Chapter 3F - Dogmatic Judaism

The Best Books on Judaism | Jewish Studies

by Dr. Sarah Imhof

There has never been a single answer to the question of what Jews believe. An ongoing rich culture of debate, as well as developing communities, has ensured that Judaism entails a wide range of difficult questions and interpretations.

One recurrent theme is that of “chosenness.” What does it mean to be a chosen people: A favorite among peoples? A community from whom the divine expects more? A moral example? Or is it simply an outdated and chauvinistic concept? Deuteronomy and Exodus already present diverse textual references to chosenness; thinkers from Maimonides and Judah Halevy to Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel have approached the question from philosophical and theological perspectives. Steven Cohen and Arnold Eisen’s study The Chosen People in America surveys the attitudes of American Jews toward ideas of divine election, while Avi Beker’s Chosen recounts a history of the idea.

The idea of messianism recurs throughout Jewish history as a contentious issue. Although most Jewish communities affirm the idea of a future messiah who will bring redemption, if and when communities have identified a living person to be a messiah, controversy has ensued. Gershom Scholem’s The Messianic Idea was one of the earliest works to consider messianism across Jewish communities, and remains remarkable for its analysis of kabbalistic interpretations. Kenneth Seeskin discusses messianic thought in the era of Maimonides in his Jewish Messianic Thoughts in an Age of Despair. Harris Lenowitz’s The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights provides a narrative of messianic figures and their relationship to Jewish communities, while Marc Saperstein’s edited collection Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History brings together scholarly essays on different Jewish communities that embraced or anticipated imminently a Jewish messiah.

Related to the general idea of messianism is perhaps the most infamous potential messiah: Jesus. Matthew Hoffman’s From Rebel to Rabbi and Peter Schäfer’s Jesus in the Talmud treat Jesus in a Jewish interpretive context in early Common Era contexts. Resurrection, an idea few associate strongly with Judaism, also has a significant history. Jon Levenson’s Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel explores the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead in the context of rabbinic writings.

Embodiment, of the divine or human, also remains a topic of significant conversation. From the dimensions of the heavenly divine body to circumcision and its religious meanings, bodies and their interpretations have played a significant role in Jewish culture. Benjamin Sommer’s The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel takes early Jewish texts as its objects of study, while Melvin Konner’s The Jewish Body presents a postmodern perspective on Jewish embodiment.

In recent history, the tragedy of the Holocaust has renewed theological conversation about theodicy. Richard Rubenstein’s After Auschwitz, which spoke of a “death of God,” challenged the possibility of religion after the Holocaust. Zachary Braiterman’s (God) After Auschwitz provides a sophisticated synthetic engagement with recent Jewish theological writing. Likewise, in Wrestling with God and The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish Theology, Steven Katz demonstrates recurrent themes in theology that engages the themes of divine power and goodness when faced with evil in history.