We need a 2026 version of David N. Myers’ 2003 book, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought.
First, the specific analytical framework Myers deployed in Resisting History. His four thinkers (Cohen, Rosenzweig, Strauss, Breuer) were not rejecting modernity wholesale. They were operating from within modernity to carve out specific domains that historicism could not colonize. Each made a specific jurisdictional claim. Cohen preserved neo-Kantian ethics from historicist dissolution. Rosenzweig preserved revelation as meta-historical event. Strauss preserved pre-modern political philosophy as accessing truths historicist method could not access. Breuer preserved Halakhic existence as Metageschichte, outside ordinary historical time.
The 2026 equivalent would ask: who now does this work against what contemporary defeaters of Orthodox Jewish epistemics? The defeaters have shifted. In 1900 the defeater was historicism — critical historical scholarship undermining traditional claims about revelation, Mosaic authorship, historical reliability of Biblical narrative. In 2026 the defeaters include biblical criticism matured and now mainstream, evolutionary biology and cognitive science producing naturalistic explanations of religious experience, archaeological consensus that challenges Biblical historical claims, the general authority of scientific method in educated discourse, and the contemporary challenge of gender, sexuality, and egalitarian claims against traditional halakhic categories.
Who provides the most coherent rebuttals now. Let me think through several candidates.
Jonathan Sacks (died 2020). Sacks’s major move was engaging modern science, political philosophy, and ethics on their own terms while arguing that Jewish tradition contains resources that contemporary discourse lacks. The Great Partnership argues that science and religion answer different questions and need each other. Not in God’s Name addresses religious violence from within religious tradition. Sacks never rejected the findings of modern scholarship but argued that the meaning-making and ethical tradition Judaism offers cannot be derived from scientific method. This is parallel to Cohen’s move — preserve a domain scientific rationalism cannot access, but do not reject scientific rationalism within its domain.
Meir Soloveichik operates differently. He is explicit about Jewish particularism, critical of liberal accommodationism, willing to make theological claims in public forums. His First Things essays and his work as rabbi of Shearith Israel position him as a confident Orthodox intellectual engaging contemporary American conservative political philosophy. Soloveichik’s move is closer to Strauss — locate resources in pre-modern Jewish thought that can critique modern assumptions rather than requiring accommodation to them. The rebuttal he offers to historicist and naturalist defeaters is that they operate with their own unexamined metaphysical commitments that Jewish tradition exposes.
Chaim Saiman offers a different move. His Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law argues that Halakhah is not primarily a legal system in the Western sense but a comprehensive mode of thinking about reality. This reframes the conversation. Modern critiques of Halakhah often assume it functions as Western legal systems function and then find it wanting by those standards. Saiman argues the standards misapply. Halakhah has epistemic and ontological commitments that cannot be evaluated within secular legal theory’s framework. This is a Breuer-style move — Metageschichte as different domain not reducible to the categories that would defeat it.
Yoram Hazony presents a different case. His Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture argues that the Hebrew Bible is a philosophical work and that Western philosophy has systematically misread it by imposing Greek categories. His Conservatism: A Rediscovery argues for a conservative political philosophy grounded partly in Biblical and rabbinic sources. Hazony’s move is more expansive than the others — he wants Jewish sources to compete directly with Western philosophical tradition rather than retreating to Jewish domains. Whether this succeeds is contested. Critics argue he overstates the philosophical coherence of Biblical texts. But the jurisdictional claim is clear: Hebrew Scripture has standing as philosophy, not only as religious literature or historical document.
Shai Held operates on the liberal Orthodox edge or Conservative-Orthodox border. His Judaism Is About Love and The Heart of Torah make theological claims about divine love and human obligation that engage contemporary ethical discourse without retreating to particularism. Held’s move is to argue that Jewish theological tradition has resources for contemporary ethical problems that secular ethics lacks. He engages thinkers like Martha Nussbaum and Charles Taylor on their ground rather than claiming separate jurisdiction. This is a Cohen-style move — Jewish resources for ethical work that can compete within modern ethical discourse without requiring that readers accept metaphysical Jewish commitments.
