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 Affirming the Other's Theology: How Far Can Jews and Christians Go?

Michael S. Kogan

in Opening the Covenant: A Jewish Theology of Christianity

This chapter addresses the question: how far can Jews and Christians go in affirming the faith of the other? It presents a reassessment of Christianity by modern Jewish theologians: Franz Rosenzweig, ... More

This chapter addresses the question: how far can Jews and Christians go in affirming the faith of the other? It presents a reassessment of Christianity by modern Jewish theologians: Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. It then presents a reassessment of Judaism by three modern Christian theologians: Paul van Buren, A. Roy Echardt, and Clark M. Williamson. It argues that the dialogue does not and should not ask either faith tradition to give up any of its positive doctrines. What each must be willing to do is to reevaluate negative convictions. In altering the views of the other Judaism and Christianity should be recognised as having crucial roles to play in sacred history.Less

Forms of Theological Language in Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption

in Contemplative Nation: A Philosophical Account of Jewish Theological Language

This chapter uses the Jewish Theological Practice (JTP) model to analyze Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption. After providing a brief introduction to Rosenzweig and his book, it considers the ... More

This chapter uses the Jewish Theological Practice (JTP) model to analyze Franz Rosenzweig's The Star of Redemption. After providing a brief introduction to Rosenzweig and his book, it considers the methodological issues peculiar to the Star. It discusses two of Rosenzweig's contemporary interpreters, Leora Batnitzky and Peter Gordon and then explores exegesis, hermeneutics, divine perfection, and religious experience as sources for the principal theological claims in the Star. In the Star, Rosenzweig promotes a highly intimate divine-human relationship that purports to produce limited knowledge of God. The chapter concludes by addressing the limits that Rosenzweig places on his theological language.Less

Franz Rosenzweig's Theology of the Jewish-Christian Relationship

David Novak

in Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification

This chapter presents Franz Rosenzweig's constitution of the Jewish–Christian relationship. Rosenzweig sees religion as one that is exclusively founded on revelation. One cannot understand his ... More

This chapter presents Franz Rosenzweig's constitution of the Jewish–Christian relationship. Rosenzweig sees religion as one that is exclusively founded on revelation. One cannot understand his movement from philosophy to religion as a movement simply from atheism to theism, Rosenzweig must be seen as moving from a detached ahistorical position to an affirmation of historical revelation. Rosenzweig was convinced that a Jew had to look out on the world from his Jewish standpoint and constitute it for himself. For him, revelation can only be either Jewish or Christian. For Rosenzweig, each community performs a vital function for the other. In Rosenzweig's constitution of the Jewish–Christian relationship, the particular origin (Judaism) of a universal process retains its individuality until the separation between the two is overcome at a higher level.Less

Between sensual and heavenly love: Franz Rosenzweig's reading of the Song of Songs

Paul Mendes‐Flohr

in Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane

This chapter examines how Franz Rosenzweig read and responded to the Song of Songs' juxtaposition of love and death. Rosenzweig viewed the erotic imagery of the Song of Songs as the most eloquent ... More

This chapter examines how Franz Rosenzweig read and responded to the Song of Songs' juxtaposition of love and death. Rosenzweig viewed the erotic imagery of the Song of Songs as the most eloquent statement in the Hebrew Bible on the meaning of revelation, of the divine-human relation. Indeed, he refers to this love-song as the Kernbuch der Offenbarung, the focal-book of revelation. Yet God is not once mentioned, nor even alluded to, in this dialogue between a man and a woman, testifying to the physical delights and anguish of their mutual love.Less

Time and History in Rosenzweig from Temp oral Existence to Eternity

in Exemplarity and Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy

This chapter examines the development of Franz Rosenzweig's thought as a philosophy of history. It considers his early rejection of historical relativism, the messianic epistemology he proposed in ... More

This chapter examines the development of Franz Rosenzweig's thought as a philosophy of history. It considers his early rejection of historical relativism, the messianic epistemology he proposed in his essay “The New Thinking,” and the messianic history he laid out in The Star of Redemption. The chapter also discusses Rosenzweig's interpretation of messianism as the drive toward the realization of universal justice in history, and suggests that his theory of individuality also took shape in conjunction with a radical rethinking of time and history.Less

