Contemporary Jewry https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-020-09325-3 The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen‑Gottstein on Heschel, Greenberg, and Sacks Eugene Korn1 Received: 25 April 2019 / Accepted: 13 May 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract Korn reviews Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s analyses of the theories of religious pluralism of Rabbis Abraham Joshua Heschel, Irving Greenberg and Jonathan Sacks in GoshenGottstein’s program of constructing a coherent Jewish theology of religion. Among the questions that Goshen-Gottstein asks are: (1) How much does each thinker believe that other religions contain divine truth? (2) How does each thinker know this? (3) What is the difference between religious pluralism and relativism? (4) How much of this pluralism can be based on Jewish law (halachah)? (5) How is religious truth validated? Goshen-Gottstein exposes the differences between these modern pluralists. Korn’s review of Goshen Gottstein also probes what the legitimate limits of Jewish religious pluralism are and whether the traditional concept of idolatry is relevant today. Keywords Religious pluralism · Idolatry · Irving Greenberg · Jonathan Sacks · Abraham Joshua Heschel · Alon Goshen-Gottstein Introduction In a famous 1972 television interview near the end of his life, Abraham Joshua Heschel announced that he believed, “God is a pluralist”.1 That is, God has willed— and continues to will—that a multiplicity of religions exists among His2 human 1 Heschel’s actual statement was: “It is the will of God that there be many religions.” The NBC interview can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEXK9xcRCho. Accessed on 10 May 2020. 2 I use the masculine pronoun when referring to God only as a necessary linguistic device, without imputing any gender to the God of Israel. In Jewish thought God has no gender but is metaphorically referenced as having both masculine traits (authority, royalty, power) and feminine traits (compassion, forgiveness, maternal instincts). In Jewish eschatology these contradictory traits will merge seamlessly into a unity in God. In other words, both sets of traits are equally divine, and equally non-divine. When no felicitous alternative exists, I similarly resort to using the masculine pronoun to denote the human being—both male and female. * Eugene Korn Ebkorn@gmail.com 1 Jerusalem, Israel 13 Vol.:(0123456789) E. Korn creatures—and perhaps even more strongly, that each religion possesses a bit of divine truth. Heschel’s belief is a product of modernity. Social emancipation and modern values have thrust pluralism into the forefront of Jewish experience, yet preciously few Jewish traditionalists in the twentieth century have confronted the challenges that pluralism presents to Jewish theology. In addition to Heschel, Rabbis Irving Greenberg and Jonathan Sacks, as well as the academic Alon Goshen-Gottstein, have addressed our pluralist reality. In the following essay, we consider how GoshenGottstein reflects on these thinkers in light of his own pluralistic theology. Some Challenges of Theological Pluralism Religious pluralists are faced with a number of spiritual and intellectual tasks. On the experiential level, how can a person of one religion see the Image of God in the face of the religious Other? And how does one create the spiritual space to dignify and respect others? Is there a way to validate the beliefs of others and even assert their truth without betraying one’s own religious convictions? Are there boundaries to pluralist religious legitimacy? Finally, how can a healthy pluralism not degenerate into unrestrained relativism that rejects the entire notion of truth? One who locates himself in a Jewish intellectual and spiritual context must ask if there are seeds within Jewish biblical, rabbinic, and halachic traditions that can sprout to support this kind of theological openness. To use Wittgenstein’s metaphor, how can we find a way to let the fly out of the all-too-often parochial Jewish theological bottle so it can enter the modern interreligious world? These are the questions that Alon Goshen-Gottstein confronts as he engages three of the four most prominent Jewish pluralist theologians of our time—Heschel, Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, and Jonathan Sacks.3 In the framework of the World Congress of Jewish Studies conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in August 2017, I analyzed several of Goshen-Gottstein’s published essays dealing with the pluralist theology of these figures. These essays are due to be published as part of a fuller study, devoted to the pluralist theology of these three figures, further contributing to Goshen-Gottstein’s already considerable volume of work on the Jewish theology of religions and religious diversity (Goshen-Gottstein and Korn 2012; GoshenGottstein 2014b, 2015a, b, 2016a, b, 2017, 2018, 2020). The present analysis allows us to consider what has already been published and its contribution to the concerns of Jewish religious pluralism. 