, when it addresses the problem of evil, does not explain or make sense of suffering, but rather consoles. This consolation is not the result of a somehow naïve acceptance of theological dogmas (afterlife, divine providence, etc.) but an affect produced by language, in language, and which aims to address the actuality of suffering, to face the reality of evil and suffering face-to-face. In this sense, religion is beyond reason when it consoles, and by doing so, it might be disclosing deep potentialities of language, perhaps its essence.
In what follows I wish to think of the language of consolation as a language that is neither a theological language nor a language of faith, but one that addresses the problem of evil and suffering in its existential dimension. In order to do this, I will turn to texts that are part of the life of religion, namely liturgical texts. Inspired by Franz Rosenzweig and his particular way of understanding religion from within its lived practices rather than from within its theological dogmas or philosophies , I am interested in what one could call the liturgical wisdom of religion, and for the sakes of this particular study, the liturgical wisdom of Judaism. Liturgy, at least in Judaism, is at the center of religion. Through it, even though indirectly, an implicit wisdom is conveyed and transmitted to the members of the religious community, a wisdom that is not easily thematizable, but which, through the generations, shapes the deep sensibilities of those who are part of the community.
In order to address the question of suffering from this perspective, I will focus on the liturgical cycle of the seven weeks following the holiday of Tisha B’Av. The ninth of Av is the day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the two Temples. In the course of history it became the day of mourning for all the suffering that the Jewish people endured during its exile. (Therefore, in certain Orthodox communities Tisha B’Av is seen as the day commemorating the Shoah.) The seven weeks following Tisha B’Av are called sheva de-nehamta, the seven (weeks) of consolation, or the seven Shabbatot of consolation. They are called so because the haftarot that are read on those Shabbatot are selected passages from the prophecies of consolation from the book of Isaiah. If there is a wisdom of consolation—beyond reason, beyond theodicy—then it is in this context, and in those liturgical texts, that one has to search for it.
Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy, 2023
Contrary to the classical denial of bodily attributes or human emotions to God, both Samson Rapha... more Contrary to the classical denial of bodily attributes or human emotions to God, both Samson Raphael Hirsch and Franz Rosenzweig embrace biblical anthropomorphisms. Their views on anthropomorphisms are part of their critiques of philosophy, especially of the basic preconceptions of the philosophical approach to the concept of God. This article analyses their positions by examining Hirsch's commentaries on scripture (especially Gen 6:6), and Rosenzweig's "A Note on Anthropomorphisms in Response to the Encyclopedia Judaica's Article." Through a close reading and interpretation of Rabad of Posquiére's famous animadversion against Maimonides's rule concerning heretics, this paper retraces the rabbinical roots of Hirsch's and Rosenzweig's approach to anthropomorphisms.
Levinas Studies, 2022
The following paper analyzes the effect of the Shakespearean text - and Hamlet in particular-on L... more The following paper analyzes the effect of the Shakespearean text - and Hamlet in particular-on Levinas's thought. I argue that Levinas's reading of Shakespeare's Hamlet played a decisive role in one of the most crucial phenomenological debates to be found in the Levinasian text, namely, the debate with Heidegger on the meaning of death and on the object of Angst (anguish). Analyzing Levinas's remarks on Hamlet in his philosophical text, this article demonstrates how Shakespeare inspires Levinas's anti-Heideggerian thesis about anguish being anguish before eternity (and not anguish before death). Moreover, this article analyzes the Hecuba scene from the perspective of Levinas's philosophy of substitution (where again Shakespeare occupies a central role), and tries to understand the situation of Shakespeare's tragedy as being "beyond tragedy."
Naharaim: Zeitschrift für deutsch-jüdische Literatur und Kulturgeschichte (Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History), 2021
This article offers a close reading of Kafka's In the Penal Colony, exploring the text as a radic... more This article offers a close reading of Kafka's In the Penal Colony, exploring the text as a radical reflection on the nature of modernity in general, and Jewish modernity in particular. The article posits that In the Penal Colony is a meditation on the relation between suffering, transgression and law. For Kafka, where modernity is understood as the incapacity of linking suffering and transgression (sin), the old order is one where the relationship between suffering and transgression is understood as fundamental, and functions as a principle of readability of reality. For the ancients, it is this readability that endows the law with meaning and validity. By integrating parts of Foucault's thesis' on modernity as elaborated in Discipline and Punish with this analysis of In the Penal Colony, this article situates Kafka's text in the context of his literature in general, positing that it is the key text to understanding his oeuvre. In addition, this article offers an original reflection on one of the hidden themes of Kafka's work: the crisis of the modern Jew.
Levinas and Literature (Edited by Michael Fagenblat and Arthur Cools), De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2021
Literature occupies a privileged role in Levinas’ life and work. Classic authors such as Racine, ... more Literature occupies a privileged role in Levinas’ life and work. Classic authors such as Racine, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, but also modern writers such as Blanchot and Celan appear time and time again throughout his oeuvre. Alongside, of course, with references to the Bible. For Levinas, as suggested in Ethics and Infinity, literature paved the way to philosophy. “Let no one ignorant of Literature enter,” would be the inscription engraved on the door of Levinas’ academy, had he one.
The centrality of literature in Levinas’ oeuvre is an undeniable fact. Some commentators have understood it merely in terms of illustration: his recourse to literature would be a means to illustrate philosophical ideas. This study will challenge this view. It will try to demonstrate how literature is not only a means for Levinas, but that one can find, in his corpus, a theory of literature, or at least an implicit doctrine of literature. This doctrine – that is to be found mainly in his Jewish texts – is sustained by an explicit phenomenology of the book. Revealing this phenomenology of the book, therefore, amounts to stressing the philosophical centrality of literature in Levinas’s thinking.