The New Thinking and the Order of Wisdom

Randi Rashkover

in Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics

Chapter 5 offers a philosophical presentation of the logic of law first through an examination of Franz Rosenzweig's New Thinking as an extension of F.W.J. Schelling's theology of divine freedom. ... More

Chapter 5 offers a philosophical presentation of the logic of law first through an examination of Franz Rosenzweig's New Thinking as an extension of F.W.J. Schelling's theology of divine freedom. Schelling's theology introduces philosophically the link between divine freedom and law earlier introduced in the Biblical analysis of God. Rosenzweig's essay, “The New Thinking,” deepens the analysis of the nexus between divine freedom and divine law and articulates the impact of both on freedom of human action and knowledge of the world. This chapter shows therefore how the logic of the law introduces a paradigm shift in analyses of how human desire relates to power and the production of knowledge about the world.Less

On Rosenzweig's Reception of the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen: Individuality, Jewish Election, and the Infinitesimal

in Exemplarity and Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy

This chapter examines the influence of Hermann Cohen on the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig. It identifies what Rosenzweig acknowledges as his debt to Cohen and those aspects of Cohen's thought that ... More

This chapter examines the influence of Hermann Cohen on the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig. It identifies what Rosenzweig acknowledges as his debt to Cohen and those aspects of Cohen's thought that he did not directly acknowledge but which nevertheless become part of his thinking. The chapter considers Rosenzweig's philosophy as growing out of his fundamental concern to preserve a notion of the concrete human individual against generalization by means of concepts, and analyzes how he framed and developed his thinking of Jewish uniqueness in terms of election.Less

Abyss, Volcano, and the Frozen Swirl of Words: The Difficult and the Holy in Agnon, Bialik, and Scholem

Adam Zachary Newton

in To Make the Hands Impure: Art, Ethical Adventure, the Difficult and the Holy

Chapter 7 corresponds itself to the third major part of the book, “Languages.” Its title, “Abyss, Volcano, and the Frozen Swirl of Words” incorporates metaphors drawn from essays by Gershom Scholem ... More

Chapter 7 corresponds itself to the third major part of the book, “Languages.” Its title, “Abyss, Volcano, and the Frozen Swirl of Words” incorporates metaphors drawn from essays by Gershom Scholem and Emmanuel Levinas about the Aktualisierung (“actualization”) or Verweltlichung (“secularization”) of Hebrew in the twentieth century. Restaging the interplay of “difficult” and “holy,” the chapter groups together a set of philosophical essays about translation and language in its material aspect: “Revealment and Concealment in Language” from 1915, by Hayyim Nahman Bialik; “Confession on the Subject of Our Language”, a 1926 letter from Gershom Scholem dedicated to Franz Rosenzweig; and Rosenzweig’s 1926 and 1925 essays, “Scripture and Luther” and “New Hebrew.” The chapter is bookended by excerpts from Bialik’s 1904 poem “Before the Bookcase” and the remarkable hymn to the Hebrew language from 1946, “Engraved Are Your Letters” by the American He- braist Abraham Regelson. Walter Benjamin’s 1916 essay, “On Language as Such and the Language of Man” and the 1923 essay on translation serve as points of reference, along with Levinas’s “Poetry and Resurrection: Notes on Agnon” from 1976. “The Eyes of Language: The Abyss and the Volcano,” Derrida’s fervent and ingenious 1986 essay analyzing the Scholem letter, and Monolingualism of the Other, his 1996 text on Rosenzweig, provide a postmodern counterpoint.Less

Jewish Theology in Postwar America

Michael L. Morgan

in Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America

This chapter covers the writings and interchanges of various Jewish theologians who wrote in America in the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, who included existentialists, and Reform Jewish ... More

This chapter covers the writings and interchanges of various Jewish theologians who wrote in America in the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, who included existentialists, and Reform Jewish theologians. These writers include Emil Fackenheim, Will Herberg, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Eugene Borowitz, Bernhard Heller, Jakob Petuchowski, Arthur Cohen, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Joseph Soloveitchik, Lou Silberman, Bernard Martin, Eliezer Berkovits, Richard Rubinstein, and many others. The chapter also covers the debates in various journals as well as ideas put forward in more substantial publications (essays, books, etc.).Less

