Spring Semester Seminar
Poetry and Wisdom in Dialogue: T.S. Eliot and the Jews
Seminar led by Daniel Gutkind
Dates: April 14, April 21, April 28, May 12, May 19
Time: 8:00-9:15 PM EST
What, if anything, should we learn from poetry? Motivated by this question and others, we will read a poem and essay by one of the twentieth-century’s best and most famous poets, T.S. Eliot. We will pair Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” with chapters from Ecclesiastes (Kohelet), and Eliot’s essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” with the passage from the Passover Haggadah addressing the Four Sons.
Ultimately, our aim will be to compare Eliot’s ideas and style to key Jewish texts. We will discuss these Jewish and Western sources on their own terms and think together about how they can be paired in conversation or opposition to one another.
Key questions will include: How do we shape tradition, and how does tradition shape us? Can a poem be read philosophically? What is the relationship between a text’s form (poetry, essay, passages from Tanach or the Haggadah) and its message?
Daniel Gutkind is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU, where he focuses on Modern Jewish Thought. Prior to beginning graduate studies, he spent four years in the Leveraged Finance & Debt Advisory investment banking group at Guggenheim Partners. Daniel graduated with honors from the University of Chicago, where he studied Economics and Fundamentals: Issues and Texts. He was awarded the Jamie Redfield Award for Excellence in Fundamentals, given to the student with the highest scholastic distinction in the program. Daniel has taught and co-taught courses for the Tikvah Online Academy on Zionist intellectual history, money and morality, and the American economy. He currently teaches classes for Tikvah’s Millstone Scholars and Begin Scholars programs. He has also led Tikvah reading groups at the University of Chicago and at Oxford.
