Revelation and the God of Israel explores the concept of revelation as it emerges from the Hebrew Scriptures and is interpreted in Jewish philosophy and theology. The first part is a study in intellectual history that attempts to answer the question, what is the best possible understanding of revelation. The second part is a study in constructive theology and attempts to answer the question, is it reasonable to affirm belief in revelation. Here Norbert M. Samuelson focuses (...) on the challenges given from a variety of contemporary academic disciplines, including evolutionary psychology, political ethics, analytic philosophy of religion, and source critical studies of the Bible. This important book offers a unique approach to theological questions and fresh solutions to them and will appeal to those interested in the history of philosophy, religious thought, and Judaism. (shrink)

Revelation is a central category in many religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism or Unificationists are difficult if not impossible to imagine without it. For some, revelation signifies a decisive event in the past, for others it is a present reality. It plays a central role in shaping religious identities, and it is the reason for much criticism. Some follow a religion only because of its claim to divine revelation, whereas others criticize it as "hearsay upon hearsay" (...) (Paine) on which they would never rest their belief. Some religions have built elaborate institutions of priests and privileged interpreters to safeguard their revelation, control access to it and to protect the right way of interpreting and communicating it. But claims to revelation have also been criticized as strategies of self-immunization, which allow religions to avoid critical public debate of their views and teachings, or legitimize the position of those in power. The 33rd Conference of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in 2012 addressed these complex issues by concentrating on three areas of debate: I. Revelation and Reason, II. Hermeneutics of Revelation, III. Phenomenology of Revelation. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 2, pp 232 - 255 In Book III of _The Star of Redemption_, Franz Rosenzweig contrasts Judaism and Christianity: Judaism consists in the eternal passage of a people from creation to revelation; it suspends the divide between God’s presence and his worldly manifestation. For Rosenzweig, being Jewish means to be with God in the world. Christianity, however, defers salvation. While Judaism is with God in the world, Christianity retreats from God and (...) the world. Christianity therefore has no “immediacy.” How can both Judaism and Christianity then live in immediacy with God in the world? Seeking to overcome Rosenzweig’s dichotomy, I endeavor to think an immediate relationship with God in the world by turning to one of Rosenzweig’s “biggest names”: Hermann Cohen. Following Cohen, I take it that Judeo-Christian continuity begins before both religions. I wish to explore the passage from the origin to the prophetic that constitutes the idea of a “pure monotheism” in Cohen’s philosophy. (shrink)

the midrash, the advisability of staying at home during this festival is promoted through the dictum, “When you bind your lulav, bind your feet (restrain ...

Distinguished historian of Judaism Jacob Neusner here ventures for the first time into constructive theology. Taking the everyday life of contemporary Judaism as his beginning, Neusner asks when in the life of the living faith of the Torah does Israel, the holy community, meet God? Where does the meeting take place? What is the medium of the encounter? In his attempt to answer these questions, Neusner sets forth the character and the form of the Torah as sung theology. (...) Israel, the holy community, meets God in the synagogue, while at prayer, and in the yeshiva, when studying the Torah—at the moment in each setting when the Torah is received. In both circumstances people do not read but sing out its words. With the written part of the Torah sung in the synagogue, and the oral part declaimed in centers of sacred learning, music provides the medium for Judaism's theological voice. Neusner identifies a reciprocal exchange between the holy community Israel and God: Israel sings to God when the Torah is studied, and God sings to Israel when the Torah is declaimed. Through the metaphor of music, Neusner offers an account of how he believes those faithful to the Torah meet God in the Torah, and how they should listen to the melody of God's self-revelation. The result is an original theological reflection that will interest all students of Judaism. (shrink)

Confronting the challenges of the 20th century, from modernity and the Great War to the Holocaust and postmodern culture, Jewish thinkers have wrestled with such fundamental issues as redemption and revelation, eternity and history, messianism and politics. From the turn of the century through the 1920s, European Jewish intellectuals confronted alienation and the challenges of modernity by seeking secure grounds for a meaningful life. After the Holocaust and the fall of Nazism, the rich results of their thinking—on topics such (...) as transcendence, redemption, revelation, and politics—were reinterpreted in an atmosphere of increasing disillusion and fragmentation. In Interim Judaism, Michael L. Morgan traces the evolution of this shift in values, as expressed in the work of social thinkers, novelists, artists, and poets as well as philosophers and theologians at the beginning and end of the century. Focusing on the problem of objectivity, the experience of the transcendent, and the relationship between redemption and politics, he argues that the outcome for contemporary Jews is a pragmatic style of religiosity that has abandoned traditional conceptions of Judaism and is searching and waiting for new ones, a condition that he describes as "interim Judaism." Published with the generous support of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. (shrink)

