Full Description
This book explores three schools of fascinating, talented, and gifted scholars who absorbed into their thought the Jewish and secular cultures of their respective homelands. They include halakhists such as Rabbi Ettlinger and Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz; Jewish philosophers from Isaac Bernays to Yeshayau Leibowitz; and biblical commentators such as Samuel David Luzzatto and Rabbi Umberto Cassuto. Running like a thread through the analysis of the different scholars, is the attempt to conciliate Jewish orthodoxy with a wish to connect with Western culture and philosophy and to accept the conclusions of scientific research. Among these attempts is Luzzatto's famous 'dual truth' approach.
This book is the sequel to the Ephraim Chamiel's previous book The Middle Way, which focused on the challenges faced by the members of the "Middle Trend" in nineteenth-century Jewish thought.
Contents
Volume I
Translator's Note
Foreword to the English Edition
Introduction
Chapter One:
Samson Raphael Hirsch: The Neo-Orthodox, Neo-Romantic Educator, and his Approach of Neo-Fundamentalist Identicality
Chapter Two:
Interpretations of Hirsch's Thought from the Right and the Left
Chapter Three:
"Heavenly Reward"—Samuel David Luzzatto's Doctrine of Divine Providence—between Revelation and Philosophy
Chapter Four:
Development of Halakhah: Luzzatto's Evolving Views
Chapter Five:
The Peshat is One, Because the Truth is One: Luzzatto between Interpretation and Thought
Chapter Six:
Luzzatto and Maimonides: "Accept Truth from Whoever Speaks It"
Chapter Seven:
Luzzatto on Theosophical Kabbalah: Harmful Invention with Worthy Intentions
Chapter Eight:
Between Reason and Revelation: The Encounter between Rabbi Tsvi Hirsch Chajes and Nahman Krochmal
Volume II
Chapter Nine:
Hirsch's Influence on Religious Jewish Philosophy in the Twentieth Century
Chapter Ten:
Hirsch's Influence on Rabbi David Tsvi Hoffmann's Commentary on the Pentateuch
Chapter Eleven:
Hirsch's Influence on Twentieth-Century Halakhic Decisors
Chapter Twelve:
The Influence of German Neo-Orthodoxy on the Young Rav Kook
Chapter Thirteen:
Luzzatto's Influence on Umberto Cassuto's Method of Biblical Interpretation
Chapter Fourteen:
Tolerance, Pluralism, and Postmodernism—A Dialectic of Opposites in Jewish Thought in the Modern Era
