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Sinai and Exodus: Two Grounds for Hope in the Jewish Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David Hartman
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, the University of Jerusalem

Extract

Hope is a category of transcedence, by means of which a man does not permit what he senses and experiences to be the sole criterion of what is possible. It is the belief or the conviction that present reality (what I see) does not exhaust the potentialities of the given data. Hope opens the present to the future; it enables a man to look ahead, to break the fixity of what he observes, and to perceive the world as open-textured. The categories of possibility and of transcendence interweave a closely stitched fabric - hope says that tomorrow can be better than today.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 373 note 1 See Bright, John, Covenant and Promise (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), for an analysis of how memories affect Biblical eschatology.Google Scholar

page 374 note 1 See Scholem, Gershom. The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971)Google Scholar; Cohen, Gerson D., ‘Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim’, The Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1967).Google Scholar

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page 377 note 1 Soloveitchik, J. B., in this light of this problem, suggests the bold thesis that Jewish messianism demands belief in the spiritual potential of the community of Israel. See On Repentance (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Torah Education Dept. of W.Z.O., 1974), ed. Peli, P. H., pp. 93–8.Google Scholar

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page 378 note 1 It is not accidental that Maimonides seriously deals with his philosophy of history in the Mishneh Torah in chapters v–IX of the Laws of Repentance.Google Scholar

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page 382 note 3 This may shed light on the talmudic preference for action based on divine commandment above spontaneous behaviour. Greater is he who does an act which he is commanded to do than he who does an act which he is not commanded to do’ (Zarah, T.B. Abodah 3a and Kiddushin 31a). This approach should not be confused with the Kantian preference for duty. Being commanded reflects the added dimension of divine loving acceptance of limited man.Google Scholar

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page 384 note 1 Soloveitchik, See, ‘The Lonely Man of Faith’, pp. 1116Google Scholar

page 385 note 1 See my Maimonides, p. 264, n. 57 and p. 267, n. 73.

page 386 note 1 Cassirer, E., The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), pp. 371–5.Google Scholar