Joshua Berman works on the historicist challenge from within. His Inconsistency in the Torah engages the documentary hypothesis directly, arguing that apparent textual inconsistencies that historical-critical scholars treat as evidence of multiple sources can be explained by ancient Near Eastern literary conventions. He does not reject the scholarly methods. He applies them with different assumptions and reaches different conclusions. This is the closest contemporary equivalent to Orthodox engagement with biblical criticism on criticism’s own ground.
David Weiss Halivni died in 2022 but his Peshat and Derash and Revelation Restored remain central. Halivni was Conservative but his work was taken seriously by Orthodox thinkers. He argued for theological frameworks that could accommodate the documentary hypothesis’s textual findings while preserving Jewish theological commitments about revelation. His move was to say that the Torah was “maculate” — imperfect in its transmitted form — but that this did not defeat the claim of Sinaitic revelation properly understood. This is Rosenzweig-like — preserve revelation as event while accommodating what historical scholarship requires about texts.
Menachem Kellner writes from Haifa, working on Maimonides. His Must a Jew Believe Anything? argues that Jewish tradition requires practice more than belief and that dogmatic commitments are more contested within tradition than Orthodox polemics admit. This is a different move. Rather than defending Orthodox epistemics against defeaters, Kellner argues that Orthodoxy itself has traditionally been less dogmatic than current Orthodox discourse claims. The defeaters defeat a hardened version of Orthodoxy but not the tradition in its fuller range.
Moshe Koppel engages contemporary questions. His Judaism Straight Up defends traditional Jewish life against both Reform-progressive Judaism and secular Western values using a combination of game theory, evolutionary psychology, and Jewish tradition. This is a Strauss-like move — turn the tools of modernity (here evolutionary social science) against the modern assumption that traditional life is irrational or outdated. Koppel argues that traditional Jewish community structures produce social goods that contemporary alternatives fail to deliver.
Tamar Ross writes from within Modern Orthodoxy on gender and feminism. Her Expanding the Palace of Torah engages feminist challenges to Orthodox Jewish life by developing a theory of progressive revelation that can accommodate changing moral understanding while maintaining commitment to Torah. This is perhaps the most Rosenzweig-like move in the contemporary context — preserve revelation while accommodating what moral seriousness requires about women’s standing.
Lawrence Kaplan works on Joseph Soloveitchik’s legacy. The Rav’s own work (especially Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith) remains central to Modern Orthodox intellectual self-understanding. Kaplan’s scholarly work on Soloveitchik continues this tradition. Soloveitchik himself was the great Modern Orthodox engagement with twentieth-century philosophy — neo-Kantian, Kierkegaardian, phenomenological — while maintaining halakhic commitment. Current Soloveitchik reception is doing work Myers’s original project would recognize.
The 2026 question is what has changed since Myers wrote. The historicist challenge Myers addressed has matured. Biblical criticism is no longer edge-of-scholarship provocation. It is mainstream. The Orthodox response has therefore matured too. Berman, Halivni, and others work within the scholarly apparatus rather than outside it. Meanwhile new defeaters have emerged. Evolutionary psychology, cognitive science of religion, archaeological minimalism about Israelite origins, and contemporary moral challenges around gender and sexuality have created new fronts.
The structure an updated Resisting History might take. Chapter on Sacks as engagement with science and secular ethics from within tradition. Chapter on Soloveichik-Halivni lineage preserving revelation while accommodating textual criticism. Chapter on Saiman as Breuer-equivalent preserving Halakhah as distinct domain. Chapter on Ross as engagement with feminist challenge through progressive revelation theory. Chapter on Hazony as expansive claim for Hebrew Scripture as competing philosophical tradition. Perhaps chapter on Held or Koppel as engagement with contemporary ethical and social-scientific challenges.
Each thinker makes a jurisdictional claim analogous to what Myers’s four made in their period. Each does so in contemporary idiom responding to contemporary defeaters. The question whether their moves are coherent rebuttals or sophisticated special pleading is exactly the question Myers asked about his original four. Rosenzweig’s move to preserve revelation was contested. Strauss’s move to preserve pre-modern political philosophy was contested. Breuer’s Metageschichte was contested. The contemporary equivalents face equivalent contestation.
