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Rabbi Elisha Ben Abuyah “At the Mind’s Limit”: Between Theodicy and Fate
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 38, Number 1, April 2014
- pp. 153-168
- 10.1353/phl.2014.0015
- Article
- View Citation
- Additional Information
Is there a limit set to human reason, where the mind must halt its inquiries without assuaging its perplexity? For rabbinic tradition, there is a limit; and a rabbi especially ought not to challenge the orthodoxy that governs Jewish religious belief. The legendary Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah sought the certitude of reason, overstepped the limit—“Free reason . . . is a heady wine”—and was castigated a pariah. But was he? Milton Steinberg’s As a Driven Leaf elicits a far more sympathetic intellectual and emotional response to Elisha, the man, and his quest, pressing us to interrogate the limit of faith and reason.
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