3 The other prominent twentieth century Jewish pluralist theologian is David Hartman. 13 The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen-Gottstein… While encountering these thinkers, Goshen-Gottstein probes their ideas and arguments to help him construct a coherent Jewish theology of religions that, inter alia, tries to answer the above questions. This enterprise is the kind of inquiry that could only occur in our modern era. It assumes a degree of pluralism acknowledging the validity of some other religions and the possibility of comparing Judaism and other religions with uniform criteria that were not assumed by pre-modern religious Jewish authorities. In striving to discover the theological truth—or at least the validity—of other religions, Jewish theology runs the risk of diluting the uniqueness and singular truthfulness of Jewish revelation. This in turn can easily undermine traditional Jewish theology’s assumption of the unique mission of the Jewish people to carry out God’s design in history. Both dilutions are anathema to traditionalists, and hence it is no surprise that these three thinkers have each provoked strong rejections from traditional quarters: Heschel was summarily dismissed by establishment Orthodoxy,4 never to be taken seriously. Greenberg has been marginalized by mainstream traditionalists,5 while Sacks was forced to retract in Galileo-like fashion important theological claims he made in the first version of his book The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (2002). Yet none of this is important to Goshen-Gottstein, who is interested only in pursuing truth, coherence, justification, spiritual meaning, and practical application when examining these theological mavericks. On the contrary, one senses his deep appreciation for these trailblazers. Goshen-Gottstein engages in in-depth analysis, digging beneath the surface formulations—the peshat—to uncover the latent presuppositions, claims, arguments, tensions, and implications of these thinkers. This is especially true of his treatment of Heschel, since Heschel’s terse poetic style often obscures the profundity of his ideas and approaches. Abraham Joshua Heschel In analyzing Heschel, Goshen-Gottstein (2009) emphasizes that above all Heschel taught us how to ask questions—particularly regarding interfaith experience and thinking. What does it mean to encounter a person in his full humanness—in his luminous reflection of Divinity? And what necessary emotional and spiritual attitudes must we possess in order to fully realize this encounter with another? Goshen-Gottstein correctly notes that Heschel’s insights about the religious Other grew 4 Heschel was not taken seriously by Orthodoxy largely because of his institutional affiliation at Jewish Theological Seminary of the Conservative movement and because he rarely engaged in the details of halachah, which has been the trademark of Orthodox discourse in the last 200 years. In addition, his participation with officials of the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s further widened the gap with Orthodoxy, since the official Orthodox policy was to shun participation in the Council. 5 Greenberg himself describes his marginalization in his essay “Modern Orthodoxy and the Road Not Taken: A Retrospective View” (2019). For Orthodoxy’s rejection of Greenberg’s views, see Ferziger (2019). The forced revision of Saks’ book is analyzed by Goshen-Gottstein and later in this essay. 13 E. Korn out of the web of his personal relations. One of Heschel’s closest friends was his neighbor Reinhold Niebuhr, with whom he frequently shared theological reflections when they regularly walked down Riverside Drive in Manhattan.6 This leads Goshen-Gottstein to ask about the role of interreligious friendship in understanding the religious Other and his faith. Heschel clearly assumes that common human experience can form the basis of interfaith relations and understanding. Despite being raised and first educated in an insulated Chasidic Jewish community, there is no unbridgeable ontological gap separating Jews and gentiles in Heschel’s thinking.7 Goshen-Gottstein (2007) emphasizes Heschel’s intellectual integrity in examining the strengths and weaknesses in his own Jewish tradition, particularly when engaging gentiles. This is refreshing considering the near ubiquitous white-washed apologetics among Jewish interlocutors with gentiles. Heschel taught us that honest introspection is another necessary condition of encountering the other. This is only possible if we recognize a fundamental truth. God and religion are not identical. God is perfect; religion is not. In Jewish terms, the Torah may be inerrant, but the formulations of halachah (Jewish law) are humanly errant. Apparently Heschel knew with certainty this non-identity from his own spiritual experience, whose reality can be shared with others. The universal human spiritual capacity seems to be the very meaning of humanness for Heschel. On this point GoshenGottstein (2007, 91) queries, “How can we cultivate this religious experience in ourselves