levi morrow Profile picture
PhD Candidate @HebrewU | Modern Jewish (Political) Theology | Translator, Editor | Theorizing from the ruins of Logos
Aug 13, 2023 11 tweets 4 min read
My chapter on Rav Shagar's appeal to fantasy, sci fi, and the imagination to ground theology is finally out! It started as a side interest (and a school paper), but in writing it I came to see how foundational the topic is for Rav Shagar.
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1/ https://t.co/BM5u1TeCCY
Image The chapter has three parts, following Rav Shagar's discussions of 1. Rambam and R. Yehuda Halevi, 2. Rebbe Nahman's stories, and 3. sci fi and messianism.

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May 29, 2023 12 tweets 3 min read
Read this fascinating book over and around the last two Shabbat.
Many thanks to @YehudahMirsky for the recommendation Image The book’s basic idea is to take seriously how the pioneers of the second and third Aliyah talked about the land, the desire baked into every syllable
May 29, 2023 9 tweets 4 min read
New sefer out from R. Amnon Dokov of Yeshivat Otniel on living in a society of wealth and plenty ImageImageImageImage Book can be purchased from the yeshiva here (no idea if they ship to the US):

otniel.org/product/%d7%9c…
Feb 8, 2023 16 tweets 4 min read
A running theme throughout Yelle's book is that the sacred/sovereign takes two forms:

A. System (the law, the economy, etc.)

B. The negation of system (emergency powers, sacrifice, etc.) The second is often conceived of as independent of the first, but Yelle insists on their connection. Rejection of the system is often just rejection in favor of a different system, or eventually creates its own new system.
Feb 1, 2023 27 tweets 8 min read
The Lonely Sovereign of Faith

What is the political theology of The Lonely Man of Faith? How are its insights about God and community related?
1/ Image Political theology’s bread and butter is the “political-theological analogy”: “This political thing is really just theology!” and vice versa. Rav Soloveitchik actually shares this intuition.
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May 29, 2022 19 tweets 5 min read
A Urban Utopia: A Levinasian Thread for Yom Yerushalayim
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1/18 In an essay in _Beyond the Verse_, Emmanuel Levinas expounds an ethical reading of a lengthy passage from Bavli Makkot about arei miklat (cities of refuge). These cities become, for Levinas, symbols of city life and urbanism more generally.
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Mar 15, 2022 16 tweets 7 min read
Purim as a Holiday of the Human (also, politics!)

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(Unless otherwise noted, all texts are from the _Days of Deliverance_ essays, "The Duality of Purim" and "The Megillah and Human Destiny")
1/ Rav Soloveitchik, attempting to determine the “metaphysics of Purim,” lands on human vulnerability as both a critical element of human existence and as the defining element of the Purim story.

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Feb 20, 2022 14 tweets 5 min read
The Golden Calf, Rav Soloveitchik, and the Masorah’s Idolatry Problem

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1/ ImageImage In an essay on the Golden Calf and Idolatry (in Vision and Leadership), Rav Soloveitchik explores the roots of idolatry. The Golden Calf was motivated by excessive self-abnegation, in contrast to the Sin of Adam.
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Feb 15, 2022 15 tweets 6 min read
(Adam) One Giant Leap for Mankind: Rav Soloveitchik and the Space Race
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1/13 Rav Soloveitchik’s _The Lonely Man of Faith_ is deeply marked by his excitement about space travel. David Schatz notes this in his foreword to the 2006 Doubleday edition:
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Feb 9, 2022 31 tweets 5 min read
“Thou Shalt Not Kill,” one of Avraham Yehudah Chein’s key essays, explores three different versions of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”: Collectivist, Individualist/Egoist, and the Jewish-Instinctive model.

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1/ ImageImage “Thou shalt not kill,” he points out, can be a way of protecting the collective. Any individual lopped off the collective hurts the collective, so the imperative maintains its health and integrity. However, because the imperative serves the aims of the collective,
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Feb 1, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read
Read this book over shabbat (also the last six shabbatot, and during the week, and still only finished it after shabbat) Image The book gives “portraits” of different “anarcho-Jewish” thinkers. Here’s the ToC, where they’re grouped as activists, mystics, and pacifists: Image
Jan 5, 2022 17 tweets 4 min read
Sovereignty Divine or Sovereignty Serpentine?
More on Rav Soloveitchik's Political Theology

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1/ Rav Soloveitchik broadly sees human sovereignty as a necessarily evil, granted conditional legitimacy under certain specifications. But I want to talk about the moment before that, when he discusses why human sovereignty is fundamentally illegitimate.
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Dec 14, 2021 23 tweets 5 min read
The Theo-Political Predicament of "The Emergence of Ethical Man"
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1/ ImageImage "The Emergence of Ethical Man" (EEM) doesn't depict a "State of Nature," but it does present a "religious anthropology" (xii), and this anthropology eventually gives rise to what he calls the "theo-political" society of the Mosaic covenant.
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Jun 21, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
Some notes on the insufficiency of revelation in Parshat Balak

1. "Don't go with them" "Go with them"
While the story paints Balaam as clearly in the wrong, it doesn't pretend he was violating a clear command. The basic thrust of the narrative insists that the command is not
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clear. God's will and revelation are not identical.

2. This leads into the next step of the drama. If revelation does not guarantee access to the divine will, what does? Maybe you should look elsewhere? Maybe *the donkey* knows? This sort of expansive divine will contra
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May 2, 2021 12 tweets 4 min read
Talking Politics: Political Theology Between Rav Ginsburg and Rav Shagar

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1/ ImageImage In a fascinating 2014 article, Dr. Assaf Tamari explores the role of consciousness in the political theology of Rav Yitzchak Ginsburgh.
Find the article and other paper by Tamari here: vanleer.academia.edu/AssafTamari
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Nov 18, 2020 15 tweets 4 min read
Theodicy and State Violence: Political Theology & Rav Shagar

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1/ ImageImage Adam Kotsko usefully expands Carl Schmitt's definition of political theology thusly: Political theology deals, writ large, with analogies between the problem of evil and political legitimacy—theological and political *justification*—in a given culture.
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Aug 26, 2020 13 tweets 2 min read
There’s an Aggadata in b. Temurah about 3000 halakhot forgotten by Yehoshua (and everyone else) after Moshe died. I’m a fan.
1/11 I usually see it brought up in discussions of Moshe or Yehoshua’s leadership and... yeah, ok. That’s definitely there, but there’s so much more.
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Jul 7, 2020 16 tweets 3 min read
The Moral Arc of the Universe and Maimonides’ Hermeneutics of Accommodation: A Thread
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Maimonides' devotes much Guide for the Perplexed Part III to giving reasons for the commandments. This act is fundamentally hermeneutic, aimed at making sense of the absurd, and I think it has a lot to say to our present moment. (I'll cite chapters, but see III:26–49)

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Jun 21, 2019 20 tweets 3 min read
Dialogic Philosophy and the Memory of the Holocaust: A Thread
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I wanted to write this up fully but I won’t have time before Shabbat, so here’s a twitter thread:
Dialogic philosophy, roughly, theorizes dialogue, talking about how it works and using it as a basis for thinking about human existence more broadly.
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