Articles

A special issue on Jewish Analytic Theology, edited by Aaron Segal and Sem Lebens, has been published in the latest issue of the Journal of Analytic Theology.  The issue can be found here.

Congratulations to our steering committee members Shlomit Wygoda Cohen (Van Leer Institute) and Noam Oren (Hebrew University) for their recent publications on Jewish themes in Religious Studies. Here are the links for Shlomit’s paper “Why does God Command?,” and Noam’s...

Andrew Pessin has written a new book of bite-sized chapters relating to Jewish philosophical theology. His book, the Jewish God Question, explores what a diverse array of Jewish thinkers have said about the interrelated questions of God, the Book, the Jewish people,...

Tyron Goldschmidt and I have finished a first rough draft of a somewhat crazy paper. It explores numerous Jewish sources that speak of God changing the past. We try to make sense of the metaphysics and the theology of the...

The paper that I recently posted about Negative Theology received hundreds of hits on academia.edu – I was surprised to see it generate that sort of interest. In actual fact, that paper grew out of my work on the Izhbitza...

I've just finished a draft of a paper on negative theology. In tangential ways, it was inspired by work I'm currently doing on the Izhbitza Rebbe. I'd really love to see if people have comments for me, so that I can improve it. Thanks in advance!

Rabbi Soloveitchik isolates a variety of types of repentance that emerge from the classical Jewish texts. In this paper, I reflect upon three of them, their inter-relationship and their philosophical significance – concentrating especially on the following question, in what...

The Talmud debates whether there is such a thing as ‘breira’ or not. ‘Breira’ literally means clarification, but in the Talmudic debate that I’m talking about, it would better be translated as retroactive clarification…. or something like that. If a...

The relationship between Judaism and philosophy has been the subject of discussion at least since Late Antiquity. Often, however, philosophy is reified as a distinct body of knowledge, the views of Epicurus and his followers, Aristotle’s corpus, or the very...

I was recently asked to write an article of philosophical interest for a Jewish publication. The content is aimed at the lay-person, but perhaps people here will find it interesting. I’d be grateful, as ever, for your comments. As a...

In the recent past John Hick has produced a significant amount of material defending a particular kind of religious pluralism. Even if one disagrees with Hick’s version thereof, a religion’s theological flexibility to incorporate a just pluralism of one sort...

There is an argument known as the Kuzari Principle. It tries to justify belief in whole swathes of the Biblical narrative, especially in the revelation at Mount Sinai. In this blog post, I hope to show that the argument is much stronger than it might seem. The name of the argument is slightly unfair, as it was first put forward not in R. Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari, but in Saadya Gaon's Emunot Vadeot.

Rosh Hashana is a day to contemplate the need for great Jewish Ideas. A day to think big. To get out of our compartmentalized boxes. Hayom Harat Olam: Today the world is born. On Rosh Hashana the world should be newly created. This is specifically important for the future of Judaism.

Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo Does Judaism really need animal sacrifices? Would it not be better off without them? After all, does the sacrificial cult not compromise Judaism? What does a highly ethical religion have to do with the collecting...

Having spent some time thinking about medieval approaches to the freewill problem – the apparent contradiction between God’s foreknowledge and our freedom – Rabbi Herzl Hefter introduced me to the work of the Chassidic Rebbe, R. Mordechai Yosef Leiner, otherwise...

What on earth is the philosophy of Judaism? There are six elements. Each has roots in the Pentateuch. It is part of the mystery of Jewish identity that these principles produce techniques that are fecund and unembarrassing in the hands of avowed secularists.