May 30, 2026/ 12 Nisan 5786 What makes higher education 'higher' is that we cultivate the love of learning for its own sake, that we provide participants with a time to reflect critically on what they believe in and why, to reflect on what purposes and life ambitions are worthy of them. We should be places of moral and civic growth that cultivate...the ability to think and reason together and argue about hard ethical and civic questions. Adapted from Michael Sandel, Harvard Magazine, 2026 I invite readers to join me, and your fellow and aspiring teachers for a monthly online meet-up. These will be informal, heartfelt conversations about the teaching life and the desire to bring "higher" religious studies to the entire desiring … [Read more...] about New Monthly OnLine Meet-Up Opportunity for Teachers and Scholars of Religious Studies/Jewish Studies
Reflections on Learning that Matters
After Cataclysm: MacIntyre, Marburg, and the Circle of Life
After a cataclysm: that defines our moment, claims Alasdair MacIntyre in his classic 1981 work, After Virtue. Yes, now is after a cataclysm: the grinding down – almost total annihilation – of ways of life that offer an orientation to what matters most, and of institutions – think the family, or even more concretely, the family dinner, or less prosaically, how to live with death (and not to flee from it, or try to cover it over): how do we spend time with someone who is mourning the loss of their spouse just moments before? We once knew. The wrecking ball we call modernity, and the fuel that powers it, capital, MacIntyre declares again and again – and continuing to speak this way well after having ceased to call himself a Marxist – has … [Read more...] about After Cataclysm: MacIntyre, Marburg, and the Circle of Life
On the Passing of Alasdair MacIntyre
A towering figure has passed. As an undergraduate at Brown University, I can say that Alasdair MacIntyre influenced me more than any other academic writer. I would even say,"he saved me," as he did so many people like me, from the debilitating moral and cultural relativism that so many of us at that time and place were heir to. More recently, I have come to appreciate his perspective on REIFICATION and COMMODIFICATION, the tendency of our culture to turn everything in its purview into a THING that can be bought, sold, or traded. (As a Roman Catholic, he nevertheless seemed to find no cause for hesitation in sounding like a member of the Frankfurt School. See Virtue and Politics Alasdair MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelianism, eds … [Read more...] about On the Passing of Alasdair MacIntyre
18 Propositions That Challenged Weimar’s Greatest Jewish Thinkers–and Still Resonate Today
In so many ways, the challenges of thoughtful Weimar Jews mirror our own. Familiarize yourselves with these, and you’ll begin to understand what makes us tick at 36 Learning Matters. Israel’s experience at Sinai is no delusion. Revelation happens where the witness lets himself be told what the voice speaking wished to say to him. To be a witness but nevertheless bracket the giver’s giving is theft. Sinai illustrates that the world is filled with signifiers and they address you. (Paraphrase of Martin Buber, “People Today and the Hebrew Bible,” (1926) Scripture and Translation, 21.) And, yet, there is no trans-personal meaning to life (e.g. learning how to die (Socrates), or becoming a man of virtue (Aristotle), or serving God (Rabbi … [Read more...] about 18 Propositions That Challenged Weimar’s Greatest Jewish Thinkers–and Still Resonate Today
Podcast: Laws of the Spirit
A New Books in Jewish Studies Podcast: Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (Stanford UP, 2024) Hosted by Avi Bernstein-Nahar The New Books Network · March 16, 2025 In his latest book, scholar Ariel Evan Mayse faces up to an enduring question about the Jewish religious movement known as Hasidism: How did it manage to innovate in the realms of Jewish study and practice with such daring and yet at the same time produce communities ready and willing to subject themselves to the rigors of inherited Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse turns to ritual studies rather than history or theology in order to grapple with this enigma, and does so with … [Read more...] about Podcast: Laws of the Spirit