Table Of ContentReviewing the Covenant
SUNY SERIES IN JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
Kenneth Seeskin, Editor
Reviewing the Covenant
Eugene B. Borowitz and the
Postmodern Renewal of Jewish Theology
Peter Ochs, editor,
with Eugene B. Borowitz
Including responses by:
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
Susan Handelman
David Novak
Thomas Ogletree
Norbert Samuelson
Edith Wyschogrod
State University of New York Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reviewing the covenant: Eugene B. Borowitz and the postmodern revival of
Jewish theology / edited by Peter Ochs with Eugene Borowitz.
p. cm. - (SUNY series in Jewish philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-4533-X (hc. : alk. paper). - ISBN 0-7914-4534-8 (pb. :
alk. paper)
I. Borowitz, Eugene B. Renewing the covenant. 2. Judaism-20th
century. 3. Commandments (Judaism)-History of doctrines-20th
century 4. Covenants-Religious aspects-Judaism-History of
doctrines-20th century. 5. Postmodernism-Religious aspects-
Judaism. 1. Ochs, Peter, 1950- II. Borowitz, Eugene B.
III. Series.
BM60I.B623R48 2000
296·3-dc21
CIP
109 8 7 6 543 21
Contents
Preface Vll
Introductory
The Emergence ofP ostmodern Jewish Theology and Philosophy
I.
PETER OCHS 3
Postmodern Judaism: One Theologian's View
2.
EUGENE B. BOROWITZ 35
Readings of Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant
3. Gene Borowitz' Renewing the Covenant:
A Theology for the Postmodern Jew
YUDIT KORNBERG GREENBERG 49
4. Reading the Covenant: Some Postmodern Reflections
EDITH WYSCHOGROD 60
5. Post-Modern or Chastened Modern?
Eugene B. Borowitz' Vision for Jewish Fidelity
THOMAS W. OGLETREE
6. Is the Covenant a Bilateral Relationship?
A Response to Eugene Borowitz'Renewing the Covenant
DAVID NOVAK 81
7. A Critique ofB orowitz' Postmodern Jewish Theology
NORBERT M. SAMUELSON 91
Vl Contents
Readings of the Readings
8. Borowitz and the Postmodern Renewal ofT heology
PETER OCHS III
9. 'Im biet, eyma-Since You Object, Let Me Put It This way
EUGENE B. BOROW1TZ 145
Postmodern Theological Renewal: A Meditation
ro. "Crossing and Recrossing the Void':· A Letter to Gene
SUSAN HANDELMAN 173
Bibliography 201
Index 207
Index ofB iblical and Rabbinic Sources 213
Preface
For decades, Eugene B. Borowitz has served as rabbi for America's liberal
Jewish congregations, philosophic theologian for its liberal rabbis, and
philosopher-rabbi for its Jewish intellectuals. His is one of the few voices
heard and loved among all genres of Jewish life, from congregants to phil
anthropic institutional workers, to rabbis, to academics. It is also one of
the few voices that speak across temporal bounds, as well as institutional
ones. Known for so many years as a philosophic and rabbinic spokesper
son for the ideals of modern Judaism, Rabbi Borowitz has, in the past
decade and a half, begun to speak as well to American Judaism in what he
calls its "postmodern condition." In Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for
the Postmodern Jew, he declares an end to the epoch of modern Jewry's ef
forts to identifY its norms with enlightened reason's search for humanity's
universal ideals. Disillusioned with that search, he says "and still in the
shadow of Holocaust, we turn again to Judaism's classical traditions and
texts and beliefs," not to turn our backs on the redeeming aspects of mod
ernity, but to re-commit that modernity to the Covenant from which it
had lost its way. A bold turn, indeed, and one which has already helped re
center discussions of theology and religious conduct throughout the Re
form movement. New questions are now on the agenda of liberal Jewish
inquiry: Who is a postmodern Jew? How does she differ from the modern
Jew and the traditional Jew? What does it mean to speak today of "Jewish
theology"? What happens to reason when we speak of renewing the Cove
nant? How can it be renewed after Shoa?
These are pressing questions for everyday Jewish practice. But they
are also heated questions for the Jewish academy. The new visions of
Gene Borowitz the Rabbi-theologian are also the new argumenrs of Gene
Preface
Vlll
Borowitz the philosopher-Jew, and these are arguments that make his
work of urgent significance for contemporary Jewish academics, as well as
their Christian peers.
In this volume, Rabbi Borowitz' fellow academics receive his recent
work in the academics' privileged language of love, which is a language of
intense intellectual analysis, challenge, response, and dialogue. Here are
leading Jewish scholars-and a Christian scholar-who are also driven to
reconsider the relation of reason and religion in a postmodern age. Seek
ing, on the side of the university, to challenge Western academic presump
tions about the dividing line between disciplined reason and religious /
communal life, these scholars are warmed by Prof. Borowitz' complemen
taryefforts to maintain the religious community's engagements with rea
son as well as tradition. And they are prepared to meet the challenge of his
claims about just what "postmodernity" may mean to the practicing Jew.
So they engage him here, in shared argument, and analysis, and care, and
study. General readers may need to brace themselves here and there, since
the academics gathered here have been stimulated to bursts of rather ab
stract thinking, but more rigid academics may need to brace themselves as
well; for the abstract is wedded on these pages to the concrete, the philo
sophic to the empirical, the conceptual to the moment of faith. The style
of religious philosophy on the pages may also be surprising; for Gene Bo
rowitz has stimulated his colleagues to interactive, friendly, and dialogic
expressions of their rigorous habits of reasoning.
In these meetings of academy and community, modernity and rab
binic covenant, rabbi and philosopher, we may very well see a glimpse of a
new approach for the academy as well as a new discipline for everyday
Jewish religion.
Before proceeding to the conversation, perhaps some of you may like
to hear first a little more formally about the conversation leader. David El
lenson has recently written a biographical tribute to Gene Borowitz and,
with the biographer's indulgence, we'll excerpt form his tribute the follow
ing, brief biographical sketch:
Eugene Borowitz received his B.A. from Ohio State University; was
ordained rabbi in 1948 by Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, which
also awarded him the degree of Doctor of Hebrew Letters in 1950. He
also received the Ed.D in 1962 from Columbia University. During the
1950S, Professor Borowitz served as founding rabbi of The Community
