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OREN CASS WANTS to restore to our morally fractured society and culture a 'moral vision,' one that is 'widely shared.' It's an honorable ambition. But who does he think shares [...]

There are two facts of my life that my grandchildren used to tell their friends with pride. One is that in the year 2000, as part of my application to [...]

Political Theology of International Order BY WILLIAM BAIN OXFORD, 272 PAGES, $85 Whatever international order there is today, it certainly is not beholden to political theology for its justification. Nevertheless, [...]

Until quite recently, natural law thinking had been a Catholic preserve. My interest in it was awakened during my days as a Jewish undergraduate at the University of Chicago, by [...]

Supersessionism describes the theological conviction that the Christian Church has superseded the Jewish people, assuming their role as God's covenanted people, Israel. At first glance, supersessionism seems to be a [...]

In 'Catholic Zionism' (January), Gavin D'Costa steps where most Catholic angels fear to tread. He goes beyond the half-century-old Catholic affirmation of God's continuing covenant with Jewish Israel to the [...]

No-fault divorce changed the American culture of marriage. So did the sexual revolution. Now proponents of gay rights are redefining marriage at an even more fundamental level. What's to be [...]

Although most Christian churches advocate some sort of mission to non-Christians, no Jewish group advocates a mission to non-Jews. Proselytization seems to be foreign to Judaism. Are covenant and mission [...]

The most recognized face of any Jewish leader of the past fifty years belongs to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, even more so today than at his death in [...]

Seeking ideas for presents this year, we asked several of our well-read friends and contributors for recommendations of a few wise, or fun, or disturbing books that every FIRST THINGS [...]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9795.2008.00343.x Byline: David Novak (1) Keywords: universality; particularism; Jewish ethics; creation; revelation; natural law; egalitarianism Abstract: ABSTRACT Jewish ethics like Judaism itself has often been charged with being 'particularistic,' and in modernity it has been unfavorably compared with the universality of secular ethics. This charge has become acute philosophically when the comparison is made with the ethics of Kant. However, at this level, much of the ethical rejection of Jewish particularism, especially its being beholden to a God who is above the universe to whom this God prescribes moral norms and judges according to them, is also a rejection of Christian (or any other monotheistic) ethics, no matter how otherwise universal. Yet this essay argues that Jewish ethics that prescribes norms for all humans, and that is knowable by all humans, actually constitutes a wider moral universe than does Kantian ethics, because it can include non-rational human objects and even non-human objects altogether. This essay also argues that a totally egalitarian moral universe, encompassing all human relations, becomes an infinite, totalizing universe, which can easily become the ideological justification (ratio essendi) of a totalitarian regime. Author Affiliation: (1)Room 314University CollegeUniversity of TorontoToronto, Ontario M5S 3H7Canada416.946.3229david.novak@utoronto.ca

MAIMONIDES by SHERWIN B. NULAND Schocken, 234 pages, $19.95 THE EIGHT-HUNDREDTH anniversary of the death in 1204 of Rabbi Moses the son of Rabbi Maimon the Spaniard--better known to the [...]

With the passing of disputations between Jewish and Christian thinkers as to whose tradition has a more universal ethics, the task of Jewish and Christian ethicists is to constitute a universal horizon for their respective bodies of ethics, both of which are essentially particularistic being rooted in special revelation. This parallel project must avoid relativism that is essentially anti-ethical, and triumphalism that proposes an imperialist ethos. A retrieval of the idea of natural law in each respective tradition enables the constitution of some intelligent common ground for ethical cooperation in both theory and practice between the traditions. This essay also suggests how the constitution of this common ground could include Muslims as well. The constitution of this common ground enables religious ethicists to present more cogent ethical arguments in secular space, but only of course, when those who now control secular space are open to arguments from members of any religious tradition. KEY WORDS: natural law, ethics, halakhah, general revelation, special revelation, border concept, universal

ESSENTIAL ESSAYS ON JUDAISM. BY ELIEZER BERKOVITS. Edited by DAVID HAZONY. Shalem. 393 pp. $22.95 paper. DURING THE SECOND HALF of the twentieth century, three significant traditionalist Jewish thinkers were [...]

Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution BY YEHUDAH MIRSKY YALE, 288 PAGES, $25 Yehudah Mirsky's biography of Rabbi (or 'Rav') Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of [...]

No one, save a prophet, could have predicted the radical change in the relationship between Jews and Christians since Western civilization narrowly escaped physical and moral annihilation in the Second [...]

In his writings, Karl Barth dismissed Judaism and never truly engaged any contemporary Jewish thinkers of his time. Viewing Barth's work from a Jewish perspective is relevant for a number of reasons, most importantly because of Barth's emphasis on the commandments of God.

The relationship between Judaism and Christianity is discussed from a Jewish perspective. Topics include presuppositions of Jewish-Christian dialogue, legalism and antinomianism, Noahide law, the law of a Gentile community, and normative communities.

ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL: PROPHETIC WITNESS. By Edward K. Kaplan and Samuel H. Dresner. Yale University Press. 416 pp. $35. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was the most significant Jewish thinker ever [...]

The right to privacy has both positive and negative connotations for those who consider themselves part of the natural law tradition. On the one hand, a significant part of the [...]

