Information Resources

New and Notable
Recent Publications of Interest

(List posted in mid-June 2001)

In an effort to help interested readers keep abreast of new publications in the disciplines that lie at the heart of the work of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies, we offer a short list of recently-published books and brief descriptions of each book. These descriptions are not reviews: No positive or negative judgments are offered with regard to the books' contents.

Jack Bemporad, John T. Pawlikowski, and John Sievers, editors. Good & Evil After Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today. KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 2000. This volume is a publication of the proceedings of the three-day International Symposium "Good and Evil After Auschwitz, Ethical Implications for Today," held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in September 1997 and sponsored by SIDIC (Service International de Documentation Judéo-Chrétienne), the Pontifical Gregorian University, and the University of Rome "Tor Vergata." Participants in the symposium reflect on questions of good and evil as they relate to the Shoah. In their presentations these scholars seek new philosophical, anthropological, ethical, and theological orientations that will help humankind to prevent future repetitions of the kind of evil that took place at Auschwitz. Contributing scholars include Emil L. Fackenheim, Johann Baptist Metz, Jack Bemporad, Benedetto Carucci Viterbi, John T. Pawlikowski, Maureena Fritz, Dirk Ansorge, Emilio Baccarini, Peter J. Haas, Didier Pollefeyt, Etienne Lepicard, Armando Rigobello, Gianfranco Dalmasso, Stefano Levi Della Torre, Bernard Dupuy, Irene Kajon, Eva Fleischner, Michael B. McGarry, Massimo Giuliani, David Meghnagi, James Bernauer, Remi Hoeckman, David R. Blumenthal, Jean Halpérin, and Joseph Sievers.

Dunn, James D. G., editor. Paul and the Mosaic Law. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001. This collection of essays represents a new chapter in the long and usually contentious debate over Paul and the Mosaic Law. Sixteen New Testament scholars examine those passages in Paul's letters that deal directly with Jewish law, seeking to find common ground both exegetically and theologically. Contributors include John M. G. Barclay, Stephen C. Barton, James, D. G. Dunn, Richard B. Hays, Martin Hengel, Otfried Hofius, Hans Hübner, Karl Kertelge, Jan Lambrecht, Hermann Lichtenberger, Bruce W. Longenecker, Heikki Räisänen, Graham Stanton, Peter J. Tomson, Stephen Westerholm, and N. T. Wright. The editor of this volume of essays is the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, England.

Gibbs, Robert. Why Ethics?: Signs of Responsibil-ities. Princeton University Press, 2000. Combining various intellectual traditions, including Jewish thought, continental philosophy, and American pragmatism, Robert Gibbs, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, presents a new theory of ethics. Gibbs argues that ethics has to do, not with reflecting on the right thing to do and acting in accordance with the dictates of reason or will, but with responsibility. He builds his argument through an exploration of responsibilities implicit in a broad range of human interactions, focusing especially on the signs that people give one another in their interpersonal relationships. In this book Gibbs adopts a Talmudic approach that interweaves citations from primary texts with commentary. The texts he uses come from a broad range of sources and thinkers, including Levinas, Derrida, Habermas, Rosenzweig, Luhmann, Peirce, James, Royce, Benjamin, Maimonides, the Bible, and the Talmud.

Signer, Michael A., editor. Humanity at the Limit: The Impact of the Holocaust Experience on Jews and Christians. Indiana University Press, 2000. In this book of essays, Jewish and Christian scholars from the United States, Canada, Israel, Germany, and Eastern Europe who work in the fields of history, theology, ethics, genetics, the arts, and literature view the legacy and continuing impact of the Holocaust from the perspectives of their disciplines. Contributors are guided by the Vatican's 1998 statement We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah as they address issues of responsibility, evil, and justice. Michael Signer, Co-director of the University of Notre Dame Holocaust Project and Professor of Jewish Thought and Culture
at the University of Notre Dame, is also co-editor of Christianity in Jewish Terms.

Smith, Huston. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief. Harper-SanFrancisco, 2001. Huston Smith, internationally renown authority on world religions, offers a historical and social critique of our contemporary society -- a society in which the human spirit is suffocated by materialism, consumerism, educational elitism, and amoral governmental and legal systems. Smith contends that the apparent rejuvenation of religion and spirituality in our time proves itself in too many cases to be in fact a debasement of true religion. He traces events that have led us into our current spiritual crisis and offers an alternative view of the appropriate place of religion in human experience.

See a review of Huston Smith's, Why Religion Matters.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus. Doubleday, 2001. This sequel to the award-winning The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis presents a reading of
the story of the Israelites' flight from slavery in Egypt informed not only by classical Jewish interpretations and Midrashic sources, but also by literary allusions, philosophy, and psychology. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Cambridge University. She has conducted classes in Torah at several institutions in Israel and lectured widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She enjoys a reputation as an original and compelling interpreter of biblical and rabbinic traditions.

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