and in others and is it a sine qua non for fruitful interfaith encounter?” In some of Heschel’s works, notably “Torah min ha-shamayim be-aspaḳlaryah shel ha-dorot” (Torah from Heaven as Refracted through the Generations) (1962) Heschel plumbed Talmudic and rabbinic tradition, but in his interfaith writings he relied almost exclusively on the Bible and his personal prophetic insight.8 If so, asks Goshen-Gottstein (2007), to what extent is Heschel working out of the fullness of Jewish tradition, the tradition whose discourse came to be dominated by rabbinic and halachic development? Goshen-Gottstein also notes that Heschel sidesteps the entire problem of avodah zarah (illegitimate “foreign” worship, sometimes connoting “idolatry”), which is so prominent in the medieval and modern rabbinic discussions of Christianity. Is this a tacit admission by Heschel that halachah is incapable of meeting Christianity and Christians on respectful fraternal grounds, or simply his decision to speak to gentiles in their own terms?9 Is Heschel developing an effective new Jewish paradigm for religiously engaged Jews? Is this even legitimate in the context of Jewish religious and theological traditions? Legitimate or not, there is no 6 See “Notes on a Friendship: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reinhold Niebuhr” by Niebuhr’s wife (2017). 7 Kabbalistic philosophy is popular in Chasidic theology and education, and the assumption that Jews and gentiles have different essences or “souls” is widespread in this literature. 8 See, for example, Heschel’s most influential essay on interfaith, “No Religion Is an Island” (1996). 9 Interestingly, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the prominent Orthodox philosopher and halachic decisor, also did not discuss the halachic category of avodah zarah when addressing the issue of dialogue with Christians in his major essay on the topic, “Confrontation” (1964). 13 The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen-Gottstein… doubt that Heschel is casting—or translating—Jewish theology into a new form and into a new cultural practice. It seems that Heschel also skirts the issue of relativism. His pluralism is conceptually distinct from relativism. Heschel once famously told Vatican Cardinals that “he would rather go to Auschwitz if forced with the alternative of conversion or death” (Hershcopf 1966, 128), yet he never tells us where the border is between his pluralism and relativism, nor how Jews can avoid the all-too-easy slide from pluralism into the subjective relativism of all religious truth. Heschel seems to privilege Jewish religious truth over that of other religions but never explains why or how this is so or what the relation of Jewish truth is to the truths of other religions. Surely this would be a fruitful theological project for Goshen-Gottstein and other interfaith theologians who insist on being faithful to their traditions. Heschel believed that interfaith cooperation was not only desirable but absolutely essential for the flourishing of humanity and to defeat the evil still surrounding humankind. Faith and commitment to the God of love and life is a bulwark against humanity’s descent into Nazi-like chaos. For Heschel, our choice is stark: “interfaith or internihilism” (1996, 237). Hence, in Heschel’s theology of religion (although he never uses this term), the universal intuition of transcendence and the urgent need for interfaith collaboration form the bases for the interfaith encounter. Yet the question remains: How do we cultivate this sense of transcendence, particularly in postmodern materialist culture? Irving Greenberg Irving Greenberg is the most important proponent of Jewish covenantal pluralism and the most engaged Jewish thinker to examine the meaning of Christianity. He differs from both Heschel and Sacks in trying to meet and affirm the validity of Christianity on its own terms.10 To do so, he examines sympathetically—rather than critically, as is the standard in Jewish discourse—the Christian dogmas of Jesus’s messiahship, the incarnation, and the crucifixion/resurrection. This is in contrast to Heschel and Sacks, who studiously avoided venturing into the specific dogmas of Christianity—or, for that matter, any other religion—by sticking to the universal properties of other religions and the religious experience of their worshipers. Greenberg views these Christian faith claims as valid and as a faithful extension of Judaism’s own theological foundations. Much of Greenberg’s analysis is an attempt to demonstrate that although these Christian dogmas contradict some biblical principles, these models nevertheless operate out of classic biblical modes. While denying that Jesus was in fact the messiah, Greenberg stresses that such belief is evidence for the vitality of the biblical dream. Woe to the generation that does not produce a would-be messiah, for it has lost its spiritual energy! Jesus is not a false messiah, merely a “failed messiah” (2004c). 10 See Greenberg’s collection of essays in For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The new encounter between Judaism and Christianity (2004a). 