Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO THE PARENT ORTHODOX MODERNIZING MOVEMENTS
- PART THREE THE RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ MOVEMENT
- Afterword
- Appendix A The Religious Kibbutz Federation settlements
- Appendix B About the religious kibbutz members quoted in this book
- Appendix C Ideological periodicals referred to in book
- Notes
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO THE PARENT ORTHODOX MODERNIZING MOVEMENTS
- PART THREE THE RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ MOVEMENT
- Afterword
- Appendix A The Religious Kibbutz Federation settlements
- Appendix B About the religious kibbutz members quoted in this book
- Appendix C Ideological periodicals referred to in book
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Rational religion is religion whose beliefs and rituals have been reorganized with the aim of making it the central element in a coherent ordering of life – an ordering which shall be coherent both in respect to the elucidation of thought and in respect to the direction of conduct towards a unified purpose commanding ethical approval…
Rational religion appeals to the direct intuition of special occasions, and to the elucidatory power of its concepts for all occasions. It arises from that which is special, but extends to what is general.
Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the MakingRELIGION AND MODERNIZATION
Rationalization is immanent in man's intellectual urge to understand the world as a meaningful cosmos through symbolic ideational patterns, and to take a unified stance toward it through patterns of norms and value-orientations. According to Talcott Parsons, “Every sharp break with traditionalism involves rationalization, for the breaker of tradition is by his very act forced to define his attitudes towards that with which he has broken.”
The need to rationalize Judaism in relation to modernization arose in Orthodox Jewry in response to Jewish Enlightenment and Emancipation of the nineteenth century. For it was when these two movements opened the world at large to the Jewish people that Judaism was pressured to justify participation in the general cultural and social life, after being turned inward toward its traditional past for many generations.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992