Are toleration and pluralism possible in Jewish religion? -- Yeshayahu Leibovitz : the man against his thought -- Leibowitz and Camus : between faith and the absurd -- Jewish religion without theology -- The critique of theodicy : from metaphysics to praxis -- The Holocaust : a theological or a religious-existentialist problem? -- Tikkun Olam : between utopian idea and socio-historical process.

In the literature we have found correspondence of several significant traits of Jewish mysticism with traits of Buddhism and other systems of Indian religion-philosophy. Among the corresponding traits is the fundamental idea of emptiness or nothingness, shuunyataa in Sanskrit, ayin in Hebrew. Also corresponding are attempts to harmonize the idea and experience of emptiness with fullness, and with the experience of the secular world with its many things and concepts. We list eight significant traits of Jewish mysticism, (...) which we find correspond with traits of Indian religion-philosophies. We also discuss some important relations of these Indian and Jewish belief systems with modern science. We contend, that natural science is built on spontaneous sensory experiences; on this basis concepts and theories are constructed. Likewise we think, that spiritual experiences occur spontaneously and contribute to the basis of religious, mystic and some philosophical belief systems. We thus think, there are important parallels between scientific and spiritual cognition. Key words: Comparative religion; Emptiness/fullness; nothingness; God; compassion; reincarnation; cognition, scientific spiritual; spiritual experiences; Buddhism. (shrink)

Is Judaism essentially a religion of laws and commandments? Or do its sources reflect significant attempts at addressing the individual's inner life, existential crises and spiritual experiences? Inner Religion in Jewish Sources offers a comprehensive exploration of inner life in the Jewish sources from the Bible to rabbinic literature, from Medieval Jewish philosophy to Kabbalistic writings and the Hasidic world, where it gained particularly potent expressions. Addressing the issue from the perspective of comparative religion, (...) it seeks to emphasize the commonality of processes of interiorization in various religious traditions, suggesting an innovative angle both in the study of religion and of religious thought. In doing so, it sheds new light on the inner aspect of Jewish religious life, which is all too often hidden behind the external and institutional aspects of the Jewish religion. (shrink)

This paper discusses the representation of Jewish religion and culture in the architecture of the YMCA Building in Jerusalem, a prominent edifice built by the New York architect Arthur Loomis Harmon for the American YMCA. Within it, Jewish place and space were reconstructed as part of an architecture planned to promote Jewish, Christian and Moslem co-existence through an American secular cultural curriculum and a Christian vision of peace.

Moses Mendelssohn is considered the foremost representative of Jewish Enlightenment. In _No Religion without Idolatry_, Gideon Freudenthal offers a novel interpretation of Mendelssohn’s general philosophy and discusses for the first time Mendelssohn’s semiotic interpretation of idolatry in his _Jerusalem _and in his Hebrew biblical commentary. Mendelssohn emerges from this study as an original philosopher, not a shallow popularizer of rationalist metaphysics, as he is sometimes portrayed. Of special and lasting value is his semiotic theory of idolatry. From a (...) semiotic perspective, both idolatry and enlightenment are necessary constituents of religion. Idolatry ascribes to religious symbols an intrinsic value: enlightenment maintains that symbols are conventional and merely signify religious content but do not share its properties and value. Without enlightenment, religion degenerates to fetishism; without idolatry it turns into philosophy and frustrates religious experience. Freudenthal demonstrates that in Mendelssohn’s view, Judaism is the optimal religious synthesis. It consists of transient ceremonies of a “living script.” Its ceremonies are symbols, but they are not permanent objects that could be venerated. Jewish ceremonies thus provide a religious experience but frustrate fetishism. Throughout the book, Freudenthal fruitfully contrasts Mendelssohn's views on religion and philosophy with those of his contemporary critic and opponent, Salomon Maimon. _No Religion without Idolatry _breaks new ground in Mendelssohn studies. It will interest students and scholars in philosophy of religion, Judaism, and semiotics. "In this lucid and provocative study, Gideon Freudenthal offers an original and compelling reading of Mendelssohn as well as a defense of the possibility of religious rationalism more generally. This book is not only an excellent contribution to a growing body of scholarship on Mendelssohn and early modern philosophy, but it also significantly sharpens and advances contemporary conversations about the relations between religion and reason." —_Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University_ "In this masterful study, Gideon Freudenthal demonstrates how Mendelssohn’s philosophy, including his philosophy of religion, is grounded in semiotics. The result is a landmark work that not only successfully challenges standard interpretations of Mendelssohn’s 'enlightened Judaism' and its alleged inconsistency but also effectively invites reconsideration of the very possibility of 'religion without idolatry.'" —_Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University_ "In focusing on Mendelssohn's 'semiotics of idolatry,' Gideon Freudenthal writes as a philosopher fully at home in multiple traditions: contemporary philosophy, eighteenth-century philosophy, Jewish biblical exegesis, and comparative religion. The result is a systematic and penetrating study, based on the Hebrew as well as the German texts, that engages Mendelssohn on perhaps the most critical issue of his understanding of religion with unprecedented philosophical rigor and imagination." —_David Sorkin, City University of New York Graduate Center_. (shrink)

