Reflections on Judaism
Talmudic interpretation of the Bible and Western thought.
In recent decades Talmudic and rabbinic literature has acquired full citizenship in Europe. Which is only fair. The contribution of the Jewish interpretation of the Scriptures is an undeniable fact that must be taken into account in order to grasp the full religious breadth of Biblical Revelation.
In doing so, this Talmudic interpretation, with its history and methods, also entered the field of literary and philosophical criticism. In this short article, we try to discern some aspects of this literature by referring to the masterful work of E. Levinas.
The point here is to point out the aporias and limits as well as to understand its mode of operation, which in our opinion borrows from a certain esotericism. The question of the rationality and relevance of this reading is therefore posed ...
Book review by Bernard-Henry Lévy:
" The Spirit of Judaism ".
Affirming, at the start of the twenty-first century, both its Judaism and its Jewishness is an act that is both difficult and courageous. This is confirmed by Bernard-Henri Lévy's latest book, which attempts to give superior reasons for this Judaism of "glory" which he holds for the highest Revelation of the divine and for the ultimate horizon of God. human.
This immense ambition, not to say this philosophico-religious claim, undoubtedly calls for some remarks on the part of a Christian spirit, which shares a certain idea of the human being which does not owe everything to rabbinical Judaism.
Critical essay on the biblical method of Mr. Balmary
Without ever affirming it formally, Mr. Balmary's psychoanalytic interpretation owes much to Talmudic reading. If the psychoanalytic angle which it adopts is so original, it owes it indeed to another tradition than this human science discovered by Freud.
I am endeavoring in this reflection to show how such a reading of the Bible has something misguided or contradicted, in that it grants in particular to the Bible a textual status which is not critical and does not allow to lift the veils of repression which the authors have nevertheless shown in drafting it.