Over the last three centuries, thinkers from Spinoza to Einstein have established a distinctive tradition of Jewish secular thought. Yet secularism did not necessarily mean a total rupture from Jewish religious tradition.

Dr. David Biale in Not in the Heavens, secular thinkers appropriated the three religious categories of God, Torah,
and Israel and filled them with new, this-worldly meaning.

Dr. David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at the University of California at Davis. His current projects include editing the Judaism section in the forthcoming Norton Anthology of World Religions and serving as project director for the international team writing A History of Hasidism.