ARE JEWS THE ONLY TRUE MONOTHEISTS?
SOME CRITICAL REFLECTIONS IN JEWISH THOUGHT FROM
THE RENAISSANCE TO THE PRESENT
David B. Ruderman*
ABSTRACT: Monotheism, by simple definition, implies a belief in one God for all peoples, not for
one particular nation. But as the Shemah prayer recalls, God spoke exclusively to Israel in insisting
that God is one. This address came to define the essential nature of the Jewish faith, setting it apart
from all other faiths both in the pre-modern and modern worlds. This essay explores the positions of
a variety of thinkers on the question of the exclusive status of monotheism in Judaism from the
Renaissance until the present day. It first discusses the challenge offered to Judaism by the
Renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola and his notion of ancient theology which claimed a common
core of belief among all nations and cultures. It then explores the impact of this universal philosophy
of Christianity on a group of early modern Jewish thinkers; considers its repercussions among Jewish
thinkers in the nineteenth century both in Western and Eastern Europe; and finally focuses on one
contemporary Jewish reflection of the vision of Pico in our own day.
Monotheism, by simple definition, implies a belief in one God for all peoples, not for one
particular nation. The Jews might have claimed the privilege of conceiving and bringing
the doctrine to the world in its original form, but ultimately, it is only meaningful when it
transcends its own particular socio-religious setting, when it addresses the condition of all
human beings and all cultures. But as the Shemah prayer recalls, God spoke exclusively to
Israel in insisting that God is one. This address came to define the essential nature of the
Jewish faith, setting it apart from all other faiths both in the pre-modern and modern
worlds.
The issue of whether Judaism’s vision of monotheistic faith is unique or not is related
to another question: If the one God spoke only to Israel, how might we define the faiths of
Islam and Christianity? Can they also claim to be monotheistic on an equal footing with
Jewish monotheism? Was Sinai an exclusively Jewish experience not to be shared by other
faiths or was it merely the font of a universal revelation of one God to all three religions?
This in turn is directly linked to the ontological status of the non-Jew in Jewish thought.
By recognizing Christianity and Islam as monotheistic faiths, the status of the believer in
both religions had to be re-thought from a Jewish perspective and elevated above the nonbelieving pagans.
I could easily begin with several medieval formulations of the issue, especially that of
Moses Maimonides, Menahem ha-Meiri, and others,1 but I have chosen instead to open
* Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History, Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania.
Email:
[email protected]
This essay is based on the keynote address I gave at the British Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference
at the University of Manchester in July, 2015. My thanks to Professor Daniel Langton and his program committee
for inviting me to deliver this talk and to publish it in Melilah.
ARE JEWS THE ONLY TRUE MONOTHEISTS? (RUDERMAN)
23
this conversation at a critical moment in the history of Western thought during the
Renaissance period. I refer specifically to the challenge offered to contemporary Jews by
the Renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola and his notion of ancient theology or prisca
theologia, the doctrine that asserts that a single true theology was given by God to humanity
in antiquity and presently threads through all religions and cultures. Pico, together with
his colleague Marsilio Ficino, concluded, on the basis of their discovery of ancient pagan
and Jewish sources, that this common core of belief, indeed a monotheistic one when
interpreted correctly, can be located among all civilizations and is not the sole possession
of ”ny one religion. Pico s formul”tion of ”ncient theology posed ” unique thre”t to the
continuity of Jewish national existence. He introduced Jews for the first time to the image
of a universal cultural experience transcending either Christianity in its present form or
Judaism. He argued for a new religious cosmopolitanism in which all separatisms would
be obliterated, and the best of every nation and culture, including Judaism, would be
fused into a collective human spirit. With Pico and with Renaissance culture in general,
Jews entered for the first time into a new dialogue with the western world. 2
In Pico s lifetime ”nd ”fter, sever”l Jewish thinkers noticed this novel formul”tion ”nd
felt the need to embrace it, or to polemicize with it, or to temper the not undisguised
Christian appropriation of other religious cultures under the alleged banner of a universal
faith. I offer briefly three interesting illustrations of those who essentially concurred with
some form of the notion of ancient theology. The most well-known is that of Leone Ebreo,
that is, Judah Abravanel, in his Dialoghi d’Amore. The work has been studied by many
scholars. I will only remark here that Leone appears to accept at face value the notion of
ancient theology, upholding a vision of the commonality of all humanity and its faith.
