Torah U-Madda Journal

I received my copy(ies) of the TuM Journal this week but have barely had time to look at it. But the table of contents looks so fascinating that I ended up reading some of it during my meals (don't tell my mother).

R. Ephraim Buckwold enters the Twersky-Soloveitchik family debate about the place of the Ra'avad and daringly takes on Dr. Soloveitchik.

R. Yitzchak Blau has an important review of Marc Shapiro's book The Limits of Orthodox Theology (a frequent topic on this blog). A bit speculative in his tone, but he make a strong if understated case.

R. Shalom Carmy reviews R. Eliezer Berkovits' contributions. I've only started that article so no comment yet.

William Kolbrener, who recently debated R. Aharon Lichtenstein in Jewish Action about Torah U-Madda, has a review of Reinman and Hirsch's One People, Two Worlds. Kolbrener makes an interesting observation that the debate was overly restrained by categories within Greek philosophy about absolute truth and relativism. He offers a further definition of the truth of Torah that defies those categories and distinguishes Judaism from fundamentalist faiths. At least I think that's what he did. I only gave it a quick read and the article uses a lot of technical terminology.

It seems that Charles Manekin has finally finished his On Maimonides book. I saw it advertised a few years ago but he had told me at the time that he had barely started it. He tried to write a primer on Moreh Nevukhim that is udnerstandable (imagine the hutzpah of writing an understandable book about Maimonidean philosophy!) and from a traditional, conservative viewpoint. Charles Raffel briefly reviews the book. I'm guessing this short book will be a must-have (and wish that I had published it).

That's all I've gotten to so far. The entire issue looks very interesting.