Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades by Catherine Lundoff (Editor)

From the Publisher

Although Jewish scholars have recognized the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas as one of the greatest talmudic minds of this century, the majority of Jews have remained ignorant of his teachings, largely because his work -- even in translation -- is dense and erudite. Rabbi Ira Stone, who has studied Levinas's work for many years and incorporated his methods and perspectives into his own teaching, now makes Levinaas accessible to lay readers for the first time.

Born in Lithuania, educated in Germany under Husserl and Heidegger, and a prisoner of war during the Holocaust, Levinas emerged after the war as one of France's most radical thinkers, whose thought influenced several generations of Jewish and Christian philosophers, among them Sartre and Pope John Paul II.

The cornerstone of Levinas's ethics is responsibility for "the Other." He rejected attempts to construct grand and abstract systems in favor of a personal ethic. Levinas lost his entire family in the Holocaust, and this cataclysmic event casts its shadow over all his writings. In the first half of his book Stone introduces the reader to the philosophy and talmudic approach of Levinas, providing what he calls a "Levinasian Dictionary." He then guides the reader through a series of talmudic passages, applying them to Levinasian techniques and insights as well as his own.

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