If life in time is imminent and means an always open future, what role remains for the past? If time originates from that relationship to the future, then the past can only be a fictitious beginning, a necessary phantom of a starting point, a retroactively generated chronological period of "before." Advanced in philosophical thought of the last two centuries, this view of the past permeated the study on the Talmud as well, resulting in application of modern philosophical categories of the "thinking subject", subjectivity, and time to thinking about thinking displayed in the texts of the Talmud. This book challenges that application. Departing from the hitherto prevalent view of thinking in the Talmud in terms of anonymous thinking subjects, called "redactors" or "designer" of Talmudic discussions, the book reconsiders the modern reduction of the past to a chronological period in time, and reclaims the originary power (and authority) the past exerts in thinking and remembering displayed both in the conversations the characters in the Talmud have, and in the literary design of these conversations. Central for that task of reclaiming the radical role of the past are contrasting medieval notions of the virtual and their modern appropriations, thinking subject among them, which serve as both a bridging point and a demarcation between the practices of thinking of, and remembering, the past in the Talmud vis-a-vis other rhetorical and/or philosophical school and disciplines of thought. The Open Past suggests the possibility of understanding the conversations and the design of these conversations in the Talmud in terms of thinking in no time. This no time has several layers of meaning. In its weakest formulation, it means "in no single time" in the sense that the Talmudic conversations happen in no historically "real" time. More strongly put, it means, borrowing the language from film theory, that the Talmud requires a never consolidated difference between diegetical time, and the time of montage; which creates a no-one's time and place that in turn creates time and place for everyone else. Even more strongly, it means that performance of the conversations in the Talmud is constantly driven by, and towards, an always open past -- a power of that past is radically different from the power of either futuristic or chronological time.

Essays that explore the rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli), the great compilation of Jewish law edited in the late Sasanian era (sixth–seventh century CE), also incorporates a great deal of aggada, that is, nonlegal material, including interpretations of the Bible, stories, folk sayings, and prayers. The Talmud’s aggadic traditions often echo conversations with the surrounding cultures of the Persians, Eastern Christians, Manichaeans, Mandaeans, and the ancient Babylonians, and others. The essays in this volume analyze Bavli aggada to reveal this rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world. Features: A detailed analysis of the different conceptions of martyrdom in the Talmud as opposed to the Eastern Christian martyr accounts Illustration of the complex ways rabbinic Judaism absorbed Christian and Zoroastrian theological ideas Demonstration of the presence of Persian-Zoroastrian royal and mythological motifs in talmudic sources

Wide-ranging and astutely argued, Talmud and Philosophy examines the intersections, partitions, and mutual illuminations and problematizations of Western philosophy and the Talmud. Among many philosophers, the Talmud has been at best an idealized and remote object and, at worst, if noticed at all, an object of curiosity. The contributors to this volume collectively ignite and probe a new mode of inquiry by approaching the very question of partitions, conjunctions, and disjunctions between the Talmud and philosophy as the guiding question of their inquiry. Rather than using the Talmud and its modes of argumentation to develop existing philosophical themes, these essays probe the question of how the Talmud as an intellectual discipline sheds new light on the unfolding of philosophy in the history of thought.

In this book, Lynn Kaye examines how rabbis of late antiquity thought about time through their legal reasoning and storytelling, and what these insights mean for thinking about time today. Providing close readings of legal and narrative texts in the Babylonian Talmud, she compares temporal ideas with related concepts in ancient and modern philosophical texts and in religious traditions from late antique Mesopotamia. Kaye demonstrates that temporal flexibility in the Babylonian Talmud is a means of exploring and resolving legal uncertainties, as well as a tool to tell stories that convey ideas effectively and dramatically. Her book, the first on time in the Talmud, makes accessible complex legal texts and philosophical ideas. It also connects the literature of late antique Judaism with broader theological and philosophical debates about time.

Denying recognition or even existence to certain others, while still tolerating diversity, stabilizes a political order; or does it? Revisiting this classical question of political theory, the book turns to the Talmud. That late ancient body of text and thought displays a new concept of the political, and thus a new take on the question of excluded others. Philosophy- and theology-driven approaches to the concept of the political have tacitly elided a concept of the political which the Talmud displays; yet, that elision becomes noticeable only by a methodical rereading of the pages of the Talmud through and despite the lens of contemporary competing theological and philosophical theories of the political. The book commits such rereading of the Talmud, which at the same time is a reconsideration of contemporary political theory. In that way, The Political intervenes both to the study of the Talmud and Jewish Thought in its aftermath, and to political theory in general. The question of the political for the excluded others, or for those who programmatically do not claim any “original” belonging to a particular territory comes at the forefront of analysis in the book. Other Others approaches this question by moving from a modern political figure of “Jew” as such an “other other” to the late ancient texts of the Talmud. The pages of the Talmud emerge in the book as a (dis)appearing display of the interpersonal rather than intersubjective political. The argument in the book arrives, at the end, to a demand to think earth anew, now beyond the notions of territory, land, nationalism or internationalism, or even beyond the notion of universe, that have defined the thinking of earth so far.

Common to both Judaism and Christianity is a heightened engagement with time within liturgical practice, in which collective religious memory and anticipation come together to create a unique sense of time. Exploring the nebulous realms of religious experience and the sense of time,Remembering the Future charts the ways that the experience of time is shaped by the traditions of Judaism and Christianity and experienced within their ritual practices. Through comparative explorations of traditional Jewish and Christian understandings of time, contemporary oral testimonies, and discussions of the work of select twentieth-century Jewish and Christian thinkers, this book maps the temporal landscapes of the religious imagination. Maintaining that the sense of time is integral to Jewish and Christian religious experience, Remembering the Futuremakes a notable contribution to interreligious studies and liturgical studies. It sheds light on essential aspects of religious experience and finds that the intimacy of the experience of time grants it the capacity to communicate across religious boundaries, subtly transgressing obstacles to interreligious understanding.

Trans Talmud places eunuchs and androgynes at the center of rabbinic literature and asks what we can learn from them about Judaism and the project of transgender history. Rather than treating these figures as anomalies to be justified or explained away, Max K. Strassfeld argues that they profoundly shaped ideas about law, as the rabbis constructed intricate taxonomies of gender across dozens of texts to understand an array of cultural tensions. Showing how rabbis employed eunuchs and androgynes to define proper forms of masculinity, Strassfeld emphasizes the unique potential of these figures to not only establish the boundary of law but exceed and transform it. Trans Talmud challenges how we understand gender in Judaism and demonstrates that acknowledging nonbinary gender prompts a reassessment of Jewish literature and law.