Efrayim Meʾir Livres

The extensive correspondence between Franz Rosenzweig and Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy provides a fresh perspective on Rosenzweig's life and philosophy, particularly his seminal work, Star of Redemption. Ephraim Meir's analysis of over a thousand letters offers crucial insights for future research, revealing the personal and intellectual dimensions of Rosenzweig's thought. This examination not only enhances understanding of his writings but also sheds light on the relationships that influenced his ideas.

This book is the first greater attempt to construct a dialogical theology from a Jewish point of view. It contributes to an emerging new theology that promotes the interrelatedness of religions in which encounter, openness, hospitality and permanent learning are central. The monograph is about the self and the other, inner and outer, own and stran≥ about borders and crossing borders, and about the sublime activities of passing and translating. Meir analyses and critically discusses the writings of great contemporary Jewish dialogical thinkers and argues that the values of interreligious theology are moored in their thoughts. In his view interreligious dialogue supposes attentive listening, humility, a critical attitude towards oneself and others, a good amount of self-relativism and humor. It is about proximity, dialogical reading, engagement and interconnectedness.

The essays collected in this volume discuss the creative tension between identity and communication and the complex relationship between specificity and universality. They deal primarily with various aspects of religious existence. The different chapters propose the shaping of identity in a dialogical manner and aim to promote an inclusive mode of thinking in which attention to the self does not preclude a genuine concern for the other. Ephraim Meir is Professor of Modern Jewish Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, and patron of the Jerusalem-Academy in Hamburg.

The present volume contains reflections on the desirability and even the necessity of the interreligious dialogue and of dialogical theology in an increasingly globalized world. A kaleidoscope of various religions, each with its own specificity and cultural singularity, characterizes plural, open societies. In this constellation, encounters with religious others allow us to reimagine and reconfigure our religious singularity. In the process of becoming interreligious, one dynamically and creatively shapes one's particularity in communication with others. The nightmare of a homogeneous society where the other has no place at all receives its alternative in the vision of a growing community in which one's cultural and religious identity is formed, affirmed, and transformed in dialogue with others.

In discussion with Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Franz Fischer and Emmanuel Levinas, Ephraim Meir outlines a novel conception of a selfhood that is grounded in dialogical thought. He focuses on the shaping of identity in present day societies and offers a new view on identity around the concepts of self-transcendence, self-difference, and trans-difference. Subjectivity is seen as the concrete possibility of relating to an open identity, which receives and hosts alterity. Self-difference is the crown upon the I; it is the result of a dialogical life, a life of passing to the other. The religious I is perceived as in dialogue with secularity, with its own past and with other persons. It is suggested that with a dialogical approach one may discover what unites people in pluralist societies.

Das Buch bietet einen umfassenden Ansatz zur dialogischen Theologie aus jüdischer Sicht. Es betont die Bedeutung von interreligiösen Beziehungen und Lernen. Meir analysiert kritische Positionen großer jüdischer Denker und zeigt, dass die Werte der interreligiösen Theologie in ihren Schriften verankert sind.