What Is Talmud? The Art of Disagreement Sergey Dolgopolski $60.00 ISBN: 9780823229345 Book (Hardcover) Fordham University Press 320 pages May 2009 Quantity:

"In both engagement and disengagement with post-Heideggerian traditions of thought, What Is Talmud redefines the place of the Talmud and its study in the intellectual map of the West."—Shofar “Dolgopolski’s argument that Talmud offers an alternative to philosophy in its radical past-ness is brillant and ground-breaking.” —Bruce Rosenstock, University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana "Explores Talmudic interpretation through a study of Rabbi Izhak Canpanton and his followers in 15th-century Spain."—The Chronicle of Higher Education True disagreements are very hard to achieve. They are even harder to maintain, for the ghost of final agreement constantly haunts them. The Babylonian Talmud, however, escapes from that ghost of agreement. Taking it as an example, one might ask: Are there any conditions under which disagreement might constitute a genuine and final relationship between finite minds? Are disagreements always only temporary steps toward final agreement? Must a community of disagreement always imply agreement, as in an agreement to disagree? In both engagement and disengagement with post-Heideggerian traditions of thought, What Is Talmud? redefines the place of the Talmud and its study in the intellectual map of the West. In Talmudic intellectual art, disagreement is a fundamental category, the ultimate condition of finite human existence or co-existence. SERGEY DOLGOPOLSKI is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Talmudic Rhetoric: An Analysis in View of Post-structuralism, Affect and Figure (in Russian) and numerous articles in Continental thought and philosophy and in Jewish studies.

<< See other titles in the "Religion" category