Leone never denied his Jewish background but the Dialoghi is a work written for all
human beings, not Jews alone. He could affirm Judaism while at the same time citing
pagan myths and even Christian sources. Like Spinoza after him (who held a copy of
Leone s book in his own libr”ry), Leone believed that the Jewish faith was most relevant
when it transcended its own exclusivity, when it became the province of all human beings
and all nations.3
An even more explicit example of the impact of ancient theology on Jewish thought is
that of Abraham Yagel in his Beit Ya’ar Ha-Levanon. In this text, a reworking of a text
found in Heinrich Cornelius Agripp” s writing, Y”gel writes: The import”nt s”ges ”mong
the gentiles, who never saw the lights neither of the Torah nor of worship, prophecy,
1 The liter”ture on this subject is v”st. See, for ex”mple, Ger”ld Blidstein,
M”imonides ”nd Me iri on the
Legitimacy of Non-Judaic Religions, in Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction of Judaism with Other Cultures, ed. Leo
Landman (New York: Yeshivah University Press, 1990), 27-35; D”vid Nov”k, Gentiles in R”bbinic Thought, in The
Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. Steven T. Katz, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 647-62;
Christine H”yes, The Other in R”bbinic Liter”ture, in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic
Literature, ed. Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 243-68;
and, of course, the pioneering study of Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in
Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), especially 159-77.
2 This is a brief summary of my earlier formulation of the challenge of Pico to Jewish thought which I still think is
valid. See David B. Ruderman, The It”li”n Ren”iss”nce ”nd Jewish Thought, in Renaissance Humanism:
Foundations, Forms and Legacies, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 1:382–
433. For more recent work on Pico, see, for example, M. V. Dougherty, ed., Pico della Mirandola: New Essays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), and the essay by Brian Copenhaver on Pico in Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy with an additional recent bibliography: (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/).
3 See my discussion in Ruderm”n,
The It”li”n Ren”iss”nce ”nd Jewish Thought, 407-12, and the earlier
scholarship I cite there. For more recent work, see the essay by Aaron Hughes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/, and its accompanying bibliography.
23
24
MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
wonders, and miracles [acknowledged the idea of one God] … Listen to what these sages
spoke ”bout the cre”tor. He then proceeds to cite monotheistic p”ss”ges of Orpheus,
Zoro”ster, Apuleius, ”nd concludes with the gre”t Hermes ”nd his pr”yer to God ”s he
wrote it at the end of the first ch”pter of the Pim”nder. This pr”yer, Y”gel ”dds is close
to what is found in the Torah of Moses, if one understands all the details of its statements
precisely, without the intrusion of ”ny f”lse thoughts, doubt or suspicion. 4
One final example is that of an Italian Jewish thinker of the seventeenth- century,
Judah Del Bene in his Kissot le-Beit David. Del Bene perhaps offers the most authentic
expression of the internalization of Catholic attitudes by an Italian Jewish writer proud of
his Jewish heritage but nevertheless convinced that his Jewish identity is intimately linked
to the spiritual and political fate of his Catholic neighbours. He sees their faith as almost
identic”l with the Jewish one; he sees their mission to the f”r-off isl”nds ”s ” form of
teaching Torah to the world; he views their enemies, especially the Ottoman Turks, as his
own; and he is even envious of the way they educate themselves and produce their own
rich monastic culture. Here is Del Bene on Catholic missionaries spreading the gospel:
Even if they do not observe the words of the Tor”h ”s we do tod”y, nevertheless, they still
believe that it is the Torah from heaven that was given at Sinai by Moses … For it was
God’s holy will to ”w”ken ” spirit in men of very good virtues, masters of a language
spoken according to the Torah today who are called Christians to spread out afar a net to
those dist”nt isl”nds ”nd to succeed in their purpose. 5
In the eighteenth century, the crisis of Jewish life revolved around the sin of
hybridity, or what I have called elsewhere mingled identities, of a dilution and blurring of
pure faith by the mingling of elements of Christianity with Judaism and with even Islam.
Boundary crossing not merely anti-nomianism, as Pawel Maciejko has argued in
exp”nding Gershom Scholem’s position, w”s the re”l heresy of the Sabbateans, as well as
that of lapsed conversos, individual converts, Christian Hebraists and even former Jews
who had become evangelical missionaries. Figures such as Jonathan Eibeshütz, Nehemiah
Ḥayon, Johannes Kemper, Jacob Frank and others created syncretistic notions of
monotheism that undermined the undiluted purity of a true orthodox Jewish faith.
