Encyclopaedia of Judaism

Marc Lee Raphael describes the perilous situation of American Judaism in the nineteenth century. He notes that several challenges faced traditional belief—the scientific spirit, Ethical Culture, Spiritualism, and a general “indifference to all things Jewish.” He comments that “religious leaders respond in such times with doctrinal or creedal statements of their faith.” ⁶ American Reform Judaism articulated its credal platform as a constructive answer to the crisis it perceived. It defended its own institutional form as the most effective response to the dangers Judaism faced at the time. This impulse underlies several constructive movements in American Judaism. Again and again Jewish thinkers sought to meet the external challenge of the American environment by constructing an image of Judaism that justified and legitimated their way of being Jewish in America. Nineteenth century Reform thinkers like Isaac Meyer Wise, David Einhorn, and Kaufmann Kohler endeavored to produce a peculiarly American style of Judaism, that is, a “Minhag America.” Early twentieth century thinkers like Samuel S. Cohon, Jacob Zvi Lauterbach, and David Neumark continued in that tradition. Thinkers like Eugene Borowitz and Alvin J. Reines represent more contemporary variations on that theme.

Conservative Jewish thinkers also exemplify a constructive imaging of American Judaism in their own likeness. Solomon Schechter, the guiding hand directing the growth of Conservative Judaism in America, saw in his idea of “Catholic Israel,” a type of Jewish consciousness appropriate for the American setting. Other early Conservative leaders like Cyrus Adler and Israel Friedlander shaped the philosophy and theology of the movement while preserving diversity and pluralism. Still others such as Jacob Agus, Robert Gordis, and Simon Greenberg strengthened commitment to a pluralistic approach to theology. Recent thinkers such as Elliot Dorff, Yochanan Muffs, and Seymour Siegel have introduced into Conservative Jewish theological constructions current trends in modern thought. ⁷

Orthodox Judaism in America represents itself as the Torah-true embodiment Judaic tradition. Yet pluralism also makes inroads into it. Orthodoxy has had two types of thinkers: resisters and accommodators. In the latter category, Samuel Belkin, Norman Lamm, Joseph Lookstein, Emmanuel Rackman Joseph Baer Soloveitchik, and Walter S. Wurzburger struggle to make sense of being an Orthodox Jew in the American context. ⁸ J. David Bleich, by contrast, presents halakhic thinking within a moral framework that confronts contemporary issues of medical ethics, business morality, political practice, and other questions facing Jews today. He combines a critical rejection of liberal compromises mixed with a willingness to engage himself with modern American problems. Even while opposing many contemporary trends, Bleich insists that the Judaism he presents benefits all Americans and not just Jews. Orthodox Judaism in America, no less than Reform or Conservative, includes thinkers who construct a theology that contributes positively to the general religious culture.

Another constructive approach in American Jewish thinking has focused on the nature of God and on this nature's implications for Jewish belief and practice. One tension arising here has been between supernaturalists, like Arthur A. Cohen, and naturalists, like Mordecai M. Kaplan. This distinction is similar to that between the Deists and the revivalist preachers. Supernaturalists, like the revivalists, accuse rationalism of undermining true belief. Too great a concern with the evidence of reason and nature, they hold, leads to skepticism and a shallow faith. Naturalists, however, claim that faith has credibility and persuasive power only if built on the firm foundation of fact and logic. They argue that supernaturalism ignores the real life situations in which human beings operate, holding that an emphasis on transcendence necessarily suggests a lack of concern with daily affairs.

We should be clear, however, that this sharp dichotomy drawn by each side in the debate tends to misrepresent the nuances of the conflicting positions. Mordecai Kaplan, for example, has far greater regard for theological precision than a simple “naturalistic” approach might suggest, while Cohen demonstrates a concern for the historical Jewish people and its practical needs that a simple “supernaturalism” might find surprising. ⁹ With that caveat in mind, however, the distinction between naturalist and supernaturalist still helps place various thinkers into proper perspective. Milton Steinberg and Jakob J. Petuchowski differ on many issues, but their common use of the supernaturalist mode unites them. Levi Olan and Henry Slonimsky exemplify very different intellectual traditions, yet the naturalistic approach they share underlies each one's theological system.

Naturalists and supernaturalists alike, no matter how they differ, agree in emphasizing the theological idea of covenant . Covenant implies a reciprocal agreement between the divine and the human in which God and Jews share in responsibility for improving the world. Covenantal stipulations obligate Jews to further the divine plan in the world. Jews, according to this view, must play an active role in actualizing God's design for humanity. This notion provides the basis on which American Jewish thinkers reinterpret the traditional idea of Jewish chosenness. The Bible asserts that the Jews are God's chosen people. Traditional Jewish theology maintains the same claim. At least superficially, this special status contradicts the American value of democracy and equality. Can a “chosen people” see itself as “equal” with all other religions in America? While “covenant ” remains the key theological term, the problem it poses for American Jewish thinkers is that of “chosenness,” of singling out one group from among others. Jewish thinkers address this issue in various ways. ¹⁰ Mordecai Kaplan rejects the idea of chosenness entirely. Others reinterpret it to apply to a specialized “vocation.” Every religious group, according to that view, has its own divinely ordained task to perform, and Jews are “equal” to others not because they share the same tasks, but because all tasks are equally important.

Overall, Jewish theologians construct theories of Judaism for the several reasons we have enumerated: to support their institutional choices, to discover an appropriate balance between naturalism and supernaturalism, and to cope with the meaning of “covenant ” and “chosenness.” Jewish academics, no less than theologians, feel the impulse to construct an idea of Judaism. While historians of Jewish philosophy seem to devote themselves to objective scholarship alone, both the selectivity of their research and the impulses behind it show that they in fact share the same Judaic concerns and American orientation as the theologians. Jewish academics often explicitly intertwine scholarship and a commitment to creating a Judaism for the modern age. ¹¹ Some of these use the Kantian approach to philosophy as a basis on which to argue for Judaism's compatibility with rationality. They thus offer constructive visions of Judaism that meet the philosophical challenges of contemporary American thinking. Existentialism, Postmodernism, or process thought provide some Jews with the basis for a new construction of Judaism.

Some American Jewish thinkers approach Judaism against the grain, as it were, opposing rather than conforming to the trends of history. They resist the tide of current thinking and claim that just as brushing against the grain makes bristles stand out more clearly, so, too, acting against popular ideas makes the truth more clear. Arthur Waskow writes of “Godwrestling,” and the image is apt. ¹² Judaism, understood from this perspective, stands in contrast to American culture and struggles to shape it. Religion, on this reading, wrestles for its life against secular values. Will Herberg and Eliezer Berkovits take up a similar stance, although they interpret authentic Judaism differently. Another critical approach, exemplified by Emil Fackenheim, learns from the Nazi Holocaust the necessity of distrusting political bodies and elevates religious truth above social utility.

