Rosenzweig attempts to philosophically take seriously, in Clifford Geertz's now famous formulation, a "thick description" of Jewish life and practice. In Geertz's words, a thick description is "first, description of details as part of 'interworked systems of construable signs . . . within which they can be intelligibly . . . described.'

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i6834.html

Geertz aims to provide social science with and understanding and appreciation of “thick description.” While Geertz applies thick description in the direction of anthropological study (specifically his own ‘interpretive anthropology’), his theory that asserts the essentially semiotic nature of culture has implications for the social sciences in general and, in our case, political science (and comparative political science) in particular.

http://academic.csuohio.edu/as227/spring2003/geertz.htm