Books by Eliezer Schweid

Per publisher's email on 4/7/2016: "The chapters of this book are taken from different publications, some of them already translated into English and some translated especially for this volume. The information about original publications, including the Hebrew title, where applicable, can be found on first page of each chapter."

The vast majority of intellectual, religious, and national developments in modern Judaism revolve around the central idea of "e;Jewish culture."e; This book is the first synoptic view of these developments that organizes and relates them from this vantage point. The first Jewish modernization movements perceived culture as the defining trait of the outside alien social environment to which Jewry had to adapt. To be "e;cultured"e; was to be modern-European, as opposed to medieval-ghetto-Jewish. In short order, however, the Jewish religious legacy was redefined retrospectively as a historical "e;culture,"e; with fateful consequences for the conception of Judaism as a humanly- and not only divinely-mandated regime. The conception of Judaism-as-culture took two main forms: an integrative, vernacular Jewish culture that developed in tandem with the integration of Jews into the various nations of western-central Europe and America, and a national Hebrew culture which, though open to the inputs of modern European society, sought to develop a revitalized Jewish national identity that ultimately found expression in the revival of the Jewish homeland and the State of Israel.

This study analyzes the writings of Rabbi Haim Hirschensohn, a Hebrew cultural pioneer who laid the foundation for the Zionist enterprise. His writings focused on finding a philosophical basis that could reconcile the Torah with the transformation forced upon the Jewish people by modernity.

Like Spinoza in his Theological-Political Treatise, Schweid helps us grasp the potential for seeing radically new messages in this oldest of books, the Bible. The American Founding Fathers realized that the Bible offers strong support for the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Socially, it offers a message of egalitarianism, especially in the provisions of the Jubilee. It is hardly an accident that two modern political movements found mottos ready at hand from the 25th chapter of Leviticus: "e;Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof"e; (engraved on the Liberty Bell), and "e;The land shall not be sold in perpetuity"e; (motto of the Jewish National Fund). Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God's creation, and its resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and need-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally-a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

The fundamental book of Eliezer Schweid is a modern interpretation of the Bible as narrative and law which can reopen the dialogue of contemporary Jews with the Bible, from which a dynamic Jewish culture can continue to draw its inspiration. The approach draws at the same time from the philosophical modernism of Hermann Cohen, the dialogical philosophy of Buber, the religious phenomenology of Heschel, and the insights of contemporary Biblical scholars, including literary analysts of the Bible. Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God's creation, and its resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and need-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally-a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

This text focuses on some of the main ethical and spiritual problems raised by the Holocaust. It addresses the views and moral dilemmas of prominent Jewish thinkers and leaders, then presents the author's own reflections on the problem of "justification of religion" and faith after Auschwitz.