Other American Jewish philosophers also couch the encounter between Jerusalem and Athens as a contest rather than as a collaboration. Both Leo Strauss and David Novak argue that religious commitment goes beyond rational proof. The theologian begins with faith and will not concede primacy to philosophy and its methods. Novak, in particular, combines the two types of critical opposition. Contrasting the clarity of Jewish law, halakha, with the ineffectiveness of secular morality, he finds philosophy insufficient to supply Jews with a basis for Judaic living. ¹³

Some recent thinkers suggest the model of Postmodernism. They legitimize a pluralistic reading of Judaism that encourages diversity and champions the under represented, such as Jewish women. ¹⁴ To accomplish this, they focus on the diverse ways in which the textual sources of Judaism generate several distinct images of Jewish meaning. Earlier American Jewish scholars such as Max Ka-dushin and Simon Rawidowicz provide direct antecedents for this approach. The emphasis on the dynamic meanings of Judaism that characterized the work of these thinkers molded the postmodern approach of Jewish thinkers today.

Other influences as well helped shape contemporary Jewish thinking. Richard L. Rubenstein's reflections on the Nazi Holocaust led him to a theology in which God represents the Holy Nothing from which all comes and to which it returns. This mystical insight underlies much of his later psychological and sociological writings that, finally, propose an inclusive, postmodern view of religion. The mystical element surfaces in several other modern Jewish thinkers, such as Zalman Schacter-Shalomi and Arthur Green, who draw on the mystical tradition to authorize and legitimate their pluralistic reading of Judaism.

The mystical turn in contemporary Jewish thought represents only one element contributing to a postmodern outlook. Another impressive use of a postmodern inclusiveness as the basis for a vision of Judaism occurs in the writings of Jewish feminists. While Judith Plaskow offers a complete contemporary Jewish theology based on feminist images, others such as Judith Baskin, Lynn Davidman, Tamar Frankiel, Blu Greenberg, Riv-Ellen Prell, and Ellen Umansky have developed feminist Jewish visions of their own. These feminists offer a sometimes critical analysis of the Jewish past and a postmodern call for diversity in contemporary Judaism. Attention to suppressed voices leads to a responsive American Judaism built out of dialogue with others.

The nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers discussed in the following reflect the diversity of American Judaic thought. They are listed alphabetically rather than chronologically, since the major themes and concerns already adumbrated are consistent through both centuries. The key elements found in Ger-shom Sexias—an approach to civil religion, a reinterpretation of traditional Judaic beliefs and images, and a confrontation between Athens and Jerusalem—appear in the works of all of these thinkers. They struggle with the central questions of naturalism and supernaturalism, covenant and chosenness, reason and revelation, and the significance of historical events (in particular the Nazi Holocaust and the rebirth of a Jewish state). To gain a clear understanding of their positions requires that we also identify the type of thought or thinking they represent: Are they offering a construction of an American Judaism from an institutional standpoint, from the perspective of naturalism or supernaturalism, from a confrontation with the question of chosenness, or from an academic position? Are they critical or postmodern analysts of American Judaism? Do they describe Jewish religion as a corrective to secular society? Do they seek to inspire a greater diversity of Judaisms in America? These questions and issues shape the biographical descriptions which follow.

Agus has both studied the history of Jewish thought and philosophy and contributed to its modern manifestation. His approach celebrates the American philosophy that he thinks offers an insightful union of pragmatism and faith. His key idea is the essential polarity of all thought and experience. He sees this polarity in every aspect of Jewish religion, so that Judaism in his view creates a dialectic of faith and reason, of the God of experience and the God of rational thought, of the particularism of traditions and the universalism of the religious methods. His approach to Torah, the Jewish people, and to interfaith cooperation reflects this dialogic position.

The mission of Israel, according to Agus, must be to transform ethnicity into a universalistic dedication to ideals and values. Jews must “transmute” their nationalism into a “rededication” to the goals of “the Jewish spirit.” Agus thus affirms the God of Athens and the God of Jerusalem equally, embracing a dialogue with America's religions and rejecting a Jewish parochialism. He contends that Judaism affirms both poles of religiousness—particularism and universalism—and thereby contributes to American civil religion.

Agus' major writings are Guideposts in Modern Judaism: An Analysis of Current Trends in Jewish Thought (New York, 1954); The Meaning of Jewish History (New York, 1963); Dialogue and Tradition: The Challenges of Contemporary Judeo-Christian Thought (New York, 1971); The Jewish Quest: Essays on Basic Concepts of Jewish Theology (New York, 1983).

An articulate advocate for traditional Jewish thought in the United States, Berkovits might well deny that there is a specifically American aspect to his thinking. Still, he is keenly aware of his environment, presenting Judaism as a treasure house of biblical thinking and arguing that moderns need such a resource as they copes with a world devoid of spiritual guidance. As he perceives modernity, humanity faces a crisis of meaning and ethics. Historical events such as the Nazi Holocaust demonstrate the human potential for evil. Secular society creates an absence of values and a religious void. Human beings lack direction and significance in their lives. Berkovits offers Judaism as a solution to these problems, claiming that Judaism supplies valuable instruction not just for Jews but for all who seek meaning in an age marked by dilemmas of faith.

Berkovits shows a civil awareness that expands beyond the Orthodox Jewish audience he specifically addresses. He has participated in general discussions in such forums as the journal Shʾma, in which Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and secular Jews enter into dialogue. His willingness to engage the entire range of Jewish opinion in America and to address non-Jews as well allows him to join in the civil religious context of the United States.

Berkovits affirms traditional Jewish practice and faith. He offers a critical appraisal of liberal Judaism by reasserting the supernaturalism of the divine, the divine source of revelation, and the transcendent purpose of the Jewish people. While he continues the philosophical tradition that reconciles Athens and Jerusalem in a single theory, his synthesis is critical. His approach to theodicy illustrates this stance. Berkovits, even in his earliest books, seriously considers the implication of real evil for theology. He refuses to develop a “solution” to theodicy, since that defies the limits of human ability. Nevertheless, he does suggest that by overcoming challenges people learn important lessons. That humanity must struggle with a world not yet perfected permits that freedom of choice necessary for moral responsibility. He sees the Holocaust as just another catastrophe in Jewish history. It, no less than the other challenges Jews have faced in the past, offers opportunities for sanctifying God and proclaiming the holiness of the divine even in the midst of darkest suffering. Suffering is a critical challenge for human beings. Berkovits interprets moral, theological, and philosophical issues in this critical fashion.

Berkovits' major philosophical writings are God, Man and History: A Jewish Interpretation (Second Edition. Middle Village, 1965); Major Themes in Modern Philosophies of Judaism (New York: 1974); and Faith After the Holocaust (New York: 1973).

A faculty member at the Hebrew Union College's New York campus, Borowitz is an active theological leader in Reform Jewish thinking, who has developed his major ideas within the framework of the concept of covenant . As he sees it, covenant entails partnership: between the divine and the human, among competing cultural systems, and among human communities. On the basis of this idea of shared responsibility, Borowitz advocates moderating the tension between modernity and tradition, between Jews and other nations, between political involvement and personal development. He writes on ethical questions, theological issues, and the history of Jewish thought. He participates widely in the intellectual activities of contemporary Jewish life. He created and is now co-senior editor of a popular journal, Shʾma, that brings together Jewish thinkers from across the spectrum of Judaic theology and philosophy to discuss central issues of the day. He has engaged in dialogue with Christians and Buddhists as an expression of his view that “covenant ” includes dialogue with thought from many traditions. One of his first works concerned not merely Jewish religious thought but religious existentialism generally.

