Judaism Books - Page 16

Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)

Joseph Weiss

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Editorial Review:

Founded in the 18th century by Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, several sects of this East European Jewish Mystical movement known as Hasidim still flourish today. This collection of 16 studies, eight of them previously unpublished, deal with the origins of the movement and also with the teachings of some of the earliest disciples of the tradition.

Moses Mendelssohn: The First English Biography and Translation

Moses Mendelssohn

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Leo Strauss and Judaism

David Novak

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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.

Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman & Philosopher

B. Netanyahu

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Biography of a Jew whose Influence far exceeds his Fame 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Don Isaac Abravenel lived at the juncture of the Medieval and the Renaissance, and through the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. His writings help preserve the Jews through this troubled time, but also delayed the resettlement of the Land of Israel.

Ben-Zion Netanyahu (father of the hero of Entebbe, and of the recent Israeli PM) first tells of the life of Abravenel, and then discusses his outlook and religion. This unusual treatment works very well. Netanyahu first introduces us to the attitudes and assumptions of the people who lived at the time, which are so often very different than our own, and then discusses how Abravenel fit into, or differed from, that zeitgeist. By building step by step -- World Outlook, View of History, Political Concepts, and finally Messianism, the author educates us about Abravenel's world, as well as his beliefs. I was surprised at Abravenel's prediction that the coming of the Messiah would be immediately preceded by a war between Christians and Moslems.

The endnotes, bibliography, and index are all very helpful.

[This review is based on the original 1953 edition.]

Editorial Review:

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) was a major historical figure during the waning of the Middle Ages. Statesman, diplomat, courtier, and financier, he was, at the same time, a scholar of encyclopedic learning, a philosopher, an exegete, a prolific author, a mystic, and an apocalyptist. In Abravanel, B. Netanyahu suggests, two long lines of tradition met and concluded: that of medieval Jewish statesmen and that of medieval Jewish philosophers. In what is both a biography and an exploration of Abravanel's thought and influence, Netanyahu describes how Abravanel illuminated the grave crisis and profound transformation experienced by the Jewish people after the Spanish expulsion.

First published in 1953, Don Isaac Abravanel has been out of print for several years. This new edition includes revisions in the text, notes, and bibliography.

Toward a Jewish (M)Orality: Speaking of a Postmodern Jewish Ethics (Contributions to the Study of Religion)

S. Daniel Breslauer

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Editorial Review:

Moving the focus away from the exposition of one particular thinker, this unique book offers a constructive, postmodern approach to contemporary Jewish thinking combined with analysis of modern Jewish thought, reflections on Jewish law, mysticism, history, and theology. This exploration of postmodernism in Judaism and its relevance as a moral standard concentrates on three basic elements in postmodernism: attention to Other, using the text as a prism for generating alternate realities, and recognition of the impossibility of absolute knowledge. While guarding against Jewish dogmatism, this approach simultaneously stimulates Jewish creativity. Modern and postmodern approaches to Judaism that are examined include those of Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Franz Rosenzweig. Recent contributions include thinkers such as Eugene B. Borowitz, J. David Bleich, David Novak, and Edith Wischograd. The varied chapters in the book will appeal to a diverse scholarly audience. Jewish scholars and people interested in modern Jewish thought will appreciate the range of concerns addressed in the text. The book assumes that readers have little knowledge of either Judaism or postmodernism so these terms are explained, which make the work accessible to the ordinary reader. The book challenges the modernism of mainstream contemporary Jewish ethics, therefore, all readers will learn to acknowledge the influence and value of the emerging postmodern approach to Jewish moral thought.

Covenantal Rights

David Novak

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Editorial Review:

Covenantal Rights is a groundbreaking work of political theory: a comprehensive, philosophically sophisticated attempt to bring insights from the Jewish political tradition into current political and legal debates about rights and to bring rights discourse more fully into Jewish thought. David Novak pursues these aims by presenting a theory of rights founded on the covenant between God and the Jewish people as that covenant is constituted by Scripture and the rabbinic tradition. In doing so, he presents a powerful challenge to prevailing liberal and conservative positions on rights and duties and opens a new chapter in contemporary Jewish political thinking.