Conversos and individual converts straddled the fence between confessions while Christian
Hebraists, evangelicals, and other Christians infatuated with Judaism erected new edifices
of faith resting on a merger of the two religions. The heresy hunters and the beleaguered
rabbinate felt threatened since the clear-cut boundaries separating pure Jewish faith from
a Christian one had blatantly been breached. I have offered elsewhere numerous examples
of this phenomenon of blended faiths and hybrid formulations of Judaism and Christianity
as they emerged conspicuously in the early modern period.6
I might add one more remarkable case from a later period here taken from my most
recent research project on missionaries and apostasy in the nineteenth century. Stanislas
Hoga was a Polish Jew who converted to Catholicism and then evangelical Protestantism in
4 See David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician
(Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 139-60 (especially 144-48) where the passage and its sources
from Beit Ya’ar ha-Levanon are fully discussed.
5 See David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 185-98, especially 195.
6 See David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2010), 159-89; and Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755-1816
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
ARE JEWS THE ONLY TRUE MONOTHEISTS? (RUDERMAN)
25
the first half of the nineteenth century. Coming under the influence of the London Society
for the Promotion of Christianity amongst the Jews, he began to work for the learned
missionary Alexander McCaul who asked him to translate his well-known assault into
Hebrew which was called Netivot Olam (entitled The Old Paths in the English original). The
book caused a sensation among European Jews and evoked strong rebuttals on the part of
several well-known Eastern European Maskilim. What is less known about the enigmatic
Hoga was that he apparently later regretted his affiliation with the London Society and
their efforts to missionize among Jews. He subsequently published several works in
English in which he openly ridiculed their meager efforts to convert his former coreligionists and their ill-conceived position that the halacha of the rabbis should be
abrogated. On the contrary, Hoga argued, a Jew like him who believes in Christianity is
still a Jew, and Jews could and should continue to practice Jewish ritual. The assault on
Talmudic law by McCaul and his colleagues was simply wrong; Jesus had come to uphold
the law not to destroy it and thus Christian faith and Jewish ritual practice could be
meaningfully merged in the modern era.7
Acknowledging the social status and dignity of the Christian went hand in hand with an
appreciation of the legitimacy of his monotheistic faith. Jewish apologetics of the
nineteenth century focus on distinguishing contemporary Christianity from ancient
paganism. The distinction only made sense when Jews recognized that their Christian
neighbours had legitimate faith systems as valid as that of Judaism, at least for them. By
conceding the simple fact that Christianity was monotheistic and not pagan, Jews were
seemingly obliged to relinquish their exclusive claim to be the true monotheists.
Yet in this same era, one particular group of Jews offered the primary resistance to the
notion of blended faiths and religious boundary crossings, insisting instead that only
Judaism offered an ideologically pure form of monotheism to the world. They were
primarily but not exclusively Liberal Jews who had considerably diminished the collective
demands of halakhic practice in favour of the personal autonomy of one’s individu”l f”ith.
For them, what remained uniquely Jewish was the idea of one God. Jewish monotheism,
so they claimed, was even the original faith of Jesus and was later corrupted by the Church
fathers and the Catholic Church. Judaism was admittedly not the only monotheism but it
was the earliest, the most authentic, and the most perfect form that had ever existed in the
history of humankind. An entire pantheon of Jewish thinkers, primarily German ones,
from the beginning of the nineteenth well into the twentieth century justified the existence
of the Jewish people in Western civilization as bearers of this unique monotheistic
formulation. I need only recall the well-known writings of Immanuel Wolf, Abraham
Geiger, Heinrich Graetz, Nachman Krochmel, Herman Cohen, and Leo Baeck, among
others. The Reform Jewish ideologues in this group who had abandoned an unwavering
commitment to Jewish ceremonial law felt especially compelled to argue that Judaism was
still unique even without halakha and could be differentiated from Christianity as a result
of its singular version of monotheism. They took a stringent polemical stance against
7 See Beth-Zion L”sk Abr”h”ms,
St”nisl”us Hog”: Apost”te ”nd Penitent, Transactions of the Jewish Historical
Society of England 15 (1939-1945): 121-14; and David B. Ruderman, Towards a Preliminary Portrait of an
Evangelical Missionary to the Jews: The Many Faces of Alexander McCaul (1799-1863), Jewish Historical Studies:
Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 47 (2015), 48-69.
