Reasoning After Revelation

Postmodern Jewish thinkers understand their Jewishness differently, but they all share a fidelity to what they call the "Torah" and to communal practices of reading and social action that have their bases in rabbinic interpretations of biblical narrative, law, and belief. Thus, postmodern Jewish thinking is thinking about God, Jews, and the worldwith the texts of the Torahin the company of fellow seekers and believers. It utilizes the tools of philosophy, but without their modern premises. Moreover, this form of Jewish thinking provides resources for philosophically disciplined readings of scripture by Jews, Christians, and Moslems seeking alternatives to the reductive discourses of secular academia, on the one hand, and to antimodern religious fundamentalisms, on the other. Postmodern Jewish Philosophy aims to utilize rabbinic modes of thinking to provide a model for ethical and religious thought in the twenty-first century, one which moves beyond the dichotomy of relativism and imperialism and is simultaneously definite and pluralistic.InReasoning After Revelation: Dialogues in Postmodern Jewish Philosophy,three preeminent Jewish scholars debate the form and meaning of Postmodern Jewish Philosophy after the failures of the great secular ideologies of modern western civilization. Emulating the methods as well as the premises of Talmudic argumentation, the authors present their responses as dialogues joined by a common love of the rabbinic tradition of commentary and interpretation of the Bible. The composers, Peter Ochs, Robert Gibbs, and Steven Kepnes, contemplate where Judaism has beenand where it is headed: on what basis will modern Jews now reason about the meaning of Jewish existence and the relevance of age-old Biblical traditions to the moral and social crises of the twenty-first century? The dialogues are further enriched by a set of responses from leading Jewish philosophers: Elliot R. Wolfson, Edith Wyschogrod, Almut Sh. Bruckstein, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg, and Susan E. Shapiro.

Steven Kepnes is associate professor of philosophy and religion and director of Jewish Studies at Colgate University. He was a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University and at the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies from 1993 to 1995. He is author of Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age; The Text as Thou: Martin Buber’s Dialogical Hermeneutics and Narrative Theology and coeditor, with David Tracy, of The Challenge of Psychology to Faith. His articles on Jewish thought have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Jewish Studies, Soundings, and the Harvard Theological Review. He is also Judaism editor for Religious Studies Review. Peter Ochs is the Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, and co-founder of the Societies for Textual Reasoning, and for Scriptural Reasoning. He is the author of Pierce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture, and the coauthor of Reviewing the Covenant: Eugene Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal of Theology. He is the author or editor of a number of works on the relations between rabbinic and American varieties of pragmatism and semiotics, and between Jewish and Christian theologies. Robert Gibbs teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, and most recently of Why Ethics: Signs of Responsibilities. His work addresses Jewish Philosophy in the tradition of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas and engages both contemporary Continental thought and American pragmatism. Tikva Frymer-Kensky is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. David Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Peter Ochs is the Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia. David Sandmel is the Jewish Scholar at the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. Michael A. Signer is Abrams Professor of Jewish Thought and Culture in the Department of Theology at University of Notre Dame. Steven Kepnes is associate professor of philosophy and religion and director of Jewish Studies at Colgate University. He was a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University and at the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies from 1993 to 1995. He is author of Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age; The Text as Thou: Martin Buber’s Dialogical Hermeneutics and Narrative Theology and coeditor, with David Tracy, of The Challenge of Psychology to Faith. His articles on Jewish thought have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Jewish Studies, Soundings, and the Harvard Theological Review. He is also Judaism editor for Religious Studies Review. Peter Ochs is the Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, and co-founder of the Societies for Textual Reasoning, and for Scriptural Reasoning. He is the author of Pierce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture, and the coauthor of Reviewing the Covenant: Eugene Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal of Theology. He is the author or editor of a number of works on the relations between rabbinic and American varieties of pragmatism and semiotics, and between Jewish and Christian theologies. Robert Gibbs teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, and most recently of Why Ethics: Signs of Responsibilities. His work addresses Jewish Philosophy in the tradition of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas and engages both contemporary Continental thought and American pragmatism.