Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought

Kleinberg takes up the debate concerning the relationship between Levinas's Judaic and his more general philosophical writings, which Levinas published separately. This separation reproduces rather than addresses questions about Levinas's (and Judaism's) universal as against its particular concerns. In a double-column format, Kleinberg's study traces in one column Levinas's intellectual history as it turned to talmudic engagement after first encountering Western literature and philosophy; while a second column, printed alongside the first, undertakes its own commentary on Levinas's talmudic commentaries. This “double session” (in Derridean terms) is intended to unsettle and challenge philosophical habits, but the columns seem largely to miss each other. In both, the discourse is descriptive rather than analytical. What is offered is a good overview of Levinas's intellectual development as it touches on Jewish topics, exposing continued tensions between philosophical generalization and specificities of history and culture.