Workshop on Talmud and Contemporary Thought – Destruction and Renewal

The Workshop on Talmud and Contemporary Thought is an annual intellectual encounter, which explores ways of how the Talmudic tradition of text may offer a medium for contemporary thought, in the sense of thought that engages on issues of contemporary social, political and cultural concern.

The workshop revolves around a Talmudic text, which serves as a medium and environment for thinking together politico-theoretical questions of contemporary concern. The program is based on readings of these texts in view of the guiding questions, which are presented by different participants as a basis for group discussions. A unique feature of the workshop is that it brings together intellectuals with various backgrounds, some more Talmudic, some from other disciplines, in an attempt to enrich conversations and broaden horizons.

The theme for the 2026 workshop is Destruction and Renewal. We would like to reflect, in view of contemporary politics, not the least in Israel/Palestine, of the meaning of large-scale destruction, of lives, of neighborhoods, of civilization, for any intellectual project, especially projects engaged in thinking.

Like war, which was discussed in last year’s workshop, the violence of destruction seems to contradict thought, theory, and any reasoning in general. In view of mass destruction, thinking, discussing and arguing stops making sense, and any attempt of making sense may even seem obscene or complicit. On the other hand, like in the case of war, intellectual language is full with terminology of destroying, undoing, taking apart, deconstructing, unsettling and erasing. If thought is the site of possibilities, thinking necessarily undermines the real.

In what ways thinking not only does not contradict destruction, but constitutes the very dimension where the undoing of existence takes its departure, through ideology or theology, discourse, narrative, policy and commands? In what ways therefore do acts of destruction not silence thought but rather summon it? And how is destruction not only arising from thinking, but also generates thought? Is thinking perhaps the origin not only of destruction but also of the destruction of destruction, that is the site of renewal? And what are the differences and relations between the intellectual positions and possibilities of the destroyed and the destroyers?

The Talmud, as the core text of the rabbinic intellectual tradition, is closely related to destruction. Not only is the rabbinic tradition situated by common historiography in the postbiblical era, within the cultural turns generated after the demise of the Judean Kingdom and the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Second Temple by the Romans. Furthermore, this destruction, the khurban, features as a constitutive myth, ethos and motif within rabbinic literature itself and has shaped both its intellectual and political project through history. In a certain sense, the Talmud arises from destruction.

The talmudic passages chosen for this year’s workshop are accordingly a series of narratives that concern the destruction of Jerusalem, found in tractate Gittin, which are commonly known as “the tales of the destruction,” aggadot ha-khurban. These passages are traditionally studied on Ninth of Av, the annual fasting day commemorating the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. 

Participants are invited to present their reading of these passages, engaging with contemporary questions related to the theme of Destruction and Renewal. Presentations should be around 20-30 minutes and serve to open a text-based discussion.