25
26
MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
Christianity, insisting on the separation of Christianity from the body-politic and the need
to define a Jewish faith in opposition to a Christian one.8
This position seems to be argued as well by a group of Maskilim in eastern Europe - I
refer to the less examined writings of Samuel Joseph Fuenn, Isaac Baer Levinsohn, and
Eliezer Zweifel in their strong defence of the rabbis and the Talmud against Alexander
McCaul and missionaries. The original monotheism and who actually conceived it and
protected its purity becomes a critical concern for them as well in defining a unique space
for Judaism within Western civilization. This became especially acute when the
missionaries argued that Jews cannot be true monotheists nor fully integrated into
European society without giving up on rabbinic theology and practice. The political
discourse about which Jews are worthy of emancipation and which are not became
intertwined with the theological discourse on what is the authentic monotheism and who is
the real creator and embodiment of its truth.9
In our own day and age, one for some of post-denominationalism and a call for a
spirituality and religiosity that transcends confessional faiths, the old debate about
monotheism seems to have faded. The Judeo-Christian heritage no longer offends Jewish
thinkers ”s it once did only ” gener”tion ”go in Arthur Cohen’s powerful polemic ”g”inst
the seemingly hyphenated relationship between the two religions.10 On the contrary, with
the new assault on Islam as an alleged incubator of terrorism and radicalism, the blended
relationship between Judaism and Christianity appears all the more accentuated. The
myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, as Cohen called it, fails to unsettle many thinkers,
Christians or Jews alike. Instead we have more or less accepted the notion that there is no
authentic or antique form of monotheism superior to other forms and that we all share
one God and one universal faith. If Judaism is to remain unique, it can no longer claim a
superior faith in one God; instead, it must rely on halachic commitment, or on ethnic or
national ties, or on family nostalgia, or on Holocaust memory. Jews can no longer claim an
exclusive claim for the birth and evolution of monotheism. It is no longer the private
treasure of the Jewish people – rather it is their gift to all humankind and binds them
rather than separates them from their fellow human-beings. To some contemporary Jews,
Pico’s idyllic vision of ”ncient theology ”ppe”rs ”ll the more s”tisfying connecting the best
of Jewish ideas with Christian ones and justifying a fellowship of merged faith and mingled
identities.
8 A sm”ll s”mpling of ” v”st liter”ture on the subject might include Imm”nuel Wolf, On the Concept of ” Science
of Jud”ism, Leo Baeck Yearbook II (1957): 194-204; Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998); Ism”r Schorsch, Ideology ”nd History in the Age of Em”ncip”tion, in The
Structure of Jewish History and Other Essays, by Heinrich Graetz, ed. Ismar Schorsch (New York: Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, 1975), 1-62; Jay Harris, Nachman Krochmel, Guiding the Perplexed of the Modern Age (New York:
New York University Press, 1991), chapter 2; Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1997); Leo Baeck, Judaism and Christianity (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1958);
Walter Jacob, Christianity Through Jewish Eyes: The Quest for Common Ground (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press,
1974); Marc Krell, Intersecting Pathways: Modern Jewish Theologians in Conversation with Christianity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003); Christian Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in
Wilhelmine Germany (Leiden: Brill, 1999), part 3.
9 I am presently working on the responses of these three thinkers to the assault of Alexander McCaul against
rabbinic Judaism and their attempts to defend the integrity of Judaism and its uniqueness in Western civilization.
They include: Samuel Joseph Fuenn, Darkei Adonai. Ms. Heb. 8390, National Library of Israel; Isaac Beer
Levensohn, Aḥiyah Shiloni Ha-Ḥozeh: Kollel Bittul Ta’anotov shel Sefer Netivot Olam (Leipzig, 1864); Isaac Beer
Levensohn , Zerubavel … [Neged] Da’at Rosh Mastineinu … Be-Sifro Netivot Olam (Warsaw, 1878); and Eliezer Zweifel,
Sanigor (Warsaw, 1885).
