Tolerance in Judaism: Medieval and Modern Sources

Tolerance is concerned with how one treats differences and boundaries, both within our own group, and between our group and others. These two are intertwined, for tolerance of internal differences builds a foundation for tolerance of external difference. Furthermore, delineations of differences and boundaries are systemic matters, structuring a group's world-view and self-definition, political attitudes, and much else. So this article will briefly review folk attitudes and Rabbinic statements from the medieval to the modern periods relating to diversity amongst Jews, as well as the actual treatment of internal diversity and sectarian tendencies within medieval and modern Judaism. It will then turn to attitudes to non-Jewish cultures and religions. To start with, we must ask how non-Jewish religions have actually been treated in the various independent, mostly quite remote Jewish nations that have arisen over the past two millennia, and how these treatments were justified. But we usually have more information about attitudes of Jews under majority Christian and Muslim rule. We can therefore review the historical changes in medieval Jewish attitudes to other religions in Muslim and Christian lands, in philosophical writings (particularly by Judah Halevi and Maimonides), halakhic (legal) discussions and mystical texts. All of these have influenced present attitudes. The most pivotal formulation of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the modern period, however, was given by Moses Mendelssohn in the eighteenth century. His views on tolerance and non-Jews helped to shape later Jewish self-understanding, as can be shown in the writings of Reform, Conservative and neo-Orthodox movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We close with a brief account of some modern Jewish thinkers whose views of other religions have been significant.

Title:

Tolerance in Judaism: Medieval and Modern Sources

First-online:

26 Oct 2006

ISSN:

1872-9029

Publisher:

Brill

Access options

Get access to the full article by using one of the access options below.

Tolerance is concerned with how one treats differences and boundaries, both within our own group, and between our group and others. These two are intertwined, for tolerance of internal differences builds a foundation for tolerance of external difference. Furthermore, delineations of differences and boundaries are systemic matters, structuring a group's world-view and self-definition, political attitudes, and much else. So this article will briefly review folk attitudes and Rabbinic statements from the medieval to the modern periods relating to diversity amongst Jews, as well as the actual treatment of internal diversity and sectarian tendencies within medieval and modern Judaism. It will then turn to attitudes to non-Jewish cultures and religions. To start with, we must ask how non-Jewish religions have actually been treated in the various independent, mostly quite remote Jewish nations that have arisen over the past two millennia, and how these treatments were justified. But we usually have more information about attitudes of Jews under majority Christian and Muslim rule. We can therefore review the historical changes in medieval Jewish attitudes to other religions in Muslim and Christian lands, in philosophical writings (particularly by Judah Halevi and Maimonides), halakhic (legal) discussions and mystical texts. All of these have influenced present attitudes. The most pivotal formulation of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the modern period, however, was given by Moses Mendelssohn in the eighteenth century. His views on tolerance and non-Jews helped to shape later Jewish self-understanding, as can be shown in the writings of Reform, Conservative and neo-Orthodox movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We close with a brief account of some modern Jewish thinkers whose views of other religions have been significant.

Encyclopaedia of Judaism Online