Jewish Studies Commons^™

Designing Men: Reading The Male Body As Text, Philip Culbertson

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Reading Bodies As Texts

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

A Response To Jay Harris, David Myers

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

A Response To Jay Harris, Allan Arkush

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

A Response To Jay Harris, Ruth Abrams

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

The Israeli Declaration Of Independence: “A Camel Is A Horse Produced By A Committee”, Jay Harris

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Contents

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Old Series: Volume 6, Number 3 (December 1997)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In this issue we engage two subjects which, though they are arguably at the heart of anything that might be called "textual reasoning," have not as of yet been explored in the journal. The two subjects are Zionism and liturgy, or more specifically, feminist liturgy. The dialogue that is the first article in this issue emerges from an on-line discussion from this past summer. It has been edited for linear coherence, but hopefully not at the expense of the passion of the original (though some of the fire was doused). Elon Sunshine did a wonderful job editing the dialogue—not even …

Old Series: Volume 6, Number 2 (May/June 1997)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In this issue we continue the discussion of JUDAISM IN THE CURRICULUM, a discussion initiated by Aryeh Cohen who solicited contributions on this matter. We would like to renew this call for submissions. The matter is important and concerns most of us. How is Judaism represented in institutions of higher (or lower?) learning? What does it mean to educate ABOUT rather than IN Judaism? What about the inside vs. the outside perspective? How much critical scholarship should be part of our courses if our students often lack much of the traditional knowledge or familiarity with content of the sacred literature …

Old Series: Volume 6, Number 1 (February 1997)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

This issue continues a conversation about martyrdom in/and the Talmud that began at the PostModern Jewish Philosophy Network Talmud Institute in Princeton in August, 1995. Liz Shanks’ article and the responses to it in Volume 5.1 started the on-line conversation. I published an article (“Towards an Erotics of Martyrdom”) in Textual Reasoning 5.2, hoping that it would widen the circle of discussants further. With the essays in this issue that hope is realized.

There are three different groups of responses in this issue. The first group are those who are responding directly to the article and the sugya, and the …

Old Series: Volume 5, Number 4 (December 1996)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

This is the final issue of Textual Reasoning for 1996. In it we introduce you to a recent restatement of the central doctrine of the Jewish rationalist tradition, the doctrine of ethical monotheism. Lenn Goodman’s book GOD OF ABRAHAM, erudite and elegantly written, is a philosophical book and a work whose philosophical statements are formulated out of an engaged reading of the classical Jewish sources. In this sense it is an instance of ‘textual reasoning.’ Furthermore, with its emphasis on the ongoing project of a mutual interpretation of the God of the Hebrew prophets and the Platonic idea of the …

Old Series: Volume 5, Number 3 (November 1996)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

Welcome to the latest issue of TEXTUAL REASONING. As many of you may know, Peter Ochs has moved himself into the wings and behind the scenes, and a new editorial team has taken over from him. You will find our introductions below. Needless to say we are appreciative for Peter’s giving us this opportunity, and will also be looking for him to continue to play an active role in upcoming issues and activities.

Old Series: Volume 5, Number 2 (July 1996)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

It is motze tisha b’av, and these summer greetings come to you in a spirit of change, hopeful yet sober. A complex day, is it not, for Jews in the scribal/pharisaic/rabbinic tradition of textual reasoning? A day of terrible loss, against a backdrop of ominous politics, that also became a time “to do for the Lord” – eyt la’asot lashem.” Our tradition of oral Torah appears to have achieved cultural authority by way of suffering. After this day, according to the mishnah in Berachot 40a, the pharisaic sages recited “l’olam u’l’olam” after psalms once recited in the Temple, one “forever” …

Old Series: Volume 5, Number 1 (March 1996)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

This issue is redacted at another time of terrible loss in Israel, the bus bombing and terrorist attacks of February 22. Included among the murdered, Matthew Eisenfeld z”l and Sarah Duker z”l were known to many members of this Network: Matthew, a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, scholar, poet, spokesperson for peace; Sarah, graduate student in science at the Hebrew University, scholar, poet, spokesperson for peace. “For those do I weep, My ears stream tears, Comfort has left me, None can restore My spirit, My children are desolate.”

We do not yet know what contributions, if any, postmodern …

Old Series: Volume 4, Number 3 (September 1995)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

For our shared work, this is a year pregnant with many new possibilities. We have many new plans and projects to tell you about, including a new Network Editorial Board with nine new Contributing Editors. But all we’ll mention now is that our new Managing Editor is David Seidenberg of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The time to tell you about the rest is after the New Year...For now, the present (issue) is too full to leave room for (words about) the future! G’mar Hatimah Tovah!

Old Series: Volume 4, Number 2 (June 1995)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

POSTMODERN JEWISH REASONING(S). How does that sound to you? On May 22, about eighteen of us joined host Eugene Borowitz for a delightful conference at Hebrew Union College (NYC) on postmodern Jewish philosophy and text reading. In-between sessions on Sifre Devarim and Mishnah Eduyot, we reflected on what to call what we were doing (a practice we have indulged in only too often in this journal). Philosophers, rabbis, text scholars, literary folk, we gathered around selections from these texts, read first in chevrutot, then in the context of background readings on modern and postmodern pedagogy broadly considered: modes of transmitting …

Old Series: Volume 4, Number 1 (February 1995)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

We don’t read alone. You might consider this a rallying cry of at least a significant sub-group of the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network. We read with. “Ehyeh imach,” says God to Moses out of the Burning Bush, “I will be with you”; and being-with is a postmodern theme, in three senses: We don’t read alone. This means, first, that the text we read is not a naked text whose meaning displays itself to anyone who would see it. It is a text that speaks in certain ways to certain groups of people. We read with-others as part of some group. …

Old Series: Volume 3, Number 4 (December 1994)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

Rosenzweig and Levinas (along with Buber and Cohen) are the principle parents of the founding members of this Network, and Gibbs’ book brings them into close dialogue with each other, with their peers in late modern/early postmodern thought, and with us. This is therefore a very important book and a very important occasion, for both the Academy and the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network. All are welcome. So please come!

For a warmup, to get you ready, we enclose a preliminary review of Gibbs’ book, by Martin Srajek (he’ll be offering different words at the Boston event). In a future issue, …

Old Series: Volume 3, Number 3 (October 1994)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

“Imaginal Bodies” heads the title of the paper Elliot Wolfson is scheduled to offer at a session on “Incarnation in Judaism and Christianity” at this year’s American Academy of Religion conference in Chicago (November 18-22). If you place that headline alongside the careful, critical textual reading you would expect to find in Wolfson’s work, then you may have an icon of the activity that characterizes some our members’ recent work in postmodern Jewish philosophy. It is an activity of reading foundational Jewish texts in a way that is informed, at once, by reasoned, disciplined criticism and by some presence (or …

Old Series: Volume 3, Number 2 (August 1994)

Journal of Textual Reasoning

A lingering message of David Hartman’s “Sinai and Messianism,” some years ago now (in Joy and Responsibility, 1978), is that, in place of a utopian messianism that may displace the present in favor of a hoped for future, Talmudic discourse offers Jews a normalized messianism that embodies the future, piecemeal, in the dialogic activities of this present moment of study and caring action. Aryeh Cohen’s essay on “Framing Women/Constructing Exile” (BITNETWORK Vol 3.2) has initiated dialogues among philosophers and Talmudists that we hope will remain a significant part of the NETWORK’s activities. Reports on these dialogues, in fact, displace most …