Jewish Theology for a Postmodern Age

by Miriam Feldmann Kaye

In the postmodern, relativist world-view with its refutation of a single, objective, and ultimate truth, it has become difficult if not impossible to argue in favour of one's own beliefs as preferable to those of others. Miriam Feldmann Kaye's pioneering study is one of the first English-language books to address Jewish theology from a postmodern perspective, probing the question of how Jewish theology has the potential to survive the postmodern onslaught that some see as heralding the collapse of religion. Basing her arguments on both philosophical and theological scholarship, Feldmann Kaye shows how postmodernism might actually be a resource for rejuvenating religion.

Her response to the conception of theology and postmodernism as competing systems of thought is based on a close critical study of Rav Shagar (Shimon Gershon Rosenberg) and Tamar Ross. Rather than advocating postmodern ideas, she analyses their writings through the lens of the most radical of continental postmodern philosophers and cultural critics in order to offer a compelling theology compatible with that world-view. Whether the reader considers postmodernism to be inherently problematic or merely inconsequential, this study demonstrates why reconsidering these preconceptions is one of the most pressing issues in contemporary Jewish thought.

173 pages, Hardcover

Published June 8, 2019

Reviews

[Jessica Sacks · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the sense of reaching a dead end in the modernist debates between faith and empiricism, Orthodox Jewish thinkers of recent decades have moved in a "neo-pragmatist" direction: "Judaism is not about what you believe, it's about what you do." This tends to downplay the fact that throughout the ages, Jewish thinkers have been doing exactly that - thinking - about the nature of God, of revelation, of the status of other religions from a Jewish perspective, of the relationship between Jewish law and ethics, and so on.

Feldmann Kaye highlights two thinkers, Tamar Ross and Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Shagar), who engage with the postmodern critique as a way of breathing new life into Jewish theology. Both draw extensively on Kabbala, a family of texts that was already intimately engaging with the contingent, and creative, nature of our grasp on the divine. The two thinkers differ in style, Ross analysing the mechanics of "cumulative revalation" while Shagar focusses on the experiential nature of religious text. Both engage with postmodern challenges in a way that both retains the dignity of religion in the face of relativism, and harnesses the potential of the "language game" to reinvigorate faith and the halachic process.

This book makes some of Shagar's writings available for the first time in English. The ideas of Shagar, Ross, and an array of secular postmodern thinkers are presented and explained in clear, precise language. In mapping together for the first time the views of these radical and brilliant Jewish thinkers, Feldmann Kaye proposes a new "visionary theology" - one characterised by intellectual honesty, commitment to the Jewish covenant, confident openness to other religions and systems of thought, and imaginative, courageous engagement with ideas of God.

[Eliezer Sneiderman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important subject. I would have liked an exploration that moved beyond an analysis of two writers - Shagar and Tamar Ross. But, there is little written on this topic. Great start.