David B. Ruderman has narrated 2 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is Jewish Intellectual History: 16th to 20th Century.
Jewish Intellectual History: 16th to 20th Century
Summary
Over the last four centuries, a small group of thinkers attempted to answer a series of remarkably challenging questions: In a world having a history of untold suffering - especially, it seemed, for Jews - was the existence of an all-powerful and comforting God still tenable? What were the purpose and meaning of Jewish practices and customs? Could Jews still justify the notion of a chosen people in a social climate in which Jewish integration and full participation with the rest of humanity had become the norm? Although their approaches and solutions differed, most thinkers shared a common goal: to provide a continuing sense of faith, meaning, and identity for their fellow Jews. Through these 24 necessary lectures, you observe the time-honored intellectual tradition through which Judaism analyzes, rethinks, and reformulates itself. This process of preserving its essential character while still trying to accommodate itself to the modern world has kept Judaism a vital and vibrant, rather than static, religion. Professor Ruderman introduces you to a new and rich body of thinkers and thinking - particularly the prominent philosopher Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza. This course considers modern Jewish thought largely in terms of two issues: the response to Spinoza and his attack on the very viability of Judaism, and the shift in the standard by which Jews defined themselves and their faith. In the modern age, it became the non-Jewish world. With these two issues in mind, you'll consider the various thinkers according to three approaches: insiders, outsiders, and rejectionists. In Professor Ruderman's estimation, Jewish thinking is a widespread and necessary part of Jewish life, an effort to find meaning and hope in an uncertain world.
©2002 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2002 The Great Courses
Between Cross and Crescent: Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza
Summary
Experience the evolution of all of Jewish life during the 10 critical centuries from its rabbinic foundations in late antiquity until the dawn of modernity in the 17th century. During this time, Judaism was forever affected by its encounters with the surrounding social, economic, political, and intellectual environments of both medieval Islam and Christendom. As a result of those encounters, new pathways of philosophical inquiry and religious spirituality would be formed. The Hebrew language would find new ways of artistic expression. And the role of Jews in the life of the surrounding community would be changed forever, sometimes even increased, as was the paradoxical case in Italy, by the very ghettoization meant to keep them isolated. These 24 insightful lectures give you a unique perspective from which to examine the three major Western religions as they interact over time, and noting especially their ability or inability to tolerate and even appreciate the "other", as viewed from the vantage point of the Jewish minority. They also feature the emergence of two distinct intellectual threads: the rise of medieval Jewish philosophy and the appearance of Jewish mysticism and piety as the faith's primary expressions of religiosity. These lectures span an enormous disciplinary range, moving back and forth among history, philosophy, religion, and art. No previous familiarity with Jewish, Islamic, or Christian history is necessary to enjoy this broad and detailed examination of the leading Jewish communities of the period, their political and economic structures, the social relations between Jews and non-Jews, and Jewish cultural and intellectual achievements in a premodern world dominated by two other faiths.
©2005 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2005 The Great Courses