Denying existence to certain others, while still tolerating diversity, stabilizes a political order in a society; or does it? Addressing this classical question of political thought, Other Others intervenes both to the study of the Talmud and Jewish Thought in its aftermath, and to political theory in general. Braking through the horizon of the currently predominant approaches to the concept of the political in political ontology and political theology, the book turns to the Talmud. In light and despite these theories, the pages of the Talmud provide a (dis)appearing display of the interperson ... More

Denying existence to certain others, while still tolerating diversity, stabilizes a political order in a society; or does it? Addressing this classical question of political thought, Other Others intervenes both to the study of the Talmud and Jewish Thought in its aftermath, and to political theory in general. Braking through the horizon of the currently predominant approaches to the concept of the political in political ontology and political theology, the book turns to the Talmud. In light and despite these theories, the pages of the Talmud provide a (dis)appearing display of the interpersonal rather than intersubjective political, which entails a radically different take on what engaging others means in society. The book shows how philosophy- and theology-driven approaches to the concept of the political have tacitly elided a concept of the interpersonal political, which the Talmud exemplifies. Both addressing and resisting such an elision, the book rereads the Talmud, while at the same time and by the same move reconsidering contemporary political theory. At the center of the analysis are figures of excluded others – of the “other others” who programmatically do not claim any “original” belonging to a territory and therefore by the logic of the currently predominant schools of political thought are questionable in their right to exist. The Political moves from a modern political figure of “Jews” as such “other others” to the Talmud, arriving, at the end, to a demand to think earth anew, now beyond the notions of territory, land, nationalism, internationalism, or even beyond the scope of a territorialized universe.