Category Books

An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers: From Spinoza to Soloveitchik »

Authors: Alan T. Levenson
ISBN-13: 9780742546066, ISBN-10: 0742546063
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Inc
Date Published: February 2006
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Alan T. Levenson

Book Synopsis

Highlighting well-known Jewish thinkers from a very wide spectrum of opinion the author addresses a range of issues including: What makes a thinker Jewish? What makes modern Jewish thought modern? How have secular Jews integrated Jewish traditional thought with agnosticism? What do Orthodox thinkers have to teach non-Orthodox Jews and vice versa?

Pt. I	Modern Judaism : attack and defense	1
1	Baruch Spinoza's critique of traditional religion	5
2	Moses Mendelssohn's defense of Judaism : between reason and revelation	25
3	Samson Raphael Hirsch's defense of Judaism : the reconciliation of modernity and the Mitzvot	41
4	Abraham Geiger's defense of Judaism : continuity and change	53
Pt. II	Recovering tradition for the individual and the community	67
5	Martin Buber : restoring the Jewish individual	73
6	Franz Rosenzweig : from alienated existentialist to Ba'al Teshuvah	89
7	Theodor Herzl : a Jewish modernist from Western Europe	103
8	Ahad Ha'am (Asher Zvi Ginzberg) : a Jewish modernist from Eastern Europe	117
9	Mordecai Kaplan : a secularist (re)constructs religion	133
Pt. III	Recovering Kedushah (the sacred) in a profane age	159
10	Israel Salanter : restoring "fear of heaven" to human behavior	165
11	Abraham Isaac Kook : mysticism and nationalism	183
12	Joseph Soloveitchik : Halachah and existentialism	197
13	Abraham Joshua Heschel : universal Hasidism	209
	Conclusion : mending the world/mending Israel	223