[NGFP-BookClub] Starting Week Five

[michael Rosenak]

Dear Friends: Today we begin our final week of study, conversation and reflection. In a sense this week closes a circle: we began with our relationship tio "the nations" and conclude by discussing: How can we live with one another? I hope you find it interesting. But first, two reactions to our latests "posters". Michael, you are absolutely right in sating that absolute religious faiths can no more be absolutely trusted that any absolutes, pagan, or whatever. Yet the failure of enlightenment culture is mind-bogling. The Holocaust is not another war, no matter how horrible, that can be given rational (however disgusting and evil) "grounds" like, say, plundering in order to conquer and settle. Only the Holocaust existed for the sole purpose of maicious and maximally painful destruction, at a time when Germany was losing the war because it would not stop the destruction. What can keep religion from doing evil despite or because its absolutes? To insist that the principle of self-limitation applies to these absolutes themselves, and that that principle of self-limitation (humility) itself be drawn from the religious tradition. I today prefer midrashic stories and statements as to why there is no more Amalek that a dozen articles on the slow movement to reason anong (even!) the Jews.  Annete, I greatly enjoyed your posting and hope that there will be responses to it as well as to Michael's. I say this because your's looks like a completed and rich "essay" to which there is nothing to say. Which is, of course, not the fact.
The opening section of Session Five is focussed on remarks of the noteworthy Neo-Kantian philosopher, Nathan Rotenstreich, a decidedly non-Orthodox Zionist. His remarks seem to give the Orthodox "the last word." Why? What does he hope will happen? Why could we expect the Orthodox Jews to be more suspicious of Rotensteich and Ahad Haam than, say, Herzl? Do you think that peoplehood is a good way to define the Jews or is it outmoded? Why? How does all this link up with Question No. 1?
Let's start with these. Have a good week. Michael Rosenak
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ngfp.org/pipermail/ngfp-bookclub/attachments/20070312/b49cb9d0/attachment.htm