Book Description: National Jewish Book Award winner. This interpretation of Jewish teaching by one of today's leading thinkers in the Jewish world will appeal to all people seeking to understand the relationship between the idea of divine demand and the human response, between religious tradition and modernity.
The Judaic tradition is often seen as being more concerned with uncritical obedience to law than with individual freedom and responsibility. In A Living Covenant, Hartman challenges this approach revealing a Judaism grounded in a covenant--a relational framework--informed by the metaphor of marital love rather than that of parent-child dependency.
This view of life places the individual firmly within community. Hartman shows that the Judaic tradition need not be understood in terms of human passivity and resignation, but rather as a vehicle by which human individuality and freedom can be expressed within a relational matrix.
Good Place to Start the Dialogue Rabbi David Hartman is a dying intellectual within Orthodox Judaism. So many rabbis have decided to abandon their hopes of ever creating a "Modern Orthodox" reality in America and worldwide. No longer are the great institutions like Yeshiva University, Rabbinical Council of America, and the like no longer defending their theology. In fact, many of their leadership officials have become defeatist about it and market it as an "approach" to becoming "more religious." Some have abandoned their previous stances causing friction in the congregations they serve.
With this reality, Rabbi Hartman is like a breath of fresh air. His service within Judaism of helping others that share in his vision of creating a positively identified Jewish community that rejects the old "horse and buggy" approach of coercion and guilty is greatly needed. On top of this, his insistence of bringing a "theological humility" that comforts other Jews from other movements is also needed.
Having said that, Rabbi Hartman's book is a summary of his theology. Quoting from other theorists as diverse as Erich Fromm and Spinoza (things one wouldn't find in Art Scroll), he begins affirm a positive approach to Orthodox Judaism that affirms both human potential and laity empowerment. No longer does the Jew need to fear modernity like they feared the Russian Czar.
Despite the nobility of the concept and the power of his personality, I found his book to be a little lofty and somewhat loose ended, but this book is essential to begin the dialogue.
Best book for learning about Jewish struggle between religion & modernity Rabbi David Hartman is so committed to exposing and trying to explain the dialectics in Judaism. One the one hand, there's G-d Who empowers his people with freedom and intellect, and on the other hand, G-d Who strikes fear and terror in the heart of man for seemingly no logical reason. David Hartman isn't a man of compromise. And by that I mean he doesn't compromise his rigorous, logical and intellectual challenges in order to blindly follow any denomination's party line.
This is the best book I've read on the subject. I've literally taken notes on every page and enjoy every page as a treat. I've already bought 3 copies for people I care about. I am (noticeably) enthusiastic about this work.
A great work of Jewish thought This is Rabbi Hartman's most important book. In it he presents his own Covenant theology. He has learned much and provides critiques of two of his great teachers in this work, Rabbi Joseph Dov Ber Soloveitchik and Yehoshua Leibowitz. Rabbi Hartman places the Covenant at Sinai at the center of Jewish experience. He tends to see this Covenant more in terms of the marital relation, than in the relation of parents and children. And this with the stress he places on responsibility and freedom for humanity. For Rabbi Hartman Torah and Torah learning are the true legacy of Sinai and the message and life- work of the people of Israel. This is a profound work and an inspiring one. And all those interested in thinking deeply about the people of Israel 's relation to G-d would do well to study this work.
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