Jewish Reformation
Regular price
€34.99
A01=Michah Gottlieb
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Michah Gottlieb
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HP
Category=HRAB
Category=HRAX
Category=HRC
Category=HRCC9
Category=HRJ
Category=HRJS
Category=JFCX
Category=QDH
Category=QRAB
Category=QRAX
Category=QRJ
Category=QRJF
Category=QRM
Category=QRMB3
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780197697665
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 235 x 156mm
- Publication Date: 18 Aug 2023
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In the late eighteenth century, German Jews began entering the middle class with remarkable speed. That upward mobility, it has often been said, coincided with Jews' increasing alienation from religion and Jewish nationhood. In fact, Michah Gottlieb argues, this period was one of intense engagement with Jewish texts and traditions. One expression of this was the remarkable turn to Bible translation. In the century and a half beginning with Moses Mendelssohn's pioneering translation and the final one by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, German Jews produced sixteen different translations of at least the Pentateuch.
Exploring Bible translations by Mendelssohn, Leopold Zunz, and Samson Raphael Hirsch, Michah Gottlieb argues that each translator sought a "reformation" of Judaism along bourgeois lines, which involved aligning Judaism with a Protestant concept of religion. Buber and Rosenzweig famously critiqued bourgeois German Judaism as a craven attempt to establish social respectability to facilitate Jews' entry into the middle class through a vapid, domesticated Judaism. But Mendelssohn, Zunz, and Hirsch saw in bourgeois values the best means to serve God and the authentic actualization of Jewish tradition. Through their learned, creative Bible translations, these scholars presented competing visions of middle-class Judaism that affirmed Jewish nationhood while lighting the path to a purposeful, emotionally-rich spiritual life grounded in ethical responsibility.
Michah Gottlieb is Associate Professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. An expert on modern Jewish thought and culture with a focus on ethics and Jewish-Christian relations, he has written or edited several books and articles, including Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn's Theological-Political Thought.
