The Center for Jewish Studies at UW-Madison is proud to present a virtual lecture series featuring lectures by Prof. Moshe Halbertal of NYU Law and the Hebrew University. Lectures will be held virtually over Webex. For more information about these event and the Center for Jewish Studies, visit cjs.wisc.edu.

“The Biblical Book of Samuel and the Birth of Politics: Two Faces of Political Violence”
Wednesday, Oct 7th (12:00 noon)
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The Book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book’s anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute observer of political life and the moral compromises and contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. This lecture will explore the ways in which the Book of Samuel understands political violence unleashed by the sovereign on his own subjects: as rooted in the paranoia of the isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action through proxies.

About Prof. Halbertal:
Moshe Halbertal is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Hebrew University and the Gruss Professor at NYU Law School, and a member of the Israel’s National Academy for Sciences and the Humanities. Among his books are “Idolatry” (co-authored with Avishai Margalit); “People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority,” both published by Harvard University Press. His books “On Sacrifice,” “Concealment and Revelation,” and “Maimonides: Life and Thought” were published by Princeton University Press. His latest book “The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical book of Samuel” (co-authored with Stephen Holmes) was published by Princeton University Press in 2017.