Table Of ContentBETWEEN
The
TIME Essentials
AND
Judaism
ETERNITY
Jacob Neusner
v>
Between Time and
Eternity
The Essentials ofJudaism
Jacob Neusner
Brown University
DICKENSON PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC
Encino, California and Belmont, California
Copyright © 1975 by Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transcribed, in any form or by
—
any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
—
or otherwise without the prior written permission of the
publisher, 16250 Ventura Boulevard, Encino, California 91436.
ISBN-0-8221-0160-7
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-8124
Printed in the United States of America
98765432
Printing (last digit):
Artwork rendered for publication by Tom Martin, from
drawings by Suzanne Richter Neusner.
sosrv/o c*£^^</*c
For
Sanford Kroll
in friendship and admiration
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
Chapter One. The Foundations of Judaism
What Do People Think Judaism Is? 5
The Founding of Judaism 10
Two Ways of Understanding History: The Alternative of
Rabbinic Judaism 15
The Destruction of the Second Temple and the Birth of
Rabbinic Judaism 19
Faith of Torah: The Symbol of Torah 35
The Aftermath of Disaster 42
Chapter Two. The Structure of Judaism: Torah, God, Israel
The Process of Torah: Midrash 47
The Essentials of Rabbinic Literature: Mishnah and
Talmud 53
vi Contents
The Talmudic Mode of Thought 68
The Religious Beliefs of Judaism God and Israel 75
:
God 76
The Individual Person 86
The Family: Adam and Even in the New Eden, Redemp-
tion in the Here and Now 94
Israel: The Jewish People 97
Timelessness and Eternity 110
Chapter Three. Judaism in Modern Times: New Messianism,
Renewed Torah
The New Age 115
The End of Traditional Society 119
Strengthening the Foundations 125
Reform Judaism 130
Zionism 145
The Holocaust 154
Reform Judaism and Zionism: The Synthesis of American
Judaism 166
Torah and Messiah 170
Glossary 177
Biblical and Talmudic References 191
Index 193
Preface
Between Time and Eternity: The Essentials ofJudaism goes
over some of the subjects treated in my Way of Torah: An
Introduction to Judaism. It is important, therefore, to explain
the difference in approach and purpose between the two
textbooks.
The primary theme of Way of Torah is that of definition.
Surveying the immense varieties of Jewish belief and behavior in
—
the modern world from wholly secular to deeply religious and
—
classical we have to ask, How shall we define "Judaism"? In
what way, in particular, do the inchoate phenomena called
"Jewish" known in contemporary life relate to the clearly
defined religious tradition of Rabbinic Judaism? In Way of
Torah, therefore, we first describe the primary mythic struc-
tures and typological expressions of Rabbinic Judaism. We then
turn to the phenomena of modern Jewish culture, the per-
sistence of the rabbinic tradition in old forms, the development
of new forms of Judaism and expressions of Jewishness.
Referring in particular to these new forms, we ask how they
relate to the old and how we are to interpret the new. Way of
Torah, therefore, is a textbook meant to focus upon a fairly
complex problem in the interpretation of modern and con-
temporary religiosity, on the one side, and on the definition of
a religion in its classic and contemporary forms, on the other. It
uii
Vtil Preface
is a textbook to serve courses in which the primary problem is
not the study of a particular religion but of the phenomena of
religion in general.
The present work, by contrast, takes as its problem not the
comparison of Judaism, neither the comparison of classical and
modern expressions of Judaism, nor the comparison of Judaism
and other religions. Rather, the problem of this book is: How
can someone who knows nothing about Judaism understand the
fundamental facts of Judaism? For that purpose, it seemed to
me the best approach was to seize upon a considerable human
dilemma, one that confronts both individuals in everyday life,
and nations or societies in historical perspective. Specifically, I
looked into the history of Judaism for what seemed to be the
central and organizing, all-encompassing issue. My conviction is
that, since the Jews are human beings, what characterizes their
ongoing life is apt to express, in an idiomatic and particular way
to be sure, a universal human problem, a trait of the human
condition. The long history of Judaism reveals, in vast and
transcendent ways, what is truly a continuing and universal
tension in the life of individuals and nations: the tension
between the private and the here and now, with its continuity
but its boredom, and the public, historical, and collective, with
its movement, change, fascination, but also its danger and
disruptiveness. Intending, therefore, to introduce Judaism in
particular, I could find no better way than to reach out to the
condition ofhumankind in general.
The two, therefore, are very different from one another,
even though use is made here of sections of Way of Torah.
Between Time and Eternity, as is clear, describes the formation
of Judaism in the classical, or rabbinic, formulation pre-
dominant since the first century, the primary expressions of
that Judaism, and the new Reform and Zionist movements
which, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, challenged the
fundamental convictions of that Judaism. While this textbook
describes Judaism in all its distinctiveness and particularity, it
does so in a way which should serve students of comparative
religions, in particular by introducing questions pertinent to the
study of any religious tradition. But, self-evidently, the particu-
—
lar issues of Way of Torah issues of definition and inter-
—
pretation are set aside in favor of a different set of questions,
