The standard reading of the relationship between the work of Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas is no longer productive. As the story goes, all three reject the traditional idealist philosophical approach in philosophy and theology; instead of viewing that which transcends the individual through reason with the goal of comprehension, each offers a distinctive approach to the reconstruction of the transcendent. Most scholars argue that Rosenzweig and Levinas reject Buber’s ethical humanism, because it does not adequately respect the distance between the individual and her ‘other.’ This casting of the tradition of 20th century Jewish thought must be reconstructed. I propose to read Rosenzweig and Buber against Levinas, arguing that they maintain a deep concern for the redemptive tasks of a community the possibility of which Levinas rejects outright. My work presents a new genealogy which will serve to ground a book project on the conception of the divine in 20th century Jewish thought, Gods of Becoming, in which I offer a detailed study of the philosophical roots and methodologies of these three central figures. This paper complements my most recent writings on the reconstruction of the central theological categories of creation, revelation, and redemption in modern Jewish thought. I am currently completing a series of articles on Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. In the first, I compare the approaches of Levinas and Husserl on the question of alterity and responsibility. In this piece I challenge Levinas’s critique of Husserl, and the alternative he offers to Husserl’s conception of alter-ego. Levinas does not think that consideration of another person as essentially similar is an adequate grounding for ethical relation. Instead, he builds his...