Judaism Examined: Essays in Jewish Philosophy and Ethics 9781618111876

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JUDAISM EXAMINED Essays in Jewish philosophy and ethics

-------------------------------   Moshe Sokol -------------------------------------

touro college press New york

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JUDAISM EXAMINED Essays in Jewish Philosophy and ethics

----------------------  Dr. Moshe Sokol --------------------------Dean and professor of philosophy Lander college for men of Touro college

New York 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: a catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.  

ISBN 978-1-618811-165-4 ©Touro College Press, 2013 Published by Touro College Press and Academic Studies Press. Typeset, printed and distributed by Academic Studies Press. Book design by Olga Grabovsky, Ivan Grave Touro College Press Michael A. Shmidman and Simcha Fishbane, Editors 43 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10010 USA

[email protected] Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x LIVING A JEWISH LIFE Chapter I

Maimonides on Joy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Chapter II

Maimonides on the Philosophical Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Chapter III

Is There a “Halakhic” Response to the Problem of Evil? . . . . . . . . . . 67 Chapter IV

Attitudes Toward Pleasure in Jewish Thought: A Typological Proposal . . . 83 Chapter V

Mitzvah as Metaphor: Towards a Philosophical Theory of Ta’amei Ha-Mitzvot . . . . . . . . . . . 112 AUTONOMY, FREEDOM, AND TOLER ANCE Chapter VI

Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility . . . . . . . 140 Chapter VII

Master or Slave? Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on Human Autonomy in the Presence of God . 158 Chapter VIII

The Autonomy of Reason, Revealed Morality and Jewish Law . . . . . . . 205

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Chapter IX

Theoretical Grounds for Tolerance in the Jewish Tradition . . . . . . . . . 225 Chapter X

Personal Autonomy and Religious Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 TOPICS IN APPLIED JEWISH ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY Applied Jewish Ethics

Chapter Xi

The Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources: A Philosophical Analysis of the Halakhic Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Chapter XIi

Some Tensions in the Jewish Attitude Toward the Taking of Human Life . . 338 Chapter XIIi

What Are the Ethical Implications of Jewish Theological Conceptions of the Natural World? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Chapter XIV

Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 Chapter XV

Ger Ve-Toshav Anokhi: Modernity and Traditionalism in the Life and Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik . . . . . . . . . . 434 Chapter XVI

Transcending Time: Elements of Romanticism in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik . . 451 Interpreting Jewish Texts Chapter XVII

What Does A Jewish Text Mean? Theories of E’lu Ve-Elu Divrei Elohim Hayyim in Rabbinic Literature . . . . . 467 Chapter XVIII

How Do Modern Jewish Thinkers Interpret Religious Texts? . . . . . . . . 481 CITATIONS INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 GENERAL INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 — vi —

--------------------------------------------------------------   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --------------------------------------------------------------

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The chapters in this volume, with the exception of Chapter Two, all appeared as papers published in numerous contexts over the course of many years, and many friends and colleagues have helped me sharpen and refine my ideas. I have thanked them at the outset of each chapter. I wish to thank here Dr. Simcha Fishbane, who long encouraged me to publish my essays, and Dr. Alan Kadish, president and CEO of Touro College, for providing the academic leadership, vision, and resources that have made this volume a reality. Dr. Michael Shmidman, dean of the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, played a pivotal role in bringing this volume to fruition, sharing his sage advice, encouragement, and precious time from beginning to end. I am deeply indebted to him. Susan Moskowitz, administrator of the Office of the Dean, and Joan Wagner, librarian, both at Lander College for Men, provided invaluable and time-consuming assistance, as did Abigail Yusupova. Sharona Vedol and Kira Nemirovsky of Academic Studies Press were a true pleasure to work with. My brother Mayer Sokol, my sister Raisy and her husband Dovid Barnett, and my brothers- and sisters-in-law, Malky and Shaya Abraham and Blim and Arnon Frager, have contributed in uncountable ways to my life, and therefore to this volume, for which I am profoundly grateful. The love of my children and their spouses, Zvi and Dina, Estee and Daniel, Aliza and Uri, Yonah and Zehava, and Yosef and Devorah, nourishes my heart, soul and mind. They and their children are my greatest sources of blessing, joy, and delight, and I wonder who and where I would be without them all. My mother-in-law, Mrs. Helen Wagh, a woman of wisdom, courage, determination, and love, together with her late husband, Isaac, a — vii —

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man of kindness, honesty, and good nature, have been the best inlaws any man could have. My parents Albert and Shirley, more than any other persons, are responsible for whatever good I possess. They raised me to respect knowledge, creativity, and moral and intellectual integrity, to care for those who need care, to be compassionate, and to act on that compassion. Their own lives model these virtues, and their love has nurtured me from infancy. Although I am very far from infancy indeed, I still feel nurtured by their love. May they continue to enjoy many happy and healthy years ahead, for they still have much to teach me, and my children and grandchildren too. Ever since we married many years ago, I have been sustained by the love, care, and practical wisdom of my wonderful wife Chaya. Hers is the most wonderful neshama, and her sweetness, purity of spirit, integrity, and clarity of thought have blessed me, and our children and grandchildren, in more ways than I can begin to enumerate. May she see much nachas from us all for many, many years to come. Finally, we all owe the greatest debt of gratitude to Him who has made everything possible. Most chapters in this volume first appeared in the following publications, and I am grateful for the editors’ permission to publish them here. “Elements of Romanticism in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Modern Judaism 30: 3 (2011). “Maimonides on Joy,” in Maimonides and His Time, ed. Lenn E. Goodman (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009). “Theoretical Grounds for Tolerance in the Jewish Tradition,” in Tolerance, Dissent and Democracy, ed. Moshe Sokol (New York: Jason Aronson, 2002). “What Are the Ethical Implications of the Jewish Theological Conceptions of the Natural World?,” in Judaism and the Natural World : Philosophical and Ethical Perspectives, ed. Hava Tirosh Samuelson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). “Is There a ‘Halakhic’ Response to the Problem of Evil?,” Harvard Theological Review 92:3 (1999). — viii —

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“Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility,” Harvard Theological Review 91:1 (1998). “What Does a Jewish Text Mean? Theories of E’lu—Ve’Elu Divrei Elohim Hayyim in Rabbinic Literature,“ Da’at 13:1 (1994). “Ger ve –Toshav Anokhi: Modernity and Traditionalism in the Life and Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Tradition 29:1 (1994). “Personal Autonomy and Religious Authority,” in Personal Autonomy and Rabbinic Authority, ed. Moshe Sokol (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 1992), 169-216. “How Do Modern Thinkers Interpret Religious Texts?” Modern Judaism 13 (1993): 25-48. “Mitzvah as Metaphor: Towards a Philosophical Theory of Ta’amei Ha- Mitzvot,” in A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Phillosophical Thought, ed. Daniel Frank (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993). “Attitudes Towards Pleasure in Jewish Thought: A Typological Proposal,” in Reverence, Righteousness and Rahmanut, ed. Jacob J. Schacter (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 1992). “The Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources: A Philosophical Analysis of the Halakhic Sources,” AJS Review XV:1 (Spring 1990): 63-83. “The Autonomy of Reason, Revealed Morality and Jewish Law,” Religious Studies 22 (1986): 423-427. “Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” with David Singer, Modern Judaism 2 (1982): 227-272. “Some Tensions in the Jewish Attitude Toward the Taking of Jewish Life,” Jewish Law Annual VII (1988): 97-114. “Master or Slave? Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on Human Autonomy in the Presence of God,” in Turim: Studies in Jewish History and Literature Presented to Dr. Bernard Lander, ed. Michael Shmidman (Jersey City, NJ: Touro College Press/Ktav, 2007), 275-330.

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Introduction

Most, although by no means all, scholars of Jewish philosophy approach the field primarily from the perspective of intellectual Jewish history. What does a particular thinker maintain, how were his ideas influenced by those of his predecessors and contemporaries and the general cultural milieu in which he lived and worked, and how did his ideas influence others? This is surely a valuable mode of inquiry. Nevertheless, it hardly exhausts the range of possibilities. This is so in several senses. First, what has sometimes been called “constructive” Jewish thought is by very definition not the province of history. Those who wish to make creative and contemporary contributions to the very same problems that have long preoccupied Jewish thinkers, or to new problems never even envisioned in the past, are hardly engaged in an historical task. While what they do often is, and should be, informed by the past, its very ambition is to liberate itself from that past and approach questions anew. Second, even when great Jewish thinkers are studied, they can and should be considered not only as historical artifacts embedded in the past, but in active dialogue with the present. After all, they wanted to be taken seriously, took themselves to be engaged in a quest for the truth, and believed in the eternal truth of what they wrote. But this would require them to be open to active and critical conversation not only with their contemporaries, but with their successors as well. Such a conversation will raise questions about the clarity of the ideas of these thinkers, their justification, and their internal coherence, and apply the conceptual frameworks and ideas of recent and contemporary philosophers to bear on those great efforts of the past. — x —

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The essays in this volume endeavor to contribute to these two tasks, and they do so from a particular perspective, that of analytic philosophy, the method in which their author was trained. Much scholarship in the field of Jewish philosophy is either historical or grounded in other methods, from continental to post-modern. Analytic philosophy, which dominated the field of philosophy for decades in the United States and Britain, and continues to be influential, is nevertheless relatively underrepresented in Jewish philosophy, although certainly present. This volume is designed to help develop further this important perspective. The subjects of these essays can be organized in a variety of ways. Some are more historical in nature, and some more constructive. However, the principle of organization I chose is topical. The first set of essays takes up aspects of the challenge of living a Jewish life, from historical and contemporary perspectives. What is the meaning of joy? What are Jewish attitudes towards pleasure? How does the Jewish philosopher live his or her life? What is the meaning of mitzvot? Are there fresh ways to deal with the perennial human problem of suffering? The second category of essays takes up a series of related themes, central concerns of the western intellectual tradition, especially but not exclusively during the modern period. These themes are human autonomy, freedom of the will, and tolerance. Another group of essays includes further studies in the thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, supplementing essays included in the first two sections of the book. Two essays in this section explore topics in hermeneutic theory, of fundamental importance in modern Jewish thought. Finally, the remaining three essays examine problems in applied Jewish ethics. These take up the crucial conversation between Jewish thought and Jewish law, central to the whole enterprise of modern Jewish ethics. Both because of a common method and the interconnection amongst topics, there is, in the end, a deeper unity running throughout the entire volume. But that should not be surprising, for philosophers, like all human beings, share certain preoccupations, emerging from a life of the mind and a mind engaged in life.

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----------------------------------- Chapter I  -----------------------------------

Maimonides on Joy

My aim in this essay is to examine closely a number of Maimonidean texts, many halakhic in nature, in an effort to unravel Maimonides’ conception of joy. My argument is that when these texts are considered in the context of Maimonides’ philosophical views, frequently as articulated in the Guide, they yield a rich and fascinating portrait of joy and the avenues to its achievement. It should first be pointed out that this essay is quite different in subject than that of Hava Tirosh Samuelson’s book on eudaemonia in the Jewish sources.1 While that learned work contains a detailed chapter on Maimonides, it does not cite the texts considered here, primarily because it addresses Jewish conceptions of the summum bonum, and focuses little on the emotional dimension of happiness. Moreover, there is an intuitive distinction between happiness or eudaemonia, on the one hand, and joy or simha on the other. Recent empirical studies of what psychologists now call “subjective well-being,” a state that correlates with at least part of eudaemonia, flesh this distinction out. Joy is purely emotional, while subjective well-being is a far broader condition, which, scholars argue, includes not only the presence of positive emotions, such as joy and affection, but also the relative absence of negative emotions, such as sadness and anxiety, as well as judgments about personal life satisfaction, which are cognitive in nature. Thus happiness, construed as subjective well-being, is a far more inclusive state than joy, which is no more than one if its many constituents.2 1

2

Hava Tirosh Samuelson, Happiness in Pre-Modern Judaism (New York: Hebrew Union College Press, 2003). There is a considerable philosophical literature on happiness. For a fuller discussion, see, for example, Deal W. Hudson, Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction (London: — 12 —

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While Maimonides mentions joy in numerous contexts, all catalogued and carefully discussed in a comprehensive article by Gerald Blidstein,3 I shall focus here on what are the most important halakhic manifestations of joy, the Jewish holidays, where the experience of joy, according to the halakha, is sometimes biblically mandated. I shall also examine a particularly significant set of texts related to the holiday of Purim, where joy is likewise of fundamental importance.4 While these sources may not give us a complete picture of Maimonides on joy, they will, I believe, shed considerable light on important aspects of it.

I. The Three Festivals Maimonides asserts in Hilkhot Yom Tov 6:17 that there is a biblical obligation to rejoice during Shalosh Regalim: Pesach, Sukkot, and Shavuot. In Temple times this was fulfilled by bringing certain sacrifices. Nevertheless it included, and according to Maimonides continues to include to this day, a series of other behaviors, which he famously describes in the next halakha: 18 Thus children should be given parched ears, nuts and other dainties; women should have clothes and pretty trinkets bought for them,

3

4

Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), especially chapter 4, and the bibliography included at the end of the book. For a survey of the extensive empirical literature on subjective wellbeing from which my comments were drawn, including a comprehensive bibliography, see Ed Diener, Eunkook M. Suh, Richard Lucas, and Heidi Smith, “Subjective WellBeing: Three Decades of Progress,” Psychological Bulletin 125 (March 1999), 276-301. Gerald Blidstein, “Ha-Simha Be-Mishnato Ha-Musarit shel Ha-Rambam,” Eshel Be-er Sheva 2 (1980), 145-163. David Blumenthal offers a brief linguistic analysis of the term simha as Maimonides uses it, in his essay “Maimonides: Prayer, Worship and Mysticism,” in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed. David Blumenthal (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 1-16. The role of the emotions in religious life according to Maimonides has been examined by Menachem Kellner in “Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76:1 (2002), 125-143, although he does not discuss joy there. Some of these texts have been analyzed by Isadore Twersky in “On Law and Ethics in the Mishneh Torah: A Case Study of Hilkhot Megillah 2:17” in Tradition 24:2 (Winter 1989), 138-149, and in a brief follow-up essay by Lawrence Kaplan, “Hilkhot Megillah Revisited: A Halakhic Analysis,” Tradition 26:1 (Fall 1991), 14-21. My approach in this essay is broader, and provides a different perspective on the texts in question, and on others. — 13 —

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according to one’s means; and men should eat meat and drink wine, for there can be no real rejoicing without meat to eat and wine to drink. And while one eats and drinks himself, it is his duty to feed the stranger, the orphan, the widow, and other poor and unfortunate people, for he who locks the doors to his courtyard and eats and drinks with his wife and family, without giving anything to eat and drink to the poor and the bitter in soul — his meal is not a rejoicing in a divine commandment, but a rejoicing in his own stomach. (Hilkhot Yom Tov 6:18)5

Whatever one’s reaction to Maimonides’ view of the divergent needs of men and women delineated here, several points should be stressed. First joy is largely associated here with material well-being — with eating, drinking and fine clothing, falling squarely under what Maimonides in Guide III:27 calls well-being of the body. This is consistent with (although not quite identical to) Maimonides’ generic explanation for the Three Festivals in Guide III:43, where he says “the festivals are all for rejoicings and pleasurable gatherings, which in most cases are indispensable for man; they are also useful in the establishment of friendship, which must exist among people living in political societies.”6 Here the stress is on material and now social well-being. Given this material conception of joy in Hilkhot Yom Tov, Maimonides is greatly concerned about the potential for selfishness in a holiday focused around food, drink, and fine clothing, and he insists on the importance of caring for the needy and poor. And again, because of his material conception of joy, Maimonides is equally concerned about the likelihood of frivolity implicit in that account, and a concomitant absence of spirituality. Here is what Maimonides writes in the next two paragraphs: 19 Although eating and drinking on festivals are included in the positive commandment to rejoice on those days, one should not eat and drink all day long, the proper procedure being as follows: In the 5

6

MT Repose on Festivals 6.18, trans. Solomon Ganz and Hyman Klein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 303. The Guide of the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides, translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 570. — 14 —

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morning, people should go early to the synagogue or the house of study, recite the prayers and read the lesson in the Law appropriate to the day, and then return home and eat. Then they should return to the house of study, and study Scripture or Mishnah until noon. After noon they should recite the afternoon prayer, and then return home and eat and drink for the rest of the day until nightfall. 20 When one eats and drinks and rejoices on a festival day, he should not overindulge in wine, merriment, and frivolity, in the belief that the more he does of this the more he is fulfilling the commandment to rejoice. For drunkenness, excessive merrymaking, and frivolity are not rejoicing but madness and folly, and we were commanded to indulge not in madness and folly but in the kind of rejoicing which partakes of the worship of the Creator of all things.7

Maimonides thus insists not only on the importance of caring for the needy, but also (1) that much of the holiday be spent in prayer and study; and (2) that the joy itself be contextualized by divine service. Despite these many constraints designed in some sense to “elevate” the holiday, it is nevertheless still true that rejoicing on the festivals is halakhically associated most closely with material well-being, or well‑being of the body. Let us now examine Maimonides’ account of one of the Three Festivals in particular, Tabernacles, or Sukkot.

II. Sukkot In the rabbinic tradition, the festival of Sukkot was an especially joyous holiday. Maimonides writes in Hilkhot Lulav 8:12 that “in the Temple there was extra joy.” In the Guide III:43 he goes much further, writing that Sukkot “aims at rejoicing and gladness.”8 This implies that joy is the whole point of the holiday, a striking claim that requires some explanation. In Hilkhot Lulav 8:13-15 Maimonides describes the joyous festivities at the Temple during Sukkot.

7 8

MT Repose on Festivals 6.19-20, Ganz and Klein, 303-304. Guide III:43 (Pines, 571). — 15 —

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13 What form did this rejoicing take? Fifes sounded, and harps, lyres, and cymbals were played. Whoever could play a musical instrument did so, and whoever could sing, sang. Others stamped their feet, slapped their thighs, clapped their hands, leaped, or danced, each one to the best of his ability, while songs and hymns of praise were being recited. 14 It was a religious duty to make this rejoicing as great as possible, but participation in it was not open to non-scholars or anyone else who wished to take part. Only the great scholars in Israel, heads of academies, members of the Sanhedrin, elders, and men distinguished for their piety and good deeds — these only danced and clapped, made music, and rejoiced in the Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles. Everyone else, men and women, came to watch and listen. 15 Rejoicing in the fulfillment of the commandment and in love for God who has prescribed the commandment is a supreme act of divine worship. One who refrains from participation in such rejoicing deserves to be punished…. If one is arrogant and stands on his own dignity and thinks only of self-aggrandizement on such occasions, he is both a sinner and a fool… Contrariwise, one who humbles and makes light of himself on such occasions achieves greatness and honor, for he serves the Lord out of sheer love… True greatness and honor are achieved only by rejoicing before the Lord, as it is said, “King David leaping and dancing before the Lord,” etc.9

The joy described here is not material or social, like that of the Three Festivals generally, but ecstatic in nature. It was associated with music and dancing, which, interestingly, were spiritual practices important for the Sufi mystics of Maimonides’ own day. Moreover, the celebrations were limited to the elite, while the average citizen merely stood by and observed. Indeed, the practices described here are not social, as was Maimonides’ characterization of the Three Festivals generally, but in certain respects even antisocial. For not only are the masses excluded from them, but King David was criticized by his own wife for his excesses while dancing in honor of the ark, and King David serves as Maimonides’ model for ecstatic dancing and singing. 9

See Guide III:43 (Pines, 572-574). — 16 —

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Thus in the Mishneh Torah the joy associated with this aspect of the Sukkot observance moves in an entirely different direction from the joy associated with the Three Festivals generally, and indeed even stands in tension with it. This too requires some explanation. Maimonides’ peroration about the importance of joy in the performance of mitzvot is certainly consistent with his comments cited earlier about the Three Festivals generally. Nevertheless, the emphasis given here on this point, and the stress on the ecstatic and on the moral and social implications of ecstatic worship, are striking. Also significant is the introduction of a phrase which does not appear in Hilkhot Yom Tov, “ahavat ha-El,” “love of God.” It is surely worth asking why this phrase first makes its appearance here. At one level, of course, the answer is obvious. Love of God may be exactly the kind of passionate experience linked to the ecstatic states Maimonides describes here. But is there more to it? In numerous places Maimonides associates love of God with knowledge of Him, the former flowing from the latter.10 Moreover, it is precisely the knowers of God, the intellectual elite, who participate in these ecstatic celebrations. But what might be behind the special role of knowledge of God for Sukkot in particular, more so than the other two festivals? In the Guide, III:43, Maimonides draws a comparison between Sukkot and Pesach, its closest analogue. Sukkot is like Pesach in that both teach a moral quality as well as a belief. The moral quality in both cases is gratitude for God’s redemption and protection of Israel. The belief is in God’s capacity for miracles, performed in liberating Israel from Egypt, a memory sustained by these celebrations. Sukkot is distinctive, however. Maimonides first focuses on its season. Recognizing that Sukkot originates as a harvest festival, he provides his own original reading of its significance. He references the Nicomachean Ethics (VIII 9, 1160a 25-28) where Aristotle explains that it was a general practice in ancient times to celebrate and offer sacrifices after the harvest, when people were at leisure. Sukkot, too, “a season of leisure when one rests from necessary labors,” affords ample and appropriate opportunity for “rejoicing and gladness.” This 10

For example, MT, Yesodei Ha-Torah 2:2 and Hilkhot Teshuva 10:6. — 17 —

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stress on Sukkot as a season of leisure is, so far as I know, Maimonides’ original contribution. That he allies this interpretation with Aristotle ’s understanding of harvest festivals is surely not without interest.11 Later in the same chapter of the Guide Maimonides takes up another major feature of the festival, the obligation to take the Four Species. After discussing the homilectical and poetic character of midrashic rationales of the symbolism of the four, he proposes that the purpose of the Four Species is to signify or indicate the joy and gladness felt by the Jews on leaving the desert, a land barren of such verdure, and entering the Land of Israel, which was blessed with fruit-bearing trees and rivers in abundance. The Four Species, themselves fragrant, fresh, and enduring products of a fertile land, are thus understood by Maimonides to provide a vehicle for celebrating the agricultural blessings of the Land of Israel. What emerges from Maimonides’ analysis in the Guide? Two transitions seem central. First, there is the transition from the labors of farming and its deprivations to a post-harvest leisure blessed with plenty, silos bursting with produce. This takes place on the plane of the individual. Then there is the transition from the deprivations of traveling through a barren desert to a life of relative wealth in the fertile Land of Israel. This takes place on the national plane. The two transitions mirror one another. I would like to suggest that the end states of each of these transitions, individual and national, are what might be termed proto-messianic. Here is how Maimonides characterizes the messianic era in the famous concluding two paragraphs of Mishneh Torah, in Hilkhot Melakhim 12:4-5 (and echoed in his Introduction to Perek Ha-Helek and elsewhere). 4 The sages and prophets did not long for the days of the Messiah that Israel might exercise dominion over the world, or rule over the heathens, or be exalted by the nations, or that it might eat and drink and rejoice. Their aspiration was that Israel be free to devote itself to the law and its wisdom, [italics mine] with no one to oppress or disturb it, and thus be worthy of life in the world to come. 11

For a study of Maimonides’ citations of Aristotle’s Ethics in the Guide see Shmuel Harvey, “Mekoran shel Ha-Muvaot min Ha-Etica Le-Aristo Be-Moreh U-be-Moreh LeMoreh,” in Meromei Le-Yerushalayim, ed. A. Ravitzky (Jerusalem: 1989), 87-101. — 18 —

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5

In that era there will be neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Blessing will be abundant, comforts within the reach of all. The one preoccupation of the whole world will be to know the Lord. Hence Israelites will be very wise, they will know the things that are now concealed and will attain an understanding of their Creator to the utmost capacity of the human mind, as it is written: “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).12

Note Maimonides’ assertion that in the messianic era “Israel will be free to devote itself to the Law and its wisdom.” The Hebrew term is “penu’im,” “free” or “at leisure.” The material ease described in the last paragraph about the messianic era echoes the phrases Maimonides uses in the Guide III:43 and elsewhere to describe the Land of Israel. Thus, for example, Maimonides writes in III:43 that Sukkot cultivates the moral quality of gratitude, in that Jews are obligated by the Torah to live in discomfort in the huts of Sukkot to commemorate how they lived as “wretched inhabitants of deserts and wastelands.” However, with the benefaction of God they “went over to dwell in richly ornamented houses in the best and most fertile place on earth.” This is a reference to the Land of Israel. Describing the messianic state, Maimonides in his Introduction to Perek Ha-Helek cites the passage in TB Shabbat 30b that the Land of Israel will in the future give forth delicate cakes and fine woolen clothing.13 It turns out, then, that the extraordinary natural fertility and richness of the Land of Israel as described in the Guide III:43 bears the potential for a proto-messianic state even in premessianic history. Maimonides in Hilkhot Teshuva 8 interprets the significance of the material blessings promised in the Torah to those who obey God’s will as providing a this-wordly opportunity to engage undistractedly in the pursuit of wisdom. This too is proleptic for the messianic era.14 12

13 14

MT Hilkhot Melakhim, 12.4-5, trans. A.M. Hershman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 245). Mishneh im Perush Ha-Rambam, translated by David Kapach (Jerusalem: 1965), vol. III, 139. For a general overview of Maimonides on the Land of Israel, see Isadore Twersky, “Maimonides and Eretz Yisrael, Halakhic, Philosophic and Historical Perspectives,” in Perspectives on Maimonides, ed. Joel Kramer (London: 1996), 257-290. There is a — 19 —

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Maimonides knew Aristotle’s view, famously enunciated in the Nichomachaean Ethics (X:7, 1177b 1-15), that leisure provides the possibility of the contemplative life, which Aristotle sees as the summum bonum. Maimonides shares with Aristotle this commitment to the importance of the contemplative life, although in my view not to the same extent as Aristotle.15 Maimonides’ reliance on Nichomaechean Ethics in Hilkhot Sukkot may thus be part of a much larger conceptual framework laid out by Aristotle that is adopted and adapted by Maimonides. The plenty and consequent leisure of life in the Land of Israel as it should be, and the plenty and consequent leisure of the postharvest season, on the national and individual planes, provide just the context necessary for a life of contemplation. And that indeed is exactly how Maimonides describes life in the messianic era made possible by messianic plenty. Leisure, and the opportunity for contemplation it provides, are thus essential features of Sukkot, especially in the Land of Israel, exactly as they are an essential feature of the messianic era. Sukkot, because of its harvest season roots, is the only biblical holiday designed to mimic and pre-figure this messianic state. This theme underlies the ecstatic joy Maimonides describes in the Mishneh Torah. His use of the phrase “love of God” there signals the role of philosophical knowledge in the celebrations, in which, as we saw, only the intellectual and spiritual elite participated directly, because only they could appreciate that knowledge, and experience it. This too would explain why Maimonides asserts only in the case of Sukkot that joy is the purpose of the holiday. For it is joy that arises in the contemplation of God which the harvest season uniquely makes possible. But this needs a more careful formulation. What exactly would foster this joy which Maimonides says is the raison d’etre of the holiday? First, it was probably conditioned by the simple, normal joy anyone

15

voluminous literature on messianism in Maimonides’ writings. For a good overview which touches upon some of the sources cited here see Joel Kramer, “On Maimonides’ Messianic Posture,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature II, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: 1984), 109-142. Note the concluding paragraph of the Guide, and the various interpretations to which it gave rise, as well as the far-reaching role of practical mitzvot in Jewish life. See note 24 below. — 20 —

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would feel once a difficult job was finally accomplished, and with food and livelihood secured at the completion of labors on the farm. But for Maimonides this connection provides no more than a psychological backdrop for the joy which is ultimately the purpose of the holiday. This “higher” joy may have sprung, in part, from newly acquired, deeper knowledge of God afforded by the leisure of the holiday itself, which Maimonides describes as spent in prayer and study. It may also have sprung from knowing that the opportunity to spend far more time seeking such knowledge was nigh, with the post-harvest leisure to follow. It may have sprung, too, from the messianic intimations of the holiday. Finally, and this is a point Maimonides himself stresses, it may also have flowed from thinking about the miracles that God performed for the Jewish people that the holiday celebrates, and that yield so much insight into the mysterious workings of the divinity. As we shall see later on, this is of special importance, for it relates to the crucial role of understanding divine providence in the experience of Maimonidean joy. Direct textual evidence linking joy to knowledge for Maimonides may be found in Hilkhot Teshuva 8:2. Maimonides there describes the world to come as a non-physical state in which there are no material bodies. What then do the rabbis mean when they assert that in the world to come the righteous will sit with crowns on their heads taking pleasure from the radiance of the divine presence? How can the crowns be physical if the world to come is non-physical? Not surprisingly, Maimonides interprets this figuratively — “derekh hidah.” “Their crowns,” he says, are a metaphor for the knowledge they have acquired. Maimonides next quotes the verse from the Song of Songs (3:11) that mentions King Solomon’s crown, and adds a verse from Isaiah (51:11) stating, “eternal joy rests on their heads.” Maimonides observes that joy is not an object that can literally rest on someone’s head. Thus, Maimonides concludes, “the crown to which the wise men referred is knowledge.” But what Isaiah said is that joy sits upon their heads, not knowledge. Thus joy and knowledge are used interchangeably when described as resting on someone’s head. From this it clearly follows that joy and knowledge can be used in some contexts interchangeably. For more evidence linking joy to knowledge of God, and for a deeper understanding of why joy follows knowledge of God, we must turn to — 21 —

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the final portion of our analysis, Maimonides’ discussion of the holiday of Purim. But before doing so it is worth observing that Maimonides’ discussion of the Three Festivals generally focuses our attention on the ways in which they contribute to the well being of the body. Our analysis of Sukkot has focused on its distinctive role in contributing to the well being of the soul. But Sukkot is one of the Three Festivals as well. Taken together, Sukkot thus contributes to both dimensions, to well being of the body and well being of the soul.

