From Idolatry to Holiness: A Modern Ethical Framework for Understanding Jewish Law

An ethical approach to religion tries to make sense of religious claims in terms of values shared by religious and secular people alike. In From Idolatry to Holiness, Samuel Fleischaker contributes to that project by providing an ethical framework for understanding the purpose of Jewish law (halakha). He begins by interpreting idolatry as self-worship, and explores the idea, advocated by Moses Maimonides, that Jewish law aims at curing people of idolatry. Though he endorses aspects of this idea, Fleischacker criticizes Maimonides and his modern followers for having an alienating and remote conception of God and a thin conception of the purpose of human life. He then uses ideas gleaned from Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger to provide a richer conception of God and of our lives. Halakha does not just free us of self-worship, Fleischacker concludes. Rather, it enables us to experience the presence of God-holiness-in everything around us.