Accepting and Excepting

Accepting and Excepting: On Pluralism and Chosenness Out of the Sources of Judaism is a collection of essays examining the need for inter-religious pluralism. So long as religions compete with each other by exclusive claims to absolute truth and salvation, how can they cooperate as forces for peace in an era of the global village and weapons of mass destruction?  Our cognition of reality is necessarily colored and shaped by language, culture, religion, and gender. Given inevitable epistemological (not moral) relativism, exclusive and absolute truth claims are meaningless. By a process of revaluation, Jews can affirm the concept of the Chosen People as internally directed with no claims of superiority, and observe traditional sancta without traditional theism.

Raphael Jospe (Ph.D. Brandeis University) is a retired professor of Jewish philosophy in Jerusalem. Author/editor of more than 20 books and editor of the Jewish philosophy division of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, he is involved in inter-religious dialogue and has lectured at the Vatican and at the World Council of Churches.