Michael L. Morgan
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195148626
- eISBN:
- 9780199870011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195148622.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This brief introduction discusses the importance of understanding what the American Jewish response – and more importantly, the American Jewish theologians’ response – to the Holocaust has been, and ...
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This brief introduction discusses the importance of understanding what the American Jewish response – and more importantly, the American Jewish theologians’ response – to the Holocaust has been, and what it has taught Jews about their approach to the past and the future. The author has approached this by an examination of the writings of five thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), each of whom in the 1960s and 1970s began to treat the Holocaust as a central and determining feature in his Jewish thinking. Each conceived of his theological task as understanding Judaism in terms of an act of coming to grips with Auschwitz, yet each has been influential in different ways, and for different constituencies. A brief summary is given of the writings of each of the five, and of some of the thoughts and conclusions raised. The introduction ends with an outline of the book.Less
This brief introduction discusses the importance of understanding what the American Jewish response – and more importantly, the American Jewish theologians’ response – to the Holocaust has been, and what it has taught Jews about their approach to the past and the future. The author has approached this by an examination of the writings of five thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), each of whom in the 1960s and 1970s began to treat the Holocaust as a central and determining feature in his Jewish thinking. Each conceived of his theological task as understanding Judaism in terms of an act of coming to grips with Auschwitz, yet each has been influential in different ways, and for different constituencies. A brief summary is given of the writings of each of the five, and of some of the thoughts and conclusions raised. The introduction ends with an outline of the book.
Michael L. Morgan
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195148626
- eISBN:
- 9780199870011
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195148622.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Auschwitz is the center of the twentieth century, its dark core, yet, in the postwar years in America few intellectuals dared to come to grips with the horror and the suffering. Jewish theologians ...
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Auschwitz is the center of the twentieth century, its dark core, yet, in the postwar years in America few intellectuals dared to come to grips with the horror and the suffering. Jewish theologians too were slow to respond until, in the turbulent years of the sixties and beyond, a small number of Jewish thinkers came to realize that the survival of Judaism and continued Jewish life require first and foremost confronting Auschwitz; looking into the abyss had become unavoidable. In this book, Michael Morgan tells the story of these theologians, and offers the first comprehensive overview of post‐Holocaust Jewish theology. He gives an account of the encounter with the death camps in the postwar writings of figures such as Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, and Primo Levi and describes the role of the Six Day War in 1967 on the development and reception of post‐Holocaust Jewish thought. In chapters on each of the central thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), he analyzes the way they have struggled with the dialectic of history and identity, and with the threat of radical rupture. Throughout the book, the intellectual developments are set in their historical context and there are chapters on the reception of post‐Holocaust Jewish thought and its legacy for today. This is a book of philosophical and theological analysis as well as a work of intellectual history and will interest a wide spectrum of readers.Less
Auschwitz is the center of the twentieth century, its dark core, yet, in the postwar years in America few intellectuals dared to come to grips with the horror and the suffering. Jewish theologians too were slow to respond until, in the turbulent years of the sixties and beyond, a small number of Jewish thinkers came to realize that the survival of Judaism and continued Jewish life require first and foremost confronting Auschwitz; looking into the abyss had become unavoidable. In this book, Michael Morgan tells the story of these theologians, and offers the first comprehensive overview of post‐Holocaust Jewish theology. He gives an account of the encounter with the death camps in the postwar writings of figures such as Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, and Primo Levi and describes the role of the Six Day War in 1967 on the development and reception of post‐Holocaust Jewish thought. In chapters on each of the central thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), he analyzes the way they have struggled with the dialectic of history and identity, and with the threat of radical rupture. Throughout the book, the intellectual developments are set in their historical context and there are chapters on the reception of post‐Holocaust Jewish thought and its legacy for today. This is a book of philosophical and theological analysis as well as a work of intellectual history and will interest a wide spectrum of readers.
Ava Chamberlain
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814723722
- eISBN:
- 9780814723739
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814723722.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Who was Elizabeth Tuttle? In most histories she is a footnote, a blip. At best she is a minor villain in the story of Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the greatest American theologian of the colonial era. ...
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Who was Elizabeth Tuttle? In most histories she is a footnote, a blip. At best she is a minor villain in the story of Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the greatest American theologian of the colonial era. Many historians consider Jonathan Edwards a theological genius, wildly ahead of his time, a Puritan hero. Tuttle was Edwards's crazy grandmother, whose madness and adultery drove his despairing grandfather to divorce. This book unearths a fuller history of Tuttle. It is a violent and tragic story in which anxious patriarchs struggle to govern their households, unruly women disobey their husbands, mental illness tears families apart, and loved ones die sudden deaths. Through the lens of Tuttle, the book re-examines the common narrative of Edwards's ancestry, giving his long-ignored paternal grandmother a voice. Tracing this story into the nineteenth century, she creates a new way of looking at both ordinary families of colonial New England and how Edwards' family has been remembered by his descendants, contemporary historians, and, significantly, eugenicists. For as the book uncovers, it was during the eugenics movement, which employed the Edwards family as an ideal, that the crazy grandmother story took shape. This book not only brings to light the tragic story of an ordinary woman living in early New England, but also explores the deeper tension between the ideal of Puritan family life and its messy reality, complicating the way America has thought about its Puritan past.Less
Who was Elizabeth Tuttle? In most histories she is a footnote, a blip. At best she is a minor villain in the story of Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the greatest American theologian of the colonial era. Many historians consider Jonathan Edwards a theological genius, wildly ahead of his time, a Puritan hero. Tuttle was Edwards's crazy grandmother, whose madness and adultery drove his despairing grandfather to divorce. This book unearths a fuller history of Tuttle. It is a violent and tragic story in which anxious patriarchs struggle to govern their households, unruly women disobey their husbands, mental illness tears families apart, and loved ones die sudden deaths. Through the lens of Tuttle, the book re-examines the common narrative of Edwards's ancestry, giving his long-ignored paternal grandmother a voice. Tracing this story into the nineteenth century, she creates a new way of looking at both ordinary families of colonial New England and how Edwards' family has been remembered by his descendants, contemporary historians, and, significantly, eugenicists. For as the book uncovers, it was during the eugenics movement, which employed the Edwards family as an ideal, that the crazy grandmother story took shape. This book not only brings to light the tragic story of an ordinary woman living in early New England, but also explores the deeper tension between the ideal of Puritan family life and its messy reality, complicating the way America has thought about its Puritan past.
