유대해방신학의 비판적 성찰을 통해 바라본 해방의 새로운 지평과 윤리적 과제 모색

Abstract

The violence of religion resulted from an unjust alliance between Christian church and state-power has appeared as anti-Semitism in the western history and culminated in the tragic event of Holocaust. Since Holocaust, mainline Jewish theology mostly has focused on the fundamental aspects of Zionism. Israel as a state-power has strongly attempted to empower Israel itself. The nationalism that Jewish identity should be firmly defined has flourished. Empowerment issues often made it happen to use imperialistic violence against neighbor states and an essentialized Jewish Identity intensified a tendency of nationalistic exclusivity. As a result, Jews as victims in the event of Holocaust came to make Palestinian people another victim. From this critical viewpoint, a Jewish theology of liberation named by Marc H. Ellis started. He raised a question of how the particularity of Jewish experiences can be transformed into supporting a task of realizing a more just humane community. While criticizing Constantine Judaism as Jewish triumphalism, Ellis insists a life of exile based on prophetic liberative traditions. Practicing exile in the harsh reality means to refuse major values and standards of the dominant religion and to embrace the oppressed with fidelity. A Jewish theology of liberation always deals with one question of what we have to be liberated from and at the same time the other question of for what we have to liberate ourselves. Through the process of answering these two questions, oppressed experiences should not be used as an unjust tool of self-justification but as a possibility of self-transcendence. The current understanding of self-identity has to be led into some liberative tasks of the future. A Jewish theology of liberation now makes it clear that we need to overcome a hostile dualistic relation between oppressors and the oppressed and go beyond it toward the practice of solidarity toward a more just humane community. To participate in this practice of solidarity, the thesis suggests that an intentional but responsible interpretation of radical interrelatedness as a religious biodiversity and a critical understanding of inseparability between self and others should be claimed. Finally it also suggests that a model of organic moral agent who is individualistic and at the same time communal should be needed in order to practice a responsible task for a more just humane community.