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Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman, editors. Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. xvi, 522 pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2002

Massimo Giuliani
Affiliation:
Washington, D.C.
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Extract

It is arduous to review an anthology that has the ambition of presenting the large spectrum of movements and schools of contemporary Jewish religious thought. Limits of space prevent us from discussing individually the many authors selected in it. Instead, we must consider the criteria by which the authors have been chosen and how the editors have organized the anthologized materials. Such criteria are reducible to the idea that is expressed by the editors in the brief preface. In these last decades of the twentieth century, the Jewish world has experienced an extraordinary flourishing of thought that produced an enormous quantity of works of theological, philosophical, and ethical reflection, whose development was unthinkable right after World War II. This production was especially widespread in the Anglo-American area, where the English-speaking Jewish communities emerged as the most learned, wealthy, and pluralistic communities in the diaspora. Nobody can deny this sociological fact, which is also a cultural phenomenon. This anthology objectively reflects this situation. Nonetheless, it also shows the great open-mindedness and the vivacity with which the Jewish thinkers of this century have tried to answer the questions posed by history.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Copyright
© 2002 by the Association for Jewish Studies

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