Sacred Attunement

A Jewish Theology

Fishbane Michael

Contemporary theology, and Jewish theology in particular, Michael Fishbane asserts, now lies fallow, beset by strong critiques from within and without. For Jewish reality, a coherent and wide-ranging response in thoroughly modern terms is needed".Sacred Attunement" is Fishbane's attempt to renew Jewish theology for our time, in the larger context of modern and postmodern challenges to theology and theological thought in the broadest sense.

The first part of the book regrounds theology in this setting and opens up new pathways through nature, art, and the theological dimension as a whole. In the second section, Fishbane introduces his hermeneutical theology – one grounded in the interpretation of scripture as a distinctly Jewish practice. The third section focuses on modes of self-cultivation for awakening and sustaining a covenant theology. The final section takes up questions of scripture, authority, belief, despair, and obligation as theological topics in their own right.

The first full-scale Jewish theology in America since Abraham J. Heschel's "God in Search of Man" and the first comprehensive Jewish philosophical theology since Franz Rosenzweig's "Star of Redemption", "Sacred Attunement" is a work of uncommon personal integrity and originality from one of the most distinguished scholars of Judaica in our time.

About the Author

Michael Fishbane is the Nathan Cummings Professor of Jewish Studies in the Divinity School and a member of the Committee on Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, "Biblical Myth" and "Rabbinic Mythmaking".

Reviews

"A passionately poetic devotion to the ideal of religious living, one that is serious without being preachy. When Fishbane tells us that the reality of God erupted into Jewish consciousness at Sinai, and that we have been trying to make sense of and respond to that event ever since, it is clear that he has been doing this in his own life for a very long time" – Tikkun

"A profoundly honest quest for authentic theological expression... I was deeply engaged in what is a nuanced, personal, and very adult guide to the experience of faith" – Forward

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