10 Arthur A. Cohen, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).
ARE JEWS THE ONLY TRUE MONOTHEISTS? (RUDERMAN)
27
In this connection, I would like to close my survey with a consideration of the
contemporary American Jewish thinker Shaul Magid who is known for his work on
kabbalistic and Hasidic thought but has in recent years taken up the role of the theologian
of post-denominationalism and Jewish renewal in the American Jewish community,
especially expounding the positions of Zalman Shachter-Shlomi and Shlomo Carlebach
and arguing for their relevance for the era in which we live. Before summarizing his
theological stance, I should point out parenthetically that even his most recent historical
work on the incarnational theology of Hasidism points out how Judaism adopted a
theology uncannily close to Christianity without recognizing it as such. 11
Magid begins by reviewing some of the history we have just discussed. His reiteration is
useful in contextualizing his novel position in the context of the other thinkers discussed
”bove. He cl”ims th”t in the nineteenth century, the tendency w”s to v”lue uniform
cultures over heteronymous ones. In religion, that tendency led to a belief in the myth of
pure, unadulterated revelatory systems. As a type of hybridity, syncretism was a pejorative
term mostly releg”ted to orient”l religions th”t did not m”ke exclusivist cl”ims, ”nd were
thus considered inferior religions. Modern Jewish thinkers, even the more progressive
and historicist thinkers, tended to present Judaism as a coherent belief system and avoided
the notion of syncretism ”s ” phenomenon in the history of Jud”ism.
M”gid continues: In ” multicultural world, however, syncretism has taken on a positive
v”lence. Blending is viewed not ”s defiling but ”s enh”ncing ” p”rticul”r religion. The
phenomenologist of religion Gerhard van der Leeuw has suggested that religions are in
constant flux and thus borrowing is ” n”tur”l p”rt of religion s own dyn”mism.
Multiculturalism pushes particularistic societies to abandon their master narratives and
theories of uniqueness in f”vour of an orientation that acknowledges, and supports,
borrowing from one another while maintaining distinct, but not exclusivist, identities.
While historicism may sometimes undermine the mythic construct of uniqueness, it often
erects in its pl”ce ”n ostensibly f”ctu”l/historic”l construct of distinctiveness th”t is still
exclusivist in orientation. In existing Jewish denominations built on the historicist model,
Judaism is still by and for Jews and theories of Jewish chosenness are still defended. In
Jewish Renew”l s syncretistic model, Jud”ism is constructed by Jews but wh”t Judaism has
to offer is not necessarily limited to Jews; the boundaries of Judaism itself have become
perme”ble.
As I see it, M”gid ”rgues, only in Jewish Renew”l s syncretistic post-denominational
approach does Judaism move in a direction that suggests both an ideological and
functional universalism. This non-exclusivist particularism frees Judaism to view itself as
one of many societies, and one of many spiritualities, each of which has a role to play in
the order of the world. When Judaism no longer needs to defend its uniqueness
(theologically or historically) it can more comfortably view itself as a partner in humanity.
While it is true that the permeability of boundaries threatens the survival of any distinct
11 Shaul Magid, Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism (Stanford,
C”liforni”: St”nford University Press, 2015). On M”gid s post-denominationalism, see his American Post-Judaism:
Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2013). For a succinct
summ”ry
of
his
position,
see
his
post,
A
Perspective
on
Jewish
Renew”l
(http://spiritualprogressives.org/newsite/?p=655), on the website of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. I have
conveniently utilized this text in summarizing his position here.
27
28
MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
community, the multicultural model th”t promotes ”n ideology of mutu”l recognition
and respect is a buffer against that danger. In this regard I think Jewish Renewal takes
multiculturalism more seriously than other American Jewish alternatives. Its universalism
is not some prophetic or messianic utopianism relegated to a redemptive future, but part
of the way Judaism needs to be lived in the here-and-now. Instead of simply assimilating
into a pre-existing Americanism as the Reform movement did, Jewish Renewal creates a
religious framework in dialogue with other religious currents in America. Instead of
offering Judaism as a separate sphere of religious practice, Jewish Renewal offers a
blending of Judaism with other spiritual practices in order to construct a more complex
and sensitive religious alternative that is aligned with American sensibilities garnered from
a counter-culture now m”instre”med. 12
In concluding with M”gid s r”dic”l formul”tion of Jud”ism ”nd its f”ith in the er” in
which we live, I do not wish to imply that he is correct, that his is the final word, and that
his call for post-denominationalism resonates widely among other Jewish thinkers, leaders,
and laity. I assume it does not, or at least not yet. My goal in closing with his contemporary
perspective was simply to chart the leg”cy of Pico s theologic”l syncretism in Jewish
thought over five centuries and to argue that it was enthusiastically embraced by an
interesting group of thinkers throughout the early modern period but fiercely contested
by anti-Sabbatean rabbis in the eighteenth century and by Reform ones in the nineteenth.
