Jerome K. Gellman, University Press of America, 1994
This most unusual book, whose subtitle is ‘Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac’ is authored by an Orthodox professor at the University of the Negev. In case this seems a remarkably narrow subject, the author has written another book on the same subject, in a field invented by A.J. Heschel, who wrote about the comparison between the thought systems of Kotzk and Kierkegaard. The key part of the study serves to compare the ‘knight of faith’ of Kierkegaard’s ‘Fear and Trembling’ with the approaches of various key Jewish thinkers, with a particular emphasis on the ideas of the Izbitzer Rebbe and his student Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin. Both of these controversial figures advanced the idea of ‘sinning for God’ as a means of understanding the akeidah, as well as other difficult Biblical narratives. Gellman also explores the approaches of other major Chassidic thinkers with Kierkegaard’s ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’ and considers the contribution of Rav Kook’s to the debate. On route, we are treated to a comparison of Rav Kook’s thought with the writings of Hegel. A great intellectual adventure.
The Fear, The Trembling And The Fire