Tradition and revelation are often seen as opposites: tradition is viewed as being secondary and reactionary to revelation which is a one-off gift from God. Drawing on examples from Christian history, Judaism, Islam, and the classical world, this book challenges these definitions and presents a controversial examination of the effect history and cultural development has on religious belief: its narratives and art. David Brown pays close attention to the nature of the relationship between historical and imaginative truth, (...) and focuses on the way stories from the Bible have not stood still but are subject to imaginative 'rewriting'. This rewriting is explained as a natural consequence of the interaction between religion and history: God speaks to humanity through the imagination, and human imagination is influenced by historical context. It is the imagination that ensures that religion continues to develop in new and challenging ways. (shrink)

Lenn Goodman argues forcefully that the Jewish tradition has a significant contribution to make to the general discourse on ethical issues. His goal in this book is to seek within the Jewish tradition, and in its interaction with other currents of Western thought, the foundations on which to build - without recourse to the privilege of "revelation" - public ethical theory.

"MIchael Morgan has served up an intellectual treat. These subtle and carefully reasoned essays explore the dilemmas of the post-modern Jew who would take history seriously without losing the commanding presence Israel heard at Sinai.... It is a pleasure to be nourished by a fresh mind exploring the tension between reason and revelation, history and faith." —Rabbi Samuel Karff "This is without doubt one of the most significant works in modern Jewish thought and a must for a thoughtful student (...) of contemporary Jewish philosophy." —Rabbie Sheldon Zimmerman "This may well mark the next stage in the long history of Jewish self-understanding." —Ethics "... rigorous history of modern Jewish thought... " —Choice Is Judaism a timeless, universal set of beliefs or, rather, is it historical and contingent in its relation to different times and places? Morgan clarifies the tensions and dilemmas that characterize modern thinking about the nature of Judaism and clears the way for Jews to appreciate their historical situation, yet locate enduring values and principles in a post-Holocaust world. (shrink)

John Schellenberg presents an argument for atheism according to which theism would be easy to believe, if true. Since theism isn’t easy to believe, it must be false. In this paper, I argue that Kabbalistic Judaism has the resources to bypass this argument completely. The paper also explores a stream of Kabbalistic advice that the tradition offers to people of faith for those times at which God appears to us to be hidden.

Following on the heels of his critically acclaimed God of Abraham, Lenn E. Goodman here focuses on rights, their grounding in the deserts of beings, and the dignity of persons. In an incisive contemporary dialogue between reason and revelation, Goodman argues for ethical standards and public policies that respect human rights and support the preservation of all beings: animals, plants, econiches, species, habitats, and the monuments of nature and culture. Immersed in the Jewish and philosophical sources, Goodmans argument ranges (...) from the fetus in the womb to the modern nation state, from the problems of pornography and tobacco advertising to the rights of parents and children, individuals and communities, the powerful and powerless--the most ancient and the most immediate problems of human life and moral responsibility. Guided by the probing argumentation that Goodman lays out with distinctive, often poetic clarity, the reader will emerge enlightened and prepared to respond with intelligence and commitment to the sobering moral challenges of the coming century. This is a book for anyone concerned with law, ethics, and the human prospect. (shrink)

This collection of original essays by prominent scholars of political philosophy analyzes Leo Strauss's thoughts concerning the relationship between revelation and reason within the context of Jewish religion and thought. Unlike other edited collections about Strauss, the contributors to Leo Strauss and Judaism: Jerusalem and Athens Critically Revisited examine their subject using a wide range of ideological and methodological approaches, arriving at a variety of conclusions, many of which are controversial. This book will be of interest to students (...) and scholars of Leo Strauss, Jewish philosophy, and political theory. (shrink)

This chapter puts forward a prima facie argument for a Jewish form of anti-supererogation before finding that no such argument can do justice to the Jewish tradition. Instead, the question becomes: what form of supererogation can Jewish law recognize? Qualified forms of supererogation would allow the Jewish philosopher to preserve certain theological and philosophical desiderata, but an unqualified form of supererogation sits more easily with a central approach to the nature of Divine revelation. Accordingly, the shape of a Jewish (...) supererogation has deep consequences for Jewish philosophy at large. (shrink)

Three leading Jewish philosophers explore what it means to participate in post modern Jewish philosophy. They contemplate where Judaism has been, the relevance of age-old Biblical traditions, and the direction in which Judaism is headed in the 21st century.