Borowitz develops his understanding of Jewish thought by struggling to reconcile the needs of modernity with an inherited tradition. He admits, without apology, that Jews today understand themselves and their traditions in terms and categories borrowed from the gentile world. Balancing traditions and influences from several sources illustrates what Borowitz calls “covenant .” By that phrase he implies a context for interaction and sharing, both between the divine and human and among human beings. This theological agenda animates every aspect of Borowitz's work. He sees himself as balancing the imperatives of the past against the commandments issuing from the present. He argues that the divine covenant with the Jews implies a struggle to balance the new and the old, the modern and the traditional, the parochial and the universal, and the individual and the social.

Borowitz recognizes the distinctive elements of the American environment and uses them to argue for dialogue, pluralism, and a responsive Judaism. He views that environment critically, noting a crisis of values, a conflict between concerns that in an earlier period had been seen as compatible. American Jews, he thinks, no longer know exactly who they are or what ideals they should uphold. Their dilemma, curiously, helps them in their search for a covenantal balance between inherited tradition and the immediate realities they meet in everyday life. Lacking absolute certainty, Jews today move haltingly between several alternatives. Jews, he thinks, have lost faith in Americanism as such, and he argues that this lack of faith may bring an unexpected return to Jewish roots. Jews also approach Judaic tradition with a fresh, challenging attitude, demanding to know the tradition that they affirm. Borowitz intimates a postmodern perspective by defining God as “the ground of our values.” That definition sees divinity as a point of departure, a stimulus to thought and imagination, not an entity to be categorized or defined. Like many postmoderns, as well, Borowitz generates ethical norms and practices by an interplay of texts, contexts, and traditions. Taken together, his various efforts create a coordinated program of constructing a faith-filled Judaism appropriate for Jews today. Thus Borowitz affirms Israel as the chosen people without abandoning the universalism of the age of reason and the Enlightenment.

The most important of his works are Choices in Modern Jewish Thought: A Partisan Guide (2nd ed., West Orange, 1995); Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew (Philadelphia, 1991); Exploring Jewish Ethics: Papers on Covenant Responsibility (Detroit, 1990); The Masks Jews Wear: The Self-Deceptions of American Jewry (Port Washington, 1980); and A Layman's Introduction to Religious Existentialism (Philadelphia, 1965).

A publisher, novelist, and theologian, Cohen often stood in opposition to the theological consensus of American Jews. His thought challenges the naturalistic theologies that modern thinkers claimed must succeed the supernaturalism of traditional Jewish thinking. In his books, he criticized the optimistic syncretism of American religiosity manifest in the conception of a “Judeo-Christian tradition,” arguing that an honest appraisal uncovers significant theological differences between Jews and Christians. Nevertheless, he recognized the relevance of Jewish religion for others, for instance confronting the theological challenge of the Nazi Holocaust in a slim but intense volume. He believed that the book offers “a theological language out of the calamity of Jewish historical existence which is not only relevant to Jews but to any other monotheist.” ¹⁵

This latter concern demonstrates that even Cohen recognizes the civil dimension of Judaism in the United States when it mobilizes moral and religious fervor to improve the quality of American spirituality. He calls upon Jews to renew their contact with the supernatural element in their tradition, because without it they lose sight of their mission and vocation. He argues that to believe in God means to believe that the world must be better than nature has made it. Jews must cultivate creative dissatisfaction in themselves and in others by pointing to a transcendent eschatological standard. The present, he argues, must be judged by how well it approximates the divine ideal.

Fully in tune with the pragmatic moralism of American thought, Cohen claims that God's failure to intervene intends to maintain human responsibility. God's agenda sets the human task, establishes the goals and purposes that surpass the natural givens of everyday life. God addresses each person intensely and individually. From that personal interaction not only the individual but the people of Israel as well learn the responsibilities and duties that God has established. Cohen's realistic assessment of contemporary America suggests that Jews and non-Jews alike have failed to live up to these duties. Depravity pervades the natural reality all believers confront. Cohen describes the task of both Jew and non-Jew today as struggling against that inherent evil surrounding everyone. Jews have experienced that evil directly in the Holocaust, but its poison pollutes all reality. In a post-Holocaust world, Cohen discerns a new meaning to Torah as prescriptive of the Jewish task and as a model for the non-Jew who shares the duty of preventing another outbreak of such radical evil.

His most extensive philosophical writings are The Tremendum: A Theological Interpretation of the Holocaust (New York, 1981); The Natural and Supernatural Jew: An Historical and Theological Introduction (2nd revised ed., New York, 1979); and The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (New York, 1970).

Born in Halle, Germany, Fackenheim fled the Nazi's, eventually to become a Reform rabbi in Canada. After completing high school in 1935, he had left Halle to study in Berlin, thinking he could find a solution to the question of history and philosophy that bothered him. When in 1983 he left North America to settle in Israel, he found in that migration a culmination and completion of his search. His essays and philosophical works reflect his experiences and chart his religious quest. The earliest ones exhibit a philosophical intent and form. They do not mention Judaism explicitly even though they focus on such theological issues as the problem of faith and reason, of history and experience in contrast to thought and idealism. His subsequent books, more self-consciously Judaic in content and purpose, investigate the intersection of Athens and Jerusalem. Fackenheim affirms both, being unwilling to settle for either alone. This philosophical emphasis also shapes what has been Fackenheim's most influential reflections, on the significance of the Nazi Holocaust.

Fackenheim confronts Judaism with the major philosophical options in modern thought. The biblical stories of Elijah respond to the positivist critique of religion. Hegel's historical consciousness would seem to leave Judaism as a relic of a now transcended stage. Fackenheim seeks to preserve the best of Hegel without undermining the heritage of Moses, by showing philosophical alternatives beyond those Hegel imagined. Both Kant and Kierkegaard, he explains in several places, misunderstood the biblical story of Abraham, depicting an erroneous dichotomy between self-legislation and religious legislation and thereby mistaking the possibility of a morally responsible self-sacrifice. Fackenheim adds, however, that in a post-Holocaust world the self-sacrifice of a martyr becomes a moral abomination. He believes that the kingdom of God in the post-Holocaust world must be built by a humanity sensitive to social and political realities. He envisions that humanity tutored by a Jewish people ready to shoulder its cosmic burden, and by a true universalism. Fackenheim notes that it is from Jerusalem, not Athens, that humanity learns the need to transcend the parochial. The lessons of the Nazi Holocaust are meant not just for Jews but for all people. As Judaism has taught humanity to cherish the universal values, so it now teaches them to secure those ideas by political power.

Fackenheim's many works span several genre. Not only did he produce theological books and philosophical studies but also introductory texts meant for both adult and adolescent audiences. Among these are Metaphysics and Historicity (Milwaukee, 1961); Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought (New York, 1980); God's Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (New York, 1972); The Jewish Return into History: Reflections in the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem (New York, 1978); To Mend The World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (New York, 1982); Quest For Past and Future: Essays in Jewish Theology (Bloomington, 1968); What is Judaism? An Interpretation for the Present Day (New York, 1987). His many writings have been anthologized in Michael L. Morgan, ed., The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim: A Reader (Detroit, 1987), and have occasioned scholarly discussion in Leonard Greenspan and G. Nicholson, eds., Fackenheim: German Idealism and Jewish Thought (Toronto, 1992).

