Alon Goshen-Gottstein Research Articles

Idolatry: A Contemporary Jewish Conversation ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein (review)

Idolatry: A Contemporary Jewish Conversation ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein (review)

AlonGoshen‐Gottstein. The Jewish Encounter with Hinduism: History, Spirituality, Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 288 pp.

The Ecumenical ReviewVolume 74, Issue 5 p. 839-840 Book Review Alon Goshen-Gottstein. The Jewish Encounter with Hinduism: History, Spirituality, Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 288 pp. Lefrandy Praditya, Corresponding Author Lefrandy Praditya pradityarandy123@gmail.com Search for more papers by this author Lefrandy Praditya, Corresponding Author Lefrandy Praditya pradityarandy123@gmail.com Search for more papers by this author First published: 19 January 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/erev.12740Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume74, Issue5Special Issue: Healing Wounded Memories Through Interreligious Perspective and EngagementDecember 2022Pages 839-840 RelatedInformation

Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Reviewed by: Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein Christoffer H. Grundmann Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice. Edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein. Interreligious Reflections Series. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2021. Pp. 442. $49.00, cloth; $39.00, paper. This book is a collection of essays published on the occasion of the seventieth birthday of Israeli Orthodox Rabbi David Rosen, hailed by the volume’s editor as “Judaism’s first and only interreligious ambassador” (p. 401). Gifted with remarkable personality traits—including being hospitable, able to build genuine trust, and able to communicate well across religious divides—Rosen gained an international reputation while heading the Anti-Defamation League’s Jerusalem office of interreligious relations from 1985 to 2001 and, subsequently, becoming director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee while simultaneously serving as “honorary advisor on matters of interfaith” to the Chief Rabbinate (p. 387). The forty-three essays are bookended by the editor’s introduction, which explains the origin of the project and its design and structure, and his conclusion, which highlights insights gained from the articles, [End Page 616] followed by the endnotes and brief remarks about the contributors, all of whom are “friends of David” (p. 2). Goshen-Gottstein also contributed a piece about the Dalai Lama. This is a very personal volume, not just regarding acquaintanceship but also regarding the very content of the pieces, because authors were asked to write about “a figure who inspire[d]” their own “interfaith work”(p. 3) Thus, the book reads almost as a “Who’s Who” of interreligious dialogue past and present at “the high end of the interfaith arena” (p. 379), as the numerous high-profile authors and senior religious dignitaries (cardinals, rabbis, ulama presidents, acharyas, swamis, archbishops) indicate, many of whom are also members of the Jerusalem-based Elijah Interfaith Institute. Averaging eight pages in length (except for a longer piece written by the honoree’s spouse Sharon), the contributions come with a portrait of the person or persons presented, save for the one about “The Anonymous Hero” by William Vendley of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. The fact that Christian, especially Roman Catholic, contributors predominate is owed to the longstanding engagement of Rosen with the Vatican, causing someone to dub him “the pope’s rabbi” (p. 387), a quip not unjustified because the honoree was once considered to become Israel’s first ambassador to the Vatican state. What makes reading this book so exiting is to see how almost all writers testify with affection to their personal role models for involvement in interreligious/interfaith dialogue and practice, some taking their inspiration from individuals outside of their own faith tradition. A Muslim writes about a Christian (A. Abadi about Hans Küng); Jews write about a Palestinian Muslim (Rabbi M. Melchior about Sheikh Abdulla Nimer Darwish) and about a Hindu (Rabbi D. Sperber about Swami Dayananda Saraswati); and Christians write about a Buddhist (S. B. King about Thich Nhat Hanh) and a Muslim (Archbishop R. Williams about Akbar Ahmed). What is also interesting to note is that, in nearly all presentations, the specificity of each religious tradition of the authors remains discernible. This diversity makes for a very rich, colorful florilegium and fitting tribute to yet another “interreligious hero.” It is also a captivating showcase of why and how one should engage in interreligious dialogue. It motivates joining with “faithful presence” (p. 250) in “the dance of dialogue” (pp. 238 and 25 ff.), the rhythm of which is set by honest, authentic encounters of people firmly rooted in their faith tradition who desire to communicate judiciously with others of the “family of believers” (p. 220) about the Unfathomable—once one realizes the limitations of any human comprehension of the truly Ultimate and [End Page 617] recognizes responsibility for joining hands in fostering global peace and care of the environment. Christoffer H. Grundmann Tūbingen, Germany Copyright © 2022 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Confronting the Challenge of Idolatry: Response to Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Same God, Other god

Confronting the Challenge of Idolatry: Response to Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Same God, Other god

A Response to Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s "The New Covenant - Jeremiah 31:30-33 (31:31-34) in Jewish Interpretation"

No abstract is available.

