Randi Rashkover - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Randi Rashkover

Karl Barth and Comparative Theology

Rashkover explores the encounter between Frank Clooney’s approach to comparative theology and Bar... more Rashkover explores the encounter between Frank Clooney’s approach to comparative theology and Barth’s confessional theology with an eye to their implications for Jewish-Christian relations. Building on her work in Freedom and Law: A Jewish-Christian Apologetics, she offers appreciation for Barth’s confessional approach, which in theory permits the possibility of revelatory encounter beyond the Christian community because of God’s freedom coupled with the lawful limit of that freedom. However, she argues, Barth’s critical theology needs a “covenantal repair,” a theological supplement that pays closer attention to the positive role of sanctification through the community’s living apprehension of the Word in time. This “repair” is needed not only for Christians, but for Christian-Jewish comparative exchange, so that both communities can describe how a claim about God’s revelation makes sense in divine-human conversation. She finds resources for this repair in the work of Robert Jenson,...

The Future of Jewish Philosophy

Journal of Reformed Theology, 2020

Like that of his father, Markus Barth’s work can be appreciated as a tireless effort to exegetica... more Like that of his father, Markus Barth’s work can be appreciated as a tireless effort to exegetically reorder Jewish-Christian relations. Even so, Barth’s writings on the Jews leave little doubt that he is vexed by a certain strain of Jewish support for Israel. More important, Barth’s writings about post-1967 Israel put his own discourse about the brotherhood of Christians and Jews into crisis. This essay will attempt to offer a working solution to this problem that can help followers of Markus Barth’s ideas continue to engage in productive and meaningful Jewish-Christian conversation.

Political Theology, 2017

On the morning of November 9, half-stunned, I called my brothera Manhattanite who had, over the c... more On the morning of November 9, half-stunned, I called my brothera Manhattanite who had, over the course of the past three months sent me no less than 5 text photos of himself standing next to Hilary at one or another democratic party function. On the phone he said two things: read the Federalist Papers and do not worry, we have a system of checks and balances. At the time, I was skeptical. Some two months later, I am willing to consider how and why a Jewish philosopher might entertain this appeal to the system. To explain let me first offer a quick and highly limited diagnosis of the current situation. At the moment, much of the nation is awash in anxiety and this I will suggest is the result of a correlation between anti-political populism and the distortion of civil discourse. A quick glance at the news headlines over the past several weeks reveals two dominant sources of current cultural anxiety both summarized by the question: what will Trump do in his first one hundred days? Will he, some articles ask, backpedal on many of his campaign promises, leaving Trump supporters holding their breath, waiting and wondering? Or, those on the other side anxiously ask, will he actually enact these sloganed promises and unleash their maladaptive effects? Both experiences are symptomatic expressions of a communicative distortion or what in this case is Trump's freewheeling , groundless rhetorical spewinga mode of discourse that instead of delivering clearly communicated meaning purposely confounds the efforts of its recipients to discern whether it is meant as claimmaking, theater, or babble. For more than a year, the public has listened to him mock the linguistic habits of accountability required for grounding all human social, economic, political and emotional affairs; habits that allow us to trust one another and adapt to the world we live in. How, did this guy get elected? One hypothesis is that Trump's communicative violence arose as an expression of anti-political populism. There is, I dare say, a pragmatic value to Trump's flights of rhetorical anarchy. Trump's language is affective and appeals to what is a real and undeniable moment in linguistic function: the cry, the shout. Folks are angry. Folks want to "react" and Trump's rhetorical lawlessness gives them language to do this. They shoot from the hip emotionally and he tosses back a slogan, something they can chant to perform a one-way utterance not intended for conversation but for catharsis only and the more he plays along, the more popular he becomes. So, don't we get to grunt and cry and shout? Yes, of course we do but the marriage between anti-political populism and demagoguery signals the over-use of a linguistic

Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2009

is frequently credited with being the first great modern Jewish thinker. It is argued that Mendel... more is frequently credited with being the first great modern Jewish thinker. It is argued that Mendelssohn gained this title by virtue of his commitment to establishing Judaisms commensurability with the Enlightenment project as it was conceived by eighteenth century German thinkers such as Leibniz and Wolff. It is the central claim of this essay that, so read, Mendelssohns work has been underappreciated for its contribution to the changing face of Jewish-Christian relations. If, I argue, Mendelssohns body of work lays the groundwork for a pluralist society, such a pluralist society presupposes an active role for both Judaism and Christianity as agents of cultural education. Mendelssohn undoubtedly issues a bold critique of Christianity throughout his work. However, a careful analysis of his overall attitude regarding religions role in the public square points to a constructive proposal emergent from Mendelssohns writings for a Jewish-Christian partnership in the labor of education and cultural critique. Of course, this is not the same as suggesting that Mendelssohns model for Jewish-Christian partnership is one that Christians would accept as authentic to their selfunderstanding. 1 To render Mendelssohns model credible, a case needs to be made that Mendelssohns construct of Christianity is recognizable to Christians. In the second half of the essay, I will attempt to demonstrate a family resemblance between Mendelssohns account of Christianity as emancipatory culture and the account of Christianity as the praxis of self-cultivation through the exercise of "reading" found in the work of St. Augustine. At stake is not only the possibility of a working partnership between Jews and Christians in a pluralist environment, but