While his writings move from a radical Marxism to an equally radical conservatism, Will Herberg's thought exhibits several themes that remain constant throughout. Herberg shows a continual suspicion of the American way of life. He acknowledges it as the best possible secular ideology but also regards it as a danger to true faith. He maintains an insistence on the particularity and uniqueness of Jewish identity united with a demand for a universally valid moral code. Herberg places both Judaism and Christianity together as “biblical religions” in opposition to the civil religiousness of American democracy. He charges that the latter attempts to co-opt the former for idolatrous purposes. American religion, in his analysis, seeks to legitimate “all religion”—by which it means Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism—as extensions of the economic and political concerns of the United States. Herberg considers this encroachment by civil religion on the particular religions dangerous. Religion, he claims, is ambiguous by nature. It provides comfort and spiritual sustenance, but it also challenges and criticizes its adherents. What Herberg calls “The American Way of Life” cannot do this, he believes, because it is too limited and narrow in scope. He opposes reducing Judaism or Christianity to a limited function subservient to American requirements of civility.

Not only is civil religion too narrow in focus, it also lacks the moral force of biblical religion. Herberg's approach to the conflict between Jerusalem and Athens focuses on the difference between the Abrahamic God of history and the Hellenic divine force. The personal God of Abraham, Herberg argues, works through holy history to create peoples obligated to fulfill the divine will. This divinity requires a decision for a faith that comes from beyond abstract reason as used by Greek philosophy and science, because it insists on this free responsibility. The Judaic approach, which he contrasts with “Greco-Oriental” spirituality, focuses on the divine will and the human obligations that flow from it. The contrast between Athens and Jerusalem becomes for Herberg the conflict between a salvation based on private, individual concerns and a redemption that emphasizes the reality of a corporate historical existence.

Herberg recognizes that American civil religion affirms the type of saving history that biblical tradition espouses. In itself he does not see American civil belief, “the American Way of Life,” as necessarily idolatrous or evil. Herberg identifies an Americanized vision of Judaism and Christianity that blunts spirituality and converts the divine itself into an idol. From this perspective Herberg celebrates Judaic faith and practice as a religious corrective to secularity.

Herberg expresses his philosophical and theological commitments in the following works: Bernhard Anderson, ed., Faith Enacted as History: Essays in Biblical Theology (Philadelphia, 1976); Judaism and Modern Man: An Interpretation of Jewish Religion (New York, 1951); Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, 1960). His work receives detailed analysis in Harry J. Ausmus, Will Her-berg: From Right to Right (Chapel Hill, 1987).

Recognized for his genius as a “translator of the Spirit,” who transmutes traditional Jewish ideas into an American idiom, Heschel has been described as quintessentially American. ¹⁶ His work emerges from his feeling that Judaism is the “most misunderstood” of all religious traditions. Viewing Judaism as a dead religion, a relic of the past, Christians, on the one hand, both do Judaism an injustice and rob themselves of the benefit of its teachings. But Jews, on the other hand, equally misunderstand their tradition, focusing only on its parochial nature, on its ethnic component, so as to miss the universal relevance of its teachings. To rectify these misunderstandings, Heschel emphasizes a politics of piety and nostalgia that look to the Jewish past—to the Bible and to Polish Hasidism—to provide answers to American civil and religious problems. He creates a religious poetics of language in order to evoke the realities of God, Torah, and the Jewish people for a generation estranged from its roots.

Understanding Judaism correctly, Heschel insists, entails recognizing the difference between the Hellenic approach to reality and the Hebraic, the distinction between Athens and Jerusalem. Whereas the Greeks studied the world in order to understand it and moderns investigate reality in order to exploit it, biblical thinkers appreciated the world to enhance the reverence they felt toward it. By placing an awareness of the divine at the frontiers of the mind, Heschel seeks to recapture that experience of wonder and reverence. Religion, he thinks, arises at the point at which reason loses its ability to function. It suggests that reality spills over the boundaries of rationality. His language evokes the divine that stands beyond the mystery, that awaits every person on the other side of utilitarian and pragmatic thinking.

Heschel champions Hebraic thought generally and Jewish thought in particular as the contribution of Judaism to humanity as a whole. This universalistic perspective transforms the traditional Jewish self-understanding of “the chosen people.” For Heschel, being chosen means having a mission to teach others the basic values of religious life. For him, these values spring from the generally human experience of the divine that lies on the other side of rationality, beyond the purview of Greek rationalism. Jews, Heschel thinks, must help all Americans regain a sensitivity to the Hebraic insights about the divine and help free them from the stultifying Greek rationalism.

Heschel presents this theology as applicable to every sensitive person. Although his books draw heavily on Jewish sources, he refuses to call his writing Jewish theology. Instead, he calls it “depth-theology.” “Theology,” he argues, focuses on the surface of religion—the external signs and practices that set one faith apart from another. It describes differences between traditions and addresses insiders within a specific religious group. “Depth-theology,” by contrast, evokes the common experience shared by all human beings. It raises the existential questions that every person asks of life. Heschel's depth theology certainly exhibits the distinctive qualities of a Jewish theology. It uses the resources of the Torah and other Judaic texts, but Heschel contends that these become vehicles for guiding all people to general religious insight. From Torah he seeks to glean more than an explication of Judaism; he desires instruction that will comfort all people living in the tormented society of modernity.

To achieve this goal, Heschel moves beyond the narrow scope of philosophical questions. He applies Jewish teaching to the central civil issues of his day. In one of his most striking moves, he designates the “Negro crisis” as “God's gift to America.” By this phrase, he means that America has been blessed by an obvious symptom of its racism. The very explosiveness of the crisis makes it easier to confront. On the basis of Jewish experience, Judaic texts, and the teachings of Jewish leaders, Heschel redefines a social “emergency” as an opportunity, as a moment in which spiritual values can “emerge.” This transformation of a social problem into a chance to develop positive responses characterizes Heschel's approach to civil questions. He analyzes the problems American society has coping with its elderly, the political questions arising from America's involvement in Southeast Asia, the dilemmas of conscience associated with Jewish concerns about religious freedom in the Soviet Union and with the survival of the modern State of Israel.

Heschel's major works are A Passion For Truth (New York, 1973); God In Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York, 1966); Israel: An Echo of Eternity (New York, 1967); Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York, 1951); Man's Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (New York, 1954); The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York, 1967); The Prophets (Philadelphia, 1962). His writings have been anthologized in Fritz A. Rothschild, ed., Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (New York, 1959; revised, 1976); and in Jacob Neusner and Noam Neusner, eds., To Grow In Wisdom (Lanham, 1990).

