An Introduction to Jewish Thought

Despite the attempts of Jewish philosophers from Philo of Alexandria in the early years of the first century of the Common Era to Maimonides in the medieval period and beyond, to understand Jewish thinking and non-Jewish thinking as ultimately expressing the same series of ideas and truth, the differences between the two exist at even linguistic levels and the greater dissimilarity between the two in a variety of areas including the very notions of epistemology and ontology are clear.

If the philosophical traditions of the Hellenistic world can be seen as the key intellectual prism of Western thought, then the Bible, and the classical Jewish tradition found in the Mishnah and the Gemara must be viewed as foundational sources of Jewish thinking. What then are the differences between Jewish thinking and Greek thinking and do any similarities or intersections exist? Heschel argues that one of the first distinguishing features of Jewish/Biblical thinking predates the Greek era, but is certainly related to an area of concern for the latter.

This is a short 65 minute lecture given at Congregation Beth Shalom in 2019 and a excellent starting point for further study.