Moshe Halbertal is a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University in 1989, and from 1988-92 he was a fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. Moshe Halbertal has also served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is David Hartman's son-in-law.
He is the author of the books Idolatry (co-authored with Avishai Margalit), and People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority, both published by Harvard University Press. He has also authored two books, Interpretative Revolutions in the Making, and Between Torah and Wisdom: R Menachem ha-Meiri and The Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence, both published in Hebrew by Magnes Press. His last book published in Hebrew is Concealment and Revelation: The Secret and its Boundaries in Medieval Jewish Thought (Yeriot, 2001). His most recent work is Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and its Philosophical Implications.
Halbertal's work is always interesting and thought provoking. He has the ability to use concepts and categories of modern philosophy, sociology, anthropology and religious studies to classify Talmudic disagreements, explain various positions in the rishonim and like a seasoned lamdan give and take within the sygyos and around them. It is almost like a new genre of learning, let's call it "academic-talmudic fusion"; many attempt it but few do it well.
Dr. Halbertal's books are chock-full of insights. Some are more speculative than others bit each book contains some revelation (no pun intended), some explanation that elucidates obscure and complex questions and gladdens the heart. They are more a collection of related ideas than a single well-developed argument, but in each there are gems. Marring his books is a tendency to end each one with an involved discussion of modern philosophical issues in the light of what was related of the Jewish tradition rather than the opposite, but this is, perhaps, a flaw which is in the eyes of the beholder. I am naturally more interested in the Jewish angle and not in how it related to modern fields of inquiry than vice versa - but the, again, I am not an academic, who needs to swim in those waters, like Professor Halbertal.
To give three examples:
In Concealment and Revelation.. Dr. Halbertal develops an idea that esoteric knowledge is by definition unstable, for it begs to be revealed in hints and allusions. As such, it invites fuller and fuller revelation at each stage. He shows how this process led to uncovering of Kabbalah in pre-exilic Spain. There were two centers of Kabbalstic learning in Spain, one located around Talmudists, like Raavad and Ramban. The other was composed of the students of R. Ezra and Azriel and R. Moshe of Burgos. Since the two schools disagreed in many details, when one school revealed something, it had to be countered by a revelation from the other school. This is so by necessity because once something is revealed in writing, a different version of it cannot survive as before, as an oral tradition restricted to a few, for the written and public version will rapidly supplant the other, hidden variant. The process fed on itself until most of the hidden science of Kabbalah became revealed and public within two or three generations.
Personally, I do not find the thesis convincing, for mystical societies are not constituted primarily of thinkers who are in limited but continuous intellectual discourse with the outside world, but of men of emotion and feeling to whom esoteric teachings are a means of deepening the intercourse with the Divine and whose very impulse is withdrawal from the common society of men. Such people do not necessarily need to reveal hidden knowledge to those others with whom they often feel little kinship. I therefore find Halbertal's thesis interesting but not convincing.
Fortunately, Dr. Halbertal' ideas appear to have been developed slowly and painstakingly over several years. Because of this, one can find traces of them in earlier stages on the Web - here.
In People of the Book, Halbertal offers an interesting and encompassing perspective on the views of various rishionim on the subject of mesora, here and here
In Idolatry (ch.2), he discusses, to restate it simply, the three types of representation: linguistic, as the word dog represents dogs by convention, having no "dogginess" in it at all; substitution, where the image substitutes for its object, as a photograph corresponds in its details to the object photographed; and metonomyc, in which the symbol corresponds in some detail or feature to its representation. An example of this would be how a scented kerchief of a loved one can stand in for her, or how an eagle ensign can represent a country. Linguistic representation is always permitted, substitutive representation is idolatry and always forbidden - metonomyic representation is only permitted in very controlled settings. With this classification drawn from modern philosophy, Halbertal is able to explain why verbal representations of God are permitted in language, statues are forbidden and cherubim are permitted in the Temple but nowhere else.
His works are filled with astute observations of this kind. Halbertal's ability to apply modern categories of thought to basic Talmudic material in an original and unique manner continues to evoke admiration. His personal religious views notwithstanding, those accomplished in classic Talmudic learning and in the fields of modern investigation will continue to hope for more such studies from this original and profound thinker, unfulfilling as he may be in some crucial areas of devotion and faith.
for other studies, see here
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Posted by: Rerto Jordans | June 08, 2010 at 10:42 PM