Judaism and the West From Hermann Cohen to Joseph Soloveitchik [Hardcover]

Grappling with the place of Jewish philosophy at the margin of religious studies, Robert Erlewine examines the work of five Jewish philosophersHermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Joseph Soloveitchikto bring them into dialogue within the discipline. Emphasizing the tenuous place of Jews in European, and particularly German, culture, Erlewine unapologetically contextualizes Jewish philosophy as part of the West. He teases out the antagonistic and overlapping attempts of Jewish thinkers to elucidate the philosophical and cultural meaning of Judaism when others sought to deny and even expel Jewish influences. By reading the canon of Jewish philosophy in this new light, Erlewine offers insight into how Jewish thinkers used religion to assert their individuality and modernity.

[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 Judaisms place in it.

A veritable tour de force and will certainly be greeted as a seminal contribution to the study of modern Jewish thought.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.

Introduction
1. Exemplarity and the German-Jewish Symbiosis: Hermann Cohen on War and Religion
2. Symbol not Sacrifice: Cohens Jewish Jesus
3. Fire, Rays, and the Dark: Rosenzweig and the Oriental/Occidental Divide
4. Redeeming this World: Bubers Judaism and the Sanctity of Immanence
5. Prophets, Prophecy and Divine Wrath: Heschel and the God of Pathos
6. Cultivating ObjlÃ$