A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices Within Judaism

With clarity, passion, and outstanding scholarship, David Hartman addresses the spiritual and theological questions that face all Jews and all people today. From the perspective of our traditional Judaism, how can we understand the varieties of 20th-century Jewish practice, and how should believing Jews relate to people of other faiths?

In these powerful essays, Dr. Hartman struggles to find ways to believe in a God of history who makes Israel important to all Jews. He argues that commitment to Jewish tradition and a commitment to pluralism need not conflict in this age of modernity, but that each can enrich the other while maintaining its integrity.

A Heart of Many Rooms is a passionate, eloquent collection of essays that praise the diversity of Jewish experiences. Philosopher David Hartman's work is based on his conviction that "[T]he rebirth of the Jewish people in its homeland challenges us to articulate a sober and responsible religious anthropology capable of energizing Jews to assume responsibility for a total Jewish society." Education regarding the variety of religious experiences within Judaism, Hartman says, will equip Jews for assuming that responsibility. To hasten that process of education, Hartman describes various Jewish experiences and brings them into dialogue with one another--orthodox and reform, religious and secular, skeptical and faithful. Although some readers may take issue with the breadth of Hartman's inclusiveness, most will agree with his basic idea of what it means to be a Jew. "My picture of a genuinely religious person is one who is not averse to getting hands dirty," Hartman writes, "one who does not await divine intervention but who experiences God's presence in efforts to discharge the responsibilities he or she feels for the welfare of a total society." --Michael Joseph Gross