A Review of Religious Genius: Appreciating Inspiring Individuals across Traditions, by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

This article is a review of the book Religious Genius: Appreciating Inspiring Individuals across Traditions, by Alon Goshen-Gottstein. The author is a member of the think tank that conceived the project described in the book, so this review is an insider’s perspective of the process described in the book.

Reflections on the Religious Other from Modern Jewish Philosophy

This essay reviews research gathered by Alon Goshen-Gottstein on Judaism and World Religions. The essay examines the notion of the Other as both feared and loved in Judaism. It assesses the work of Goshen-Gottstein positively and adds portraits of the Other from modern Jewish philosophers, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas, that attempt to show how others from different religions and cultures can help to open new perspectives on life and even open a way to God. The paper ends with an argument for both universalistic perspectives from theologies of creation and particularistic perspective from theologies of revelation in interfaith dialogue.

Reading Jewish Theology and World Religions from the Perspective of a Dialogical Theology from a Jewish Vantage Point

The article discusses the volume Jewish Theology and World Religions, edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn. It depicts its core contents, presenting them in light of the relatively new discipline of interreligious or dialogical theology that challenges exclusivist and inclusivist approaches to other religions. The lines between a nonexclusivist theology of religions present in the volume and a pluralist, dialogical world theology described in the article are not clear-cut. In fact, many ideas and concepts found in Jewish Theology and World Religions lead in the direction of a pluralist theology of religions. I argue that what is needed today is not only a revisited confessional Jewish theology, but also and foremost a dialogical theology from a Jewish vantage point that values the uniqueness of the religious Other and promotes a religiosity based on human rights and a shared humanity.

The Future of Religious Leadership: World Religions in Conversation

This essay offers a critical reading in The Future of Religious Leadership: World Religions in Conversation, a collection of articles edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein. The essay suggests a few ways of reading this book. In one way, it should be appreciated as a history of ideas, allowing us to trace the development of the concept of leadership in various religions, allowing us to understand how leadership came to be what it is today. The question posed to all the authors who wrote texts for this book pertained not only to the significance of leadership in their respective religions, but to the future of religious leadership. They were asked to address the challenges they have faced, the ways in which they have contended with them, and, equally important, the manner in which they have dealt with the cumulative significance of the many challenges to a new formulation of leadership in the future. Therefore, before readers embark on their encounter with each of the different accounts contained in the book, it is important to start by first considering the significance of the project as a whole. To this end, this review begins by presenting the book’s potential readers with its major challenge, which also appears to have been the goal of compiling all of its essays into one text: identification of the shared elements of the challenges facing the different religious leaderships. Phrased more precisely, it is the argument that the future of religious leadership depends entirely on interreligious discourse. It is the divergence into interreligious study and interreligious theology—which the book’s authors and editors regard as necessary at this point in time—that constitutes the primary motive for the anthology’s compilation into a single major project.

The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen-Gottstein on Heschel, Greenberg, and Sacks

Korn reviews Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s analyses of the theories of religious pluralism of Rabbis Abraham Joshua Heschel, Irving Greenberg and Jonathan Sacks in Goshen-Gottstein’s program of constructing a coherent Jewish theology of religion. Among the questions that Goshen-Gottstein asks are: (1) How much does each thinker believe that other religions contain divine truth? (2) How does each thinker know this? (3) What is the difference between religious pluralism and relativism? (4) How much of this pluralism can be based on Jewish law (halachah)? (5) How is religious truth validated? Goshen-Gottstein exposes the differences between these modern pluralists. Korn’s review of Goshen Gottstein also probes what the legitimate limits of Jewish religious pluralism are and whether the traditional concept of idolatry is relevant today.

My Response to Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s Luther the Anti-Semite: A Contemporary Jewish Perspective

Alon Goshen-Gottstein deserves kudos for reassessing Luther’s legacy for Jew and Christian. He has pried open new vistas of negotiating inter-religious differences. Most importantly, he has alerted us to the twin trap of religious triumphalism and delegitimation. For those of us on the precipice, it is precisely the awareness of the trap, both religiously and politically, that keeps us from falling into the chasm below. In this review, I have thus pushed the theopolitical dimensions in exploring alternative ways of conceptualizing primarily a Jewish–Christian partnership and secondarily the Jewish–Christian–Muslim one under the Abrahamic umbrella while pointing out some of the pitfalls. The first is the importance of the doctrine of Jewish election in accounting for Christian antisemitism as well as that of Islam, Nazism, and possibly Soviet Communism. The second is the suggestion of using the changing relationship between Britain and America as a model for that between Judaism and Christianity. For the relationship between Judaism and the sister faiths of Islam and Christianity, I have suggested also the models of the Aleinu prayer and that of Abraham. This is accompanied with an understanding of religious pluralism that allows for this development. We are all indebted to this unusual and courageous book for prodding and provoking more thinking on the complexities, possibilities, and pitfalls of the fluctuating relationship of Judaism, Christianity, and others.

