United Passions: Jewish Modernity and the Quest for Integrity in Paul Mendes-Flohr

Abstract

Over his long and distinguished career as a historian of modern Jewish thought, Paul Mendes-Flohr has followed his great subject, Martin Buber, in striving for unity among the many subjects and spheres of Jewish life in modernity (politics, economics, religion, etc.). I argue that he has done so both descriptively and normatively, in both his accounts of the work of others and in his own methodology. Like Buber himself, Mendes-Flohr moves from an effort to achieve integrity by simply drawing everything together to an interest in holding divisions together in productive and pluralistic tension.

Keywords

• modern Jewish thought
• Paul Mendes-Flohr
• dialogue