Theologies of Hope

Alan Mittleman

in Hope in a Democratic Age: Philosophy, Religion, and Political Theory

This chapter examines how Jews and Christians have responded to the attempted secularization of hope. It considers how the biblical religions, Christianity and Judaism, both resisted and were ... More

This chapter examines how Jews and Christians have responded to the attempted secularization of hope. It considers how the biblical religions, Christianity and Judaism, both resisted and were co-opted by modern hope. The emphasis here is on how Jewish and Christian thinkers conceptualized the relationship between hope and politics. Politics in the broadest sense as organized human action on a large scale can either be a sufficient vehicle for the fulfilment of hope, a failure vis-a-vis human hope, or a necessary but insufficient engagement on behalf of human hope. Among Jewish thinkers, this chapter considers Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber. Among Christian thinkers, it looks at Walter Rauschenbusch, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jürgen Moltmann. Finally, it discusses the normative Catholic position on hope and politics. It concludes that, while modern Jewish and Christian religious thought contributes different resources to the civic project, both can form a common front on behalf of the renewal of a public philosophy and a shared story for a liberal society.Less

Nationality, Judaism, and the Sacredness of Language

in Exemplarity and Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy

This chapter examines Franz Rosenzweig's views on the questions of nationality, language, and translation in his Jüdische Rundschau. It analyzes the role of German, Jewish, and German-Jewish ... More

This chapter examines Franz Rosenzweig's views on the questions of nationality, language, and translation in his Jüdische Rundschau. It analyzes the role of German, Jewish, and German-Jewish exemplarity in Jacques Derrida's philosophical nationality project, and puts forward Derrida Rosenzweig's views on Jewish existence and Hermann Cohen's views on German Judaism to pursue the question of (Jewish) identity or belonging through the optic of exemplarity. The chapter also considers Derrida's views on the debate between Rosenzweig and Gershom Scholem on the issue of translation and sacred language.Less

The Fourth Wave: Reimagining the German Jewish Bible

Abigail Gillman

in A History of German Jewish Bible Translation

The three translators of the fourth wave believed that modern people’s relationship to the Bible, and to religion, had become reified, and that translation, undertaken in a modernist vein, could ... More

The three translators of the fourth wave believed that modern people’s relationship to the Bible, and to religion, had become reified, and that translation, undertaken in a modernist vein, could provoke new religiosity. They rejected the scholarly methods of their forerunners and also the axiom that a German Jewish translation had to be clear, correct, and beautiful. In Die fünf Bücher der Weisung, Buber and Rosenzweig deployed German to defamiliarize Hebrew scripture; to channel the voice beneath the written text; and to facilitate an intimate theological encounter. Bertha Pappenheim, social activist, pedagogue, and writer, began translating the Tsene-Rene, the medieval Yiddish Women’s Bible, into a folksy, Yiddish-inflected German. Pappenheim believed that the Bible ought to promote simple piety and ethical practice. Pappenheim was Buber's student and friend; she also lectured at Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus. Proponents of the Jewish cultural renaissance, all three produced groundbreaking translations before turning to the Bible: The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln (Pappenheim); The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (Buber); and Ninety-Two Poems of Judah Halevi (Rosenzweig). In the face of manifold crises of the early twentieth century, these three thinkers took radical measures to insure Jewish survival and renewal.Less

Responsibility beyond the Superego

Eric L. Santner

in On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig

Following Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling's lead, Franz Rosenzweig links the paradoxical materiality of the Other—his or her non-thing-like Thingness—to the enigma of human freedom. That is, ... More

Following Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling's lead, Franz Rosenzweig links the paradoxical materiality of the Other—his or her non-thing-like Thingness—to the enigma of human freedom. That is, when we encounter the Other in his or her singularity, we encounter that which in the Other contracts from all predicative being (and the matrix of relations established through it) in the very act of contracting predicates. To return to the context of intersubjectivity, the contrast Rosenzweig proposes is one between relation and encounter: between love in the third person, love on the basis of our predicative being—our knowable “whatness” or “essence”—and revelatory love, love as eventful encounter with the Other in his or her death-driven singularity, the uncanny locus of human freedom. Rosenzweig's crucial insight is that the capacity for ethical encounter can be understood as an event belonging to the “psychotheology of everyday life.” This chapter examines the paradox of the superego as well as Rosenzweig's views on Judaism, redemption, and revelation.Less

