How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought [NOOK Book]

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Overview

Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality--or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period--and why Jewish thinkers have fought as well as championed this idea.

Ever since the Enlightenment, Jewish ...

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How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought

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Overview

Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality--or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period--and why Jewish thinkers have fought as well as championed this idea.

Ever since the Enlightenment, Jewish thinkers have debated whether and how Judaism--largely a religion of practice and public adherence to law--can fit into a modern, Protestant conception of religion as an individual and private matter of belief or faith. Batnitzky makes the novel argument that it is this clash between the modern category of religion and Judaism that is responsible for much of the creative tension in modern Jewish thought. Tracing how the idea of Jewish religion has been defended and resisted from the eighteenth century to today, the book discusses many of the major Jewish thinkers of the past three centuries, including Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Zvi Yehuda Kook, Theodor Herzl, and Mordecai Kaplan. At the same time, it tells the story of modern orthodoxy, the German-Jewish renaissance, Jewish religion after the Holocaust, the emergence of the Jewish individual, the birth of Jewish nationalism, and Jewish religion in America.

More than an introduction, How Judaism Became a Religion presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought.

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Editorial Reviews

Times Higher Education Supplement
Batnitzky devotes her book to differentiating the array of responses to the modern notion of Judaism as a sheer religion. She presents meticulously the disparate positions of figures as varied as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geigel, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Abraham Kook and his son, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Emil Fackenheim and Mordecai Kaplan. She also presents the altogether 'premodern' views of Eastern European Jews such as the Hasidim. She shows that even resolute Reform Jews such as Geiger failed to work out a clean separation between politics and religion. With the Holocaust and with the founding of Israel, any divide seemed refuted by history.
— Robert A. Segal
Jewish Voice and Herald
As Batnitzky points out, Judaism doesn't fit any modern mold especially well. Her book adds both shrewdness and humility to the search for modern Jewish identity and the claims often made about the purity of these identities.
— Edward Ruehle
Tablet Magazine
Superb and thought-provoking.
— Adam Kirsch
Jewish Ideas Daily
The book uses the combined rubric of religion, nation, and culture as the key to understanding the past two centuries of Jewish thought. This sweeping construct illuminates scholars and their debates, revealing ironies that have heretofore gone largely unnoticed.
— Lawrence Grossman
Commonweal
What historical analysis cannot tell us, however, is whether the truth about the Jews is found in the more or the less traditional versions of Judaism, in the more communal or the more individualistic thinking, or in the religious or in the secular understandings of Jewishness. To answer that question, one must step outside the constraints of historical description and venture into the world of constructive thought. For anyone who wishes to understand the history of the question and the answers that have already been proposed, Leora Batnitzky's stimulating book is an excellent place to start.
— Jon D. Levenson
Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews

This book is lucidly written and can be read by the scholar and general interested reader alike.
— David Tesler

H-Net Reviews
It has been decades since a broad, synthetic volume addressing the major issues and thinkers in modern Jewish thought has been published. How Judaism Became a Religion fills a lacuna in the field, and this book will no doubt serve as the authoritative secondary source on the topic for some time. Leora Batnitzky offers an eminently readable overview of a large number of complicated, even esoteric thinkers in terms that are manageable, indeed inviting, for nonspecialists and lay readers alike. (Helpfully, she also offers such readers a well-chosen list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter.) In doing so, she renders an invaluable service to the field.
— Mara Benjamin
Jewish Review of Books
Leora Batnitzky's How Judaism Became a Religion is a bold new interpretation of modern Jewish thought by one of the leading scholars in the field.
— Micah Gottlieb
Choice
In [How Judaism Became a Religion], Batnitzky provides a useful introductory map of this diverse, centuries-long story. In nine brief chapters, she explains the different responses Jews have made to the challenges of modernity and where each choice leads vis-à-vis both the people of Israel and the individual Jew. The simple design of the book provides an overview of the whole complex issue that will help beginners grasp the essential details. Libraries serving Judaica and religion collections will want to purchase this volume.
Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter Reviews
This book is lucidly written and can be read by the scholar and general interested reader alike.
— David Tesler
Times Higher Education Supplement - Robert A. Segal
Batnitzky devotes her book to differentiating the array of responses to the modern notion of Judaism as a sheer religion. She presents meticulously the disparate positions of figures as varied as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geigel, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Abraham Kook and his son, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Emil Fackenheim and Mordecai Kaplan. She also presents the altogether 'premodern' views of Eastern European Jews such as the Hasidim. She shows that even resolute Reform Jews such as Geiger failed to work out a clean separation between politics and religion. With the Holocaust and with the founding of Israel, any divide seemed refuted by history.
Jewish Voice and Herald - Edward Ruehle
As Batnitzky points out, Judaism doesn't fit any modern mold especially well. Her book adds both shrewdness and humility to the search for modern Jewish identity and the claims often made about the purity of these identities.
Tablet Magazine - Adam Kirsch
Superb and thought-provoking.
Jewish Ideas Daily - Lawrence Grossman
The book uses the combined rubric of religion, nation, and culture as the key to understanding the past two centuries of Jewish thought. This sweeping construct illuminates scholars and their debates, revealing ironies that have heretofore gone largely unnoticed.
Commonweal - Jon D. Levenson
What historical analysis cannot tell us, however, is whether the truth about the Jews is found in the more or the less traditional versions of Judaism, in the more communal or the more individualistic thinking, or in the religious or in the secular understandings of Jewishness. To answer that question, one must step outside the constraints of historical description and venture into the world of constructive thought. For anyone who wishes to understand the history of the question and the answers that have already been proposed, Leora Batnitzky's stimulating book is an excellent place to start.
Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews - David Tesler
This book is lucidly written and can be read by the scholar and general interested reader alike.
H-Net Reviews - Mara Benjamin
It has been decades since a broad, synthetic volume addressing the major issues and thinkers in modern Jewish thought has been published. How Judaism Became a Religion fills a lacuna in the field, and this book will no doubt serve as the authoritative secondary source on the topic for some time. Leora Batnitzky offers an eminently readable overview of a large number of complicated, even esoteric thinkers in terms that are manageable, indeed inviting, for nonspecialists and lay readers alike. (Helpfully, she also offers such readers a well-chosen list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter.) In doing so, she renders an invaluable service to the field.
Jewish Review of Books - Micah Gottlieb
Leora Batnitzky's How Judaism Became a Religion is a bold new interpretation of modern Jewish thought by one of the leading scholars in the field.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781400839711
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • Publication date: 8/22/2011
  • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 224
  • Sales rank: 723,475
  • File size: 417 KB

Meet the Author

Leora Batnitzky is professor and chair in the Department of Religion at Princeton University, where she also directs the Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought. She is the author of "Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation" and "Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered" (Princeton).
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1

Part I: Judaism as Religion 11
Chapter 1: Modern Judaism and the Invention of Jewish Religion 13
Chapter 2: Religion as History: Religious Reform and the Invention of Modern Orthodoxy 32
Chapter 3: Religion as Reason and the Separation of Religion from Politics 52
Chapter 4: Religion as Experience: The German Jewish Renaissance 73
Chapter 5: Jewish Religion after the Holocaust 91

Part II: Detaching Judaism from Religion 109
Chapter 6: The Irrelevance of Religion and the Emergence of the Jewish Individual 111
Chapter 7: The Transformation of Tradition and the Invention of Jewish Culture 130
Chapter 8: The Rejection of Jewish Religion and the Birth of Jewish Nationalism 147
Chapter 9: Jewish Religion in the United States 166
Conclusion 183

Notes 193
Index 203

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