Inventing New Beginnings: On the Idea of Renaissance in Modern Judaism (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture). By Asher D. Biemann

摘要

In Inventing New Beginnings: On the Idea of Renaissance in ModernnJudaism, Asher Biemann invites his readers to rethink time. He explores phil-nosophies of beginnings or “thinking in renaissance” (10) and exemplifies thenchallenge not to think time as a mere diachronic succession. But how tonaccomplish the emancipation of time from nature and from repetition andnrecurrence? The issue is by no means abstractly philosophical. Whether ansociety has a differentiated sense of its own temporality is to be measured bynits capacity to invent new beginnings and to provide discontinuities—an inevi-ntable by-product of beginnings—with moral meaning. Beginnings thus presup-npose conscious acts that enhance cultural empowerment and human agency.