13 E. Korn Goshen-Gottstein (2018) analyzes Greenberg’s attempt to validate Christianity by appealing to Christian experience, noting that rather than any philosophical-like demonstrations that prove the truth claims of these dogmas, it is the experience itself that provides the ground of their validation. As a Jew, Greenberg is content to validate those experiences but as relevant only to those who have had them. Christians had those experiences, but in Jesus’s time non-Christian Jews did not. Greenberg sees Christianity’s birth (and its endurance) as a triumph of fidelity in the face of tragedy, rewarded with powerful religious experiences that taught Christian believers that God is present in their faith community. Christians experience God’s love, which has transformed their lives, and hence the Christian claim of election is valid. All this spiritual magnanimity led to heated Jewish polemic and Greenberg’s banishment from the Orthodox theological community by most Orthodox rabbinical leaders.11 But Goshen-Gottstein is not interested in the polemic, only in evaluating Greenberg’s criteria for theological validation and religious truth. Greenberg’s method is, to use Goshen-Gottstein’s felicitous phrase, “a hermeneutic of empathy,” which seeks to validate Christian experience by translating it into Jewish terms without compromising basic Jewish theology (2018, 72). Theologically, this is a heroic enterprise—an attempt to “square the circle”—and it raises a number of critical questions regarding both Greenberg’s and Goshen-Gottstein’s theological deliberations: Psychologically, is it ever possible for a faithful Jew—rather than as an “objective” critical analyst—to ignore Jewish criteria in order to evaluate another’s religion or dogmas? And if possible, is it a religious desideratum?12 There is inevitable tension between one’s own Weltanschauung and another’s religious world. Is this tension a source of creativity or just a naive illusory attempt doomed to failure? Can the tension ever be resolved? Should it be? It seems that experience has trumped Truth, and that process has superseded content in Greenberg’s theology of Christianity. To return to the messianic question cited above, Goshen-Gottstein (2018) correctly notes that Greenberg’s distinction between a false and a failed messiah hinges on how Christians treat Jews rather than the historical or theological truth of that messianic claim. When Christians persecute Jews in Jesus’s name, he is a false messiah. When Christians bring love and consolation to millions around the world in Jesus’s name, he is merely a failed messiah. Religious truth has given way to human action and moral behavior; it is not dependent on metaphysical, theological, or historical demonstration. This sounds radical to traditional Jewish ears but is, in fact, a creative variant of the theories of Rabbis Menachem Ha-Meiri in the fourteenth century, Moshe Rivkis (“Be’er HaGolah”) in the seventeenth century, Jacob Emden in the eighteenth century, and 11 See footnote 5. Soloveitchik thought it was not, seeing it as betrayal. Moreover, he assumed that the Catholic Church would not abandon its traditional supersessionist theological criteria in discussing Judaism at the Second Vatican Council, and this assumption was the primary basis for Soloveitchik’s objection to Jewish participation at the Council specifically and to interfaith theological dialogue in general (Korn 2005). 12 13 The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen-Gottstein… Samson Raphael Hirsch in the nineteenth century, in their approaches to non-Jewish religious forms generally and to Christianity specifically.13 In the end, as Goshen-Gottstein (2018) stresses, this new theology of Christianity is for Greenberg most importantly about common action, about perfecting the world, and about hastening the messiah’s coming. Indeed what is common—although at times only implicit—to Heschel, Greenberg, and Sacks is the justification of theological ideas by their ethical and redemptive effects when those tenets are adopted and lived out by their believers. Much of this brings us back to the issues of pluralism and its boundaries in constructing a Jewish theology of religions. As noted, a defect in Heschel’s thought was that he did not seriously confront, qua rabbi, the issue of avodah zarah. (I add that Sacks does not treat it in any depth either.) Greenberg does tackle this issue as well as the difference between his concept of pluralism and relativism. It is unfortunate that Goshen-Gottstein does not analyze Greenberg’s contribution here, because it has major import for the conceptual coherence and moral sobriety of pluralist convictions as well as for the existential problem of maintaining faith while living in contemporary pluralistic culture. In fact, it was Greenberg who convinced me that modern Jews should not drop the category entirely despite its halachic demand for Jewish intolerance. According to Greenberg, “Idolatry is the partial, created or shaped by humans, that claims