Luther the Anti-Semite: A Contemporary Jewish Perspective by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Luther the Anti-Semite: A Contemporary Jewish Perspective by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Sharing Wisdom: Benefits and Boundaries of Interreligious Learning by Alon Goshen-Gottstein, and: Learning to Live Together: Case Studies in Interfaith Diversity by Tom Wilson and Riaz Ravat, and: The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, a View from Jerusalem by Ronald Kronish

Reviewed by: Sharing Wisdom: Benefits and Boundaries of Interreligious Learning by Alon Goshen-Gottstein, and: Learning to Live Together: Case Studies in Interfaith Diversity by Tom Wilson and Riaz Ravat, and: The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, a View from Jerusalem by Ronald Kronish Eugene J. Fisher Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Sharing Wisdom: Benefits and Boundaries of Interreligious Learning. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. 118. $60.00. Tom Wilson and Riaz Ravat, Learning to Live Together: Case Studies in Interfaith Diversity. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017. Pp. 176. $23.00, paper. Ronald Kronish, The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, a View from Jerusalem. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2017. Pp. 179. $30.00, paper. The books by Wilson/Ravat and Goshen-Gottstein both deal with interreligious relations among the world's great religions, while Kronish centers on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in Israel. Wilson and Ravat narrate the programs of the St. Philip's Centre in Leicester, England, ranging from formal and informal dialogues to joint educational efforts and working together to meet the social and other needs of the community as a whole. Leicester, which dates back to Roman times, is a religiously and ethnically diverse community, almost half of which is non-Christian. It contains Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and various other, smaller religious communities, whose beliefs and practices are each briefly described. The Leicester Model of social integration is summarized as achieving the goal of "Living Well Together," a goal not only of interaction between and among differing religious communities but within them as well. A number of case studies illustrate the efforts of the St. Philip's Centre, with varying results, to bring people together in order to celebrate their differences and develop common programs for the greater good of all. Goshen-Gottstein brings together papers presented at a meeting of the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders that was hosted by the Dalai Lama and Bhai Sabib Bhai Mohinder Singh in Amritsar, India, on the theme of sharing wisdom within and among the world's religions. Six scholars, each speaking for his or her own religion, present the understanding of wisdom in their own traditions and how they can relate to and understand the meaning of wisdom in [End Page 141] the other traditions, which include Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. The editor sums up the six presentations with an insightful presentation of what they have in common and where this might lead for future interreligious dialogues and cooperation. Again, readers will delight in brief and meaningful introductions to and analyses of the world's religions and become better prepared for dialogues in which they might participate in the future. These two books provide illuminating and challenging reading. They deepen understanding and challenge readers to act to take the next step and organize or participate in dialogues and joint action programs in their own communities. Read together, they offer practical advice and scholarly thought and are highly recommended. Kronish is the recently retired Founding Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, which he led for a quarter of a century. His book details his personal involvement in what is one of the most significant interreligious dialogues in the world, the relations between the Jewish and Muslim communities in Israel and the surrounding areas, as well as relations with the small Christian minority and its contacts with the larger Christian communities around the world. The difference between the dialogues and programs described by Kronish and those of the other two books reviewed here is that, as the author states repeatedly, the dialogues in the Middle East can have—and in many cases do have—a positive influence on the ongoing, crucial, and difficult peace process between Israel and Palestine. Lives are quite literally at stake. While not political in nature, these religious "peacebuilding" dialogues can help bring about better understanding of the needs of the "other" communities and help indirectly the peacemaking efforts of diplomats and political leaders of their respective communities. Kronish begins with a brief autobiography, narrating how he became a "humanistic/progressive/liberal/Zionist" rabbi and how and why he and his wife made aliyah, moving "up" to live in Israel...

L’apprentissage des rencontres interreligieuses

Based in Jerusalem, The Elijah Interfaith Institute, founded and presided by Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, organizes meetings of religious leaders in a spirit of dialogue and collaboration. The chosen themes include points of doctrine and burning questions for inter-religious relations. These meetings rely on the working papers of specialists of six traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism). Updated, these essays are now edited in a new collection. (…)