For Novak, "covenantal rights" are rooted in God's primary rights as creator of the universe and as the elector of a particular community whose members relate to this God as their sovereign. The subsequent rights of individuals and communities flow from God's covenantal promises, which function as irrevocable entitlements. This presents a sharp contrast to the liberal tradition, in which rights flow above all from individuals. It also challenges the conservative idea that duties can take precedence over rights, since Novak argues that there are no covenantal duties that are not backed by correlative rights. Novak explains carefully and clearly how this theory of covenantal rights fits into Jewish tradition and applies to the relationships among God, the covenanted community, and individuals. This work is a profound and provocative contribution to contemporary religious and political theory.

Twilight of Jewish Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas' Ethical Hermeneutics

WRIGHT

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Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) is widely acknowledged as one of the great Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, yet during his lifetime he refused the label 'Jewish philosopher', insisting that he was a philosopher tout court. The Twilight of Jewish Philosophy explores the relationship between Levinas' ethical philosophy and his understanding of Judaism.
The first chapter focuses on the 'face-to-face' or 'ethical relation', as it is presented in Totality and Infinity. Subsequent chapters are concerned with showing how this quasi- phenomenological account of the ethical relation provides the orientation for Levinas' approach to interpreting the texts of both Judaism and western thought, his 'ethical hermeneutics'. Through close readings of his major texts, the significance of key terms in Levinas' discourse - particularly 'humanism', 'God' and 'Judaism' - is clarified. Finally, the author examines the writings that constitute Levinas' most distinctive contribution to Jewish thoug

Leo Baeck: Teacher of Theresienstadt

Albert H. Friedlander

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The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology

Michael Fishbane

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Editorial Review:

Exegesis--interpretation and explanation of sacred texts--is the quintessence of rabbinic thought. Through such means and methods, the written words of Hebrew Scripture have been extended since antiquity, and given new voices for new times. In this lucid and often poetic book, Michael Fishbane delineates the connections between biblical interpretation and Jewish religious thought.

How can a canon be open to new meanings, given that it is believed to be immutable? Fishbane discusses the nature and rationale of this interpretative process in a series of studies on ancient Jewish speculative theology. Focusing on questions often pondered in Midrash, he shows how religious ideas are generated or justified by exegesis. He also explores the role exegesis plays in liturgy and ritual. A striking example is the transfer of speculative interpretations into meditation in prayer. Cultivation of the ability to perceive many implicit meanings in a text or religious practice can become a way of living--as Fishbane shows in explaining how such notions as joy or spiritual meditations on death can be idealized and the ideal transmitted through theological interpretation. The Exegetical Imagination is a collection of interrelated essays that together offer new and profound understanding of scriptural interpretation and its central role in Judaism.

History of Jewish Philosophy (Routledge History of World Philosophies)

Daniel Frank

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Takes a lot of knowledge for granted 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This massive book, consisting of contributions from 35 scholars, is obviously a valuable and learned resource for anyone interested in Jewish philosophy, and it contains much illuminating material. However, that it is "accessible to general readers as well as to scholars", as one of the blurbs on the back cover of the book reads, is true of only a few of its 39 chapters. The bulk of the book is certainly not suitable for anyone who is not already familiar with philosophy in general, with technical philosophical vocabulary in particular, or has a good knowledge of Judaism. In no way is this book comparable in approach and style with books written for the general public, such as Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy (or, for that matter, my own Philosophy and Living). Indeed, the style of writing can sometimes only be described as constipated.

True, it is difficult (though not impossible) to write lucidly for the general public about medieval philosophy. The medieval chapters acount for some 400 of the 900-odd pages of the book; and very tedious they are, as philosophers debate over and over again such questions as whether the world was created ex nihilo or not, whether God has attributes or not (some thinkers considering attributes a derogation to God's unity), and how Free Will can be reconciled with God's foreknowledge.

The trouble lies in the relationship between Philosophy and Theology. Aquinas differentiated between, on the one hand, "Revealed Theology", which starts with Revelation about God as an indisputable given and as the basis of Faith from which Reason then makes certain deductions, and, on the other, "Natural Theology", which starts with the experience of nature or created things and uses Reason to argue from that experience - a process which, for Aquinas, aims at - and, rightly used, must lead to - an intellectual knowledge of God. Many medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers took the same line. Philosophy and Theology will part company when philosophers not only do not accept (as most medieval philosophers did) that the knowledge of God is the aim of philosophy, but actually use Reason to challenge the truth of revealed knowledge, including in extreme cases, the truth of the existence of God. Until that happens, however, it is not always easy to tell whether a certain argument is theological or philosophical.

