The Body of Faith
Rosenthal, Abigail L.
In Brief THE BODY OF FAITH: JUDAISM AS CORPOREAL ELECTION, by Michael Wyschogrod. Winston-Seabury, $24.95, 265 pp. Judaism is not only a different religion from Christianity, in the sense...
...One enters a people...
...It's also refreshing...
...Judaism is not only a different religion from Christianity, in the sense of comprehending a somewhat different set of beliefs...
...One assumes one kind of being...
...Judaism is a consequence of God's decision not to falsify man by absorbing him into God's spirituality but to maintain an active and personal relationship with man in his corporeal, national, and historical nature...
...One takes on and becomes accountable to a particular situation among the peoples of the world...
...Inauthentic religion," Wyschogrod writes, "is always characterized by a lack of contact with the present...
...It neither minces words nor avoids a hard look at the double binds in which religious adherence may place one — after it has got one out of some other double binds that belonged to strictly secular existence...
...Judaism, Wyschogrod maintains, is not reducible to its ethics...
...Written in an unaffected and communicative style, it enables the concerned reader to think about that Jewish fact, accompanied by Wyschogrod's extraordinarily original, irradiating vision of the religious problematic...
...It is far less concerned with' implicit philosophical principles than is Christianity...
...It is also a different sort of religion...
...The Body of Faith: Judaism as Corporeal Election, by Michael Wyschogrod, is first of all a sustained reflection on that puzzling fact about Judaism...
...The book is theologically learned, from both Christian and Jewish standpoints, and it is philosophically sophisticated...
...ABIGAIL L. ROSENTHAL...
...If this is so, The Body of Faith is an expression of authentic religion...
...It is possible to convert to Judaism, as to Christianity, but in the former case the adoption of a historical fate is more obviously involved...
Vol. 112 • September 1985 • No. 16
