Jenny R. Labendz, "Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective" (Oxford UP, 2026)

July 28, 2026

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5 min read

In the Babylonian Talmud, a rabbi named Hillel stands up and announces twice in one extended passage: “There is no Messiah for Israel.” And then the discussion just keeps going, as if nobody heard him. This moment captures something central to Jenny R. Labendz’s Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective (Oxford UP, 2026). The rabbis of late antiquity were not confused or indifferent about the end of the world. They were thinking about it constantly—but in ways that defy the tidy categories scholars and laypeople have inherited. Labendz, a Talmudist who has increasingly turned to early Christianity as a comparative lens, argues that rabbinic eschatology is not a lesser version of Christian apocalypticism. It is a different species of thought altogether, one that embraces imperfection, paradox, and a deliberate refusal to resolve.

What Eschatology Actually Means (and Why We Get It Wrong)

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What you'll learn

1 (01:41) **Jenny's Background and Project Origin** - The author introduces herself and explains how a surprising Talmud text with a Barnard student sparked a 12-year research project.
2 (03:39) **Defining Eschatology: The "Best of All Possible Worlds"** - Labendz redefines eschatology to enable meaningful comparison between Judaism and Christianity, moving past simplistic ideas about the end of the world.
3 (05:50) **Why People Think Rabbis Rejected Eschatology** - Labendz explains the two main reasons for the common misconception that rabbinic literature is uninterested in eschatology.
4 (09:14) **The Book Cover: Cézanne's "Pines and Rocks"** - The author explains why a Cézanne painting of a blurry, hard-to-make-out forest scene perfectly captures the rabbis' approach to eschatology.
5 (12:18) **The Sources: The "Sea of Talmud"** - Labendz describes the vast, anthological, and shifty body of classical rabbinic literature that forms the basis of her study.
6 (18:38) **Rabbinic Eschatology vs. Apocalypticism** - Labendz distinguishes rabbinic eschatology from apocalypticism, introducing the concept of "post-apocalypticism" to describe the rabbis' imperfect visions of the end.
7 (26:20) **The Day of Judgment: Collaborative and Inconclusive** - The rabbinic view of the day of judgment is not an autocratic, cataclysmic moment but a collaborative, hesitant, and often inconclusive process.

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Show Notes

In Beyond Hope: Rabbinic Eschatology of Late Antiquity in Comparative Perspective (Oxford UP, 2026) Jenny Labendz addresses distinct patterns within rabbinic eschatology that have been overlooked in scholarship and in Jewish thought. Contrary to what is usually expected of eschatology, this book demonstrates that the rabbis held a sustained eschatology of irresolution. While the rabbis occasionally waxed poetic along the lines of a perfected new world in the eschaton, a vast store of rabbinic texts depicts a deeply imperfect eschaton. This is the profound difference between rabbinic and early Christian eschatology.
Despite its differences from the Christian doctrine of perfection, rabbinic eschatology aligns neatly with a different Christian concept, namely inaugurated eschatology. The eschaton is not only be hoped for in the future, but can be attained in the present. The best of all possible worlds has not yet been entirely actualized, but it has been inaugurated, in the rabbinic view by the exodus from slavery in Egypt, the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, and the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. This is a paradigm shift for thinking about rabbinic eschatology, which rejects the dogmas and binaries that generations of scholars have taken for granted.

In this new book, Jenny Labendz explores the relationship between this world and the best possible world, the limits of that best possible world, and asks a crucially grounding question--what are we talking about when we're talking about the end of the world?

Interviewee: Jenny R. Labendz received her PhD from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2010 and was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at St. Francis College until 2025. She is also the author of Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture, published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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