Rethinking the Messianic Idea in Judaism [Hardcover]

Over the centuries, the messianic tradition has provided the language through which modern Jewish philosophers, socialists, and Zionists envisioned a utopian future. Michael L. Morgan, Steven Weitzman, and an international group of leading scholars ask new questions and provide new ways of thinking about this enduring Jewish idea. Using the writings of Gershom Scholem, which ranged over the history of messianic belief and its conflicted role in the Jewish imagination, these essays put aside the boundaries that divide history from philosophy and religion to offer new perspectives on the role and relevance of messianism today.

Michael L. Morgan is the Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Indiana University.

Steven Weitzman, the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism whose most recent publications includeSolomon: The Lure of Wisdomand a second revised edition ofThe Jews: A History.

Lehrer and Meng have edited an important interdisciplinary work, which should make an immediate impact on the field of Polish Jewish Studies.

[A]ppropriate for academic collections that are either comprehensive or include a specialization on messianism.Sept 2015

the messianic is a difficult concept in both Christianity and Judaism, but it is also of central importance to both religions. The originating difference between Judaism and Christianity often turns on the question or status of the massianic.

Invites exploration of a number of significant issues including but not limited to: Jewish-Christian relations, post-Holocaust Jewish thought, Judaism and the political, the future of Zionism, Judaism and naturalism, biblical hermeneutics, and Jewish ethics.

Introduction
Michael L. Morgan and Steven WeitzmlÐ