Passion of Israel

"Richard Crane's extraordinary work brings much-needed nuance and keen insight to a still hotly contested aspect of Jacques Maritain's thought. Refusing to settle for simplistic answers, Crane brilliantly analyzes the complexities and gradual developments in Maritain's thinking on Jews and Judaism in the years surrounding the Shoah. Combining careful readings of Maritain's published and unpublished works with cultural, political, and intellectual history, at last Maritain and the enduring issue of Christian-Jewish relations are brought to life. This important and original book is a must-read."

--Brenna Moore, Fordham University, author of Sacred Dread: Raissa Maritain, the Allure of Suffering, and the French Catholic Revival (1905-1944)



"By assembling Maritain's writings, situating them chronologically within their historical contexts, and subjecting them to trenchant philosophical and theological analyses, Crane has produced an indispensable volume. More importantly, however, Crane's intellectual biography also provides an invaluable interpretive key that unifies the philosopher's thought and life. Beneath Crane's finely detailed surface narrative flows this powerful subterranean stream revealing an otherwise obscure coherence: as unimaginable horrors continued to unfold, Maritain had a deep need--perhaps a profoundly anxious one--for both reason and God in history."

--Stephen Schloesser, SJ, Loyola University Chicago, author of Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919-1933