III. Purim Maimonides in Hilkhot Megillah 2:14 describes Purim as “… a day of joy [simha] and celebration, of sending gifts to friends and to the poor.” This reference to Purim as a day of joy and celebration derives from Megillat Esther itself, and goes considerably further than Maimonides’ characterization of the Three Festivals, and even of Sukkot. While there is an obligation to experience joy on those days, even extra joy, they are not called “days of joy,” as is Purim. What lies behind this crucial difference? Let us read further, now halakha 17. 17 It is preferable to spend more on gifts to the poor than on the Purim meal or on presents to friends. For no joy is greater or more glorious than the joy of gladdening the hearts of the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the strangers. Indeed, he who causes the hearts of these unfortunates to rejoice, emulates the Divine Presence, of whom Scripture says, “to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones” (Is. 57:15).16

The similarity to Maimonides’ emphasis on helping the poor in Hilkhot Yom Tov regarding the Three Festivals is obvious. But consider these differences:17 1. Notice that strictly speaking the obligation in Hilkhot Megillah is not to feed the poor, as it was in Hilkhot Yom Tov, but to make them happy. This one happens to accomplish by feeding them, 16 17

Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: 1984), 118. See Twersky and Kaplan, op. cit., n. 4, for different approaches to these differences. — 22 —

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but the obligation per se as Maimonides formulates it is to be “mesameah lev aniyim.” This is hardly insignificant. What lies behind the difference? 2. Maimonides adds in Hilkhot Megillah, but not in Hilkhot Yom Tov, that in fulfilling this obligation one is similar to the shekhina, the Divine Presence. Why does Maimonides mention this only in Hilkhot Megillah? And what exactly does he mean by “similar to the Divine Presence”? In order to gain insight into the difference between the Festivals and Purim, and to attempt to answer some of these questions, we would do well to note first that Megillat Esther, in verses 9:29-30, uses the terms “shalom” and “emet,” “peace” and “truth,” to characterize the Megillah itself. Do these two terms have any special significance in the Maimonidean lexicon? At the end of Hilkhot Taanit, and based upon the Tosefta (Taanit 3) Maimonides asserts that in the messianic era the cycle of fasts commemorating the destruction of the Temple, which plays so important a role in the Jewish calendar, will no longer obtain.

19 All the fast days mentioned above are destined to be abolished in the time of the Messiah; indeed, they are destined to be turned into festive days, days of rejoicing and gladness, in accordance with the verse, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful seasons; therefore love you truth and peace.”18

Maimonides identifies the messianic era and its joy and gladness with the truth and peace prophesied by Zechariah. Megillat Esther also uses the term joy to describe the Purim holiday; and, as we have seen, it too speaks of truth and peace. So three values join in Purim: joy, peace, and truth, all linked by Zechariah with the messianic era. When Maimonides quotes Zechariah’s prophecy, that fasts will be transformed to days of joy and gladness, he is careful to include the words truth and peace, 18 .



Ibid., p. 117. — 23 —

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going beyond the shortened version of the prophecy cited in the text of the Tosefta that he may well have used.19 In Shemoneh Perakim 4 he cites the same verse from Zechariah that he cites at the end of Hilkhot Taanit and adds: “Know that ‘truth’ refers to intellectual virtues, because they are true and will not change, and ‘peace’ to the moral virtues on which the peace in the world depends.”20 Thus the messianic era foretold by Zechariah will be an age of intellectual perfection — knowledge of God — and moral perfection. This conception of the messianic era mirrors Maimonides’ comments on the same subject at the end of Hilkhot Melakhim, and in the Guide III:11 (although there moral virtue is made dependent on intellectual virtue). This reading reinforces our own reading of Maimonides on Sukkot. There I argued that the joy of Sukkot is linked to knowledge of God in a proto-messianic state. According to Maimonides’ interpretation of this verse in Zechariah, knowledge of God (“emet”) is linked to the actual messianic state, and in that same verse it is also linked to joy. The terms “truth” and “peace” are bound up with the term “joy” because “truth” and “peace” entail intellectual (and moral) perfection. Thus, the verse in Zechariah on Maimonides’ own reading supports our theory, that knowledge of God and joy are properties of the messianic era. But what then accounts for the differences between the joy of Sukkot and the joy of Purim as it emerges in the Maimonidean texts we have examined? Why is Purim called a day of joy and Sukkot not? Why is the mitzvah on Purim to bring others to joy, but not on Sukkot? Why is someone who does so compared to the shekhina, divine presence, but not someone who rejoices and feeds the poor on the other holidays? If Purim achieves knowledge of God, is its yield different in any way than the knowledge of God achieved on Sukkot? Based upon what we have seen so far, it seems likely that there would be a link between the messianic state and Purim. What is that link, and is it different than the link between Sukkot and the messianic state, which I have called “proto-messianic”? 19 20

Tosefta (Jerusalem: 1970), 221. Kapach edition, 254. — 24 —

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In order to attempt an answer to these questions we would do well to turn to the Guide once again, but now to III:51. In numerous passages in that important chapter Maimonides describes joy as flowing from knowledge of God. For example, he writes, “And there may be a human individual who, through his apprehension of the true realities and his joy in what he has apprehended achieves a state in which he talks with people and is occupied with his bodily necessities while his intellect is wholly turned toward him…”21 In this passage and others Maimonides characterizes the ideal state of the knower of God as including the emotion of joy, not to mention love. Unfortunately, he does not make clear exactly why this is so. Can we gain a deeper and more precise understanding of why knowledge yields joy? Let us turn to the first mention of the link between joy and knowledge in this very chapter. In this passage Maimonides describes an individual who focuses only on God, renounces all other than He, and directs all his or her intellectual energies “toward an examination of the beings with a view of drawing from them proof with regard to Him, so as to know His governance of them in whatever way possible.”22 Moses is referred to there as someone who achieved this rank, conversing with God, such that “because of his great joy in what he apprehended he did neither eat bread nor drink water. For his intellect attained such strength that all the gross faculties in the body ceased to function.” This passage is interesting on at least two accounts. First of all, Maimonides attributes Moses’ abstinence to his joy. Why not directly to Moses’ knowledge? Is it because of the powerful response of the emotions to what we desire? In any case, this passage also makes much clearer exactly what knowledge yields the joy in question: knowledge of God’s governance of the world. Of course, all anyone can ultimately know of God, Maimonides argues in Book I of the Guide, are God’s attributes of action. Here, where Maimonides links joy and knowledge explicitly, he also makes it explicit that the knowledge that yields joy is exactly that knowledge, of divine providence, insight into 21 22

Guide III:51 (Pines, 623). Guide III:51 (Pines, 620). — 25 —

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how God governs the universe. But why does this specific form of knowledge yield joy? Perhaps the halakhic sources shed light on these philosophical sources. Let us return to Purim. As is well known, the holiday celebrates the Jewish redemption from the evil machinations of Haman and his dupe, King Achashverosh. The story told in Megillat Esther derives its power in part because the mysterious and threatening turns of events yield the ultimate salvation of the Jewish people in utterly unforeseeable ways. Who could have predicted that the very gallows Haman built for Mordechai would see Haman and his sons hanged? Who could have predicted that the seemingly disastrous turn of events would in the end lead to a significant strengthening of the Jewish position? While the reader of Megillat Esther knows that all will work out well in the end, and is familiar with every twist of the plot, the actors do not. They are utterly ignorant of what will turn out to be the true meaning of the nightmare in which they find themselves enmeshed. In a single, brilliant flash, the redemption that Purim celebrates illuminates the otherwise hidden and enigmatic contours of divine providence. I would like to suggest that Purim more than any other holiday provides insight into the astonishing work of providence. So Maimonides saw the link between joy and knowledge on Purim as making it a day of joy more than any other. For no other day in the Jewish calendar provides such a stunning revelation of the mysteries of providence. That is just the kind of knowledge that Maimonides in III:51 says engenders joy. It is as if God had for a moment parted the veils that hide His power in the world and given observers a glimpse of the divine mysteries. This is evocative of the metaphor Maimonides uses at the beginning of the Guide,23 in describing the lightning flashes of insight which momentarily illuminate the dark night of human ignorance. Would this occasion joy? I should certainly think so. This reading of the knowledge-joy link makes it particularly understandable why knowledge gives rise to joy, especially since the illumination in question derives from the experience of divine salvation. Death no longer waits at the doorstep. 23

Guide, Introduction (Pines, 7). — 26 —

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Consider now the link I have suggested between the messianic state and this knowledge of divine providence and consequent joy. Remember that the verse in Zechariah which Maimonides quotes links the messianic state to both joy and knowledge. Not only that, the verse promises that the fast days commemorating the destruction of the Temple will become holidays. But why should that be so? One answer is that in the messianic era it will become clear just how that great tragedy in Jewish life led to ultimate redemption. If the destruction of the Temple is the product of divine providence, then, for Maimonides it would have had some ultimately beneficent purpose. Revealing that concealed purpose would dramatically reverse the experience of tragedy, transforming its commemoration from mourning to celebration. This reading sharpens the parallel between Purim and the messianic era. Both observances bespeak a brilliant vision of the mysteries of providence behind the shadows of tragedy. The messianic era casts a much longer and more powerful beam than Purim. But I would argue that both are of the same ilk, and thus both are called days of joy. Not so with the Three Festivals generally, nor with Sukkot in particular. The element of divine providence is there, as Maimonides explains in the Guide, and that is a factor in the joy that Maimonides sees as prescribed for these holidays. It was God, he says, who made the harvest possible, who redeemed the Jews from Egypt and cared for them in the desert. Yet there is no dramatic reversal or stunning illumination like that of Purim, or that of the messianic age that will transform fast days into joy. Sukkot, I have argued, is “proto-messianic.” Purim, I would suggest, is “micro-messianic,” for two reasons. First, it captures for a brief moment the lightning flash of insight into divine providence. Second, the victory over enemies and resultant physical ease again presage the ease and comfort of the messianic era. Why then the unique obligation on Purim to bring all to rejoicing, and why only for Purim does Maimonides use the phrase “compared to the Divine Presence”? The answers may lie in the final paragraph of the Guide, which delineates what has been called a post-theoretic morality. The moral virtues are only the third in Maimonides’ hierarchy — 27 —

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of virtues, the fourth and highest being intellectual virtue. Still, in describing the life of one who has achieved intellectual perfection, and understands God’s governance of the world, Maimonides says that such a person “will always have in view loving-kindness, righteousness and judgment, through assimilation to His [God’s] actions…” At this stage, moral virtue is not cultivated habit but a consequence of understanding God’s governance of the world. God acts with compassion toward His creatures and so will the individual who has achieved full knowledge of God’s compassionate governance. As Plato understood, to know goodness, or compassion, is to live it. This is the deeper meaning of imitatio dei, the highest, post-theoretic level of morality.24 For Maimonides, Purim’s micro-messianic illumination of the mysteries of divine providence may foster just that kind of moral sensibility. The events described in Megillat Esther reveal God’s miraculous and compassionate care for Israel despite all appearances to the contrary, and indeed, paradoxically, precisely through those seemingly ugly appearances. By illuminating the providential mysteries concealed behind Jewish suffering, God brought his people new insight and joy, which the newly insightful who experience this great joy should share with others. For “God” we can, of course, substitute “Divine Presence.” This would explain why Maimonides uses the phrase “divine presence” only in the context of Purim. The two distinctive features of Maimonides’ description of Purim’s joy are linked: the obligation to bring others to rejoice, and the use of the phrase “compared to the divine presence.” The joy of the Three Festivals, and even Sukkot, is of a different order. Only Purim can provide the stunning insight into providence which can, if only for a moment, penetrate the veils of mystery and yield the sort of knowledge that approximates the post-theoretic knowledge of the concluding chapter of the Guide. The kindnesses of the Three Festivals, I argued earlier, are ensconced in a tikkun ha-guf morality, a morality of habit, of the

24

For a review and analysis of the extensive literature on the concluding section of the Guide, see Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection (Atlanta: 1990), and Hava Tirosh Samuleson, op. cit., n. 1. My own approach favors a Platonic reading of Maimonides. — 28 —

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third perfection. There the obligation is simply to feed the poor, but not wholly to imitate what God has achieved, rendering others so joyous that in their joy, like God, they must make others joyous as well. All moral acts, including feeding the poor, are imitatio dei, as Maimonides makes clear in Hilkhot De’ot 1. But they are imitatio dei of a completely different order. Perhaps the best conclusion to the substantive portion of this paper is Maimonides’ own conclusion to the substantive portion of his discussion of the laws of Purim, Hilkhot Megillah 2:18. 18 All prophetic Books and the Sacred Writings will cease [to be recited in public] during the messianic era except the Book of Esther. It will continue to exist just as the Five Books of the Torah and the laws of the Oral Torah that will never cease. Although ancient troubles will be remembered no longer, as it is written: “The troubles of the past are forgotten and hidden from my eyes” (Isaiah 65:16), the days of Purim will not be abolished, as it written: “These days of Purim shall never be repealed among the Jews, and the memory of them shall never cease from their descendants” (Esther 9:28).25

Maimonides draws this paragraph from TY Megillah 1:5. But it need hardly be cited, especially in a halakhic work. This teaching explicitly links Purim to the messianic era, one of the essential claims of the “micromessianic” theory of Purim proposed here. Purim is the quintessential festival of the messianic era. It reveals the meaning behind the suffering its story relates, and the ways in which Jewish tragedy providentially gives way to salvation. So too the messianic era will reveal that same providence hidden behind exile. Therefore, Maimonides says, all Jewish suffering will be forgotten during the messianic era — not merely because all is now well, for that is hardly a sufficient reason to forget. Tragedy will be forgotten because it will be revealed as the very means by which the bliss of redemption and the messianic era were won. In that important sense Jewish tragedy is only apparent tragedy. So only Megillat Esther, which teaches that lesson in the most vivid way, will survive into the messianic era. 25

Translation from Maimonides Mishneh Torah, trans. Philip Birnbaum (New York: 1974), 110. — 29 —

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*** I’d like to conclude this chapter with a caveat. I have sought to analyze Maimonides’ halakhic teachings regarding joy, raising a series of problems with the texts and seeking their solution in Maimonides’ philosophical writings. If I am right, this chapter is yet one more argument for the unity of Maimonides’ work as a halakhist and a philosopher. It shows how Maimonides’ halakhic and philosophical works illuminate one another. Yet we cannot be entirely certain that our approach is sound. Maimonides’ halakhic works do not explicitly advance any of the philosophical ideas I have cited here in my effort to illuminate his writings. Nor do his philosophical writings make explicit any of the halakhic implications I have suggested flow from those ideas. Students of Maimonides are all too familiar with the allusive character of the master’s writings. His methods leave us inevitably to suffer our lack of perfect certainty. But if my analysis is correct, come the messianic era, that suffering will end. Perhaps it too will be revealed to have been only an appearance, and not real suffering at all. And then, of course, we can rejoice.

— 30 —

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---------------------------------- Chapter II  -----------------------------------

The Tragedy of Excellence

Maimonides on the Philosophical Life*

I Students of Maimonides are accustomed to contradictions within the text of the Guide of the Perplexed, and between the Guide and Maimonides’ other writings. Far less common, but no less important, is a contradiction between Maimonides’ own life and his writings. The former kind of contradiction illuminates Maimonides’ philosophical views. The latter sheds light not only on his philosophical views, but also on Maimonides himself, the man as philosopher. I shall argue that attending to this kind of contradiction highlights a tension of the greatest importance in Maimonides’ philosophical system, between his conceptions of intellectual and moral perfection. This tension, properly understood, suggests that Maimonides’ view of the human condition is in certain important respects what I shall here call tragic. Moreover, I shall propose that Maimonides’ own personal life exemplified precisely that tragic dimension which is implied by his philosophical views, and which for Maimonides echoes in the lives of all who aspire to human excellence.1 That Maimonides’ life was a “paradox,” as Professor Isadore Twersky called it, has long been noted.2 In his famous 1199 letter to Samuel ibn *

1

2

I am deeply indebted to Professors Barry Kogan, David Shatz, Michael Shmidman, Joseph Stern and Hava Tirosh Samuelson for their detailed and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Responsibility for what remains is of course mine. My main aim in this essay is to focus on these philosophical problems. Speculation about Maimonides’ life remains just that — speculation, even if well grounded in the data available to us. Nevertheless, my contention is that such speculation can in itself lead to significant philosophical and exegetical insight, by directing our attention to hitherto less than adequately explored avenues into Maimonides’ thought. Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 3-4. This “paradox,” or contradiction, has been the subject of two essays, both published — 31 —

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Tibbon, written some five years before his death, Maimonides describes an arduous weekly regimen, his days and even nights completely taken up with the obligations of his medical practice, and Saturdays busy with Jewish communal activities. During the morning and early afternoon, Maimonides writes, he was busy with his myriad responsibilities as court physician to the Sultan, not to mention the exhausting three-hour commute to and from the palace. When he returned home, Maimonides continues, [By] then I am almost dying of hunger. I find the antechamber filled with people, both Jews and gentiles, nobles and common people, judges and bailiffs, friends and foes — a mixed multitude, who await the time of my return. I dismount from my animal, wash my hands, go forth to my patients, and entreat them to bear with me while I partake of some slight refreshment, the only meal I take in the twenty-fours hours. Then I attend to my patients … patients go in and out until nightfall, and sometimes even, I solemnly assure you, until two hours and more in to the night. I converse and prescribe for them while lying down, from sheer

in Joel L. Kaemer, ed., Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), “Maimonides’ Governance of the Solitary,” by Ralph Lerner (33-46); and “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,” by Steven Harvey (4775). I shall have more to say about each of these essays in what follows. Prof. Michael Shmidman has observed that Maimonides may well have needed the remuneration that came from his work as a physician, since the brother who had long supported him was dead, and Maimonides was opposed to communal support of Torah scholars. Nevertheless, unless Maimonides was in extreme financial need, it is unlikely he would have worked as hard as he did. One gets the sense from this letter that other factors were operative. Prof. Josef Stern has questioned the usefulness of this letter in deriving clear hints about Maimonides’ life and person, in light of the oddity of Maimonides’ refusal to grant time for consultation to his devoted translator, who was willing to risk life and limb in travelling to Maimonides. While this demurral is well taken, the letter does provide us with whatever hint we do have about Maimonides, and it should not be taken lightly, especially since, I shall argue, it serves to call attention to a problem which inheres within Maimonides’ philosophical system itself. In other words, as I observed in footnote 1, my thesis in this essay is that the putative contradiction between Maimonides the person and the philosopher calls attention to and mirrors a contradiction within Maimonides’ theory, and so the burden of evidence for my thesis doesn’t rest on the letter alone, but rests as well on his philosophical views objectively examined. While I have framed the discussion around the contradiction between Maimonides’ life and writings, that should not obscure the central philosophical tension I wish to explore. — 32 —

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fatigue, and when night falls, I am so exhausted I can scarcely speak. In consequence of this no Israelite can have any private interview with me except on the Sabbath. On this day the whole congregation, or at least the majority of its members, come to me after the morning service, when I instruct them as to their proceedings during the whole week; we study together a little until noon, when they depart. Some of them return and read with me after the afternoon service until the evening prayers. In this manner I spend that day.3

It is not hard to see why a life of such unrelieved professional and communal activity should be entirely inimical to achieving human excellence, as Maimonides himself understood it. In Book III:27 of the Guide, Maimonides’ summarizes his conception of the summum bonum: [Man’s] ultimate perfection is to become rational in actu … this would consist in … knowing everything concerning all the beings that it is within the capacity of man to know…. It is clear that to this ultimate perfection there do not belong either actions or moral qualities and that it consists only of opinions toward which speculation has led and that investigation has rendered compulsory.4

This highly intellectualist conception of the good, explained in the context of Maimonides’ account of mitzvot and ultimately drawn from Aristotle,5 explicitly excludes actions or moral qualities. Thus treating the sick — exactly Maimonides’ own personal preoccupation — is an action which expresses a moral quality, and would therefore not be part of humankind’s highest perfection. This relegation of moral behavior to a secondary status is reiterated in the last chapter of the Guide, in which Maimonides famously distinguished among four perfections, the third and penultimate of which is moral perfection. Maimonides there concedes that morality is of great importance, and that “most of the commandments [of the Torah] serve no other end than the attainment

3

4

5

Quoted and translated in Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader (Springfield: Behrman House, 1972), 7. The Guide of the Perplexed, translated Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), III:27, 511. All references to the Guide are from this edition. Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, 6-8. — 33 —

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of this species of perfection.”6 Nevertheless, says Maimonides: This species of perfection is likewise a preparation for something else and not an end in itself. For all moral habits are concerned with what occurs between a human individual and someone else. This perfection regarding moral habits is, as it were, only the disposition to be useful to people; consequently it is an instrument for someone else. For if you suppose a human individual is alone, acting on no one, you will find that all his moral virtues are in vain … and that they do not perfect the individual in anything.…7

Here the problem with moral virtue is that it is not a perfection of the individual himself; it is a means to achieving social well being, and not an end in itself.8 For Maimonides, again following Aristotle, the form — the essential “whatness” — of human individuals is not their matter, central to the formation of character, but their intellect. Therefore, it is through their intellects that humans achieve their own individual perfection: The fourth species is the true human perfection; it consists in the acquisition of the rational virtues — I refer to the conception of the intelligibles, which teach true opinions concerning the divine things. This is in true reality the ultimate end; this is what gives the individual true perfection, a perfection belonging to him alone; and it gives him permanent perdurance; through it man is man.9

Now of course the claim that moral virtue is secondary to intellectual virtue does not mean that moral virtue is unimportant. Surely, by Maimonides’ own concession, it has some importance, and therefore, at least on the face of it, perhaps it is not unreasonable for Maimonides to spend some time helping the sick. So at one level, the problem is that Maimonides’ own allocation of time, with its consuming focus on healing, 6 7 8

9

III:54, 635. Ibid. See Howard Kreisel, “Individual Perfection vs. Communal Welfare and the Problem of Contradictions in Maimonides’ Approach to Ethics,” PAAJR (1992), 107-141, for a discussion of these issues. Ibid. — 34 —

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does appear to preclude the intellectual perfection, which constitutes for him the highest human good. For if Maimonides is so busy with his patients, when does he have enough time to contemplate God? But there is another level to the problem as well. For suppose Maimonides were not as busy with his patients as he tells us. Suppose, for example, that he had spent five hours a days on familial, professional and communal matters, and seven hours a day in contemplation. Would that have been adequate to achieve the highest human good? There is considerable evidence from the Guide that Maimonides would have counseled against even this allocation of time; that Maimonides himself drew quite radical conclusions from his own intellectualist presuppositions. To see why this is so, let us begin by examining Book III:51 of the Guide. This chapter begins with an introduction, explaining that the chapter is no more than a “conclusion” of the preceding chapters, “at the same time explaining the worship as practiced by one who has apprehended the true realities peculiar only to Him … and it also guides him toward achieving this worship, which is the end of man….”10 What is Maimonides after here? One way of looking at it is this: Since Maimonides is concerned in the Guide with explicating the summum bonum, he must account for the difference between the prophet and the philosopher. For while Maimonides places the philosopher on a high enough pedestal, Maimonides realistically enough recognizes that not all philosophers — even those who have achieved close to perfect knowledge of “everything concerning all the beings that it is within the capacity of man to know” — are perfect human beings. So what then are they lacking? The most obvious answers for Maimonides are a well-developed faculty of imagination and moral perfection.11 But Maimonides believed there is more to it than that, and this becomes evident in his discussion of prophecy in III:51 especially. For Maimonides there, the distinction between prophet and philosopher is that the prophet continually contemplates God and is thus more focused on Him than the philosopher. This focus, which Maimonides 10 11

Ibid., 618. Guide, II:36-37. — 35 —

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calls “intellectual worship,” has not only a cognitive but also an affective component, too, in that persons in this state fear and passionately love God as well.12 Given initial parity of knowledge between two deeply contemplative persons, the more exclusive the focus on God — as opposed to pleasure of the senses, family matters, or social obligations, for example — for one of them, the more he/she will come to know God relative to the other, and feel love and fear of Him. Indeed, this focus is necessary to achieve prophecy, and prophecy, once achieved, provides knowledge to the prophet not accessible to the philosopher.13 In Maimonides’ famous parable of the palace, which appears at the beginning of this chapter, great philosophers can join the king in the inner part of his habitation. However, there are those who set their thought to work after having attained perfection in the divine science, turn wholly toward God, may He be cherished and held sublime, renounce what is other than He, and direct all the acts of their intellect toward an examination of the beings with a view toward drawing from them proof with regard to Him, so as to know His governance of them in whatever way possible. These people are those who are present in the ruler’s council. This is the rank of the prophets.14

This is a highly suggestive passage. For our present purposes I wish to emphasize the exclusivity claim: only persons who are “turned wholly toward God” and who “direct all the acts of their intellect” in contemplation of a particular sort (italics mine), can become prophets. On this account the role of moral virtue would be to assist the potential prophet in seeking to “renounce what is other than He,” all the distractions of worldly life — the “sense of touch” as Maimonides refers 12

13

14

The exact nature of this affective state is of course somewhat unclear, since emotions are dependent upon the body, and prophets are actualized intellects. But this relates to the discussion below concerning the tension between the moral and intellectual in Maimonides. See the concluding few sentences of II:38, and the overall discussion of the faculty of divination there. For the view that prophecy and philosophy do not necessarily yield different degrees of knowledge, see Barry Kogan, “What Can We Know and When Can We Know It? Maimonides on the Active Intellect and Human Cognition,” in Moses Maimonides and His Time, ed. Eric Ormsby (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 121-137. Ibid., 620. — 36 —

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to it in this context. This includes, most importantly, overcoming his desire for worldly pleasures and satisfactions. As Maimonides never tires of telling his readers, the pursuit of pleasures of the senses is a most potent distraction from realizing one’s true human perfection. Book III:51 then proceeds to chart a practical program for achieving this intense form of worship, including progressive concentration on expanding parts of prayer, focus on the management of one’s household during necessary contact with the family, and nighttime contemplation while one lies awake in bed. It is in this context that Maimonides urges all aspirants to the highest form of human perfection to live in solitude: Thus it is clear that after apprehension, total devotion to Him and the employment of intellectual thought in constantly loving Him should be aimed at. Mostly this is achieved in solitude and isolation. Hence every excellent man stays frequently in solitude and does not meet anyone unless it is necessary.15

There are at least one and as many as four persons in human history, Maimonides says, who achieved prophecy and no longer needed to live in solitude. Moses, and perhaps the Patriarchs too, were capable of interacting with others while simultaneously thinking about God. However, Maimonides explicitly disavows any ability on his own part to achieve this exalted level of worship.16 This same theme is reiterated in II: 36 of the Guide as well, in the context of Maimonides’ discussion of prophecy. He first emphasizes that the aspiring prophet must detach himself from the desire for sensual pleasures and the desire for power and honor. Maimonides continues by writing: 15 16

Ibid., 621. Pines in his translation (p. 624, n. 32) notes that the original Arabic is ambiguous, and Maimonides may be disavowing not the capacity to achieve this state himself, but the capacity to guide others to achieve it. Nevertheless, even according to this translation of the Arabic, the overall discussion makes it quite clear that only Moses, and perhaps the Patriarchs, achieved this exalted rank. It is therefore highly unlikely that Maimonides thought himself to have achieved this level too, even if, as some have suggested, Maimonides did think that he had achieved prophecy. See A. J. Heschel, “Did Maimonides Believe He Had Achieved Prophecy?” (Heb.), Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 155-188 (Hebrew section). — 37 —

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He should rather regard all people according to their various states with respect to which they are indubitably either like domestic animals or beasts of prey. If the perfect man who lives in solitude thinks of them at all, he does so only with a view to saving himself from the harm that may be caused by those among them who are harmful if he happens to associate with them, or to obtaining an advantage that may be obtained from them if he is forced to by some of his needs.17

This rather harsh passage conveys a deep unhappiness on the part of the aspiring prophet in associating with most persons. They simply distract him from his pursuit of total focus on God, sometimes by even causing him harm. Interaction is occasionally required — if you don’t own a cow how will you get your morning milk? — but this must be kept to the barest minimum.18 Shlomo Pines and other have pointed to the Islamic background of this idea, especially in the writings of ibn Bajja.19 Whatever Maimonides’ sources, however, he affirms the view as his own, and that is the crucial point. How then is this advocacy of the solitary life consistent with Maimonides’ own life as an over-committed physician?

