Judaism between Culture and Cognition
I explore some fundamental themes in Jewish religious history from a non-reductive biocognitive perspective. This is a perspective influenced by the “Aarhus school” in the cognitive science of religion that approaches religion holistically, at the same time that it takes insight from biology, medicine, and psychology to be fair game for students of religion.
The focus is not meant to essentialize Judaism, but to examine the interface between Jewish religious norms (institutions, language, ritual) and biological systems (bodies, species, groups) over time. In fact, the force of my work is to question the very distinction between biology and culture, or at least, to complicate that relation. My work emphasizes the way in which these norms condition biological bodies over time, at the same time that it recognizes the role of human agency in reshaping human ecologies.
The text itself will be presented as a general history of the interface between Judaism and biology/cognition since its “origins”. The chapters will serve as test cases, exemplars of the interaction that is the subject of the book.
Chapter One: Intro, Religious Cognition in the Wild
Chapter Two: Rabbinic Judaism and the Education of the Heart
Chapter Three: The Polemic Against Divination
Chapter Four: Rabbinic Divination and the Scope of Rationality
Chapter Five: Names in Torah as Material Symbols
Chapter Six: Rituals of Education
Chapter Seven: Jewish Niche Construction
Book Project
“The message of the Torah must not be enslaved in the rectangle.”
-Mel Alexenberg, Future of Art in a Digital Age, 11.