This volume features Eliezer Schweid's philosophy of Judaism for a secular age. The volume brings together four of Schweid's most original and influential philosophical essays and an interview with him that together express his fundamental outlook: the faith of a secular Jew, freely choosing loyalty to his or her national culture and drawing on Jewish heritage to inform how to act responsibly toward one's neighbor, one's people, the world, and God. The themes span the gamut of Schweid's life work: the existential loneliness of the modern Jew; Judaism as a culture; faith in light of the...

This volume features Eliezer Schweid's philosophy of Judaism for a secular age. The volume brings together four of Schweid's most original and influential philosophical essays and an interview with him which express his fundamental outlook: the faith of a secular Jew, having freely choosen loyalty to his or her national culture and to Jewish heritage informs him or her how to act responsibly toward one's neighbor, one's people, the world, and God. The themes span the gamut of Schweid's life work: the existential loneliness of the modern Jew; Judaism as a culture; faith in light of the...

Eliezer Schweid's career as philosopher, scholar, educator and public intellectual has spanned the history of the State of Israel from the pre-war Yishuv period to the present. In these essays he recalls his formative years in the Zionist youth and the Hebrew University. He reflects on the existential loneliness of the modern Jew. He examines the perennial problem of theodicy through a Jewish lens in its broadest human parameters. Finally, he offers a challenging critique of the postmodern culture of the "global village," in which the marketplace and skepticism have crowded out humane values...

The culmination of Eliezer Schweid's life-work as a Jewish intellectual historian, this five-volume work provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the major thinkers and movements in modern Jewish thought, in the context of general philosophy and Jewish social-political historical developments, with extensive primary source excerpts. Volume Two, "The Birth of the Jewish Historical Studies and the Modern Jewish Religious Movements," discusses the major Jewish thinkers of central and eastern Europe before 1881, in connection with the movements they fostered: German-Jewish...