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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Hope is a category of transcedence, by means of which a man does not permit what he senses and experiences to be the sole criterion of what is possible. It is the belief or the conviction that present reality (what I see) does not exhaust the potentialities of the given data. Hope opens the present to the future; it enables a man to look ahead, to break the fixity of what he observes, and to perceive the world as open-textured. The categories of possibility and of transcendence interweave a closely stitched fabric - hope says that tomorrow can be better than today.
page 373 note 1 See Bright, John, Covenant and Promise (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), for an analysis of how memories affect Biblical eschatology.Google Scholar
page 374 note 1 See Scholem, Gershom. The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971)Google Scholar; Cohen, Gerson D., ‘Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim’, The Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1967).Google Scholar
page 374 note 2 See James, William, ‘The Will to Believe’, Essays on Faith and Morals (New York: Meridian, 1962), pp. 32–62.Google Scholar
page 374 note 3 Op. cit. p. 10.Google Scholar
page 375 note 1 For discussion on the views of Eliezer, R. and Yehoshua, R., see Urbach, E., The Sages (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), trans. by Abrahams, I., pp. 668–73Google Scholar, and ‘Redemption and Repentance in Talmudic Judaism, Types of Redemption (Leiden: Brill, 1970), ed. Werblowsky, Z. and Bleeker, J., pp. 190–206.Google Scholar
page 377 note 1 Soloveitchik, J. B., in this light of this problem, suggests the bold thesis that Jewish messianism demands belief in the spiritual potential of the community of Israel. See On Repentance (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Torah Education Dept. of W.Z.O., 1974), ed. Peli, P. H., pp. 93–8.Google Scholar
page 377 note 2 For a phenomenology of halakhic activism, see Soloveitchik, J. B., ‘Ish-HaHalakhah’, In Aloneness, In Togetherness (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), Ed. Peli, P. H., pp. 37–188Google Scholar and ‘The Lonely Man of Faith’, Tradition (Summer 1965), pp. 33–44.Google Scholar
page 377 note 3 Berakhot, T. B., 5a. The following statement characterizes Rabbinic spirituality: ‘The gates of prayer are sometimes open and sometimes closed, but the gates of repentance always remain open’ (Midrash Rabbah, Deuteronomy, 11, 12).Google Scholar
page 378 note 1 It is not accidental that Maimonides seriously deals with his philosophy of history in the Mishneh Torah in chapters v–IX of the Laws of Repentance.Google Scholar
page 379 note 1 See Guide, III, 27, and my Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1976), pp. 83–101. Maimonides should not be interpreted as maintaining a Marxist type of historical determinism. Rare individuals may achieve the goals of a messianic era (intellectural love of God) even within an unredeemed world. It was for such individuals he wrote the Guide of the Perplexed.Google Scholar
page 381 note 1 Soloveitchik, See, ‘The Lonely Man of Faith’, pp. 28–30.Google Scholar
page 382 note 1 See Hartman, D. and Yagod, E., ‘The Joy of the Law’, Midstream (Winter 1978).Google Scholar
page 382 note 2 Compare Plato's arguments for the philosopher to return to the care of the community with Maimonides, Guide, II, 37. See my Maimonides, op. cit. p. 246, nn. 7, 10Google Scholar; p. 261, n. 39.
page 382 note 3 This may shed light on the talmudic preference for action based on divine commandment above spontaneous behaviour. ‘Greater is he who does an act which he is commanded to do than he who does an act which he is not commanded to do’ (Zarah, T.B. Abodah 3a and Kiddushin 31a). This approach should not be confused with the Kantian preference for duty. Being commanded reflects the added dimension of divine loving acceptance of limited man.Google Scholar
page 382 note 4 See Kaufman, Y., The Religion of Israel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), trans. and abridged by Greenberg, Moshe, pp. 425–6Google Scholar, and Goshen-Gottstein, M., ‘Ezekiel and Ijob: Zur Problemgeschichte von Bundestheologie and Gott-Mensch-Verhältnis’, Festschrift far Joseph Ziegler (Wurzburg: Echten-Verlag, 1972), II, 155–70.Google Scholar
page 384 note 1 Soloveitchik, See, ‘The Lonely Man of Faith’, pp. 11–16Google Scholar
page 385 note 1 See my Maimonides, p. 264, n. 57 and p. 267, n. 73.
page 386 note 1 Cassirer, E., The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), pp. 371–5.Google Scholar