JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

exodus, book of
God and man is characterized by the holy spirit. Through his
relation to God and his acknowledging God as the model and
source of holiness, man strives to attain holiness for himself.
Man and God are partners in bringing the work of creation
to completion, i.e., in bringing about the messianic era. Both
the deeds of man and the divine grace are necessary for the
salvation of mankind.
Jewish existentialism proper begins with Franz Rosenzweig.
Following Cohen, Rosenzweig attaches a great importance
to the individual. In Das neue Denken (“The New Thinking,”
1925) he criticizes traditional philosophical categories,
instead making the personal experience of the individual the
starting point of philosophy. Because God, the world, and man
are experienced as three distinct entities, Rosenzweig rejects
the approach of philosophy from the pre-Socratics until Hegel
which reduced in a monistic manner these three “substances”
to one basic essence, to God (in pantheism), to man (in anthropology),
or to the world (in materialism). The separation
and interrelationship of God, man, and the world is central to
his New Thinking. He explains that the relation between God
and the world is cognized as creation; between God and man,
as revelation; and between man and the world, as redemption.
As a result, the I is less a Cartesian cogito than a relating being,
called upon to respond.
All of Martin Buber’s mature thought bears the stamp of
a closely similar existentialism of dialogue reflected in his notion
of the I-you relationship, and his insistence on the concrete,
on the unique, on the everyday, on the situation rather
than the “-ism,” on response with one’s whole being and the
personal wholeness that comes into being in that response. At
the center of Buber’s existentialism stands “holy insecurity” or
the “narrow ridge” – the trust that meaning is open and accessible
in the lived concrete, that transcendence addresses us in
the events of everyday life, that man’s true concern is not unraveling
the divine mysteries, but the way of man in partnership
with God. The partnership with “the eternal You” comes
into expression in the meeting and encounter with a you. The
living presence of God is felt when one is present to the other
and makes the other present.
For Abraham Joshua Heschel religious reality does not
begin with the essence of God but with His presence, not with
dogma or metaphysics but with that sense of wonder and the
ineffable which is experienced by every man. Through this
sense of wonder man is led toward that transcendent reality
to which each finite thing alludes through its own unique reality.
Heschel approaches philosophy of religion as “situational
thinking” and “depth theology” which endeavor to “rediscover
the questions to which religion is an answer” (A.J. Heschel,
God in Search of Man [1955], 3).
Basic existentialist themes are also found in the thought
of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. His thinking is pervaded by
such themes as loneliness and alienation, but also heroic readiness
of obeying the divine commandments. Soloveitchik’s halakhic
hero lives through the normative prism of halakhah.
He is the ideal type who orients his life to halakhic discipline
and develops an indifference toward the chaotic, death, and
the absurd.
Although the existential Jewish writer F. Kafka has his
own anti-hero, who is the object of circumstances, of misunderstandings,
and alienation and who possesses a total lack of
communication, one may sense Kafka’s longing for a fuller life
in his description of alienated modern man (Meir, 129–145).
In their various writings, all Jewish existentialists proposed
that their readers adopt an “authentic” lifestyle, the content of
which differed from author to author.
Bibliography: E.B. Borowitz, A Layman’s Introduction to
Religious Existentialism (1965); M. Friedman, The Worlds of Existentialism;
A Critical Reader (1964); idem, To Deny Our Nothingness:
Contemporary Images of Man (1967). add. bibliography: D.
Hartman, “The Halakhic Hero: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic
Man,” in: Judaism, 9 (1989), 249–73; E. Meir, Jewish Existential Philosophers
in Dialogue (Hebrew; 2004).
[Maurice Friedman / Ephraim Meir (2nd ed.)]
EXODUS, BOOK OF (Heb. title) תֹ ומְ ש ׁ [הֶ ּלֵ אְ ו] “[And these
are] the names of ” – the first words of the book; Gk. exodos ton
wion Israel ex aigyptou], “departure [of the children of Israel
from Egypt]”; (cf. Sefer Yeẓi’at Miẓrayim (“book of the departure
from Egypt”), Dikdukei Te’amim, 57) the second book of
the Pentateuch. The masoretic notice at the end of Exodus
(C.D. Ginsburg’s edition) gives it 1,209 verses (middle verse:
22:27), 16,713 words, and 33,529 letters; 33 (or 29) triennial
sections (sedarim), 11 annual ones (parashiyyot). According
to the traditional chronology, the book’s narrative embraces
129 years, from the death of Joseph (A.M. 2320) to the erection
of the Tabernacle in the second year after the Exodus
(A.M. 2449). The book itself is the end-product of centuries
of composition. It has 40 chapters (adopted from the Vulgate
in the 14th century).
Book of Exodus – Contents
Chs. 1:1–18:27 The Liberation.
1:1–2:25 The enslavement of Israel and the advent of
Moses.
3:1–7:13 The call and commissioning of Moses.
7:14–11:10 The plagues.
12:1–13:16 Firstborn plague and Passover rite.
13:17–15:21 The miracle at the sea.
15:22–17:16 Trouble and deliverance on the way to Sinai.
18:1–27 Jethro’s visit and the organization of the people.
Chs. 19:1–24:18 The Covenant.
19:1–20:21 The theophany at Mt. Sinai and the Decalogue.
20:22–23:33 Rules and admonitions.
24:1–18 The Covenant ceremony.
Chs. 25:1–40:38 The Tabernacle and the Golden Calf.
25:1–27:19 Orders to build the Tabernacle.
27:20–31:18 Activities and actors in the Sanctuary.
32:1–34:35 The Golden Calf.
35:1–40:38 Building the Tabernacle.
612 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6