Druckschrift 
Liberal Judaism and halakhah / edited by Walter Jacob
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Philosopher and Poseq- 91 ­

to in so pluralistic time as ours, since our covenant relationship to God is as a people, it implies some common way of Jewish living."(40) Actually Eugene Borowitz is not entirely sure that we are living in a post-halakhic world perhaps it is a pre-halakhic situation in which we found ourselves and"a day might come when a sufficient number of Jews trying to live in covenant come to do things in a sufficiently similar way that there customs begin significant for them and other Jews to take into account in determining their Jewish duty."(41) Borowitz s covenant is based upon the individuals commitment expressed more in a theoretical than in a practical halakhic manner.

As we turn to Emil Fackenheim (1916-) we see a figure who was educated in Europe but has spent most of his adult life in North America and now resides in Israel . His philosophical works deal with post-Kantian issues and of course with the Holocaust . Halakhah plays a definite role in his Jewish thought. It is the response in. the God -Israel relationship,"Moral law, mediated through the leap of faith, becomes the divine law to man. Halakhah is Jewish custom and ceremony mediated through the leap into Jewish faith; and it thereby becomes the divine law to Israel (42) For him halakhah is the human response and in a sense Jewish gift to God . The laws have a

potential of becoming divine. Fackenheim differentiates between law and commandment. For him the"law discloses only itself. A

commandment discloses its giver along with itself. Obedience to a law does not necessarily create 2a relation to its giver. Obedience to a commandment necessarily creates such a relation. In Judaism revelation is commandment rather than law."(43)