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In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–9, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Emil Fackenheim, a Jewish theologian and philosopher, who has radically changed his thinking since 1967. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

An examination is made of some of the responses to the work of the five main Jewish thinkers/theologians, which was addressed in Chs. 6–10, and to the work of other post‐Holocaust Jewish thinkers. This is done by looking at the popular response (that of ordinary Jews), the response of young Jewish radicals, and that of Orthodox Jewish thinkers. The dissenting thoughts of various thinkers as to the centrality and use of the Holocaust in Jewish America are discussed.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–7, and 9–10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Irving Greenberg, an orthodox rabbi and deeply traditional figure, but also a bold and radical Jewish thinker. Citations of each thinkers work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

In this chapter, and in the next four, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Richard Rubinstein, a prominent Jewish theologian, but not institutionally tied to one of the denominations of American Judaism; he was a Hillel rabbi and then an academic. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to a honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–8, and 10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Arthur Cohen, a prominent Jewish theologian, but not institutionally tied to one of the denominations of American Judaism; he was an editor and a novelist. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

The impact of the Six Day Israeli–Arab War of May–June 1967 on American Jewish life and especially in the way American Jews perceived Israel and the Holocaust is considered. The events of that summer and the changing character of American life shaped the constituencies for the post‐Holocaust Jewish thinkers; they also helped to shape them and their work. The chapter discusses the reactions of the young Jewish radicals, and the various (sometimes bizarre) groupings of thinkers that emerged. To some, the Six Day War enabled the Holocaust to move to a central focal location in Jewish identity, so that by the mid‐1970s, the Holocaust and the Israeli victory of 1967 were intertwined with Jewish pride and sense of responsibility to respond to threat with strength and self‐confidence.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6, and 8–10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Eliezer Berkovits, an orthodox Jewish theologian and philosopher. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

The contemporary legacy of the post‐Holocaust movement for modern Judaism and Jewish self‐understanding is considered in an examination of modernist and postmodernist thought. For various reasons, the primacy of the Holocaust has been seen by many as opposed to a number of recent developments in Jewish life, especially the return to texts, the renewal of ritual celebration, and the commitment to “liberal” values. The author encourages an appreciation of the realism and yet the idealism of the post‐Holocaust thinkers and points out that their goal, like that of every Jew, is to find a way to return to the past in order to live into the future with integrity and hope.

This chapter pays close attention to the nineteenth century when philosophical abstraction was displaced as the core of thinking on Jewish purpose in an effort to make sense of the dramatic social, political and economic changes of the era. It talks about how Jews became the key case to political reforms once they were brought into the political mainstream in the wake of the French Revolution. It also analyzes how both Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers in the nineteenth century cast Jews as the bearers of a special role in leading Western society to its developmental destiny. The chapter describes the ways in which Jews proudly presented themselves as cosmopolitans, morally lofty teachers, or ethnically superior builders of the future. It reviews claims that Jews had a vital mission to perform in the world, which found wide readerships among non-Jews that resonated with the admiration for the fortitude of the Hebraic tradition in the writings of non-Jewish thinkers.

This chapter centers on the eighteenth century as the period in which the primary purpose of Jews was to sharpen the elaboration of key philosophical concepts. It explores the work of Pierre Bayle, whose Historical and Critical Dictionary in the 1700s baffled eighteenth-century readers over its elusive positioning of Judaism as the marker of the limits of rational philosophy. It also reviews the vexed preoccupation of Voltaire with Jews that stemmed from his structurally similar but temperamentally different positioning of them as fundamentally antithetical to enlightenment reason. The chapter also explains the paradigm of exceptionalism that framed the work and reception of Jewish thinkers in the period, including Moses Mendelssohn. It describes the penetrating mind and noble character of Mendelssohn that became the model for the dramatic hero of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's masterpiece Nathan the Wise, in which Jewish purpose was cast as the exemplification of rational universalism.

This chapter investigates a largely unexplored facet of English Jewish history, reopening the issue of whether there was a Haskalah in England. Historians generally contend that the modernization of England's Jews was not ideological but was shaped by the irresistible pull of English society. In this view, the creative work of diverse Anglo-Jewish thinkers is seen as a specifically Jewish phenomenon, a response to English openness and tolerance. In contrast, the chapter points to a number of thinkers who were in contact with English intellectuals and were influenced by such important trends as Lockian philosophy, millenarianism, Newtonianism, deism, and atheism. The discovery of this English Jewish intellectual current prior to the Berlin Haskalah, and apparently unrelated to the work of other maskilim, certainly provides students of the Haskalah with food for thought.

