The 59.1 of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies is now available! For each issue, the Diablogue features one author and makes a full-text PDF version of their article available for 30 days on Project Muse. In this issue, we feature Netta Schramm’s "Dialogue of Difference.” A full-text PDF version of the article can be accessed HERE.
Netta Schramm is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. She received a B.Sc. and an M.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she submitted her dissertation titled “Sound Beliefs: A Performative Approach to the Thought of Irving Greenberg, Ovadia Yosef, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz.”
Schramm was a Minerva Fellow at Ludwig Maximillians Universität, Munich, 2019–21. Among her publications are: “Are You My Rabbi? Yitz Greenberg’s Intellectual Biography in Kuhnian Terms” (Modern Judaism 43:3) and “Radical Translation as Transvaluation: From Tsene-Rene to The Jews Are Coming: Three Readings of Korah's Rebellion” (PaRDeS 25).
Is a “dialogue of difference” merely another term for “two monologues”?
I believe not. The purpose of this dialogue approach is mutual understanding. Therefore, in its ideal state, such dialogue would allow require participants to refine and sharpen their own viewpoints, while also recognizing the points of disagreement with their conversation partner. This cognitive effort would cultivate mutual respect without any expectation for agreement.
Why do you find the reading of Liebowitz’s affect, beyond the interview transcript, so significant?
In 1916, Ferdinand de Saussure criticized an ingrained misconception of spoken language and derided linguists who focus on written texts: “It is rather as if people believed that to find out what a person looks like, it is better to study his photograph than his face.” Indeed, the performative event, bodily gestures, intonation, and tempo all have significant semiotic value. A close reading of a video presentation allows one to notice gaps between what is being said and how it is being said, a gap that cannot be deduced from a written transcript. [NOTE: Scroll down to view a video excerpt.]
What do you think those interested in interfaith dialogue — as advocates or critics — can learn from the encounter between Leibowitz and Dubois?
The dialogue between Leibowitz and Dubois is a fascinating case of two people engaged in dialogue with different aims in mind. Perhaps “dialogue of difference” can offer advocates of interfaith dialogue a new notion of “anti-dialogue” that can refresh their activity. For critics of interfaith dialogue, a “dialogue of difference” can serve as a more enticing form of interfaith communication scheme because it focuses on defining what is different rather than bridging theological or normative gaps.
How did you get interested in the topic?
As a student of modern Jewish thought, I have dealt extensively with the Jewish-Christian dialogue since Vatican II. I am also engaged in offering hermeneutical tools for reading audio and audio-visual texts in the contexts of modern and contemporary thought and philosophy. Thus, I employed my methodology on the filmed Lebowitz-Dubois exchange and offered a new formulation of Leibowitz’s theory of dialogue.
What is your next project? 1-3 sentences
I am working on a book project titled “Icon and Iconoclast: the intellectual biography of Yeshayahu Leibowitz.”
