Reinventing Maimonides in Contemporary Jewish Thought

James A. Diamond, Menachem Kellner (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

248 Seiten

2025
The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Verlag)
9781835539958 (ISBN)

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The first critical study of how Maimonides has been read by leading Orthodox rabbis in our time shows that some have tried to liberate themselves from his influence, others have built on his ideas generating vibrant controversy, and yet others have sought to recreate Maimonides in their own image.

Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A. N. Whitehead’s famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition ‘consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’ could equally characterize Maimonides’ place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations—Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman—have read and provided footnotes to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today.

Professor Diamond holds the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. He is the author of Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (2012), winner of a Canadian Jewish Literary Award in 2015, and Converts, Heretics and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider (2007). Professor Kellner is chair of the Department of Philosophy and Jewish Thought, Shalem College, Jerusalem and Wolfson Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought, University of Haifa.

Note on Transliteration
Note on Sources

Introduction
James A. Diamond and Menachem Kellner

1. Rabbi Naftali Tsevi Yehuda Berlin: The Love of Israel versus the Love of the Mind
James A. Diamond

2. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik and Maimonides
Menachem Kellner

3. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and the Mystification of Maimonidean Rationalism
James A. Diamond

4. Maimonides and R. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira: Abandoning Reason in the Warsaw Ghetto
James A. Diamond

5. Rav Elhanan Wasserman on Maimonides, and Maimonides on ‘Reb Elhanan’
Menachem Kellner

6. Each Generation and Its Maimonides: The Maimonides of Rav Aharon Kotler
Menachem Kellner

7. What, Not Who, Is a Jew: Halevi-Maimonides in Those Days, Rabbi Aviner and Rabbi Kafih in Our Days
Menachem Kellner

Afterword
Seth Avi Kadish

Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	06.01.2025
Reihe/Serie	The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	368 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
ISBN-13	9781835539958 / 9781835539958
Zustand	Neuware