II In his essay on this issue, Steven Harvey proposes that Maimonides’ daily presence in the sultan’s palace may actually have afforded him time for contemplation. The sultans for whom Maimonides worked had reputations as patrons of scholars, and they may have allowed him certain freedoms, with time for research and contemplation.20 17 18

19

20

Ibid., 372. While later in that passage Maimonides says that this perfect individual does concern himself with “general directives for the well-being of men in their relations with one another,” this emerges from “his apprehension of divine matters” and is a reflection of his intellectual perfection, not his moral compassion, a “posttheoretic” rather than “pre-theoretic” morality. See below for a fuller discussion of this distinction. See his “Philosophic Sources of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in his translation of the Guide, cvii, and the very extensive discussion in the article by Steven Harvey, op. cit., note 2 and the sources cited therein. Op. cit., 73 ff. — 38 —

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While this is a clever suggestion, I find it not wholly satisfactory on two counts. First, some limited time for contemplation hardly amounts to the solitude Maimonides so forcefully advocates. As I noted earlier, there are two levels to the paradox of Maimonides’ life, and while this may solve the first level, it doesn’t solve the second. The ideal of solitude, if it is to be taken seriously, requires more than some spare hours at the sultan’s palace. Moreover, the whole tenor of Maimonides’ letter to ibn Tibbon conveys the image of a beleaguered man with no time to breathe. If Maimonides did have leisure during his stay at the palace, the letter hardly suggests it. No doubt Maimonides’ main goal was to convince ibn Tibbon not to journey to him, since he would not have the time to spend instructing him. But is it clear that Maimonides could not have taken ibn Tibbon with him to the sultan as an assistant and apprentice? Overall I find it unlikely — although by no means impossible — that Harvey is right in his conjecture. And even if he is right, we don’t have the complete solution we need. A second approach to the problem is advocated by Ralph Lerner, and considered, but rejected, by Harvey as well. This approach flows from the well-known school of Maimonides scholars who advocate what has come to be called a Platonic reading of the Guide. This school takes as foundational the closing paragraph of the Guide, which advocates what some have called a fifth perfection, over and above the first four: It is clear that the perfection of man that may truly be gloried in is the one acquired by him who has achieved, in a measure corresponding to his capacity, apprehension of Him, may he be exalted, and who knows his providence extending over His creatures as manifested in the act of bringing them into being and their governance as it is. The way of life of such an individual, after he has achieved this apprehension, will always have in view “loving-kindness, righteousness and judgment,” through assimilation to His actions, may He be exalted, just as we have explained several times in this treatise.21

This concluding sentence has suggested to some scholars that the highest form of human perfection for Maimonides is not a life of 21

III:54, 638. — 39 —

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contemplation, but a life of moral activity. Others have argued that this highest life is political, the establishment or governance of a society devoted to the knowledge of God.22 Whatever the merits of these readings, and I shall have more to say about this passage later, Ralph Lerner has proposed one version as a solution to our paradox. The reason Maimonides led so active a medical life, Lerner suggests, is that Maimonides had achieved this fifth level of human perfection and had sought to act with “lovingkindness” towards the sick and needy. I find myself unsatisfied with this solution as well. First, it isn’t clear that this Platonic reading is the correct one, and indeed many dispute it. But even if it is correct, I fail to see how it can help us. Consider the following question: Isn’t there a contradiction within the Guide itself, between Maimonides’ advocacy there of a life of solitude and his advocacy of a life of “lovingkindness, righteousness and judgment”? If one acts in lovingkindness towards all those in need, how can one live in isolation? This is a tension within the book itself, and not a tension between the book and Maimonides’ life. What interpretive strategies are available to us? I think the probable answer to this question is that it depends upon one’s level of achievement.23 Who are the exemplars of this highest form of life described in III:54? When Maimonides defines the terms “lovingkindness, righteousness and judgment” in Book III:53, all his prooftexts that refer to individuals refer to God Himself, and in one instance, to Abraham. In Book III:51 Maimonides describes the Patriarchs and Moses as having achieved a sufficiently high level of knowledge and contemplative focus so that, “… the end of their efforts during their life was to bring into being a religious community that would know and worship God …, to spread the doctrine of the unity of the name in the world and to guide people to love Him.”24 This is 22

23 24

This matter has been hotly debated, especially during the past two decades. For recent summaries of the very extensive literature see Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 1990); the article by Steven Harvey, op. cit., n. 2, 70-72; and Howard Kreisel “Imitatio Dei in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” AJS Review XIX:2 (1994), 169-211. For more on this, see below. Ibid., 624. — 40 —

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the most divine form of lovingkindness, since bringing into being a religious community models God’s own behavior in creating the world, choosing the Jews as His people, and revealing the Torah. Now as we know, only Moses and perhaps the Patriarchs had achieved that uncommon ability to associate with others while thinking of God. For them there was no contradiction between living lives of uninterrupted lovingkindness and contemplating God. Lesser mortals, such as the other prophets, would need to curtail their lovingkindness and preserve time for solitary contemplation in order to finally achieve the highest levels characteristic of Moses and the Patriarchs. Those who fall beneath the achievements of these great figures would presumably alternate their regimens, between periods of solitary contemplation and periods of activity, with the ratio dependent upon their level of prophetic achievement and concomitant compulsion to reach others,25 as well as the needs of the hour. If this account of the contradiction within the Guide is correct, then it might indeed allow Maimonides some time for his medical practice, depending upon his own status. However, since Maimonides did not reach the Mosaic/Patriarchal level himself, as noted above, he should not have been eligible to devote all his life to lovingkindess. We are then left with our original question: How could Maimonides at this crowning point in his life have spent all or virtually all his time treating the sick? Even if we assume that the letter is a bit hyperbolic — and I’m not sure that is the case — it surely seems likely that Maimonides did spend at least very considerable time in his medical practice. How much time could he have had left in solitude? This question is rendered even more acute if we consider that healing the sick concerns “welfare of the body” and prophetic activity concerns not only “welfare of the body” but also “welfare of the soul.” Maimonides in Book III:27 regards welfare of the body as a means to achieving welfare of the soul, which is superior. What could be more 25

For Maimonides this depends upon the strength of the overflow of the active intellect that reaches them. See Guide II:11 and II:37. For a discussion of this important point see Warren Zev Harvey, “Political Philosophy and Halakha in Maimonides” [Hebrew], Iyyun 29 (1980), 209-212; Howard Kreisel, “Imitatio Dei in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” AJS Review XIX:2 (1994), 169-211; and Barry Kogan, op. cit., n. 13. — 41 —

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important for someone like Maimonides than devoting one’s life to promulgating the truth? Indeed Maimonides did exactly that for significant parts of his career, in writing his philosophic, and portions of his halakhic, works. But at the very culmination of his years he veered not only from the contemplative solitude he advocates, but from the sort of life he himself regarded as superior, to time-consuming concern with welfare of the body at the expense of welfare of his, and others’, souls. What might have justified this shift?

III I would like to suggest that the solution to our problem emerges from the practical implications of what might be called Maimonides’ twotiered ethical theory. It has long been noted that Maimonides’ ethical theory in his halakhic works stands in tension with the theory he advocates in the Guide.26 In the Mishneh Torah and Eight Chapters he interprets the obligation to imitate God as an obligation to cultivate a moral character which follows the middle way in behavior. The key feature of this ethical model, derived from Aristotle and Alfarabi, is its psychological orientation. The goal of moral life is to cultivate the sort of psychological character that yields morally correct emotional and behavioral responses to changing circumstances, where “correct” 26



See Steven Schwarzschild, “Moral Radicalism and ‘Middlingness’ in the Ethics of Maimonides,” Studies in Medieval Culture XI (1977), for an early and influential discussion of this and related themes. See too Herbert Davidson, “The Middle Way in Maimonides’ Ethics,” PAAJR 54 (1987), and more recently Howard Kreisel, “Individual Perfection vs. Communal Welfare and the Problem of Contradictions in Maimonides’ Approach to Ethics,” PAAJR (1992), 107-141. For the view that Maimonides held a consistent ethic throughout his writings, see Barry Kogan, “Ha-Rambam al Musag Ha-Idi’al Ha-Enushi: Hasid oh Hakham?” in Sefer Ha-Yovel Le-Shelomo Pines, Mehkerei Yerushalayim 9 (1990), 77-191, and the literature cited therein. Aristotle himself seems to have proposed two different conceptions of human excellence, that of practical reasoning, which finds its expression in human choices according to the middle way, and that of theoretical reasoning, which finds it expression in a life of contemplation. Unlike Maimonides, however, Aristotle does not maintain that a life of contemplation has its own ethical standards, nor does he maintain that one should live one’s life in solitude: for Aristotle, man is a social and political being. Despite these differences, however, it seems likely that the philosophical tradition in which Maimonides was working was influenced by this Aristotelian dichotomy. — 42 —

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is identified with the middle way between two extremes. For example, when it comes to pleasure, a person should so train himself that he neither desires to indulge in pleasurable activities constantly, nor desires to avoid them entirely. Neither extreme is good; rather, persons should indeed desire to marry, eat meat, drink wine and so on, but not to excess, and they should act accordingly. Despite the Aristotelian origins of this theory, Maimonides does give it a “Jewish twist”27 in several important ways. First, he identifies it with the obligation to walk in God’s ways. Thus, Maimonides says, The precept concerning walking in God’s ways has been interpreted by the Sages to mean “Be gracious even as He is called gracious; be merciful even as He is called merciful; be holy even as He is called holy” (Shabbat 133b). Thus the prophets described God by all kinds of attributes, “slow to anger and abounding in kindness, righteous and just, perfect and mighty” and so on to inform us that these traits are good and right and man ought to adopt them for himself and thereby imitate God as much as he can.28

While the character traits identified in this passage are not obviously examples of the middle way, Maimonides is convinced that the middle way is true as an ethical theory, and reasons that therefore this must be what the Sages (and the biblical verse) had in mind. The net result, however, is that the obligation to cultivate character traits which reflect the middle way, including compassion, kindness and so on, is a biblical mandate. This is so notwithstanding Maimonides’ affirmation in the Mishneh Torah (but not in Eight Chapters) of the ethics of what he calls the hasid, the “saintly” or “pious” person, who veers somewhat to the side which is furthest from the worst of the two extremes, unlike the hakham, the wise person who follows the mean. Thus the hasid will approach the side of great humility, because arrogance is the more problematic of the two extremes related to self-regard.29 This allowance for the hasid does constitute a second difference between Maimonides 27

28 29

The phrase is Schwarzchild’s, from “Moral Radicalism and ‘Middlingness’ in the Ethics of Maimonides,” Studies in Medieval Culture XI (1977), 67. Mishneh Torah, De’ot, chap. 1:5. De’ot, chap. 1, 8-9. — 43 —

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and Aristotle. Nevertheless, Maimonides clearly portrays him as an exception to the biblical (and Aristotelian) model. This is even more evident in Eight Chapters, where the hasid is portrayed as someone who chooses to veer from the mean only as a prophylactic, to insure that he ultimately always remains safely within the mean.30 Thus the hasid model, even if it is taken to be an exception to the rule, only serves to further exemplify it: the standard remains the mean and he who follows it, the hakham. A third Jewish dimension to Maimonides’ version of the theory rests in two clear-cut exceptions to the general principle. Unlike Aristotle, Maimonides maintains that one should be exceedingly humble and never feel any anger.31 While the theory of the mean dominates Maimonides’ earlier, halakhic works, it barely makes an appearance in the Guide. One indicator of the differences between these works is Maimonides’ shifting attitude towards sensual pleasure. As we have noted, the halakhic works argue for moderation in this regard. However, the Guide almost consistently advocates asceticism, and in rather sharp language at that. Thus, Maimonides says that “… the first of the degrees of the people of science and, all the more, prophets …” is the “renunciation of and contempt for the bodily pleasures.… In particular this holds good with regard to the sense that is a disgrace to us — as Aristotle has set forth — and especially in what belongs to it with regard to the foulness of copulation.”32 30

31

32

See Twersky, op. cit., for an explanation for the divergence in this regard between these two halakhic works. See Mishneh Torah, De’ot, chap. 1 and 2; and Eight Chapters, chap. 4. For a discussion of the Aristotelian background of Maimonides’ theory of the mean, and the significance of these exceptions, see Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 93-123. (This chapter of the book is a reprinting of an earlier essay, “The Doctrine of the Mean in Aristotle and Maimonides: A Comparative Study.”) See too, Daniel Frank, “Humility as a Virtue: A Maimonidean Critique of Aristotle’s Ethics,” Maimonides and His Times (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 89-99 and, for alternative readings of the significance of these exceptions, see Barry Kogan, ibid., in Sefer Ha-Yovel. II:40, 384. See too II:36; III:8 and III:49. For a discussion of this aspect of the tension, see Davidson, op. cit., n. 26; Kreisel, “Individual Perfection…,” op. cit., n. 26; and Isadore Twersky, op. cit., n. 3, 459-479. — 44 —

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This specific difference in turn reflects a much broader one. The Guide’s model for moral behavior downgrades cultivated moral virtue to the third level of perfection, as we have seen. Cultivating moral character is not a perfection of the individual; it serves no more than a social purpose. In Book III:27 Maimonides describes moral virtue as a perfection of the body rather than a perfection of the soul. He tells his readers there that a society whose citizens lacked moral virtue would be dysfunctional, and that the purpose of cultivating virtue is to insure a well-ordered society in which one has the peace of mind and stability to achieve welfare of the soul, namely knowledge of God. Book I:2 of the Guide maintains that morality is a matter of social convention and not knowledge. The very capacity and need to make moral choices governed by character is a consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve.33 Eating from the forbidden fruit thrust humankind into the realm of imagination, in which humans are drawn by, and into, what their imagination projects as good, and not what truly is good. While Maimonides does occasionally mention the value of moderation in the Guide,34 he almost never employs the technical terms and theoretical apparatus of the middle way, which is thereby sharply conspicuous for its scarcity.35 Morality does make an appearance in the Guide in quite another theoretical framework, however, and that is the moral behavior that follows upon achieving the highest knowledge of God. As noted earlier, Maimonides concludes the Guide by advocating a life of “lovingkindness, righteousness and judgment” for one “who has achieved … apprehension of Him, may He be exalted, and who knows His providence extending over His creatures … and their governance as it is.…”36 But what does this “post-theoretic” morality consist in? Even if Maimonides means to refer here to political behavior, as some scholars suggest, I think a simple 33 34

35

36

For a discussion of this, and references, see below, note 53. E.g. II:39, speaking about the “balanced” quality of the Law; and III:49, speaking about “balance” in regard to sexual intercourse, so that it is not avoided entirely. In III:49 (p. 611) Maimonides does mention “the principle of keeping the mean in all matters,” in the context of his treatment of circumcision. However, it isn’t at all clear that his usage of the term “mean” is identical with his use of the term in Eight Chapters. See Joseph Stern, Problem and Parables of the Law (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), 89-91. III:54, 638. — 45 —

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reading of the text, especially in light of Maimonides’ interpretation of the terms “lovingkindness, righteousness and judgment” in III:53, suggests that it has a moral connotation as well. Herbert Davidson has pointed to the importance of Maimonides’ views on divine attributes, and especially a key passage in Book I:54, for understanding not only the conclusion of III:54, but all of Maimonides’ ethical theory in the Guide.37 In his discussion of divine attributes, Maimonides maintains that no predicates can be attributed to God’s essence, since this would violate God’s simple unity; moreover, God’s essence is in principle unknowable. This implies that we cannot assert of God anything positive at all, including the psychological characteristics that constitute moral character. This leads to Maimonides’ claim that all qualities attributed to God are in reality attributes of action, not essential attributes. In other words, when we say that God is compassionate, we can’t coherently mean that He possesses the moral quality of compassion, for that would be to attribute a quality to God’s essence. What we really mean is that God’s actions are such that if they were performed by human beings they would be said to proceed from someone who is compassionate. We can describe God’s actions in various ways, borrowing from our human experiences, but we cannot describe God Himself. Language about God thus reduces to language about God’s providential governance of His world. “The meaning here is not that He possesses moral qualities, but He performs actions resembling the actions that proceed in us from moral qualities.”38 This claim, that God does not have moral qualities, follows not only from Maimonides’ elaborate theory of divine attributes. Moral character, as Maimonides maintains throughout his writings, is a psychological quality, and is bound up with human emotions. But emotions, and all psychological qualities, are ultimately physical, are “perfections of the body” in Maimonides’ terms, not “perfections of the soul.” Thus God, Who has no body could hardly have these qualities. God acts only according to the rational, unchanging standards of the intellect, according to what is truly right. He is not influenced by emotions or embedded character traits, which can cloud judgment. 37 38

Op. cit., 64 ff. I:54, 124. — 46 —

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What are the moral and political implications of this conception of divine morality? If human beings are obligated to imitate God — to “go in His ways,” as the Torah says — then they should be obligated to behave towards others as God does, to emulate God’s attributes of action. That is, they should make moral and political judgments exclusively according to what reason requires, uninfluenced by emotions or embedded character traits. This is exactly what Maimonides says in I:54: It behooves the governor of a city, if he is a prophet, to acquire similarity to these attributes, so that these actions may proceed from him according to determined measure and according to the deserts of the people who are affected by them and not merely because of his following a passion … for all passions are evil… (p. 126). For the utmost virtue of man is to become like unto Him, may He be exalted, as far as he is able; which means that we should make our actions like unto His, as the sages made clear in interpreting the verse “Ye shall be holy.” They said “He is gracious, so be you gracious; He is merciful; so be you also merciful” (p. 128).

Maimonides quite explicitly re-interprets imitatio dei, the biblical mandate behind the middle way ethics of his halakhic works. Interestingly, the verse he chooses here is not “You should go in His ways,” which he uses in the Mishneh Torah, but “You shall be holy.” Holiness requires passion-less, character-less moral choices made only according to what the intellect understands to be right. Maximal emulation of God is a post-theoretic morality, in which human beings so understand God’s providential governance of the world that they act only according to that understanding. Emotions, even good moral character, can mislead. As Maimonides points out, compassion, as fine a quality as it normally is, can get in the way of justice. Sinners, after all, must be punished and Amalekites killed, notwithstanding the compassion they might evoke.39 The asceticism encouraged in the Guide seems linked to this higher 39

Maimonides probably does not mean to take the Stoic position that emotions are bad. For Maimonides, love and fear of God, and especially heshek, impassioned love of Him (III:51-52), are emotions that flow from knowledge, and therefore good. What Maimonides precludes at the highest levels of human achievement are decisions based upon emotion, or emotions sufficiently strong to destabilize reason. — 47 —

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morality. As Maimonides says time and again, the pursuit of pleasure precludes achieving knowledge of God. Since the ethics of the Guide, unlike that of the halakhic works, is consequent upon understanding God and His providential governance of the world, asceticism becomes crucial not only for the Guide’s ethos, but for its ethics too, unlike the ethics of the halakhic works. That said, what are we to make of this shift from Maimonides’ halakhic works to the Guide? Davidson himself, and Lawrence Berman,40 propose that Maimonides simply changed his mind after writing the earlier halakhic works. That is, Maimonides came to the realization later in his life, before writing the Guide, that the logic of his view of divine attributes and His conception of God required him to abandon the theory of the middle way in favor of a purely intellectualized ethic. While this approach is plausible, I favor the view of Kreisel,41 Twersky42 and others, that Maimonides offers his reader a two-tiered system of ethics, already adumbrated in the Mishneh Torah through his distinction between the hakham and the hasid, the wise and the pious. The wise person, it will be recalled, follows the middle way; the hasid veers from it. It seems likely that the morality the hasid aspires to is none other than the ascetic, passion-less and character-less morality of the Guide. The pre-theoretic morality of the more popular, halakhic works is less demanding, and more suited to the capacities of the vast majority of the Jews. The Guide, on the other hand, is indeed a guide, to those who aspire to the highest form of human perfection, theoretical knowledge, and then post-theoretic imitation, of God as a pure Intellect. Thus the Guide affirms the doctrine of the mean, but downplays it considerably in favor of the post-theoretic morality, which it favors. It should be recalled in this regard that Maimonides chose a different biblical verse for imitatio dei in the Guide than he does in Mishneh Torah. In the latter he cites the verse from Deuteronomy “And you shall walk in His ways” (Deut. 28:9), whereas in the former he cites the command

40

41 42

“Ethical Views of Maimonides within the Context of Islamicite Civilization,” Perspectives on Maimonides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 320. Op. cit., n. 22, 132 and passim. Op. cit., n. 2, esp. pages 507-514. — 48 —

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in Leviticus “You shall be holy” (Leviticus 19:2). The Guide advances the loftier goal of holiness, whereas the Mishneh Torah does not. Interestingly, one of the two exceptions that Maimonides offers to the doctrine of the mean in his halakhic works exactly foreshadows the Guide’s overall ethical model of passion-less behavior. As noted above, Maimonides, citing numerous rabbinic passages, maintains that anger should be entirely avoided. One should train oneself not to be angry even for something that would justify anger. If one wishes to arouse fear in his children and household or members of a community of which he is the head, and desires to exhibit anger so that they may amend their ways, he should make a show of anger before them … but in reality his mood should be composed like a man who simulates anger and does not really feel it.43

Maimonides concludes this paragraph about anger by citing as a prooftext a verse from the prophets: “And they that love Him are like the going forth of the sun” (Judges 5:11). This relates to Maimonides’ claim that those who act without anger are impelled to do so out of love for God. Now what is the connection between love of God, “like the going forth of the sun,” and acting without anger? The explanation may be that Maimonides here means to allude to a claim he makes several books later in the Mishneh Torah, in “The Laws of Repentance” 10:6 (and repeats in the Guide), that love of God is consequent upon knowledge of Him. Maimonides may be subtly suggesting that those who love God know Him, and if they know Him, they will act without any passion at all, including anger. This, indeed, is exactly the position of the Guide, generalized from anger to all character traits. In other words, if one truly understands the implications of Maimonides’ apparently odd prooftext, one will be led in the direction of the morality of the Guide, whose theory is thus adumbrated already in the Mishneh Torah. I would now like to suggest that this model of the two-tiered ethic in Maimonides’ moral philosophy positions us to offer a solution to the contradiction between Maimonides’ life and his writings. I wish to stress, however, that the cogency of my proposed solution stands 43

Deot, 2:3. — 49 —

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independent of whether one accepts the hierarchical reading of Maimonides’ two-tiered ethic offered here (which I continue to use throughout this essay), or whether one accepts the Davidson/Berman thesis that Maimonides changes his mind. Even according to Davidson and Berman, the Guide itself does apparently offer us a two-tiered ethic, that of perfection three, social morality, and that of perfection four (or five depending upon how one counts), the “lovingkindness, righteousness and justice” of III:54. While I and others maintain that perfection three is none other than the mean, even if it isn’t we still have here some form of lower-order morality involving the cultivation of virtues — the “perfection of the body” as Maimonides calls it in III:27 — and the higher order morality of III:54. That alone is enough to make my case.

