Rosenzweig's Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity

Description

Rosenzweig's Bible examines the high stakes, both theological and political, of Franz Rosenzweig's attempt to revivify the Hebrew Bible and use it as the basis for a Jewish textual identity. Mara Benjamin's innovative reading of The Star of Redemption places Rosenzweig's best-known work at the beginning of an intellectual trajectory that culminated in a monumental translation of the Bible, thus overturning fundamental assumptions that have long guided the appraisal of this titan of modern Jewish thought. She argues that Rosenzweig's response to modernity was paradoxical: he challenged his readers to encounter the biblical text as revelation, reinventing scripture - both the Bible itself and the very notion of a scriptural text - in order to invigorate Jewish intellectual and social life, but did so in a distinctly modern key, ultimately reinforcing the foundations of German-Jewish post-Enlightenment liberal thought. Rosenzweig's Bible illuminates the complex interactions that arise when modern readers engage the sacred texts of ancient religious traditions.

Mara H. Benjamin is Assistant Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College. Previously, she was Visiting Lecturer and Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow in Judaic Studies at Yale University and Hazel D. Cole Fellow in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. Her articles have appeared in Jewish Social Studies and Prooftexts.

'The standard reading of Franz Rosenzweig's life and thought is that the thought culminated with the publication of his magnum opus the Star of Redemption in 1921 and that his life as a Jewish educator in Frankfurt was a realization of the mandate of that great work. But this reading suggests that Rosenzweig's remaining thinking and writing are ancillary to the system of the Star. Benjamin's provocative proposal, which she develops with clarity and intelligence, is that the Star is not the end but rather the beginning of Rosenzweig's life-long project. His entire professional career can be viewed as an effort to read and understand the biblical text. Benjamin's readings of the Bible in the Star, in Rosenzweig's translations and commentary of the poems of Yehuda Halevi, and in the Biblical translation project with Martin Buber map three stages on a journey that lasted until his death in 1929. The book gives us a novel and fascinating picture of this important Weimar Jewish intellectual.' Michael Morgan, Chancellor's Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Indiana University Michael Morgan (Chancellor's Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Indiana University), Michael Morgan