Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOverall, this short book offers an engaging take on some of the classics of modern Jewish philosophy and makes a spirited case for debating their legacy in light of the contemporary study of religion.
* Journal of Religion *
Judaism in the West is an excellent book, which reaches further than its unassuming tone would have one assume. It is essential reading for scholars of Jewish thought, and valuable for anyone interested in religious studies methodology, and the relationship between Jewish and religious studies.
* Reading Religion *
[The] author has done an important service for the fields of Jewish studies and religious studies by linking the thought of five great modern Jewish philosophers directly to the problem of the West and of Judaism's place in it.
* Harvard Theological Review *
Erlewine's book provides a distinctive, indispensable introduction to modern Jewish thought. . . . Highly recommended.
* Choice *
While the thinkers examined here are hardly unknown, each chapter offers an original analysis that builds on but also importantly adds to previous scholarship. One of the book's important contributions lays in the philosophical credit that is granted to Buber, Heschel, and Soloveitchik, who are often taken to be of less philosophical rigor than Cohen and Rosenzweig, and Erlewine's justification for giving this credit.
* Religious Studies Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Exemplarity and the German-Jewish Symbiosis: Hermann Cohen on War and Religion
2. Symbol not Sacrifice: Cohen's Jewish Jesus
3. Fire, Rays, and the Dark: Rosenzweig and the Oriental/Occidental Divide
4. Redeeming this World: Buber's Judaism and the Sanctity of Immanence
5. Prophets, Prophecy and Divine Wrath: Heschel and the God of Pathos
6. Cultivating Objectivity: Soloveitchik, The Marburg School, and the Religious Pluralism
Conclusion
Notes
Index
