The Doubting Jew: Atheism, Jewish Thought and Interfaith Relations

对犹太人怀疑的拟议研究将集中在无神论和犹太教宗教之间的相遇。无神论与怀疑论、哲学唯物主义和科学自然主义等相关哲学一起，是西方思想和社会中最具影响力的思想潮流之一。因此，在任何试图在现代世界中定位后者的宗教研究中，这是一个非常重要的现象，不容忽视。对于犹太教和犹太人的学者来说，这个问题更加紧迫，因为对犹太人来说，众所周知，宗教和种族的类别模糊了，所以谈论非犹太犹太人是有意义的，他们中的许多人在历史上一直对宗教漠不关心，甚至怀有敌意。非宗教哲学和宗教之间的跨文化交流对研究美国犹太教的主导形式--改革犹太教--特别感兴趣，自19世纪初以来，改革犹太教一直是对现代性的回应。同样，犹太人和基督徒之间的不同信仰之间的接触在现代发生在基本上无神论的物质主义文化的背景下；甚至可以说，他们一直伴随着对话的第三个伙伴，即宗教怀疑论者。这些观察促使我们问：1.为什么还没有对犹太人与无神论的接触进行实质性的调查？这样的调查将填补无神论和随之而来的宗教-无神论争论的历史研究的一个重要空白。这也将加强那些同时拥护和反对无神论论点的人对现代犹太人身份的理解。为什么没有关于改革或自由犹太教的重大研究将怀疑作为一种分析范畴？这样的研究可能会修改对犹太教进步形式发展的历史理解。虽然改革的出现通常被描述为对相对于东正教犹太传统和基督教的现代性的回应，但人们也可以同样容易地专注于怀疑的话语，特别是围绕无神论、怀疑论和唯物主义哲学。3.为什么犹太-基督教关系史学家忽视了无神论现象？这样的研究将为宗教间关系的学术研究开辟一条新的途径，尽管公共基督教神学话语中高调地提出了无神论，而且自启蒙运动以来，犹太人一直强烈倾向于与基督教思想相关的现代性反应，但到目前为止，这种研究一直被忽视。这里的提议代表了一个计划，将西方犹太人在神学上对现代无神论和怀疑论的反应聚集在一起，其中一些不容易获得，也不在公共领域。这样的著作很重要，不仅是因为现代无神论历史的犹太章节缺失了，还因为涉及的主要原始材料对进步犹太教历史学家来说是一个没有得到充分利用的资源，对于理解现代犹太和基督教思想的复杂相互关系也是如此。人们本以为这样的原始资料集合会成为这三个地区的历史学家熟悉的、经常使用的资源，但事实并非如此。

The proposed study of Jewish doubt will focus on the encounter between atheism and the religion of Judaism. Along with the related philosophies including scepticism, philosophical materialism and scientific naturalism, atheism is amongst the most influential intellectual trends in Western thought and society. As such, it is too important a phenomenon to ignore in any study of religion that seeks to locate the latter within the modern world. For scholars of Judaism and the Jewish people, the issue is even more pressing in that for Jews, famously, the categories of religion and ethnicity blur so that it makes sense to speak of non-Jewish Jews many of whom have historically been indifferent or even hostile to religion. The intercultural intercourse between non-religious philosophies and religion is of particular interest in the study of the dominant form of Judaism in the US, that of Reform Judaism, which since the early nineteenth-century has presented itself as a response to modernity. Likewise, interfaith encounters between Jew and Christian have in modern times taken place against the backdrop of a largely atheistic, materialist culture; one might even say that they have been accompanied by an ever-present third partner in dialogue, namely, the religious doubter. These observations prompt us to ask:1. Why has no substantial survey of the Jewish engagement with atheism yet been undertaken? Such a survey would fill an important gap in the historical study of atheism and the attendant religion-atheism controversy. It would also enhance an understanding of modern Jewish identity among those who both embraced and those who opposed atheistic arguments.2. Why have no major studies of Reform or Liberal Judaism used doubt as a category of analysis? Such a study would likely revise the historical understanding of the development of progressive forms of Judaism. While the emergence of Reform is usually presented as a response to modernity vis-à-vis Orthodox Jewish tradition and Christianity, one might just as readily focus upon discourses of doubt, specifically around atheism, scepticism and materialistic philosophies. 3. Why has the phenomenon of atheism has been overlooked by historians of Jewish-Christian relations? Such a study would open up a new avenue of research for scholarship of interfaith relations, ignored until now despite the high profile atheism has been given in public Christian theological discourse and the fact that, since the Enlightenment, there has been a strong tendency for Jews to work out their responses to modernity in relation to Christian thought.The proposal here represents a programme to bring together Western Jewish theological responses to atheism and scepticism in the modern period, a number of which are not easily available or in the public domain. Such a body of work would be important not just because the Jewish chapter of the modern history of atheism is missing, but because the primary source materials involved represent an underutilized resource for historians of progressive Judaism and for understanding the complicated interrelationship of modern Jewish and Christian thought. One would have expected such a collection of primary sources to be a familiar and regularly used resource for historians of all three areas, but this is not the case.