John K. Roth, "Sources of Holocaust Insight: Learning and Teaching about the Genocide" (Cascade Books, 2020)

06/15/20 • 75 min

At Newman I co-teach a class titled "The Holocaust and its Legacies." I teach the course with a Professor of Theology and it's designed to help students understand the ways in which the Holocaust shaped the world they live in. It is, in a sense, designed to help students gain insight.

John K. Roth's new book Sources of Holocaust Insight: Learning and Teaching about the Genocide (Cascade Books, 2020) may become a required text in this course. His book is different than, I think, any other books I’ve discussed on the show. It is a reflection, a tribute, and perhaps a kind of valedictory all at once. John reflects on the people who have taught him, in all the different ways teaching can happen, and the lessons that he’s learned over decades of thinking and writing about the Holocaust. In doing so, he offers the reader an insight both into his own development and into the way historians, theologians, philosophers and artists have responded to the Holocaust over time.

It's a revealing book, sober, reflective and occasionally inspiring. Roth offers us an intellectual biography that puts his other work into context. But he also challenges his readers to be better scholars and better people while recognizing the world is far too big for one person to change.

Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press.

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James A. Diamond, "Jewish Theology Unbound" (Oxford UP, 2018)

James A. Diamond discusses his new book, Jewish Theology Unbound (Oxford University Press, 2018), with Rachel Adelman. This book challenges the widespread caricature of Judaism as a religion of law as opposed to theology. Broad swaths of rabbinic literature involve not just law but what could be best described as philosophical theology as well. Judaism has never been a dogmatic religion, insisting on a monolithic theology rooted in a uniform metaphysics that would exclude all others. The book engages in close readings of the Bible, classical rabbinic texts, Jewish philosophers, and mystics from the ancient, to the medieval, to the modern period, which communicate a profound Jewish philosophical theology on human nature, God, and the relationship between the two.

It begins with an examination of questioning in the Hebrew Bible, demonstrating that what the Bible encourages is independent philosophical inquiry into how to situate oneself in the world ethically, spiritually, and teleologically. It then explores such themes as the nature of God through the various names by which God is known in the Jewish intellectual tradition, love of others and of God, death, martyrdom, freedom, angels, the philosophical quest, the Holocaust, and the State of Israel, all in light of the Hebrew Bible and the way it is filtered through the rabbinic, philosophical, and mystical traditions. For all intents and purposes the Torah no longer originates in heaven, but flows upstream, so to speak, from the earth, propelled by the interpretive genius of human beings.

Professor James Diamond James A. Diamond holds the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He completed his doctorate in Medieval Jewish Thought ay the University of Toronto and became the international director of the Friedberg Genizah Project He has written extensively on Maimonides (the Rambam).

Rachel Adelman is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew College in Boston.

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Next Episode

A Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 2: Value Theory

In this episode (# 2), we discuss Eisler’s early years as a member of the Jewish bourgeoisie in turn-of-the-century Vienna with historian Steven Beller. We also hear from the closest living relative of Robert Eisler, his grand-nephew Richard Regen. Philosopher Tom Hurka provides some background for understanding the arguments Eisler is making in Studies in Value Theory, especially his critiques of hedonism and aesthetic philosophy. Finally, we look at the events surrounding Eisler’s dramatic arrest and trial for attempted art theft in Udine in 1907 and discuss its short- and long-term consequences.

Voice of Robert Eisler: Caleb Crawford

Additional voices: Brian Evans

Editing and engineering: March Washelesky

Music: “Shibbolet Baseda,” recorded by Elyakum Shapirra and his Israeli Orchestra.

Guests: Steven Beller (independent scholar), Tom Hurka (Chancellor Henry N. R. Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto), Richard Regen (grand-nephew of Robert and Lili Eisler).

Funding provided by the Ohio University Humanities Research Fund and the Ohio University Honors Tutorial College Internship Program.

Special thanks to the Warburg Institute, the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford, and to the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College.

Bibliography and further reading:

-Beller, Steven, ed. Rethinking Vienna 1900. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012.

-Beller, Steven. Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1989.

-Eisler, Robert. “The Empiric Basis of Moral Obligation.” Ethics, Vol. 59, No. 2, Part 1 (Jan., 1949), pp. 77-94.

-Eisler, Robert. “Der Wille zum Schmerz, Ein psychologisches Paradox.” Jahresbericht der Philosophischen Gesellschaft an der Universitat zu Wien (1904), pp. 63-79.

-Eisler, Robert. Studien zur Werttheorie. Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1902.

-Fabian, Reinhard and Peter M. Simons. “The Second Austrian School of Value Theory.” In Austrian Economics: Historical and Philosophical Background, ed. by Wolfgang Grassl and Barry Smith, pp. 29-78. Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 1986.

-Frondzi, Risieri. What Is Value? An Introduction to Axiology. Second edition. La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1971.

-Grassl, Wolfgang. “Toward a Unified Theory of Value: From Austrian Economics to Austrian Philosophy.” Paper presented at 19th-20th Century Austrian Thought and its Legacy, November 1-3, 2012, University of Texas at Arlington.

Associate Professor Brian Collins is the Drs. Ram and Sushila Gawande Chair in Indian Religion and Philosophy at Ohio University. He can be reached at [email protected].

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