Customer Reviews

Essential Essays on Judaism

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This work contains a selection of essays by one of the foremost Jewish thinkers of the modern era Eliezer Berkovits. The essays are: Part I . JEWISH MORALITY AND LAW Law and Morality in Jewish Tradition,The Nature and Function of Jewish Law,Conversion and the Decline of the Oral Law, A Jewish Sexual Ethics,The Biblical Idea of Justice,II RETURN TO JEWISH NATIONHOOD On the Return to Jewish National Life, On Jewish Sovereignty, Towards a Renewed Rabbinical Leadership, The Spiritual Crisis in IsraelIII JEWISH THEOLOGY The Encounter with the Divine, Knowledge of the World and Knowledge of God, The Concept of Holiness, Faith After the Holocaust.
The work provides in one volume work selected from the fifteen or so books Rabbi Berkovits published in his lifetime.
Anyone who cares for Jewish life thought and history would do well to not simply read this work, but study it carefully.

Editor David Hazony has put together a fantastic collection by one of the great, and sadly little known, Jewish philosophers, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits. The essays are both challenging and thought provoking. Berkovits' clear writing style makes his profound thoughts accessible to a wide array of readers (assuming your willing to put a little effort into it). The essays were written over the course of the latter half of the 20th Century. Even the earlier essays maintain their relevance to modern readers seeking to explore the depths of traditional Jewish thougt. This book is an excellent source for novices and scholars alike.

Rav Eliezer Berkovits is one of the most important Jewish thinkers of the second half of the 20th century, yet he is not that well known. The Shalem Center is to be commended for realizing the importance of his work to the modern Jew and the modern Jewish state.
This book contains selections from several of Berkovit's writings and they deal with all the major challenges traditional (i.e. Orthodox) Judaism has had to confront in the modern era. This includes the Holocaust, the rise of the State of Israel, the challenge created by a large part of the Jewish people falling away from observance of the mitzvot of the Torah and the rise of non-Orthodox Jewish movements that have attempted to redefine the role of the Torah.
Rav Berkovits combines great erudition in traditional Talmudic studies obtained under his revered teacher, Rav Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg who is accepted as an authority by the more conservative Haredi ("Ultra-Orthodox") community in addition to a doctorate in Philosophy which gives him the toos necessary to analyze the modern Jewish condition. His style of writing does not involve use of philosophical jargon as does the writing of Rav Joseph B Soloveitchik and so I find it more approachable.
Rav Berkovits also does not hide his feelings, the pain he feels over the Holocaust (which he barely escaped, getting out of Germany just before the onset of World War II), his joy at the establishment of the State of Israel, the excitement over the challanges it poses, his love for the Jewish people which brings him to try everything possible to prevent the falling away of non-observant Jews and to try to maintain contact between the observant Jewish world and the non-Orthodox movements while not compromising on the importance and authority of Halacha as understood by the Orthodox. His most controversial views involve his belief that the traditional Rabbinical world has not done enough to utilize the built-in flexibility of the Halachic system in order to make it more responsive to the challanges of the modern world that I listed above. He emphasizes that the Halacha must make the world better and help people who are in difficulties and distress and that it should not be viewed as a separate, self-contained system that takes no heed of these things.

I highly recommend this book and Rav Berkovits' other writings for the modern, concerned Jew, regardless of their denominational affiliation.