IV What are the practical implications of Maimonides’ two-tiered ethic? What is the path to moral excellence? No doubt it begins with the cultivation of those character traits which constitute the middle way. This is surely no easy task, as anyone who has tried to cultivate these qualities can attest. It takes years and years of labor, with constant adjustments and struggles along the way. Even then, how many people have we met who have fully realized all the virtues Maimonides enumerates and discusses? The life of the hakham is difficult to achieve. We can safely assume that Maimonides himself worked to shape his character according to the standards of the mean.44 To the extent that he was successful, he would have become the sort of person who by virtue of his character would respond charitably to those in need, courageously in situations of danger, and so on. While he would need 44

While Maimonides does say in III:8 of the Guide that “it is easy … to control suitable matter” (p. 433), he doesn’t tell us all that much about how easy his own matter may have been to train. There are rabbinic traditions according to which even Moses himself was born with innate aggressiveness, which he had to learn to control. It is probably safe to assume that Maimonides had to make at least some efforts in regard to at least some of the moral virtues which appear on his long list. — 50 —

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to choose consciously to do so, that choice would flow naturally from the character traits he had shaped and developed over time. The more stable and mean-centered these traits would have become, the better Maimonides would have been situated to pursue the knowledge that constitutes the highest human perfection. Aspirants to the truth who lack these traits, Maimonides frequently tells us, are inevitably diverted. Thus Maimonides would have worked on his character simultaneous with his studies of logic and mathematics, then physics and ultimately metaphysics. But at some point Maimonides would have run into a problem, for in order to achieve the very highest levels of human perfection, to which we can only assume Maimonides personally aspired, he would have needed to transcend the moral education he had so diligently cultivated. I have argued here that the highest form of morality for Maimonides is passion-less and characterless. In order to achieve that level of morality, one must achieve deep knowledge God and His governance of the world. Either subsequent to acquiring that knowledge, or simultaneous with its achievement, at least at the deepest levels, the aspirant to the higher morality must train himself to respond to life’s exigencies not out of his entrenched moral character but out of an understanding of God’s providential governance of the world. Indeed, he must rise above those very traits he has worked so hard to cultivate, so that they don’t interfere with the choices made according to the new knowledge he has acquired. While this experience may seem foreign to Maimonides’ readers, it really isn’t so far removed from common human experience. Thus, one may feel a natural, and developed, compassion for one’s children, but nevertheless rise above those feelings to mete out the kind of punishment one believes is necessary for the children’s moral wellbeing. Parents thus detach or dissociate themselves from what comes naturally to them in order to “do the right thing.” This seems to be something like what Maimonides has in mind, although for Maimonides one would undergo this dissociation even if compassion and right reason yielded the same, and not contrary, results. That said, Maimonides’ requirement is still very difficult to achieve. But this is only one level to the practical difficulties Maimonides’ twotiered theory raises. For what kind of life is necessary to realizing the — 51 —

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highest levels of divine knowledge that humans can achieve? None other than the life of solitude. At the sub-Mosaic/Patriarchal level, human relationships ultimately divert one from the intense focus necessary to achieve and sustain ongoing contemplation of God. This is not to say that once thrust into contact with others one shouldn’t follow the mean. But this form of morality is only the third perfection. As Maimonides says in III:54, it isn’t an end in itself but only a means to another end, “an instrument for someone else.” But “the conception of intelligibles … is in true reality the ultimate end” and is “the true human perfection.” Only prophets like Moses, and perhaps the Patriarchs, can afford frequent interaction with others because of their learned ability to think about God while at the same time effectively relating to others. But how does this work? How can they think about God all the while relating to others? One way of thinking about this, as I noted above, is that Moses and the Patriarchs succeeded in dissociating themselves from their actions. They were capable of “going through the motions” of human relationships, mechanically saying or doing the right thing while their thoughts were really elsewhere. While this interpretation is plausible, I strongly favor another, according to which Moses and the Patriarchs achieved an uncommon integration of the contemplative and moral. As Kogan, Warren Zev Harvey, Kreisel,45 and others stress, the very same overflow from the Active Intellect which yields knowledge of God in the aspirant to such wisdom yields knowledge-based (as opposed to character-based) moral behavior as well. In the case of Moses and the Patriarchs, every action they take and every choice they make derives only from their true knowledge of God (His attributes of action) and from nothing else. When they talk politely to their neighbors or help an old woman cross the road, they do so out of the knowledge of how God would have acted in the circumstances. Therefore their actions and choices are constant expressions of their thinking. In this way, their contemplation of God has never ceased.

45

For an elaboration of this view see references, n. 26, especially the Kreisel article cited there. Those scholars who read III:54 politically, and especially out of an epistemological skepticism about the possibility of human knowledge of the divine, would not share this perspective. For a discussion, see Kellner, ibid., n. 23. — 52 —

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The situation is different for lesser prophets, and surely nonprophets who aspire to prophecy. When they interact with others they do so at least sometimes out of their third-perfection character traits, and when they act out of their third-perfection character traits, their actions do not then derive from active knowledge of God. Their theoretical intellects at the moment of choice or action are put on hold while they negotiate moral life based on entrenched character traits. Individuals whose moral life is so constituted cannot permit themselves very much in the way of diversions from the life of contemplation. For if they do, then their negotiation with social reality, which necessarily takes considerable time, will in turn preclude them from understanding enough of Him to receive the kind of overflow which makes possible the highest peaks of the post-theoretic life, in which active knowledge of God and moral behavior can be simultaneous and fully integrated. We can safely assume, then, that Maimonides himself probably aspired to the solitude whose necessity he himself preached. But here we run into what seems to be an insurmountable difficulty. Maimonides presumably had worked hard to entrench within himself the character traits of the hakham, including the virtue of compassion, which appears on Maimonides’ list. Now what is Maimonides to do? His antechamber is full of sick people in need of a cure. Maimonides the hakham feels deep compassion for the sick who crowd his room for treatment. Maimonides knows that compassion is the virtue the Jewish legal and philosophical traditions call for, and so Maimonides feels compelled to help the sick.46 But Maimonides knows that if he conforms to the mandates of the hakham, acts compassionately and treats the sick, he will never have the solitude necessary to leap over the first tier of his ethical system to the second. Can he just slam the door on the sick and say “Sorry, I’m busy now, I have to go contemplate God”? This behavior 46

Numerous passages in Maimonides’ writings, halakhic and otherwise, reflect endorsement of the value of compassion. For a summary and discussion of many of these texts, see Twersky, op. cit., 424-429 and the references cited in the footnotes. While the halakha embodies the virtue of compassion in its legal framework, Maimonides may well have found partial technical halakhic exemption from the duty to treat all the sick, Jew and non-Jew, until late in the evening due to his own physical exhaustion and advancing age. Nevertheless Maimonides chose not to avail himself of such exemptions. — 53 —

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would be wrong according to the standards of morality dictated by the life he has led so far. But then this means that the moral standards of the first tier of his ethics preclude Maimonides’ ever achieving the knowledge, moral standards and indeed life of the second tier. In effect Maimonides is trapped by the very values he advocates and the life he has long lived, prevented from achieving the supreme values, and the very life to which he has long aspired. Another way of putting this point is that first-tier excellence precludes, for Maimonides, the complete realization of second-tier excellence. This is a “tragic conflict” in which Maimonides is trapped between two incommensurate goods, two competing obligations, much like the heroes of ancient Greek tragedies were themselves caught in such irreconcilable moral conflicts.47 It is right to act compassionately to the sick as it is right to aspire to the highest forms of excellence; but these demands tragically conflict. Whatever Maimonides does, he will violate one or another of these crucial obligations. On this reading, the sense of tribulation that seems to come through in Maimonides’ letter to ibn Tibbon may be more than the complaints of a too-busy man. Maimonides may be expressing the deep angst of someone caught in the vise of an unresolvable tragic dilemma. Am I stretching the boundaries by calling this conflict “tragic”? While I shall have more to say about this in the last section of this essay, at one level, at least, I think the answer is “no.” First, not all classic tragedies involved death on the part of the person caught in conflict. Thus Creon, in Antigone, was faced with a choice between his religious obligation to honor the dead Eteocles by burying him, and his duty to preserve order in the state. More importantly, Maimonides’ own conflict would not have been peripheral to his life, but central to its deepest yearnings. The obligation to treat the sick would have prevented Maimonides from fully achieving that perfection which constitutes the summum bonum, the highest good to which humans must aspire. Failure to wholly 47

For a philosophically sophisticated discussion of the nature of “tragic conflict” in Greek tragedy, and subsequent philosophical attempts to argue against the possibility of such moral conflict, see Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), especially chapters 2 and 3. I have followed her discussion of tragedy in formulating my views here. — 54 —

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realize that goal would be devastating to anyone who devotes his life to its achievement. In that sense Maimonides is caught in what I call a “tragedy of excellence.” His moral excellence as a physician precludes him from realizing the very highest form of human excellence, maximal knowledge of God and the “lovingkindness” which flows from it. To what extent can we generalize from Maimonides to all aspirants to human excellence? Is this a conflict only for Maimonides the busy physician with an anteroom full of patients on whom he can’t shut the door, or is it a conflict intrinsic to the human condition? On the one hand, some persons did break the barriers, notably Moses and perhaps the Patriarchs. Even other, lesser, prophets did — by definition — achieve prophecy, and therefore must have found sufficient time for solitude to do so. It is crucial to realize, therefore, that the dilemma raised here is not wholly insurmountable. Why? I think the answer has to do with the fluid, multi-dimensional nature of prophecy as Maimonides understood it. Prophecy comes and goes, and it exists in greater and lesser degrees depending upon many factors, including the level of theoretical knowledge, moral perfection, perfection of the faculty of imagination and even the mood of the prophet. Moses’ own prophecy left him following the sin of the golden calf.48 The extent of contemplative solitude one manages is but one factor in how far one can climb the ladder of prophecy. Of special importance in this regard is the occurrent focus of the prophet. One of Maimonides’ central points in III:51 is that prophets, when they are not actively contemplating God, are susceptible to the harshness of the natural order. Thus a life of complete solitude may be necessary to achieve the very highest, most enduring forms of prophecy; less solitude may secure one lesser or more impermanent forms of prophecy. Yet all prophets, whatever their level, still show “lovingkindness, righteousness and judgment” in their public role, issuing calls to repentance or otherwise seeking to help their people. That said, I still wish to argue that the conflict identified here extends beyond Maimonides the busy physician to all aspirants to human excellence. Any person who cultivates compassion, physician, carpenter or teacher, will find ample calls upon his time and energy. 48

Guide II:36. — 55 —

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What parent isn’t called upon to spend time helping with one’s child, or to earn the livelihood necessary to support the family? It must be remembered that these are not mere social pressures; these are all religious obligations, which follow from Maimonides’ doctrine of the middle way. To the extent that one acts morally, so defined, and heeds the call of the character traits which properly motivate moral action, he/she will be spending that much less time in the study of philosophy and its preparatory subjects. Indeed, it seems to me likely that the higher the level of achievement the more acute the level of conflict. This is so for several related reasons. First, the more advanced one gets, the more difficult and time-consuming it becomes to progress yet higher. Moreover, progress at this level requires even more solitude than at lower levels. Both these factors combine to yield ever greater conflict with the demands of the social virtues. In addition to these considerations there is another: the greater one’s wisdom, the more one can help society. Therefore, the virtue of compassion would require the wise person, more so than someone less wise, to work on behalf of the society. And the more one spends time working on behalf of society, the less time one has for solitude. Every step upward on the path to excellence necessitates a compassionate step commensurately sideways, on behalf of society. How then is any progress possible? For the same reasons I noted above: some partial solitude may make it possible to continue to ascend the ladder of excellence (to use Maimonides’ metaphor in Book I:15), even if not at the rate one might wish. Not every step upward is met with the obligation for an exactly equal step sideways; progress may therefore be slowed, but is still be still attainable. Nevertheless, the key point I wish to stress now is that the conflict itself is unavoidably present. Even if progress is possible it is still hampered, and what hampers it is not mere human weakness, but moral virtue, a form of human excellence itself, at least as Maimonides conceives it. In the case of Maimonides’ own life, this conflict wrought even more havoc with his aspirations than for many other aspirants to human excellence. Because Maimonides was a gifted physician, who had more than the usual capacity to help others, the obligations of the first-tiered moral life waxed exceedingly heavy. — 56 —

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V I shall return to the picture of the human condition that emerges from this account of Maimonides’ views and its implications for Maimonides’ own life later. First, however, I wish to suggest that the conflict to which the two tiers of morality give rise is not merely a practical one, rooted in distractions from without. Rather, it is inescapably rooted within the very nature of existence itself, a consequence of Maimonides’ Neoplatonized metaphysics. According to Aristotle, matter is no more than that which takes on forms, their “substratum.” To speak of an “opposition” between matter and form would be mistaken. Maimonides, however, had received the Aristotelian matter/form doctrine already filtered through, and altered by, Neo-platonism.49 For Maimonides, matter is not merely that which takes on forms; because forms constantly change, matter is conceived as the font of privation, the source of all impermanence and deficiency. As such it is ultimately responsible for disease, death, sin and moral failure. Indeed, Maimonides goes so far as to identify matter with the evil impulse, Satan and the angel of death.50 Forms, on the other hand, are permanent and enduring. All change that occurs is in matter, as the forms come and go, but not in the forms themselves. In the case of human beings, their form — that which makes them human — is their intellect. The intellect, following Plato, stands in opposition to matter. Matter in human beings is what leads to physical and moral breakdown, while the form of human beings, their intellect, is what humans essentially are, and what leads to their enduring excellence. On this metaphysical model, matter and form stand in opposition to one another, with matter taking on a severely negative valuation, and form a very positive valuation. Maimonides’ first-tier ethical theory of the mean is designed to train the impulses of matter. “Moral virtues belong only to the appetitive 49

50

For studies of the influence of Neo-platonism on Maimonides see Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides and Neo-Platonism: Challenge and Response,” in Lenn Goodman, ed. Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 137-156; and idem., “Neoplatonic Currents in Maimonides’ Thought,” in Perspectives on Maimonides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 115-140. Guide III:22, 488-489. — 57 —

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faculty,” Maimonides says at the conclusion of Book II of Eight Chapters, and the appetitive faculty obviously pertains to matter. Reason, on the other hand, as Maimonides says at the end of Book I of Eight Chapters, is “… that faculty peculiar to man which enables him to understand, reflect, acquire knowledge of the sciences, and to discriminate between proper and improper actions.”51 Thus it is the task of reason, as discriminator between proper and improper actions, to oversee the appetitive faculty according to the requirements of moral virtue. This leads to Maimonides’ famous medical metaphor for his theory of the mean: Physicians of the soul must cure and then sustain the health of the appetitive faculty by inculcating mean-centered moral character. The theory of the mean is thus directed exclusively at matter’s influence on human behavior, and its implementation is therefore in significant measure an activity of practical reasoning. However, Maimonides, following Aristotle, recognizes another kind of intellect, the theoretical, alluded to in the first portion of the passage quoted above about reason. Only theoretical reasoning can yield the knowledge of God and His providential governance of the world, which makes second-tier moral behavior possible. Here choices are made not out of moral character but out of knowledge of God.52 The tension between the claims of the first tier pre-theoretic and second tier post-theoretic models of morality in Maimonides’ ethics can 51

52



The translations are from Maimonides Reader, Isadore Twersky (Springfield, NJ: Behrman House, 1972), 12. For Aristotle, theoretical reasoning by definition cannot yield choice. Maimonides’ view of theoretical wisdom therefore manifests a Platonic influence. See Howard Kreisel, “Practical Intellect in the Philosophy of Maimonides,” HUCA 59 (1988). Maimonides’ discussion of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Guide I:2 reflects the account outlined here. Prior to the fall, Adam was engaged exclusively in theoretical contemplation. His post-fall knowledge of good and evil came as a result of being “inclined toward his desires of the imagination and the pleasures of his corporeal senses” (25). Morality ceased to be an exclusive function of theoretical knowledge and became dependent upon the imagination, which is a property of matter and is therefore necessarily flawed. See Warren Zev Harvey, “Maimonides and Spinoza on the Knowledge of Good and Evil” [Hebrew], Iyyun 28 (1979), 167-185; Shlomo Pines, “Truth and Falsehood and Good and Evil: A Study of Jewish and General Philosophy in Connection with The Guide of the Perplexed I:2,” in Isadore Twersky, Studies in Maimonides (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 1990), 95-157. — 58 —

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thus be seen as a consequence of Maimonides’ metaphysics. While the appetites of someone with a very well-cultivated moral character are directed only towards that which should be desired, and in the proper manner, they are nevertheless appetites, and as such are material. But the choices and behavior of someone at the maximal post-theoretic level, ideally at least, should not be materially driven, but rationally driven. Therefore, it is to be expected that there would naturally arise a conflict between the demands of pre-theoretic and post-theoretic moralities, given the oppositional relationship between matter and form. Even the best-trained matter, by its very nature, may not conform to the perfect dictates of perfect intellect. This highest standard of human excellence, in which all choices are always rationally driven only according to a complete apprehension of God and His ways, is probably unattainable by anyone. Even Moses succumbed to the impact of the sin of the spies and temporarily lost his prophetic capacities.53 Indeed, insofar as humans are material beings there will always be an element of the material and therefore appetitive in human choices: Moses too must eat and drink (except while he was atop Mt. Sinai). Nevertheless, the aspiration to wisdom of the highest form, and the effort to live accordingly, inexorably yields this tension, which inheres in the very metaphysic of existence.54 53 54

The Guide II:36, 372-373. Kathleen Wilkes (“The Good Man and the Good for Man,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amelie Rorty [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980], 341-358) suggests that the tension between the contemplative and practical ideals in Aristotle is rooted in exactly this metaphysic. “Man is a hybrid — caught in a constant tug of war between the claims of his divine and hylomorphic nature; his theology tells us that the divine element is not commensurable with the hylomorphic. The contemplative life is fully attainable only insofar as man can become god-like, and the constant and irremovable block to this is that he is biologically an animal … The indecision in Aristotle’s ethics arises directly from the bilateral nature of Aristotle’s man and cannot be evaded” (352). On her interpretation of Aristotle, it would turn out that the philosophical tradition in which Maimonides worked may have been ultimately rooted in this Aristotelian tension, which would have been the precursor to the Maimonidean conflict explored here. There is no question, however, that the Neo-platonic elements in Maimonides sharply recast the form and acuteness of the dilemma. What may have been an “indecision” or “frustration” (Wilkes’ expressions) in the Aristotelian schema becomes a tragic conflict for Maimonides. Aristotle nowhere addresses this directly, whereas this conflict is central to the Guide III:8, and stands at the core of other Maimonidean doctrines as well, as we shall see. — 59 —

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Book III:8 of the Guide is centrally concerned with exactly this oppositional character of matter and form, and Maimonides there sharpens the point I have been making. He classifies people according to the extent to which their lives are shaped by matter or intellect, describing the superior person in the following way: Among men there are individuals who aspire always to prefer that which is most noble and to seek a state of perpetual permanence according to what is required by their noble form. They only reflect on the mental representation of an intelligible, on the grasp of a true opinion regarding everything, and on union with the divine intellect… Whenever the impulses of matter impel such an individual toward the dirt and the generally admitted shame inherent in matter he feels pain because of his entanglement, is ashamed and abashed because of what he has gone through, and desires to diminish this shame with all his power and to be preserved from it in every way.55

No person can wholly escape the material, which Maimonides says in this chapter is the cause of all sin. Indeed, “… the commandment and prohibitions of the Law are only intended to quell all the impulses of matter.”56 But complete abandonment of matter, short of death itself, is impossible, and the superior person can only feel abject shame at such a predicament.57 The very need for training, from the perspective of the aspirant to perfection, is a sad, indeed shameful consequence of the en-mattered state of human existence. Would that he not even need to learn to control his desires for food, drink or sex. The aspirant to perfection, Maimonides says in this same chapter, would “… take as his end that which is the end of man qua man: namely, solely the mental representation of the intelligibles, the most certain of which being the apprehension, in as far as this is possible, of the deity, of the angels, and of His other works. These individuals are those who 55 56 57

III:8, 432. III:8, 433. See Joseph Stern, “Maimonides’ Conceptions of Freedom and the Sense of Shame,” in Freedom and Responsibility, ed. Charles Manekin and Menachem Kellner (Bethesda, MD: University Press of Maryland, 1997), 217-266 for a study of this chapter and the link between shame and freedom for Maimonides. See too my “Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility,” in chapter VI of this volume. — 60 —

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are permanently with God.”58 A life lived according to pure intellect, on the part of “individuals who are permanently with God” would avoid the very character training made necessary by matter. While Maimonides himself doesn’t quite say this, his position in III:8 suggests that first tier morality is in an important sense inherently shameful, even if necessary, just as eating, Maimonides says, is inherently shameful even if necessary. Both derive from the en-mattered state of existence.59 Were man not a material being, first-tier morality would be wholly unnecessary. Of course, not all actions that derive from matter are equally shameful. Adultery is more shameful than eating, which is in turn more shameful than acting out of good character, which is shameful only in that it must cope with that which is shameful. But this obvious point should not obscure the deeper one, that these actions all derive from a common metaphysical substructure, matter, and that as a result they are all, to a far greater or far lesser degree, in a sense inherently shameful. I have argued so far that Maimonides’ conception of the oppositional character of matter and form gave rise to a tension between Maimonides’ first tier pre-theoretic and second tier post-theoretic moralities.60 This perspective yields two further observations. First, above I characterized Maimonides’ situation as a “tragedy of excellence.” That is, Maimonides, and — I have argued — to some extent all human beings are trapped in a conflict between two competing sets of incommensurate moral and even religious goods, the competing values of Maimonides’ first-tier and second-tier excellences. However, if this conflict is rooted in the

58 59

60

III:8, 432-433. In the Guide I:2 Maimonides says that Adam and Eve first became aware of their nakedness, and wanted to cover it — a classic manifestation of shame — only after their sin, through which they fell from pure theoretical knowledge to apprehension based upon convention, which flows from imagination. Here the link between shame and imagination, a property of matter, seems manifest. See too above, n. 54. Interestingly, while Aristotle himself gave classic philosophical voice to the pretheoretic morality of the mean, and while Aristotle himself advocated a life of contemplation as the most perfect of lives, as noted above he never developed an alternative morality reflecting the contemplative life. This emerged for Maimonides only as a consequence of his Neo-platonism, with its oppositional view of matter and the intellect, and the Platonic conception of virtue as knowledge. — 61 —

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metaphysics of existence, then we have an added dimension to the picture I have drawn here. In addition to the notion of “tragic conflict,” Greek tragedy, in the view of some scholars, has yet another tragic dimension as well. In the words of George Steiner, this is the conviction that “the forces which shape or destroy our lives lie outside the governance of reason or justice.”61 Tragic heroes are beset and overcome by forces over which they have no control, and which they cannot comprehend. Steiner himself contrasts this view of the human predicament with the “Judaic” one, according to which all occurs as the result of a wise God, acting according to the highest standards of justice. Even if we accept Steiner’s distinction, I would argue that there is still an element of this form of tragedy in the Maimonidean world. The human condition, indeed all of existence, consists of a combination of matter and form. As Maimonides says, “It is impossible for matter to exist without form, and for any of the forms in question to exist without matter.”62 While matter makes it possible for human beings to exist as human beings, matter also makes it impossible for human beings to achieve their very highest aspirations as human beings. People can refine their matter, but they are inevitably and shamefully bound up with it. Thus at the very highest levels of achievement, human beings have no control over their en-mattered state. They are stuck with it, even if they have labored all their lives with complete human success, and have purified their matter to the extent humanly possible. This helplessness in the face of metaphysical reality seems to me to have an element of the tragic in it. This perspective is further reinforced by Maimonides’ discussion of the purposes of creation in the Guide III:13. Maimonides there maintains that human beings cannot know the purpose of creation; existence is a consequence of God’s will, and “just as we do not seek for the end of His existence, May He be exalted, so we do not seek for the final end of His volition, according to which all that has been and will be produced in time comes into being as it is.”63 Maimonides does indeed 61 62 63

George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (New York: Faber and Faber, 1961), 6-7. III:8, 431. III:13, 454. — 62 —

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admit that God’s wisdom is identical with His will. Nevertheless, the overall thrust of this chapter is to argue for the human inscrutability of the purposes of creation, at whose metaphysical heart stands the matter/form relation. God as a perfectly rational being Whose wisdom is equivalent to His will surely had a reason for creating humans bound up with the sort of matter which prevents them from achieving constant angelic presence with Him. However, Maimonides argues in II:13, humans in principle cannot know what those reasons are. Thus human helplessness in the face of the inexorable demands of matter is made the more tragic by its inscrutability.64 While I shall soften this point somewhat at the conclusion of this essay, I first wish to call attention to a second observation. There seems to be a pattern in Maimonides’ philosophical thinking of which this overall tension is but one instance. Thus, Maimonides maintains in Mishneh Torah, “Foundations of the Law” 2:2 and 4:12, that awe of God and love of Him are dialectical states, in which knowledge of God yields love of Him, which in turn causes humans to recoil in awe of Him. Love and awe therefore stand in tension with one another. Similarly, Maimonides maintains that human excellence consists in knowing God, but philosophical reflection yields the view that God is unknowable. Indeed, the more one knows God, the more one comes to understand just how unknowable He truly is. In a way, knowledge of 64

The analysis throughout this section is most at home in the skeptical reading of Maimonides, according to which knowledge of God is impossible for anyone. In contemporary scholarship this view was articulated by Shlomo Pines in his influential article, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge according to Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja and Maimonides,” in Isadore Twersky, Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 82-109, and has most recently been taken up by Joseph Stern in “Maimonides’ Conception of Freedom …,” op. cit., n. 57. Alexander Altman, in “Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics,” Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklarung (Tubingen, Germany: J.C.B Muhr, 1987), 60-129, and others have disagreed (See Barry Kogan, “What Can We Know …,” op. cit., n. 13). Nevertheless, I wish to stress that while my analysis may be most at home in the Pines tradition it is nevertheless consistent with the Altman position as well. According to Altman too, even if some degree of union with the Active Intellect is possible, human beings can still never wholly overcome their en-mattered state while alive, and the purposes of creation, which include humanity’s en-mattered condition, remain inscrutable, as I discuss below. God’s essence remains forever outside the scope of human understanding. — 63 —

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God deconstructs its own aspirations. And again, the impulse to praise God is stifled by the realization that the highest form of human praise for the divine is silence. I hope to explore more fully this pattern and its implications for the theme I have been developing here in a separate study. For now I only wish to note that what I have called the tragic conflict at the core of Maimonides’ ethics and metaphysics — and indeed Maimonides’ own life — may well resonate even more deeply within his philosophical reconstruction of Judaism, including its epistemology, and its conception of the human approach to the divine.

