Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides) [Paperback]

Dan Cohn-Sherbok (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415126282 | ISBN-13: 978-0415126281 | Publication Date: February 1, 1997 | Edition: 1

This popular Key Guide provides an overview of the broader intellectual currents of Jewish philosophy. It includes a chronological table and maps.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Cohn-Sherbok has done a service for those of us needing short biographies of 50 important figures in our tradition. . . . It is a wonderful text that can be used to complement introductory books to Judaism
.
–Jewish Book World

...each entry contains an appropriate, brief summary of the life of the individual and his writings, along with a very brief list of references. The author's selections are exclusively male..
– Jewish Book Council, Vol. 15, No. 2

About the Author

Rabbi Professor Dan Cohn-Sherbok teaches Jewish Theology at the University of Kent. He is the author and editor of over 40 books including Who's Who in Jewish History and Atlas of Jewish History, (Routledge, 1996).

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (February 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415126282
• ISBN-13: 978-0415126281
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,550,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than a catalogue!, December 19, 2000

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This review is from: Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides) (Paperback)

Educated persons will know at least something about such Jewish philosophers as Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Martin Buber, and Elie Wiesel. All of them have found their way into most major Western encyclopedias. This book offers much more. Cohn-Sherbok, a well-known writer of things Jewish, is an ordained Reform rabbi, and he naturally, and properly, concentrates on the religious aspects of his subject. Cohn-Sherbook devotes a two-page essay to each of the fifty thinkers included in this mini-encyclopedia. There are no footnotes, but numerous crossreferences. The author's deep involvement in his subject helps the reader apprehend the book as a unified whole. This becomes all the more evident if the essays are read in chronological order, which is easy to do, since the author includes a neat 2000-year chronological table of the names included. We thus get a fascinating view of how the Jewish religious landscape changed under the impact of several catastrophic events, from the Babylonian exile, over the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, to the Nazi Holocaust. The endurance of the Jewish people under such calamities is striking. So is the ability of the thinkers presented here to steer their philosophical and religious reflection into fruitful channels. This implies neither an easy optimism, nor a resigned submission to fate. Rather, we witness here a deep rethinking of the foundations of religion, obviously relevant to Jews and non-Jews alike.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars uneven, July 3, 2008

By 

Michael Lewyn (Forest Hills, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides) (Hardcover)

This book is about evenly divided between profiles of premodern (mostly medieval) thinkers and modern (mostly Reform or Zionist) thinkers. The quality of the profiles varied; nonphilosophers (e.g. Zionists) were dealt with fairly well, and this book made me aware of some that I knew nothing or almost nothing about. However, Cohn-Sherbock struggles to make the deeper philosophers comprehensible. General rule of thumb: if you don't understand philosopher X's own work, you won't understand it any better after reading this book.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good work which could be better, May 19, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides) (Paperback)

This work competently traces the lives and outlines the thought of major Jewish thinkers from Medieval times. But it seems to me to have what might be called an ' over-liberal bias' and includes at least two people who certainly are not ' major Jewish thinkers'. It also naturally excludes many others who might be said to truly deserve a place here.
A good work which could be better.