Seeking Redemption in an Unredeemed World: Essays in Jewish Spirituality

The Jewish view of history rests on three pillars: Creation, Revelation and Redemption. Arguably Redemption stands pre-eminent among the three. Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, asserts that the revealed Torah is one continuous name of God. That same Torah, however, bids us to remember Redemption, initiated by the Exodus, all the days of your life (Deut. 16:3)... encompassing both This World and The World to Come.

The Hebrew words for Redemption include Yeshu-ah (Salvation), Hatzalah (Deliverance), Pidyon (Release and Restoration) and Ge-ulah (Redemption). Interestingly, all are abstracted from human activity and applied only metaphorically to God. Rather than defining redemption as deliverance from history and the human condition, Judaism seems to emphasize redemption within history, even when those redemptions are partial and fleeting.The essays in this volume offer diverse glimpses of how redemption might break through the fissures of our all-too-fractured world. Spanning theology, liturgy and spiritual practice, the arts, sociology and even politics, they open multiple doors through which the spirit of redemption may be glimpses, welcomed, and pursued.Foreword by Shaykh Ibrahim Abdul-Malik, EdD, PhD, Ecumenical Studies (Fairleigh Dickinson University), Co-editor, Learning to Lead: Lessons in Leadership for People of FaithPreface by Rabbi Norman Solomon, PhD, Senior Associate (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies), Author of Torah from Heaven: The Reconstruction of Faith