S. DANIEL BRESLAUER is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He has published extensively on modern Jewish religion and morality including Covenant and Community in Modern Judaism (Greenwood, 1989), Contemporary Jewish Ethics (Greenwood, 1985), Modern Jewish Morality (Greenwood, 1986), and Judaism and Human Rights in Contemporary Thought (Greenwood, 1993).

Preface
Ab(O)ut Face: An Introduction
Toward a Postmodern Jewish Ethic
The Shifting Faces of Jewish Ethics
Modern and Postmaodern Jewish Ethics
Play and (M)Orality
The Art of Jewish (M)Orality
Jewish Law and Postmodern (M)Orality
Applying a Postmodern Jewish Ethic
Martin Buber's Hasidic Ethics of Moving On
Toward a (M)Oral Definition of God
Playing with Words: The Example of Shaul Tchernichowsky
The (M)Oral Art of History
Jewish (M)Orality and the Law: The Case of Usury
Selected Bibliography
Index

Moving the focus away from the exposition of one particular thinker, this unique book offers a constructive, postmodern approach to contemporary Jewish thinking combined with analysis of modern Jewish thought, reflections on Jewish law, mysticism, history, and theology. This exploration of postmodernism in Judaism and its relevance as a moral standard concentrates on three basic elements in postmodernism: attention to Other, using the text as a prism for generating alternate realities, and recognition of the impossibility of absolute knowledge. While guarding against Jewish dogmatism, this approach simultaneously stimulates Jewish creativity. Modern and postmodern approaches to Judaism that are examined include those of Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Franz Rosenzweig. Recent contributions include thinkers such as Eugene B. Borowitz, J. David Bleich, David Novak, and Edith Wischograd.
The varied chapters in the book will appeal to a diverse scholarly audience. Jewish scholars and people interested in modern Jewish thought will appreciate the range of concerns addressed in the text. The book assumes that readers have little knowledge of either Judaism or postmodernism so these terms are explained, which make the work accessible to the ordinary reader. The book challenges the modernism of mainstream contemporary Jewish ethics, therefore, all readers will learn to acknowledge the influence and value of the emerging postmodern approach to Jewish moral thought.