Avi Garelick

Love Potions

amplified amorous power - already existing architecture of passion - the coast is clear for the two to escape - a ridiculous, contrived obstacle - the domain of an evil god - death, and thus spiritual union - immense longing for beautiful women - « Says R. Hanina, one who is seduced » - what is a Godly way to get drunk

Beastly Flesh

« tying up and slaughter » - the most modern age - « just so I could smell their brisket » - « disengagement yields great fruit » - slaking a lust for beastly flesh - « He spilt blood! » - an interstitial mythic space - the secularization of meat - triumphant overcoming - « grow by the flesh of others »

No Rain Comes From Heaven

« the whole world » - rainfall is about lifestyle - spiritual inflation - why is God doing this to us? - theological victim-blaming - « Hydrological drought always has a social history » - the writers of ritual - to refuse food when the Lord does not feed you

The Afterworld Debt Crisis

the Alter Rebbe - the imaginary structures of death and the afterlife - the logic of empire was retained in Byzantium and Islam - intercessors as a path to pardon - the barbarian lands of postimperial Europe - nightmare visions of Irish lawyers

For the Day That Is All Sabbath

kinetics - when the dust settles on history - for what reason must you allow your cattle to rest - General Strike - the inwardness and outwardness of cessation

God for the Perplexed

two dangerous works of Jewish heresy - the Dominican intervention - the study of systematic theology - God in terms of reason - His strong hand, His outstretched arm, His face - a philosopher’s predilections - the tenets of negative theology - disdain for spiritual intuition - an ideal category, a conceptual defect, or a failure of practice? - why ask an expert when you could ask a book? - « if I am greater than he »

Afterthought on “Incest, Cannibalism, and the Gods”

Snakes on a Paradise

sin and exile - one primary being and one helper - fabrics and words - why is the imaginative faculty called « snake »? - outside the garden before we know it - one interdicts, the other contradicts - hiding in the bushes from our actions - paradise as a bus stop

The Idea of Karaism: A Provocation to Rabbinical Judaism

a demographic and ideological threat - to open up the Bible, as though it were a car manual - enterprise of ventriloquism - a bewildering litany of strangenesses - emphasis on rational access - « those before us were of truth » - like refusing to eat bread before learning to bake - not a cause for embarrassment