Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought

242 Pages·2021·1.38 MB·English

by  Ethan Kleinberg

EMMANUEL LEVINAS’S TALMUDIC TURN
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Cultural Memory
in
the
Present
Hent de Vries, Editor
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E M M A N U E L L E V I N A S ’ S
TA L M U D I C T U R N
Philosophy and Jewish Thought
Ethan Kleinberg
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2021 by Ethan Kleinberg. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free, archival- quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Kleinberg, Ethan, 1967– author.
Title: Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic turn : philosophy and Jewish thought /
Ethan Kleinberg. Other titles: Cultural memory in the present.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2021. |
Series: Cultural memory in the present | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021005589 (print) | LCCN 2021005590 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781503629448 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503629592 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781503629608 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Lévinas, Emmanuel—Religion. | Talmud—Criticism,
interpretation, etc.—History. | Jewish philosophy—20th century.
Classification: LCC B2430.L484 K57 2021 (print) | LCC B2430.L484 (ebook) |
DDC 296.1/206—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005589
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005590
Text and cover design by Kevin Barrett Kane
Typeset at Stanford University Press in 11/14.4 Adobe Garamond Pro
In memory of Hayden White
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Chronology of Levinas’s Talmudic Lectures at
the Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue française xv
Introduction: God on Our Side / God on God’s Own Side 1
1 Being- Jewish, from The Temptation of Temptation
Vilna to Paris (Shabbath, 88a and 88b) 15
2 The Alliance Israélite Old as the World
Universelle, Shushani, (Sanhedrin, 36b– 37a)
and the École Normale
Israélite Universelle 53
3 The Talmudic Lectures at Beyond Memory
the Colloque des intellectuels (Berakhot, 12b– 13a)
juifs de langue française 89
4 Hebrew into Greek: Contempt for the Torah as Idolatry
Translation and Exemplarism (Sanhedrin, 99a and 99b) 127
Conclusion: Constitutive Dissymmetry 165
Notes 183
Index 211
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