Leora Batnitzky and Micah Goodman - Modern Judaism

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2014

⏱️ 108 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is the condition of modern Judaism? It is simultaneously rationalist and non-rationalist, Israeli and Diasporic, nationalist and individualist, powerful and fearful of rising anti-Semitism, particularist and universalist. To sort out modern Judaism's camps and contradictions and to offer some thoughts on Judaism's theological, sociological, and political future, Tikvah hosted a conversation between two very different thinkers who taught in Tikvah's summer fellowship and advanced institutes. Leora Batnitzky is an American scholar of modern Jewish philosophy, a professor at Princeton University, and the author, most recently, of How Judaism Become a Religion. Micah Goodman is an Israeli educator and the Founding CEO of Ein Prat Academy, a Beit Midrash instructing secular and religious young leaders in Israel in both religious and philosophic texts. Goodman is also the author of two Israeli bestsellers: The Dream of the Kuzari and The Secrets of the Guide for the Perplexed.

Recording took place on July 28, 2014.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When we do these events, we like to get a feeling for who these people are. So you hear them
0:06.6	teaching a curriculum in their classroom, and this is an opportunity to engage them in a different
0:13.0	way. A good way to know who people are is to see what they've invested their soul and
0:18.6	their mind and their energy in, and books that you've written are a pretty good entryway.
0:23.7	So, Mika, I'll give you your choice of Maimonidesur,
0:26.6	Ehudah Levy, and tell us what we can learn about one or the other,
0:32.1	what's an important thing we should learn from one or the other,
0:34.4	about modern Judaism and the modern Jewish condition.
0:37.5	I think, I'd like to think about Chapter one in the guide for the perplexed.
0:42.0	Chapter one in the guide is an interpretation of the chapter one in Genesis.
0:46.2	Chapter one in Genesis is where, besides telling us that God created the world,
0:51.4	it also tells us that human beings are created in the image of that God.
0:55.3	And it uses the term
0:56.5	Célem.
0:57.9	Now, Ceylem is a very tricky word in Hebrew,
1:00.3	in biblical Hebrew.
1:02.0	And what Scala say today,
1:03.2	that Ceylem is,
1:05.7	well, biblically,
1:06.5	Tzelem is an icon.
1:08.3	It's an idol.
1:09.5	We're actually commanded to smash the Tzlamin, the Canaanite idols.
	...

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