Bar-Ilan University

Graduate Student, Jewish Philosophy

Thesis Title: Through the Cave: Zoharic Approaches to Existential Darkness

About

Broadly, I'm interested in how cognitive processes, like deliberation, reflection, contemplation, dialogue, and study, relate to life.

I'm engaged in PHILOSOPHIC READINGS OF JEWISH SOURCES, in particular readings in the ZOHARIC LITERATURE which, it turns out, offer profound approaches to existential darkness.

I look forward to further work in
EXISTENTIALIST topics (freedom, facticity, responsibility, absurdity and chaos, despair, creativity, self),
EPISTEMOLOGY (including social aspects of, truth v. emet, wisdom, narrative and knowing, character and knowledge),
PHILOSOPHIC ANTHROPOLOGY,
META-ETHICS, and
PRACTICAL REASON as it touches on self, responsibility, and character.

Much of this could be considered Jewish Philosophic Theology (see www.bibleandphilosophy.org/project-overview). Some of this bridges between the "rational" and the "mystical."

My nose can usually be found in the TaNaKh (Hebrew Bible), Midrash, Talmud, Zohar, or the work of Maimonides.

I suspect that primitive categories in Jewish tradition may fruitfully be applied in areas of philosophic concern.

Some recent great minds I'm reading are: Victor Turner, Jerome S. Bruner, Alasdair MacIntyre, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Gabriel Marcel, Santayana, Matis Weinberg.

Some biographical odds and ends...
I grew up on the cusp of the American Bible belt in an area completing its transition into a bureautechnotopia. There, I attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which is frequently rated as the US's best public school.
My junior year of high school, I did research into sonoluminescence. My senior year, I worked at NIH, in NINDS, in the cognitive neuroscience division, building modeling how dopamine neural networks tell time and assisting with a study published in Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6732/abs/399148a0.html).
I'm married to Debora nee Lugarini, who was born and raised in Genoa, Italy. Debora paints, does calligraphy, and works in early childhood education. She has a background in sociology and psychology. We met in Israel, in Ulpan Etzion. We have two girls, Eden Yahav and Lehava Hodaya Tekhelet.
I'm also into music and linguistics.
I'm a native English speaker. I flow in Hebrew. I read Aramaic. I have forgotten Japanese and neglected Ancient Greek. I understand much Italian but find myself unusually quiet in Italian conversations. I aspire to return to Japanese and Greek, and eventually to learn Arabic, French, German, Sanskrit, and Chinese.

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