Studies in the Meaning of Judaism (JPS Scholar of Distinction Series)

A WAY: THE POSTMODERN EXPLICATION OF JEWISH SELFHOOD

A W AY:THE POSTMODERN EXPLICATION OF JEWISH SELFHOOD 237 Insight may open up the past in new ways, but it does not thereby go on to become a creative force generating a fresh way of restructuring how we think. It was one thing for me to realize that individualistically founded thought would inevitably fail to appreciate the full social dimension of human responsibility. It was quite another thing to create a way of thinking that paid tribute to the dignity of self-determination while equally affirming the truth of the people of Israel’s ongoing corporate relationship with God. Thus, nearly a decade passed until I was able to give my notion of the Jewish self book-length statement in Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew (number 273 in the bibliography ). In that time, my continuing concern with applied theology turned away from issues of educational practice, though I did write two textbooks . One, in 1984, Liberal Judaism (number 215 in the bibliography), gave adults a thematic introduction to non-Orthodox Jewish theology. A year later, I wrote with my former student Naomi Patz an ideologically oriented work for children, Explaining Reform Judaism (number 229 in the bibliography). The major focus of my effort to refine my theologizing by reference to the living practice of Judaism in our time was now Jewish ethics. When Wayne State University Press expressed an interest in publishing a collection of my articles on various aspects of Jewish ethics, I was surprised how many I had done over the years. There are forty of them (seven previously unpublished) in their 1990 book Exploring Jewish Ethics (number 264 in the bibliography). I have little doubt that this shift in my practical attention was connected with the turbulence of the times and a consequence of my 1970 founding of Sh’ma, A Journal of Jewish Responsibility. I remained its publisher and editor until 1993 (in no small part due to my neighbors Seymour Udell, z”l, who put his printing company at my disposal for its first three years, and Alicia Seeger, z”l, who graciously and efficiently managed its many administrative complexities). In that period of social activism and intense ethical debate, I was convinced that there needed to be an ongoing demonstration of Judaism’s relevance to our public concerns. But I had learned enough about “Judaism” by then to know that speaking in its name had to be representatively multivoiced, not just “liberal,” or “conservative,” or “religious,” or “secular,” but dialogically inclusive of every responsible kind of voice. Like the texts of our tradition , it could serve our community best by the interplay of contesting interpretation, allowing the thoughtful Jewish reader to be enlightened by the rabbinic style of clarifying each point of view by pairing it with other points of view. That much was in place at the founding of Sh’ma and proved its worth as the little journal slowly found its uncommon voice and then its supportive public. It dawned on me only in the eighties that another cultural-intellectual transition was gaining strength, and that I had been slowly making my way into a postmodern way of thinking , a topic to which I shall return after two digressions. Since I consider intergroup relations a special instance of applied ethics, two further papers in this section, number 22 on Orthodoxy and number 23 on (Zen) Buddhism (of the Kyoto School), can also be said to testify to my ethical interests. However, as the social ethos changed, I turned my attention to the individuals who are the ultimate agents of ethical purposes. The happy result of this turn to virtue ethics was the 1999 publication of The Jewish Moral Virtues (number 321 in the bibliography ), done with my former student Frances Schwartz. I also want to claim personal privilege for the maverick presence here of my study, “The Blessing over a Change of Wine” (paper 21). Above, in my introduction to the section A Glimpse and its article on computers and creative worship, I referred to the theologian’s humanity as evidenced by a sense of humor. My halakhic essay on wine witnesses to two other important aspects of my life: friendship and wine. Nat Hess, z”l, my dear, older friend during the nearly half-century my wife, Estelle, and I lived in Port Washington, mentored me in the worlds of wine and Jewish leadership...