Reclaiming the Wicked Son

Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers

By (author) Stephen Stern, Steven Gimbel

Publication date:

13 September 2022

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781839986147

Reclaiming the Wicked Son takes the ideas of six well-known secular Jewish philosophers from Karl Marx and Ludwig Wittgenstein to Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler and views them through a wide range of Jewish lenses from the Talmudic tradition and prophetic Judaism to Kabbalist approaches, thereby understanding the twentieth-century secular thinkers as on-going elements of a living Jewish intellectual tradition.

Introduction: Reclaiming the Wicked Son; 1. Karl Marx and Materialistic Messianism; 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein and Neo-Talmudic Thought, 3. Ayn Rand and the Hassidic Courts; 4. Peter Singer: The Amos of Animals; 5. Judith Butler and Orthopraxy; 6. Noam Chomsky, Kabbalist; Conclusion: Re-Membering the Tribe; Bibliography; Index

"Steven Gimbel and Stephen Stern have taken on one of the major challenges in Jewish Studies: how does one read the outliers, those thinkers who contentious approaches both challenged and restructured Jewish Studies as a transdisciplinary field? From Karl Marx to Ayn Rand, from Peter Singer to Judith Butler, the authors frame the debates and innovations of a range of major Western thinkers both in terms of their affiliation with and alienation from their own sense of Jewishness. An important and readable coming-to-terms with the uncomfortable edges of modern Jewish thought" — Sander L. Gilman, Author of I Know Who Caused COVID-19: Xenophobia and Pandemics.