Thinkers and Teachers of Modern Judaism

This unique collection of essays focuses on the recent developments in Jewish religious thinking with penetrating analyses of the teachings of the most important modern Jewish religious thinkers - Buber, Baeck, Heschel, Rosenzweig, Kook, Kaplan, Soloveitchik among them - whose teachings have had a lasting influence on contemporary Jewish life. The cumulative evidence of these studies suggests that Judaism has remained down to the present time a vital force, as in several crucial epochs in the past, seeking new forms of expression, facing new problems and finding new insights into its millennial struggle for an understanding of the relationship between God and humanity. As for developments in Jewish culture and social philosophy - its communal life - several events have radically and sometimes tragically transformed it, to the point that, despite its unbreakable historical continuity, the Jewish identity has been abruptly altered. After the cataclysmic events of mid-century - the Holocaust, the establishment of Israel, the return of Oriental Jewry, and the loosening of the traditional religious bonds - a scrutiny of what all this means for Judaism, which for thousands of years has kept the Jewish people united, is of vital significance not only for the Jews and for the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, but also for the global issues of the religious predicament of our modern age. The essays contained in this volume make an important contribution to the elucidation of these problems, and can serve as pointers of the way.