This project investigates modern Baltic Rabbinic thought as a distinct intellectual formation within the broader landscape of modernity. It examines the principal forms, currents, institutions, and figures of the Baltic Rabbinic tradition—particularly from the nineteenth century onward—not as a closed or purely internal development, but as a mode of thought constituted in relation to dominant currents of European philosophy as well as to other non-hegemonic and subaltern intellectual frameworks. The project approaches this tradition both in its internal differentiation—such as the tensions between Hassidic and Mitnagdic milieus, or between mussar and halakhic orientations—and in its external positioning vis-à-vis modern conceptual regimes, including law, ethics, subjectivity, and collective existence. Baltic Rabbinic thought thus appears as a site in which modern categories are reworked through alternative epistemic and textual practices. A central hypothesis of the project is that Baltic Rabbinic thought constitutes not merely a traditional or pre-modern residue, but a form of modern intellectual production that challenges the hegemony of philosophical logos. Its modes of reasoning—structured around dispute (makhloket), commentary, and textual plurality—articulate a distinctive approach to thought that diverges from systematic, unifying, and logocentric models. In this sense, Baltic Rabbinic traditions are approached as offering not only alternative contents, but alternative forms of thinking, with significant implications for contemporary theoretical debates. The project develops the hypothesis of two recent book-length studies. The first, State of Others. Levinas and Decolonial Israel, centered on Emmanuel Levinas, examines the modern philosophical reception and transformation of Rabbinic thought. It argues that Levinas’s engagement with Talmudic discourse reactivates Baltic Rabbinic traditions as a resource for rethinking modern political and philosophical concepts, especially dominant notions of sovereignty, universality, and the state. The second, No Logos. Exilic Theory of Talmud, turns to the internal logic of Talmudic discourse itself, conceptualising it as a distinct discipline of thinking, defined by its specific modes of language, interpretation, and disagreement. It develops a theoretical framework for understanding Rabbinic traditions as sites of epistemic resistance and innovation within modernity. Taken together, the project and these two studies articulate a unified research program: the re-situation of modern Baltic Rabbinic thought within global intellectual history as a critical interlocutor of modern philosophy and as a source of alternative epistemologies.
Elad Lapidot is Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Lille and the co-founder of The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora at The Katholische Akademie in Berlin. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Paris-Sorbonne University and has taught philosophy, Jewish thought, and Talmud at several universities, including the University of Bern, Humboldt Universität and Freie Universität Berlin. His work is guided by questions concerning the relationship between knowledge and politics. Among his publications are State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel (Indiana University Press, 2025); Politics of Not Speaking (State University of New York Press, 2025); Jews Out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism (State University of New York Press, 2020); a Hebrew translation, with introduction and commentary (with R. Bar), of Phänomenologie des Geistes, Vol. 1 (Resling Publishing, 2020); Heidegger and Jewish Thought: Difficult Others, edited with M. Brumlik (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); and Être sans mot dire: La logique de “Sein und Zeit” (Zeta Books, 2010).
