How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought

by Leora Batnitzky

Publisher:

Princeton University Press

, 2011

Overview

Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality—or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period—and why Jewish thinkers have fought as well as championed this idea.

Ever since the Enlightenment, Jewish thinkers have debated whether and how Judaism—largely a religion of practice and public adherence to law—can fit into a modern, Protestant conception of religion as an individual and private matter of belief or faith. Batnitzky makes the novel argument that it is this clash between the modern category of religion and Judaism that is responsible for much of the creative tension in modern Jewish thought. Tracing how the idea of Jewish religion has been defended and resisted from the eighteenth century to today, the book discusses many of the major Jewish thinkers of the past three centuries, including Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Zvi Yehuda Kook, Theodor Herzl, and Mordecai Kaplan. At the same time, it tells the story of modern orthodoxy, the German-Jewish renaissance, Jewish religion after the Holocaust, the emergence of the Jewish individual, the birth of Jewish nationalism, and Jewish religion in America.

More than an introduction, How Judaism Became a Religion presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought.

Key Features

• Traces how the idea of Jewish religion has been defended and resisted from the eighteenth century to today
• Discusses many of the major Jewish thinkers of the past three centuries
• Presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought

Praise for How Judaism Became a Religion

As Batnitzky points out, Judaism doesn't fit any modern mold especially well. Her book adds both shrewdness and humility to the search for modern Jewish identity and the claims often made about the purity of these identities.

—Edward Ruehle, Jewish Voice and Herald

Leora Batnitzky's How Judaism Became a Religion is a bold new interpretation of modern Jewish thought by one of the leading scholars in the field.

—Micah Gottlieb, Jewish Review of Books

Batnitzky devotes her book to differentiating the array of responses to the modern notion of Judaism as a sheer religion. She presents meticulously the disparate positions of figures as varied as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geigel, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Abraham Kook and his son, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Emil Fackenheim and Mordecai Kaplan. She also presents the altogether 'premodern' views of Eastern European Jews such as the Hasidim. She shows that even resolute Reform Jews such as Geiger failed to work out a clean separation between politics and religion. With the Holocaust and with the founding of Israel, any divide seemed refuted by history.

—Robert A. Segal, Times Higher Education Supplement

Product Details

• Title: How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought
• Author: Leora Batnitzky
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Print Publication Date: 2011
• Pages: 224
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Resource ID: LLS:HWJDSMBCMRLGN
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-05-17T15:53:27Z

About Leora Batnitzky

Leora Batnitzky is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish studies and professor of religion at Princeton University, where she also directs the Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought. She is the author of Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation and Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (Princeton).