Whereas some of the critics of Hermann Cohen's strictly rational foundation of religious consciousness promoted a turn to subjectivism, others endorsed an ethicotheology while seeking to revise the "Religion of Reason." Among the latter was the Ukrainian-born social philosopher David Koigen (1877-1933), author of Der moralische Gott. Eine Abhandlung über die Beziehungen zwischen Kultur und Religion/The Moral God: An essay on the relations between culture and religion (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1922). This article examines Koigen's reevaluation of (...) class='Hi'>Jewish monotheism as a culture-forming religion (Kulturreligion) grounded in a religious ethos which integrates the rational will, ethics and emotion. (shrink)

Tamar Rudavsky's erudite survey of Jewish philosophy during the Middle Ages is the latest compendium of a wide array of thinkers who profoundly constructed bridges between the two worlds of Jewish beliefs informed by the Hebrew Bible and its rabbinic overlay at one end, and of science and philosophy dominated by Aristotelian physics and metaphysics at the other. Jewish philosophers, like their Islamic and Christian counterparts, tirelessly exerted themselves to reconcile the two into a unified system. The (...) very title of Maimonides's seminal Guide of the Perplexed reflects his attempt to resolve the angst of his intellectually sophisticated coreligionists who faced an irreconcilable either/or choice between the... (shrink)

T. M. Rudavsky tells the story of the development of Jewish philosophy from the 10th century to Spinoza in the 17th, as part of a dialogue with medieval Christian and Islamic thought. She gives a broad historical survey of major figures and schools within the medieval Jewish tradition, focusing on the tensions between Judaism and rational thought.

This paper probes the implications of a genetic basis for sexual orientation for traditional branches of Judaism, which are struggling with how accepting to be of noncelibate gays and lesbians in their communities. The paper looks at the current attitudes toward homosexuality across the different branches of Judaism; social and cultural factors that work against acceptance; attitudes toward science in Jewish culture; and the likelihood that scientific evidence that sexual orientation is at least partly genetically determined will influence (...) class='Hi'>Jewish scholars' and leaders' thinking on this issue. (shrink)

In his learned and insightful reading of the eighteenth-century German–Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Gideon Freudenthal clearly wants to rescue him from total irrelevance. For Freudenthal claims that “Mendelssohn’s philosophy of Judaism—and of religion in general—can be defended and, in fact, still deserves contemporary interest” (12). But does Mendelssohn’s philosophy deserve the interest of philosophers who are interested in what is still significant in the present first for themselves and then for everybody else; or perhaps it deserves the interest (...) only of historians of ideas who are interested only in what was significant in the past for those who lived then? (Let it be assumed that a philosopher .. (shrink)

Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality--or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period--and why Jewish thinkers have fought as well as championed this idea. Ever since the (...) Enlightenment, Jewish thinkers have debated whether and how Judaism--largely a religion of practice and public adherence to law--can fit into a modern, Protestant conception of religion as an individual and private matter of belief or faith. Batnitzky makes the novel argument that it is this clash between the modern category of religion and Judaism that is responsible for much of the creative tension in modern Jewish thought. Tracing how the idea of Jewish religion has been defended and resisted from the eighteenth century to today, the book discusses many of the major Jewish thinkers of the past three centuries, including Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Zvi Yehuda Kook, Theodor Herzl, and Mordecai Kaplan. At the same time, it tells the story of modern orthodoxy, the German-Jewish renaissance, Jewish religion after the Holocaust, the emergence of the Jewish individual, the birth of Jewish nationalism, and Jewish religion in America. More than an introduction, How Judaism Became a Religion presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought. (shrink)

This article examines the reasons for the limited interest in environmentalism in Judaism. The author suggests that the reasons are both historical and theological, Jews have been an urban people since the tenth century and they are also people of the book—that is a culture that sees any distraction from scholarly contemplation as less than worthy. However, over the past three decades there has been an interest and this is in response to the claim that the Judeo-Christian tradition is to (...) blame for the environmental crisis. The author challenges the notion that nature can be seen as the base of a core ethic of care pointing out that it is violent and does not care for the weak. The article challenges earth-based spirituality as it has appropriated the kabbalah, particularly the Skehinah and suggests that a misreading underpins this approach. (shrink)

The study brings to light three of Polqar's main purposes; (1) seeking to defend Judaism as a true religion against Christianity; (2) similarly to his fellow Jewish Averroists, Polqar wishes to defend the discipline of philosophy. By philosophy, Polqar means Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle. As a consequence, he offers an Averroistic interpretation of Judaism and becomes one of the main representatives of Jewish Averroism; (3) defending his philosophical interpretation of Judaism."-- Back cover.

This article discusses the question of how Arendt’s mature “neo-Roman” republican political theory relates to her early. It argues that her early reflections on the problem of Jewish politics in modernity already adopt one of the main pillars of her later republican political theory, i.e., the substitution of federalism for sovereignty. The article puts forth the hypothesis that Arendt’s republicanism takes up the idea that Romans and Jews, during their republican periods, both held a “civil” conception of religion. (...) Arendt’s conception of civil religion is analyzed in light of her readings of Virgil. The article concludes that Arendt’s mature political thought is neither “non-religious” nor contains a “political theology” but that it does put forward a civil-religious interpretation of natality and plurality. (shrink)

This article discusses the question of how Arendt’s mature “neo-Roman” republican political theory relates to her early. It argues that her early reflections on the problem of Jewish politics in modernity already adopt one of the main pillars of her later republican political theory, i.e., the substitution of federalism for sovereignty. The article puts forth the hypothesis that Arendt’s republicanism takes up the idea that Romans and Jews, during their republican periods, both held a “civil” conception of religion. (...) Arendt’s conception of civil religion is analyzed in light of her readings of Virgil. The article concludes that Arendt’s mature political thought is neither “non-religious” nor contains a “political theology” but that it does put forward a civil-religious interpretation of natality and plurality. (shrink)

The authors of this volume elucidate the remarkable role played by religion in the shaping and reshaping of narrative forms in antiquity and late antiquity in a variety of ways. This is particularly evident in ancient Jewish and Christian narrative, which is in the focus of most of the contributions, but also in some “pagan” novels such as that of Heliodorus, which is dealt with as well in the third part of the volume, both in an illuminating comparison (...) with Christian novels and in an inspiring rethinking of Heliodorus's relation to Neoplatonism. All of these essays, from different perspectives, illuminate the interplay between narrative and religion, and show how religious concerns and agendas shaped narrative forms in Judaism and early Christianity. A series of compelling and innovative articles, all based on fresh and often groundbreaking research by eminent specialists, is divided into three large sections: part one deals with ancient Jewish narrative, and part two with ancient Christian narrative, in particular gospels, acts, biographies, and martyrdoms, while part three offers a comparison with “pagan” narrative, and especially the religious novel of Heliodorus, both in terms of social perspectives and in terms of philosophical and religious agendas. Like the essays collected by Marília Futre Pinheiro, Judith Perkins, and Richard Pervo in 2013, which investigate the core role played by narratives in Christian and Jewish self-fashioning in the Roman Empire, the present volume fruitfully bridges the disciplinary gap between classical studies and ancient Jewish and Christian studies, offers new insights, and hopefully opens up new paths of inquiry. Contributions by (in alphabetical order): Cathryn Chew, Mark J. Edwards, Erich Gruen, Vincent Hunink, David Konstan, Karen King, Dennis MacDonald, Laura S. Nasrallah, Judith Perkins, Richard Pervo, Ilaria Ramelli, Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, and Lawrence Wills. (shrink)