Franz Rosenzweig and Religious Constitutionalism

Miguel Vatter

in Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt

This chapter discusses Franz Rosenzweig’s political theology in light of the tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Christian political theology is based on a message of universal love and ... More

This chapter discusses Franz Rosenzweig’s political theology in light of the tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Christian political theology is based on a message of universal love and brotherhood, but Rosenzweig points out how the reception of this message in the West took the form of nationalism and a sanctification of imperialism. This chapter offers a new reading of Rosenzweig’s wartime unfinished work on geopolitics, Globus, as an early meditation on what we now call “globalization.” It then reconstructs his masterpiece The Star of Redemption as a treatise on political theology that opens an alternative path to peoplehood based on the possibility of a cosmopolitan empire of law that is not territorially delimited and an access to citizenship that is not ethno-culturally predetermined. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the contested interpretation that Rosenzweig gives of Islam in the Star of Redemption and the problem of “holy war.”Less

three In the Year of the Lord 1800: Rosenzweig and the Spinoza Quarrel

Bruce Rosenstock

in Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Beyond

This chapter shows how Franz Rosenzweig's philosophy of revelation can be read as laying the foundation for a new “messianic friendship,” one between Moses Mendelssohn and ... More

This chapter shows how Franz Rosenzweig's philosophy of revelation can be read as laying the foundation for a new “messianic friendship,” one between Moses Mendelssohn and Friedrich Jacobi. It shows how Rosenzweig inherited Jacobi's concept of experientially-based revelation, but took it beyond Jacobi's gnostic anti-Judaism by offering a decidedly anti-gnostic reading of the “root words” of the Hebrew Bible in The Star of Redemption. Rosenzweig is at pains to show that the God of the Hebrew Bible is a person and not, as Jacobi claims Baruch Spinoza represents Him, subjectless substance. Rosenzweig can be said to have offered a posthumous resolution of the Spinoza Quarrel that respects both Mendelssohn and Jacobi in their efforts to offer philosophical recuperations of the concept of lived revelation. It is in this sense that a “messianic friendship” is stated between Mendelssohn and Jacobi.Less

Concepts of Scripture in Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig

Jonathan Cohen

in Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction

This chapter explores how Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig bring God back into the picture and thus, represent a gesture of return to older modes of biblical interpretation. Their approach does not ... More

This chapter explores how Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig bring God back into the picture and thus, represent a gesture of return to older modes of biblical interpretation. Their approach does not simply restore medieval or midrashic approaches to scripture but rather shifts the focus of authority from the biblical text to a space between the reader and the text, a space wherein the voice of the divine can still be heard by contemporary readers. According to Buber and Rosenzweig, the divine voice can only be heard in the context of an address, challenge, or question put to a listener or reader. In this sense, the hermeneutics of Buber and Rosenzweig retains its identity as a dialogical hermeneutics. The dialogue between heaven and earth that has somehow been preserved in the biblical text has become a world-historical paradigm and inspiration for subsequent dialogue.Less

Rosenzweig’s Patient

Aaron W. Hughes

in Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism

Whereas previous systems of thought—from medieval Aristotelianism to German idealism—flattened particularity and the difference in which it was grounded by positing abstract universal forms, ... More

Whereas previous systems of thought—from medieval Aristotelianism to German idealism—flattened particularity and the difference in which it was grounded by positing abstract universal forms, Rosenzweig locates in the individual’s finitude the ability to grasp the “All” by means of the relationships that he or she enters into with others. Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption is arguably the greatest work of modern Jewish thought. However, I wish to argue that his desire to establish the superiority of Judaism and those who practice it sets up a highly problematic (and faulty) comparison that is powered by a problematic juxtaposition between an essentialized “eternal people” and an equally essentialized “peoples of the world.” An early twentieth-century philosophical system that is grounded in racial and religious superiority, and that seeks rejuvenation based on an acknowledgement of shared ancestry, culture, and blood should immediately alert us to its implicit and explicit connection to fascism. For, ultimately, Rosenzweig’s philosophy of Judaism is one that is predicated on Jewish difference and, as such, is highly exclusive.Less