Reflections on Identity ─ The Jewish Case

"This book deals with the meaning of identity in general and Jewish identity in particular. Different notions of Jewish identity have been formulated in the history of Jewish thought, many of them supporting a rigid and one-sided view of it. Relying on acultural historical analysis of various theoretical and empirical dimensions of this concept, the book shows that the term Jewish identity denotes a field covering a broad range of options for Jewish existence. Common to all is the affirmation of Jewish identity, but not necessarily one single approach as the sole possible course of Jewish life"--

Avi Sagi is a professor of philosophy at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he established the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies. He is also a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He has written and edited many books and articles in philosophy, among them Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd; Kierkegaard, Religion, and Existence: The Voyage of the Self; Jewish Religion after Theology, and Prayer after the Death of God. His contribution to contemporary Jewish philosophy has recently been showcased in Avi Sagi: Extentialism, Pluralism, and Identity ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes (Leiden: Brill, 2015).