This chapter examines the concepts of revelation and faith, as well as their relation to one another. The idea of revelation common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can be divided in different ways: general revelation and specific revelation, propositional revelation and non-propositional revelation. I argue that an account of specific revelation is most rich when both propositional and non-propositional kinds of revelation are admitted. I also explore why the more recent non-propositional (...) conceptions became relevant due to the controversies concerning the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of scripture. The concept of faith stands parallel to that of revelation, as it too embodies both a sense of belief in a set of propositions as well as a trusting relationship with God inexpressible, in part, by propositions. I then examine the role of reason in religious faith and particularly the many ways the two might relate between the poles of religious rationalism and fideism. (shrink)

The novelty in Rosenzweig’s new ways of thinking lies in the fact that, unlike the traditional view, in his thought philosophy is the discipline containing a subjective element, whereas religion is more objective since it is founded on revelation. These complementary differences help the philosopher rethink Judaism and Jewish identity in the context of the spiritual crisis of the secularized Judaism of his time. Starting with the analysis of this reconstruction of philosophy, this text attempts to present (...) a balanced perspective on Rosenzweig’s vision of the relation between Judaism and Christianity. We will not single out the common elements or those that separate these two monotheist religions; setting Judaism and Christianity on the same level is considered to be a compensatory gesture towards Judaism and Jewish tradition. There is in Rosenzweig a significant moment of approach toward Christianity, especially to a Christianity without Christ, but Rosenzweig opts for a different solution, that of building a new philosophy based on Judaism. Moshe Idel’s analysis suggests that it is the Kabbalistic mysticism that Rosenzweig redefines in order to propose a new way of thought based on both philosophy and religion. Thus, Rosenzweig gives new meaning to the balance of divine and human in the field of religion. (shrink)

Abstract. The object of this essay is to explain what there is about discussions of Judaism and the sciences that is distinctive from discussions about religion in general and the sciences. The description draws primarily but not exclusively from recent meetings of the Judaism, Medicine, and Science Group in Tempe, Arizona. The author's Jewish Faith and Modern Science, together with a selective bibliography of writings in this subfield, are used to generate a list of science issues—focused around the (...) religious doctrines of creation, revelation, and redemption in Judaism—that raise specific challenges to Jewish faith. Special attention is given to Leon Kass's The Hungry Soul as an example of a distinctive way to integration knowledge of both science and rabbinic Judaism on a philosophical issue. (shrink)

With the passing of disputations between Jewish and Christian thinkers as to whose tradition has a more universal ethics, the task of Jewish and Christian ethicists is to constitute a universal horizon for their respective bodies of ethics, both of which are essentially particularistic being rooted in special revelation. This parallel project must avoid relativism that is essentially anti-ethical, and triumphalism that proposes an imperialist ethos. A retrieval of the idea of natural law in each respective tradition enables the (...) constitution of some intelligent common ground for ethical cooperation in both theory and practice between the traditions. This essay also suggests how the constitution of this common ground could include Muslims as well. The constitution of this common ground enables religious ethicists to present more cogent ethical arguments in secular space, but only of course, when those who now control secular space are open to arguments from members of any religious tradition. (shrink)

