Interim Judaism: Jewish Thought In A Century Of Crisis

Book Summary

Interim JudaismJewish Thought in a Century ofCrisis Michael L. Morgan Probes the impact ofthe 20th century on Jewish belief and practice. Confronting thechallenges of the 20th century, from modernity and the Great War to the Holocaustand postmodern culture, Jewish thinkers have wrestled with such fundamental issuesas redemption and revelation, eternity and history, messianism and politics. Fromthe turn of the century through the 1920s, European Jewish intellectuals confrontedalienation and the challenges of modernity by seeking secure grounds for ameaningful life. After the Holocaust and the fall of Nazism, the rich results oftheir thinking -- on topics such as transcendence, redemption, revelation, andpolitics -- were reinterpreted in an atmosphere of increasing disillusion andfragmentation. In Interim Judaism, Michael L. Morgan traces the evolution of thisshift in values, as expressed in the work of social thinkers, novelists, artists, and poets as well as philosophers and theologians at the beginning and end of thecentury. Focusing on the problem of objectivity, the experience of the transcendent, and the relationship between redemption and politics, he argues that the outcome forcontemporary Jews is a pragmatic style of religiosity that has abandoned traditionalconceptions of Judaism and is searching and waiting for new ones, a condition thathe describes as "interim Judaism." Michael L. Morgan isProfessor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He isauthor of Platonic Piety and Dilemmas in Modern Jewish Thought (Indiana UniversityPress). He has edited The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim; Classics in Moral andPolitical Theory; Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy (Indiana UniversityPress); and A Holocaust Reader: Responses to the Nazi Extermination. With PaulFranks, he has translated and edited Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and TheologicalWritings. Published with the generous support of Hebrew UnionCollege--Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati July 2001128pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/4cloth 0-253-33856-5 $35.00 L / 26.50paper0-253-21441-6 $15.95 s / 12.50

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