Kadushin's approach to Rabbinic Judaism and the theology he derived from that approach influenced a generation of Conservative Jewish rabbis and scholars. Not widely known during his lifetime, his work has become more popular in a postmodern age. He has pointed to a way in which exegesis and interpretation can be used to understand theology and religious ideas. He finds in these methods an organic Judaic system that rivals the philosophic approaches of the Greek thinkers. This judgment relies on Kadushin's familiarity with classical philosophy. As someone trained in Greek thought, he felt that the Hellenic legacy in medieval Judaic thinking intruded as a foreign element and therefore condemned those medieval philosophers for departing from the inherent characteristics of Jewish religion.

Kadushin thought that the difference between organic Jewish thought and Hellenic philosophy lay in the approach each took to written texts. He identified this difference as one between the scientific method of dissection and self-distancing, on the one hand, and that of synthesis and engagement on the other. Athens and Jerusalem denote two ways of looking at texts, and Kadushin not only chose Jerusalem but devoted his writings to expounding the correct method for understanding the Judaic approach.

For postmoderns, Kadushin's locating of God's presence in Jewish worship has become extremely persuasive. Worship is more than just a collection of words. The words recited and the actions performed, Kadushin teaches, create moments in which the divine and human meet. He characterizes the basic element in Jewish prayer, the berakha, as a creative use of language. Through prayer, the worshiper comes into immediate relationship with the divine and feels God's presence experientially. Kadushin extended this insight about Jewish prayer into his understanding of the Torah as a whole. His hermeneutic reads texts as clusters of “value-concepts.” Taken together the prayers convey ethical teachings about the importance of thankfulness, the value of the created world, and the significance of other people. Kadushin followed a procedure that today might be called “intertextual,” analyzing clusters of words and concepts independently of the specific contexts in which they occurred. In this way, he evoked the organic structure behind Rabbinic writings as whole. This approach enabled him to show how aspects of Jewish thought that might appear chauvinistic or parochial were actually part of a universalist orientation. In particular, he elevated the idea of the “righteous gentile” to a position of prominence in Rabbinic thought. This openness to non-Jews makes Kadushin's view of Jewish chosenness acceptable within the egalitarian context of life in the United States. Israel's task in the world then, as defined by Kadushin, is fully compatible with the American democratic ideal.

Kadushin's major works are Organic Thinking: A Study in Rabbinic Thought (New York, 1938); The Rabbinic Mind (New York, 1951; second edition, 1965); and Worship and Ethics: A Study in Rabbinic Judaism (Evanston, 1964). A useful collection of studies on his work and its influence is Peter Ochs, ed., Understanding the Rabbinic Mind: Essays on the Hermeneutic of Max Kadushin (Atlanta, 1990).

Kaplan's complete and impressive rethinking of Judaism continues to show new facets of meaning even in the contemporary Jewish context. By translating the Judaic tradition into pragmatic language, so that the elements of God, Torah, and Israel have significance in the modern context, he aimed not so much at creating an American Judaism as at providing American Jews with a persuasive rationale for remaining Jewish. He did this by making Jewish theological symbols vehicles for transmitting current philosophical meaning.

The idea of God, for Kaplan, represents a function, not a content. The idea of divinity, that is, refers to the common experience of discovering in the natural world unexpected support for human ideals and values. Expressing belief in God, on this reading, means affirming the surprise people feel when their highest concerns seem validated by “impersonal” nature. The word God thus signifies a response people have to the world, not an entity within the world. This view clearly rejects a supernaturalism, in which God is a super-human being who intervenes in the human sphere, just as a parent intervenes in a child's world. Kaplan's God is not a separate being who acts analogously to human beings, only in a more miraculous way, more powerfully and more perfectly than natural creatures can. Yet, while rejecting supernaturalism, Kaplan also refuses to call himself a naturalist. This is because his theology uses natural experience only as data pointing to something that transcends any single datum. He refers to his view instead as “transnaturalism,” for it suggests that natural experience encounters a process that supports human development in a manner in which naturalistic analysis alone cannot allow.

Just as God refers to an experience associated with the process of self-development, so Torah refers to an experience associated with the process of assigning meaning to texts. Here again, Kaplan in the 1930s and 1940s anticipated the postmodern philosophies of the 1980s and 1990s. He sees Torah as texts awaiting meaning and understands “revelation” to comprise the effect of these texts on a community. When a community finds in certain written works the possibility of affirming and transcending its specific cultural context, then those works are to be recognized as “revealed.” When Kaplan encourages loyalty to Torah, he refers to the process of using Jewish particularity as expressed in classical texts to address universal issues and general human concerns.

This understanding of Torah influences Kaplan's rather controversial view of Jewish identity. Although an avid Zionist, Kaplan rejected the theological concept of Jewish chosenness (this rejection may have led to his growing estrangement from Max Kadushin, who affirmed the idea). Kaplan hoped that the Jewish people would construct a transnational community that would model the democratic vision of participatory government. He looked to this potential as the major contribution that Jews could make to a confused modern society. This democracy in action was not a “justification” for Jewish survival—Jews he felt had the same right to survive as all other human communities. Instead he argued that the Jewish idea of covenant could offer a typology of communal democracy that would affirm individual freedom while encouraging group loyalty.

Kaplan's most influential work is Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction of American-Jewish Life (New York, 1967). Other important writings among his numerous publications are A New Zionism (second enlarged edition, New York, 1959); Judaism Without Supernaturalism: The Only Alternative to Orthodoxy and Secularism (New York, 1958); Questions Jews Ask: Reconstructionist Answers (New York, 1956); The Future of the American Jew (New York, 1967); and The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (New York, 1962). A useful study of his thought is S. Daniel Breslauer, Mordecai Kaplan's Thought in a Postmodern Age (Atlanta, 1994).

While serving as rabbi of Temple Beth El in New York City, Kohler crafted the seminal statement of Reform Judaism referred to as the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885. As revealed in his platform, Kohler's thinking represented what has come to be referred to as classical Reform theology, emphasizing rationalism and ethics, both of which were prominent in American philosophy. Judaism, in Kohler's view, exemplified the ideal ethical monotheism . Its beliefs, practices, and above all ability to evolve and change marked it in his eyes as perfectly suited to the modern temperament. To maintain this position, he interpreted the various classical texts of the Jewish tradition as a philosophical rationalism. This required him to transform the historical and ritual aspects of Jewish experience into intellectual categories. In doing this, he neglected—and rejected—both the mystical elements in Judaism and the sociological sense of peoplehood advocated by European Jewish thinkers of his time. As later twentieth-century Jewish theologians increasingly turned to both mysticism and peoplehood as dominant, if alternative, ways of understanding Judaism, Kohler's formulation became marginalized.

In its nineteenth-century context, Kohler's Judaism had a great relevance and importance. His construction of Jewish religion was suited to the American Protestantism of his day, resembling the interpretation of Christianity offered by advocates of the Social Gospel, for instance, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), who proclaimed an ethical Christianity. Yet while many Christian theologians advocated an ethical philosophy, Kohler ignored their views and, in his defense of Judaism, branded all Christianity as a fundamentalistic irrationalism. This misrepresentation of Christian thought suggests the problem that Kohler faced. He wished to legitimize Judaism by pointing out a unique Judaic message that contributed an indispensable legacy to all humanity. He identified that message with rational ethics and so argued that, if Christian theologians had learned this lesson at all, they did so from Judaic, not Christian, sources.