Le mouvement appelé Conservative ou massorti est le courant le plus florissant du judaïsme depuis le début du siècle aux États-Unis, d’où il s’est répandu en beaucoup de pays . Cherchant à se frayer une voie entre les tendances « réformée » et « orthodoxe », qui se sont affrontées en Allemagne depuis le milieu du XIXe siècle, puis aux Etats-Unis, ce courant est significatif des tensions et des évolutions qui traversent le judaïsme contemporain. Reprenant l'intuition fondamentale de Frankel, pour (...) qui la tradition est un dynamisme de changement, le Conservative entend garder l’identité juive dans la fidélité à la Halakha tout en lui permettant de s'adapter aux temps nouveaux. Mais comment tenir alors et garantir l'origine juive de la Halakha ? S'inspirant de Rosenzweig et de Buber, les théologiens du Conservative conçoivent la révélation comme l'expression de la Parole de Dieu dans l'histoire d'Israël, au présent ; comme un enseignement avant tout ordonné à l'action éthique et toujours en quête d'interprétation ; elle est véhiculée par l'histoire du peuple et son autorité réside dans la communauté . Ainsi se confirme l'évolution de ce mouvement vers des positions plus « libérales », qui ne manquent. pas de susciter bien des questions : qu’est-ce qui justifie l'obéissance à une tradition humaine, comment autoriser, discerner, imposer des changements de pratique ? À travers ces interrogations, le judaïsme apparaît comme la religion de l'incessante élaboration de la Loi.The most flourishing movement in Judaism since the beginning of century in the United States has been the Conservative or massorti. From there it spread to other countries, including France. Seeking a way between the « reform » and « orthodox » tendencies, which have been in conflict since the middle of 19th century in Germany, and subsequently in the United States, this continuing debate is indicative of the tensions and evolutions that traverse contemporary Judaism. Taking up the fundamental intuition of Frankel, for whom tradition of a dynamism of change, the Conservative wishes to keep a Jewish identity in fidelity to the Halakha, white allowing the possibility of adapting to modern times. But how can one maintain and guarantee the divine origin of the Halakha ? Inspired by Rosenzweig and Buber, the Conservative theologians see revelation as the expression of the Word of God in the history of Israel : in the present ; as conveyed by the history of a people, and whose authority resides in the community . The evolution of this movement towards more « liberal » positions is thus confirmed, but raises many questions: what justifies obedience to a human tradition, how can it authorize, discern, or impose changes of practice ? Through these interrogations, Judaism appears as a religion of unceasing elaboration of the Law. (shrink)

True Bergsonianism : beginnings of a philosopher -- The controversy over intersubjectivity -- Nazism and crisis : the interruption of a trajectory -- Totaliter aliter : revelation in interwar thought -- Levinas's discovery of the other in the making of French existentialism -- The ethical turn : philosophy and Judaism in the Cold War.

Interest in Leo Strauss is greater now than at any time since his death, mostly because of the purported link between his thought and the political movement known as neoconservatism. Steven B. Smith, though, surprisingly depicts Strauss not as the high priest of neoconservatism but as a friend of liberal democracy—perhaps the best defender democracy has ever had. Moreover, in _Reading Leo Strauss, _Smith shows that Strauss’s defense of liberal democracy was closely connected to his skepticism of both the extreme (...) Left and extreme Right. Smith asserts that this philosophical skepticism defined Strauss’s thought. It was as a skeptic, Smith argues, that Strauss considered the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between reason and revelation—a conflict Strauss dubbed the “theologico-political problem.” Calling this problem “_the_ theme of my investigations,” Strauss asked the same fundamental question throughout his life: what is the relation of the political order to revelation in general and Judaism in particular? Smith organizes his book with this question, first addressing Strauss’s views on religion and then examining his thought on philosophical and political issues. In his investigation of these philosophical and political issues, Smith assesses Strauss’s attempt to direct the teaching of political science away from the examination of mass behavior and interest group politics and toward the study of the philosophical principles on which politics are based. With his provocative, lucid essays, Smith goes a long way toward establishing a distinctive form of Straussian liberalism. (shrink)

Leon Kass is much misunderstood. He is not simply a Republican ideologue who tailored his ideas to break out of the ivory tower and into the halls of power. Nor does he ook simply to use human nature as a moral guide. When the full range of his writings is considered and set in the tradition of his teachers, Hans Jonas and Leo Strauss, what emerges is a natural law position colored by religious revelation.

Interest in Leo Strauss is greater now than at any time since his death, mostly because of the purported link between his thought and the political movement known as neoconservatism. Steven B. Smith, though, surprisingly depicts Strauss not as the high priest of neoconservatism but as a friend of liberal democracy—perhaps the best defender democracy has ever had. Moreover, in _Reading Leo Strauss, _Smith shows that Strauss’s defense of liberal democracy was closely connected to his skepticism of both the extreme (...) Left and extreme Right._ It was as a skeptic, Smith argues, that Strauss considered the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between reason and revelation—a conflict Strauss dubbed the “theologico-political problem.” Calling this problem “_the_ theme of my investigations,” Strauss asked the same fundamental question throughout his life: what is the relation of the political order to revelation in general and Judaism in particular? Smith organizes his book with this question and assesses Strauss’s attempt to direct the teaching of political science away from the examination of mass behavior and interest-group politics and toward the study of the philosophical principles on which politics are based. With his provocative, lucid study, Smith establishes a distinctive form of Straussian liberalism himself. _ “By returning to the source and examining what Strauss actually wrote, Mr. Smith lets the breeze of reason into the feverish sickroom of ideology. He portrays a Strauss who cherished democracy as the best bulwark against tyranny, and who valued intellectual honesty above all. By the time Mr. Smith is done, nothing is left of the Strauss caricature except the ignorance and malice that fathered it.”—Adam Kirsch, _New York__ Sun_. (shrink)

