December 30: Emmanuel Levinas

Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who combined Talmudic interpretation with contemporary ethics and became a noted public intellectual in France before his death in 1995, was born in Kovno, Lithuania on this date in 1906. Levinas was active in the Alliance Israelité Universelle and wrote actively about Jewish identity issues within the context of European modernity. He was strongly influenced by the theologies of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber and sought to elevate the role of religion in society by cultivating its ethical content over its abstractions and metaphors. Levinas was a captivating but difficult writer. He described his philosophy as the “wisdom of love” (rather than “love of wisdom,” which is the Greek meaning of the word “philosophy”).

“Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable.”—Emmanuel Levinas