Fragile Finitude: A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology

by Michael Fishbane

The world we engage with is a vibrant collage brought to consciousness by language and our creative imagination. It is through the symbolic forms of language that the human world of value is revealed—this is where religious scholar Michael Fishbane dwells in his latest contribution to Jewish thought.

In Fragile Finitude , Fishbane clears new ground for a theological life through a novel reinterpretation of the Book of Job. On this basis, he offers a contemporary engagement with the four classical types of Jewish Scriptural exegesis. The first focuses on worldly experience, the second on communal forms of practice and thought in the rabbinical tradition, the third on personal development, and the fourth on transcendent, cosmic orientations. Through these four modes, Fishbane manages to transform Jewish theology from within, at once reinvigorating a long tradition and moving beyond it. What he offers is nothing short of a way to reorient our lives in relation to the divine and our fellow humans. Written from within the Jewish tradition, Fragile Finitude is intended for readers across the religious spectrum.

208 pages, Hardcover

Published April 20, 2021

Reviews

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm having a hard time rating this book because I found the parts I understood genuinely interesting and engaging, but the writing style at times was quite difficult to grasp. I'm also not a scholar of Judaism nor was I raised in any of its schools of thought (hello, Catholic school), so I'm certain that much of the book went over my head, and little of it applied to me as an atheist.

However, I did note that some themes appeared only to vanish without much significance. in particular, Fishbane's gripes with the modern age needed to be fleshed out; they appear in the beginning with quite negative lanuage without much evidential backing, and then disappear, never to return Similarly, as we discussed extensively in class, aspects of his "ladder" analogy for spiritual and ethical development could've been fully fleshed out in terms of what value he's placing on each of the steps, whether he considers them equal in importance, etc.

That being said, if you're a theist---and especially if you're Jewish!---and you're interested in new understandings of scripture and tradition that can square with modern understandings of both science and philosophy, this is your book!

4/5 stars

[Jonathan Dine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clearer distillation of themes Professor Fishbane previously explored in Sacred Attunement. Highly recommend this work for anyone interested in what jewish theology and theological constructive writing should look like in the 21st century.