Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Readings: Between Tradition and Invention

This essay offers reflections on how to read Emmanuel Levinas's talmudic readings as historical documents. It suggests that existing scholarship, following the conventional wisdom and an interest in canonization, often treats these readings (as Levinas would have wanted) as supratemporal insight rather than as historical productions. The essay begins with an overview of Levinas's Jewish upbringing and training before turning to interpretations of the methodology and the substance of some of this figure's inaugural public engagements in the early 1960s with talmudic sources. The conclusion is that Levinas's improvisational novelty and creativity, hitherto underrated, appear to be too great to plausibly justify any claim that he affiliated with a normative Jewish tradition. The essay concludes by considering whether this conclusion reflects the wrong question. It is possible that Levinas meant to change what it means to affiliate with tradition in general, and the Jewish tradition in particular.