Chaim Ben Yaakov. Love and Hatred: Jews and Philosophy (A Series of Lectures)

From Plato and Philo of Alexandria to Hermann Cohen and Rav Kook. What distinguishes the Jewish worldview, how does the Jewish people relate to philosophy, and what answers does it offer to its classical questions?

EAJC Director General Dr. Haim Ben-Yakov discusses the primary schools of Jewish and Greek thought in this course, which he has delivered at universities in Israel, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Riga.

If you have long wished to comprehend Jewish philosophy, now is the ideal time to take our course.

Lecture 1. Introduction to Jewish Philosophy

Course overview and fundamental philosophical concepts.

Lecture 2: What is G-d?

How G-d and His essential attributes were understood in Judea and Ancient Greece, the revolutionary nature of the Jewish perspective, whether religion serves as a universal source of morality, and what is of greater significance from the standpoint of Judaism — religious sentiment or action.

Lecture 3 (Part 1). What is Right and What is Wrong? On the Subject of Morality.

What constitutes moral action from the perspectives of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Mill, Kant, and classical Greek philosophers, and in what aspects does Jewish philosophical thought agree or disagree with them? Is morality relative or absolute, how and why one should act "rightly," Sophocles' tragedies, the trial of Socrates, religious anarchism, and the relationship between religion and state from a Christian perspective.

Lecture 3 (Part 2). Moral and Immoral. Ethics and Religion.

Lecture 4 (Part 1). How Then Was the World Created?

Lecture 4 (Part 2). Is the World Light or Darkness?

Lecture 5 (Part 1). Shabbat: Freedom and Servitude

Lecture 5 (Part 2). What is the Meaning of Shabbat?

Lecture 6 (Part 1). In What Way is Man Similar to G-d?