Abstract
Korn reviews Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s analyses of the theories of religious pluralism of Rabbis Abraham Joshua Heschel, Irving Greenberg and Jonathan Sacks in Goshen-Gottstein’s program of constructing a coherent Jewish theology of religion. Among the questions that Goshen-Gottstein asks are: (1) How much does each thinker believe that other religions contain divine truth? (2) How does each thinker know this? (3) What is the difference between religious pluralism and relativism? (4) How much of this pluralism can be based on Jewish law (halachah)? (5) How is religious truth validated? Goshen-Gottstein exposes the differences between these modern pluralists. Korn’s review of Goshen Gottstein also probes what the legitimate limits of Jewish religious pluralism are and whether the traditional concept of idolatry is relevant today.
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Notes
Heschel’s actual statement was: “It is the will of God that there be many religions.” The NBC interview can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEXK9xcRCho. Accessed on 10 May 2020.
I use the masculine pronoun when referring to God only as a necessary linguistic device, without imputing any gender to the God of Israel. In Jewish thought God has no gender but is metaphorically referenced as having both masculine traits (authority, royalty, power) and feminine traits (compassion, forgiveness, maternal instincts). In Jewish eschatology these contradictory traits will merge seamlessly into a unity in God. In other words, both sets of traits are equally divine, and equally non-divine. When no felicitous alternative exists, I similarly resort to using the masculine pronoun to denote the human being—both male and female.
The other prominent twentieth century Jewish pluralist theologian is David Hartman.
Heschel was not taken seriously by Orthodoxy largely because of his institutional affiliation at Jewish Theological Seminary of the Conservative movement and because he rarely engaged in the details of halachah, which has been the trademark of Orthodox discourse in the last 200 years. In addition, his participation with officials of the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s further widened the gap with Orthodoxy, since the official Orthodox policy was to shun participation in the Council.
See “Notes on a Friendship: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reinhold Niebuhr” by Niebuhr’s wife (2017).
Kabbalistic philosophy is popular in Chasidic theology and education, and the assumption that Jews and gentiles have different essences or “souls” is widespread in this literature.
See, for example, Heschel’s most influential essay on interfaith, “No Religion Is an Island” (1996).
Interestingly, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the prominent Orthodox philosopher and halachic decisor, also did not discuss the halachic category of avodah zarah when addressing the issue of dialogue with Christians in his major essay on the topic, “Confrontation” (1964).
See Greenberg’s collection of essays in For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The new encounter between Judaism and Christianity (2004a).
See footnote 5.
Soloveitchik thought it was not, seeing it as betrayal. Moreover, he assumed that the Catholic Church would not abandon its traditional supersessionist theological criteria in discussing Judaism at the Second Vatican Council, and this assumption was the primary basis for Soloveitchik’s objection to Jewish participation at the Council specifically and to interfaith theological dialogue in general (Korn 2005).
For the details of these rabbinic precedents, see Korn (2012).
On this point in Ha-Meiri’s thinking, see chapter 2 of Moshe Halbertal’s, Between Torah and Wisdom: Rabbi Menachem Ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence (Hebrew) (2000).
See footnote 1.
Goshen-Gottstein has tried to do this in his treatment of Hinduism in Same God, Other god: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry (2016b).
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Korn, E. The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen-Gottstein on Heschel, Greenberg, and Sacks. Cont Jewry 40, 137–147 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-020-09325-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-020-09325-3