Kohler interpreted the Jewish view of God in ethical terms. God's unity provided the basis on which humanity could develop a self-consciousness of its unity with all creation. Declaring the unity of God, for Kohler, affirms more than an abstract theory; instead, it gives expression to an experience of the interconnection of all things.

Rather than rejecting biblical miracles as supernaturalistic and irrational, Kohler insists that they function pedagogically. The miracles reported in the Bible, he argues, are merely external symbols of the one great miracle—the cosmic order. They draw attention to the rational purpose that animates creation. That recognition of order, he claims, is indispensable for ethics, for without the assurance of predictability and order, it would be impossible to practice the right and avoid immorality. Stories about miracles thus contribute to morality by reminding people of the ordered pattern which permeates reality.

The Torah, in Kohler's view, also serves a moral purpose by providing detailed instruction on how to live an ethical and moral life. Combining law and doctrine, the teachings of priest and prophet alike, its stimulates the highest virtues in every person. Kohler charts an evolution in the Bible from primitive symbols that perform this function to more elevated one. At one time, he thinks, the practice of circumcision taught people the self-discipline they needed to live morally. Later, he explains, the Sabbath with its regulations fulfills the same purpose, but on a higher level. Torah links human beings with the infinite divinity; it ennobles individuals so they can elevate the world as a whole. Judaism, as expressed in the Torah as Kohler reads it, thus is a programmatic battle against injustice and falsehood, aiming to “hallow every pursuit and endeavor.”

That interpretation of Torah expresses Kohler's view of the purpose of the Jews as a chosen people. Jews are selected, Kohler thinks, to teach humanity the ethical truths essential for an ideal society. Kohler focuses on the “messianic age” that Jews are to establish rather than on a “messiah ” who will inaugurate that age. He does this because he sees the Jewish task as one of active social amelioration. To be a Jew, he thinks, is “to be the messenger and champion of religious truth.” The Jewish mission is not to bring a messiah , but rather to teach humanity how to institute a moral system of loving teachings. Kohler thinks that Jews today must conduct this mission in a more pluralistic fashion. While Judaism has indeed progressed from nationalism to universalism, he thinks it needs to take one further step. Jews should now recognize the validity of all ethical religions. While Kohler explicitly criticizes Christianity as a flawed faith, he applauds Christians when they include ethical monotheism within that faith. Jews, he thinks, should accept the fact that different groups call their ethical teachings by different names. When Jews discover that American Christians actually practice a type of Judaism, they can accept American pluralism as part of their own religious mission. This final step in the evolution of Judaism reflects Kohler's acceptance of the modern temperament, of the Jew's place in American society, and of the importance of pluralism in a democratic society.

Kohler's major theological work has been reprinted recently with an excellent introduction by Joseph C. Blau, in Kohler, Kaufmann, Jewish Theology: Systematically and Historically Considered (New York, 1968, reprint of 1918 edition).

An ordained Conservative rabbi who has written pioneering books and articles, Plaskow offers what has been called “the first major attempt to provide a coherent vision of Judaism that incorporates women's experiences.” ¹⁷ Indeed, Plaskow makes sensitivity to the spirituality of women the cornerstone of her thinking, perceiving all elements of Jewish theology through that prism.

A view of the divine, for Plaskow, shapes society; it offers the models used in judging human behavior and in evaluating the world in which people live. Jewish sources have provided some useful images that people today can reappropriate: the Shekinah (God's female aspect) and Lilith (an often maligned spirit who figures in medieval Jewish writings as a demon who refuses to accept the male power establishment).

These images, she thinks, enable contemporary Jews to use theology effectively. She argues for this because she thinks theology provides metaphors by which human beings understand themselves. With this is mind, she demands that a view of God must enable all human beings to discover their individual identity, and, therefore, she judges theology by the inclusiveness of its images. Traditional views of divinity silenced many members of the believing community, of which the silencing of women is only one example. A more suitable divine image must give voice to the formerly silenced ones.

Just as she views God as an expressive category rather than as an active, intervening being, so Plaskow defines Torah as a vehicle of memory, shaping the past in the perspective of the present. She recognizes that the texts that traditionally provided the vehicle for reshaping memory are embedded in male presuppositions. One cannot indulge in traditional exegesis, since the texts privilege the male reader. Despite this problem, Plaskow discovers ways of envisioning biblical ideas that transcend their male bias. She suggests a revolutionary alternative: transform texts from history, midrash, or liturgy into “living memories.” The text dissolves into a pretext for an act of present being. It presents an occasion on which remembering transcends reading, on which response transcends obedience.

The biblical idea of Jews as the “chosen people,” for example seems imbedded in a hierarchical system. God apparently selects one group among many for special favor. Plaskow rejects this idea as a negative influence on human life. Traditional views of the chosen people, she declares, have created hostile dichotomies—Israelis against Palestinians; Eastern European Jews against Oriental Jews; and, perhaps most crucial of all, male Jews against female Jews. She argues, however, that Jews today can see themselves as part of a group called together in egalitarian unity. Chosenness need not mean being selected to be better than others but being open to sharing a community with others. Chosenness as the idea of inclusion, as an impulse to join with others, has a more positive meaning. Jews are “chosen” in the sense that they illustrate the basic human need for companionship, for social cohesion, and for equality. In this way a biblical concept rooted in divisiveness becomes the basis for a more universalistic and inclusive paradigm.

Plaskow complains that traditional Judaism places too great an emphasis on submission to authority. When Jewish women seek spirituality, they are told, she charges, to obey more rules, to learn more legal precepts. Jewish women may, in this way, repair the broken modern world in the process of repairing a traditional Judaism crippled under this burden of Jewish law. By articulating their Jewishness against the grain of tradition, Jewish women fulfill an important general mission—they testify to the need for revolution and change. Sexuality, redeemed in feminist Judaism, becomes less an obstacle requiring legal redress and more a source of personal power and expression. Jewish feminists show how human beings share the divine power of creation, how they actualize their partnership in creativity.

Plaskow's major work is Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco, 1990).

Rawidowicz spent only nine of his 61 years in the United States, and many of his publications still are accessible only in Hebrew. Nevertheless as one of the architects of Brandeis University, he has exercised considerable influence on American Jewish thinking. Rawidowicz's contribution was to examine Jewish thinking as an act of “interpretation.” It provides the means by which “thought” becomes established among the Jews and thus is a key to the survival of the Jewish people. Jewish thought provides a synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem, which Rawidowicz traces from Rabbinic times through the present day.

God, in this perspective, represents the ideal model of learning and interpretation. The divine is a dynamic principle which Rawidowicz, like Maimonides, as Rawidowicz interprets him, locates in the human being. This view anticipates postmodern intuitions of reality. There is no fixed order, no escape from contingent accidents of being. The divine finds its “permanence,” as it were, in the very transient incarnation of human beings.

