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CONTENTS OPENING CHORDS Prodigal Sons of Assimilation • Heinrich Heine • Bernard Lazare The Vertical Irruption • Franz Rosenzweig • Arnold Schonberg The Challenge of the Holocaust • Karl Wolfskehl • Benjamin Fondane The Challenge of Eretz Israel • Aaron Abraham Kabak • The Nazir of Jerusalem PART ONE: DIALECTIC OF THE JEWISH CONDITION I. The Knots and the Tensions • The Jewish Statement: An Essential Contradiction • The Dialectics of "Being for Oneself" and "Being With the Others" • Taking the Same Path as Everyone Else • The Danger: Moving From Participation to Alienation • The Dissymmetrical Character of the Nineteenth Century 2. The "Anti" and Its Masks • From the Witness Stand to the Box of the Accused • The Crime of Existing • The Fruitless Escape • Did the "Anti" Have its Roots in Germany? • The "Anti" Has Roots in France • The "Anti" Has its Roots Everywhere • The Incarnation of the Absurd in History 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 24 29 29 30 31 32 33 37 37 39 40 41 43 46 47 vi CONTENTS 3. The "Meta" and its Morphoses 49 • And Yet, Perhaps 49 • Some Foul Blows Are Strokes From the Heavens 50 • The Fascination of the Shema 51 • The Search for an Additional Soul 52 • Living a Question 53 • The "Meta" in Its Human Relationship: Thou Art My People 53 • Being Taken Hold of by the "Meta": Yom Kippur 57 • Next Year in Jerusalem . . . (We Have so Willed, and It Is not a Dream) 58 • The Dialectics of the "Anti" and the "Meta" 59 • Yes, Perhaps 60 • Maybe the Messiah 61 PART TWO: THE SITUATION OF BIBLICAL MAN 4. The Ontological Psychodrama 67 • Rupture and Continuity 67 • The Dialogue of the Covenant 68 • The Ontology of the Mask 69 • Comedy, Tragedy ... 70 • The Exit 71 • The False Legend of the Wandering Jew 72 • The True Story of the Wandering: A Return 73 • The Secret of Teshuva 74 5. The Typological Sociodrama 77 • Where Art Thou, God? 77 • Where Art thou, Moses? 78 • The Exodus of the Jew Toward Himself 80 • He Who Had Called Others Gets His Call 81 • The Typology of the Desert 82 • Israel, A Company of Unlimited Liability 84 6. The Prophetical Metadrama 87 • The Forced Return 87 • The Kingdom of a God Whose Throne Is Down Here 88 • The Morphology of Rhythm 88 • Phantasms of the Curvature 89 • The Jewish Mystery 91 • The Conjugal Memory 92 Contents vii PART THREE: FROM DENIAL TO REAFFIRMATION 7. The Variants of Dis-assimilation 99 • The Absolute Impasse 99 • Too Late: Heinrich Heine 100 • A Road Without a Landscape: Bernard Lazare 101 • Dis-assimilation by Transference 103 • The Frustration of an Elusive Figure: Franz Kafka 104 8. The Challenge Accepted 105 • Benjamin Fondane 105 Turning Around Judaism Like a Moth 106 From the Exodus to the Burning Bush 107 In Thy Fearful Nights of Wrath 111 • Karl Wolfskehl 113 The Germanic Fiefdom 113 The Flight to the Antipodes 114 The Irruption of the Voice: The Fiefdom of God 115 The Four Mirrors of Job 116 The Voice Speaks 117 The "Old-new Gales" 119 9. The Returners from Marxism 121 • The Jews of the Awakening 121 • Rutenberg, Steinberg: The Fighters of the October Revolution 122 • The Piotr-Pinhas Adventure 124 • Son of Mother Russia 125 • Son of My People Israel 125 • Embarked Upon the Phantom Ship of Liberty 126 • Jewish Prayer at the Heart of the Supreme Soviet 127 • Liberty Graven in the Law . . . 127 • . . . And Justice as Well 128 • The Non-promised Land of Utopia 129 10. The Pilgrim of Hope: Ernst Bloch 131 • Genesis Is at the End 131 • The Counterpoint of a Jewish Melody 132 • The Exodus Principle 133 • The Principle of Hope 134 • The Jewish Response of Liberty 135 viii 11. 12. 13. CONTENTS • I Command You To Hope • Princess Sabbath From the Temptation of the Cross to the Star of Redemption: Franz Rosenzweig • A Duel With Death • The Patience of Rediscovery • On the Threshold, in Search of the Key • Rediscovering the Language • The "Personalism" of Teshuva: The Return to Observance • Returning to the Absolute From Baptism to Kol Nidre-Arnold SchOnberg • The Written Document of a Teshuva • Conversations With (and About) God • Jacob's Ladder • Vicissitudes of Teshuva-the "Meta" and the "Anti" • Surviving in Exile Until the Hour of Deliverance • A Militant Exile-a Zionist Political Doctrine • The Presence of Events: The Shoa and the State of Israel • Mount Nebo Kol Nidre GLOSSARY OF HEBREW TERMS SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX 136 138 139 139 140 141 142 144 146...

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