The following lines will be guided by the following hypothesis: In order to be understood fully, Levinas’s doctrine of literature should be interpreted in light of one of the central theme of his Jewish philosophy, namely, the theme of chosenness and universality. Moreover, in his theory of literature Levinas is perhaps formulating, under cover, his most extreme version of the relation between singularity (Israel) and universality (nations). Its scandalous version. This is what I demonstrate in this paper.
Sartre, Jews, and the Other: Rethinking Antisemitism, Race, and Gender (Edited by: Manuela Consonni and Vivian Liska), De Gruyter, Oldenburg, 2020
In the heart of Menahem Brinker’s Hebrew translation of the Réflexions sur la question juive, one... more In the heart of Menahem Brinker’s Hebrew translation of the Réflexions sur la question juive, one of the key paragraphs of the book is missing, the one from the third part of the book where Sartre claims the Jew cannot be defined through his relation to (Jewish) history. On the other hand, in Brinker’s commentary of Sartre’s text - “Sartre on the Jewish Question: Thirty Years Later” –, published as an afterword to the Hebrew translation, this very paragraph is discussed quasi-implicitly and thoroughly, and Sartre’s thesis about the non-existence of Jewish history becomes the object of one of Brinker’s main critiques of this text (which eventually leads to a criticism of Sartre’s main thesis: The Jew is made by the anti-Semite). The present study proposes a reading of this textual intrigue found in the Hebrew translation of the Réflexions.
Like a symptom, this missing paragraph permits to look deeper into a possible modality of the relation of the modern Jew to the Jewish question. Discarding on the one hand the religious dogmas, Brinker is, so to say, compelled to refer to them, awakening them as it where from his deepest self, in order to confront Sartre’s thesis, in order to think the Jew as something more than just the result of the hateful gaze of the anti-Semite. In order to think that which he himself experiences, even if negatively: the positivity of Jewish existence.
The Oxford Handbook of Levinas (Edited by Michael L. Morgan), Oxford University Press, 2018
This article studies the place of the Bible in Levinas’s philosophical project. Besides his progr... more This article studies the place of the Bible in Levinas’s philosophical project. Besides his programmatic call “to translate the Torah into Greek” (i.e., into a philosophical idiom), throughout his writings Levinas calls for a return to the Bible in its original givenness. Through an exploration of the tension between those two movements, which at first sight contradict one another, this article tries to understand anew the role the Bible plays in Levinas’s thought. How are those two movements reconcilable? What are the implications of this tension for Levinas’s philosophical project? And how does this tension affect the project of Jewish philosophy in general? Through a reflection on the conditions of a return to the Bible as Levinas understands it, this article attempts to shed some light on those fundamental questions.
Kafka and the Universal (edited by Arthur Cools and Vivian Liska), De Gruyter, 2016
“Before the Law” (“Vor dem Gesetz”) is one of the most if not the single most commented upon of K... more “Before the Law” (“Vor dem Gesetz”) is one of the most if not the single most commented upon of Kafka’s texts : “Helplessness seizes one face to face with this page and a half,” notes George Steiner. Has everything not already been said, been written, been thought, about this text? Like a detective, the commentator searches for the key that will once and for all resolve the enigma, unveil the mystery that hides so secretively within its depths. A mystery which we know everything depends upon. One might skeptically wonder at the discovery of yet another interpretation of “Before the Law”: “What more can be added?” he asks himself. And he may be right. Perhaps the gates of interpretation are henceforth sealed. We may have arrived too late.
But before this text, do we not always already come too late? Has not the doorkeeper always already shut the door? The moment one realizes there is nothing to add to this text might be the very moment one realizes that, from the start, this text, though soliciting interpretation, in fact defies interpretation. We are indeed seized by helplessness. Equally impotent before this text, the first reading equals the last reading, because strictly speaking there is no first and no last here. Before this text, as before the law, we find ourselves equally exposed, equally empty, without resources. Before this text, we find ourselves, exactly like the story’s protagonist, the countryman, the Mann vom Lande: ignorant. And from this position the text inspires us infinitely. Ignorance serves therefore as my starting point in the interpretation of "Before the Law" proposed in the following study.
Lament in Jewish Thought: Philosophical, Theological and Literary Perspectives (edited by Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel), De Gruyter, New York-Berlin, 2014
Consolation is one of the fundamental longings of human existence. Man seeks consolation, as he s... more Consolation is one of the fundamental longings of human existence. Man seeks consolation, as he seeks meaning, or love. While the question of love or of meaning has occupied philosophers intensively during the ages, the philosophical literature on consolation is very limited, and rare. Moreover, not only is consolation left to the margins of the history of philosophy (in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages), in modernity, consolation became the object of a form of rationalistic critique of religion. The consolations of religions, for the moderns, are considered to be imaginary, un-true and harmful. Paying attention to the existential desire for consolation, this paper proposes a reflection on consolation that challenges this modern critique, and proposes an original reflection on the philosophical question of evil and suffering from the point of view of consolation. What is consolation? Is it possible to formulate a non-naïve, philosophically valid, wisdom of consolation? And what is the relation between consolation and lament? How does lament contribute to a different hearing of the sense of consolation? Those are the questions this work addresses.