SummaryJerusalem is the holy city for Leo Strauss. It is the symbol of Judaism; moreover it is a root of Western culture together with Athens. But it would be wrong to label Strauss' philosophical thought with such definitions as ‘Jewish philosophy’. Therefore it is surprising that many contemporary interpreters strive to find a confessional or religious foundation in Strauss' thought. On the contrary, many of Strauss's texts testify his choice in favour of Athens, i.e., of philosophy. Yet the choice (...) of Athens does not imply a rejection of Jerusalem. Strauss is convinced that Jerusalem plays a central role in Western civilisation and considers the indifference to religion and the ideologisation of philosophy completed in the modern age as causes of Western crisis, i.e., of contemporary nihilism. Philosophy and religion are forced to live side by side (like philosophy and politics) because neither reason nor revelation can express the ultimate word on the good and the just, i.e., on truth. (shrink)

Fackenheim was one of the most philosophically serious, knowledgeable, and provocative contemporary Jewish thinkers. His original focus as a philosophical theologian was mainly on revelation, but in his later work he concerned himself primarily with the wide-ranging implications of the Holocaust. In this book, Kenneth Hart Green examines Fackenheim's intellectual trajectory and traces how and why he focused so intently on the Holocaust. He explores the deeper thought that Fackenheim developed about the Holocaust, which he construed as a cataclysmic (...) event that ruptured history and one that also brought about a change in the very structure of being. As Green demonstrates, the Holocaust, according to Fackenheim's interpretation, changes how we view all things, from God to man to history. It also radically affects Judaism, Christianity, and philosophy, the major traditions that have shaped the Western world. (shrink)

Accounting for the Commandments in Medieval Judaism explores the discursive formation of the commandments as a generative matrix of Jewish thought and life in the posttalmudic period. Each study sheds light on how medieval Jews crafted the commandments out of theretofore underdetermined material. By systematizing, representing, or interrogating the amorphous category of commandment, medieval Jewish authors across both the Islamic and Christian spheres of influence sought to explain, justify, and characterize Israel's legal system, divine revelation, the cosmos, and (...) even the divine order. This volume correlates bodies of knowledge-such as jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, pietism, and kabbalah-that are normally treated in isolation into a single conversation about a shared constitutional concern. (shrink)

It seems to me that the critical questions that science and natural philosophy raise for Jewish theology are the following: Does God evolve? Does the universe have or even need an interpretation, specifically with reference to the fact that most of the universe most of the time is uninhabitable, and there may be many more than one universe? Does the universe need a beginning? What is distinctive about human consciousness, intelligence, and ethics in the light of evidence for evolution from (...) all of the life sciences? Finally, will both life and the universe end?These questions are not only modern. They contain all the primary issues that have dominated rabbinic thought. That agenda can be summarized in six topics: How should we model what we believe about (1) God, (2) the world, and (3) the human being; and how should we understand the relations between them, that is, between (4) God and the world (or, creation), (5) God and the human (or, revelation), and (6) the human and the world (or, redemption)? In this paper I focus on the fourth issue, creation. My answer is presented in detail in my Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation(Samuelson 1994). Here I shall summarize my conclusions there concerning science, Jewish texts, and the correlation between them. (shrink)

Stephane Moses, Sistem si revelatie. Filosofia lui Franz Rosenzweig Bucuresti, Ed. Hasefer, Colectia Judaica, 2003.

