Faith: Jewish Perspectives explores important questions in both modern and premodern Jewish philosophy regarding the idea of faith. Is believing a voluntary action, or do believers find themselves within the experience of faith against their will? Can faith be understood through other means (psychological, epistemic, and so forth), or is it only comprehensible from the inside, that is, from within the religious world? Is a subjective experience of faith fundamentally communicative, meaning that it includes intelligible and transmittable universal elements, or is it a private experience that we can point to or talk about through indirect means (poetic, lyrical, and so forth), but never fully decipher? This book presents various manifestations of the concept of faith in Judaism as a tradition engaged in a dialogue with the outside world. It will function as an opening and an invitation to an ongoing conversation with faith.

Dov Schwartz is the Natali and Isidor Friedman Chair on Teaching the Writings of Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, Bar Ilan University. He is the author of Religion or Halakhah? The Philosophy of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik (2007), Central Problems of Medieval Jewish Philosophy (2005), Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (2005), and many others.