Levinas Facing Biblical Figures (Ed. Yael Lin), Lexington Books, 2014
The interest in Levinas' relation to the Talmud seems to have prevailed over the question of his ... more The interest in Levinas' relation to the Talmud seems to have prevailed over the question of his relation to the Bible. Nevertheless, the Bible plays a fundamental role in his thought. Not only does Levinas reflect in several of his Jewish texts on the central role the Bible played occupies in his thought, but the biblical context – both in direct quotations and in allusions to biblical figures – is omnipresent in Levinas' thinking, both in his Jewish texts and in his purely philosophical writing. Moreover, at critical moments in his phenomenological descriptions of human existence, Levinas refers to biblical verses, or alludes to biblical references: "Thou shall not kill", in Totality and Infinity, "Here I am" or "Am I the guardian of my brother?", in Otherwise than being or beyond essence. What role does the biblical verse play in Lévinas's philosophy? What lies behind Levinas' practice of quotation? How does the Hebrew verse intervene in Levinas' writing? In order to answer those questions I follow here the different occurrences of the figure of the prophet Jonah throughout Levinas's corpus. I show how the prophetic verse, from text to text, interrupts Levinas' purely philosophical practice and helps him formulate his most metaphysical thesis about the meaning of subjectivity and transcendence.
Post-subjectivity (Edited by Christoph Schmidt, Merav Mack and Andy German), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014 , 2014
Heidegger's fundamental ontology is a long effort to recover the original task of thinking by ret... more Heidegger's fundamental ontology is a long effort to recover the original task of thinking by rethinking the ultimate ground otherwise than in terms of subjectivity or substantiality; by rethinking the sense of Being.
Thinking post-subjectivity here means taking the Heideggerian challenge seriously: trying to hear again the meaning of subjectivity, after and despite Heidegger’s radical critique of subjectivity as an onto-theological operator (substance) preventing the access to a genuine hearing of Being. Could there be a thinking of subjectivity which does not fall under Heidegger's critique of subjectivity as substantiality? Is it possible to read the philosophical tradition otherwise than Heidegger, and perhaps to track another "history of subjectivity" in it than the one he describes? Those are the questions this paper addresses.
The hypothesis of this paper is that Heidegger’s critique of subjectivity is possible only at the price of an occultation of another thought of subjectivity, and of a different metaphysics present in Greek thinking since its very dawn. In what follows, I am proposing a reading of the Socratic-Platonic thought of the soul precisely in this way: as an original thought of subjectivity which defies Heidegger's critique of subjectivity as substantiality and presence. In order to show this, I am examining here the history of the relation between subjectivity and substantiality. The critical moment of this history is the transition from Plato to Aristotle. Actualizing the debate between Plato and Aristotle on the nature of the soul while recognizing the non-substantial quality of the Platonic soul will contribute to the recollection, from within Western metaphysics, of a different tradition of thought than the one criticized by Heidegger, and perhaps also to the renewal of this other, forgotten tradition of subjectivity.
Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought No. 24 (Mechkarei Yerushalayim B'mach'shevet Yisra'el), 2015
The relation between philosophy and Judaism is one of the major themes in Emmanuel Levinas' thoug... more The relation between philosophy and Judaism is one of the major themes in Emmanuel Levinas' thought. Levinas often uses the metaphor of translation to characterize his project: his effort consisting of translating Jewish ideas, which philosophy lacks, to the language of philosophy. This paper proposes a reevaluation of this theme in light of posthumous published texts from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as texts from that period which Levinas did not include in his published corpus. These texts describe the experience of persecution and suffering as an experience lived by the Jew as a modality of his relation to to transcendence, to the divine. In this paper I demonstrate how this experience lies at the basis of Levinas' philosophy, and how the Jewish experience of suffering – while impossible to translate into the universal language of philosophy – paradoxically nourishes Lévinas phenomenological project, translating Jewish wisdom into the language of philosophy.
De Gruyter, 2024
As a Jew, Kafka received nothing in inheritance from his father. Nevertheless, throughout his œuv... more As a Jew, Kafka received nothing in inheritance from his father. Nevertheless, throughout his œuvre, subtly, remnants of Jewish words can be deciphered. Hence, the question at the heart of this book: what remains when what’s left is a “nothing of Judaism” (Letter to the Father)? This question necessitates a philosophical and Jewish reading of his work, prompting a reconsideration of the intricate relationships between the Jew and the West and the Jew and modernity. Thus, this book proposes an examination of Kafka's oeuvre to uncover what remains Jewish therein — at the heart of Europe, amidst modernity — where nothing remains: the enigma of the Letter.
הוצאת כרמל, 2019
מתוך גב הספר האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מציע בחינה חדשה של המחשבה היהודית המודרנית מתוך עיון באחת הדמוי... more מתוך גב הספר
האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מציע בחינה חדשה של המחשבה היהודית המודרנית מתוך עיון באחת הדמויות הבולטות שעיצבוה – משה מנדלסון. האם ניתן ליישב בין רעיון הנבחרוּת היהודית ובין אידאל האוניברסליות הפילוסופית מבלי לוותר לא על היהדות ולא על הפילוסופיה? האם בתקופתנו עוד ניתן לחשוב באופן משמעותי את התגלות האל, ויותר מזה את מצוות האל? אלי שיינפלד מציע מחשבה חדשה על אודות השאלות הללו מתוך קריאה צמודה של ירושלים – יצירת המופת של מנדלסון – ולאור הביקורת הפונדמנטלית על היהדות כפי שנוסחה על ידי שפינוזה במאמר תיאולוגי מדיני. המחבר טוען שבירושלים מנדלסון מנסח את התשובה הפונדמנטלית הראשונה לביקורת של שפינוזה על היהדות, ובכך הוא הופך לאבי הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית
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אך בצד הניסיון לנסח מחדש את התשובה של מנדלסון – בשפתם של הוסרל, היידגר וסארטר, בעקבות מחשבתם היהודית של פרנץ רוזנצווייג ועמנואל לוינס, וכן מתוך נאמנות להוראתו של מורו בני לוי – מחבר הספר מבקש גם לאתגר את מחשבת מנדלסון, ואת המחשבה היהודית המודרנית בכלל, מבפנים: האם הכול ניתן לתרגום לשפה האוניברסלית של הפילוסופיה? האם לא אובד דבר מה, באופן בלתי נמנע, במעבר מן הסינגולרי לאוניברסלי, במעבר מן הפסוק אל הלוגוס? והאם מחשבת מנדלסון מסוגלת להיות נאמנה עד הסוף לחכמה היהודית, לחכמת החכמים? האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מבקש לשאול את השאלות האמורות ולדרוש ממנדלסון תשובות עליהם, אף אם במחיר חשיפת גבולות
הפילוסופיה היהודית שלו; גבולות שאינם אלא, אולי, גבולות הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית.