VI Contemporary students of Maimonides are heir to three dominant images of the master. First there is the picture of Maimonides as the majestic synthesizer of the Jewish and philosophical traditions, author of perhaps the greatest code of Jewish law ever written, and author of its most influential philosophical work as well, which satisfactorily synthesized Aristotelianism and Judaism. The second regnant image of Maimonides is that of the closeted Aristotelian who masked his true philosophical views in his cryptic Guide, while purveying for the masses the best behavior and beliefs they could possibly attain given their enormous limitations. The third image is that of a heroic philosopher struggling mightily to reconcile his competing commitments, with greater or lesser success, depending upon one’s views. I have argued in this paper that Maimonides’ metaphysics led him to what I have called a conception of the human condition which might be called tragic, with conflicting implications for his own life as a responsible physician and aspirant to human excellence. Whatever one’s image of Maimonides, it is altogether likely that at some point in his life he was beset by serious conflict as he sought to reconcile his Jewish and philosophical commitments (whether successfully according to the first model, less so according to the third, or hardly at all according to the second). It should hardly be surprising, then, if his larger picture of the world too was inherently conflicted. This would be especially true according to the third of these three images of Maimonides. — 64 —

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Before concluding, I wish to refine and qualify in certain important ways the central claim of this essay. While Maimonides’ conception of the human condition may have been tragic, it is crucial to realize that Maimonides himself never articulated it as such. Moreover, there is no evidence that Maimonides’ life was afflicted by his conception of the human condition. The famous letter to ibn Tibbon may reflect sadness or tribulation, but not deep affliction. The life of the classical Greek tragic hero ended, if not in death, then in personal torment. There is no evidence that Maimonides himself felt anything like such torment. Why? While there can be no certain answer to this question, we may gain insight into Maimonides the man and philosopher if we ask whether there is anything about his strictly philosophical positions which may have prevented him from experiencing his own life, and the human condition as a whole, as suffering the anguish of tragic conflict? Maimonides, let us recall, believed that God was a perfectly rational being Who exercises wise providential governance over His world. Therefore, for Maimonides, human existence must be governed by divine wisdom, even if human existence is conflicted at its core, and even if, as Maimonides argues throughout the Guide, God’s wisdom is in the end inscrutable.65 Rationally grounded belief in God’s ultimate rationality might have made it possible for Maimonides to live with conflict, and even flourish. To be sure, Maimonides’ own life plan could not have been fully rational, because there inhered within it inevitable conflicts of value. However, God’s life plan for Maimonides must have been fully rational since, to Maimonides, God is a rational being. Socrates, Plato, Kant and many other philosophers could not live with incommensurate moral goods,66 and therefore they would have experienced the kind of conflicts described here as tragic. But Maimonides, with his enduring belief in God’s ultimate, even if impenetrable, rationality, need not have experienced those conflicts as tragic nor, perhaps, need others who 65

66

This does not entail, however, that the conflict is a merely practical one which humans might conceivably overcome. I have argued here that ultimately the conflict can in principle never be fully resolved, because it inheres in the metaphysics of the world. However, if God designed the world there must be a reason for this conflict, even though humans do not know what that reason is. See Nussbaum, op. cit., n. 47, Part II. — 65 —

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share Maimonides’ views about God. In this way, then, Maimonides’ brand of theism may have enabled him to triumph over the tragic implications of his Neo-platonism, and over the tragic dilemmas his own life presented. In concluding his discussion of the unknowability of God’s purposes in creating the world, Maimonides writes: This is what one ought to believe. For when man knows his own soul, makes no mistakes with regard to it, and understands everything according to what it is, he becomes calm and his thoughts are not troubled by seeking a final end; or by seeking a final end for what has no final end except its own existence, which depends upon the divine will — if you prefer you can also say: on the divine wisdom.67

Calm and untroubled thoughts are not the only result of this perspective. Maimonides unexpectedly chooses to conclude his famous discussion of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Guide I:2, with its emphasis on the role of corporeality, pleasure and imagination — all functions of matter — in leading to their sin by asserting “Praise be to the Master of the will whose aims and wisdom cannot be apprehended.”68 Matter may have caused the fall of humankind from its pre-lapsarian level of contemplative perfection, perhaps the greatest tragedy in human history. Nevertheless, Maimonides concludes by teaching his readers, God, “whose aims and wisdom cannot be apprehended,” deserves our praise.

67 68

Guide III:13, 456. I:2, 26. I am grateful to Prof. Kogan for pointing out to me the relevance of this passage to my overall thesis. — 66 —

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--------------------------------- Chapter III  ----------------------------------

Is There a “Halakhic” Response to the Problem of Evil?*

I. Introduction On the face of it, the very title of this paper may appear puzzling. Responses to the problem of evil are by their nature theological or philosophical, whereas halakha, or Jewish law, is about behavior. In what sense, then, can there be a halakhic response to the problem of evil? I propose to inquire into whether or not a theological construction of Judaism according to which halakha stands at its core might provide a conceptual matrix out of which to respond to the problem of evil. There is something prima facie attractive about such an enterprise. The problem of evil is one of the oldest in the history of theological and philosophical inquiry, one that has engaged countless thinkers, religious and nonreligious, over many centuries. But what do Jewish thinkers, qua Jews, have to contribute to the discussion? Does the Jewish tradition have insights particular to its own picture of God, humankind, and the world, that are distinctive in important ways from the insights of other religious traditions, or from the insights of philosophical inquiry generally?1 Do those insights avoid what many believe to be an unfortunate property of much of the classical literature on evil, that is, its apparent sterility? It has frequently been observed that whatever their purely philosophical successes, classical theodicies sometimes seem to have little relevance in *

1

I would like to thank Professors Jon Levenson and David Shatz for helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay, as well as participants in the Academy for Jewish Philosophy session at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Boston, December 1997, where a portion of this essay was read and discussed. For a recent study, see Oliver Leaman, Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). — 67 —

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the lives of many religious believers, even philosophers, whose faith, so far as I can tell from reading and experience, seems untouched by their philosophical subtleties.2 While this question is hardly an argument against classical theodicy and its real philosophical importance, it is an argument in favor of looking at alternative strategies for responding to the problem of evil that do not suffer from this sterility. Indeed, a recent trend in philosophy of religion, as I discuss below, reflects this sensibility. What then of the Jewish tradition? Can it make its own contribution to this new turn in responding to the problem of evil? One promising place to look for a truly distinctive Jewish voice is in that precinct of the Jewish tradition that seems characteristic of Judaism alone, its powerful legal orientation. Jewish law, at least until the modern period, and for many Jews beyond then, has been central to the Jewish religious experience. The late Professor Isadore Twersky has felicitously called this phenomenon halakhocentrism. Do the theological implications of this orientation suggest any strategies for responding to the problem of evil? The quest for a theological response to the problem of evil out of a halakhic matrix in turn leads to the work of one of the twentiethcentury’s leading Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (19031993), who argued again and again for the importance of constructing a Jewish theology out of halakhic sources.3 That this theme preoccupied Soloveitchik is hardly surprising. Scion of perhaps the most august Lithuanian rabbinic family of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he received an outstanding Talmudic education, followed by study at the University of Berlin, where he took a doctorate in philosophy, completing a dissertation on the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen. While Soloveitchik taught Talmud for decades at Yeshiva University in New York, it was his theological writings that provided a sophisticated articulation of the world of Talmud study, and of the theological and existential dilemmas with which Soloveitchik himself struggled. He became the leading rabbi and intellectual in the world of

2

3

For a series of very interesting essays about the role of reason in the life of faith, see Thomas V. Morris, ed., God and the Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). For an overall review and analysis of Soloveitchik’s œuvre, see David Singer and Moshe Sokol, “Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” Chapter XIV of this volume. — 68 —

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modern Orthodoxy, shaping its voice and agenda for decades, thereby profoundly influencing twentieth-century Jewish theology. As it happens Soloveitchik indeed wrote about the problem of evil from what he himself called a halakhic perspective, and his treatment of the issue is original. If what he has to say is plausible, let alone true, then we will have what amounts to a signal contribution not only to Jewish thought, but to the long and tortured debate over the problem of evil in the history of Western philosophy. Indeed, I argue that his approach avoids the sterility of classical theodicies and is a precursor to a new turn in philosophy of religion that also avoids some of the pitfalls that have plagued these efforts. In the final section, I return to the affinities of Soloveitchik with contemporary philosophy of religion. Soloveitchik’s most authoritative discussion of the problem of evil appears in his essay “Kol Dodi Dofek” (“It Is the Voice of My Beloved That Knocketh”),4 a classic of twentieth-century religious Zionist thought. In an as yet unpublished address delivered in 1961, five years after he had first presented “Kol Dodi Dofek” and the same year in which the latter was first published in Hebrew, Soloveitchik returned to the subject at great length.5 Perhaps because of the nature of the audience, or because of his agenda at the time, which was to address issues of mental health from a Jewish perspective, his argument in that address seems less developed than it had been in earlier works. It is also quite possible that the 1961 address represented pre-1956 work, which Soloveitchik retrieved from the file cabinet for delivery in 1961. Whatever the explanation, I shall hew to the “Kol Dodi Dofek” argument.

4

5

“Kol Dodi Dofek” was first delivered as an address in 1956 and subsequently published in Hebrew in 1961. It is now available in a Hebrew-language collection of some of Soloveitchik’s work entitled Be-Sod Ha-Yahid Ve-Ha-Yahad, ed. Peli (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), 331-400. The essay was recently translated by Lawrence Kaplan and published in Fred Heuman and Bernhard Rosenberg, eds, Theological and Halakhic Reflections on the Holocaust (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1992), 51-117. Citations are from this translation and edition, and republished in Out of the Whirlwind: Essays on Mourning, Suffering and the Human Condition, edited by David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky and Reuven Ziegler (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2003), 86-115. This address was published under the title “The Halakha Approach to Suffering” in The Torah U-Madda Journal 8 (1999); it was also published in Out of the Whirlwind. — 69 —

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II. Fate versus Destiny “Kol Dodi Dofek” contains a sustained argument for the view that the only sound Jewish response to the Holocaust is support for rebuilding the state of Israel. The essay thus not only provides a theological justification for Religious Zionism — its primary goal — but also, at least secondarily, attempts to deal theologically with the Holocaust. For Soloveitchik, however, the Holocaust does not require special theological treatment; his theological response to the Holocaust is but an instance of his theological response to evil in general. Hence, the introductory section of “Kol Dodi Dofek” is a locus for Soloveitchik’s treatment of the problem of evil. Soloveitchik’s basic strategy is to argue that the classical enterprise of theodicy is both misconceived and Jewishly illegitimate. As a strategy, this approach is quite interesting. The usual form that the discussion takes in theological and philosophical literature is: The existence of evil serves as evidence that God does not exist, or that God is not omniscient, or omnipotent, or omni-benevolent. The usual form of the solution is either to deny the existence of evil or to cede ground on claims about God’s omniscience, omnipotence, or omnibenevolence. Soloveitchik, on the other hand, denies the legitimacy of this whole form of discussion. The basis for this denial derives from a fundamental distinction that runs like a thread throughout Soloveitchik’s entire œuvre: the distinction between human existence as fate and as destiny (goral and yi’ud in Hebrew) or, in another pair of contrasting terms, human existence as object and as subject. Soloveitchik defines the goral/fate/ object mode of existence as follows: It is an existence of compulsion … a purely factual existence, one link in a mechanical chain, devoid of meaning, direction, purpose, but subject to the forces of the environment into which the individual has been cast by providence…. The “I” of fate has the image of an object … as made and not as maker. He is fashioned by his encounter with an objective, external environment…. The “I” of fate is caught up in a blind, wholly external dynamic. His being is empty, lacking any inwardness, any independence, any selfhood. Indeed, an “I” of fate is a contradiction — 70 —

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in terms. For how can “I”-awareness and selfhood coexist with pure externality and objectlike being.6

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the goral mode of existence. It may come as a surprise, then, that according to Soloveitchik, philosophical grappling with the problem of evil is an important instance of goral living! Humans in the goral mode, Soloveitchik argues, respond to evil in their lives in two stages. First, there is the stage of utter confusion and perplexity. When evil first strikes the sufferer is crushed, unable to make sense of anything that has befallen him, unable to make sense of life as a whole. Following this initial phase, the sufferer actively seeks to gain insight into his suffering by struggling to understand the cosmos and God’s role in its governance. For the theist, the struggle often leads to a denial of evil, to the claim that all is really good. Soloveitchik argues, however, that from the perspective of human experience, this claim is simply false. While from God’s perspective all suffering might well be justified, and therefore good, human beings are incapable, for metaphysical reasons, of adopting God’s perspective. Therefore, the only humanly possible response to suffering is to acknowledge its evil. To deny the existence of evil may well be metaphysically true, but metaphysical truth is humanly false, and therefore humanly useless. Soloveitchik takes this argument a crucial step further. The problem with theodicy is not only that its classical solutions — as he understood them — are humanly false. They also reflect humankind in its goral or fate mode of existence, in which humans lose their most characteristic qualities. Classical theodicy voids selfhood and inwardness, and those who engage in it live mechanically, acted upon by a “blind, wholly external dynamic,” subject to a fate not of their own making. To pose the problem of evil in metaphysical terms is to be trapped by a dilemma imposed from without. There is a fatal fallacy, then, not only in classical attempts to solve the problem of evil. The fallacy runs much deeper: it rests in the very formulation of the problem in the first place. To formulate the problem metaphysically is to concede too much at the 6

Soloveitchik, “Kol Dodi Dofek,” 52. — 71 —

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outset, for in doing so we allow ourselves to be ensnared by a discourse that is antithetical to our essential humanity. Classical theodicy, then, is the misbegotten child of the metaphysicians. What is the alternative to classical theodicy? And what exactly are the essentially human qualities that the goral mode of existence lacks? The answer emerges from the second form of existence Soloveitchik identifies, that of yi’ud, destiny, or subject. Soloveitchik defines this form as follows: It is an active mode of existence, one wherein man confronts the environment into which he has been thrown, possessed of an understanding of his uniqueness, of his special worth, of his freedom, and of his ability to struggle with his external circumstances without forfeiting either his independence, or his selfhood…. Man is born like an object, dies like an object, but possesses the ability to live like a subject, like a creator, an innovator who can impress his own individual seal upon his life … and enter into a creative, active mode of being. Man’s task in the world, according to Judaism, is to transform fate into destiny … an existence of compulsion, perplexity and muteness into an existence replete with a powerful will, with resourcefulness, daring and imagination.7

The yi’ud dimension of existence, obviously the favored, calls humankind to respond to suffering actively, creatively, and productively, by honestly confronting the horrors of suffering, rather than self-deceptively shoving them under some thick metaphysical carpet. What exactly constitutes such a response? The following question: “What must the sufferer do to live through his suffering?” The theological center of gravity shifts from speculation, which does not help the sufferer, to praxis. “What obligation does suffering impose?”8 These questions are, says Soloveitchik, typically halakhic modes of discourse. “The halakha is concerned with this problem as it is concerned with other problems of permitted and forbidden, liability and exemption. We do not inquire about the hidden ways of the Almighty, but rather about the path wherein man shall walk when suffering strikes…. What ought one to do so that he not perish in his afflictions.”9 7 8 9

Ibid., 54. Ibid., 56-57. Ibid., 56. — 72 —

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The halakhic answer to the question, says Soloveitchik, is simple: “Afflictions come to elevate a person, to purify and sanctify his spirit … the function of suffering is to mend that which is flawed in an individual’s personality.”10 It is important to emphasize here that Soloveitchik’s thesis is not the traditional religious theodicy, namely, that people suffer because they sinned. That formulation, which seeks a causal explanation for suffering, would violate the same canons of response that classical metaphysical systems did. Both remain trapped in the goral mode of being. Both seek explanations. But to look for an explanation is not in itself actively, creatively, and productively to respond to crisis and challenge. Such a yi’ud response emerges only with action. Partially, of course, that action is constituted in spiritual deepening and repentance, and in classic modes of Jewish ritual behavior. Soloveitchik, however, gives repentance a spin of his own by adding a decisive ethical dimension. The sufferer must learn from his own experience to empathize with other sufferers and to act on that empathy. In an extended, lyrical gloss on Job, Soloveitchik argues that Job’s transformation came about because, for the first time, he “prayed for his friends.”11 This emphasis on the ethical serves his argument for Religious Zionism well. The only legitimate response to the Holocaust is action, not speculation, and that action consists in building the state as, among other things, a haven for Jewish sufferers. This ethical emphasis likewise helps to frame Soloveitchik’s theodicy in universal rather than purely parochial terms. It must be recalled that yi’ud and goral are human, and not exclusively Jewish, modes of existence. A yi’ud-ic response, then, should be possible outside the framework of halakha in its narrowest, exclusively Jewish sense; Soloveitchik interprets yi’ud in this broader way. Halakha is but one among many modes of yi’ud living, with primacy given to the ethical moment.

10 11

Ibid. Job 42:10. — 73 —

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III. Critical Reflections This brief summary of Soloveitchik’s response to the problem of evil suggests certain observations regarding the intellectual context of his thesis. First, Soloveitchik presents a theology of suffering, that is, an attempt to make sense of human suffering, rather than a theodicy in the classical sense, that is, a solution to the metaphysical problem of evil. Such an undertaking is hardly uncommon. What is uncommon, however, is the critical (might one say quasi-Kantian?) argument against the very possibility of solving the classical problem: the argument that the very formulation of the problem itself is fatally flawed. Second, the axiological stress on creativity, self and other, and on individuality — a motif which, as I noted above, runs throughout his œuvre — betrays a strong neo-Kantian influence.12 This is hardly surprising, since Soloveitchik studied philosophy in Berlin in the late 1920s, at that time a stronghold of neo-Kantianism. The stress on the ethical as a response to the problem of evil is likewise found in the writings of Hermann Cohen, himself a famous neo-Kantian, and concerning whose writings Soloveitchik wrote his doctoral dissertation.13 So far as I know, however, none of these intellectual forebears makes Soloveitchik’s core argument. This leads me to a third observation, which I will put in the form of a question: To what extent is his argument dependent upon the “New Thinking” in Jewish theology advanced by such seminal figures as Martin Buber14 and Franz Rosenzweig? For better or worse, this 12

13

14

The most striking example of Soloveitchik’s neo-Kantianism is his argument that halakha is a set of a priori-like categories for apprehending the world. For more on Soloveitchik’s neo-Kantianism, see Lawrence Kaplan, “Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Halakha,” Jewish Law Annual 6 (1984), 139-197; and Aviezer Ravitzky, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik On Human Knowledge: Between Maimonidean and NeoKantian Philosophy,” Modern Judaism 6 (1986), 157-188. See Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (New York: F. Ungar, 1972), much of which is devoted to the problem of suffering and evil. Gerald Blidstein has called attention to a distinction Buber draws between passive “peoplehood” and active “nationhood,” which parallels the distinction that Soloveitchik draws in this essay. Buber, however, does not apply these categories to the problem of evil. See Blidstein, “Biblical Models in the Contemporary Thought of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik,” Journal of Literature and Theology 8 (1994), 237-40; and the references to Buber cited therein. See also Michael S. Berger, “U-vikashtem Mi-sham: — 74 —

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existentialist turn has dominated twentieth-century Jewish thought, including Soloveitchik’s own, most obviously in his work written during and since the 1960s. One fairly obvious way to read Soloveitchik’s argument against classical theodicy is from an existentialist perspective. On this reading, Soloveitchik would be arguing that classical theodicy fails the cardinal (existential) test of authenticity. Moreover, its speculative character misconceives human nature and the self, which creates itself, as Sartre and others argued, only in action. While I don’t think that this reading is altogether wrong, I do think that it fails to capture the whole of Soloveitchik’s argument. For consider the following three objections to Soloveitchik’s thesis as it is existentially interpreted. First, isn’t the tum to authenticity, to human as opposed to objective truth, no more than an intellectual dodge? Doesn’t it just avoid the difficult problem of answering the atheologian, who maintains that evil is evidence against the existence of God? Isn’t the existential insistence on action, on yi’ud aspirations as opposed to rational goral-izing, really an ostritchlike reluctance to face the unforgiving rationality of the atheological executioner? Second, while authenticity may be a virtue, speculation per se is hardly a vice. It may very well be that speculation will yield no authentically satisfying human response to the problem of evil and suffering. But why isn’t speculation itself considered an active, creative response to the human condition? Why isn’t the courageous human effort to understand the mysteries of the cosmos itself a reflection of the undauntable human intellect — a point Soloveitchik himself makes in his essay “U-Vikashetem Mi-Sham”?15 Surely thinking, too, is a peculiarly human endeavor and, undertaken with Socratic courage, is hardly a timid and passive one. Third, is it so clear, as Sartre argued, that there is indeed no self but that created in action? Are there not stable personality traits that make up one’s character and stable human characteristics that at least partially constitute human nature?

15

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Response to Martin Buber’s Religious Existentialism,” Modern Judaism 18 (1998), 93-118. This extensive and important monograph has now been translated into English. And from Them You Shall Seek, trans. Noami Goldblum (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2008). — 75 —

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These critical arguments are, admittedly, entirely misguided for the existentialist, and in this regard Soloveitchik himself may have been among them. Those who are not committed existentialists, however, may find themselves troubled by them. Can Soloveitchik’s argument be defended on non-existentialist grounds? I raise this question not only because I wish to explore the broader implications of Soloveitchik’s insight without being exclusively wedded to its possible existentialist origins. I raise it also on interpretive grounds. I am unconvinced that Soloveitchik himself was writing only existentially when he penned these pages, for it seems to me that Soloveitchik’s language and the categories he uses are far more redolent of neo-Kantianism than existentialism. Thus, I am inclined to think that Soloveitchik himself would not have been content with a purely existential reading of his thesis; his core argument speaks in a voice far more reaching than that of the existentialist alone. Perhaps more importantly, however, the Western religionist, Soloveitchik included, is, from the beginning, likely to find him or herself uncomfortable with the Sartrian selfcreation thesis. Is there no human soul that is partially constitutive of the self? Are right and wrong — as Sartre maintained — wholly a product of choice and action? In general, Soloveitchik himself is far more at home with the Kierkegaardian quest for authenticity in choice than the Sartrian stress on self-creation through action.16 The three objections to Soloveitchik and their response demand a closer reading of his own argument, for one must question to what extent these are objections against Soloveitchik, and to what extent they are objections against a wholly existentialist reading of Soloveitchik. Now it must be recalled that Soloveitchik maintains that he is arguing for a Jewish response to the problem of evil. That is, Soloveitchik understood Judaism as halakhocentric. Moreover, it is this understanding of Judaism, he argues, that encourages a particular kind of response to evil, one that is authentic not only to human nature, but to the very teachings of Judaism itself. In Judaism, he writes, “the fundamental question is: What obligation 16

See, for example, Soloveitchik’s later monograph, “Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition 7 (1965), 5-67. — 76 —

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does suffering impose upon man? This question is greatly beloved by Judaism, and she has placed it at the very center of her world of thought.”17 A solution to these criticisms of Soloveitchik would arise from the character of Judaism itself. For Soloveitchick, the insistence upon action rather than speculation or, more profoundly, the insistence that the only adequate human response to the problem of evil is yi’ud-ic rather than goral-ic, derives from the halakhocentric character of Judaism. Judaism’s halakhocentrism, rather than independent existentialist sensibilities alone, yields Soloveitchik’s quasi-Kantian critique of the metaphysical posing of the theodicy problem. It is Judaism’s halakhocentrism that leads Soloveitchik to regard human speculation concerning unsolvable metaphysical problems as vacuous, that grounds his primacy of action over speculation, and that drives his behavioral, rather than metaphysical, response to the problem of evil. The very distinction between two fundamentally different modes of human existence, between “fate” and “destiny” as Soloveitchik defines them, itself grows out of deep Jewish soil.18 I do not mean to suggest that he accepts these conclusions only because his Judaism teaches them. No doubt these teachings reinforce and sharpen existentialist sensibilities and a neo-Kantian philosophical worldview that resonate deeply within Soloveitchik the person. Nevertheless, his justification for those sensibilities, that which legitimates them, is for him at least in part their Jewishness. If Soloveitchik is correct in his characterization of Judaism, moreover, then one would have an answer to the criticisms leveled above. 17 18

Soloveitchik, “Kol Dodi Dofek,” 56. The theme of what I am calling halakhocentrism (following Isadore Twersky) is a recurrent motif in Soloveitchik’s thought and it is explored in virtually all of his major works, especially Halakhic Man (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983), passim; and U-vikashtem Mi-sham. Soloveitchik again and again, in varying ways and contexts, argues for the superiority of what he regards as the this-worldly, obligationcentered quality of Judaism, over more purely spiritual, other-worldly religious traditions. It is hardly surprising then that this foundational picture of Judaism, and the equally foundational picture of humankind and its summum bonum that flow from it, would be pressed into service in the construction of a theodicy.

— 77 —

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This way of reading Soloveitchik rests his exposition on fundamentally Jewish grounds, and it provides a particularly Jewish spin to his response to the problem of evil. But this interpretation of Soloveitchik in turn raises two new problems. First, isn’t there a basic fallacy in his argument? Is it logically coherent to employ Jewish premises to solve the problem of evil? Doesn’t that beg the very question that the atheologian raises? If evil exists in human experience, as Soloveitchik affirms, then does that not constitute evidence against the traditional Jewish conception of God? And, if so, how can I appeal to traditional Jewish conceptions to defend belief in him? If there is good evidence against God’s existence, traditionally conceived, then simply asserting that Judaism provides reasons for sticking my head in existentialist sand does not get me very far. Of course, if the evidence for this view does not derive from Judaism per se, but from existential reflections about authenticity and truth, then of course the vicious circle is avoided. But then Soloveitchik would also be open to the three objections leveled above. In short, we are caught on the very sharp horns of a dilemma. A second question is also raised by an interpretation of Soloveitchik’s response as particularly Jewish. Is he correct in characterizing Judaism as centered primarily around action rather than speculation? Surely Judaism possesses a speculative tradition in both the philosophical and especially mystical spheres. Is his a willful misreading of Judaism?