The question of natural law poses a problem to modern Judaism. When natural law became linked to natural rights, Jews were granted admission to European society. Jewish modernity was determined by the acquisition of citizenship, the Holocaust, and the founding of the state of Israel. Natural law presupposes there is something greater than the Jewish religion. A philosophical answer to the dilemma comes from the the Enlightenment which theorizes that through social contract people can set up their own primary society.

Michael Wyschogrod's argument that Jews who become Christians should continue to observe the Torah is an unhistoric possibility. It would be the same as saying Jewish Christians are a sect of Judaism, which is unacceptable in traditional Jewish theology. In Jewish law, apostasy is a rejection of God and therefore not acceptable, even if done in good conscience.

I agree with Michael Wyschogrod ('A King in Israel,' May 2010) when he speaks of Israel as a 'Jewish state' that 'has not succeeded in defining just what that means.' [...]

One way anti-Jewish sentiment has been interpreted is simply as a quid pro quo. Gentile animosity, in this view, does to the Jews what the Jews have done, or at [...]

While pleased with Jon D. Levenson's designation of us as 'four highly-regarded professors of Jewish studies' ['How Not to Conduct Jewish-Christian Dialogue,' December 2001], we are dismayed by his wholesale [...]

SACRED ATTUNEMENT: A JEWISH THEOLOGY by MICHAEL FISHBANE University of Chicago Press, 246 pages, $30 THE WORD theology means literally God-talk. But since talk about anything--even talk about God--takes place [...]

Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972 by Edward K. Kaplan Yale University Press, 544 pages, $40 Abraham Joshua Heschel is probably best remembered today for his political activism [...]

Peter Knobel For years I have struggled to define precisely my belief in God. I treated it as a philosophical and theological question which could be answered in a systematic [...]

The Jewish-Christian dialogue of recent decades is a new thing that stands in sharp contrast to the terribly complicated relationship between Jews and Christians over the past two thousand years. [...]

Translated by Jan Garrett. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. xi + 375 pp. Paper, $19.95--There is no more satisfying philosopher to read than Aristotle. That is because [...]

University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. xxiii + 309 pp. Cloth, $40.00; paper $17.95 -- Diskin Clay's Platonic Questions is a bold attempt to represent the essential trajectory [...]

By R. Kendall Soulen Fortress. 195 pp. $19 paper. Reviewed by David Novak This book is an impressive debut by a young Protestant theologian, R. Kendall Soulen. It began as [...]

ISRAELIS AND THE JEWISH TRADITION: AN ANCIENT PEOPLE DEBATING ITS FUTURE. By DAVID HARTMAN. Yale University Press. 174 pp. $18.50. This book comprises Hartman's 1998 Terry Lectures at Yale University. [...]

THE JEWISH STATE: THE STRUGGLE FOR ISRAEL'S SOUL. By YORAM HAZONY. Basic. 432 pp. $28. 'WHY SHOULD THE JEWISH STATE exist at all?' Until quite recently, there was a ready [...]

It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust. There were only fifteen years between January 1933, when [...]

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH: A JEWISH APPROACH TO MODERN MEDICAL ETHICS. By ELLIOT N. DORFF. Jewish Publication Society. 456pp. $34.95. THE FACT THAT the now regular advances in biomedical [...]

The recent canonization of Edith Stein as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by the Roman Catholic Church poses a number of very serious challenges to living Jews, we who [...]

THE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT OF HASIDISM. By NORMAN LAMM. KTAV. 624 pp. $49.50. Since Hasidism presents such a spiritually appealing form of Jewish life, and since its practitioners ('Hasidim') are a [...]

My host told me, a rabbi with a yarmulke on my head, to address the pope in Yiddish. This I did, and I could tell from the expression on his [...]

In his youth in rural Ontario and rural Texas, Richard John Neuhaus had little or no contact with Jews--but as an adult his contact was constant. And this played a [...]

By EGAL FELDMAN. University of Illinois Press. 323 pp. $34.95. The book is an account of the history of Jewish-Catholic relations in America for the past one hundred years or [...]

MAIMONIDES' EMPIRE OF LIGHT: POPULAR ENLIGHTENMENT IN AN AGE OF BELIEF. By RALPH LERNER. University of Chicago Press. 221 pp. $35. Of all those who were personally students of Leo [...]

Issues concerning Jewish-Christian relations in the unpredictable and uncontrollable secular world are discussed. The need to encourage the world to choose and respect life is highlighted.

Kaufman, William E. Vol. 5, Contemporary Existentialism Series. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. 226 pp. Paper, $33.95--This book is a thorough reworking of the author's 1971 dissertation at Boston University, [...]

HEAVENLY TORAH AS REFRACTED THROUGH THE GENERATIONS. By ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL, edited and translated by GORDON TUCKER with LEONARD LEVIN. Continuum, 848 pages, $95 One of the most delightful effects [...]

LIVING IN THE IMAGE OF GOD: JEWISH TEACHINGS TO PERFECT THE WORLD. By IRVING GREENBERG with SHALOM FREEDMAN. Jason Aronson. 366 pp. $35. Rabbi Irving Greenberg has become one of [...]