Review of Jewish Theology Unbound: Alex Green

Tikkun Magazine, 2019

Book Review: Jewish Theology Unbound by James A. Diamond By Aaron Hughes | 7 hours ago James A. Diamond, Jewish Theology Unbound Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. In his Lonely Man of Faith, Joseph B. Soloveitchik begins by articulating a problem besetting contemporary human existence. How can the person of faith, he asks, live in a utilitarian society that mistakes its own materialism for magnificence and that recognizes nothing beyond its own temporality? How can such an individual, Soloveitchik continues, live "by a doctrine which has no technical potential, [and] by a law which cannot be tested in the laboratory"? If we were to translate this into contemporary parlance, we might say: In a "selfie" world where do we find one another and how do we locate something transcendent in the quotidian? Certainly we are taught in university courses that the fundament of such questions-only now with the face of "faith" subsequently rearranged and given the new name of "reason"-is ancient Greece. What is the meaning of life, of death, of freedom, and of evil? We are also told how such questions are universal and that the answers to them of catholic applicability. Emblazoned on the entranceway to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, philosophy professors tell us, were the words, "Know Thyself," just as centuries later Kant's "Dare to Know" become the rallying call of the European Enlightenment. What links these two slogans is knowledge and the nature of the questions that spur us to seek answers to them. But the call for universality, as any minority will remind us, threatens the particular with erasure. That which neither fits nor conforms becomes a problem, and no matter how much we may proclaim that the particular is indexical of the universal, as we are all prone to do in Jewish thought, the latter simply shrugs and turns its back. Framed somewhat differently: lost between the Platonic and the Kantian bookends of the Western philosophical corpus resides the religious tradition of Judaism. Not only is it lost, it is frequently and actively muted. When Kant wrote the above words, his lodestar was Protestant Christianity, especially that which he considered its spiritualized ethical teachings based on pure love. Judaism, by contrast, failed to "satisfy the essential criteria of [a] religion" since it lacked the appropriate inner orientation to moral laws. This reduction of Judaism to the law and the concomitant assumption that the tradition is devoid of faith and theology resides at the heart of Diamond's impressive Jewish Theology Unbound. Standing upon the shoulders of the Jewish philosophical tradition, something he has articulated historically in a host of award-winning publications, Diamond here tries something slightly different, though certainly no less rigorous. His goal is nothing short of articulating, or perhaps better recovering, a-not the-philosophical theology that emerges from Jewish sources. I, for one, appreciate this locution. I have read too many books and been involved in too many projects devoted to Jewish philosophy/theology that claim to tell us exactly what Judaism is or is not. Diamond's hesitation and cautiousness is the spring from which all good reflection both begins and ends. Diamond's gift is as exciting as it is refreshing. He takes it upon himself to show how (1) Jewish sources (Bible, and subsequent rabbinic, legal, theological, philosophical, and mystical interpretation) contribute to the asking (and answering) of large philosophical questions from the vantage point of the particular; and (2) how such questions and answers are no less sophisticated, meaningful, or spiritual than that produced by other religious traditions, but especially that of Christian theology, which seems, at least on first glance, to have a stranglehold on the engagement with theological reflection. Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/unbinding-the-particular?fbclid=IwAR2OMeDm0lx0N4TDloGutXIpFkxJMUUxBdcS1mpamYoCiGPvlxF1-DmRaLM)

Journal of Textual Reasoning, 2021

Reading Religion, 2019

Review This book is a remarkable publication on a number of counts, but two stand out prominently, at least to this reviewer. First, while much of the work in the field of Jewish philosophy leans towards the intellectual-historical, it is an enlivening event to encounter a work that offers a constructive and positive theological account of Judaism. The field of theology-itself rooted in the seminarian origins of the religious studies academe-has long been dominated by Christian, or Christocentric, discourses whose terms and concepts are seen as identical with the structure of the very field. (h7p://www.facebook.com/readingreligion)

The Book of Doctrines and Opinions: notes on Jewish theology and spirituality, 2021

Existential questions are the big questions about the human condition: love, death, freedom, evil, suffering, and suicide. These questions were treated by existentialists as an end unto themselves. As Paul Tillich write: "only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers" (The Dynamics of Faith, 94). In a similar vein, Elie Wiesel wrote "every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer." (Night). James Diamond in his new book seeks to create a Jewish theology of questions from the text of Maimonides. James A. Diamond holds the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. He earned an

Prof Alan Brill - The Book of Doctrines and Opinions: notes on Jewish Theology and Spirituality, 2019

Feldmann Kaye’s method is to first present the theological tenor of the current age, followed by showing how Rabbi Shagar and Prof Ross fit into this age, then to give examples and directions for expanding these ideas. Feldmann Kaye is comfortable contextualizing her subjects in postmodern thinkers even if the subjects themselves have not read them. If Wittgenstein is important in the 21st century, and her two thinkers fit into this trend of Wittgenstein, then she can offer other thinkers and ideas – such as by Paul Ricoeur, W. V. O. Quine, or Martin Heidegger- to amplify and develop the idea. This method would be akin to discussing the Existential Age of Buber, Sartre and Camus, then showing that Heschel and Soloveitchik should be contextualized as Existentialists, and concluding with ideas from Tillich, Maritain, or Rahner. All her discussion points to Feldmann Kaye’s own “visionary theology” bursting out between the lines of the book never articulated, even with my coaxing for this interview. She has sympathy for the post-secular 21st century ideas of Richard Kearney’s anantheism and Jean Luc Marion’s saturated event. She wants to open up to a theology “which does not rely on an ultimate and singular truth, but posits instead that the notion of a multiplicity of truths.” For Feldmann-Kaye “The implications are twofold: firstly, since faith does not lend itself to scientific verification, it becomes difficult to justify a preference for one’s own world view or way of life. Second, if such truths are perceived as culturally particular social constructs, their prime function is limited to defining communal boundaries.” I heard part of it at the World Congress of Jewish Studies in 2017. I hope to hear more. The book focuses on three specific themes in their thought, (1) Cultural Particularism, (2) Language, and (3) Revelation. In 1979, Lyotard published The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, a work acknowledging that the era of modernism and existentialism had ended. In its place, Lyotard offered skepticism about universalizing theories and a rejection of universals and metanarratives. Feldmann Kaye relies heavily on this seminal work to define the philosophic climate of our era.

The Routledge Handbook for 21st Century Judaism, 2023

Jewish Theology Unbound, 2017

The voluminous corpus of the rabbinic genre known as midrash and aggadah involves not just law (halakhah), but also a prolific repository of unrefined philosophical theology. The aggadic and midrashic style encompasses narrative, allegory, and a deeply intimate exegetical engagement with every syllable of the biblical text. It may not correspond neatly to the kinds of systematic treatises, largely identified with the Christian tradition, through which theology is traditionally delivered. The philosophy and theology that inhere in the midrashic genre are, at the very least, of equal profundity and complexity. One needs only to be attuned to its manner and style of communication, consisting of an unrelenting intricate weave of ciphers and cross-references to its biblical antecedents, to hear a literal barrage of philosophical theology.