האפולוגיה של מנדלסון מציע גניאולוגיה של הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית, שבהבנתה טמונה האפשרות להבין את היהודי המודרני, כלומר את עצמנו.
הוצאת כרמל (פרשנות ותרבות: סדרה חדשה, תרגומים), 2019
האם אנו רואים את מה שאנו רואים? האם אנו מסוגלים לשאת את הממשי כשהוא מופיע מולנו, בפשטותו הערומה? ... more האם אנו רואים את מה שאנו רואים? האם אנו מסוגלים לשאת את הממשי כשהוא מופיע מולנו, בפשטותו הערומה? למעשה, אין דבר שברירי יותר מן הכושר האנושי להכיר בממשות, לקבל ללא סייג את צו הממשי. שכן ברגע שהממשי מתגלה כמעיק, במקום להתמודד עמו אנו משלים את עצמנו. אנו משלים את עצמנו ביחס לעתידנו, כאשר העתיד מאיים. אנו משלים את עצמנו ביחס לעולם, כאשר העולם אינו מסביר פנים. ואנו משלים את עצמנו ביחס לעצמנו כי, בסופו של דבר, אנו מי שאנו ותו לא. וכך אנו מייצרים לעצמנו כפילים, אנו מכפילים את הממשי כדי לא לראות את שתמיד ראינו. אך הכפיל לא יתממש, וכשהממשי יתממש, הכפיל יימחק, ואנו, בניגוד לכל היגיון, נופתע.
בהשראת הוגים כמו ניטשה, ברגסון, ושופנהאואר, ודרך הספרות, הפילוסופיה והאמנות, קלמאן רוסה מציע בהממשי וכפילו: מסה על האשליה הרהור מקורי על היחס שבין הממשי, הכפיל והאשליה. רוסה מתאר בספרו את הדיאלקטיקה העדינה שבין הממשי והכפיל על כל צדדיה וחושף שהאשליה העצמית אינה תופעה שולית אלא במובנים רבים החוק הנסתר של יחסנו הבסיסי לממשות. הממשי וכפילו הוא ספר מפתיע כפי שרק הממשי עשוי להפתיע: הוא מזכיר לנו את שתמיד ידענו, ובסופו של דבר קורא לנו לחזור אל סדר ההווה, סדר הממשי, בו בלבד יכול האני להכיר את עצמו.
קלמאן רוסה (2018-1939) הוא פילוסוף בעל יצירה ענפה, ולמעלה מארבעים ספריו מהווים את אחת התרומות המקוריות ביותר למחשבה הצרפתית העכשווית. הממשי וכפילו, בו ניתן למצוא את עיקרי מחשבתו של רוסה, הוא ספרו הראשון המתורגם לעברית. לתרגום נוסף אחרית דבר מאת אלי שיינפלד.
Editions Verdier, 2018
Jérusalem, livre majeur de Moses Mendelssohn, est une apologie du Judaïsme. Apologie dans le sens... more Jérusalem, livre majeur de Moses Mendelssohn, est une apologie du Judaïsme. Apologie dans le sens de Socrate: sommé de répondre aux accusations des hommes de la cité, Mendelssohn, le "Socrate de Berlin", doit répondre de son soi. Peut-on être juif et éclairé à la fois? Le juif de Lumière est-il pensable? Peut il exister? Face à la critique moderne du judaïsme – celle qui trouve sa formulation la plus accomplit dans le Traité théologico-politique de Spinoza – Mendelssohn formule une réponse fondamentale, inaugurant ainsi la pensée juive moderne.
Entendre cette réponse nécessite une lecture attentive de Jérusalem. Inspiré par la leçon de Franz Rosenzweig et d'Emmanuel Levinas, et dans le sillage de l'enseignement de Benny Lévy, L'Apologie de Mendelssohn tente une telle lecture.
Lecture sensible au retour a Platon s'opérant discrètement dans le penser de Mendelssohn: le Platon dialoguant, celui attaché à la vérité d'existence plutôt qu'à l'exactitude mathématico-logique.
Mais lecture sensible aussi au retour à la sagesse des maitres d'Israël qui s'opère nettement au sein de Jérusalem. Sagesse qui sait penser le commandement divin non pas comme loi politique mais comme possibilité singulière d'accorder vie et vérité. Sagesse permettant ainsi de repenser le sens de l'élection d'Israël et son rapport à l'universalisme.
Mendelssohn a-t-il su rester fidèle à l'enseignement des maitres d'Israël? A-t-il pu accorder jusqu'au bout élection et universalisme? Question ultime que pose L' Apologie de Mendelssohn, permettant enfin d'examiner les limites qu'il impose a la pensee juive dans son oeuvre.
