Can Jews Be Radical Theologians?

Abstract

AbstractIn its first half, this essay recapitulates the history of the relationship between Christian radical theology (sometimes called “God-is-dead theology”) and Judaism from the 1960s onward, in order to hypothesize that this relationship has not yet become a productive dialogue, since Jewish philosophical theology has understood itself to be fundamentally opposed to the Hegelian elements on which Christian radical theology depends. If God is immanent in history, as God was for Hegel, wouldn't a Jewish radical theology be obscene after the Holocaust? Taking up a productive line of inquiry in the work of the author's teacher, the late Edith Wyschogrod, the second half of the essay claims that a non-obscene Jewish radical theology is possible once it centers around law as a site of kenosis, in which the authority of God as lawgiver becomes subordinate to the development of the freedom of the members of the community. Classical rabbinic texts about the so-called “Yavneh reforms” are analyzed in support of this claim.