"Written in a racy, persuasive style, the book impresses the reader as a work of significant scholarship...I encourage students of comparative religions- and especially those of Islamic economics- to read it with great care."&$151; Islamic Studies The worlds of economics and theology rarely intersect. The former appears occupied exclusively with the concrete equations of supply and demand, while the latter revolves largely around the less tangible concerns of the soul and spirit. Intended as an interfaith clarification of the relationship between (...) the material and the spiritual worlds, this volume first inspects secular beliefs about the relationship between economics and ethics. Exploring the differences and similarities between the treatment of economic issues in each of the great monotheistic religions, Rodney Wilson reveals how each tradition considers such subjects as individual wealth, lending, economic regulation, usury, insurance capitalism, socialism, and banking. He concludes with an intriguing epilogue on the rapidly expanding field of business ethics. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Semitic Religions: Hebrew, Jewish, Christian, Moslem John croall, Esq., of Southfield, being deeply interested in the defence and maintenance of the doctrines of the Christian Religion, and desirous of increasing the religious literature of Scotland, instituted a Lectureship. The Lectures shall be delivered biennially in Edinburgh, Shall be not less than six in number, and shall be devoted to a consideration of the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion and the Doctrines of the Christian (...) Religion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), the author of Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, is the pivotal figure of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Jewish philosophy and theology. The Jewish thinkers influenced by him include Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Emmanuel Levinas. A thoroughgoing rationalist, Cohen was an opponent of mythology and mysticism, which he viewed as cheapening and corrupting religion. Cohen summoned Jews back to the truths of reason, the centrality (...) of ethics, the primacy of humanity in theology, and the moral law as the essence of religious life and thought. What is essential to Cohen is the notion that God can be discovered by the processes of reason itself. It is not necessary to "believe" in God. God can be known through the exercise of reason and the pursuit of the ethical life. In this important study, Rabbi Jehuda Melber presents a comprehensive reformulation, analysis, and interpretation of Cohen's philosophy of Judaism for the contemporary reader. Book jacket. (shrink)

Humanistic management theory and religiously grounded business ethics are both important research avenues for the study of business management. This paper links these two domains by examining to what extent a religiously grounded business ethics can potentially contribute to the broad and burgeoning literature on humanistic management through an exploration of the case of Jewish business ethics. Specifically, this paper examines three distinct ways of doing Jewish business ethics. These three ways are labeled here as traditionalist, integrationist, and (...) constructivist. Each of these distinct paths begins with a different conception of the fundamental relationship between Judaism and business. Traditionalists believe that the creation of wealth is a legitimate practice, but only because Judaism says so. Integrationists, by contrast, consider wealth creation as a legitimate practice on its own terms. From this perspective, wealth creation is viewed as a positive human activity, independent of its grounding in religious thought. Judaism contributes to wealth creation by setting and guarding its appropriate boundaries and limits and by serving as an external source of morality and meaning, often invoking broad aspirational Jewish values like tikkun olam. Finally, constructivists agree with the integrationists about the stand-alone value of wealth creation. Constructivists push even further, though, and assert that business is not only a legitimate practice, but it is a potentially meaningful one. Business is imagined as an ongoing and open-ended constructive project, one that includes a broad and complex set of human values including wealth creation, but potentially other values like covenantal leadership, kindness, everyday redemption, and other higher purposes. Here, business is no longer viewed merely as a source of material wealth for society but business is envisioned as a potentially important location and source of human meaning and fulfillment. For the constructivists, the role of Jewish business ethics is not to judge business from the outside, but it is to actively participate and contribute to an expansive dialogue with other business ethics voices, centered on the construction of new and evolved forms of business as a human enterprise. (shrink)

Creative Betrayal: Hasidism, Israeli Writers, and Martin Buber Contemporary American Jews seem to have a strange attraction to an eighteenth century Jewish ...

