To the extent that Jewish theologians are engaged with contemporary academic philosophy, they tend to favor the “Continental” approach rooted in the French and German philosophical traditions. Samuel Lebens calls on Jewish thinkers instead to apply the methods of “analytical” philosophers—those thinkers, mostly English-speaking, whose work is based on formal logic, precise language, and basic concepts. He admits this sounds counterintuitive:
One might think that to engage in a systematic program of outlining what it is that Judaism believes is to misunderstand what Judaism is about. Unlike Christianity, Judaism shirks systematization. What binds Jews together, apart from various ethnic, cultural, and national ties, has always had much more to do with what we do than what we believe. We don’t have a history of councils gathering together to decide on an issue of theology or metaphysics, as the Christians have. If we had any councils gathering together, they were more likely to decide upon a matter of law than upon a matter of belief. . . .
Nonetheless, the danger of systematizing an unsystematic religion can be overcome in [several] ways.
One route would have the analytic philosopher of Judaism develop a conception of a faith that eschews doctrine—[that is,] give an analytic account of why religion is not the sort of thing that propositional doctrines can aptly govern. An analytical philosophy that describes, in a principled and well-argued fashion, when and where the strictures of analytic philosophy are best left behind is still an attempt at analytic philosophy!
Read more on Marginalia: http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/it-is-time-for-the-analytic-philosophy-of-judaism-by-samuel-lebens/