Defining "Jewishness" has been a problem for centuries of Jewish existence. Jews have had to ponder the problem of spatial and temporal discontinuities. Without a common government, language, and land, how do Jews share a common history?
The views of some major historians are considered, including Heinrich Graetz (1817-91), Simon Dubnov (1860-1941), Ben-Zion Dinur (1884-1972), and Gershom Scholem (1897-1982). In the modern era, the problem of providing a rationale for Jewish particularism led to three approaches: the insider, the outsider, and the rejectionist.
Professor Ruderman argues that the ghetto system in late 16th- and early 17th-century Italy ushered in a new era of Jewish-Christian relations and a restructuring of Jewish cultural life.
A primary feature of the Jewish experience in the 17th century was the return to Jewish life of large numbers of Iberian Christians whose ancestors had originally been baptized and left the Jewish community. Their experience sets the stage for understanding the philosophy of Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) was crucial in shaping the evolution of modern Jewish thought. His Theological-Political Treatise first appeared in 1670 and repudiated the assumptions upon which Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) built his rational edifice of Judaism.
In Jerusalem, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) responded partly to Spinoza's conclusions and partly to his intellectual circle in Berlin, who had accepted him despite his Jewish ancestry. Mendelssohn's strategy to rescue Judaism from the assault of Spinoza and the Enlightenment failed.
A small group of German Jewish intellectuals founded the Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews in 1819. By studying Judaism "scientifically," they hoped to reveal the greater significance of Jewish civilization within the general intellectual and spiritual context of humanity.
Heinrich Graetz (1817-91) authored the monumental History of the Jews in 11 volumes. Graetz used history as a battleground to defend the integrity of Judaism against its Christian detractors, especially the renowned German historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896).
Abraham Geiger (1810-74) utilized his vast knowledge of Jewish sources in the service of his own ideology of Reform Judaism. He challenged the Christian scholarly world, as Graetz was doing, to recognize the significance of rabbinic Judaism in understanding its own religious origins.
Samson Raphael Hirsch (1810-88) became the leading proponent of Neo-Orthodox Judaism and a prominent critic of the Reform movement. He represented a different kind of orthodox rabbi from Moses Sofer (1762-1839). Sofer was unyielding in his opposition to university education, linguistic assimilation, or any change.
Zecharias Frankel (1801-75) participated in the deliberations of Reform Jewish leaders but left, fearing that the reformers had instituted changes in Judaism that were too radical.
Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-65) viewed the history of western civilization as an opposition between Judaism and "Atticism." By the latter he meant the Greek love of philosophy, arts and sciences, the development of the intellect, and the love of beauty. Judaism, on the other hand, gave the world religion and morality, which spring from the heart, not the mind.
By the second half of the 19th century, the optimism regarding Jewish political and social emancipation had diminished. In Eastern Europe, massive numbers of Jews lived in restricted areas. A political movement calling for the creation of a Jewish state in Israel emerged as a novel response.
Ahad Ha-Am (1856-1927) saw Israel as a spiritual center attracting an elite leadership who would shape a new secular culture for Israel and the Diaspora. Jacob Klatzkin (1882-1948) believed the only meaningful goal of Zionism was to regain the land of Israel and normalize the conditions of Jewish existence. Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) believed that Zionism exemplified the highest ideals of American culture.
Socialism and Marxism had an enormous appeal for Jews living in Western and Eastern Europe. Socialism's utopian ideas resonated as a radical means of alleviating their wretched status in European society. Unfortunately, when the socialist revolution lost its initial élan, Jews were left more frustrated than ever.
Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) represents both a final stage of 19th-century Jewish thought in Germany and the beginning of a new set of responses to the challenges of Jewish identity in the 20th century. For Cohen, the essence of Judaism was ethical monotheism grounded in a prophetic universalism stressing moral commitments to humanity and emphasizing a mission to bring about a utopian future.
Leo Baeck (1873-1956) pursued a prominent career as a rabbi in Berlin. Like Cohen, he underscored the central role of ethical monotheism in Judaism, but departed from him in stressing the role of religious consciousness as well.
Martin Buber (1878-1965) is probably the best-known Jewish social and religious philosopher of the 20th century. His works embody his guiding principles of dialogue and meaningful human encounter with the other and with the divine.
Buber's closest collaborator was the Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929). They disagreed intensely, however, on Jewish ritual observance. In a work addressed to Buber entitled The Builders, Rosenzweig challenged him to adopt the same openness towards Jewish observance that he had demonstrated towards the study of Jewish texts.
Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1983) was perhaps the most original of American Jewish thinkers who "reconstructed" Judaism to meet the needs of second-generation American Jews. Anthropology offered Kaplan a rationale for Jewish group cohesiveness in place of the traditional doctrine of chosen-ness.
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72), although the product of the Hasidic world of Eastern Europe, wrote for American Jews. He attempted to describe the concept of divine revelation: the process by which God reaches out to human beings.
In the first edition of After Auschwitz, published in 1961, Richard Rubenstein (1924- ) claimed that the destruction of European Jewry meant Jews could no longer affirm the myth of an omnipotent God or its corollary, the election of Israel. Emil Fackenheim (1916- ) provided a meaningful response to Rubenstein in his 1970 work God's Presence in History.
The emergence of feminist theology within the Jewish community is a relatively recent phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s. Jewish feminism has contributed to a new understanding of Judaism through new readings of classical texts and liturgy, new scholarship in Jewish history, and new theological perspectives that take gender into account.
It is difficult to summarize and appraise the most recent theological thinking. Arnold Eisen has argued recently that the ruminations of Jewish thinkers are irrelevant to most Jews. Ultimately, are the questions of God, Torah, and Israel only of interest to intellectuals?