Dolgopolski to Explore the Politics of Disagreement at Global Talmud Workshop

Now in its annual cycle, the international workshop uses Talmudic texts to spark deep conversations on modern social, political and cultural challenges. This year’s theme, Communities of Disagreement, invites participants to consider how conflict, dissent and debate are essential—rather than detrimental—to collective life.

Dolgopolski, whose work “The Open Past: Subjectivity and Remembering in the Talmud” and “The Other Others: Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and the Talmud” has earned international recognition, has written extensively on how the Talmud cultivates the “art of disagreement.” His scholarship frames argument not as division, but as a powerful form of connection—a way to live together without needing to fully agree.

This year’s gathering centers on how political systems and societies can contain conflict without collapse. As modern diplomacy deteriorates into hostility, and arguments devolve into silence or violence, participants will examine what ancient Talmudic traditions can teach us about managing difference—within communities and across them.