Resling Editors, Tel Aviv 2007, 2007
Unsettling Jewish Knowledge: Text, Contingency, Desire (editors: Anne C. Daily, Martin Kavka and Lital Levy), 2023
What is language supposed to do—and if one of the main concerns of religion is the problem of evi... more What is language supposed to do—and if one of the main concerns of religion is the problem of evil, then what is religious language expected to do—in order to address suffering in its concreteness, in its existential here and now? Answer: to console. This is the thesis I intend to defend in the following pages: religious language, when it addresses the problem of evil, does not explain or make sense of suffering, but rather consoles. This consolation is not the result of a somehow naïve acceptance of theological dogmas (afterlife, divine providence, etc.) but an affect produced by language, in language, and which aims to address the actuality of suffering, to face the reality of evil and suffering face-to-face. In this sense, religion is beyond reason when it consoles, and by doing so, it might be disclosing deep potentialities of language, perhaps its essence.
In what follows I wish to think of the language of consolation as a language that is neither a theological language nor a language of faith, but one that addresses the problem of evil and suffering in its existential dimension. In order to do this, I will turn to texts that are part of the life of religion, namely liturgical texts. Inspired by Franz Rosenzweig and his particular way of understanding religion from within its lived practices rather than from within its theological dogmas or philosophies , I am interested in what one could call the liturgical wisdom of religion, and for the sakes of this particular study, the liturgical wisdom of Judaism. Liturgy, at least in Judaism, is at the center of religion. Through it, even though indirectly, an implicit wisdom is conveyed and transmitted to the members of the religious community, a wisdom that is not easily thematizable, but which, through the generations, shapes the deep sensibilities of those who are part of the community.
In order to address the question of suffering from this perspective, I will focus on the liturgical cycle of the seven weeks following the holiday of Tisha B’Av. The ninth of Av is the day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the two Temples. In the course of history it became the day of mourning for all the suffering that the Jewish people endured during its exile. (Therefore, in certain Orthodox communities Tisha B’Av is seen as the day commemorating the Shoah.) The seven weeks following Tisha B’Av are called sheva de-nehamta, the seven (weeks) of consolation, or the seven Shabbatot of consolation. They are called so because the haftarot that are read on those Shabbatot are selected passages from the prophecies of consolation from the book of Isaiah. If there is a wisdom of consolation—beyond reason, beyond theodicy—then it is in this context, and in those liturgical texts, that one has to search for it.
Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy, 2023
Contrary to the classical denial of bodily attributes or human emotions to God, both Samson Rapha... more Contrary to the classical denial of bodily attributes or human emotions to God, both Samson Raphael Hirsch and Franz Rosenzweig embrace biblical anthropomorphisms. Their views on anthropomorphisms are part of their critiques of philosophy, especially of the basic preconceptions of the philosophical approach to the concept of God. This article analyses their positions by examining Hirsch's commentaries on scripture (especially Gen 6:6), and Rosenzweig's "A Note on Anthropomorphisms in Response to the Encyclopedia Judaica's Article." Through a close reading and interpretation of Rabad of Posquiére's famous animadversion against Maimonides's rule concerning heretics, this paper retraces the rabbinical roots of Hirsch's and Rosenzweig's approach to anthropomorphisms.
Levinas Studies, 2022
The following paper analyzes the effect of the Shakespearean text - and Hamlet in particular-on L... more The following paper analyzes the effect of the Shakespearean text - and Hamlet in particular-on Levinas's thought. I argue that Levinas's reading of Shakespeare's Hamlet played a decisive role in one of the most crucial phenomenological debates to be found in the Levinasian text, namely, the debate with Heidegger on the meaning of death and on the object of Angst (anguish). Analyzing Levinas's remarks on Hamlet in his philosophical text, this article demonstrates how Shakespeare inspires Levinas's anti-Heideggerian thesis about anguish being anguish before eternity (and not anguish before death). Moreover, this article analyzes the Hecuba scene from the perspective of Levinas's philosophy of substitution (where again Shakespeare occupies a central role), and tries to understand the situation of Shakespeare's tragedy as being "beyond tragedy."
Naharaim: Zeitschrift für deutsch-jüdische Literatur und Kulturgeschichte (Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History), 2021
This article offers a close reading of Kafka's In the Penal Colony, exploring the text as a radic... more This article offers a close reading of Kafka's In the Penal Colony, exploring the text as a radical reflection on the nature of modernity in general, and Jewish modernity in particular. The article posits that In the Penal Colony is a meditation on the relation between suffering, transgression and law. For Kafka, where modernity is understood as the incapacity of linking suffering and transgression (sin), the old order is one where the relationship between suffering and transgression is understood as fundamental, and functions as a principle of readability of reality. For the ancients, it is this readability that endows the law with meaning and validity. By integrating parts of Foucault's thesis' on modernity as elaborated in Discipline and Punish with this analysis of In the Penal Colony, this article situates Kafka's text in the context of his literature in general, positing that it is the key text to understanding his oeuvre. In addition, this article offers an original reflection on one of the hidden themes of Kafka's work: the crisis of the modern Jew.
Levinas and Literature (Edited by Michael Fagenblat and Arthur Cools), De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2021
Literature occupies a privileged role in Levinas’ life and work. Classic authors such as Racine, ... more Literature occupies a privileged role in Levinas’ life and work. Classic authors such as Racine, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, but also modern writers such as Blanchot and Celan appear time and time again throughout his oeuvre. Alongside, of course, with references to the Bible. For Levinas, as suggested in Ethics and Infinity, literature paved the way to philosophy. “Let no one ignorant of Literature enter,” would be the inscription engraved on the door of Levinas’ academy, had he one.
