Sephardic Heritage Update 928
David Shasha
Friends,
We begin this week’s newsletter with my essay on Christian Fundamentalism and Post-Modernism. It seems that everywhere we turn as we look at contemporary views of Judaism and Christianity, we find literalism and fundamentalism. From the New Atheists, to The Tikvah Fund Jewish Neo-Cons, to Messianic Zionists, and beyond, the idea is to reject the hermeneutic pluralism of Post-Modernism and return to an ossified, static 19th century German view of history and reading. My article argues for the importance of Post-Modernism in Jewish Studies and against the doctrinal understanding of religion that ultimately stems from Christian fundamentalism. In its own way this is all connected to the New Anti-Semitism and the way in which Jews have capitulated to it.
Robin Ridless presents that Christian Conservatism in an article from the Right Wing Christian journal Law and Liberty that attacks hermeneutical pluralism, and with it the Midrashic tradition in Judaism. It is an important article that reminds us of the profound differences between Judaism and Christianity.
One of the most important figures in the history of Religious Studies in America was the great Harvard Professor George Foot Moore. His epic study of post-Temple Judaism remains the best introduction to rabbinic literature and its value-system. This article on Torah presents a very handy precis of his scholarship and its importance to the current discourse. Moore serves as a vital corrective to much of what is now going on in Jewish Studies, a field that has increasingly become tied to Christian radicalism and the Evangelical movement in the Trump era.
I recently prepared a special newsletter on the great scholar of religion Karen Armstrong, whose work has been central to the SHU from the very beginning. The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reviews her excellent new book The Lost Art of Scripture which once again reminds us of her importance to the current discussion of religion, and which, like Moore, serves as a much-needed corrective to the current discussion of Judaism.
We close with two sermons by Park Avenue Synagogue Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove. Cosgrove is a Conservative rabbi and aggressive Neo-Con who has, in pure Tikvah Fund style, sought to make alliances with the radical CHABAD and its militantly messianic values. These sermons were much-discussed in Neo-Con Jewish circles as they represent an important bridging mechanism to bring together extremist Jews under one unified umbrella.
David Shasha
Christian Fundamentalists and Post-Modernism: Law, Hermeneutics, and Textual Multivocality
By: David Shasha
“The Plural Text” and the Death of Legal Meaning
By: Robin Ridless
The Idea of Torah in Judaism
By: George Foot Moore
Book Review: What is the Meaning of Sacred Texts?
By: Nicholas Kristof
Religion Beyond the Limits of Reason Alone
By: Rabbi Elliot J. Cosgrove
Do a Mitzvah!
By: Rabbi Elliot J. Cosgrove