Perhaps Magid is right that we live in an age which no longer values uniform cultures or
pure, unadulterated revelatory systems; syncretism and blended identities have become
the norm; and in the future, all barriers separating Jewish religious culture from those of
other communities, especially Christian ones, will ultimately disappear. But has he
sufficiently factored in the hostility of so many to Jews and Judaism in the world we
inhabit, even when Jews seek the universal path he espouses; and has he considered
adequately the stubborn persistence of religious and cultural boundary maintenance on
the part of many Jews throughout the world, including those living on the North
American continent? In not claiming any expertise in constructive theology, I will leave it
to others to evaluate the cogency of his provocative opinions. I can only state as a mere
histori”n th”t M”gid s position h”s ” long pedigree ”nd th”t despite the enormous
differences between Pico s ”nd our world, cert”in continuities rem”rk”bly persist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baeck, Leo. Judaism and Christianity. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1958.
Blidstein, Ger”ld. M”imonides ”nd Me iri on the Legitim”cy of Non-Jud”ic Religions. In
Scholars and Scholarship: The Interaction of Judaism with Other Cultures, edited by Leo
Landman, 27-35. New York: Yeshivah University Press, 1990.
Cohen, Arthur A. The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Copenh”ver, Bri”n. Pico dell” Mir”ndol”. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/).
12 The cit”tions in the l”st three p”r”gr”phs ”re from M”gid, A Perspective on Jewish Renew”l, from the section
entitled Historicism vs. Syncretism.
ARE JEWS THE ONLY TRUE MONOTHEISTS? (RUDERMAN)
29
Dougherty, M. V, ed. Pico della Mirandola: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008.
Fuenn, Samuel Joseph. Darkei Adonai. Ms. Heb. 8390. National Library of Israel.
Harris, Jay. Nachman Krochmel, Guiding the Perplexed of the Modern Age. New York: New
York University Press, 1991.
H”yes, C–r—st—ne. T–e Ot–er —n R”bb—n—c L—ter”ture. In The Cambridge Companion to the
Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, edited by Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S.
Jaffee, 243-68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Heschel, Susannah. Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1998.
Hug–es, A”ron. Jud”– Abr”b”nel. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abrabanel/).
Jacob, Walter. Christianity Through Jewish Eyes: The Quest for Common Ground. Cincinnati:
Hebrew Union College Press, 1974.
Katz, Jacob. Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and
Modern Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.
Krell, Marc. Intersecting Pathways: Modern Jewish Theologians in Conversation with Christianity.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Lask Abrahams, Beth-Z—on. St”n—sl”us Hog”: Apost”te ”nd Pen—tent, Transactions of the
Jewish Historical Society of England 15 (1939-1945): 121-14.
Levensohn, Isaac Beer. Aḥiyah Shiloni Ha-Ḥozeh: Kollel Bittul Ta’anotov shel Sefer Netivot
Olam. Leipzig, 1864.
. Zerubavel … [Neged] Da’at Rosh Mastineinu … Be-Sifro Netivot Olam. Warsaw, 1878.
Maciejko, Pawel. The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755-1816.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
Magid, Shaul. American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society.
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2013.
. Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism.
Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2015.
. A Perspect—ve on Jew—s– Renew”l. http://spiritualprogressives.org/newsite/?p=655
Nov”k, D”v—d. Gent—les —n R”bb—n—c T–oug–t. In The Cambridge History of Judaism, edited
by Steven T. Katz, vol. 4, 647-62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Poma, Andrea. The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1997.
Ruderman, David B. Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2010.
. T–e It”l—”n Ren”—ss”nce ”nd Jew—s– T–oug–t. In Renaissance Humanism:
Foundations, Forms and Legacies, edited by Albert Rabil, Jr., 1:382 433.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
. Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.
. Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish
Physician. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1988.
. Towards a Preliminary Portrait of an Evangelical Missionary to the Jews: The
Many Faces of Alexander McCaul (1799-1863). Jewish Historical Studies:
Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 47 (2016, forthcoming).
29
30
MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015)
Schorsch, Ism”r. Ideology ”nd History in the Age of Em”ncip”tion. In The Structure of
Jewish History and Other Essays, by Heinrich Graetz, 1-62. Edited by Ismar
Schorsch. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1975.
Wiese, Christian. Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in
Wilhelmine Germany. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
Wolf Imm”nuel. On the Concept of ” Science of Jud”ism. Leo Baeck Yearbook II (1957):
194-204.
Zweifel, Eliezer. Sanigor. Warsaw, 1885.