Modern Theology, 2008

Peter Ochs’ work offers a rehabilitation of the wisdom tradition celebrated by rabbinic Judaism. ... more Peter Ochs’ work offers a rehabilitation of the wisdom tradition celebrated by rabbinic Judaism. While Jewish philosophy, long occupied by the particular names and categories of the given order, has neglected the deepest insights of the rabbinic appreciation of wisdom, Ochs’ work recovers wisdom as a metaphysically imaginative and pragmatically effective exercise of reasoning. The four articles offered in this symposium on the work of Peter Ochs by David Lamberth, James K. A. Smith, Nicholas Adams and Leora Batnitzky, together with Peter Ochs’ response and Steven Kepnes’ conclusion, offer a striking illustration of the reach and depth of Ochs’ recovery of wisdom. This reach extends but is not limited to a ‘new thinking’ and agenda for philosophical theology applied to its specific areas of concern, including the relationship between philosophy and theology, the nature of religious studies, and the practice of Scriptural Reasoning.

The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, 2002

Philosophy Today, 2006

In a time when the protection of the rights of individuals appears more threatened than ever by r... more In a time when the protection of the rights of individuals appears more threatened than ever by religious thinking, it is more important than ever to consider the question of rights in Judaism. This essay describes a Jewish theology of sexuate rights that appropriates Luce Irigaray's call for sexuate rights rooted in an appreciation of sexual difference and critiques Irigaray's dismissal of Jewish covenantal thought as incapable of accommodating such a perspective. The paper argues that a Jewish theology rooted in an analysis of the passing of the infinite in sociality offers a basis for the category of rights in general and sexuate rights in particular thereby offering an antidote to Irigaray's Utopian hope for the return of an immanent God who alone lends voice and language to a vocabulary of sexuate rights. Irigaray Though largely ignored by Jewish thinkers, Irigaray's work warrants attention by not only Christian theologians but Jewish theologians as well. Irigaray's unique appreciation for the language of rights and the language of theology makes her work well suited for conversation with Jewish thinkers. Of note for Jewish theologians are Irigaray's critique of contemporary discourse on sexuality as well as her recommendations and hopes for the arrival of a second incarnation and her rhetoric of sexuate rights. Irigaray's critique of the subsumption of women into societal discourse dominated by the male subject extends out of her epistemology of desire or eros. Irigaray calls eros the "intermediary"-in order to describe knowledge as a dynamic and on-going process of lack and attraction between knower and the knowable. Knower and known-persons and things, persons and Gods and persons and persons all relate to one another by a process of drawing near, motored by love as the intermediary or interval that mediates between lack and attraction. Through love, knowledge becomes a third term-the result of the impassioned link between knower and knowable. So impassioned, knowledge traces and describes coordinates of time and place that it wants and needs. Nonetheless, eros' physics and metaphysics are always changeable, never stable. The world of persons, things and gods is a place of passage between the knower and the known. Philosophy, as the active quest for knowledge is not therefore "fixed and rigid, abstracted from all feeling. It is a quest for love."1 Philosophy is commentary on love, attraction, desire and the changing face of the world hereby constructed. A celebrant of change Irigaray's philosopher is "unhoused, very curious . . . sometimes exuberant, sometimes close to death."2 To speak of a single instance or character of eros is to deny the reality of sexual difference. Desire is double Irigaray argues, as men and women sponsor desires unique to themselves-desires that potentially give rise to varying and changeable world-views. It takes "at least two" Irigaray argues-two philosophers remarking on the link between persons and gods, persons and persons, persons and things. Unfortunately, Irigaray argues, western discourse denies the double-character of desire. "Even when aspiring to a universal or neutral state . . the subject has always been written in the masculine form, as man ... It is man who has been the subject of discourse, whether in the field of theory, morality or politics . . and the gender of God, the guardian of every subject and discourse, is always paternal and masculine in the west."3 The masculine monopoly on discourse produces a good many pathologies, epistemological, social and spiritual. Under ideal circumstances, the double character of desire affords the conditions of the possibility of authentic inter-subjectivity between persons. Openness to the desires of the other ought to factor into male and female constructions of reality. The other is and ought to be one feature of reality that is at once unknown and yet desired. Knowledge of the other imparts a dose of epistemological health into the knower so far as it permits the knower to realize alternative schemes of world construction. …

Journal of Religious Ethics, 2004

ABSTRACT We claim that divine command metaethicists have not thought through the nature of the ex... more ABSTRACT We claim that divine command metaethicists have not thought through the nature of the expression of divine love with sufficient rigor. We ar-gue, against prior divine command theories, that the radical difference be-tween God and the natural world means that ...

