A Daily Revelation
KONVITZ, MILTON R.
A Daily Revelation Evolution of Jewish Thought. By Jacob B. Agus. Abelard-Schuman. 443 pp. $7.50. Revieived by Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Law. Cornell University; Author, ''On the Nature of...
...Hasidism and Moses Mendelssohn and the modern era of Jewish emancipation—some 30 centuries of Jewish spiritual and intellectual development...
...Ibn Gabriol, Abarbanel...
...There is not one Judaism, there are many Judaisms: an open and continuously flowing river of thought, feeling and action...
...All Jews are alike, just as in the dark all cows are black, and Judaism is the dark night in which all differences are totally wiped out...
...One of the important consequences that flow from reading this book is the feeling that Judaism is far from being the fossil of which Arnold Toynbee once wrote...
...In time the Karaites, unable to bear the burden of a perpetual rediscovery of Judaism, a daily revelation at the foot of Sinai, developed their own commentaries and official interpretations, which in some respects were at least as vigorous as those of the rabbis—just as some Protestants could not stand the burden of a perpetual reformation: Some would not see beyond Luther and some would not see beyond Calvin or Knox...
...for inherent in Judaism are the means of its own evolution and survival as a living force...
...Spinoza...
...Author, ''On the Nature of Value" TO MOST NON-JEWS, Judaism appears to be a single religion to which all Jews everywhere and at all times have adhered...
...Saadia Gaon, Maimonides...
...it is, as the rabbis themselves speak of it, maayem chaim, a stream of "living waters...
...With substantial reason...
...It is a work not only for those who know little or nothing of the subject: it is a work that will be read and appreciated also by those who have themselves traversed the path followed by the author and who look for original understanding, new perceptions, personal yet responsible interpretations...
...The Evolution of Jewish Thought: From Biblical Times to the Opening of the Modern Era...
...The founder of the sect, Anan, attacked the rabbinical and Talmudic interpretations of the Bible and insisted on the right of every Jew to go back to the original text of the Bible and to interpret it according to his own understanding and conceptions...
...Gersonides...
...It is not a single reservoir that confines, holds back, obstructs the free flow...
...In the daylight of this book, Judaism appears in multiple forms, shapes, sizes and colors...
...Kabbalah...
...One of the most interesting and original chapters is the one on the Karaites, a schismatic sect that arose about the middle of the 8th century and that began to decline four centuries later: remnants of the movement are still extant...
...Philo, the Karaites...
...With deep learning, profound insight and great skill Rabbi Agus charts the development of Jewish thought step by step, taking the reader from the pages of the Bible, through the Pharisees...
...Rabbi Agus describes Karaitism as a "Jewish Protestant movement...
...But the dark night is nothing more than ignorance, and this ignorance can be quickly and effectively brought to an end by reading Rabbi Agus' new book...
...Only a scholar and thinker who has mastered this subject, in its detail and its sweep, could have produced this very helpful and thought-provoking hook...
Vol. 44 • October 1960 • No. 41
