European Judaism

This article draws on the author’s memories of his youthful involvement with European Judaism, having been invited by Rabbis Michael Goulston and Albert Friedlander to join the editorial board in 1970. The formulaic technique involving the phrase ‘I remember’, also used in the author’s first memoir, The Arithmetic of Memory, is derived from a book by the French writer Georges Perec, who in turn was inspired by the American poet Joe Brainard. Unfamiliar names mentioned in the text are easily found online, should readers want to explore further. Among the topics discussed are memorable trips to Paris and Italy. Significant individuals who feature in the article include Rabbi Lionel Blue, Emmanuel Levinas, George Steiner, George Oppen, Edmond Jabès and Jon Silkin.

Dr Marcus Ehrenpreis was already a prominent figure on the European Jewish scene when he in 1914 travelled through the first pangs of World War One to become the Chief Rabbi of Stockholm, a small and largely dormant Jewish community in the periphery of Jewish life in Europe. This would seem an unexpected move by a man who had served as the personal secretary of Theodor Herzl at the first Zionist congress in Basel 1897 and as the Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria for fourteen years and who had made himself known as a leading proponent for making Hebrew the language of a Jewish spiritual and cultural renewal. Instead he was to make Sweden and the Swedish language (!) the central elements of his remaining life and the experimental ground for his vision of a deepened and energized spiritual and cultural Judaism in a dynamic relationship with the non-Jewish world.

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) is well known for his essays on social psychology, most of them written after his exile in the United States at the end of the 1930s. But his lesser known early works – from 1922 to 1930 – are very creative, as well as politically radical, and deserve to be discussed. They have some common aspects: a messianic understanding of Judaism; a Freudian-Marxist rejection of capitalism as a socio-economic system; and the revolutionary aspiration for a socialist utopia with religious roots. These elements together shaped an original and subversive thought.

The mobilization of theological concepts within the political sphere is increasingly dependent upon the capacity of those concepts to bear the weight of a discourse of universalism; this universalization becomes problematic when such theo-political concepts are then taken up as terms of commonality in interreligious dialogue. This article will focus on one such concept, redemption, as a case study, uncovering the ways that assumptions of universalism might betray the mutual understanding towards which dialogue aims.

What is Jewish about memory and how does it relate to questions of justice and redemption? Within European modernities we learn to think of ourselves as rational selves and within a liberal moral culture to put the past behind us, so making it difficult to engage with the traumatic histories of the Shoah and the moral challenges it offers to European moral traditions. Does Judaism provide a critique of secular moral traditions and open possibilities for an embodied ethical tradition that values memory and so engagements with the past, while reminding us that ‘not to know sufferings means not to be human’? (Genesis Rabbah 92:1).

This article sets out to retrieve a concept of diaspora – deeply rooted in Jewish tradition but somewhat eclipsed in the Jewish imagination today – in which dispersion is understood as exile and return is deferred to ‘the end of days’. The argument is developed via a conversation between David Grossman and Amos Oz in 2003, in which Grossman reflects on the question ‘Are we a people of place or of time?’ Pursuing this question leads to a passage in Isaiah in which the prophetic author refers to Zion as Beulah. Beulah is Zion under the aspect of hope, Zion as the prospect of redemption, the end of exile in the here and now.

Throughout history, Jewish notions of justice, hope and redemption have inspired political visions within as well as beyond the Jewish tradition. In the past century, examples can be drawn from Ernst Bloch to Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. Also in the present politico-philosophical debate, a number of prominent voices draw explicitly on Jewish sources in their attempts to formulate radical visions. This article engages with one of the more influential figures in this respect, Giorgio Agamben. Although Agamben offers a highly original and constructive reading of Jewish notions of justice, hope and redemption, it will nevertheless be argued that he fails to do justice to an essential element in Jewish conceptions of liberation. In consistently posing ‘law’ as the counterpole to liberation, Agamben disregards the extent to which law, in the Jewish tradition, is constitutive of justice, hope and redemption. Moreover, in equating ‘law’ with coercion and oppression he also fails to recognize the progressive force of the politico-juridical system, which is the target of his critique.

