Rethinking religion and secularism : a discussion on Jewish secularization and the emergence of Judaism as a modern religion

The encounters between religions and modernity has been a widely discussed issue in the social sciences literature. This study focuses on the tension between the assumption that secularization will bring the dissolution of religions and the criticism that rather than causing dissolution, the secular demand constructs and gives life to a category of the religious which is harmonious with itself. By relying on that critique of secularity, it elaborates the Jewish modernization in the 18th and 19th centuries, with a particular focus on the Jewish secularization and the emergence of Judaism as a modern religion in relation to that process of secularization. To that end, following an analysis of the secularization of Jewish historical imagination, the deep impact of the Jewish historicist idea is discussed. Finally, it analyzes the emergence of Reform Judaism with references to the influence of Jewish historicist thinking, with a particular focus on the works of Abraham Geiger and how he constructed Judaism as a historical and universal religion.