Description: Is commitment to God compatible with modern citizenship? In this book, Daniel H. Weiss provides new readings of four modern Jewish philosophers - Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin - in light of classical rabbinic accounts of God's sovereignty, divine and human violence, and the embodied human being as the image of God. He demonstrates how classical rabbinic literature is relevant to contemporary political and philosophical debates. Weiss brings to light striking political aspects of the writings of the modern Jewish philosophers, who have often been understood as non-political. In addition, he shows how the four modern thinkers are more radical and more shaped by Jewish tradition than has previously been thought. Taken as a whole, Weiss' book argues for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between Judaism and politics, the history of Jewish thought, and the ethical and political dynamics of the broader Western philosophical tradition.
Review Quotes: 'Bridging modern Jewish philosophy and classical rabbinic sources, Daniel Weiss argues that a commitment to divine sovereignty does not produce but rather mitigates human violence. Weiss offers new and compelling readings of a number of seminal modern Jewish philosophers, while also setting forth a provocatively fruitful vision of modern Jewish philosophy as not merely the product of modern Europe but rather as the rightful inheritor of classical Jewish thought. Anyone interested in Judaism, modern philosophy and indeed the relationship between religion and politics will have much to gain from this timely and important book.' Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University