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In his new book Living The Letters: An Alphabet of Emerging Jewish Thought (Palgrave Macmillan March 2025), Michael Marmur, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Jewish Theology, considers central questions of Jewish life today.

Born and raised in England, Rabbi Marmur completed a B.A. in Modern History at the University of Oxford before moving to Israel in 1984. While studying for an M.A. in Ancient Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he completed his studies in the Israel Rabbinical Program of 91�첥 in Jerusalem and was ordained in 1992. After 20 years serving 91�첥 in administrative capacities as the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost, and as Dean of the Jerusalem campus, Marmur now concentrates his energies on teaching and writing.

Marmur’s previous publications include Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sources of Wonder (University of Toronto Press, 2016), and American Jewish Thought Since 1934: Writings on Identity, Engagement and Belief (Brandeis University Press, 2020), which he co-edited with 91�첥’s late Chancellor Emeritus Rabbi David Ellenson, Ph.D. ��”l. We reached him at his office at the Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem to talk about his new book.

The Hebrew alphabet isn’t just in the title of this work, but in its very essence. Tell me how you structured the book, and how the alphabet has informed Jewish thought, and your own thinking.

Michael Marmur: The alphabet has long been a kind of a rubric for expressing a range of ideas. It’s there in the Hebrew Bible. A number of psalms and a number of chapters of other books of the Hebrew Bible are organized alphabetically. Those who have attended High Holy Day services will be familiar with the communal confession ashamnu, bagadu gazalnu – an alphabet of wrongdoing, if you like. Alphabetical organization is also used in songs of praise and in catalogs of various kinds.

The introduction to your book includes a brief history of how alphabets get used in Jewish culture. Can you give us an example?

MM: There’s one source that I particularly love that appears in the Talmud where in the 3rd century of the common era, kids who are learning the alphabet learn ethical teachings attached to the letters of the alphabet. For example, Gimel and Dalet, the 3rd and 4th letters of the Hebrew alphabet, are understood in that tradition to denote gemol dalim, the injunction to support those who are weak. And in connection with that, the students discuss the forms of the letters: for example, the leg sticking out from the Gimel is like the leg that you should be using to run towards the person in need to do them some good. And why, they ask, is the back of the Dalet turned away from the gimmel? Because it’s embarrassing to receive support.

I knew I did not want to write a book only about the Three Big Things you have to know or believe. I wanted something more complex, and the 22 letters gave me the kind of governing principle I was looking for.

In the introduction, you also discuss your approach to writing about theology. How would you describe that?

MM: People use the term theology both in a very narrow way to mean talking about God, and in a much more expansive way to mean talking about things to which you attach ultimate value. And my theology is not simply about things that Jews – including this Jew – have to say about God, but also about the Jewish condition and our human situation, and, given the fact that I’m speaking to you from my home in Jerusalem, there is also a lot about Israel and our current challenges. And I make the claim in my introduction that everybody who’s ever written this kind of work going all the way back to medieval times and before, is actually writing a book to their children, whether or not they have children, and whether or not their children ever read them.

You also make a claim that there is an important distinction to be made between two kinds of theology, which you compare to the two kinds of peanut butter. Can you explain?

MM: There’s the smooth variety and the crunchy or the chunky variety. Smooth theology spreads very thin and very evenly and strives to answer every question in a very sort of measured way. That’s not the kind of theology I know how to write. Mine is crunchy, which means it’s got all kinds of bits in it, including sources culled from all over Jewish culture. And sometimes those chunks can get stuck between your teeth. It’s not always a smooth experience. I make the argument in my book that while some people write this kind of work from a place of certainty, I wrote my book out of a combination of anxiety and hope, with the idea that, without anxiety, you are not motivated to spend a lot of your time trying to formulate new ideas and concepts, but if all you have is paralyzing anxiety, you won’t get anywhere, because you also need to be fueled by hope.

Your book makes a case for the relevance of Jewish life at a time of rupture and change. What are the theory and practice of contemporary Judaism that you put forth?

MM: Well, there isn’t one thing. It’s an alphabet, and there are these 22 chapters all about the same length, each a kind of a short essay. Some are what I would call classically theological: What do I mean when I say God? or What does it mean to pray? In one of my chapters, I ask, When I get up tomorrow morning, do I plan to put on tefillin (phylacteries)? And I explore how for classical Reform Judaism, that was a non-question – also for Orthodox Jews it’s also a non-question because it’s obvious that you are going to, if you are a male and it’s a weekday. But for a Jew like me, it is a question, one that I use to explore issues of Jewish practice more widely.

Other chapters are overtly political in nature. I have a chapter about the concept of decency, and the question of whether we meet fundamental standards of decency and what we need to do to ensure that we might do so in the future.

On the subject of Israel, the October 7 attack happened while you were writing. How did the book change in light of that event?

MM: When the war broke out, I was actually writing the chapter on doubt. It certainly changed the book. The imprints of this sort of huge upheaval are clearly to be found within the work. How and in what ways? I’m not sure that I even have perspective. We’re so much in the middle of this unfolding drama, and I don’t know whether I have any distance on it whatsoever. I hold what would be considered very liberal views – I was a previously a chair of Rabbis for Human Rights. I would not say that my fundamental worldview has altered beyond recognition. Many Israelis say that everything is different after October 7, but often when you drill down, what they mean is: “If your opinion is different from mine, it’s your opinion that should have changed after October 7.”

Some people who held those more liberal opinions did declare following the outbreak of the war that they had changed, and that their previous ideas had been naive. I am not in that camp. I would say that my levels of anxiety have increased. My store of hope has been depleted. But my fundamental orientation to these questions has largely stayed where it was. My book does not propose geopolitical solutions for our current situation, but I tried to put my finger on some of the most urgent questions – moral questions, social questions, religious questions – that I think we have to face up to.

How has this work been informed by, and shaped, your teaching, and what do you hope your students will take away from it?

�Ѳ�:��This book has been percolating for many years, and the encounters I have had with generations of Israeli and North American students have certainly contributed to it. I have already had the opportunity of teaching sections of the book to students and graduates, and my hope is that the book will encourage them to formulate their own theologies, and to come up with their own alphabets of meaning.