[en] The rediscovery of Judaism such as it was experienced in the face of modernity at the end of the Eighteenth Century turned out to be paradoxical: following the Emancipation and the cracks it had caused, it constituted an act of reinvestment as far as identity and culture were concerned, and yet, ever since, it has revealed the uncertainties of a problematic transmission and an altered bond. The phenomena of return and re-adhesion to Jewish tradition, which can be seen as the whirling dervishes of repurchase and revival and as the will to perform the inaugural once again, are phenomena which constantly nag at memory and disturb legacy. From the specific demand, dictated by their minority status, that the Jews resist the temptation of assimilation, to the deeply unsettling events of the century, which so often pushed the Jews to the brink of the abyss, there are scores of reasons to perceive those backward-going processes as particularly difficult.We are faced with a double impossibility: of ignoring Jewish history on the one hand, and of restoring it on the other, and this very double impossibility led so many Jewish intellectuals to criticise modernity. Indeed, their response was not to be a solely religious one: the "philosophy of return" was also a form of social criticism which couldn't do without tackling a broader issue, namely the dead-ends reached by historical progressivism. For, in the philosophy of return, two trends coexist, both separate and complementary and always interrelated: an attempt at re-legitimizing Jewish traditions, and a certain wariness of the promises of the Aufklärung and of the philosophies of Progress. (Trad. Marion Roman)

[es] La experiencia del redescubrimiento del judaísmo, tal como se impone ante el desafío de la modernidad a partir de fines del siglo xviii, resulta paradójica : operando un reforzamiento identitario y cultural posterior a las grandes fisuras de la Emancipación, no deja, sin embargo, de ilustrar el vértigo de una transmisión problemática y de un vínculo alterado ; movimientos giratorios de reapropiación y de reanudación, estos fenómenos de re-adhesión o de un "retorno" a la tradición judía no hacen más que inquietar a la tradition. Exigencias particulares dictadas por un estatuto minoritario que obliga a los judíos a resistir a las seducciones de la asimilación, a los estremecimientos del siglo que con frecuencia condujeron al judaísmo al borde del abismo, estas caminatas a tientas parecen ser especialmente incómodas.Se trata de una doble imposibilidad – de escabullirse de la historia judía e de restaurarla – que conduce a un número importante de intelectuales judíos por el camino de la crítica de la modernidad : la respuesta, en efecto, no será sólo religiosa ; el "pensamiento del retorno" se transforma también en crítica social, indisociable de una reflexión más vasta sobre las dificultades del progresismo histórico. De hecho, en el "pensamiento del retorno" coexisten dos movimientos distintos y complementarios : un impulso de relegitimación de la tradición judía, ya sea manifestándose así como una crítica de las promesas de l'Aufklärung y de las filosofías del Progreso. (Trad. Consuelo Biskupovic, Ens/Ehess)el pensamiento del retorno, tradición judía, critica social, crisis de la modernidad, intelectuales judios.