to be infinite. Idolatry mimics the Divine and claims the absolute status of the Divine, yet it is, in fact, finite” (2004b, 210). Greenberg fashioned this definition in light of the Shoah and 20th century history. Substantively, it is a skillful fusion of Maimonides’s definition of avodah zarah as cognitive error with Ha-Meiri’s conception of idolatry as the absence of moral restraint, as Greenberg contends: This pseudo-infinite cannot contain the infinity of life (or of human dignity). In fact, we know that idolatry is the god of death and that it creates a realm of death….All human systems (even those that are given by divine revelation) that claim to be absolute, exercise no self-limitation, or leave no room for the other turn into idolatry, i.e., into sources of death. It is no accident that Nazism, which sought perfection and eliminated all restrictions and limitations…created a realm of total death—the kingdom of night. All political systems and all religions that allow themselves to make unlimited absolute claims are led to idolatrous behaviors. They often generate death-dealing believers…. All social systems that “other” the other and absolutize their own host culture/ policy turn idolatrous and then degrade or destroy others (2004b, 210). Greenberg’s covenantal pluralism stands midway between the relativism of no absolute truths and the absolutist monism that insists on only one religious truth for everyone. His pluralism is a moderating position, functioning as the corrective to the evils of each extreme that leads to either theological anarchy or brutal intolerance. Today’s theological pluralists need to ask: Absent universal religious truth, is every conception of God permitted? Under the pluralist principle, we must allow 13 For the details of these rabbinic precedents, see Korn (2012). 13 E. Korn others to form their own God idea without imposing our own limits upon them. But if every form of worship is legitimate—even if only for others—do we not forfeit the logical basis for criticizing those who worship the god of death and violence and act accordingly? How can theological pluralism not collapse on itself by demanding the acceptance of religious intolerance, murder, and destruction? Here we can see the need for Greenberg’s conception of idolatry and the centrality of Tselem Elohim (the Image of God) in his religious worldview. It is his concept of idolatry as human systems that claim to be absolute, that exercise no self-limitation, or that leave no room for the other which establishes the limit of legitimate theological pluralism. And in doing so, Greenberg saves theological pluralism from becoming its own false idol. Without Greenberg’s concept of idolatry, there would be no logical way to distinguish between a valid religious worldview promoting the sanctity of every person and one that destroys other persons in the name of God. Without this idolatry-limit, a principled pluralist would have no rational grounds for condemning the religious imperialist who strives to violently impose his intolerant views on others. Yet ultimately it is not idolatry’s logical function that makes it essential to Greenberg’s religious world, Goshen-Gottstein’s world, or ours. Rather, it is the prohibition’s role in steering persons away from delegitimizing others and the brutal carnage that absolutism brings in its wake. By insisting that idolatry is an evil that must be avoided, Greenberg directs religious people to the path of God Who loves His creatures. Jonathan Sacks Goshen-Gottstein’s analysis is most acute when he tackles the writings of that oncebut-now-repentant pluralist Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (2014a). Goshen-Gottstein notes that most strategies for arriving at the validity of other religions rely on affirming commonality—either common theologies, personal intuitions, or morality (ala Ha-Meiri),14 because affirming common moral principles seems to imply obeying the same God. Yet Sacks focuses on religious differences, asking how we can ascribe meaning and validity to them, and hence the revealing title of Sacks’ book The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (2002). In it Sacks attempts a celebration of differences among religions and, like Heschel, proclaims that “God creates religious pluralism”,15 relying heavily on a universalist reading of the Bible taken from Genesis: 1–11. Sacks’s early pluralism seems to imply that all religions possess equal truth and, importantly, that it is this truth that justifies extending respect and dignity to gentile worshipers. In the book, Sacks does not put constraints on his absolute generosity. It was only years later, in Not in 14 On this point in Ha-Meiri’s thinking, see chapter 2 of Moshe Halbertal’s, Between Torah and Wisdom: Rabbi Menachem Ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence (Hebrew) (2000). 15 See footnote 1. 