This chapter discusses the earliest manifestations of systematic philosophy in al-Andalus, as well as their religious and political context. The second half of the tenth century was a watershed in Andalusian intellectual history. The story of this turning point is twofold. The first part relates to the introduction of sciences to al-Andalus, while the second relates to the censorship of philosophical and scientific books. The censorship of books was accompanied by the persecution of their readers, which drastically limited, and sometimes paralyzed, the Muslim practice of philosophy as it was prevalent at the time: Neoplatonic as well as mystical philosophy. Yet these restrictions were applicable to Muslims alone. Jewish thinkers, inspired by the same suspect sources, continued to develop the same sort of forbidden philosophy. Consequently, it is these Jewish thinkers who are prominent in the history of philosophy in al-Andalus in the eleventh century; and it is also they who served as custodians of the forbidden lore until better times. The chapter also studies Ibn Masarra, who is commonly considered to have been the first independent Andalusī Muslim thinker of local extraction.

This chapter examines the attempts of modern liberal Jewish thinkers, responding to intellectual currents in political theory and liberal Protestant theology, and brute political facts, to construct a new political theology for the emerging Jewish bourgeois citizen. This project entailed the articulation of a new Jewish narrative—a “history” of Judaism for contemporary purposes or a “usable past” orchestrated around the theological “idea” of Judaism, detailing how it had emerged, developed, and was preserved, despite the vicissitudes of history, and affirming its contemporary and enduring meaning. Narrating this story requires first a glance at the situation of the Jews in Europe at the beginning of liberalism and at the challenges that the new order posed to Judaism.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the historical relationship between Judaism and Christianity, which had not been peaceful. Through the ages, Christian thinkers had made Judaism the object of attack, hoping to convince Jews to abandon their ancestral faith. From the earliest days of the new religion, when Christianity was just emerging from Judaism, Christians sought to demonstrate to Jews that Jesus was the expected messiah and that the doctrines he taught were true. Many Jews did not remain passive in the face of the Christian challenge to their religion. Talmudic and midrashic literature offers evidence that Jews were aware of the story of Jesus as related in the Gospels and basic Christian doctrines, against which they argued. In a later period, Jewish thinkers in Muslim countries polemicized against Christianity. This book therefore studies the Jewish philosophical polemic against Christianity in the Middle Ages. In combating the doctrines of Christianity, Jewish polemicists employed a variety of types of argumentation to strengthen their own beliefs. These arguments may be divided into three distinct categories: exegetical arguments, historical arguments, and rational arguments.

This chapter discusses four models that past and present Jewish thinkers have adopted in understanding other religions and urge Jews to hold on to multiple models in tension with each other. Jewish inclusivism affirms the uniqueness of Judaism, but rejects the idea that non-Jews lack religion. Jewish universalists accept a universal truth available to all humanity, beyond revelation but not against it. However, religious universalists remain close to the inclusivists in that everything is grounded in the teachings of Judaism. In contrast, religious pluralism is a modern philosophical approach that accepts that one's religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth. Jewish pluralists write that God has chosen Jews to walk the way of the Torah, Christians to follow Christ, Hindus to be guided by the Vedas, and Muslims to follow the way shown by the Quran. Finally, for Jewish exclusivists, the sole domain of truth is the Torah and Judaism is the sole path to God; those who are not Jews follow a mistaken path and are at best bystanders in the divine scheme.

This chapter explores the important thinkers who came after Moses Maimonides’ time. During this period there were three basic ways of relating to Maimonides the philosopher, theologian, and halakhist: his work was commented upon, it was subjected to criticism, and it was invoked as an authority. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries only five thinkers explicitly contributed to the discussion of creed formulation in Judaism. With the beginning of the fifteenth century the chapter reveals a startling change. While in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the question of creed formulation was, at best, of peripheral concern to Jewish intellectuals, in the fifteenth century it moved much closer to the centre of the stage. Indeed, with the glaring exception of Maimonides, no Jewish thinker before the beginning of the fifteenth century devoted systematic, self-conscious, and sustained attention to the question of the dogmas of Judaism.

This chapter provides summaries for each of the chapters in this book. The first chapter traces the origins of the Noahide laws, which were considered obligatory for all time, and would be the measure by which gentiles would be judged. The next seven chapters examine each of the Noahide laws in detail, including the law of adjudication, the law of blasphemy, the law of idolatry, the law of homicide, the law of sexual relations, the law of robbery, and the law of the torn limb. After considering the role of aggadah in charting universal moral law, the book looks at Mamonides' and Joseph Albo's theory of Noahide law. It then explores several other prominent Jewish thinkers who reflected on the role of Noahide law, before studying Moses Mendelssohn and his school, as well as Hermann Cohen and the Jewish neo-Kantians.

This concluding chapter summarizes some of the main points discussed in the previous chapters. It then draws some conclusions. The chapter first turns to the question of heresy. When considering the theological debate within medieval Judaism against the canvas of medieval theological debate, the chapter reveals the absence of schisms and sects and by the absence of charges of heresy. It considers why that is so against the backdrop of the underlying question of what can be considered a principle of Judaism. Finally, the chapter turns to creation and the Messiah as part of the overall discussion on dogmas of Judaism.