IV. A Jewish “Internalism” I leave Soloveitchik temporarily to consider several recent studies in analytic philosophy of religion that look to the resources of religious traditions themselves for solutions to the problem of evil and, in so doing, avoid the sterility characteristic of much of classical theodicy. According to these studies, the atheologian is out to prove the irrationality of the theist’s position on grounds of its inconsistency. That is, the atheologian maintains that belief in an omni-benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient being is inconsistent with empirical evidence that evil exists. The usual strategies for solving this problem, as noted above, have been to deny the existence of evil on metaphysical grounds, — 78 —

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or to qualify in some way one or more of God’s “omni-” attributes. Are these the only strategies available? Might there not be resources, beliefs, or attitudes within a particular faith tradition that themselves eliminate the purported inconsistency? The argument of the atheologian will work only if he or she demonstrates an inconsistency among beliefs that the theist in fact holds. If the theist doesn’t hold those beliefs, then the atheologian has failed to demonstrate any irrationality. Consider, for example, the following imaginary atheological argument against Judaism: Judaism must be false because it maintains that God maximizes aesthetic pleasure, but empirical evidence shows that aesthetic pleasure in our world is not maximal. Now it is perfectly obvious that this argument fails, since one of its premises is false. Judaism does not, after all, maintain that God is an aesthetic pleasure maximizer. Therefore we have no evidence that Judaism is false. In an important essay, Marilyn McCord Adams, who developed and popularized this way of thinking about the problem of evil, formulates the point this way: “Where the internal coherence of a system is at stake, successful arguments for its inconsistency must draw on premises internal to that system or obviously acceptable to its adherents.”19 While the strategy limned here, which might be called “internalist,” is designed specifically to address the atheologian, it highlights an important feature of religious belief systems generally: they provide a comprehensive picture of the world to their adherents. Canons of logic are surely relevant to those who are both religious and rationalist. Nevertheless, what counts as problematic for the system depends upon what the system itself teaches. While this might seem a truism, its implications are far reaching.20 The internalist strategy outlined thus far appears promising 19

20

Marilyn McCord Adams, “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,” reprinted in Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams, eds., The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 210. The “internalist” approach discussed here coheres well with (although does not entail, nor is it entailed by) George Lindbeck’s “cultural linguistic” model for understanding religion. See his The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post-Liberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984). For a discussion of Lindbeck’s views see George Lindbeck and Bruce D. Marshall, eds., Theology and Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1990). — 79 —

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enough as a strategy, and indeed it is by now widely acknowledged. Troubles arise, however, when the Jewish philosopher reads on. For the applications of this strategy in the literature smack strongly of Christian values and beliefs, altogether foreign to Judaism. Thus, McCord Adams, who in her essay addresses the problem of horrendous evils like the Holocaust, argues that certain goods “engulf horrendous evils and are incommensurate with them. These include the good of identifying with Christ, who himself, Christians believe, suffered horrendous evil for all humankind; the good of heavenly beatitude that is the reward for suffering horrendously; and the vision of God that may come by way of horrendous suffering.21 Based on the autobiographical writings of Simone Weil, Diogenes Allen likewise argues that suffering can yield the most perfect experience of Godly love to which humans have access, and that this good is incommensurate with the evil of suffering.22 Eleonore Stump suggests that evil is what she calls the mirror of good, that it is only the experience of evil that yields the most profound appreciation and experience of God’s very goodness.23 All of these approaches share a common Christian appreciation for suffering following upon the model sufferer, Jesus himself. For exactly this reason, all of these approaches might seem problematic to the non-Christian, just as it is foreign to the spirit of Judaism, in which the predominant view is that suffering is bad, as Soloveitchik himself observes along with many others. But if the approaches developed by Marilyn McCord Adams, Diogenes Allen, and Eleonore Stump are Jewishly and — some might even wish to argue — morally problematic, the overall strategy is not. In fact, I think that the best way to read “Kol Dodi Dofek” is as a precursor to, and a Jewish version of, internalism. Halakhocentric Judaism teaches, according to Soloveitchik, that to be truly human is to act to make oneself and the world better, and not to ponder fruitlessly the metaphysical mysteries of the cosmic economy. The very posing of the question in metaphysical terms betrays

21 22

23

McCord Adams, “Horrendous Evils,” 218-219. Diogenes Allen, “Natural Evil and the Love of God,” reprinted in Adams and Adams, 189-221. Eleonore Stump, “The Mirror of Evil,” in Morris, God and the Philosophers, 235-247. — 80 —

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a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be a human being, indeed, makes no human sense at all. But, the atheologian might object, this is irrational. For, on the one hand, you admit that evil exists, and, on the other, you affirm belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God. These propositions are inconsistent. If you accept the basic standards of rationality, then you must qualify or deny one or more of these beliefs. To this objection Soloveitchik would respond: Judaism teaches that to require a rational resolution of this inconsistency is itself irrational. For human rationality — the only sort to which humans have access — mandates a behavioral, not a metaphysical, response. The formulation of the problem as metaphysical rather than experiential is, according to Judaism, a profound category mistake. Therefore, there is no irrationality to the Jewish belief system. But, the atheologian would in turn object, haven’t you committed a logical fallacy here by begging the question against theistic belief through appeal to a Jewish, and therefore theistic, value? To this objection Soloveitchik would respond in true internalist spirit: Your atheological argument rests on the claim that the theistic system is irrational, either because it affirms inconsistent beliefs or because it begs the question. But I have just shown you that the Jewish belief system neither affirms inconsistent beliefs nor begs the question, and is not irrational for the reasons you adduce. No one requires me to accept the Jewish belief system. But if I do, for reasons of my own, then I am not guilty of your charge of irrationality. From this perspective, Soloveitchik’s strategy for solving the problem of evil makes a real contribution not only to Jewish philosophy, but to universal theological and philosophical discussions of the problem of evil. For Soloveitchik, in effect, provides a characteristically Jewish formulation of internalism, one that does not depend on what for non-Christians may be a morally problematic affirmation of the value of suffering, especially suffering from horrendous evil. It is a solution, moreover, that emerges from a profound conception of what it means to be a human being, on the basis of which it is possible to render a quasi-Kantian critique of the very possibility of the classical enterprise of theodicy. — 81 —

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Nevertheless, one final question remains. Is Soloveitchik correct in his interpretation of Judaism? Isn’t there a considerable speculative tradition in Judaism? Doesn’t he understate the importance of that tradition, while overstating the relative importance of halakha? This question is bound up with numerous historical, theological, and ideological controversies. Two points, however, should be made. Historically, at least up until the modern period, Judaism, in comparison with Islam and especially with Christianity, strongly emphasized in all its varieties the behavioral, as the early Christians who rejected Judaism in part for this very reason correctly recognized. Second, Soloveitchik’s thesis about the primacy of yi ‘ud over goral in Judaism is at least plausible and may indeed be absolutely right. This plausibility, at the very least, should give the atheologian pause. That too is a considerable achievement.

— 82 —

----------------------  Chapter IV. Attitudes Toward Pleasure in Jewish Thought ----------------------

--------------------------------- Chapter IV  ----------------------------------

Attitudes Toward Pleasure in Jewish Thought : A Typological Proposal* I. Introduction In this essay I seek to develop a classificatory framework for analyzing attitudes towards bodily pleasure, and then to apply that framework to Jewish thought. My first concern is to clarify and formulate the kinds of positions one could take towards bodily pleasure. Given the typology formulated, the Jewish tradition is examined for evidence of the extent to which Jewish sources over the years have instantiated the different types. It is worthy of note that the very same exercise could presumably be done for other religious traditions as well, since the framework is tradition-neutral. Insofar as I do make positive claims about Judaism, I am of course engaging in a limited form of intellectual history. In this regard several important caveats must be issued. First, it is simply impossible within the constraints of an essay whose first purpose is analytic to explore fully and satisfactorily all the nuances of the various sources cited here, as it is of course impossible to survey all of classical Jewish literature. Moreover, the texts cited derive largely from the medieval period, and tend to be primarily philosophical/ethical in nature. This was done quite consciously, since for the analytic purposes of the essay, clarity of formulation is critical, and such clarity is most often found during *

I am grateful to the American Jewish Committee for its support of much of the research associated with this paper. Earlier versions of the paper were read before the Association for Jewish Studies Annual Convention in Boston and the New York Jewish Theology Group. I benefited much from the questions and comments addressed to me on each of those occasions. Dr. Jacob J. Schacter, editor of the volume in which this article first appeared, made numerous helpful comments and suggestions as well. — 83 —

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the medieval period and in the philosophical genre. Finally, it isn’t entirely certain that Jewish thinkers during the biblical or rabbinic periods consciously thought of bodily pleasure as a fundamental value or religious category (positive or negative). They almost certainly did think about bodily pleasure, but we have no direct evidence of the role the category played in their thinking. Despite these caveats, a typological analysis can do much towards clarifying the issue in question by suggesting certain conceptual links between various positions and, most importantly, by illuminating the fundamental, pretheoretic intuitions which may have given rise to them.1 These, then, are the aims of this essay. As will be seen, the organizing principle of the scheme proposed revolves around the question of whether bodily pleasure is an inherent evil, an inherent good, or value-neutral. I suggest that six conceptually distinct schools of thought have evolved through the western intellectual tradition, what I call Extreme Asceticism, Moderate Asceticism, Ascetic Neutralism, Liberal Neutralism, Liberalism and Hedonism. I shall treat each of these schools of thought separately, in the context of their relationship to the Jewish tradition.

II. Extreme Asceticism The Extreme Ascetic affirms two logically distinct themes. First, he holds that:

1. Sensual pleasure is an evil. Such a view is associated with Gnosticism, Manichaeism and other dualistic world-views. The Extreme Ascetic tends to believe that there exists some higher dimension of good in the universe, i.e., God, and that all material objects are very far removed from that dimension of good; indeed, they stand in direct opposition to it. To the extent that a person experiences sensual pleasure in a material object, he is immersed in that experience and therefore divorced from all that is spiritual and good. Thus, experiencing pleasure is an evil. This view, in 1

See chapters X and XI in this volume. — 84 —

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turn, leads the Extreme Ascetic to affirm a second proposition:

2. All actions which make a person experience pleasure ought to be avoided entirely. The Extreme Ascetic reasons that if pleasure is a bad thing, it is wrong to do anything which would make him experience it. Thus, the Extreme Ascetic would eat and drink only enough to keep alive. He would live in abject poverty, sleep in uncomfortable quarters, and wear uncomfortable rags for clothing. He would avoid all sexual relations, and generally live a life of great physical discomfort. In his view, this lifestyle brings him closer to the all-spiritual God. With several minor, if noteworthy, exceptions,2 Extreme Asceticism never took root in Judaism. The reason is straightforward. Traditional Judaism had always required pleasurable actions. For example, each male Jew is obligated by the Torah to have children. And again, it is a biblical mitzvah to rejoice on the Sabbath and holidays which, according to the rabbinic tradition, includes eating meat, drinking wine, and even having sexual relations with one’s spouse. Thus, stretching all the way back to the biblical period, the basic requirements of Jewish law are inconsistent with the behavior advocated by the Extreme Ascetic. It is worth pointing out here that certain unusually stringent ascetic practices have surfaced periodically over the course of Jewish history. I am referring here to ascetic penances, i.e., the active self-infliction of physical pain for purposes of penance or self-improvement. These practices, which have included extensive fasting, rolling in the snow, or self-flagellation, were endorsed in the teachings of, amongst others, the thirteenth-century Ashkenazi pietists,3 kabbalistic teachers of the sixteenth-century,4 and nineteenth- and twentieth-century mussar

2

3

4

E.g., the Rechabites in Jeremiah 35, the Essenes, and the Sect of the Therapeutae, mentioned in Philo. See, for example, R. Judah the Pious, Sefer Hasidim (Jerusalem: Sifre Vahrman, 1969), no. 19 (cited below), 50, among others. See R. J. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), Chapters 4 and 7. — 85 —

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masters.5 Solomon Maimon, in his autobiography, refers to such practices in the eighteenth-century as well without, however, giving them his personal endorsement.6 From a logical point of view, Extreme Asceticism by no means entails a doctrine of ascetic penance. The claim of those who engage in such behavior, that pain is at least sometimes good, clearly does not follow from the Extreme Ascetic position that pleasure is an evil. To say that pleasure is evil is not to say that pain is good. Moreover, and of special importance, one can affirm a doctrine of ascetic penance and yet deny Extreme Asceticism. That is, one can concede that certain pleasurable behavior is permitted or required; one can even deny that pleasure is inherently evil, and yet still maintain that ascetic penances are good. This is because self-mortification as a penitential act would, in this view, be good because repentance is good, and ascetic penances help achieve repentance. The special circumstances of sin, and the special role of punishment in God’s forgiveness of sin, have a logic all their own. A fine example of this distinction appears in Sefer Hasidim by R. Judah the Pious, one of the leading Ashkenazi pietists in the thirteenthcentury. He writes: One who commits adultery … if it is during the winter season … he should break the ice on top of the river and sit in the water up to his mouth or nostrils, according to the duration of the sin…. And during the summer he should sit in a ditch in which there are ants.7

We have, thus, a very graphic portrayal of self-mortification for the purpose of penitence. Nevertheless, the very same book contains the following endorsement of sexual relations in the marital context: The Torah did not forbid a man to have pleasure from his wife in any way he wants, lest he desire another woman. A man should do with his wife 5

6 7

E.g., the Novaredok School, founded by Rabbi Yosef Y. Hurvitz. See Dov Katz, Tenuat ha-Mussar (1978), IV, 252-261. S. Maimon, An Autobiography (New York: Schocken Books, 1947), 43-45. Op. cit., n. 3. — 86 —

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as it says in Masekhet Kallah (i.e., “a person can do whatever he wishes with his wife”).8

III. Moderate Asceticism The Moderate and Extreme Ascetic both agree that:

1. Sensual pleasure is an evil. The Moderate Ascetic, however, infers that:

2. All pleasurable actions ought to be avoided to the extent possible. Some actions, such as the mitzvot mentioned above, or those consistent with the minimal necessities of life, are permissible according to the Moderate Ascetic. I shall soon explain why Moderate Asceticism has not been popular in Judaism. Nevertheless, it does have its extremely influential proponents. One of the clearest formulations of this position appears in no less a work than Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. In the course of a discussion about the personal properties of the prophet, Maimonides writes: By then he will have detached his thought from, and abolished his desire for, bestial things — I mean preference for the pleasures of eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, and, in general, of the sense of touch, with regard to which Aristotle gave a clear explanation in the Ethics, saying that this sense is a disgrace to us. How fine is what he said, and how true it is that it is a disgrace! For we have it in so far as we are animals like other beasts, and nothing that belongs to the notion of humanity pertains to it.9

In a later passage, Maimonides supplements this view by adding:

8

9

Ibid., no. 1111. While in this passage R. Judah supports uninhibited sexual relations in the marital context (within, of course, the confines of such laws as niddah), he does not endorse them with much enthusiasm. A stronger endorsement, however, does appear in the Bologna edition of Sefer Hasidim (Jerusalem: Mekitse Nirdamim, 1987), no. 509. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by S. Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), II:36, 371. — 87 —

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Consequently, one’s recourse to these things (i.e., eating, drinking, and copulation) should be reduced to the extent possible: one should do them in secret, should feel sorrowful because one does them, and not have them spoken of and discoursed about; no gathering should be held with a view to these things. A man should be in control of all these impulses, restrict his efforts in relation to them, and admit only that which is indispensable. He should take as his end that which is the end of man qua man: namely, solely the mental representation of the intelligibles.10

This passage is of great interest because Maimonides’ language is unusually strong. It also is certainly interesting that one of the few classic formulations of a position which is clearly that of the Moderate Ascetic draws explicitly from a non-Jewish philosophical source — Aristotle. A second example of Moderate Asceticism — or perhaps set of examples — may be found in those medieval Jewish thinkers whose ideas were influenced by Sufism, a school of Islamic mystics with a strong ascetic current. These thinkers, amongst whose ranks would be included (to one extent or another) R. Bahya ibn Pakuda, R. Abraham Maimuni (the son of Maimonides), R. Abraham He-Hasid, and R. David Maimuni, believed that the physical world is distant from God, and is a barrier to the soul in its goal of achieving pure spirituality which is a kind of intense longing and love for God. All physical involvements are therefore to be avoided to the extent possible. R. David Maimuni, a fourteenth-century descendant of Maimonides, puts it this way in his Moreh ha-Perishut: Abstinence is necessary in order to establish spirituality and erase the physical. This is because establishing physical forms and that which accompanies them in the soul causes the erasure of the lights from the soul.11

Elsewhere he says: 10

11

Ibid., III:8, 432. Note my mention later in this paper of the apparently different position on asceticism taken by Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah and Shemoneh Perakim. Translated from Arabic into Hebrew by Yoseph Yanon (Fanton) (Jerusalem: Mekitse Nirdamim, 1987), 57. — 88 —

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An abstainer [parush] is one who takes a nazirite’s vow from the pleasant things of the world and its enjoyments, and distances himself entirely, and turns from everything that is not God. Abstinence is seclusion and separating oneself.12

Throughout this work, R. David Maimuni stresses the ascent of the soul to God, and the abandonment of the physical world and all its pleasures, which he calls a “mask” which blocks God’s presence in the soul. The author of Moreh ha-Perishut, like R. Abraham Maimuni in his work Ha-Maspik LeOvdei Hashem, specifically cites Sufi sources for some of his views. Thus we find yet again that a Moderate Ascetic — and there are not many in the classical sources — explicitly draws from sources foreign to Judaism.13 From the intellectual historian’s perspective, it is perhaps not surprising that some of the clearest formulations of the most ascetic positions found in the Jewish tradition are medieval, a period in world history when asceticism was prevalent. Were Maimonides and others then guilty of projecting an alien medieval situation and philosophical bias onto a completely inhospitable Judaism? The answer is a qualified no. It is important to point out that ascetic tendencies existed within normative Judaism long before the medieval period. Quite a few rabbinic texts, written up to a thousand years beforehand, appear to advocate ascetic values. To cite just two examples from the Talmud, R. Yitzhak, a second-third generation amora from Palestine, is reported to have said: “Whoever takes pleasure from a permissible (i.e., non-mitzvah mandated) meal will in the end go into exile” (Pesahim 49a). Similarly, 12 13



Ibid., 15. While Bahya ibn Pakuda too draws from Sufi sources, and articulates views regarding the physical world not very dissimilar from that of the Maimons, it is not clear that he is a Moderate Ascetic, as a close reading of his section on abstinence will show. For more background on Jewish Sufism, see F. Rosenthal, “A Judeo-Arabic Work under Sufic Influence,” Hebrew Union College Annual 15 (1940), 433f; S. D. Goitein, “A Jewish Addict to Sufism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 44 (1953), 37-49; idem., “Rabbenu Avraham ben ha-Rambam ve-Hugo he-Hasidi,” Tarbitz 33 (1963-64), 181-197; idem., “A Treatise in Defence of the Pietists by Abraham Maimonides,” Journal of Jewish Studies 16 (1965), 105-114; G. Cohen, ‘’The Soteriology of Abraham Maimuni,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 35 (1967), 75-98; 36 (1968), 33-56; A. Lazaroff, “Bahya’s Asceticism Against its Rabbinic and Islamic Background,” Journal of Jewish Studies 21 (1973), 11-38; and Yanon’s introduction to his edition of Moreh ha-Perishut. — 89 —

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Rabbi Elazar, a second generation Babylonian amora, is quoted as follows: “Whoever sits in fasting is considered holy” (Taanit 11a). In an earlier text, the baraita which is the sixth chapter of the Ethics of the Fathers, the following teaching appears: This is the way of the Torah: to eat bread with salt, to drink water by measure, to sleep upon the ground and live a life of hardship (Avot VI:4).

Other such views are recorded in various places in rabbinic literature.14 Thus, Maimonides had grounds for claiming that they were operating safely within the parameters of normative Judaism. Why then is Moderate Asceticism an unpopular position within Judaism? First, such views are not extremely widespread in the classical sources. Even Rabbi Elazar’s position, cited above, is disputed on the same page in the Talmud by Samuel, who holds that whoever fasts regularly is a sinner, not a saint. Indeed, one could make a good case for interpreting most, if not all, of the pro-ascetic statements in the Talmud as representing an ideal for the scholar, rather than a normative principle intended to govern the daily behavior of the average Jew. Second, the pro-ascetic statements recorded in rabbinic sources are consistent with Ascetic Neutralism, a more liberal view quite different from that of the Moderate Ascetic, as I shall soon spell out. Therefore, strictly speaking, even pro-ascetic rabbinic sources cannot be shown to fall into the Moderate Ascetic camp. Third, and of special importance, the weight of the biblical tradition rests heavily against the Moderate Ascetic, as it does against any version of asceticism. It has often been claimed, and rightly so, that the Torah is a very this-worldly text. Aside from the glaring absence of any mention of olam ha-ba, the world to come, an omission which greatly troubled the Rabbis,15 so much of the good life portrayed in the Torah is a very material 14

15

For a fuller discussion of asceticism in rabbinic literature, see E. E. Urbach, “Askesis ve-Yesurin be-Torat Hazal,” Yitzhak Baer Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1960), 48-68, and the more recent and finely nuanced essay by Steven Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible Through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 253-88. See the discussion in E. E. Urbach, Hazal: Emunot ve-Deot (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 384-92, concerning the tension in rabbinic sources about the locus of God’s — 90 —

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one. In blessing after blessing, reward is presented in physical terms. For example, if the Israelite keeps God’s commandments, he is told: … then I will give your rains in their season, and the land shall yield her produce and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage unto the sowing time; and ye shall eat your bread until you have enough and dwell in your land in safety (Leviticus 26:3-13).

There can be no question that biblical literature on the whole is far from ascetic. Thus, Moderate Asceticism, and indeed any version of asceticism, must contend with the evidence of the Torah. How then did rabbinic asceticism find its way into the tradition? We saw that the Moderate Asceticism of Maimonides was partially rooted in certain rabbinic sources. Where did those Rabbis get it? The Rabbis themselves would probably answer that such biblical institutions as Yom Kippur and nezirut represent only the most minimal of ascetic practices, rather than the maximum allowed by law. They would argue that for practical reasons alone the Torah felt it could not enforce long-term strict asceticism, and so it was forced to compromise its ascetic ideal by limiting ascetic practices to Yom Kippur and nezirut. The Rabbis would thus claim that they are making real what the Torah held as ideal. The intellectual historian would add that the Roman persecutions, culminating in the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people, had a great deal to do with the emergence of rabbinic asceticism, limited as it might have been.16 In addition, while the worldly, downto-earth values of the Torah make sense for a pre-exilic people living in comfort on their land and with their own Temple and agricultural festivals, the Jews in exile needed a different religious orientation. What they did was to search for values latent in their tradition, such as asceticism and Torah study, which did not depend upon possession of 16

reward for the performance of good deeds. The Rabbis themselves were aware of this: “After the destruction of the Temple there increased ascetics amongst the Jews who did not eat meat or drink wine” (Baba Batra 60b). I am grateful to Professor Michael Shmidman for reminding me of the relevance of this passage. — 91 —

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the Temple or the land. In addition to the problem the biblical texts pose for the Moderate Ascetic, he must contend with yet another problem, a conceptual one. If pleasure is an evil (premise 1), why then does the Torah command the Jew to perform actions which, by their very nature, are pleasurable? The Moderate Ascetic must somehow account for the existence of mitzvot requiring actions which, in his view, ought to be considered evil. Several strategies are available to him. He might maintain that while God wants the Jew to perform those mitzvot, He wants him to do so with an absolute minimum of sensual pleasure. Indeed, he might argue that at least part of the reason God revealed those mitzvot might have been to provide an opportunity for self-sanctification through the suppression of pleasurable sensations while engaging in pleasurable actions. The Moderate Ascetic might also claim that for some cosmic reason, unknown or unknowable with any certainty to man, God created a material world and a physical man to inhabit it. The mitzvot in question are a necessary concession to the physical dimension of man. Finally, and perhaps most plausibly, the Moderate Ascetic might suggest that man’s cosmic role is to sanctify his own sensuality by putting it to divine use. Such a view finds its most striking formulation in Lurianic mysticism and those thinkers influenced by Luria’s ideas. Hasidut, starting in the eighteenth-century, and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook in the twentieth-century, placed great emphasis on this doctrine.17 In any event, the Moderate Ascetic must somehow deal with what appears to be a deep inconsistency between so much of Jewish life and texts, and his own view that pleasure is an evil. It is exactly over the issue of whether pleasure is an intrinsic evil that the Neutralist, and of course the Liberal, part company with the Moderate Ascetic.

17

For R. Kook, see his Orot ha-Kodesh (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1985), II, 292293; III, 136; idem., Arfilei Tohar (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1983), 114-17. For various Hasidic sources, see M. Kasher, ed., Perakim be-Mahshevet Hasidut (Jerusalem: Mekhon Torah Shelemah, 1972), 59-61, 66-68, 120-122. — 92 —

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IV. Neutralism: Some General Remarks The Neutralist denies that pleasure in itself is either good or evil. He maintains that pleasure is unlike justice or kindness, for example, which are good in and of themselves, or unfairness and meanness, which are evil in and of themselves. Pleasure itself, the Neutralist maintains, is value-free. Its value is instrumental, derived from the ends for which it is a means. More precisely, pleasure derives its value exclusively from the consequences of pleasurable activities, or from the motive the person has for engaging in them. For example, if a person seeks to engage in pleasurable activity as a means of forgetting about his obligations to God or to other persons, then, for him, pleasure is an evil. On the other hand, if a person engages in pleasurable activity because he believes he is doing God’s will and in so doing is sanctifying the world about him, then experiencing pleasure is a good thing for him. It all depends upon either consequences or motive. To summarize, the Neutralist affirms the following three theses:

1. Pleasure in itself is neither good nor bad. 2. Pleasurable activities are also, in themselves, neither good nor evil. 3. Pleasurable activities derive their value only instrumentally, either by considering the consequences of the pleasurable activities (Consequentialist Neutralism), or by considering the intentions of the person engaging in the pleasurable activity (Intentionalist Neutralism). As far as I can tell, Neutralism is the most popular position in the Jewish tradition. A majority of the classical texts are either clearly Neutralist, or at least consistent with Neutralism, and this position, therefore, requires extra attention. As it happens, Neutralists fall into two categories, those that tend towards asceticism, and those that are more liberal. I shall call the former Ascetic Neutralists, the latter Liberal Neutralists, and discuss each position separately. — 93 —

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V. Ascetic Neutralism The Ascetic Neutralist maintains that pleasurable activities generally have undesirable consequences, and are therefore to be minimized. Because he does not believe that pleasure itself is evil, his ascetic tendencies may sometimes be a bit less emphatic than those of the Moderate Ascetic. What are the concerns of the Ascetic Neutralist? Simply put, he believes that pleasure tempts. The biological impulse for pleasure at best distracts man from God, His Torah and mitzvot. At worst, it can lead man directly to sin. The sybarite is far too busy pursuing pleasure to pay attention to higher human values. Indeed, his need for pleasure might be powerful enough even to drive him outside the boundaries of moral behavior. Many of the clearest formulations of Ascetic Neutralism appear in medieval and early modern sources, although many earlier rabbinic texts seem to imply much the same idea. Indeed, it seems to me that the great majority of pro-ascetic rabbinic sources are best explained as examples of Ascetic Neutralism. Although many examples of this position can be found in the classical sources, I shall focus on a selection from the Ba’alei ha-Nefesh (“Masters of the Soul”) by R. Abraham Ben David of Posquieres, popularly known as the Rabad, the famous twelfth-century critic of Maimonides’ monumental book of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah. Although short in length, the book has had a substantial long-term impact on subsequent halakhic discussions of sexuality.18 Indeed, it includes an entire chapter on the subject, called “Gates of Holiness.” Aside from its general importance to the halakhist and intellectual historian, it is particularly important for our purposes, since Rabad’s discussion of sexual pleasure deals not only with his views about the consequences of pleasurable sexual activity, but also with his views about proper motives for engaging in such activity. His treatment of 18

See Isadore Twersky, Rabad of Posquieres (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 92-97.

