The Talmud – A Personal Take. Selected and edited by Tal Hever-Chybowski

Poetics Today, 2019

This article presents a new approach to understanding the discourse of the Babylonian Talmud and the ways it generates meaning. This approach is rooted in Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism as explicated in his "Discourse in the Novel" and is based on a reevaluation of the literary and theoretical implications of the findings of the previous generation of textual philological Talmudic scholarship. The article challenges previous efforts by Daniel Boyarin and Barry Scott Wimpfheimer to apply Bakhtin's thought to the Talmud. The final section presents a close reading of a Talmudic passage which demonstrates how this new approach sheds fresh light on the place of the feminine voice in the Talmud.

Routledge eBooks, 2023

The Formation of the Talmud, 2021

Finally, I would like to recognize, and express my deepest thanks to, my true partner in this project, Adina Yoffie, my editor, without whom this dream would not have come to fruition. Her incisive questions, insightful advice, and invaluable edits really transformed my work. This book would not have become a reality, nor conveyed its message, without her input and partnership. I look forward to working with her on many future projects. I have had the great pleasure of teaching academic Talmud to many smart and insightful students throughout the years, both in my earlier scholarly homes at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania and at my current academic base, Yeshiva University. My students' insightful questions, thirst for knowledge, and enthusiasm have inspired many of the ideas in this book. The words of the rabbinic sages, umitalmidai yoter mikulam, "And from my students [I have learned] more than from all [others]," especially resonate with me. I am very pleased that this volume will be part of De Gruyter's Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts series. I have received great encouragement and assistance from the entire team at de Gruyter throughout the entire process, and especially from Vivian Liska, the series editor. It has been a delightful experience working with them. This book is dedicated to Iona, my wife and partner of the last 37 years. Her unwavering support, encouragement, and selfless patience have made this entire odyssey possible. Her care, love, and dedication have been the guiding light of my life. About her I can truly say what Rabbi Akiva said of his wife: "What is mine is really hers." XIV Acknowledgments Contents Foreword IX Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Y.I. Halevy: The Traditionalist in a Time of Change 6 Chapter 2 Halevy and the Historiography of the Talmud 64 Chapter 3 Halevy the Historian of the Talmud 91 Chapter 4 Halevy and the Politics of the Talmud 131 Conclusion 183 Bibliography 197

Foucault Studies, 2011

The vast and multifaceted tradition of Hebrew thought may provide readers of Foucault with the possibility of expanding upon his work, especially with respect to the kind of action [ergon] focused on reading and writing that was such a preoccupation of his ethical turn. While Foucault's interest in Ancient, Medieval, and early modern Christianity in the shaping of a self is well known, as is his interest in Iranian Shi'ism and its links to self practices (though this latter has been overshadowed by the political storm provoked by his writings on the Iranian revolution and Khomeinism), there seems to be virtually nothing specifically about Jewish thought in Foucault, apart from his comments on Spinoza and the role of the imagination in Hebrew thinking in the introduction to his translation of Binswanger on dreams and existence (1954). In recent issues, Foucault Studies, with two book reviews by David A. Kaden, has sought to bring to its readers' attention the possible links between the final Foucault's interest in ethics, modes of being-in-the-world, care of self, and Jewish religious thinking. With Sergey Dolgopolski's volume, here under review, that effort shifts its focus to the complex of issues raised by the reading of a text and its aims, as it emerged in the art of Talmud. Here, indeed, are Foucauldian questions. The Hebraic Talmudic tradition, as Dolgopolski explores it, contains a vision of reading as a spiritual exercise, a conception of paired learning, both of which are concerns of Foucault, and-perhaps the most striking-a different understanding of commentary, not as polemic, which Foucault eschewed, but as a component in the very formation of a text itself. Indeed, Dolgopolski's exploration of the Talmudic tradition provides us with a new ‚take‛ on the famous, but aborted, debate between Habermas and Foucault: With Dolgopolski's Talmud, the reader enters a ‚world‛ where the aim of a dialogical encounter, of communicative action, to use a Habermasian trope, is not agreement; it is a ‚world‛ where a reversal of the very bases of the Habermasian ideal speech situation produces disagreement. Dolgopolski's What Is Talmud? is not an exploration of either Jewish law or ethics. It is, rather, an inquiry into the ways in which the meaning or sense of an argument is established, the mode in which one reads a text or hears an oral argument, the way in which truth claims are constituted. And it is a contribution to the

AJS Review, 2010