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, 2010

It is the central argument of this essay that the profile of persons as ordered and affirmed by t... more It is the central argument of this essay that the profile of persons as ordered and affirmed by the difference between the divine and the human presents a different conception of power than that presupposed by multiculturalism.

Feminist Theology, 2009

We present readings, by Jewish, Christian and Muslim women scholars, of 'difficult' texts from th... more We present readings, by Jewish, Christian and Muslim women scholars, of 'difficult' texts from three scriptural traditions, viz. Ephesians 5.21-33, Sura' 4.32-35 and Genesis 30.1-26. All three texts concern marriage and point in different ways to the erasure of women's significance or agency, and we ask what happens when women read such texts as scripture. Our readings were developed in conversation with one another, following the developing practice of 'Scriptural Reasoning', and they suggest ways in which the texts and their feminist readers can 'correct' and challenge each other. We propose that feminist biblical hermeneutics and intertraditional scriptural reasoning can be mutually informative, with both practices seeking to take embodied difference seriously and to allow unresolved critical questions to arise in reading.

Dialog, 2009

... Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference By Kristen Deede... more ... Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference By Kristen Deede Johnson. Randi Rashkover. ... Author Information. Department of Religion George Mason University 4400 University Drive, MS 3F1 Fairfax, VA 22030 USA rrashkov@gmu.edu. ...

CrossCurrents, 2012

L et me begin with a ''love letter to Catherine.'' Dear Catherine, something happened when I read... more L et me begin with a ''love letter to Catherine.'' Dear Catherine, something happened when I read your essay-something cathartic because at this point in my life I have a good 35 (OK, let's be honest), 40 years of bad synagogue experience under my belt. Sure I liked learning the prayers when I was a kid because I was good at memorization and I liked to sing, but I never enjoyed praying in synagogue. My first religious encounters were in nature. I read the transcendentalists. I became a philosopher because Emerson and Thoreau referenced Kantian idealism. I was masterful at synagogue tricks but felt nothing from them. A quick dalliance with orthodoxy during my courtship with my husband proved that I loved orthodox davening but was always seated on the wrong side of the curtain. Recent experiences with the twenty-first century ''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'' school of Reform Jewish liturgical style have left me humming new tunes to the Aleynu after services but have done nothing for me existentially, ethically, intellectually, and even aesthetically. So when you ask why has contemporary Jewish liturgy aimed so low? And when you insightfully announce the dubitability of the confessionalism that in liberal schuls counts for religious sentiment and devotion, I'm with you. And here is where we really must begin. Eloquently and effectively you speak of the crisis of sincerity and say, ''Fundamentalist religion… is quintessentially modern and savagely sincere: it retaliates against the disruptions of modernist protest by recreating them in full force from the opposing side. The totalistic nature of sincerity,

Political Theology, 2021

Contemporary political theology is often considered an outgrowth of Carl Schmitt’s daring associa... more Contemporary political theology is often considered an outgrowth of Carl Schmitt’s daring association between politics, God, and power. However, this is only half of the story, since the discourse has been equally influenced by the prophetic politics that first emerged between the wars in Weimar Germany and gained new life in America in the 1960s. While texts like Karl Barth’s Romans or Martin Buber’s Kingship of God and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Prophets have deeply influenced thinking about the relationship between theology and the political, no conversation about prophetic politics can fail to mention the dramatic role played by Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption. By a prophetic politics I mean the idea of political action determined by human testimony to an event of divine revelation. Widely considered a groundbreaking work, the Star has, nonetheless, not been reviewed in light of its ability to launch a robust response to tyrannical or totalitarian forces. Such a review provides an important test to discern the character and, indeed, the strength of the Star’s political program in the face of circumstances of grave political distress. Few political theorists have done as much to unveil the dynamics of tyranny and totalitarianism as Hannah Arendt. Consequently, in what follows, I will stage an encounter between Arendt’s analysis of tyranny and totalitarianism and her view of political resistance to better understand and assess the political program introduced by the Star and the tradition of prophetic politics in which it participates. According to Arendt, a tyrannical regime is a government rooted in “arbitrary power and unrestricted law yielded in the interest of the ruler and hostile to the interests of the governed.” Tyrannical governments pit the preservation of the ruler over and against the preservation of the collective life it rules. Consequently, tyrannical regimes develop mechanisms that secure the preservation of the ruler and blunt mechanisms that preserve the life of the collective or what according to Arendt is the community’s political activity. For Arendt, political judgments and actions are the means by which a collective preserves itself through history in the face of ongoing contingencies. As has been widely discussed, Arendt’s account of political reflection owes much to Immanuel Kant’s discussion of aesthetic judgment in the Critique of Judgment. For Kant, aesthetic claims are judgments that do not achieve objective validity by