The book under review raises this difficulty on occasions, but is then prepared to discuss as philosophy some positions which, to me at least, cannot be called philosophical at all. The most outstanding of these is the mysticism of the Kabbalah, the subject of a particularly obscure chapter (chapter 19) in the book. It is a legitimate philosophical position to show that certain parts of the Torah lend themselves to metaphorical interpretation so that they can correspond with Reason; likewise there is a legitimate philosophical case to be made that we need to allow for mystical experiences which are not subject to Reason. But to go beyond that and to describe as philosophical an exegesis of Biblical texts which depends on numbers or on letters to which numerical values are given is, to say the least, a distortion of the rational procedures which philosophy requires.

And what does it mean to describe any philosophy as specifically Jewish? It is most obviously Jewish when it concerns itself with matters that are peculiar to Judaism, such as the nature of God's Covenant with Israel. It is less uniquely Jewish when it applies the same philosophical concepts to Jewish sources (the Jewish Bible, the Talmud etc.) as Islamic philosophers apply to the Koran, the hadiths and the sharia. And what if the author is known to have been a Jew, irrespective of any specifically Jewish content in his philosophy? What about Spinoza, excommunicated by the Jewish authorities, consequently (as the chapter on him shows) evincing bitterness and hostility to Judaism, and developing a philosophy which has nothing to do with Judaism?

Spinoza arguably draws less on the thinkers of other traditions than any of the other philosophers mentioned in the book. I would argue that he is one of the four Jewish-born thinkers whose originality has massively influenced European civilization. (The other three, Marx, Freud, and Einstein, are not included in this book, the first two presumably because they are not considered philosophers.) What the book brings out very strongly is how all the other major post-biblical Jewish thinkers were influenced by the non-Jewish environment in which they lived and so by the thought of non-Jewish philosophers. It traces the influence of Hellenism on such as Philo of Alexandria; of the Islamic Aristotelianism of Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroës on Maimonides and the Maimonideans; of the Enlightenment on Moses Mendelssohn; of Hegelianism on the Wissenschaft des Judentums; of Kant on Samuel Rafael Hirsch and Hermann Cohen; of Herder and nationalism on Zionism. Only Maimonides, though himself influenced by Arabic philosophy, in turn exercised an appreciable influence over Thomist Christianity; and Spinoza, as I have already said, was central in shaping the Radical Enlightenment.

Spinoza could do this because in Holland the Jews were emancipated. Likewise there was briefly some relaxation of persecution in Renaissance Italy, in which context the Jewish Kabbalah was taken up by Pico della Mirandola and led to the development of a Christian Cabbalah. But these were exception between the time of Maimonides and that of Mendelssohn. During that period hardly any intellectual interaction between Jews and non-Jews took place. It was during that period that the Jews in most European countries were ghettoized and to some extent also ghettoized themselves intellectually, in that the rabbis at the time welcomed and reinforced this isolation. Although the ghettoes still existed in the time of Mendelssohn, he was himself accepted by the philosophers of the German Enlightenment; and once the ghettoes were abolished by the French Revolution, the fruitful interplay between Jewish and non-Jewish thought could again resume.

Editorial Review:

Consciously writing from a Jewish background, thirty-five esteemed authors, from Britain, Canada, Israel, and the United States cover the whole breadth of Jewish philosophy, concentrating upon the philosophical interest of the ideas themselves.

The contributors to this work explore numerous issues raised in the text of the Bible and in the history of the Jewish people, and discuss the major schools of thought and most serious controversies of ancient and modern Jewish philosophy. Topics include postmodern techniques, the thought of Moses Maimonides, and philosophic studies of the Holocaust. Throughout this work, the authors insist on the importance of understanding the social and cultural context in which Jewish philosophy exists. The broad range of ideas in this volume makes it an invaluable sourcebook on the nature of Jewish philosophy.