Zohar Atkins: Between Philosophy and Torah [Rationality Re-Release]

Update: 2025-10-23

Description

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Zohar Atkins, Rabbi and philosopher, about the role that philosophy – particularly rationalist philosophy – plays in Judaism.

Zohar is a profound and poetic thinker who tries to lead an examined Jewish life. Despite being a philosopher, he is an advocate of doing, not just thinking. He takes the idea of there being 70 faces of the Torah to heart, endorsing philosophical pluralism in relation to Judaism.

How do philosophy and the Torah interact?
Does the Torah espouse any one true philosophy, or is it open to multiple philosophical interpretations?
What role in Jewish life can rationalism play, and what role should it play?

Tune in to hear a conversation about philosophy and Judaism.References:

References:

Dialogues of Plato by Plato

The Kuzari by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi

Slate Star Codex

LessWrong

@ZoharAtkinsZohar is the founder of Etz Hasadeh, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and a popular public thinker. Zohar holds a Dphil in theology from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Zohar is the author of An Ethical and Theological Appropriation of Heidegger’s Critique of Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Nineveh (2019), a collection of poems, and thinks aloud about a daily question at What is Called Thinking. Zohar writes a much-loved and deeply contemplative column on the Parsha at Etz Hasadeh.

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