The author of this little book makes no claim to being a philosopher, and is fully conscious of the very obvious limits of his writing ability. He is fully aware, too, of the nebulousness of his task, the task, namely, which he has taken upon himself of discussing what he calls universal religion on the basis of the Bible, the Talmud and the history of the Jewish people. Overcoming, however, his reluctance to divulge his ideas in writing because he feels (...) intuitively that he can transcend all his human frailty, he sets about presenting us with a philosophy of entire existence, as he himself puts it. A formidable task indeed. He would be grievously hurt, he tells us, were we to label his effort as theology. And still we are within our rights to ask: what else but theology could or should be the rational penetration of what God has spoken to men? In fact, the finished product turns out to be neither philosophy nor theology, but rather a series of pious, at times even pseudo-mystical reflections on God’s revelation as found in the Old Testament and as interpreted down the centuries in the various Jewish traditions. The serious philosopher or earnest theologian or the historian of religions will find nothing here. (shrink)

This volume presents a penetrating interview and sixteen essays that explore key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, Rémi_ _Brague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers than on their relationships with one another. Their disparate philosophical worlds, Brague shows, were grounded in different models of revelation that engendered divergent interpretations of the ancient Greek sources they held in common. So, despite striking similarities in their solutions for the philosophical problems they all (...) faced, intellectuals in each theological tradition often viewed the others’ ideas with skepticism, if not disdain. Brague’s portrayal of this misunderstood age brings to life not only its philosophical and theological nuances, but also lessons for our own time. (shrink)

This volume presents a penetrating interview and sixteen essays that explore key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, Rémi_ _Brague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers than on their relationships with one another. Their disparate philosophical worlds, Brague shows, were grounded in different models of revelation that engendered divergent interpretations of the ancient Greek sources they held in common. So, despite striking similarities in their solutions for the philosophical problems they all (...) faced, intellectuals in each theological tradition often viewed the others’ ideas with skepticism, if not disdain. Brague’s portrayal of this misunderstood age brings to life not only its philosophical and theological nuances, but also lessons for our own time. (shrink)

Jewish destiny works itself out in the nexus between two poles: between temporal, finite human experience and the eternity of divine governance and orientation. At times the two poles seem close; an intimacy with God seems accessible and worthy of human aspiration. At other times, however, the poles diverge, and God seems remote, human affairs seem a vale of tears, the domain of human responsibility alone. Like human existence, Judaism is embedded in history and yet cleaves to transcendence, and (...) no one has understood the depths of this polarity for human existence in general and for Judaism in particular better than Franz Rosenzweig. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive study of the philosophy of Maimonides by the noted 20th-century rabbinic scholar and thinker, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Based on a complete set of notes on Rabbi Soloveitchik's lectures, it constitutes a major contribution to our knowledge of both Maimonides and Soloveitchik.

Judaism and Christianity are religions whose theological epistemology is based on revelation. The primary source of revelation is Holy Scripture. However, history has also been recognised as a source of revelation, particularly the history of Israel and the Jewish people. Because they understood history as a source of revelation, many religious Jews altered their understanding of Jewish statehood in Eretz Israel during the twentieth century, from distinctly averse to increasingly supportive. On the same principles, the (...) Catholic Church made arguably the most profound change in its theology in the twentieth century, concerning its understanding of Jews and Judaism. This was prompted by an­­other major historical event, the Shoah. While in Judaism the historical phenom­enon of the State of Israel profoundly influenced theology, another historical phenomenon, the Shoah, was theologically approached with far more unease and ambiguity. In the Catholic Church, in contrast, the historical phenomenon of the Shoah prompted a serious reconsideration of certain tenets of theology, includ­ing soteriology, while the historical phenomenon of the State of Israel did not. This article addresses this apparent contradiction comparatively. (shrink)

With the widening schism between Orthodox and non-Orthodox and secular Jews, Kellner (Jewish religious thought, U. of Haifa) addresses the timely issue of the future of Judaism in the context of the classical faith. Appends notes on Maimonides, other Jewish thinkers, and prayers (Yigdal,Ani ma'amin). Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Both Christianity and Judaism have their basis in the Torah, the five central books of the Hebrew Bible that culminate in the revelation at Sinai. This very commonality, potentiality a source of mutual respect and concord, has played itself out, in the two thousand years since the advent of Christianity, in a disastrous rivalry of interpretation. Christians have interpreted their own religion in such a manner as to disallow the separate legitimacy of Judaism. Jews, in response, have (...) often adopted an insularity of focus at odds with the universality of God as Judaism itself understands it. I believe this rivalry has had a distorting effect upon both religions. The purpose of my essay is to search out some theological positions that both traditions might be able to accept, and that might permit each to adopt an affirmative, and informed, acceptance of the other. (shrink)