Dilemmas in Modern Jewish Thought PDF Download

Author: Michael L. Morgan
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253114761
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
"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."Â -- 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.

Author: Eugene B. Borowitz
Publisher: Behrman House, Inc
ISBN: 9780874415810
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Jewish philosophy responds to the challenges of today's world. By studying the ideas of great contemporary thinkers, readers will achieve a rich understanding of our contemporary spiritual needs.

Author: Claire Elise Katz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857735160
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
How Jewish is modern Jewish philosophy? The question at first appears nonsensical, until we consider that the chief issues with which Jewish philosophers have engaged, from the Enlightenment through to the late 20th century, are the standard preoccupations of general philosophical inquiry. Questions about God, reality, language, and knowledge - metaphysics and epistemology - have been of as much concern to Jewish thinkers as they have been to others. Moses Mendelssohn, for example, was a friend of Kant. Hermann Cohen's philosophy is often described as 'neo-Kantian.' Franz Rosenzweig wrote his dissertation on Hegel. And the thought of Emmanuel Levinas is indebted to Husserl. In this much-needed textbook, which surveys the most prominent thinkers of the last three centuries, Claire Katz situates modern Jewish philosophy in the wider cultural and intellectual context of its day, indicating how broader currents of British, French and German thought influenced its practitioners. But she also addresses the unique ways in which being Jewish coloured their output, suggesting that a keen sense of particularity enabled the Jewish philosophers to help define the whole modern era. Intended to be used as a core undergraduate text, the book will also appeal to anyone with an interest how some of the greatest minds of the age grappled with some of its most urgent and fascinating philosophical problems.

Author: Leo Strauss
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438421443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
Explores the impact on Jews and Judaism of the crisis of modernity, analyzing modern Jewish dilemmas and providing a prescription for their resolution.

Author: Zeev Levy
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781433106972
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Pt. I. Politics and hermeneutics in the philosophies of Spinoza and Mendelssohn -- Tolerance, liberty and equality -- Spinoza's and Maimonides' esoteric writings -- Pt. II. Philosophical hermeneutics -- Biblical hermeneutics : J.G. Herder and J.W. von Goethe -- Hermeneutics and demythologization : Martin Buber and Rudolf Bultmann -- Hermeneutics and tradition -- Pt. III. Ethics and contemporary Jewish thought -- Death, dying, body, and soul -- Does it make sense to speak about Jewish ethics? -- Pt. IV. Lévinas, politics, and contemporary Jewish thought -- Lévinas on state, revolution, and utopia -- Lévinas on secularization -- Lévinas on death and hope.

Author: Michael L. Morgan
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253338565
Category : Holocaust, Jewish
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
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

Author: Elliot N. Dorff
Publisher: Jewish Publication Society
ISBN: 0827608624
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
How do we use power once we?ve gained it? Is it completely for our individual benefit, or do we use it to help our neighborhoods, or society at-large? What kinds of decisions must CEOs and business owners make regarding suppliers and customers? How should bosses treat workers? Teachers treat students? Parents treat children? Government treats citizens? Power dynamics affect people on a political level, a social level, and a deeply personal level as well. The newest volume in the Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices series examines these dynamics and includes essays by such fine contributors as U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, NBC Universal Television-West Coast President Marc Graboff, and author and scholar James Diamond.

Author: Zev Garber
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761828945
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This book comprises a series of ten essays written by the authors both individually and collaboratively. While the subjects of these essays are wide ranging, they share a common recognition that issues at the forefront of contemporary Jewish thought must be measured against the background of ancient traditions, which revisit rabbinic and biblical times and beyond. The intent of these essays is to illustrate how shadows of longstanding traditions continue to shade current perceptions. Double Takes challenges the reader's assumptions about modern Jewish thought by demonstrating how the past can be an unpredictable lens for the present-day. An examination of contemporary themes in a historical perspective reveals unanticipated, even disconcerting, refractions. The book appears in the Studies in the Shoah series as volume 26.

Author: Leo Strauss
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791427736
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
Explores the impact on Jews and Judaism of the crisis of modernity, analyzing modern Jewish dilemmas and providing a prescription for their resolution.

Author: Ken Koltun-Fromm
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025310856X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
"Koltun-Fromm's reading of Hess is of crucial import for those who study the construction of self in the modern world as well as for those who are concerned with Hess and his contributions to modern thought.... a reading of Hess that is subtle, judicious, insightful, and well supported." -- David Ellenson Moses Hess, a fascinating 19th-century German Jewish intellectual figure, was at times religious and secular, traditional and modern, practical and theoretical, socialist and nationalist. Ken Koltun-Fromm's radical reinterpretation of his writings shows Hess as a Jew struggling with the meaning of conflicting commitments and impulses. Modern readers will realize that in Hess's life, as in their own, these commitments remain fragmented and torn. As contemporary Jews negotiate multiple, often contradictory allegiances in the modern world, Koltun-Fromm argues that Hess's struggle to unite conflicting traditions and frameworks of meaning offers intellectual and practical resources to re-examine the dilemmas of modern Jewish identity. Adopting Charles Taylor's philosophical theory of the self to uncover Hess's various commitments, Koltun-Fromm demonstrates that Hess offers a rich, textured, though deeply conflicted and torn account of the modern Jew. This groundbreaking study in conceptions of identity in modern Jewish texts is a vital contribution to the diverse fields of Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionism, and religious studies. Jewish Literature and Culture -- Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor Published with the generous support of the Koret Foundation