| title | description | date of
composition |
# of
pages |
| Against Faith | Personal essay discussing (and criticizing) the role of faith in Jewish religious belief, favoring scientific wonder over blank and dangerous trust. | 1/96 | 15 |
| Alexism: Chapter 1 | Chapter one of my first novel. Publish me! | 1996-98 | 18 |
| Another Word for Sky | Poems 1995-1999 (new collection) | 1995-99 | 35 |
| Categories & Cultures in Religious Discrimination | Research paper analyzing the elision between "religions" and "cultures," focusing on the First Amendment case involving the exclusion of Hasidim from the New York town of Airmont. | 12/95 | 30 |
| Critiquing Capitalism's Critics | Research paper deconstructing the critiques of capitalism offered by Marx, Veblen, Pope John Paul II, and Pat Buchanan, particularly the implicit establishment of a "value" intrinsic in humanity in contrast to the capitalist Jew. | 2/96 | 45 |
| Derrida and Nonsense Theology | Seminar paper suggesting that quasi-gnostic "nonsense theology" may satisfy the Derridian concerns about logocentrism and ontotheology by favoring nonrational vowel meditation over traditional "consonant" theology. | 4/96 | 30 |
| Dualism and its Perils: the case of Mendelssohn | Discussing relation between Mendelssohn, Westphalia, and later reforms and orthodoxies in European Jewry. | 5/98 | 15 |
| Eight Teenagers | Prose fiction excerpted from the anthology Condominium: 75 Stories | 1993-96 | 15 |
| Existence in the Tanya | Research paper on yesh and ayin in the work of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi. | 4/94 | 28 |
| Geoengineering: A Climate Change Manhattan Project | Published article on geoengineering as a strategy for climate change mitigation. | 1/98 | 60 |
| Hasidism and Nature: Between Negation and Affirmation | Analysis of modalities of the man-nature-God relation in early Hasidism | 6/98 | 14 |
| The Housist Manifesto | Playful but insistent catechism of the philosophy of confronting the irresolvably absurd. | 2/91-3/96 | mu |
| Knowledge, Torah, and Ultimacy in the Meor Einayim | Term paper on the infinity of God and the experience thereof through Torah in R. Menachem Nahum of Chernobyl. | 5/94 | 32 |
| Legitimations of Ultimacy in Romantic Discourse | Term paper tracing "essentialist" and "integrationist" understandings of ultimate meaning in Fichte, Schleiermacher, and Schiller, and the totalizing potential of each. | 12/95 | 27 |
| A Letter on Quality | Why a non-lazy life may have merit after all, written in the form of a "letter to a young poet." | 7/95 | 8 |
| Little Buddy | Winner of the 1994 Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest at Columbia University. | 10/94 | 3 |
| Memo on Bowers v. Hardwick II | Hypothetical legal memo arguing that, while the notorious anti-sodomy case of Bowers v. Hardwick is not contradicted by Romer v. Evans, it is no longer good law in light of changed understandings of the family. | 6/97 | 12 |
| Moot Court Brief | see Writing Sample I | ||
| No More Trivia | A statement against irony, following the death of a young scholar, and a proposal for a neo-pragmatist embrace of some transpersonal value. | 2/96 | 15 |
| Ode to the University Library | Worshipping Cambridge's priapic library | 2/92 | 1 |
| On the Conditions for Being Postmodern | Short book note playing with David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity | 11/93 | 7 |
| On the Nature and Origins of the Capitalist Religion | Research paper developing the concept of capitalism as religion, building on Weber, and suggesting that Protestant "value spheres" of the religious and the secular have engendered the growth of market-based norms as traditionally "religious" discourse has waned. | 1/96 | 50 |
| On the Uniqueness of the Holocaust and its Ramifications for the Relevance of Philosophy | Written for Emil Fackenheim, arguing against the thesis that the holocaust is philosophically unique, and calling into question the role of philosophy as explanation. | 12/93 | 25 |
| Particularity by any other Name: Rosenzweig & the Postmodern | Essay considering Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption as a postmodern Jewish text concerned with surface, particularity, & infinity. | 1/98 | 13 |
| Paths to the Divine: Ecstasy and Theology in R. Dov Baer of Lubavitch | Seminar paper relating R. Dov Baer's emphasis on contemplation and his theology of panentheism, with general remarks on the psychology of mysticism and the relation between the esoteric and the ethical. | 1/97 | 30 |
| Philosophical Questions and Kabbalistic Answers (The Anxiety of Influence) | Seminar paper discussing how early Kabbalah adopted not the substantive ideas of philosophy but its new orientation towards the "inner meaning" of Judaism. | 1/98 | 25 |
| Philosophy, Explanation, Coherence | Paper defending the project of philosophy of law and critiquing the discourse of law & economics. | 5/96 | 18 |
| The Psychological Serpent: Dualism and Evil in R. Nachman of Bratzlav | Paper on the re-psychologization of mythological evil in R. Nachman | 9/98 | 12 |
| Purim, 5756 | Poem on the death of Matt Eisenfeld z"l, and a good deal else. | 4/96 | 5 |
| Resisting Dualism: Irenaeus | Analysis of the philosophical, anthropological, and hermeneutic arguments of Against Heresies. | 5/98 | 21 |
| Saadia Gaon's kavod nivra and its place in his Philosophy of Judaism | Research paper on the kavod as understood, first by Saadia, as a created entity mediating between Gcd and the world. Also treats the importance of this doctrine for the subsequent development of Jewish mysticism. | 12/93 | 25 |
| Spans of Broken Bridges | Miscellaneous poems not included in Trees Like Fire. | 1991-96 | 30 |
| Trees Like Fire | Poems, 1993-1996 | 1993-96 | 40 |
| The Web as Exposure | Short essay on writing as exposure, and this library in particular. | 2/97 | 3 |
| What is God? | According to Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed. | 1/94 | 20 |
| Why is this Night Different from All Other Nights? | Functionalist and symbolic analyses of the Passover Seder and its place in American and Israeli Jewish practice. | 5/98 | 14 |
| Writing Sample I: Moot Court Brief | Petitioners' brief at Yale's Moot Court of Appeals regarding qualified immunity for private prison guards. (Finalist for the Benjamin Cardozo brief writing prize.) | 3/97 | 28 |
| Writing Sample II: Standing Brief | Plaintiff's brief in support of partial summary judgment as to standing in an environmental case, written for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. | 6/95 | 8 |
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