— 94 —

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the subject thus achieves a certain subtlety and complexity. Rabad begins his discussion by proposing an ascetic ideal, but for consequentialist reasons: Now you should understand and know that man can not achieve this quality (of sanctity of the heart) unless he abstains from a portion of that which is permissible to him, and fences himself with the fence of abstinence, and abstains from things which are permissible to him because they are a path to habitual sin…. All this (sexual) abstinence serves as a fence against sin, so that the desire for illicit sex does not gain strength … (because) if, after satisfying his desire with that which is permissible, he can no longer find permissible things, his desire will seek the forbidden.19

Following his advocacy of at least some form of asceticism for consequentialist reasons, Rabad then considers the question of how one should approach sexual relations with one’s spouse, considering that on the one hand it is a mitzvah, and on the other hand it is a pleasurable activity which, as he argued above, can have dangerous consequences. And now we must know and discern what the right intention is for engaging in this action (i.e., sexual activity), and what kind of intention corrupts it, and causes the person to lose his reward (for fulfilling a mitzvah), and brings upon him evil instead of good. I have inquired into and analyzed this issue, with my limited intellect, and I have found that the action can have only four (justifiable) intentions.20

These intentions include propagation, satisfying a spouse’s sexual needs, improving the health of a fetus, and preventing oneself from sinning. Where these four legitimate motives are absent, Rabad concludes, and the intention of the one who engages in sexual activity is solely for the purpose of personal pleasure, then he comes perilously close to sustaining moral and religious loss. And if he purposely arouses himself, then this is “the idea of the evil inclination,” and it will lead him to sin. 19 20

Rabad, Baalei ha-Nefesh (Warsaw, 1882), 68. Ibid. — 95 —

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While Rabad projects an ascetic ideal, he arrives at the conclusion that when performed for the right reasons, pleasurable activity can be of real religious value. His Neutralism allows him to consider the consequences of sexual activity which concern him, as well as the motives for engaging in sex, which, when appropriate, are religiously redeeming. Rabad provides a good example of how the Neutralist’s asceticism can be somewhat tempered by a consideration of the right motive for engaging in pleasurable activity. The Liberal Neutralist, on the other hand, whose position we shall next consider, focuses largely on right motives; he does not share the Ascetic Neutralist’s overriding worry about the possible evil consequences of pleasure.

VI. Liberal Neutralism The Ascetic Neutralist and the Liberal Neutralist differ in their empirical estimation about the likely consequences of pleasurable activity. While the Ascetic Neutralist believes that it is likely to lead to evil, the Liberal Neutralist appears not to share this concern, at least not to the same degree. For him, the key question is motive: we must consider why the person wants to engage in his pleasurable behavior before we decide whether what he did was good or bad. Oddly enough, one of the clearest formulations of the Liberal Neutralist position is that of Maimonides, this time in his Mishneh Torah. In this work, Maimonides apparently takes a different position on this issue than in his Guide of the Perplexed. The reasons for the shift, if indeed there is a shift at all, have been much discussed by the commentators, but this is not a primary concern of ours. What is clear is that the language of Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah is that of the Liberal Neutralist. Maimonides first roundly criticizes those who adopt an ascetic lifestyle: Possibly a person may say: “Since envy, cupidity and ambition are evil qualities to cultivate and lead to a man’s ruin, I will avoid them to the uttermost and seek their contraries.” A person following this principle, will not eat meat, or drink wine, or marry, or dwell in a decent home, — 96 —

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or wear comely apparel, but will clothe himself in sackcloth and coarse wool like the idolaters’ priests. This too is a wrong way, not to be followed. Whoever persists in such a course is termed a sinner. The sages accordingly enjoined us that we should only refrain from that which the Torah has expressly withdrawn from our use.21

Next, Maimonides formulates what he regards as the proper attitude towards pleasurable activities such as eating, drinking and sex: Man should direct his heart and all his actions only for the aim of knowing God, and his sitting, arising and speaking should all be considered in that light. How is this? When he does business or engages in work so that he might earn wages, his purpose should not only be to acquire money, but he should do these things so that he can acquire what his body needs — food and drink, as well as a place to live and marriage to a woman. So too when he eats, drinks and cohabits, he should not intend to do these things only for the sake of pleasure, to the extent that he eats and drinks only that which is sweet to the taste, or engages in sex for the purpose of pleasure. Rather, he should eat and drink only for the purpose of making his body and limbs healthy…. Therefore … he should not engage in intercourse when he desires it, but only when he knows that he must for reasons of health emit seed, or for the purpose of propagation.22

Maimonides refines his view that the right motive for engaging in pleasurable activities is for health, by adding in the next paragraph: A man should aim to maintain physical health and vigor in order that his soul may be upright, in a condition to know God. For it is impossible for one to understand the sciences and meditate upon them when he is hungry or sick, or when any of his limbs is aching.23

It is in these last two paragraphs that Maimonides’ Liberal Neutralism 21

22 23

Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Deot 3:1, translated in Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader (New York: Behrman House, 1972), 56-57. See, too, idem., Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 459-86, and the works cited there. See also Maimonides’ Eight Chapters (Shemoneh Perakim), Chapter 4, and his Commentary to the Mishnah, Avot II:12, where he develops a very similar (although not altogether identical) thesis. Ibid., III:2 (translation mine). Ibid., III:3, translated in I. Twersky, op. cit. — 97 —

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is most clearly formulated. Eating, drinking and sexual relations derive their value instrumentally, as means to the higher end of coming to know God. To the extent that one’s motive in engaging in these activities is to make himself healthy and better able to know God, those activities are good. To the extent that engaging in them impedes one’s ability to know God, they are bad. That eating, drinking and sex are pleasurable is largely incidental for Maimonides. The pleasure they generate plays no essential role in the value we assign to them. In theory, one could eat only the most pleasurable foods in the world, or take the greatest pleasure in sex, provided that one’s intentions are good (as Maimonides defines it), and what one does is good for one’s health. It should be pointed out, however, that applying this theory to real life would result in a more ascetic life than might be expected. This is so because of the overriding weight attached to good motive, as defined by Maimonides. If pleasure is not a good in itself, and if the inviolable test for engaging in pleasurable activities is whether or not they will be conducive to knowing God, then we are not likely to pay much attention to their pleasurableness. We will rigorously seek to do all and only those things that will help us achieve our real objective in life. Pleasure will likely fall by the wayside. Thus the theoretical difference which appears to divide Maimonides of the Mishneh Torah from Maimonides of the Guide fades somewhat in real-life practice. The Liberal Neutralist position is found in such widely divergent works as the Tanya, written by the eighteenth-century founder of Lubavitch Hasidism, R. Shne’ur Zalman of Lyadi, one of the most important figures in Hasidic thought,24 as well as earlier in the Kuzari, written by the great eleventh-twelfth-century poet and philosopher, R. Yehuda Halevi.25 Here, however, I should like to focus on yet another source for this view, that of the influential Iggeret ha-Kodesh (‘The Letter of Holiness”). This thirteenth-century work by an anonymous SpanishJewish mystic contains a striking critique of the Maimonidean position on pleasure formulated in the Guide of the Perplexed, which was cited earlier as an example of Moderate Asceticism. 24 25

See Likutei Amarim: Tanya (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1966), 21ff. The Kuzari, translated by H. Hirschfeld (New York: Schocken, 1968), 137ff. — 98 —

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Early on in his discussion of the subject, the author takes issue with the Maimonidean view, drawn from Aristotle, that the sense of touch is a disgrace: Maimonides, of blessed memory, was wrong when, in his Guide of the Perplexed (II:36) he praised Aristotle for declaring that the sense of touch is disgraceful for us. Heaven forbid that we say so! We cannot agree with the teaching of that Greek, for this doctrine contains an unsuspected trace of apostasy.… But we, the people of the holy Torah, we believe that the Lord created everything as His wisdom directed, and that He created nothing that was ugly or shameful. Were we to maintain that sex is obscene, we would have to say that the organs of generation are obscene. But this cannot be, for the Lord, may His name be exalted, created them.26

The author of the Iggeret ha-Kodesh accuses Maimonides of injecting alien elements into Judaism. It is inconceivable to him that God, who is all good, would create anything which is inherently disgraceful. How then are we to view the sexual organs? [J]ust as the hands, when they write the scroll of Torah, are considered honorable and praiseworthy and exalted, but when they steal or otherwise indulge in dishonorable acts are regarded as ugly — so was it with the organs of generation of Adam and Eve: before they sinned it was one way, after they sinned quite different. Just as we ascribe honor and praise to any organ when it serves to do good, and shame and ugliness when it is the instrument of evil, so was it with regard to the first man’s sexual apparatus.27

We have here a clear statement of the Neutralist position. What changed with the sin of Adam and Eve was the purity of their motive, not any inherent property of the sexual organs themselves. What then of the sexual act itself? Coitus is something holy and clean when it is performed properly, at 26

27

See Norman Lamm, ed., The Good Society (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 104-105. For the original text, see The Holy Letter (New York: KTAV, 1976), 41-43. This is a translation of Iggeret ha-Kodesh by Seymour J. Cohen. Lamm, ibid., 105-106; Cohen, ibid., 47. — 99 —

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the proper time, and with the proper intentions. Let no one think that proper coitus is shameful or ugly. Heaven forbid! For the sexual act is referred to as “knowledge.”28

According to the author of the Iggeret ha-Kodesh, the proper intentions which make the sex act holy appear to be mystical in nature. Later in the same chapter, he also associates the reproductive consequences of sex with the idea that God created man in His image, and man, as God’s agent, carried forward His creation of the world by reproducing. Such an intent would also make the sex act a holy one. Next, the author considers the value of sex when engaged in for other, lesser reasons: [W]hen a person engages in the sex act and his intentions are not for the sake of heaven, the seed that issues from him is considered a “fetid drop,” and God has no part in it. About such does the Torah say, as in the story of Noah’s generation, “for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth” (Genesis 6: 12). This is the way to the destruction of the body, it is equivalent to offering devotion to an idol, or planting a tree that is worshipped by idolators, for he sows corrupt seed.29

Elsewhere in the same chapter, the author makes it clear that sex for the sake of pleasure alone falls into the category just described.30 This is probably not because pleasure itself is an evil, but rather because anything which has no divine purpose is distant from God, and therefore is in some sense evil. Worshipping pleasure, like worshipping idols, is wrong, because in both instances what is not being worshipped is God. Thus, the ringing endorsement of “proper” sexuality found in the Iggeret ha-Kodesh, so distant in spirit from the Moderate Ascetic as well as the Ascetic Neutralist, is significantly circumscribed by the author’s Neutralism, and by his insistence on holy motives as a condition for placing a positive value on sex. The Liberal position, which I shall now outline, starts from an entirely different premise, i.e., that pleasure is a good thing in itself.

28 29 30

Lamm, ibid., 104; Cohen, ibid., 41. Ibid., 107. Ibid., 105. — 100 —

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VII. The Liberal Position and Hedonism The Liberal position in Judaism seeks to come to grips with the thisworldly orientation of the Torah itself, and with the various mitzvot which require pleasurable activities. On a deeper level, the Liberal seeks to understand why God would have created a world so full of pleasurable things, and why God would have created human beings with the capacity to experience such intense pleasure. The Liberal maintains that the Moderate Ascetic and Neutralist approaches to this question are answers by indirection, and that they cannot fully account for the amazing plenitude of pleasure in the universe. For all these reasons, the Liberal believes that:

1. Pleasure is a good in itself. This means that pleasure does not derive its value only instrumentally; rather, pleasure is simply a good, an end in itself, like justice or kindness. Of course, this does not imply that pleasure’s value in traditional Judaism is equal to that of justice or kindness. Where the good of pleasure comes into conflict with the good of justice, the latter would certainly prevail because it is a more important value than pleasure. To say that pleasure is a good is not to make any claim about how good it is — about where it ranks in a hierarchy of values. It is only a claim that pleasure does have inherent value. This means that all other things being equal, it is a good thing to experience pleasure. But how does one determine which goods rank higher in the hierarchy of values than others? And does the thesis that pleasure is a good in itself imply that, where it does not come into conflict with any more important value, pleasure can be pursued limitlessly? If I do not act unkindly, unjustly, and so on, can I lead my life in a sybaritic stupor? We arrive here at the great divide which separates Liberalism from Hedonism. The classical moral Hedonist maintains that there are no criteria for good or bad outside of physical pleasure. To put it differently, all pleasures, and only pleasures, are intrinsically good. Thus, for the Hedonist, pleasure can never also be the means to some other good, because, for the Hedonist, there can be no good other than pleasure. — 101 —

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It should not be difficult to see why Hedonism could have no roots in classical Judaism, or for that matter in any other religion which affirms the existence of God as traditionally conceived. At the very heart of the classical belief in God is the conviction that only God can be a source of all value, and not also dependent upon anything else for value. If God, even in part, depended for His value on the value of something else, then there would be a value greater than God. For the traditional monotheist that is impossible. God’s goodness is such that not only is He a good in Himself, but He is never also a means to some other good, because all other goods derive their status as a good from Him. Maintaining that a good exists independent of God is, in effect, idolatry: placing final value on some end not connected with God. Such a view about God’s absolute goodness is quite antithetical to the Hedonist’s belief about the absolute value of pleasure. Thus, anyone, the Jew included, who maintains the traditional conception of God, or any approximation thereof, cannot also be a Hedonist. What then does the Liberal maintain? He believes that while God regards pleasure as a good thing in itself, He also considers it to be a means for human beings to achieve some other, divine good. The key point is that the Liberal, unlike the Hedonist, recognizes that pleasure is one value amongst many others. He maintains that there is a higher — or highest — value, from which pleasure, and other goods also, derive their value instrumentally. That value is God. Thus, the Liberal believes that pleasure is a good thing to experience, but it must be placed in the context of God’s overall plan for mankind; it must be limited by that plan, and it must be experienced to further its ultimate aims. In God’s overall plan for mankind, the Liberal claims, other goods have greater importance. These might include man’s efforts to serve God, to know Him, or to sanctify the world. To the extent that pleasure interferes with those ultimate goals, its own, lesser, good loses some of its ultimate (although not inherent) value. And to the extent that it helps achieve those ultimate goals, its own value is instrumentally enhanced. To sum up, the Liberal maintains the following three theses: — 102 —

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1. Pleasure is a good (or end) in itself. 2. Pleasure is also always a means to some higher end, i.e., God. 3. Pleasurable actions are good only if they are performed also as a means to that higher end, i.e., God. Aside from their theoretical and theological significance, theses two and three have a good deal of practical significance as well. They provide against the limitless pursuit of pleasure, since they assure that we must always take into account our ultimate, divine purpose as we experience pleasure. And that ultimate purpose is surely not served by excessive involvement in pleasure. The Liberal position is not a widespread one in classical Jewish sources. While we called attention earlier to the many mitzvot which call for pleasurable actions, we have seen how advocates of other, more restrictive positions would account for those mitzvot. Nevertheless, there are sources, many from the rabbinic period, which seem to be best explained as holding the Liberal position. Of course, they do not announce themselves as Liberals. Yet, the most straightforward reading of what they say strongly suggests that they belong to that school of thought. It is interesting to note that during the medieval period, which generally tended towards the ascetic, and which had a profound influence on the subsequent development of Judaism, commentators on those Liberal sources in some instances sought to explain away their Liberal consequences. Samuel, a leading first generation amora, is quoted in the Talmud as saying to Rav Yehuda: “… Smart one! Grab and eat, grab and drink, because the world which we will depart is like a party” (Eruvin 54a). Immediately thereafter, Rav, Samuel’s famous colleague, is quoted as saying to Rav Hamnuna: My son, if you have it (i.e., money, according to Rashi’s commentary), it is good for you, because there is no enjoyment after death, and death does not tarry. And if you say “I will leave it for my son,” who is to tell you after your death that he has not lost it (ibid.).

— 103 —

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These striking remarks seem most consistent with the view that pleasure is a good in itself. Otherwise, why advocate so forcefully eating, drinking and enjoying one’s money? A similarly strong comment, also attributed to Rav, appears in the Palestinian Talmud: Rabbi Hezekiah, the son of Rabbi Kohen, said in the name of Rav: “In the future man will be taken to account for all that his eyes saw and did not eat.” Rabbi Le’azar was concerned about his teaching, and saved his pennies to buy each new food as it grew during the year.31

In none of these sources do we find any attempt to justify pleasure by appeal to other values. Pleasure seems to be advocated for its own sake alone. Another example of this attitude appears in the context of a midrashic discussion about why the matriarchs were barren. After proposing a string of explanations, the following account appears: Rabbi Hunei, in the name of Rabbi Meir, said: “Why were the matriarchs barren? So that their husbands would be able to take pleasure in their beauty.”32

The Midrash goes on to explain that (in its view) women are not as attractive while pregnant, and God wanted to preserve the matriarchs’ beauty — at great emotional pain to them and their husbands — for the sake of pleasure. Here too, the simplest reading of the text (although one the medieval commentators have difficulty with) is that pleasure is a good in itself. In fact, there are a number of other Rabbinic and post-Rabbinic statements which suggest a nonascetic attitude towards pleasure.33 Nevertheless, while they seem most at home in the Liberal position, some are also consistent with Liberal Neutralism. Therefore, strictly speaking, they cannot all be cited as evidence for liberalism.

31 32 33

Kiddushin II, 65; see the commentary of the Korban ha-Edah, ad. loc. Midrash Rabbah, Shir ha-Shirim 2:8. See, e.g., Taanit 11a; Nedarim 20b; Bereshit Rabbah 84. — 104 —

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Although the Liberal position appears in the classical sources with the most frequency in Talmudic texts, it by no means disappeared entirely during the post-Talmudic period. The courtier class of poets, who flourished during medieval Spanish Jewry’s golden age, wrote innumerable “wine-songs,” odes to pleasures of the senses. These upperclass Jews were members of various Spanish courts (hence, “courtier” Jews), and participated extensively in the cultural life attendant upon court membership. As did their non-Jewish counterparts, they attended court drinking parties, and wrote poetry singing the glories of wine and leisure. Probably the most well known of the courtier Jews was Samuel ha-Nagid, the eleventh-century Granadian poet, general, diplomat and talmudic scholar. In addition to his remarkable secular accomplishments, he was a man of such rabbinical repute that Abraham ibn Daud, the medieval Jewish historian, regarded him as the founder of post-Babylonian Rabbanite Judaism. This medieval Rabbi penned the following lines: Do not spend the entirety of your days in His service, Rather make time for God, and periods of time for yourselves, Give him half the day, and the other half (set) for your own activities, And during your nights, give no respite to wine (drinking).34

In another poem he writes; When you are awake, let your right hand stretch to a winecup which is like a candle in the darkness, And refrain from making a day of respite from the glass, at night too let your sleep be little For your lifetime is short, and in the grave there will be plenty of slumber.35

*** 34

35

Cited in Bezalel Safran, “Bahya ibn Pakuda’s Attitude Toward the Courtier Class,” Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 171. Ibid. — 105 —

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Before concluding this discussion of Liberalism, we need to consider a question of some importance, one which cuts to the very core of the Liberal position. Why is pleasure good? Given the Liberal’s conviction that all goods are related to God, and must fit with His overall plan for human life, why should God bother with pleasure? What theological value could there be in experiencing pleasure? A fully satisfactory answer to this question would require another essay equal in length to the present one. All I can hope to do here is briefly sketch out the beginning of an explanatory proposal inspired by remarks made in the Iggeret ha-Kodesh which I cited earlier. For lack of a better name, I shall call this proposal a kind of Jewish Humanism.36 The starting point of the proposal is the classic Jewish belief whose origins go back to the Torah itself: man is created in God’s image. If we take this belief seriously, says the Jewish Humanist, it should follow that there is no dimension of man which is inherently evil. If God, in all His various facets, is all good, and He created man in His image, then it seems reasonable to believe that man in all his various facets is all good as well. Of course this does not mean that man cannot do evil. He can, and unfortunately does. In this respect he is unlike God. But it does mean, says the Jewish Humanist, that every human attribute is inherently good, unless man consciously subverts that attribute, turns away from God’s image, corrupts himself, and uses his attributes for evil. R. Samuel b. Nahman in the midrash took a similar, although not identical, view: “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). R. Nahman said in the name of R. Samuel: “Behold it was very good” — that is the yetzer ha-ra (will to evil). But is the yetzer ha-ra very good? That is astonishing! Yet, were it not for the yetzer ha-ra, man would not build homes, or take wives, or propagate, or engage in business.37

R. Samuel thus regards even the will to evil as good, although its good is instrumental rather than inherent. 36

37

This approach owes a great deal to R. Samson Raphael Hirsch. For a discussion of aspects of this issue, and for a number of important references in Hirsch’s writings, see I. Grunfeld’s introduction to Hirsch’s Horeb (London: Soncino Press, 1961), I, lxxxix-xcvii. Bereshit Rabbah 9:7. — 106 —

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The Jewish Humanist takes this general idea a critical step further. If all human attributes are inherently good, he reasons, then expressing and further developing those attributes is inherently good as well, for in doing so we express and develop that which is inherently God-like. Now this does not imply that developing and expressing our human qualities is always good. If we do so as an end in itself, and not also as a means to a higher end, then, as I argued above, we are engaging in a kind of idolatry. Only God is an end in Himself. In the view of the Jewish Humanist this precisely is the failure of secular humanism; it fails to see human values as representing only part of a larger constellation of values, at whose head stands God Himself. The Jewish Humanist does believe, however, that when appropriately situated in this larger context, there is an inherent value in refining and expressing our human qualities, for those qualities are divine qualities once removed. This would mean that refining and expressing our capacities for art, music and just plain thinking, for example, are good things, and should be pursued for their own sake. The Jewish Humanist recognizes that these activities must be weighed against other values and that, on balance, it may not be appropriate to pursue those ends to the exclusion of certain other ends, or even more than certain ends. But develop them he will, because they are good in themselves. What applies to art and music should apply to pleasure as well, which is no less a human capacity than art or music. Thus, says the Jewish Humanist, experiencing pleasure is a good in itself. The problem for the Liberal and his Jewish Humanist interpreter is a practical one. Given the complexity of our value system, how do we go about ordering our lives, placing each of our human and divine goods in proper perspective? When, how, and to what extent do we experience pleasure, develop our intellects, serve God, and so on? The Jewish Humanist would concede that there can be no unqualified, single answer to this question for all people. Each human being is unique in his peculiar composite of capacities and talents. Nevertheless, it is exactly the point of the mitzvot, the Liberal and his Jewish Humanist interpreter might argue, to provide a general plan for exercising one’s humanity and serving God. Thus, the mitzvot amply provide for experiencing pleasure  —  Shabbat, the holidays, sexual — 107 —

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relations between husband and wife, and so on. But they insist upon limits — e.g., illicit sexual relations and non-kosher foods are forbidden. Thus, Shabbat, the holidays and spousal relations provide a divine context for the intrinsically valuable expression of our human capacity to experience pleasure. The Torah generally provides a broad rubric for balancing divine ends and human ends which, the Jewish Humanist holds, are themselves divinely sanctioned. Those classic authors who took the Liberal position thus perceived themselves to be operating within the framework of the Torah.

VIII. The Modern Period In this essay I have focused primarily on classical Jewish sources. In part, this is because modern Jewish thinkers who treat this subject return to those sources in justifying their views. Indeed, all modern Jewish thought must in some fashion or other contend with the classical sources. As it happens, one of the most important methodological issues in modern Jewish thought revolves around the question of how, exactly, should this be done? However one answers that question, one point is perfectly clear: contending with the Jewish sources is precisely what distinguishes Jewish philosophy or ethics from general philosophy or ethics. At the heart of any Jewish philosophizing is the appeal to a classic text. That is what makes philosophizing Jewish. Since the classical sources play so fundamental a role, I have presented them unmediated by modern thinkers. Nevertheless, it might be instructive to sample, if only briefly, some contemporary Jewish writers on sensual pleasure. It is not surprising that most modern Jewish thinkers take a Liberal approach to the question of pleasure, particularly among Reform and Conservative theologians.38 Of special interest, however, is the spectrum of opinions amongst Orthodox thinkers. I shall cite here two examples of twentieth-century Orthodox thinkers, who represent 38

See, for example, Eugene Borowitz, Choosing a Sex Ethic (New York: Schocken, 1967) for an example of a Reform view, and Robert Gordis, Love and Sex: A Modern Jewish Perspective (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978) for a Conservative view. — 108 —

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quite different perspectives on the question. The first is drawn from the “mussar” school, a nineteenth-century Eastern European ethical/ spiritualist revival movement, which continues to exert a great deal of influence in contemporary traditional Orthodox yeshiva circles. Most (although by no means all) mussar thinkers stressed the importance of self-denial in the quest for moral and spiritual perfection. A fine example of this view appears in the works of Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, an influential mussar theoretician and teacher who studied with the great pre-war mussar teachers in Lithuania and Russia, and then relocated to England and later to Israel after the Second World War. He wrote: The holy person sees himself as being forced to descend into this-worldly matters, in order to use them to serve God … to raise up the holy sparks immanent in this world, and to complete the world, as is the will of God. Certainly, this is self-denial on his part, a great sacrifice; for he hates descending into this impure place, a world of eating and drinking and other such this-worldly matters which he finds disgusting and abominable. Nevertheless, he strengthens himself in self-sacrifice for this task, for the purpose of serving God, blessed be He.39

Rabbi Dessler, and his colleagues in the mussar school, stand as modern heirs to the Moderate Ascetic tradition within Judaism. The question of pleasure is also treated by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the leading contemporary Orthodox theologian and talmudist, and one of the most important figures in twentiethcentury Jewish thought. In the course of a long Hebrew monograph on Jewish religious phenomenology entitled “And From There You Shall Seek,” Rabbi Soloveitchik discusses the importance of sanctifying the body in Judaism. According to R. Soloveitchik, the entire Torah is directed primarily at the body rather than the soul. Apparently, says R. Soloveitchik, “Jewish law prefers eating before God to praying,” since so many Torah laws are connected with eating, whereas according to most halakhic authorities, ritual prayer is not a Torah law. The reason for this is God’s underlying wish that the Jew redeem the natural world, by providing it with direction and purpose. 39

Mikhtav me-Eliyahu (Bnei Brak : Hever Talmidav, 1964), III, 152-153. — 109 —

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However, this direction and purpose by no means entails asceticism or self-denial: Halakhah requires man to enjoy the beautiful and lustrous creation no less than the man of pleasure. However, halakhic man’s pleasure is improved and refined — the pleasure of the person who has descended into the very heart of pleasure and understood its essential nature. It has in it something of the aesthetic attraction to pleasure felt by the satiated man, who has tasted fully of the world and not found complete solace; it also has in it something of the moral dimension of commanded man, who is afflicted by his drive for pleasure, and who controls it.40

R. Soloveitchik points out that the Torah certainly did not forbid sensual pleasure; quoting the Talmud, he calls such ascetics sinners, and continues: What the Torah hates is the emptiness in pleasure, when the body is … willy-nilly entrapped by powerful urges… Halakhah forswears man from the hysteria and insanity of pleasure. The pleasure which the Torah recommends is devoid of excessive intensity … drunken senses. Rather it has in it the refined beauty and aesthetic splendor of life. When man takes pleasure in the world in the spirit of halakhah his pleasure is modest and delightful, pleasure without the mania of illicit sex, and without the fever of gluttony.41

In this subtle and complex analysis, R. Soloveitchik affirms the importance and instrumental value of pleasure, but only where it has been refined and endowed with meaning by the processes of Jewish law.

IX. Closing Remarks What conclusion can be drawn from the preceding analysis? First, a typological framework was suggested for conceptualizing attitudes towards bodily pleasure. This must stand on its own as a useful 40

41

Ish ha-Halakhah: Galuy ve-Nistar (Jerusalem: World Zionist Congress, 1979), 207 (translation mine). In English translation, And From There You Shall Seek, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2008), 111. Ibid., 208. — 110 —

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explanatory device, apart from its application to Jewish sources. Second, I argued on the basis of textual evidence and other theological considerations that four, and only four, approaches to the value of bodily pleasure took root in the Jewish tradition. Extreme Asceticism at one extreme, and Hedonism at the other, were found to be inconsistent with certain norms and theological commitments by-and-large characteristic of Judaism over the ages. On the other hand, Moderate Asceticism, Ascetic Neutralism, Liberal Neutralism and Liberalism were all found to have influential proponents within the tradition. Given the serious theological underpinnings of each of these positions, and the historical, cultural, religious and philosophical diversity of classical Judaism over its long development, it is not at all surprising to find such diversity, even within the supposedly more monolithic Judaism of the premodern period, and to see it carried forward to the contemporary era.

