Jewish Thought

Modern thinkers have addressed the free will problem by questioning the authority of science, acknowledging the limits of freedom, and asserting the transcendent importance of choice.

Moving beyond equal access to express women's sensibilities and experiences in Jewish life and organizations.

In Jewish sources, the leaf is a metaphor for the fragility and durability of life.

This major 20th-century Jewish thinker saw vegetarianism as the biblical ideal to which humankind should work to return.

Behind these biblical practices is a vision of how politics, economics, and relations to the environment should be structured that makes manifest spiritual concerns as well.

According to some Hasidic thinkers, human free will is an illusion; God causes all human actions.

Jewish thinkers have both embraced and directly reacted to foreign ideas and philosophies.

It is difficult to speak of a single or official Jewish worldview, theology, or philosophy. Instead, we must speak of Jewish theologies and philosophies: the various and varied religious worldviews articulated during Judaism's long history.

Jewish tradition assumes that our actions are significant.

The philosophers of the Middle Ages believed they were unearthing existing wisdom, not creating new ideas.

Medieval commentators suggested justifications for God's hardening Pharaoh's heart.

The idea that God controls the world, determining the trajectory and details of its history, is strong in Judaism and is one of the theological issues that contributes to the Jewish problem of free will.