Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity

Michael Fagenblat is Senior Lecturer at the Open University of Israel. He is the author of A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas's Philosophy of Judaism.

Negative theology is the attempt to describe God by speaking in terms of what God is not. Historical affinities between Jewish modernity and negative theology indicate new directions for thematizing the modern Jewish experience. Questions such as, What are the limits of Jewish modernity in terms of negativity? Has this creative tradition exhausted itself? and How might Jewish thought go forward? anchor these original essays. Taken together they explore the roots and legacies of negative theology in Jewish thought, examine the viability and limits of theorizing the modern Jewish experience as negative theology, and offer a fresh perspective from which to approach Jewish intellectual history.

Introduction. Delineations: Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity1. The Limits of Negative Theology in Medieval Kabbalah and Jewish PhilosophySandra Valabregue2. "No One Can See My Face and Live"Kenneth Seeskin3. What is Positive in Negative Theology?Lenn E. Goodman4. Negative Theology as Illuminating and/or Therapeutic FalsehoodSam Lebens5. "My Aid Will Come From Nothingness": The Practice of Negative Theology in Maggid Devarav Le-Ya'akovJames Jacobson-Maisels6. Secrecy, Apophasis, and Atheistic Faith in the Teachings of Rav KookElliot R. Wolfson7. Two Types of Negative Theology; Or, What Does Negative Theology Negate?Shira Wolosky8. Khoric Apophasis: Matter and Messianicity in Islamo-Judeo-Greek NeoplatonismSarah Pessin9. Negative Dialectics, sive secular Jewish theology: Adorno on the prohibition on graven images and imperative of historical critiqueIdit Dobbs-Weinstein10. The passion of non-knowing true oneness: Derrida and Maimonides on God-and Jew, perhapsMichael Fagenblat11. Jewish Negative Theology: A Phenomenological PerspectiveDavid Novak12. Mysteries of the Promise: Negative Theology in Benjamin and ScholemAgata Bielik-Robson13. Can Halakhah Survive Negative Theology?David Shatz14. The Stylus and the Almond: Negative Literary Theologies in Paul CelanAdam Lipszyc15. "Gods Change": The Deconstruction of the Transcendent God and the Reconstruction of the Mythical Godhead in Yehuda Amichai's Open Closed OpenTzahi Weiss16. The Politics of Negative TheologyMartin Kavka