13 The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen-Gottstein… God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (2015), that Sacks explicated why religions of death and violence lacked theological legitimacy. Sacks’s admission that other religions also possess truth made him persona non grata among many of his traditionalist rabbinic peers in England. They forced him to revise the book’s full-throated endorsement of religious pluralism and retreat to the more restrained position of religious inclusivism. GoshenGottstein (2014a) skillfully parses the difference between the claims in these two versions. Here are two of them: 1. In version 1 all religions possess divine truth; in version 2 gentile religions are validated only by their adherence to the Jewish category of the Noahide covenant and obedience to its seven moral commandments. Their difference from Judaism is legitimated not by their possession of divine revelation but by their human aspiration for God. 2. In version 1 God’s universal love is responsible for conferring validity on religious diversity; in version 2 it is cultural diversity that leads to the need to dignify others, not the diversity of divine truth. In other words, version 1 finds value in difference, while version admits value despite difference. I add here that, paradoxically, it is actually version 2 that best expresses the book’s title. The thoroughgoing pluralist seeks for not merely the “dignity” of the religious Other but, more strongly, the “sanctity” of the Other and his worship. This emanates from theological truth, not merely from human aspiration or moral discipline. Sacks has not presented systematic philosophical arguments in either version to justify his respective claims. This is unfortunate, for in addition to supplying logical rigor, systematization would go far in clarifying which group of claims is more philosophically and spiritually grounded. Final Reflections The three Jewish theologians discussed above, as well as Goshen-Gottstein himself, ultimately find an essential role for God’s love of His human creatures, and His beneficence in endowing them with a bit of the Divine Self—Tselem Elohim. It is this divine universal love that ultimately mandates acceptance of all religions that lead to human flourishing and transcendence. Jewish theology needs to take the “God of Love” more seriously, even though it frequently embarrasses many rabbinic rationalists and traditionalists who wrongly attribute this concept exclusively to Christianity. Any successful contemporary Jewish theology needs to explicate the conceptual and spiritual differences between pluralism and relativism in a fuller and more profound way. It must also delve further into the concept of religious truth and nurture a charitable—though bounded—understanding of how to probe the truth of diverse religious concepts and claims and justify other religious practices. 13 E. Korn It will need to explicate avodah zarah in the context of contemporary experience and culture in order to distinguish between religious legitimacy and illegitimacy. This will enable Jewish theologians to celebrate constructive religious diversity as a reflection of God’s infinitude, as the Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 claims, and to evaluate Asian and other non-Abrahamic religious experiences.16 Heschel was correct. In our shrinking world of cultural, religious, and demographic diversity, remaining stuck in a Jewish spiritual and intellectual ghetto is simply untenable. There is a dire need for a robust positive Jewish theology of religions. In addition to pointing out this need, Alon Goshen-Gottstein has been a pioneer in this enterprise, showing us how to take seriously the great Jewish theologians of the past and how to build on the shoulders of these three contemporary Jewish theological pluralists. References Ferziger, Adam S. 2019. “The road not taken” and “the one less traveled”: The Greenberg-Lichtenstein exchange and contemporary Orthodoxy. In Yitz Greenberg and modern Orthodoxy: The road not taken, ed. Adam S. Ferziger, Miri Freud-Kandel, and Steven Bayme, 254–289. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. 2007. No religion is an island: Following the trail blazer. Shofar 26 (1): 72–111. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. 2009. Heschel and interreligious dialogue: Formulating the questions. In Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, theology and interreligious dialogue, ed. Stanisław Krajewski and Adam Lipszyc, 161–167. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. 2014a. Arguing for/over the dignity of difference. Paper presented at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture’s consultation on Respect and Human Flourishing on November 20, 2013. Jerusalem, Israel: The Elijah Interfaith Institute. https://faith.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/ Goshen-Gottstein.pdf. Accessed on 10 May 2020. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon (ed.). 2014b. The religious other: Hostility, hospitality, and the hope of human flourishing. Interreligious Reflections. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. 2015a. The Jewish encounter with Hinduism: Wisdom, spirituality, identity. Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon (ed.). 