The most coherent rebuttals probably come from those who engage the defeaters on the defeaters’ own ground rather than retreating to separate domains. Berman’s work on biblical inconsistencies is powerful because he accepts scholarly method and reaches different conclusions through more careful application. Sacks’s engagement with science is powerful because he accepts science’s findings and argues for domains science cannot address by its own methods. Saiman’s work on Halakhah is powerful because he engages legal theory rigorously and argues for distinctions legal theory has missed.
Less coherent rebuttals retreat to claims that Orthodox epistemics need only be coherent within Orthodox commitments. This is the move that does not satisfy defeaters because defeaters precisely question whether Orthodox commitments should be adopted. Rebuttals that require the rebuttal’s audience to already have accepted the position the rebuttal defends are not rebuttals to the defeaters. They are statements of commitment that the defeater has already questioned.
The 2026 observation is that Orthodox epistemic defeat is now not primarily at the scholarly level. The scholarly defeaters have been there for over a century and Orthodox intellectuals have developed responses. The current defeat is more social and experiential. Young Orthodox Jews are exposed to secular education, to social media, to peer groups that question traditional claims. The question is not primarily “can Orthodox epistemics survive historical criticism” but “can Orthodox life survive the social conditions contemporary life imposes.” The intellectual rebuttals may be coherent while still failing to prevent communal attrition. This is a distinction the original Myers project did not need to make as sharply.
Who works on this social-experiential problem. Moshe Koppel’s game-theoretic argument for traditional community structures is one answer. Haredi intellectuals like Aaron Lopiansky or Aharon Feldman do different work — they address their own communities rather than engaging the broader intellectual marketplace. The divergence between Modern Orthodox and Haredi intellectual responses is important for the 2026 project. Modern Orthodox thinkers generally accept the burden of engaging the defeaters. Haredi thinkers generally reject the burden, arguing that engagement concedes too much. The question of which approach produces more resilient Orthodox communities is empirical and contested.
One important thing Myers’s original project did that the 2026 update would need to preserve. Myers took his subjects seriously as thinkers even when he disagreed with their conclusions. He did not treat Cohen, Rosenzweig, Strauss, and Breuer as specimens to be analyzed from outside but as interlocutors whose arguments deserve substantive engagement. A 2026 update would need the same posture. The contemporary thinkers I have named deserve engagement, not dismissal or condescension. Their arguments might succeed or fail but they must be evaluated on the arguments.
Each thinker is making a claim about what domain belongs to Jewish authority, what domain belongs to general scientific or scholarly method, and where the boundary should fall. The contest is ongoing. Different thinkers draw the boundary differently. The 2026 landscape has more thinkers making more varied moves than the 1900-1934 landscape Myers mapped. The pluralism is itself a feature of the contemporary situation.
Myers’s original project was sympathetic to anti-historicism in a way the rest of his scholarly work sometimes was not. Resisting History showed him engaging positions he did not fully share with real intellectual generosity. A 2026 update would need the same generosity directed at contemporary Orthodox thinkers whose political and social positions are frequently at odds with Myers’s own. Whether current Myers could write such a book is an open question. The Myers of 2003 could. The Myers of 2026 may or may not be able to bracket his political commitments enough to engage, say, Hazony or Soloveichik with the generosity he extended to Strauss and Breuer.
If someone were going to write the book, the thinkers most deserving of serious treatment in my assessment would be Berman (on biblical criticism), Sacks (on science and ethics), Saiman (on halakhah as distinct mode), Ross (on gender and progressive revelation), Koppel (on social-scientific challenges), and the ongoing Soloveitchik legacy through Kaplan and others. Each addresses a defeater. Each proposes a strategy for maintaining Orthodox intellectual coherence. The book would work by showing what each strategy accomplishes and where each strategy runs into difficulty. The result would be the same textured picture Myers produced in 2003 — neither triumphalist defense of Orthodox epistemics nor dismissive critique of their project, but careful engagement with attempts to carry the tradition through contemporary challenges.
