suggested to me that I occupy an uncommon situation in the field of contemporary Jewish thought. Most of my professional colleagues are philosophers, specializing in the medieval Jewish or modern general areas. I am one of a tiny number identifying themselves as Jewish theologians and, rarer still, one with postrabbinic training in Christian theology. Standing between these two disciplines, then, I propose to undertake a comparative theological inquiry here, hoping thereby to gain insight into the distinctive faith of each tradition. Somewhat recklessly, I should like to work holistically and try to characterize the current situation in each faith by focusing on one broad theme. I can, perhaps, reduce the risk of so grandiose an enterprise by starting from a description of the Jewish situation, which I know better, and then move on to what appears to me to be its closest Christian parallel. I hope the heuristic gains of this effort compensate for its substantive shortcoming.

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Conscious of the dignity of this occasion and of the honor bestowed upon me to speak to this convocation, I prepared an address which, I hoped, responded to a major religious concern we Americans share. This weekend, when the Rosh Hashanah celebration ended, I learned of the massacre at Shatila and Sabra. The event and the response to it by Jewish leaders have filled me with such moral anguish that I find the text I have ready inadequate to this time of pain. But I have not found the wisdom, or the power, perhaps because I have not had the courage, to discard what I wrote and address myself to this spiritual calamity. I hope you will understand and that God will forgive my yielding to prudence rather than heeding my conscience. For I have decided to continue now with the address I wrote for this occasion.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsEugene B. BorowitzDr. Borowitz is Professor of Education and Jewish Religious Thought at Hebrew Union College‐Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.

There is a crisis in public morality. Apparently the decline in our standard of behavior is so obvious that, despite our political and class and religious differences, we can agree upon the disorder if not the therapy. I therefore propose not to document our ills any further, but I do wish first to diagnose them and only then to suggest a line of significant treatment.

Nearly a dozen years ago I coined the term "Covenant Theology" (Commentary, July, 1961) to designate the central thrust of an emerging existentialist interpretation of Judaism. Since then the expression has had some currency, though questions have been raised as to its adequacy. In my own work over the years, looking at Judaism as a Covenant relationship has proved so consistently useful that I consider my old coinage to have been quite a happy one. (I capitalize to indicate I am referring to God's Covenant with the people of Israel rather than any other covenant, say, that with the Sons of Noah.)

Jewish theology in recent years seems to have broken with its custom of following the current trend in Protes tant theology. The movement to secularize Christianity has had little effect upon Jews, for they came through the alliance with secularity some time ago. God-is-dead theology had spe cial appeal because the problem of theodicy has been an un- healed wound for Jews ever since the revelation of Hitler's slaughter of European Jewry. Yet, there has been an almost complete rejection of God-is-dead Judaism. That is traced to the fact that the new atheism would validate Auschwitz, and the Jewish community cannot tolerate that. By contrast, it has felt itself commanded, as a matter of ultimate importance, to keep the people of Israel alive. It has also sensed in the survival of the State of Israel the positive presence of God. A new intellectual leadership seems to have emerged, one which operates with a sort of Jewish existentialist theological con sensus. However, the younger generation seems less interested in theory than in experimentation to find more meaningful forms of living Judaism.