1 March Deviant Yeshiva Reads Levinas
The Hague, The Hague
01/03 10:00Oy Vey’s resident philosopher Yoni Busquila will be leading a series of face-to-face discussions of Jewish philosophical texts at the LJG in Den Haag. The discussions and texts are in English. In the first session of 2025’s edition of the Deviant Yeshiva, we will be reading and discussing Levinas’s “Messianic texts” from Difficult Freedom. In partnership with the Cultural Committee of LJG in the Hague.
To register, send an email with your full name and contact information to reserveringen@ljgdenhaag.nl.
You can also register for the other sessions on Jewish philosophy:
📅 MARCH 1 – Levinas, “Messianic Texts” from Difficult Liberty
📅 MARCH 29 – Walter Benjamin, selection from “On the Concept of History”
📅 MAY 3 – Hermann Cohen, “To Create Messianic Time: A Jewish Critique of Political Utopia” from Ethics of Maimonides
📅 JUNE 7 – Gershom Scholem, “On Jonah and the Concept of Justice”
📅 JULY 12 – A surprise!
All sessions begin at the bright and early time of 10 am. So rise and shine and enjoy a shabbat discussion with Yoni!
We must think more radically…
— Levinas
The goal of the reading group is to inspire the reflection on Jewish topics and question. The main theme will be messianism and the different approaches to it by Jewish thinkers in the last century. The meetings will take place once a month and everyone is invited to join. We ask that people register in order to receive the texts in advance so they can read and bring their questions or responses. The sessions are guided dialogues arounds the texts and what they propose. The participants are not expected to agree or even like the texts, all we ask is that you think about them and join us in the conversation.
The four sessions explore the issue of messianism in 20th century Jewish Philosophy. We will begin with Levinas’ interpretations of the Talmud tractate Sanhedrin on the topic of Messianism where he tries to define what the concept means in those rabbinical discussions. We will then move to Benjamin’s classic text on the concept of history and his kabbalist approach to the possibility of changing it. The third text will be Cohen’s engagement with Maimonides to argue against the idea of messianism as a form of utopia. The last meeting will be a conversation about Scholem’s interpretation of Jonah and the relationship between prophesy and justice.
reserveringen@ljgdenhaag.nl
photo of Levinas by Bracha L. Ettinger, background removed, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license