Michah Gottlieb Boeken

Exploring the nuances of the faith-reason debate, this book delves into Jewish perspectives that highlight the political implications distinct from Christian views. Through in-depth analyses of influential Jewish thinkers spanning from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries, including figures like Maimonides and Spinoza, it sheds light on how Jewish thought engages with these philosophical challenges. This work is particularly valuable for scholars and students examining the intersections of faith, reason, and politics within religious traditions.

In the century and a half beginning with Moses Mendelssohn's pioneering translation and the final one by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, German Jews produced sixteen different translations of at least the Pentateuch. Exploring translations by Moses Mendelssohn, Leopold Zunz, and Samson Raphael Hirsch, Michah Gottlieb argues that each articulated a middle-class Judaism that was aligned with bourgeois Protestantism, seeing middle-class values as the best means to serve God and the authentic actualization of Jewish tradition.