Is צדקה simply the Jewish word for charity—or does that assumption already conceal a philosophical mistake?

In this seminar, we use Humpty Dumpty to enter Wittgenstein’s radical account of language, grammar, and practice. A movement does not contain checkmate. A sound does not contain speech. A transfer of money does not contain צדקה. Before saying that צדקה and charity are “the same action interpreted differently,” we must first ask: the same according to what criteria?

Wittgenstein’s claim that “essence is expressed by grammar” challenges the idea that words merely label pre-existing ontological categories. Grammar does not simply tell us what name to attach to a completed object or action; it helps articulate what kind of object or action is in question, what counts as the same, and what counts as correct or mistaken.

This has profound consequences for religious life. We do not first exist as complete religious individuals and then privately assign meanings to words such as מצוה, תשובה, תפילה, יראה, and צדקה. We become capable of articulated, norm-governed religious action and self-understanding through participation in a religious world of language, law, ritual, authority, teaching, and correction.

The seminar then reads Humpty Dumpty a second time through Gilles Deleuze. Wittgenstein uses the paradox to expose the impossibility of private semantic mastery. Deleuze transforms Humpty’s wall, his “proud” verbs, and his language of impenetrability into a philosophy of surface, event, becoming, and the production of sense.

The seminar ends by opening the next question:

If a written sign does not contain the rule of its own application, how can Torah continue through כתב alone? What living practice allows written Torah to remain living law?

Primary texts:

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter VI

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §§316, 344, 371–383

Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, “Fourth Series of Dualities”