Menachem Kellner: Jewish Universalism

Menachem Kellner: Jewish Universalism

Author: Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9004298282

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Menachem Kellner is an American-born scholar of Jewish philosophy, an educator, and a public intellectual who lives in Israel. For over three decades he taught at the University of Haifa, where he held the Sir Isaac and Lady Edith Wolfson Chair of Jewish Religious Thought as well as several high-level administrative positions. Currently he teaches Jewish philosophy at Shalem College, Israel’s first liberal arts college, which seeks to integrate Western and Jewish texts. Trained in ethics and political philosophy, Kellner specializes in medieval Jewish philosophy, arguing that Maimonides’ rationalist universalism should serve as the ideal for contemporary Jewish life. Creatively fusing Zionism, modern Orthodoxy, and democracy, his vision of Judaism is open to and engaged with the modern world.


Must a Jew Believe Anything?

Must a Jew Believe Anything?

Author: Menachem Kellner

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2022-03-09

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1802079262

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The crucial question for today's Jewish world, Kellner argues, is not whether Jews will have Jewish grandchildren, but how many different sorts of mutually exclusive Judaisms those grandchildren will face. This accessible book examines how the split that threatens the Jewish future can be avoided. For this second edition, the author has added a substantial Afterword, reviewing his thinking on the subject and addressing the reactions to the original edition.


Science in the Bet Midrash

Science in the Bet Midrash

Author: Menachem Marc Kellner

Publisher: Academic Studies PRess

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13:

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This book explores the religious thought of Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), the single most influential Jew of the last thousand years. While covering many aspects of his religious philosophy, the central focus of these essays is the way Maimonides elucidated and expressed the universalistic thrust of the Jewish tradition.


Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism

Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism

Author: Menachem Kellner

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2006-09-21

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 190982108X

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Maimonides’ vision of Judaism was deeply elitist, but at the same time profoundly universalistic. He was highly critical of the regnant Jewish culture of his day, which he perceived as so heavily influenced by ancient Jewish mysticism as to be debased. While focusing on that critique, Menachem Kellner skilfully and accessibly demonstrates how Maimonides used philosophy to purify a corrupted and paganized religion, and to present distinctions fundamental to Judaism as institutional, sociological, and historical, rather than ontological. In Maimonides’ hands, metaphysical distinctions are translated into moral challenges.


Maimonides the Universalist

Maimonides the Universalist

Author: Menachem Kellner

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2020-11-04

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 1800347456

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Maimonides’ Mishneh torah presents not only a system of Jewish law, but also a system of values. This study focuses on the moral and philosophical meditations that close each volume of his code. The authors analyse these concluding passages to uncover the universalist outlook underlying Maimonides’ halakhic thought.


To Heal a Fractured World

To Heal a Fractured World

Author: Jonathan Sacks

Publisher: Schocken

Published: 2007-02-06

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0375425195

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One of the most respected religious thinkers of our time makes an impassioned plea for the return of religion to its true purpose—as a partnership with God in the work of ethical and moral living. What are our duties to others, to society, and to humanity? How do we live a meaningful life in an age of global uncertainty and instability? In To Heal a Fractured World, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers answers to these questions by looking at the ethics of responsibility. In his signature plainspoken, accessible style, Rabbi Sacks shares with us traditional interpretations of the Bible, Jewish law, and theology, as well as the works of philosophers and ethicists from other cultures, to examine what constitutes morality and moral behavior. “We are here to make a difference,” he writes, “a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make the world a place of justice and compassion.” He argues that in today’s religious and political climate, it is more important than ever to return to the essential understanding that “it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the lives of others and the world.” To Heal a Fractured World—inspirational and instructive, timely and timeless—will resonate with people of all faiths.


Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon

Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon

Author: James A. Diamond

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-10-27

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1107063345

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This book examines a wide range of theologians, philosophers, and exegetes who share a passionate engagement with Maimonides, assaulting, adopting, subverting, or adapting his philosophical and jurisprudential thought. This ongoing enterprise is critical to any appreciation of the broader scope of Jewish law, philosophy, biblical interpretation, and Kabbalah.


To be a Holy People

To be a Holy People

Author: Eugene Korn

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781602804555

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"Can Jewish tradition face our modern understanding of justice, equality, and human progress? The author addresses ancient and modern moral questions. Building on biblical and rabbinic traditions, he analyzes how Jewish ethics relates to Jewish law, fairness, equality, and compassion, as well as the challenge of religious violence. This provides food for thought on subjects ranging from gender, freedom, and military ethics to Jewish particularism and contemporary universalism"--


We Are Not Alone

We Are Not Alone

Author: Menachem Kellner

Publisher: Academic Studies PRess

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1644696150

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Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other uses Maimonides’ writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil. Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of traditionalist Judaism.


Holiness in Jewish Thought

Holiness in Jewish Thought

Author: Alan L. Mittleman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-01-19

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0192516515

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Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. "Holiness" seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature and offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the development of the Jewish tradition. They are challenged to think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Not all of the contributors push into philosophical and theological territory, but they all provide resources for the reader to do so. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.