The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish Theology brings together a distinguished international array of senior scholarsumany of whose work is available here in English for the first timeuto consider key topics from the meaning of divine providence to questions of redemption to the link between the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel.
The impact of technology-enhanced mass death in the twentieth century, argues Zachary Braiterman, has profoundly affected the future shape of religious thought. In his provocative book, the author shows how key Jewish theologians faced the memory of Auschwitz by rejecting traditional theodicy, abandoning any attempt to justify and vindicate the relationship between God and catastrophic suffering. The author terms this rejection "Antitheodicy," the refusal to accept that relationship. It finds voice in the writings of three particular theologians: Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, and Emil Fackenheim. This book is the first to bring postmodern philosophical and literary approaches into conversation with post-Holocaust Jewish thought. Drawing on the work of Mieke Bal, Harold Bloom, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, and others, Braiterman assesses how Jewish intellectuals reinterpret Bible and Midrash to re-create religious thought for the age after Auschwitz. In this process, he provides a model for reconstructing Jewish life and philosophy in the wake of the Holocaust. His work contributes to the postmodern turn in contemporary Jewish studies and today's creative theology.
The theological problems facing those trying to respond to the Holocaust remain monumental. Both Jewish and Christian post-Auschwitz religious thought must grapple with profound questions, from how God allowed it to happen to the nature of evil. The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish Theology brings together a distinguished international array of senior scholars—many of whose work is available here in English for the first time—to consider key topics from the meaning of divine providence to questions of redemption to the link between the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. Together, they push our thinking further about how our belief in God has changed in the wake of the Holocaust. Contributors: Yosef Achituv, Yehoyada Amir, Ester Farbstein, Gershon Greenberg, Warren Zev Harvey, Tova Ilan, Shmuel Jakobovits, Dan Michman, David Novak, Shalom Ratzabi, Michael Rosenak, Shalom Rosenberg, Eliezer Schweid, and Joseph A. Turner.
Emil Fackenheim's Post-Holocaust Thought and Its Philosophical Sources engages with the philosophers who made the greatest impact on the thought of Emil Fackenheim.
Presents essays by Jewish thinkers who have found process thought to be a useful framework for contemporary Jewish thought and a set of conversations between Jewish and Christian thinkers on the appropriateness of process thought for Judaism and Christianity.
Through a comparative reading of postwar North American and wartime Orthodox Jewish texts about the Holocaust, Krawcowicz offers a novel interpretation of Jewish responses to the Holocaust that focuses on the role of metahistorical paradigms employed to employ historical events.
The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology offers an overview of Jewish theology, an aspect of Judaism that is equal in importance to law and ethics. Covering the period from antiquity to the present, the volume focuses on what Jews believe about God and also about the relation of God to humans and the world. Parts I and II cover exciting new research in Jewish biblical and rabbinic theology, medieval philosophy, Kabbalah (mysticism), and liturgy. Parts III and IV turn to modern theology with an exploration of works by leading figures, such as Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the relation of theology to issues such as feminism and the Holocaust, and the relation of Judaism to other world religions. In Part V, the book explores how the insights of analytic philosophy have been integrated with Jewish theology.
Negative theology is the attempt to describe God by speaking in terms of what God is not. Historical affinities between Jewish modernity and negative theology indicate new directions for thematizing the modern Jewish experience. Questions such as, What are the limits of Jewish modernity in terms of negativity? Has this creative tradition exhausted itself? and How might Jewish thought go forward? anchor these original essays. Taken together they explore the roots and legacies of negative theology in Jewish thought, examine the viability and limits of theorizing the modern Jewish experience as negative theology, and offer a fresh perspective from which to approach Jewish intellectual history.
How Jewish is Christianity? The question of how Jesus' followers relate to Judaism has been a matter of debate since Jesus first sparred with the Pharisees. The controversy has not abated, taking many forms over the centuries. In the decades following the Holocaust, scholars and theologians reconsidered the Jewish origins and character of Christianity, finding points of continuity. Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity advances this discussion by freshly reassessing the issues. Did Jesus intend to form a new religion? Did Paul abrogate the Jewish law? Does the New Testament condemn Judaism? How and when did Christianity split from Judaism? How should Jewish believers in Jesus relate to a largely gentile church? What meaning do the Jewish origins of Christianity have for theology and practice today? In this volume, a variety of leading scholars and theologians explore the relationship of Judaism and Christianity through biblical, historical, theological, and ecclesiological angles. This cutting-edge scholarship will enrich readers' understanding of this centuries-old debate.
Is there a religious meaning to the idea of a chosen people after the Shoah? / Eliezer Schweid -- The issue of confirmation and disconfirmation in Jewish thought after the Shoah / Steven T. Katz -- Philosophical and midrashic thinking on the fateful events of Jewish history / Joseph A. Turner -- The Holocaust : lessons, explanation, meaning / Shalom Rosenberg -- Between Holocaust and redemption : silence, cognition, and eclipse / Gershon Greenberg -- Ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought about the Holocaust since World War II : the radicalized aspect / Gershon Greenberg -- Theological reflections on the Holocaust : between unity and controversy / Michael Rosenak -- Building amidst devastation : halakic historical observations on marriage during the Holocaust / Ester Farbstein -- Two Jewish approaches to evil in history / Zev Harvey -- A call to humility and Jewish unity in the aftermath of the Holocaust / Shmuel Jakobovits -- Is there a religious meaning to the rebirth of the state of Israel after the Shoah? / Shalom Ratzabi -- The concept of exile as a model for dealing with the Holocaust / Yehoyada Amir -- Is there a theological connection between the Holocaust and the reestablishment of the state of Israel? / David Novak -- The Holocaust and the state of Israel : a historical view of their impact on and meaning for the understanding of the behavior of Jewish religious movements / Dan Michman -- Theology and the Holocaust : the presence of God and diving [i.e. divine] providence in history from the perspective of religious Zionism / Yosef Achituv -- Educational implications of Holocaust and rebirth / Tova Ilan.
