Description
Book SynopsisOne cannot think of Judaism without taking some stance relating to Israel's special status, its election. The present collection highlights the challenges that Judaism faces, as it continues to uphold a sense of chosenness and as it seeks to engage the world beyond it—nations, as well as religions. The challenge is captured by the dual implication of election: divine love on the one hand and enmity with others on the other. Israel's election, mission and vocation are played out within this tension of love, grounded in God and extending to humanity, and the opposite of love, as this finds expression in Israel's relations with others. Israel must work out the purpose of its election and its realization in history in the tension between these two extremes. This challenge takes on great urgency in the context of advances in interfaith relations. These lead us to reflect on the meaning of Israel's election as part of developing a contemporary Jewish theology of world religions.
Trade Review“Judaism’s Challenge is not interested in how Jews relate to each other, but in how Jews do and should relate to non-Jews. … Once we accept that God created the vast cosmos, those of us in one extremely tiny corner of the cosmos—who hold ourselves to be the objects of God’s special love—are faced with the apparent oddness of the Master of the Universe choosing any subset of humanity as a special treasure. Coming to grips with that apparent oddity is indeed Judaism’s Challenge. … Libraries are full of books written about attempts by Jews as individuals and Jewry as a corporate entity to come to grips with the challenges of modernity. On the evidence of the book before us, more such libraries are going to be written. And in them, Judaism’s Challenge will have a prominent place.”
— Menachem Kellner, The Lehrhaus
“Goshen-Gottstein is to be congratulated for bringing these contributions together, for his insightful introduction, his own excellent chapter on the multiple possible meanings of Israel being a Kingdom of Priests, and his very helpful summary at the end of the book. There wasn’t a single weak chapter in the entire volume. … Judaism’s Challenge will be of immense interest to anybody wanting to find contemporary meaning, compatible with our modern and liberal sensibilities, in the doctrine of election, and Jewish chosenness. Academic Studies Press have also made it mouth-wateringly affordable, so there’s little excuse to miss out.”
—Samuel Lebens, University of Haifa, Religious Studies
“Goshen-Gottstein is, of course, not only a contributor but also the editor of this superb collection, indeed a curator who has shepherded the volume through a collegiality that makes the project particularly coherent. For the non-Jewish readers, particularly Christians and Muslims, the high degree of theological resonance in the narratives, doctrines, and ethics considered herein make the volume especially valuable. …This is also because many of the Jewish sources are untranslated, so that the breadth and depth of references here offer an abundance of witness not often available. But the merits of the volume are not limited to their resonances across Abrahamic traditions: non-Abrahamic readers are, no less, provided much evidence for historical and theoretical cross-fertilization in their own similar concepts and spiritual practices.”
— Kurt Anders Richardson,
Ecumenical Trends“The authors are to be commended for forthrightly acknowledging and wrestling with a number of morally troubling conceptions of the Other that are linked to or may flow from the notion of Jewish election, and for striving to find theologically nuanced ways to create greater tolerance toward outsiders and other religious traditions.”
— Joel Kaminsky, Theological Studies
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Election and Sanctity of Israel in the Hebrew Bible, Israel Knohl
- A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation, Alon Goshen-Gottstein
- Israel as Blessing: Theological Horizons, Eugene Korn
- Jewish Chosenness—A Contemporary Approach, Jerome Gellman
-
Aleinu—a Prayer Common to Jews and Gentile God-Fearers, Menahem Katz
- Two Dimensions of Jewish Identity, Stanislaw Krajewski
- Images of the Non-Jew in the Kedushat Levi: A Textual and Theological Exploration, Or Rose
- Israel's Election and the Suffering of the Holocaust, Gershon Greenberg
- Israel's Election and the Moral Dilemma of Amalek and the Seven Nations of Canaan, Reuven Kimelman
- From Enmity to Unity—Recovering the Ba'al Shem Tov's Teachings on Non-Jews, Menachem Kallus
- Conclusion: Judaism's Challenge—Being Israel in Changing Circumstances
- Notes on Contributors
