Jewish Thinkers on Big Questions

What is atonement? How do we human beings confront our own flaws and mistakes? How do we respond to suffering? What is compassion for the “Other”? If there is revelation, can we know what it is? What is divine law? What is commandment? How do Jewish answers to these questions differ from Christian ones? These are perennial, looming questions in Jewish thought, and we will probe them with the help of texts from Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Hermann Cohen, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the great medieval thinker Maimonides.