Tablets and Broken Tablets

The end of the era of grand ideologies and absolute truths, one of the hallmarks of postmodernism, usually threatens religious thought, which sees such ideas as dismantling identity and liable to weaken religious commitment. The fact that many people today live with a postmodern consciousness makes it hard to transmit an orderly worldview at all, and this is all the more true of the religious world, which by its nature seeks to give meaning to the life of the individual and the community within an orderly, rational framework. Most attempts to bridge this gap involve dismissing the value of the postmodern condition – in effect, a kind of turning a blind eye to its content.
Not so the book Tablets and Broken Tablets, which deals courageously and originally with the pointed questions postmodernism raises: questions such as the value of religious life, morality, democracy, Zionism and the New Age. Its author, Rabbi Shagar, one of the most original and groundbreaking Jewish thinkers of recent generations, even argues that it is impossible to live a complete religious and moral life in our time without critically adopting some of the ideas of postmodernism. In his view, these ideas do not necessarily lead to religious and moral disintegration, but on the contrary – to the creation of an authentic religious and ethical world, full of vitality. The book offers a real response to the distress of the individual at the start of the twenty-first century, and at the same time sets out a contemporary social vision of unmatched relevance.

Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg – Shagar (1949–2007) was a Zionist Torah scholar and religious thinker who taught Hasidut and carried on a deep dialogue with postmodernism. He left behind many writings in a variety of fields of Judaism, which have been published in recent years and reveal his unique thought to the wider public.
This volume is the first in the series “Tzirufim Chadashim: Thought on Contemporary Issues”. It contains the essence of Rabbi Shagar’s thinking on current issues, and first and foremost the crowning achievement of his intellectual work – a religious and spiritual discourse in the face of postmodernism.