Rosenzweig’s Midrashic Speech-Acts: From Hegel and German Nationalism to a Modern-day Ba’al Teshuvah

doi:10.1017/9781108233705.010

10 - Rosenzweig’s Midrashic Speech-Acts: From Hegel and German Nationalism to a Modern-day Ba’al Teshuvah

from Part III - Modern

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2020

Jules Simon

Edited by

Steven Kepnes

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Steven Kepnes: Affiliation:
Colgate University, New York

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Summary

This chapter situates Franz Rosenzweig’s unique and influential contributions to Jewish theology in his Christian historicist and philosophical context of modern European civilization. Doing so allows us to best understand his theological contributions with the interdependent two-fold Jewish exilic tradition of interpreting the Torah as an engaged, dialectical response from the dual perspectives of the living Scriptural authority of their respective communities of faith and the non-Jewish and increasingly secular contexts in which they found themselves. The chapter unfolds as an interpretation that is based on Rosenzweig’s introduction of a novel methodological speech-act philosophy that he calls New Thinking which takes shape in the midrashic form of a messianic aesthetics. Simon claims that this approach enables Rosenzweig to set out a normative guide of teaching-as-practice throughout the entirety of The Star of Redemption, in order to bring the structures of the inter-related processes of Creation, Revelation, and Redemption into functional and dynamic ethical relations.

Keywords

Rosenzweig Midrash Messianic Aesthetics Hegel Speech-Acts Covenant Theology

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology , pp. 213 - 238

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108233705.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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References

Selected Further Reading

Batnitzky, Leora. Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.Google Scholar

Benjamin, Mara. Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar

Fishbane, Michael. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.Google Scholar

Franks, Paul W. and Morgan, Michael L., eds. Philosophical and Theological Writings. Indianapolis and Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.Google Scholar

Gibb, Robert. Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.CrossRef Google Scholar

Gordon, Peter. Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.Google Scholar

Green, Arthur. “The Children in Egypt and the Theophany at the Sea.” Judaism 24.3 (Fall 1975): 446–56.Google Scholar

Holtz, Barry W. Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986.Google Scholar

Kepnes, Steven. Liturgical Time: Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.CrossRef Google Scholar

Kepnes, Steven. “Liturgical Time: Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption.” In Jewish Liturgical Reasoning, 79–130. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.CrossRef Google Scholar

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.Google Scholar

Neusner, Jacob. What is Midrash? And Understanding Rabbinic Midrash: Texts and Commentary. New York: KTAV, 1985.Google Scholar

Rosenzweig, Franz. The Star of Redemption. Translated by William W. Hallo. Notre Dame, IN, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.Google Scholar

Samuelson, Norbert. A User’s Guide to Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar

Simon, Jules. Art and Responsibility: A Phenomenology of the Diverging Paths of Rosenzweig and Heidegger. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011.CrossRef Google Scholar

Wiesel, Elie. Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends. New York: Random House, 1976.Google Scholar