Rawidowicz reads Jewish texts to discover the same impulse to growth, change, and development that God models. “Interpretation” means more for him than just the eternal and essential aspect of Judaism. It is also the key to its texts. Rawidowicz rejects the static compilation of Torah that even as exalted a poet as Hayim Nahman Bialik created in his Sefer Ha-Aggadah. ¹⁸ Bialik reinterpreted traditional material in radical ways. His poetry evoked new meanings from biblical, talmudic, and medieval Jewish sources. Yet as an anthologist, Bialik pared down the tradition to meet narrow specifications, inventing set categories under which to organize the vast material he found. Rawidowicz considered such an approach antithetical to the Jewish spirit, limiting rather than expanding the potential meanings of the texts. Therefore he calls Bialik's desire for such an anthology and his exaltation of Jewish lore a “protest against poetry.” Poetry requires anxiety, readiness for change, movement. Removing poetry from Torah, Rawidowicz contends, sacrifices the dynamic spirit of Judaism for the fixed content that spirit manifested during only one historical period. He advocated the “poetic” approach of continually changing the content of Judaism through radical interpretations. Such readiness to develop Jewish religion might alter its “meaning” but, he thought, would remain faithful to its spirit.

The same impulse to look to the spirit and not to a fixed content led Rawidowicz to reject the thinking of Zionists who divided Jews into diverse camps. There is but one “Israel,” he contended, not a “diaspora” Judaism on the periphery and a “Zionist” Judaism at the center. The task of the modern Jew is to create a community in which scholars and community members work together to revive a dynamic Judaism. The legacy of the Nazi Holocaust is for Rawidowicz a call for a reborn Jewish learning. Jewish scholars, whose isolation, he insists, is thrust upon them and not freely chosen, require a cooperative community in which creative thinking can take place. Here Rawidowicz synthesizes Athens and Jerusalem into a universal academy for human learning. Not coincidentally, Brandeis University became, at least in his eyes as chair of the Graduate Department of Judaic Studies from its inauguration in 1953, just such a common ground of study.

His writings have been collected in Simon Rawidowicz, Studies in Jewish Thought (Philadelphia, 1974), which includes a foreword by Abram L. Sachar, a Biographical Introduction by Benjamin C.I. Ravid, and an editorial postscript by Nahum Glatzer; and in Benjamin C.I. Ravid, ed., Israel, The Ever-Dying People, and Other Essays (Rutherford, 1986).

Rubenstein has created an impressive corpus ranging from theological investigations to sociological studies. While his thought has developed and taken unexpected turns, it remains consistent in its theological elements. Indeed, after thirty years, he was able to produce a second edition of his After Auschwitz Zionism with only minor alterations.

Rubenstein translates Mordecai Kaplan's naturalism into a postmodern idiom. His view of the divine parallels that of the ancient Jewish mystics—God is the wholly Other from whom all things come and into which they are eventually reabsorbed. This divinity, like Kaplan's, does not intervene in human life, but rather provides the dynamic model for that life. Unlike Kaplan, however, Rubenstein, conditioned by the experience of the Nazi Holocaust in a way Kaplan was not, proposes a more pessimistic model. God symbolizes the varied possibilities of life, life's inevitable cycle of eternal return, but not an advance or progress toward ever higher human values. God stands for those limitations that, if confronted by a naive humanity, lead to despair. Recognizing the divine as a metaphor for inevitable human failure helps prepare modern Jews for the test of a world in which morality depends only on power.

This theology also underlies Rubenstein's idea of Torah. The ancient rabbis, he holds, practiced a type of disguised psychotherapy. Their tales and interpretations of Torah exposed Jews to their darkest inclinations and provided them with “self-perspective if not self-knowledge.” Thus, even in grotesqueness, they provided a path to mental health. Rubenstein finds in the Jewish heritage anticipations of modern predicaments and measures, that in their time enabled Jews to cope with those challenges. Modern Jews, for the most part, he contends, can no longer accept the premises of the ancient texts. The naive assumptions no longer command respect and so the palliatives they offered no longer fulfill their original function. The Torah testifies to a truth that still endures, but it responds to that truth in ways that fail to achieve their purposes.

Rubenstein admits that some Jews today can still generate the mythic power of Torah and use it to fulfill their needs. The lessons of the Nazi Holocaust and its contemporary successors in this “age of triage,” however, have taught most Jews to view the world more darkly and realistically. Rubenstein offers interpretations of the barbarity of modernity. He sees the event of Auschwitz, the sociology of modern mass destruction, and the psychology of religion as keys to understanding modern life. This idea underlies his defense of the modern State of Israel's military self-reliance and his view of the necessity for Jewish survival of the “tribalism” explicit in the idea of the “chosen people.” Rubenstein not only naturalizes Jewish theology, but he makes that naturalization a model for all nations. From Auschwitz he derives a more realistic appraisal of how religion and politics intersect and reinforce one another. He regards this lesson as a harbinger of a future which will transcend traditional Judaic religiousness.

Rubenstein's presentation of these ideas makes his philosophy the touchstone against which other philosophies measure themselves. ¹⁹ His most important works are After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism (Baltimore, 1992 [2nd ed.; first edition 1966]); The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Over-Crowded World (Boston, 1983); The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future (New York, 1978); Morality and Eros (New York, 1970); and The Religious Imagination: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Jewish Theology (Indianapolis, 1968).

For over forty years Rabbi Soloveitchik (sometimes called “the Rav,” that is, the teacher, par excellence) lectured to American audiences speaking in Hebrew and Yiddish. He articulated a theology of Judaism based on the halakhic resources of the tradition but responding to the existential predicament of the modern Orthodox Jew. His thought developed philosophical ideas derived from Emmanuel Kant or neo-Kantians such as Hermann Cohen and from existentialists such as Soren Kierkegaard. He integrated this philosophical material with the Jewish legal corpus, using it as both an inspiration and as illustrative content for his writings. Despite his clear recognition of human irrationality, his rigorous thinking and intellectual proclivities identify him with the rationalist opponents of mysticism.

Soloveitchik generates several “ideal types” or typologies of religious experience. These imply that different temperaments or stages of development shape ways in which human beings interact with the divine. Drawing on the double account of the creation of human beings found in Genesis 1-4, Soloveitchik claims that the Bible presents two models of human personality, which he designates as “Adam I” and “Adam II.” The first experiences partnership with the divinity through shared creativity. God sets humanity to work on perfecting the world, on mastering it and improving it. The second type of human recognizes the lonely isolation arising from the cosmic task. This “lonely man of faith” seeks redemption through God, through submission to the divine master. This type of religious person discovers a covenantal relationship with God that reassures the anxious self of its importance and worth.

Soloveitchik insists that both Adam I and Adam II are essential aspects of any religious life. Each person should combine elements from both types. Another of his dichotomous ideal types presents the same dilemma differently by speaking of halakhic and existential piety. These contrasting forms of religiousness can be identified too easily and imprecisely with the rational approach of Jewish legalism and the mystical approach of movements such as Polish Hasidism. Seen that way, Soloveitchik's thought may appear as an attempt to reconcile the divergent elements in his own personal biographical journey. A different approach sees these as models by which those engaged in traditional Jewish learning, who also confront a confusing modern predicament, learn to see themselves. Soloveitchik, on this reading, provides an existential hermeneutic by which to place oneself in the process of halakhic decision-making, in the on-going study of traditional Torah.