Introduction : Einstein's Jewish science -- Is Einstein a Jew? -- Is relativity pregnant with Jewish concepts? -- Why did a Jew formulate the theory of relativity? -- Is the theory of relativity political science or scientific politics? -- Einstein and the Jewish intelligentsia -- Einstein's liberal science? -- Conclusion : Einstein's cosmopolitan science.

Eleven contributions by Muslim and Jewish scholars--philosophers, historians, political scientists, and theologians--examine such topics as Moroccan saint veneration, nationalism and religion in Jewish and Muslim fundamentalism, the social psychology of religious disappointment, and Kabbalah and Sufism. Editor Selengut (religious studies, Drew University) provides an introduction. There is no index. c. Book News Inc.

A thought-provoking and timely call to apply Judaism's powerful teachings to help shift our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path. While appreciating the radical, transformative nature of Judaism, Richard Schwartz argues that it has been "stolen" by Jews who are in denial about climate change and other environmental threats and support politicians and policies that may be inconsistent with basic Jewish values. Tackling such diverse issues as climate change, world hunger, vegetarianism, poverty, terrorism, destruction of the environment, peace prospects (...) in Israel, and American foreign policy, he offers practical suggestions for getting Judaism back on track as a faith based on justice, peace, and compassion. He urges the reader to reconsider current issues in line with Judaism's highest values in an effort to meet the pressing challenges of today's world. (shrink)

Many studies written about the Jewish-Christian relationship are primarily historical overviews that focus on the Jewish background of Christianity, the separation of Christianity from Judiasm, or the medieval disputations between the two faiths. This book is one of the first studies to examine the relationship from a philosophical and theological viewpoint. Carefully drawing on Jewish classical sources, Novak argues that there is actual justification for the new relationship between Judaism and Christianity from within Jewish religious tradition. (...) He demonstrates that this new relationship is possible between religiously committed Jews and Christians without the two major impediments to dialogue: triumphalism and relativism. One of the very few books on this topic written by a Jewish theologian who speaks specifically to modern Christian concerns, it will provide the groundwork for a more serious development of Jewish-Christian dialogue in our day. (shrink)

Jewish learning and thought in Languedoc -- 1250-1300: implications of original philosophic work and the diffusion of philosophic learning in Languedoc -- 1250-1300: Jewish contacts with Christian intellectuals and Jewish thought regarding Christianity -- Meiri's transformation of Talmud study: philosophic spirituality in a halakhic key -- 1300: on the eve of the controversy -- 1300-1304: knowledge and authority in dispute -- 1304-1306: the controversy peaks -- The effects of the expulsion: Jewish philosophic culture in Roussillon and (...) Provence. (shrink)

This study aims to explore the impact of migration as a central event in personal identity, spirituality and religiousness on subjective well-being. The sample was composed of 204 Latin American immigrants living in Israel, with ages ranging from 18 to 80 years (M = 48.76; SD = 15.36) across both sexes (Men = 34.8%; Women = 65.2%). The results show that, when analyzing the effects on Subjective Well-Being (SWB), Positive and Negative Affect, Centrality of Event, Religious Crisis and Spiritual Transcendence (...) present as the most relevant explanatory variables within the models. However, contrary to expectation, the present study identifies positive associations between the centrality of migration and SWB. Motivations for emigration should be explored in further studies as they could be mediating the relationship between centrality of events and subjective well-being. (shrink)

