“Alan Brill examines the attitudes found in Jewish classical literature and contemporary writings towards western and eastern religions. Brill understands various writers inherently express a wide range of views ranging from rejecting to welcoming. The perspective is designed to argue for a more inclusive and tolerant stance based on modern mind-sets and deeper understandings of Christianity and Islam and even Judaism itself. His wide knowledge of world religions from the perspectives of inside practitioners and outside academic scholars of religion allows him to present original and thought provoking arguments for greater religious recognition of the other.” -- Herbert Basser, Queen’s School of Religion, Queen’s University, Kingston Canada

“In presenting the urgency, the possibility, but also the complexity of a Jewish engagement with other religious traditions, Brill works consistently with concrete texts and particular contexts.  Doing so, he not only speaks appropriately to Jews but challengingly to Christians.  By being uniquely Jewish, Brill’s book is a distinctive contribution to the general discussion on how to make religious sense out of religious diversity.”-- Paul Knitter, Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture, Union Theological Seminary, New York

"Alan Brill’s work is an encyclopedic contribution to the literature on religious pluralism. It is at once a guide to the spectrum of Jewish interpretations of other faiths, an insightful analysis of the contemporary interreligious landscape and a sampler of Brill’s own comparative thinking in regard to some major traditions. Through argument and by example, this book encourages a new depth of Jewish engagement in the theological discussion of diversity."-- S. Mark Heim,  Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, Andover Newton Theological School

Judaism and World Religions is essential for a Jewish theological understanding of the various issues in encounters with the other major religions. With passion and clarity, Brill argues that in today’s world of strong religious passions and intolerance, it is necessary to go beyond secular tolerance toward moderate religious positions. Brill outlines strategies for Jews who want to remain true to traditional sources while interacting with the diversity of the world’s religions.

This companion volume to Judaism and Other Religions provides the first extensive collection of traditional and academic Jewish approaches to the religions of the world. In the majority of volume, he presents an excellent survey of the possibilities contained in the texts useful for discussing Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism from a Jewish point for view.

Alan Brill is the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Professor in honor of Sister Rose Thering at Seton Hall University, where he teaches Jewish Studies in the Graduate Department of Jewish-Christian Studies. He is active in interfaith encounter. Brill is the author of Thinking God: The Mysticism of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin and Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010).

The Christian philosopher and theologian Mary Astell (1666-1731) called for a counter-intuitive feminist revolution, which included the education of, and Protestant monastic community for, women (as an alternative to marriage), while simultaneously affirming a wife’s submission to her husband. This thinker argued that the Bible does not discuss gender equality, while simultaneously basing a large portion of her case for equality on Trinitarian theology. Astell’s religious nuances are reminders that the modus operandi of change is relative to the cultural and religious expectations of the world one is working in and the future one is seeking.

The second half of the Twentieth Century saw much of Latin America undergoing intense periods of political instability and violence resulting in major social and political changes. Responding both to this uncertain political climate and the call to openness initiated by the Second Vatican Council, several theological movements began to take shape within Latin American Catholicism that sought to re-imagine the present and future of the Catholic Church. Critical to these projects was a re-figuration of salvation history that could better account for the social and political inequalities faced by many Latin American Catholics and that could respond to the immediate needs of marginalized peoples. This paper examines how Liberation Theology can be said to have proposed an eschatology that was responsive to social and cultural experiences of marginalized groups in Latin America and explores the legacy of this movement in the light of the extreme violence of the Guatemalan Civil War.

What happens when rabbinical students partner with Protestant seminarians and commit to a sustained and in-depth study of biblical text?

A lot.

They seek commonality. They tell stories.  They bring their vulnerabilities. They are offered a new lens through which to view their sacred texts.  They are challenged to articulate their beliefs and explain aspects of their tradition to their study partners, often helping them to clarify their relationship to their own tradition, to their sacred literature and to God.  As a semester progresses and trust develops, they share their challenges.  They question their partners.  They come to appreciate their differences, and to respect them.

As the interactions deepen between the pairs, and among the group, so too does understanding. What results is a broadening of their definitions of “Jew” and “Christian” to include nuance, narrative and diversity.

This article focuses on two concepts, each charged with a distinct ethical valence and ambiguity, namely “courage” and “the will of God,” and approaches them from a comparative perspective. A discussion of either concept by itself could involve the interplay between the philosophical, ethical, mystical, and religious; here, I bring them together in the hope that each may shed light on the other, focusing especially on their conjuncture in what I call “prophetic courage.” There are many ways in which the word courage is used, and in some of them, a courageous act can at the same time be called an unethical act. When we speak of truly great courage, however, we tend to associate it with the ethical and the good. Here I will be concentrating on prophetic courage as a type of great courage, and hence one that is profoundly connected to the question of the ethical.

In this response I aim to introduce some distinctions in order to render a more complex view of the sector of theology in which interreligious dialogue resides at present and to raise some concerns about Dr. Light’s theological position.