How Judaism Became a Religion

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I: Judaism as Religion 11 Chapter 1: Modern Judaism and the Invention of Jewish Religion 13 Chapter 2: Religion as History: Religious Reform and the Invention of Modern Orthodoxy 32 Chapter 3: Religion as Reason and the Separation of Religion from Politics 52 Chapter 4: Religion as Experience: The German Jewish Renaissance 73 Chapter 5: Jewish Religion after the Holocaust 91 Part II: Detaching Judaism from Religion 109 Chapter 6: The Irrelevance of Religion and the Emergence of the Jewish Individual 111 Chapter 7: The Transformation of Tradition and the Invention of Jewish Culture 130 Chapter 8: The Rejection of Jewish Religion and the Birth of Jewish Nationalism 147 Chapter 9: Jewish Religion in the United States 166 Conclusion 183 Notes 193 Index 203

Leora Batnitzky is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish studies and professor of religion at Princeton University, where she also directs the Tikvah Project on Jewish Thought. She is the author of "Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation" and "Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered" (Princeton).

Honorable Mention for the 2011 PROSE Award in Theology & Religious Studies, Association of American Publishers "As Batnitzky points out, Judaism doesn't fit any modern mold especially well. Her book adds both shrewdness and humility to the search for modern Jewish identity and the claims often made about the purity of these identities."--Edward Ruehle, Jewish Voice and Herald "Superb and thought-provoking."--Adam Kirsch, Tablet Magazine "An excellent introduction to the key philosophers and writers who influenced modern Jewish thought."--Wallace Greene, Jewish Book World "It has been decades since a broad, synthetic volume addressing the major issues and thinkers in modern Jewish thought has been published. How Judaism Became a Religion fills a lacuna in the field, and this book will no doubt serve as the authoritative secondary source on the topic for some time. Leora Batnitzky offers an eminently readable overview of a large number of complicated, even esoteric thinkers in terms that are manageable, indeed inviting, for nonspecialists and lay readers alike. (Helpfully, she also offers such readers a well-chosen list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter.) In doing so, she renders an invaluable service to the field."--Mara Benjamin, H-Net Reviews "Leora Batnitzky's How Judaism Became a Religion is a bold new interpretation of modern Jewish thought by one of the leading scholars in the field."--Micah Gottlieb, Jewish Review of Books "Batnitzky devotes her book to differentiating the array of responses to the modern notion of Judaism as a sheer religion. She presents meticulously the disparate positions of figures as varied as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geigel, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Abraham Kook and his son, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Emil Fackenheim and Mordecai Kaplan. She also presents the altogether 'premodern' views of Eastern European Jews such as the Hasidim. She shows that even resolute Reform Jews such as Geiger failed