In a paper given at the Von Hügel Institute in Cambridge the author introduces the document recently issued by the Vatican, ‘The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable’.He outlines the streak of anti-Semitism in the Christian Church from its beginning, and the determined efforts made since 1960 by the Catholic Church to correct this bias, both by teaching documents and by personal friendship and cooperation. This has been a particular emphasis of Pope Francis, who stresses that Judaism is the elder brother of Christianity. Most significant has been the 2001 document of the Papal Biblical Commission, outlining the dependence of so many Christian doctrines on the revelation of God in the Hebrew Bible. Pope Benedict insisted that the Jewish reading of the Hebrew Bible was, though not a Christian reading, a valid reading. The present document explains that for Christians the Jews are still the Chosen People of God, not superseded by Christianity.

This article discusses how ‘The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable’ attempts to rethink the theology of supersession. This is a huge step because supersessionism has been the backbone of the ecclesiastical position of Christianity on Judaism from the earliest period of the evolvement of the institutional Church. It informed the principle that Jews were tolerated in Christian society because they were deemed to be useful to Christians. The question is whether the document succeeds in what it sets out to achieve. The article wonders whether supersessionism can be put to rest as long as the Church holds to the position that ‘Confessing the universal and therefore also exclusive mediation of salvation through Jesus Christ belongs to the core of Christian faith’. It concludes with the suggestion that Edward Schillebeeckx’s approach to exploring how Christianity might find a way of accommodating a plurality of religions whilst maintaining its own particular truth claim unscathed could inspire creative ways to confront this issue.

This article contains critically constructive reflections on the document, ‘“The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of “Nostra Aetate” (no. 4)’. The author argues that a certain type of supersessionism (mild, as opposed to harsh, using categories employed by Levering and Novak) is inevitable and even necessary to Christian discourse. The document fails to define different types of supersessionism and their various relationships to the concept of fulfilment. The latter concept is advocated by the document. The author also raises questions about the justification of the document’s statements on mission, suggesting a theological approach by which these teachings could be better understood. However, this new understanding raises even more difficulties for Catholics and Jews than it perhaps resolves.

The radical changes in attitudes of the Catholic Church to the Jewish people brought about by Nostra Aetate can only be welcomed. This latest document, ‘The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable’, continues the process but raises questions as to how far Jews can recognize themselves in these attempts at a new theological interpretation of Judaism. For example, the document argues that for Christians the ‘New Covenant’ ‘can only be understood as the affirmation and fulfilment of the “Old”‘. Yet by defining the ‘Old’ as the ‘Abrahamic Covenant’ alone, it fails to recognize that it is the ‘Sinai Covenant’ that is an essential part of Jewish self-understanding. The document indicates how much further the process of mutual understanding needs to be explored by both partners in this dialogue.

This article explores and critiques Maimonides’ doctrine on the problem of evil. The article questions whether the solution is satisfactory in relation to The Guide for the Perplexed itself, the Guide’s audience and for Maimonides himself. The article begins by discussing key principles of Maimonides’ doctrine: the concept of evil as privation, the corruptive nature of matter, Maimonides’ classification of evil, divine providence and the perfection of the intellect. An investigation of Rambam’s solution to the problem of evil reveals fundamental principles underlying the Guide and highlights the radical nature of his philosophy. Whilst Maimonides’ doctrine may not be wholly satisfactory, the work was an intensely personal one, allowing him not only to deal with his particular tragedies, but to offer his people a way of coping with a time of immense suffering and potentially transcending the evil of their time.

Infertility and pregnancy loss (miscarriage, termination, stillbirth and neonatal death) affect a significant proportion of our community, both women and men. While biblical narrative shows a range of reactions to infertility, the idea that a child is a blessing, or even a reward from God, can be unhelpful for people struggling with childlessness. Meanwhile, standard Jewish liturgy is completely silent, as though these issues are too painful to be confronted, even in prayer. Our prayer books must offer support and spiritual guidance to individuals at times of crisis. The article concludes with some new liturgy, and with relevant readings and prayers, adapted for the purpose, from existing prayer books.

This article describes the journey of the author’s secular Jewish family as they grappled with how to celebrate their sons’ bar mitzvahs. It is a personal reflection, based on diary entries kept throughout the period of planning a Jewish rite of passage; creating new rituals outside of the conventional religious practice marking a boy’s transition to manhood. This process led the author to consider both what it means to be a secular Jew as well as alternative ways to celebrate Jewish culture.