2015b. Memory and hope: Forgiveness, healing, and interfaith relations. Interreligious Reflections. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon (ed.). 2016a. The future of religious leadership: World religions in conversation. Interreligious Reflections. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. 2016b. Same God, other god: Judaism, Hinduism, and the problem of idolatry. Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. 2017. Religious genius: Appreciating inspiring individuals across traditions. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. 2018. Genius theologian, lonely theologian: Yitz Greenberg on Christianity. In A Torah giant: The intellectual legacy of Rabbi Dr. Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, ed. Shmuly Yanklowitz, 71-92. Jerusalem, Israel: Urim Publications. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon, ed. Forthcoming 2020. Judaism’s challenge: Election, divine love, and human enmity. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon, and Eugene Korn (eds.). 2012. Jewish theology and world religions. Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Greenberg, Irving. 2004a. For the sake of heaven and earth: The new encounter between Judaism and Christianity. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society. 16 Goshen-Gottstein has tried to do this in his treatment of Hinduism in Same God, Other god: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Problem of Idolatry (2016b). 13 The God of Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yonatan: Goshen-Gottstein… Greenberg, Irving. 2004b. Pluralism and partnership. In For the sake of heaven and earth: The new encounter between Judaism and Christianity, 198-212. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society. Greenberg, Irving. 2004c. Toward an organic model of the relationship. In For the sake of heaven and earth: The new encounter between Judaism and Christianity, 145-161. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society. Greenberg, Irving. 2019. Modern orthodoxy and the road not taken: A retrospective view. In Yitz Greenberg and modern Orthodoxy: The road not taken, ed. Adam S. Ferziger, Miri Freud-Kandel, and Steven Bayme, 7–54. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press. Halbertal, Moshe. 2000. Between Torah and wisdom: Rabbi Menachem Ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean halakhists in Provence. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press (Hebrew). Hershcopf, Judith. 1966. The Church and the Jews: The struggle at Vatican Council II. In American Jewish year book 1965: A record of events and trends in American and world Jewish life, vol. 66, eds. Morris Fine, and Milton Himmelfarb, 99-136. New York, NY: The American Jewish Committee; Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1962. Torah min ha-shamayim be-aspaḳlaryah shel ha-dorot [Hebrew]. London: Soncino Press. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1996. No religion is an island. In Moral grandeur and spiritual audacity, ed. Susannah Heschel, 235-250. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Korn, Eugene. 2005. The man of faith and interreligious dialogue: Revisiting “Confrontation.”. Modern Judaism 25 (3): 290–315. Korn, Eugene. 2012. Rethinking christianity: Rabbinic positions and possibilities. In Jewish theology and world religions, eds. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, and Eugene Korn, 189-215. Oxford, UK, and Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Niebuhr, Ursula M. 2017. Notes on a friendship: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reinhold Niebuhr. On being. https://onbeing.org/blog/ursula-niebuhr-notes-on-a-friendship-abraham-joshua-heschel-andreinhold-niebuhr. Accessed 6 Jan 2020. Sacks, Jonathan. 2002. The dignity of difference: How to avoid the clash of civilizations. New York, NY: Continuum Press. Sacks, Jonathan. 2015. Not in God’s name: Confronting religious violence. New York, NY: Schocken Books. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. 1964. Confrontation. Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 6 (2): 5–29. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Eugene Korn is a resident of Jerusalem. He is Academic Director of Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Jerusalem, which he helped found. He holds a PhD in ethics from Columbia University and rabbinic ordination from the Israeli rabbinate. He has authored and edited seven books on Jewish thought and interfaith relations, including Jewish Theology and World Religions, co-edited with Alon Goshen-Gottstein (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012). His scholarly writings have been translated into Hebrew, German, Italian and Spanish. Previously Dr. Korn was Professor of Jewish Studies at Seton Hall University (USA), National Director of Interfaith Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League in New York and Executive Director of the Center for Christian Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. 13