Sergey Dolgopolsk

Sergey Dolgopolski
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Academic background
Education	University of California, Berkeley; Graduate Theological Union; Russian Academy of Sciences
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Academic work
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Discipline	Jewish philosophy; Rabbinic literature; Political theology
Sub-discipline	Talmudic argumentation; memory; political thought
Institutions	University at Buffalo, SUNY

Sergey B. Dolgopolski is a scholar of Jewish thought, rabbinic literature, and comparative literature. He is the Gordon and Gretchen Gross Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought and the Department of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His work focuses on the Talmud as a body of text and thought, with particular attention to rhetoric, philosophy, hermeneutics, disagreement, memory, political theology, and the relation between rabbinic and philosophical traditions.

Education and academic career

Dolgopolski received a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union, and the degree of Doctor of Philosophical Sciences from the Russian Academy of Sciences. At the University at Buffalo, he holds appointments in the Department of Jewish Thought and the Department of Comparative Literature, and serves as the Gordon and Gretchen Gross Professor of Jewish Studies.

Scholarship

Dolgopolski's scholarship approaches the Talmud not only as a legal or historical corpus but also as a distinctive form of intellectual, philosophical, rhetorical, and political practice. His work has examined disagreement, memory, subjectivity, alterity, and the philosophical interpretation of rabbinic literature.

His first monograph, What Is Talmud? The Art of Disagreement, was published by Fordham University Press in 2009. The book argues that disagreement is a constitutive feature of Talmudic reasoning rather than merely a problem to be resolved. It distinguishes between "the Talmud" as an object of historical and philological study and "Talmud" as an intellectual art or practice.

His second monograph, The Open Past: Subjectivity and Remembering in the Talmud, was published by Fordham University Press in 2012. The book develops an account of memory, subjectivity, and temporality in the Talmud, engaging philosophical questions concerning thinking, remembering, and the past.

His third monograph, Other Others: The Political after the Talmud, was published by Fordham University Press in 2018. The book brings rabbinic literature into conversation with political theory and political theology, focusing on alterity, excluded others, and concepts of the political.

Dolgopolski has also co-edited volumes on Jewish studies, rabbinic thought, and philosophy. These include When Jews Argue: Between the University and the Beit Midrash, co-edited with Ethan B. Katz and Elisha Ancselovits, and Talmud and Philosophy: Conjunctions, Disjunctions, Continuities, co-edited with James Adam Redfield.

Reception

Dolgopolski's work has been reviewed in scholarly journals and review publications in Jewish studies, rabbinics, rhetoric, philosophy, religious studies, and critical theory. Reviewers have particularly emphasized the methodological character of his scholarship and its treatment of the Talmud as a form of thought rather than only as an object of legal, historical, or philological reconstruction.

Reviewing What Is Talmud? in AJS Review, Zvi Septimus wrote that Dolgopolski had "carved out a new space" in the field of rabbinics by addressing questions that had received comparatively little previous attention. In Diogène, James Adam Redfield described the book as stylistically demanding, noting its "uncompromising terminology" and "abstract idiom", but also called it a "remarkable book". Redfield argued that Dolgopolski's project was to present Talmud as a distinctive intellectual practice, different from both philosophy and rhetoric, and organized around disagreement rather than agreement.

The book also received attention in the field of rhetoric. In Rhetorica, David Metzger situated What Is Talmud? within debates over Jewish rhetoric and rabbinic discourse. Metzger wrote that Dolgopolski developed a "sustained and insightful" account of what he called "Talmudic rationalism" and described the book as "an important new contribution to the study of rhetoric" as well as a "necessary reorientation" of studies of rabbinic discourse and textuality. In Philosophy & Rhetoric, Michael Bernard-Donals framed the book around the question of whether there is a distinctly Jewish rhetoric. He wrote that Dolgopolski presents Talmud as "a significant mode of thought in its own right" and concluded that the book offered "a worthwhile model" for rethinking what rhetoric can do for philosophy.

In Foucault Studies, Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg read What Is Talmud? in relation to Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, Deleuze, and post-Heideggerian philosophy. They argued that Dolgopolski's account of Talmudic reading raised "Foucauldian questions" about reading, commentary, and the constitution of truth claims. They emphasized that, in Dolgopolski's account, the aim of Talmudic dialogue is "not agreement" but the cultivation and preservation of disagreement.

The Open Past was likewise discussed as a philosophical contribution to Talmud study. Reviewing the book for H-Judaic, Jason Mokhtarian described it as situating "the Babylonian Talmud's modes of thinking and remembering in light of twentieth-century philosophy and rhetoric". He characterized the book as a "singular piece of scholarship" and as a critique and reorientation of text-critical assumptions about thinking in the Talmud. In The Marginalia Review of Books, Zachary Braiterman described The Open Past as a work of "philosophical Talmud", arguing that Dolgopolski turned from the Talmud as a historical or cultural object toward "Talmud" as a form of thinking. Braiterman emphasized the book's engagement with film theory, Heideggerian post-phenomenology, and virtual reality.

Reviewing The Open Past in Jewish Culture and History, Marton Ribary described the book as offering "a new approach to the study of the Talmud" informed by twentieth-century continental philosophy and film theory. Ribary noted that some arguments were "unconvincing at times", while concluding that the work remained "thought-provoking and original". The Open Past was also reviewed by Günter Stemberger in the Journal for the Study of Judaism.

Selected publications

Books

• What Is Talmud? The Art of Disagreement. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009.
• The Open Past: Subjectivity and Remembering in the Talmud. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
• Other Others: The Political after the Talmud. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018.

Edited volumes

• When Jews Argue: Between the University and the Beit Midrash. Edited with Ethan B. Katz and Elisha Ancselovits. London: Routledge, 2023.
• Talmud / And/ Philosophy: Conjunctions, Disjunctions, Continuities. Edited with James Adam Redfield. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2024.

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