The centrality of literature in Levinas’ oeuvre is an undeniable fact. Some commentators have understood it merely in terms of illustration: his recourse to literature would be a means to illustrate philosophical ideas. This study will challenge this view. It will try to demonstrate how literature is not only a means for Levinas, but that one can find, in his corpus, a theory of literature, or at least an implicit doctrine of literature. This doctrine – that is to be found mainly in his Jewish texts – is sustained by an explicit phenomenology of the book. Revealing this phenomenology of the book, therefore, amounts to stressing the philosophical centrality of literature in Levinas’s thinking.
The following lines will be guided by the following hypothesis: In order to be understood fully, Levinas’s doctrine of literature should be interpreted in light of one of the central theme of his Jewish philosophy, namely, the theme of chosenness and universality. Moreover, in his theory of literature Levinas is perhaps formulating, under cover, his most extreme version of the relation between singularity (Israel) and universality (nations). Its scandalous version. This is what I demonstrate in this paper.
Sartre, Jews, and the Other: Rethinking Antisemitism, Race, and Gender (Edited by: Manuela Consonni and Vivian Liska), De Gruyter, Oldenburg, 2020
In the heart of Menahem Brinker’s Hebrew translation of the Réflexions sur la question juive, one... more In the heart of Menahem Brinker’s Hebrew translation of the Réflexions sur la question juive, one of the key paragraphs of the book is missing, the one from the third part of the book where Sartre claims the Jew cannot be defined through his relation to (Jewish) history. On the other hand, in Brinker’s commentary of Sartre’s text - “Sartre on the Jewish Question: Thirty Years Later” –, published as an afterword to the Hebrew translation, this very paragraph is discussed quasi-implicitly and thoroughly, and Sartre’s thesis about the non-existence of Jewish history becomes the object of one of Brinker’s main critiques of this text (which eventually leads to a criticism of Sartre’s main thesis: The Jew is made by the anti-Semite). The present study proposes a reading of this textual intrigue found in the Hebrew translation of the Réflexions.
Like a symptom, this missing paragraph permits to look deeper into a possible modality of the relation of the modern Jew to the Jewish question. Discarding on the one hand the religious dogmas, Brinker is, so to say, compelled to refer to them, awakening them as it where from his deepest self, in order to confront Sartre’s thesis, in order to think the Jew as something more than just the result of the hateful gaze of the anti-Semite. In order to think that which he himself experiences, even if negatively: the positivity of Jewish existence.
The Oxford Handbook of Levinas (Edited by Michael L. Morgan), Oxford University Press, 2018
This article studies the place of the Bible in Levinas’s philosophical project. Besides his progr... more This article studies the place of the Bible in Levinas’s philosophical project. Besides his programmatic call “to translate the Torah into Greek” (i.e., into a philosophical idiom), throughout his writings Levinas calls for a return to the Bible in its original givenness. Through an exploration of the tension between those two movements, which at first sight contradict one another, this article tries to understand anew the role the Bible plays in Levinas’s thought. How are those two movements reconcilable? What are the implications of this tension for Levinas’s philosophical project? And how does this tension affect the project of Jewish philosophy in general? Through a reflection on the conditions of a return to the Bible as Levinas understands it, this article attempts to shed some light on those fundamental questions.
Kafka and the Universal (edited by Arthur Cools and Vivian Liska), De Gruyter, 2016
“Before the Law” (“Vor dem Gesetz”) is one of the most if not the single most commented upon of K... more “Before the Law” (“Vor dem Gesetz”) is one of the most if not the single most commented upon of Kafka’s texts : “Helplessness seizes one face to face with this page and a half,” notes George Steiner. Has everything not already been said, been written, been thought, about this text? Like a detective, the commentator searches for the key that will once and for all resolve the enigma, unveil the mystery that hides so secretively within its depths. A mystery which we know everything depends upon. One might skeptically wonder at the discovery of yet another interpretation of “Before the Law”: “What more can be added?” he asks himself. And he may be right. Perhaps the gates of interpretation are henceforth sealed. We may have arrived too late.
But before this text, do we not always already come too late? Has not the doorkeeper always already shut the door? The moment one realizes there is nothing to add to this text might be the very moment one realizes that, from the start, this text, though soliciting interpretation, in fact defies interpretation. We are indeed seized by helplessness. Equally impotent before this text, the first reading equals the last reading, because strictly speaking there is no first and no last here. Before this text, as before the law, we find ourselves equally exposed, equally empty, without resources. Before this text, we find ourselves, exactly like the story’s protagonist, the countryman, the Mann vom Lande: ignorant. And from this position the text inspires us infinitely. Ignorance serves therefore as my starting point in the interpretation of "Before the Law" proposed in the following study.
Lament in Jewish Thought: Philosophical, Theological and Literary Perspectives (edited by Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel), De Gruyter, New York-Berlin, 2014
Consolation is one of the fundamental longings of human existence. Man seeks consolation, as he s... more Consolation is one of the fundamental longings of human existence. Man seeks consolation, as he seeks meaning, or love. While the question of love or of meaning has occupied philosophers intensively during the ages, the philosophical literature on consolation is very limited, and rare. Moreover, not only is consolation left to the margins of the history of philosophy (in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages), in modernity, consolation became the object of a form of rationalistic critique of religion. The consolations of religions, for the moderns, are considered to be imaginary, un-true and harmful. Paying attention to the existential desire for consolation, this paper proposes a reflection on consolation that challenges this modern critique, and proposes an original reflection on the philosophical question of evil and suffering from the point of view of consolation. What is consolation? Is it possible to formulate a non-naïve, philosophically valid, wisdom of consolation? And what is the relation between consolation and lament? How does lament contribute to a different hearing of the sense of consolation? Those are the questions this work addresses.