Book Review: Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry. By Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Book Review: Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry. By Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Reviewed by: Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry by Alon Goshen-Gottstein Ankur Barua Same God, Other God: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry By Alon Goshen-Gottstein. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 265 pp. Alon Goshen-Gottstein has given us a path-breaking study, grounded in profound erudition and spiritual discernment, which explores two interconnected themes: the status of Hinduism as Avoda Zara ("foreign worship" or "idolatry"), and the rabbinic category of Avoda Zara itself, by examining its suitability to some of the multiple forms of religious Hinduisms. The term Avoda Zara in rabbinic literature represents the rejection of the worship of gods other than the God to whom Israel is bound in a relation of covenantal exclusivity. For Jewish life and thought, Avoda Zara is the conceptual prism through which other religions could be viewed as inadequate, invalid, and illegitimate and placed under the sign of suspicion, ridicule, and contempt. An instance that Goshen-Gottstein highlights is the rabbinic ruling in 2004 that Jewish Orthodox women could not wear wigs (sheitel) made of hair that had been shorn at the Hindu temple of Tirupati in South India. As a scholar of rabbinic thought who has also cultivated deep friendships with various Hindu religious figures across several decades, Goshen-Gottstein objects to such hasty dismissals of Hinduisms merely because of the presence of physical images, gurus, and cosmic powers in Hindu devotional universes, without first developing a sensitive understanding of the intentionalities of the Hindus themselves who engage with these foci in their spiritual lives. A key emphasis that runs through the book is on rethinking Jewish categories in contexts of interreligious dialogue, especially when some Jewish seekers have "turned East" and immersed themselves in diverse forms of Hindu spiritualities. Goshen-Gottstein's study highlights the points that, on the one hand, medieval rabbinic conceptualizations of Avoda Zara which were developed in response to Christianity cannot be mechanically applied in halachic rulings to Hindu universes, and, on the other hand, the ongoing encounters with Hinduism can surprisingly illuminate certain dimensions of Jewish thought. Maimonides's highly influential definition of Avoda Zara as the worship of any being other than God does not quite fit the panentheistic visions of Vedantic Hinduisms which speak of the divine presence in all beings. For Hindus, generally speaking, the image is an imperfect representation not of a finite being that is other than the divine reality but of Brahman, the metaphysical plenitude [End Page 141] of divinity. Pointing out that the idol or the image is visualized in some Hindu modes of worship as a temporary abode of the divine spirit, which is why it is later ritually immersed in water, Goshen-Gottstein offers as a Jewish analogy the theme of the divine presence in the structures of the Temple which makes the divine available to the world. Certain forms of contemporary Judaisms, too, have configured panentheistic notions of the deity, and these are conceptually similar to the Vedantic standpoint that everything is encompassed by the divine. Again, while Nachmanides operates with a hierarchical universe where the God of Israel is placed above the lesser gods (elohim) who are worshipped by the nations, Hindu worshippers of the images of the supreme God such as Vishnu do not seek any lower deities but God alone. The rich Hindu articulations of such images offer, Goshen-Gottstein suggests, points of deep spiritual resonance with the Hassidic emphasis on the cultivation of the imagination for meditatively envisioning, however falteringly, the incorporeal God. Goshen-Gottstein argues, midway through the book, that even if one concludes that Hinduism is Avoda Zara, the affirmation that Hindus and Jews worship the same God can bring about a reorientation of some Jewish perceptions of Hindu deities, images, and ritual practices as strange, foreign, and offensive. Jewish and Hindu beliefs in the divine as the ultimate source of worldly reality, and the emphases in both contexts on moral uprightness and the spiritual life indicate that the one common God is worshipped. Drawing on the thought of Menachem Meiri, who argued that the validity of a "religion" is to be measured in...

Book Review: Friendship across Religions: Theological Perspectives on Interreligious Friendship. Edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Book Review: Friendship across Religions: Theological Perspectives on Interreligious Friendship. Edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn, Eds. Jewish Theology and World Religions

No abstract is available.

Jewish Theology and World Religion. Edited by AlonGoshen‐Gottstein and EugeneKorn. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012. Pp. xiv + 344. $64.50.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 39, Issue 3 p. 185-186 Judaism: Modern Jewish Theology and World Religion. Edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012. Pp. xiv + 344. $64.50. Daniel Ross Goodman, Daniel Ross Goodman Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical SchoolSearch for more papers by this author Daniel Ross Goodman, Daniel Ross Goodman Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical SchoolSearch for more papers by this author First published: 16 September 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.12062Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume39, Issue3September 2013Pages 185-186 RelatedInformation

Alon Goshen-Gottstein. The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha Ben Abuya and Eleazar Ben Arach. Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. xii, 416 pp.

In The Sinner and the Amnesiac, Alan Goshen-Gottstein returns to the question of rabbinic biography with a comprehensive study of all traditions about Elisha ben Abuya, also known as Aher, “the Other.” (One chapter is devoted to the few traditions of R. Eleazar b. Arakh, a sage who reportedly forgot all his knowledge of Torah.) Goshen-Gottstein also provides a thorough summary of the secondary literature on Elisha, whom scholars variously have portrayed as a mystic, gnostic, apostate, philosophical atheist, and heretic. He appends a complete Hebrew version of the main Bavli story of Elisha including all manuscript variants.