Soloveitchik offers these models to Jews caught between a commitment to Orthodox Jewish tradition and the modern American situation, addressing himself to the perplexed within his American audience. This audience helps explain why his typology is general rather than specific and why despite the universalism of his theory he still takes pains to distinguish between a Judaic and a Christian type of religiousness. The question facing him is how modern Orthodox Jews discover their humanity through Judaism and how their Judaism expresses their human situation. Soloveitchik does not need to justify Judaism as a mode of human living. He merely needs to show those for whom Judaism is the only alternative how it serves to illuminate their humanity.

Among his important writings are Be-Sod Ha-Yahid veha-Yahad (Jerusalem, 1978); Halakhic Man (Philadelphia, 1983); The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought (New York, 1986). A useful study of his thought is given by Aaron Lichtenstein, “Joseph Soloveitchik,” in Simon Noveck, ed., Great Jewish Thinkers of the Twentieth Century (Washington, 1963), pp. 281-297.

Strauss influenced a generation of scholars in political philosophy, constructing out of the legacy of the ancient thinkers—Plato, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, a philosophy of Judaism for a post Holocaust generation. His own intellectual journey took him from the existentialist philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, in whose Frankfurt Lehrhaus he studied, back through early modern thinkers such as Baruch Spinoza, Nicolo Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes, to the ancients, Plato, Maimonides, and Halevi. His experience of antisemitism and Nazi murder of Jews played a crucial role in this intellectual development. He abandoned the modernist enterprise after discovering the catastrophes to which it led.

In the United States, he addressed a varied audience including students at the Hillel Foundation at the University of Chicago, Jewish intellectuals, and philosophers. Although couching his call differently to each group, Strauss' choice to return to the medievals and the Judaism of Moses Maimonides remains a focal point. He continually reiterates the superiority of the ancients to the moderns, in general, and to modern liberalism in particular. This attack on liberalism stimulates continuing controversy. Yet many who may disagree with Strauss' apparent conclusions often agree with his insight that careful writing requires careful reading.

His decision to reject existentialism derives from his belief that it “solves” the conflict between faith and reason too easily. It avoids confronting the issue rather than forcing a clear choice between the two alternatives. Strauss claims that no reconciliation can unite the biblical God of Judaism to the divinity discovered by the natural theology of the philosophers. The philosophers seek to know God's nature. Yet God's omnipotence means that no one can know the divine essence. That Spinoza sought to reveal that essence shows, for Strauss, that he stands with Athens and not Jerusalem. Medievals like Maimonides, he claims, were too perceptive to believe that the categories of being Jewish and being a philosopher were anything other than mutually exclusive. Announcing this axiom, Strauss urges a decision on modern Jews. They must either relinquish an imperialistic philosophy that tries to know all things or else be caught outside of Jerusalem.

Those inside Jerusalem have abandoned the task of choosing. They have affirmed unquestionably that which the authority of the past provides. Strauss emphasizes the irrational nature of Torah as a guide and teacher. To follow Torah means to forego the process of testing Torah truths against some putatively higher standard. It means recognizing that revelation provides “authoritative disclosure” in itself. Strauss recalls how the thought and person of Franz Rosenzweig attracted him to an existential commitment to a renewed Jewish life. Strauss, however, follows this thinking more radically than his mentor. It leads him first to a Zionist affirmation of the Jewish people and then to an acknowledgment that Zionism, correctly understood, should reinforce a completely Orthodox way of living. If Zionism tests the Jew's attachment to the Jewish people and its faith, then the test of Zionism itself lies in the authenticity of its adherence to Orthodox tradition.

At the heart of this argument lies Strauss' recognition that religion plays a political role in the creation of human communities. The idea of God, with its idea of an omnipotent power, enables a community to justify its politics, art, science, and laws. Divine dispensation, through religion, transforms these aspects of the civil order from arbitrary devices for social control into expressions of a natural pattern inherent in the world. Medieval Jewish philosophers, and one might guess Strauss himself, portray Jews as ideal citizens. They so describe them to tame the potentially dangerous impulses of individuals for the social good. By privatizing philosophy, by naturalizing civil law, and by socializing art, human beings express their most antisocial instincts in socially responsible ways. The purpose of the Jew as civil being would seem to reside in this exemplary function.

Strauss expresses his views about Jewish philosophy most clearly in Hilail Gildin, ed., An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss (Detroit, 1989); Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 1952); and Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors (Philadelphia, 1987). The controversy surrounding his thinking becomes clear by comparing two works devoted to his thought: Shadia B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York, 1988) and Kenneth Hart Green, Jew and Philosopher: The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss (Albany, 1993).

Wolfson may not seem at first glance an original Judaic thinker, for his reputation is built on scholarly analysis of medieval Jewish thought. Nevertheless in several essays Wolfson demonstrates that he exemplifies creative American Judaic thought. When understood through the prism of Wolfson's life, these more popular essays offer insight on Wolfson's academic approach. Both types of work reveal an effort to resolve the issues of God, Torah, and Israel in the context of American life.

Wolfson's view of the divine was ironically classical and unbending. He embraced the classical view of God that he discovered in religious philosophy from Philo through Spinoza as the only legitimate theological option. He scorned modernist thinkers who reinterpreted the meaning of “divinity” so that it lost all connection with traditional thought. Wolfson allowed faith a place in the world by admitting that scholarship only deals with “appearance” and that reality might point to a truth that academic science could not apprehend. He also held that academic science could establish just what that apprehension entailed. Any attempt to alter or dilute the traditional belief would render its force as a distinctive religious belief less powerful. Honesty, he claimed, demanded that Americans choose between the consequences of belief and the consequences of unbelief.

Wolfson's honesty prevented him from legitimating American Jewish denominationalism in its usual form. All types of institutional Judaism in America—whether Orthodox or liberal—seemed to be part of a conspiracy of deceit. At the same time, his scholarly agenda advanced a different sort of denominationalism. He read medieval philosophy as a single system, even when thinkers came to radically different conclusions, as occurred in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian religious thought. The system of Maimonides looks different from that of Halevi. The different schools of the Kalaam took divergent positions concerning the relationship between the Quran as Muslims read it and the heavenly Quran that God possesses. Yet they all begin from the identical point of departure, seeking to reconcile Greek philosophy and biblical religion. Wolfson's scholarship legitimates denominationalism, at least in the middle ages. Whether Judaic, Muslim, or Christian, all medieval religious philosophy, he declares, shared the common experience of mediating between two literary and intellectual traditions. It was this shared hermeneutics that allowed Wolfson to predict the time when Jews would “reclaim Jesus.” From the perspective of the pluralism inherent in religious philosophy, he contends, Jesus appears as just another Rabbinic interpreter who sought to revise Judaic ways of reading the Bible. ²⁰ While, for Wolfson, the only defensible theology is a classical one, the only acceptable practice is accommodation to pluralism as an adaptation to the American way of life.

Wolfson's scholarly studies include The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning (Cambridge, 1935); Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam Zionism (Cambridge, 1947); Isadore Twersky, George H. Williams, eds., Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge, 1973, 1977). Essays of equal scholarship but more popular in appeal appear in his Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays (Cambridge, 1961).