Levinas Facing Biblical Figures (Ed. Yael Lin), Lexington Books, 2014
The interest in Levinas' relation to the Talmud seems to have prevailed over the question of his ... more The interest in Levinas' relation to the Talmud seems to have prevailed over the question of his relation to the Bible. Nevertheless, the Bible plays a fundamental role in his thought. Not only does Levinas reflect in several of his Jewish texts on the central role the Bible played occupies in his thought, but the biblical context – both in direct quotations and in allusions to biblical figures – is omnipresent in Levinas' thinking, both in his Jewish texts and in his purely philosophical writing. Moreover, at critical moments in his phenomenological descriptions of human existence, Levinas refers to biblical verses, or alludes to biblical references: "Thou shall not kill", in Totality and Infinity, "Here I am" or "Am I the guardian of my brother?", in Otherwise than being or beyond essence. What role does the biblical verse play in Lévinas's philosophy? What lies behind Levinas' practice of quotation? How does the Hebrew verse intervene in Levinas' writing? In order to answer those questions I follow here the different occurrences of the figure of the prophet Jonah throughout Levinas's corpus. I show how the prophetic verse, from text to text, interrupts Levinas' purely philosophical practice and helps him formulate his most metaphysical thesis about the meaning of subjectivity and transcendence.
Post-subjectivity (Edited by Christoph Schmidt, Merav Mack and Andy German), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014 , 2014
Heidegger's fundamental ontology is a long effort to recover the original task of thinking by ret... more Heidegger's fundamental ontology is a long effort to recover the original task of thinking by rethinking the ultimate ground otherwise than in terms of subjectivity or substantiality; by rethinking the sense of Being.
Thinking post-subjectivity here means taking the Heideggerian challenge seriously: trying to hear again the meaning of subjectivity, after and despite Heidegger’s radical critique of subjectivity as an onto-theological operator (substance) preventing the access to a genuine hearing of Being. Could there be a thinking of subjectivity which does not fall under Heidegger's critique of subjectivity as substantiality? Is it possible to read the philosophical tradition otherwise than Heidegger, and perhaps to track another "history of subjectivity" in it than the one he describes? Those are the questions this paper addresses.
The hypothesis of this paper is that Heidegger’s critique of subjectivity is possible only at the price of an occultation of another thought of subjectivity, and of a different metaphysics present in Greek thinking since its very dawn. In what follows, I am proposing a reading of the Socratic-Platonic thought of the soul precisely in this way: as an original thought of subjectivity which defies Heidegger's critique of subjectivity as substantiality and presence. In order to show this, I am examining here the history of the relation between subjectivity and substantiality. The critical moment of this history is the transition from Plato to Aristotle. Actualizing the debate between Plato and Aristotle on the nature of the soul while recognizing the non-substantial quality of the Platonic soul will contribute to the recollection, from within Western metaphysics, of a different tradition of thought than the one criticized by Heidegger, and perhaps also to the renewal of this other, forgotten tradition of subjectivity.
Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought No. 24 (Mechkarei Yerushalayim B'mach'shevet Yisra'el), 2015
The relation between philosophy and Judaism is one of the major themes in Emmanuel Levinas' thoug... more The relation between philosophy and Judaism is one of the major themes in Emmanuel Levinas' thought. Levinas often uses the metaphor of translation to characterize his project: his effort consisting of translating Jewish ideas, which philosophy lacks, to the language of philosophy. This paper proposes a reevaluation of this theme in light of posthumous published texts from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as texts from that period which Levinas did not include in his published corpus. These texts describe the experience of persecution and suffering as an experience lived by the Jew as a modality of his relation to to transcendence, to the divine. In this paper I demonstrate how this experience lies at the basis of Levinas' philosophy, and how the Jewish experience of suffering – while impossible to translate into the universal language of philosophy – paradoxically nourishes Lévinas phenomenological project, translating Jewish wisdom into the language of philosophy.
DAAT: Journal for Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah (No. 81), Aug 2016
This article revisits the dispute between Moses Mendelssohn and Rabbi Jacob Emden on the question... more This article revisits the dispute between Moses Mendelssohn and Rabbi Jacob Emden on the question of Jewish chosenness and Universalism, based on a renewed analysis of their correspondence concerning Maimonides’ synthesis of the Noachide laws. Whereas Mendelssohn advocates for a universalism of Reason, Emden develops a surprising idea of universalism as mediated by divine commandment. This article proposes to uncover the philosophical layers beneath the Mendelssohn-Emden debate, which permits to highlight the theoretical originality of Emden’s idea of Jewish universality, often regarded as dogmatic and pre-modern in comparison to Mendelssohn’s enlightened thinking. More importantly, this paper demonstrate how, would Mendelssohn have accepted Emden’s doctrine of universalism, he could have find a solution to one of the most important problems he struggles with in his book Jerusalem, i.e., the contradiction between universalism and chosenness.
Hakibutz Ha-Meuhad, 2014, 2014
"הזמן והאחר" הוא הצעד הפילוסופי הראשון של לוינס: בספר זה נקבעים הצירים המרכזיים והתמות העיקריות ש... more "הזמן והאחר" הוא הצעד הפילוסופי הראשון של לוינס: בספר זה נקבעים הצירים המרכזיים והתמות העיקריות שיאפינו את הגותו לכל עורך הדרך. בספר זה, פורץ לעצמו לוינס דרך חדשה.