This article suggests that second-wave feminist theology between around 1968 and 1995 undertook the quintessentially religious and task of theology, which is to break its own idols. Idoloclasm was the dynamic of Jewish and Christian feminist theological reformism and the means by which to clear a way back into its own tradition. Idoloclasm brought together an inter-religious coalition of feminists who believed that idolatry is not one of the pitfalls of patriarchy but its symptom and cause, not a subspecies (...) of sin but the primary sin of alienated relationship. The first moment of feminist theology’s criticism of patriarchal power is not that it is socially unjust, but that it has licence to be unjust because it is idolatrous. Yet, neither opponents of feminist theology who dismiss it on the grounds that it is a secular import into the tradition, nor feminist students of theology and religion, have paid sufficient attention to feminist theology’s counter-idolatrous turn as the religious ground of women’s liberation. Here, the freedom and becoming of women is dependent on the liberation of the religious imagination from captivity to a trinity of idols: the patriarchal god called God who is no more than an inference from the political dispensation that created him; the idol of the masculine that created God in his own image and the idol of the feminine worshipped as an ideational object of desire only as the subordinated complement of the masculine and as a false image that becomes a substitute for the real, finite women whose agency and will it supplants. (shrink)

Jewish Law as Rebellion is unconventional and controversial in its approach to the world of Jewish Law and its response to religious crises. The book delves into the contemporary application and development of halacha and pointedly protests many accepted methods and ideals, offering new solutions to existing halachic dilemmas. Rabbi Cardozo discusses hot topics such as same-sex marriage, conversion, and religion in the State of Israel and presents a critical analysis and explanation of the application of halacha.

The opening of Halakhic man : a covert dialogue with homo religiosus -- Homo religiosus: between religion and cognition -- The first paradigm of homo religiosus : Maimonides -- The second paradigm of homo religiosus : Kant -- Halakhic man as cognitive man -- The negation of metaphysics and of the messianic idea -- Mysticism, Kabbalah, and Hasidism -- Halakhic cognition and the norm -- Halakhic man's personality structure -- Religiosity after cognition : all-inclusive consciousness -- Myth as metaphor (...) : halakhic man as a creator of worlds -- Change or interpretation: repentance as creativity -- On providence and prophecy -- Halakhic man after twenty years : what has changed?. (shrink)

Distinguished philosopher Hilary Putnam, who is also a practicing Jew, questions the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the 20th century—Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas—to help him reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. An additional presence in the book is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, although not a practicing Jew, thought about religion in ways that Putnam juxtaposes to the views of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. Putnam explains the leading ideas of each of these (...) great thinkers, bringing out what, in his opinion, constitutes the decisive intellectual and spiritual contributions of each of them. Although the religion discussed is Judaism, the depth and originality of these philosophers, as incisively interpreted by Putnam, make their thought nothing less than a guide to life. (shrink)

Among the topics explored in this book are ways of viewing the soul, the relation between body and soul, environmentalist thought, the phenomenon of torture, and the philosophical and theological warrants for genocide. Presenting an analysis of abstract modes of thought that have contributed to genocide, the book argues that a Jewish model of concrete thinking may inform our understanding of the abstractions that can lead to genocide. Its aim is to draw upon distinctively Jewish categories of thought (...) to demonstrate how the conceptual defacing of the other human being serves to promote the murder of peoples, and to suggest a way of thinking that might help prevent genocide. (shrink)

A comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the major thinkers and movements in modern Jewish thought, in the context of general philosophy and Jewish social-political historical developments. Volume 1 (of 5) covers the period from Spinoza through the Enlightenment.

This article is an analysis of the theological-philosophical revolution that Leibowitz's thought represents in the philosophy of religion in general and in Jewish philosophy in particular. This revolution relies on a positivist viewpoint, which denies any possibility of making statements about God. In his approach, statements about God are interpreted as statements denoting the relationship between the individual and God. Conventional religious beliefs -- such as the belief in the creation or in revelation -- become meaningless. Leibowitz therefore (...) suggests a new interpretation, both of theoretical religious beliefs and of the normative system -- the Halakha. The belief in revelation is construed as a human judgment, which endows the halakhic system with divine validity. Halakha does not draw its meaning from its divine source but from its inner religious meaning, which Leibowitz sees in worship. (shrink)