Michael Marmur, "Living The Letters: An Alphabet of Emerging Jewish Thought" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Jul 2, 2025

Michael Marmur, an Associate Professor of Jewish Theology at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem, discusses his work, 'Living The Letters,' which explores emerging themes in Jewish thought. He examines the departure from traditional theology and presents 'chunky vs. smooth' theology, highlighting the richness of the Hebrew alphabet in understanding Judaism. Marmur reflects on Israeli identity and its complexities, the balance between tradition and modernity, and the interplay of language and belief. His insights challenge listeners to envision a vibrant future for Jewish life.

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INSIGHT

Chunky vs Smooth Theology

Theology can be smooth, offering harmonious, all-encompassing answers, or chunky, bringing diverse, unresolved ideas.
Marmur chooses chunky theology to embrace complexity and invite readers to actively engage with Judaism’s richness.

INSIGHT

Alphabet as Theological Framework

Using the Hebrew alphabet as the book’s structure embraces pluralism and totality in Jewish thought.
The alphabet’s traditional resonance allows exploring many ideas as combined building blocks, akin to a periodic table of meaning.

INSIGHT

Aspaklaria: Lens of Perspectives

Aspaklaria, meaning lens or prism, highlights the multiplicity of perspectives in Jewish theology.
Marmur opens with this to emphasize the diversity and subjective nature of perceiving divine and worldly truths.

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Today, most Jewish thinkers have turned away from theology. And if they do, they look into one narrow window into the subject, writing a treatise into topics like the problem of evil or the nature of Jewish chosenness. Not so with today's guest, Michael Marmur. In his newest work, Living The Letters: An Alphabet of Emerging Jewish Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) Marmur explores dozens of the most pressing theological and philosophical issues in Judaism from the nature of Torah to the place of spirituality today, from the meaning of Jewish peoplehood to the place of Israel.

In this work, Michael Marmur employs the structure of the Hebrew alphabet to set out elements of an emerging Jewish theology, presenting a case for the urgent relevance of Jewish life at a time of deepening rupture and accelerating change. He presents core components of a theory and practice of contemporary Judaism. The Hebrew alphabet has long beguiled and preoccupied Biblical authors and liturgical poets, rationalists and mystics, conservatives and radicals. It has served as a locus of theological speculation, an engine of creativity and a recurrent motif throughout the cycle of life, from childhood instruction to graveside recitation. For each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Marmur proposes a concept, gleaned from theology, philosophy, ritual, politics, community and other fields. Readers are invited to combine and deploy them in imagining a Judaism of tomorrow.

As you will hear, Living the Letters is a hard book to pin down. And that's the point. Jewish theology today isn't neat. It's in conversation with 3000 years of Jewish thought, informed by secular scholarship, and demands creativity and expansive thinking. There is no question that readers of Marmur will come away with many important insights but at the same time, they will be full of questions and inspired to probe many of his many subjects more deeply. I hope this episode does the same.

This book is open access:

https://library.oapen.org/hand...

Rabbi Michael Marmur is Associate Professor of Jewish Theology at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem. Until July 2018 he served as the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost at HUC-JIR, having previously been Dean of the Jerusalem campus. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sources of Wonder (University of Toronto Press).

Rabbi Marc Katz is the Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is author of the books Yochanan’s Gamble: Judaism’s Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) chosen as a finalist for the PROSE award and The Heart of Loneliness: How Jewish Wisdom Can Help You Cope and Find Comfort (Turner Publishing) which was chosen as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

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