Introduction: The State of Jewish Ideas: Towards a New Jewish Canon

If periods in Jewish history can be described in reference to major themes, then contemporary Judaism deserves its own place in the timeline, and we are bidden to characterize and understand its defining ideas. Contemporary Judaism constitutes something of a paradox. On the one hand, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries witness a great Jewish “settling down” after the ruptures, revolutions, disruptions, and dislocations of the mid-twentieth century. The majority of Jews in the world are found now split between Israel and North America and experiencing a new Jewish economic and political stability based in remarkable social, economic, and