Leora Batnitzky - Is Judaism a Religion?

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2014

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nineteenth century political emancipation brought citizenship rights to European Jews. In How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky explores how this new political reality affected Jewish philosophy and the Jewish people. The prospect of secular citizenship challenged Judaism's premodern integrity, and drove Jewish writers, intellectuals, and rabbis to grapple with how to recast Judaism as a "religion," emphasizing its private faith over its national call to public practice. The transformation of Judaism as a religion – and reactions to it – is the driving question of modern Jewish thought to this day. What does Judaism gain and lose as a religion? What effects, positive and negative, has this modern transformation yielded? How does conceiving of Judaism as a religion relate to Zionism and the refounding of a Jewish State for the Jewish People?

Listen as Leora Batnitzky, Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of Religion, and Chair of the Department of Religion at Princeton University, discusses the intellectuals who recast Judaism as a modern religion, those that opposed the change, and the legacy of modern Jewish thought today. The event was recorded before a live audience on February 20, 2014 at the Tikvah Center in New York City.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So now I turn to introducing Leora, which is really a pleasure.
0:04.0	Leora Benitsky is the Perlman Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Religion at Princeton University.
0:11.0	She's also the director of Princeton's Tikva Project on Jewish Thought.
0:17.0	She's the author of idolatry and representation,
0:23.5	philosophy of Frons Rosenzweig reconsidered,
0:26.5	Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas,
0:28.7	philosophy and the politics of Revelation,
0:34.7	and this book, which is going to be our principal topic tonight,
0:39.1	how Judaism became a religion, an introduction to modern Jewish thought.
0:49.8	I can safely say that Professor Van Nitzky has been a guide, one of the principal guides for Tikva in all of our work in Jewish thought.
0:57.2	She has been the academic director of the program we run at Princeton called the Jewish Thought and Enduring Human Questions program since 2008, and in that capacity has been my partner,
1:04.2	my teacher, colleague, and friend.
1:06.8	So welcome.
1:07.8	Thank you very much.
1:09.7	It's really a pleasure to be here and to see everyone,
1:13.3	and also to see everyone, especially from TIGPA.
1:17.3	Thank you.
1:19.0	So I happen to know because I was speaking to you about your book
1:25.6	when it was still a Microsoft Word document, I think,
1:28.5	that at one point along the way, its working title was, is Judaism a religion?
1:33.6	And that's how we've titled the session tonight.
1:37.0	When it came out, it was how Judaism became a religion.
	...

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