Tzvi Schoenberg

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2025, with a dissertation entitled Voice, Motion, World: The Linguistic Theology of Joseph Giqatilla's Ginnat Egoz. My dissertation examines the intersection of language and cosmology in 13th-century Castilian Kabbalah, focusing on how Giqatilla constructed a theological worldview around the linguistic structures of Hebrew.

My research situates Giqatilla within broader medieval debates about language, metaphysics, and cosmology. I study how Jewish thinkers used the non-semantic features of Hebrew—grammar, phonetics, and divine names—as models for explaining divine action and the structure of the natural world.

As a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow, I am expanding this work into a study of analogical reasoning in 13th–14th century Kabbalah. I focus on how Kabbalists adapted philosophical distinctions—particularly between linguistic and ontological analogy—to theorize the relationship between divine speech and cosmic order. My project also engages with parallel developments in Christian scholasticism and Islamic philosophy, examining how analogical frameworks shaped medieval discussions of language and causality.

My approach combines close textual analysis with intellectual history, drawing on religious studies, philology, and philosophy of language. I am broadly interested in how language functioned as a key site for metaphysical inquiry in medieval intellectual traditions.

Faculty Mentor: Jeremy Brown, Department of Theology