לפרוץ דרך משמע להיפרד מהעבר. הזמן והאחר נכתב כולו בסימן הרצח-אב: לוינס מנסח בו לראשונה את הביקורת שלו על הפילוסופיה המערבית, מפרמנידס ואפלטון עד ברגסון היידגר וסארטר. להבין את פריצת הדרך של הזמן והאחר משמע קודם כל לעקוב אחר האופן בו לוינס נפרד מן הפילוסופיה המערבית הלכה למעשה. אולם לפרוץ דרך משמע גם לפלס דרך חדשה. להבין את פריצת הדרך של לוינס, משמע גם להתחקות אחר האופק החדש שזה פותח, מעבר לביקורת. משימה זו דורשת חריגה אל מעבר לגבולותיו הגלויים של הטקסט. שכן הקטסט של לוינס הוא טקסט מורכב, מרובד, מתוח. זהו טקסט המתקיים מכוח דיאלוג מתמיד עם ההיסטוריה של הפילוסופיה ועם המקור ההתגלותי (הטקסט הדתי). אך בעוד ב"הזמן והאחר" הדיאלוג עם הפילוסופיה נוכח וגלוי לכל אורך הדרך, ההתכתבות עם היסוד הדתי, ההתגלותי, נסתר. ההיפותזה המנחה אותי בקריאה שאני מציע כאן ל"הזמן והאחר" היא שהטקסט ההתגלותי פועל בתוך כתיבתו הפילוסופית של לוינס כרובד נסתר המפרה את המהלכים הנועזים והתיאורים הפנומנולוגיים החדשניים ביותר של ספר זה. על הפרשן לעורר את הכוח הסמנטי החבוי ברבדים העמוקים של "הזמן והאחר". על עבודת הקריאה לחשוף את המקור הנסתר המאפשר את רצח-האב הגלוי. זה מה שאני מבקש לעשות כאן.
God Will Not Stand Still: Jewish Modernity and Political Theology, 2009
State of Exception and State of Emergency (Eds: Shenhav, Y., Schmidt, C., and Zelniker, S.) , 2009
Cahiers d'Etudes Levinassiennes, 2010
Journal of Religion, 2011, vol 4 (no. 91) , 2011
Revue internationale de philosophie, 2010, vol. 2 (no. 252), 2010
World Congress of Jewish Studies, 2017
Judaism as Culture: Opening Session in Memory of Menachem Brinker Session in the World Congres... more Judaism as Culture: Opening Session in Memory of Menachem Brinker
Session in the World Congress of Jewish Studies Judaism as Culture: Opening Session in Memory of Menachem Brinker
Chairperson: Moshe Idel
Ariel Hirschfeld: Menachem Brinker and Josef-Hayim Brenner: Story of Brotherhood
Eli Schonfeld: Sartre and the Question of Jewish History: Menahem Brinker reads Anti-Semite and Jew
הרצאה במסגרת כנס החוגים למחשבת ישראל, בר אילן, ינואר 2017
הרצאה במסגרת סדרת ההרצאות "עולם המחשבה של פרידריך ניטשה", מכון שפינוזה ומכון ון ליר, מרץ 2013
הרצאה במסגרת יום העיון "התנ"ך בתרבות הישראלית", החוג למקרא, אוניברסיטת תל אביב, מאי 2012
Cours donne au college academique de Natanya dans le cadre de la serie "Empreintes et Memoire", D... more Cours donne au college academique de Natanya dans le cadre de la serie "Empreintes et Memoire", Decembre 2013
Paper given at the international conference: Levinas facing Biblical Figures, Ben Gurion Universi... more Paper given at the international conference: Levinas facing Biblical Figures, Ben Gurion University, December2010
Paper given in the context of the international conference: "After Sin: Sin and Evil: Poetry, Phi... more Paper given in the context of the international conference: "After Sin: Sin and Evil: Poetry, Philosophy and Theology", The Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, November 2011
רליגיה: בית למחשבה דתית, 2020
הקיום היהודי נושא בחובו יחס מיוחד אל האמת; יחס הקושר באופן עמוק בין האמת לבין האדם הנושא אותה – ב... more הקיום היהודי נושא בחובו יחס מיוחד אל האמת; יחס הקושר באופן עמוק בין האמת
לבין האדם הנושא אותה – בטענה זו נפתחת השיחה עם ד"ר אלי שיינפלד, תלמידו של
הפילוסוף היהודי־צרפתי בני לוי. תוך עיסוק בנבכי הקיום היהודי המודרני, עולים בשיחה
זו קווי־מתאר ליחסים המורכבים שבין היהודי, הפוליטי, המצוות, והמשיחיות היהודית.
ד"ר אלי שיינפלד הוא מרצה בכיר בתוכנית הבינתחומית לפילוסופיה והגות יהודית במרכז
האקדמי שלם, וממייסדי בית המדרש "שם ועבר" בירושלים. ספרו האחרון, "האפולוגיה
של מנדלסון: הולדת הפילוסופיה היהודית המודרנית", ראה אור בהוצאת כרמל
בשנת 2019 . מתנאל בראלי הוא עורך כתב העת "רליגיה" ועמית במכון "ארגמן".
The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, who was both a philosopher and an educator and one of the fou... more The philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, who was both a philosopher and an educator and one of the founders of modern Jewish thought, has in recent years received increasing interest in Israel and his translated works have become bestsellers. Less well-known is his educational activity among the Jews of France. Eli Schonfeld describes one of Levinas' unique educational projects which involved short talks on Rashi every Shabbat morning at the Jewish high school in Paris where he was the principal. This tradition continued for close to three decades and left a strong impression on numerous generations of students.
A short essay on the question of reality and illusion in light of Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci.
Devarim Achadim: Tarbut Yehudit Me-et Le-et (No.26), Jun 2014