— 111 —

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---------------------------------- Chapter V  -----------------------------------

Mitzvah as Metaphor : Towards a Philosophical Theory of Ta’amei Ha-Mitzvot I The inquiry into ta’amei ha-mitzvot is a long and distinguished one, extending back to the classical period and continuing into the twentiethcentury.1 I. Heinemann distinguishes four different approaches that the sources have taken over the years to account for, as he puts it, the “value” of the mitzvot:2 1. Utilitarian: This approach maintains that the value of at least some mitzvot is that they improve the lot of the Jew in this world and the next. For example, Yehuda Halevi suggests that reciting birkot ha-nehenin enhances Jewish pleasure and joy in life.3 2. Intellectualist: This rationalist view, whose leading medieval and modern exponents are, respectively, Maimonides and Mendelssohn, maintains that the purpose of many, if not most or all, of the mitzvot is to teach and embed in the Jew correct theological beliefs. Thus, for example, observing Shabbat, it has long been maintained (following the verses in the Torah itself), serves to remind the Jew that God created the world and is its master. 3. Moralist: This approach emphasizes the moral purpose of many mitzvot. A thinker such as Shmuel David Luzzatto, for example, claimed that one of the characteristic features of the Torah is its

1

2

3

For the classic exhaustive treatment of the history of the inquiry, see Itzhak Heinemann, Ta’amei haMitzvot be -Sifrut Yisroel (Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency, 1949). Ibid., 240. Heinemann does not, but probably should, add a fifth category drawn from the mystical tradition, according to which the value of certain rituals is to restore the Godhead itself to its ideal state. In general, Heinemann’s study pays insufficient attention to the Jewish mystical tradition. Y.Halevi, The Kuzari, trans. H. Hirschfeld (New York: Schoken Books, 1968). — 112 —

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desire to inculcate the virtues of mercy and compassion.4 4. Nationalist: This more typically modern thesis maintains that the value of many mitzvot, such as the holidays, resides in their ability to reinforce the national bonds of the Jewish people.5 Even a cursory review of the overall body of mitzvot makes it hard to deny that each one of the considerations underlying these accounts plays a role in at least some mitzvot. Surely some mitzvot have, among several possible ends, at least a nationalist end (e.g., the rituals associated with Pesah) or a moral, theological, or perhaps utilitarian one. In effect, then, each account starts from a perfectly reasonable beginning (except, perhaps, for the utilitarian thesis, but more about that later), and all too often seeks to extend the account beyond its natural borders. In search of a comprehensive theory of ta’amei ha-mitzvot, proponents of the moral, theological, national, or utilitarian approaches seem to discover their favorite value lurking unexpectedly beneath many a ritual rock, as it were. This tends to lend the various theories a somewhat forced quality. But the project of developing such a comprehensive theory is surely a desideratum. After all, we intuitively sense that some common assumptions, tasks, or methods underlie the mitzvot. This is especially so in the case of mitzvot we might call “rituals.” By “rituals” I mean religiously mandated rites, or patterns of behavior, such as the haggadah service, the recitation of kiddush on Saturdays and holidays, the sounding of the shofar, and so on. Some involve the use of ritual objects, others involve the recitation of set verses or prayers, and yet others involve physical motions, such as shaking the lulav and etrog. Many involve combinations of all these elements. We tend to lump all these activities under the common (English) term ritual. But what precisely is common to all of them, particularly if there are different values attached to each? After all, some may have primarily a nationalist value, others a theological one. Other questions call out for answers as well. What accounts for the immense power that rituals exercise over religious devotees, and what accounts for the lasting power of so many rituals? Is there any 4

5

For a discussion of Luzzatto’s views, see chapter 3 in Heinemann’s Ta’amei ha-Mitzvot be-Sifrut Yisroel. Ibid., vol. 2, 56-60. — 113 —

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general way to account for the particular details of ritual performance? Perhaps most important of all, what “purely religious reasons” are there for performing or originating religious rituals? I believe that an ideal philosophico-theological, as opposed to social scientific, theory of ritual would account for ritual in purely religious categories. But what counts as a purely religious category? My aim in this paper is to briefly sketch out a theory of religious ritual that seeks to answer these questions. This paper is drawn from a larger work, and in this context I shall need to treat only cursorily certain issues that are more fully addressed therein.

II Rituals are often spoken of as symbols of a certain sort. Within the Jewish tradition, Samson Raphael Hirsch has perhaps made the most systematic use of a theory of symbols to explain a large class of mitzvot, which he calls the “edot,” in all their detail. Indeed, he wrote a 235-page treatise exploring the topic.6 While there is much to be said for Hirsch’s approach, it is hard to deny that there is a certain artificial, almost rigid, quality to his use of the theory, in at least some instances. After all, how can one really know just what God intended in originating the mitzvot in all their particulars? More recently Clifford Geertz defines religion as a “system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”7 Geertz maintains that rituals, which are enacted symbols, relate ethos, “the tone, character and quality of life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood,” with worldview, “the 6

7

“A Basic Outline of the Jewish Symbolism,” partial translation in S. R. Hirsch. The Timeless Torah, ed. Breuer (New York: Published for the Samson Raphael Hirsch Publications Society by P. Feldheim, 1957), 303-420. See also S. R. Hirsch, Horeb, trans. I. Grunfeld, 2 vols (London: Soncino, 1962), 54-214; S. R. Hirsch. The Nineteen Letters, trans. B. Drachman (Jerusalem: Published for the Samson Raphael Hirsch Publications Society by P. Feldheim, 1969) 83-87, S. R. Hirsch. Commentary on the Pentateuch, trans. I. Levy, 6 vols (London: I. Levy, 1963). Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books) 1973-90. — 114 —

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picture of the way things in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, self and society … their comprehensive ideas of order.”8 As he puts it elsewhere, “In ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined, fused under the agency of a single set of symbolic forms, turns out to be the same world.”9 Geertz seems to be making an important point about ritual, stressing its capacity to shape the ritualist’s way of experiencing the world.10 Nevertheless, he does not spell out precisely how or why ritual functions in this way, nor does he apply his basic insight into tackling the questions I raised earlier in this essay. We have here the seed of an idea, but a theory of ritual requires more. In a sense, the theory I shall soon outline is an attempt to explore just how ritual mitzvot might perform the role Geertz ascribes to them.

III My basic thesis, as the title of this essay suggests, is that religious rituals can be usefully thought of as a species of metaphor. But that is to say very little, or to say it poorly, unless we have some idea of what metaphor is. This of course has been the subject of a vast literature. Here I can do no more than summarize my own theory of what metaphor is, so as to justify its application to religious ritual. On the face of it, this claim seems at worst nonsensical, and at best metaphorical itself. Metaphors are usually taken to be figures of speech, the stuff of linguists and semanticists. How then can behavior be metaphorical? Simply put, the basic idea I should like to advocate is that what makes a word or expression metaphorical is (1) its function and (2) the mechanism whereby it realizes that function.

Metaphorical Function Theoreticians of metaphor have long sought to account for certain 8 9 10

Ibid., 127. Ibid., 1973, 112. See also the works of Mary Douglas, especially her Purity and Danger (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1996). — 115 —

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problems in the use of metaphor. For example, it is often thought that for an expression to be metaphorical it must be literally false, or couldn’t have been intended by the speaker as literally true. But then why is the expression “Smith took the shirt off Jones’s back” metaphorical, if the speaker intended to assert not only that Smith is a mean-spirited creditor, but that he actually stripped Jones of his shirt in collecting his debt? Similarly, we all have intuitions about which metaphors are banal and which are fresh. But what criteria are there for distinguishing between them? Most importantly, how do we go about interpreting metaphors? Some metaphors are extremely complex and quite difficult to interpret, especially those used in poetry. Indeed, many are embedded in larger contexts that are themselves metaphorical, for example, a metaphor that appears in a book by Kafka. A theory of metaphor should provide guidelines that aid in explicating metaphors, as well as criteria for determining what is and what isn’t a correct interpretation. A metaphor’s context is obviously crucial here in solving many of these problems, since by examining a metaphor’s context we may learn a great deal about what it means. But what exactly is a metaphor’s context, and how exactly do we appeal to it in interpreting metaphor?11 One way of approaching these problems is to analyze a metaphor by way of its function. If we want to know what the context does to a metaphor, we should inquire as to what a metaphor does to its context, that is, what its function is. In other words, we need to examine how the metaphor contributes to the author’s or reader’s goals in writing (or speaking) or reading (or listening to) the metaphor in question.12 No doubt, of course, the author or reader can have many different goals, and a metaphor can perform many different speech acts, such as asserting, commanding, and so on. But what exactly is the characteristically metaphorical way in which the metaphorical expression, as against 11

12

Given the limitations of this essay, I cannot spell out in detail how the theory I propose answers all these questions. Nevertheless, I hope the reader will get some sense of my approach to these problems from the discussion that follows. For a somewhat similar view of metaphor, although quite different in a number of important respects, see Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 245-64. C. Boorse, “Wright on Functions,” The Philosophical Review 85 (1976), 29-45. — 116 —

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literal expression, contributes to the realization of these goals? In short, what exactly is the metaphor’s characteristic function? Max Black, in a classic treatment of the metaphor phenomenon, maintains that metaphor “selects, emphasizes, suppresses and organizes features of the principal subject [the object of the metaphorical expression] by implying statements about it that normally apply to the subsidiary subject [the metaphorical expression itself].”13 But which properties of the principal subject may be “selected, emphasized,” and so on, such that the selection is metaphorical and effective? To say that “this bachelor is a male” is to emphasize a feature of the bachelor, namely, his sex, but it is surely not to speak metaphorically. Similarly, to say “the smiling sun” is also to emphasize certain features of the sun, but to do so only banally. How are we to account for these observations? And how are we to account for the jolt, the tension that an effective metaphor seems to set off in the reader? Speaking of “selection” or “emphasis” of certain features of the principal subject doesn’t go quite far enough to explain this phenomenon. Perhaps the best way to begin answering this question is to consider a picture puzzle. As children, we were presented with, for example, what appeared to be an elaborately leafy picture of a tree, and then we were asked to find the elephant pictures concealed therein. After examining the picture of the tree from all sorts of angles, we finally “saw” the elephants. Here we encounter a determinate structure that can be experienced under different aspects, as pictures of different things. Wittgenstein calls this phenomenon “seeing-as.”14 While Wittgenstein limited his discussion of this phenomenon to picture puzzles and the like, discoveries in cognitive psychology suggest that human beings always experience everything in the world in precisely this way, that all human experience is in reality only “experience-as.” Even if the world itself is determinate, a question philosophers have long debated, human experience is not. Since we 13

14

M. Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962); “More about Metaphor,” Dialectica 31 (1977), 29-45. See N. Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1976). L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1968), Part II, xi. — 117 —

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human beings bring to the perceptual and experiential encounter all sorts of mental baggage, our experiences and percepts are in part determined by that baggage. There is no naked eye or virgin experience in the human encounter with the world. What we experience depends upon our beliefs, desires, emotions, percepts, wishes, hopes, and so on, what we might call an “experiential set,” the sum total of mental states that determine the character of our experience. As R. L. Gregory says in regard to visual perception: The seeing of objects involves many sources of information beyond those meeting the eye when we look at an object. It generally involves knowledge of the object derived from previous experience, and this experience is not limited to vision but may include other senses.… Objects are far more than patterns of stimulation; objects have pasts and futures. When we know its past or can guess its future an object transcends experience and becomes an embodiment of knowledge and expectation without which life of even the simplest kind is impossible.15

Consider, as an example, the different experiences of the artist and the radiologist, who both observe an x-ray. The artist, because of his interest in beauty and in the aesthetic experience, because of his desires for an aesthetic experience, because of his knowledge of the play of light and shadow and the possibilities of perspective, will have one experience of the x-ray, with distinctive emotional, cognitive, desiderative, attitudinal, and other elements. He may experience the x-ray as an object of art. The radiologist, on the other hand, because of his knowledge of and interest in radiology, will experience it as a diagnostic tool and have an entirely different experience, with quite different constitutive elements. Now consider an artist who examines a particular x-ray, then studies medicine, abandons his art, becomes a radiologist, and happens upon the same old x-ray once again. His initial experience of the x-ray will be entirely restructured. He will no longer experience the x-ray as a work of art but as a diagnostic tool. The content of his experiential set, whose object is the x-ray, will undergo a transformation: new beliefs, desires, wishes, percepts, and so on will displace the old ones. There is a 15

R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 7-12. — 118 —

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certain dynamic and fluidity to the change as well, in that each member of the experiential set has an impact on the other, setting off a kind of experiential chain reaction. A change in desire can have an impact on belief, which in turn can have an impact on percept, which in turn can have an impact on the original desire, and so on and on, until an equilibrium is reached. This model of experiential structuring and restructuring illuminates the metaphor phenomenon. Metaphor’s function, I would suggest, is to set off precisely this kind of restructuring of the reader’s experiential set, whose object is the principal subject of the metaphor. Consider an example: suppose you are at the beach on a calm, sunny afternoon, relaxing, taking in the sun, the seagulls, and the rhythmic waves. You experience the sea as a vast, tranquil, free place in the world, your experiential set consisting of beliefs about the sea and its relaxing qualities, the desire to rest after a difficult semester, a yearning to explore its vast, liberating reaches. Next you pick up the volume of Tennyson you’ve taken along, flip open the pages until you come upon the passage stating of a corpse and the sea into which it is flung, that it (the corpse) drops into its “vast and wandering grave.” You reflect upon that line, and your experiential set undergoes a change and now consists of the following: a set of beliefs about the great depth and opacity of the sea and its consequent ability to hide and cover, its incessant wearing and eroding movements, its ability to swallow up everything not fit to stay on top, feelings of vague anxiety and foreboding, perceptions of the darkness that lurks beneath the sea’s shining surface. The sea no longer is for you “a vast, tranquil free place in the world.” It has now become “a great and forbidding place.” This clearly involves more than a mere change of belief, which is merely cognitive. We have here a change in the reader’s entire experiential set, his emotions, desires, and attitudes, a change in each element, which in turn triggers changes in other elements. Moreover, such change may in fact not even start with a change of belief; an emotional or attitudinal change may take place first; this in turn leads to cognitive change. Where this systemic change does takes place it can be so extensive that, at least in the maximally effective metaphor, the reader’s concept of the metaphor’s subject is no longer the same. — 119 —

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Statements such as “this bachelor is a male” or “the smiling sun” fail as metaphors on this account, because our experience of a bachelor or the sun is not restructured by the assertion, since our experiential set whose object is bachelor or sun already contains those elements the expression seeks to emphasize. The jolt or tension characteristic of a good metaphor, on the other hand, results from the mental battle that takes place between the shadow of our old experiential set and the force of the new one. Our avenues into the world do not give psychological ground easily, and we are torn between our entrenched earlier experience of the object and the power of the new one. Elements of the old experiential set mingle uneasily with inconsistent elements of the new one, until a new, internally consistent equilibrium is established. Once established, however, after maximal restructuring, we have a new object before us. The subject of an effective metaphor can never be quite the same again.

The Mechanism of Metaphor I have argued that metaphorical function is a necessary condition for metaphoricality. Nevertheless, it cannot be a sufficient condition as well, since there are many media for the restructuring of experience, metaphor only one among them. A second condition, conjoined with metaphorical function, is necessary and sufficient for metaphoricality. That second condition is the mechanism of metaphor. To get at what this mechanism might be, consider a visual paradigm. Rudolf Arnheim describes an experiment in which observers were asked to describe their impressions of two paintings of very different style, which were placed one next to the other. Then one of the pair of pictures was replaced by another picture and the changes in impressions resulting from the new combination were recorded. Arnheim summarizes the results of the experiments by stating that “an arbitrary confrontation deformed the two components of the pair.… The pairing of two images throws into relief a common quality”16 (my emphasis). 16

R. Arnheirn, Visual Thinking (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 61 — 120 —

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The characteristic mechanism whereby a metaphor realizes its function seems to be a linguistic analogue to precisely this visual phenomenon. Metaphor “interacts” the experiential set whose object is the principal subject (“men” in “men are wolves”) with the experiential set whose object is the principal subject of the metaphor (“wolves” in “men are wolves”).17 I experience men, with all the components of my experiential set whose objects are men, and I experience wolves, with all the components of my experiential set whose objects are wolves. The pairing of the two experiential sets causes me to occurrently experience both simultaneously, which highlights characteristics of men’s features that they share with wolves; this causes me to experience men quite differently. My experiential set whose objects are men now contains elements that were once only part of my experiential set whose objects were wolves. It should be added here that any metaphor is invertable; that is, whether men or wolves are the principal subjects is an arbitrary matter of focus, since asserting “wolves are men” results in the interaction and restructuring characteristic of metaphor as well, except that here the subjects are wolves. I shall call this phenomenon bilaterality. Its importance is especially relevant to ritual, so I shall not dwell on this point just yet. In any case, if metaphor’s function is to restructure the reader’s experience, to recreate, as it were, the metaphor’s object, it achieves that function through the distinctive interaction mechanism described above. Both these features are jointly necessary and sufficient for an expression to be metaphorical. If this account of metaphor is correct, then one of its consequences is that nonlinguistic communication can be metaphorical as well. If, upon observing some outrageous, comical, and crude behavior by an acquaintance at a party, you look at a friend, grimace, and make a monkey-like face, you are metaphorically, if nonlinguistically, asserting of the acquaintance that he is a monkey. Both conditions for metaphoricality are met: the experience of the acquaintance has been restructured, as has that (by giving rise to an interaction between two 17

I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936). — 121 —

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occurrent experiences) of the principal and subsidiary subjects of the communicative act. Whether this counts as an instance of metaphor (as I am inclined to believe), or an instance of metaphor-like behavior, is for my purposes here not at all significant. The stage has now been set to make good on my original claim, that religious ritual can be understood as a species of metaphor, since, on the analysis just presented here, nonlinguistic behavior can be quite as metaphorical as linguistic behavior.

IV Early on in this paper I suggested that a key issue that must be addressed in developing a philosophico-theological theory of ritual mitzvot is explicating what would count as a purely religious end in performing mitzvot. A maximally effective philosophico-theological theory for ritual mitzvot should explain mitzvot such that their performance is justified on purely religious grounds. But what can we mean by “purely religious” end? I would suggest here that for an end to be “purely religious” it must meet two conditions: (1) it must be unique to the religious life-plan, and (2) it must be indispensable to it. If an end in performing a mitzvah is not unique to the religious life-plan, say it is performed for health reasons and so could just as well be performed by a health-conscious secularist, then it should hardly count as a purely religious end. Similarly, if the end is not indispensable to achieving the highest goals of religious life, then it fails to account for ritual by the most serious categories the religion itself puts forward. This failure would make the theory a less than maximal account of the significance of ritual. Applying this test to the four classes of classical explanations of ta’amei ha-mitzvot formulated by Heinemann would yield the conclusion that explanations that are either exclusively utilitarian, exclusively moral, or exclusively nationalist fail to meet the purely religious end desideratum, because achieving any one of these ends is not unique to the religious life-plan. Behaving morally or healthily, for example, are of course ends in many a nonreligious life-plan as well. Moreover, depending upon one’s conception of the highest ends of religious life, — 122 —

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any one of these ends may not be indispensable either. If achieving mystical union with God is the ultimate end of one’s religious life-plan, it is far from clear that national unity is indispensable to achieving that goal. While it may more plausibly be argued that it is helpful in achieving the goal, it is far less plausible to claim that for any particular individual it is indispensable. Thus most of these theories, insofar as they are exclusivist, fail to account for at least some mitzvot in purely religious terms, at least as I’ve unpacked the notion of “purely religious.” While this of course does not make the theories false, it does mean that they are not maximal. If the ultimate end of performing mitzvot is linked in some way to the transformation of human experience, however, then it does not seem difficult to account for the performance of mitzvot in purely religious terms. This is so because it is hard to imagine any religious end the achievement of which involves no change in human experience. Whether one’s conception of the ultimate aims of the religious life is, for example, union with God, or knowledge of Him, these aims can hardly be achieved without some change in the experience of the ritualist, change of a more than purely cognitive sort. It thus turns out that the desideratum of accounting for ritual mitzvot in “purely religious” terms, as unpacked above, naturally leads to a theory of ritual mitzvot which seeks to account for them by appeal to their broad impact on human experience. This in turn leads naturally to a theory of ritual mitzvot grounded in metaphor, since, on the account of metaphor summarized here, metaphor functions precisely to structure and restructure the reader’s experience of the metaphor’s object.

V Before I proceed any further with an analysis of ritual mitzvah as metaphor, it might be best to examine a particular ritual observance as an example. Consider, then, the traditional performance of the kiddush ritual. On Friday night the head of the family, typically upon return from synagogue services, fills a silver cup with wine, and, with the family gathered around, he or she recites aloud, over a set dinner table, which includes covered hallot, the kiddush. This consists of a series of verses — 123 —

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depicting God as resting from His creative labors on the seventh day of creation and sanctifying the day, a blessing over the wine, and a blessing of God for sanctifying Shabbat in memory of creation and for sanctifying the Jewish people by commanding them to observe the Shabbat. We have here a series of behaviors, call them R, performed by the head of the household. The ritualists, the head of the household and the family, depending upon their religious sensitivities and background, will experience both R and, on account of the performance of the ritual in its context (special setting, special time, etc.) will experience some other state of affairs, call it R*. This might be any number of things, such as God’s presence in the world, the sanctity of the Sabbath day, God’s omnipotence as creator of the cosmos, and so on. For the purpose of this analysis, I shall arbitrarily select one, God’s presence in the world. The simultaneous experience of R and R* causes the ritualist to experience R and R* — God’s presence in the world — as sharing certain properties. And it is experiencing R and R* as sharing these properties that causes the ritualist’s experience of God’s presence in the world to be restructured. For example, he or she might experience both God and the ritual as being bound up with human needs and desires, timebound, family-bound, evocable by human activity, warm and secure, tranquil. This in turn causes the ritualist to experience God differently, restructured with emphasis on God as evocable by a special set of activities or state of mind, as bound to human activity and inactivity (the seventh day of rest), as time-sensitive, as immanent, as part of human needs and pleasures, as warm and nurturing, like the family around him. It should be apparent that the precise nature of the interaction between R and R*, and the experiential restructuring that takes place, depends upon the exact nature of the ritual, the context in which it is performed, and the particular background of the ritualist. The application of the mitzvah-as-metaphor theory to kiddush, as sketched above, is meant only to serve as a model for the application of metaphor to ritual in general. Indeed, even within the kiddush ceremony itself, what the principal subject is (note the range of choices listed above), what gets interacted, which properties are experienced as shared by the principal and subsidiary subjects, and the resultant restructuring all — 124 —

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depend upon the particulars of the ritualist. What counts as a metaphor and how the metaphor is to be interpreted, how it functions, depends upon the reader; thus, in the case of ritual, which we are claiming is a species of metaphor, determining the actual end that results from the performance of some ritual depends upon the individual ritualist and the circumstances. The theory of mitzvah-as-metaphor is no more than a model for the analysis of ritual; the application of the model requires special insights into the particular conditions of an actual ritual performance. All this is not to say, of course, that the metaphoricality of mitzvot is random. Linguistic metaphors themselves, while radically contextand individual reader-dependent, both in regard to whether they are metaphorical and in regard to their interpretation and success, nevertheless typically function as metaphors in somewhat similar ways for different readers. This is because most readers have similar experiential sets and therefore respond to language in similar ways. Otherwise, communication would be impossible. So too in the case of ritual mitzvot. By virtue of the historical, religious, and literary knowledge and emotional associations that the typical ritualist brings to the ritual, certain common experiences are generated by the performance, which in turn interact with the ritual itself. The metaphoricality of mitzvot can be as commonplace as the commonest of religious experiences or as fresh as the rich imagination of the creative ritualist. But more about this later. Taking these points together we can see how the mitzvah-asmetaphor theory differs from the usual symbolist interpretations of mitzvot. At the heart of all theory construction is the attempt to subsume the phenomenon in question under a well-understood, theoretically articulate system. The symbolists seek to account for mitzvot by subsuming, and thereby explaining, them within the framework of a theory of symbols, according to which there exists a referential relation between most ritual objects or performances and a certain idea or attitude.18 Certainly I do not wish to deny that such 18

Josef Stern has brilliantly analyzed the complexities of these relations in his “Modes of Reference in Rituals of Judaism,” Religious Studies 23 (1987), 109-128. — 125 —

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a relation exists in the case of some mitzvot, that is, those mitzvot in which the relation is explicit in the Torah or other original sources for the mitzvah, such as Shabbat and God as creator of the cosmos. Rather, in order to avoid the kind of artificiality and rigidity that comes of overextending symbolist interpretations so as to provide for a comprehensive account of ritual mitzvot, the mitzvah-as-metaphor theory subsumes mitzvah under a different explanatory framework, the now theoretically articulate phenomenon of metaphor. The metaphor phenomenon, on the account sketched here, does not require the existence of referential relations for its application (although of course it does not deny their existence or importance). Instead, it requires the existence of a certain function (experiential restructuring) and mechanism (interaction of experiential sets), which, it is claimed, indeed obtain in the case of ritual. This means, however, that there is a certain fluidity to the role of ritual, in that ritual can function metaphorically for different ritualists in quite different ways. There is no single “correct” metaphoricality for the ritualist, just as there is no single “correct” metaphoricality for the speaker of metaphor. What may function for you as a metaphor may, for me, be quite literal. If you have never heard of the expression “a high note,” you may find it metaphorical; most of us will not experience it as metaphorical at all. So too in the case of ritual. You may experience kiddush in one way, with a primary subject and interactions quite your own, and I may experience it very differently. Certainly both our experiences are likely to be shaped in one way or another by the particular details of the ceremony, the words uttered therein, the biblical texts alluded to, the laws governing the ceremony, the laws governing Shabbat generally, and so on. Nevertheless, the experience is also likely to be shaped by the personal background, history, desires, wishes, and knowledge of the ritualist. One of the important aims of the mitzvah-as-metaphor theory is indeed to provide theoretically for the personalization of ritual performance, that is, to provide an explanatory framework for mitzvot, such that personalization of mitzvot is part of their religious value. According to the symbolist school, for example, mitzvot relate referentially to certain subjects. If I absorb that referential relation, then I have successfully performed — 126 —

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the mitzvah. Success thus depends upon absorption of a static relation. For the mitzvah-as-metaphor theory, on the other hand, no such static referential relation need exist, such that it must be satisfactorily absorbed. Successful performance of a mitzvah, that is, one that helps achieve the highest ends of the religious life-plan, requires a highly personal encounter: the encounter between my individual experience of the ritual and my individual experience of that to which the ritual gives rise. And it also requires that, as a result of the live interaction between these two occurrent experiences, my experience of that to which the ritual gives rise, for example, God (we shall see other examples later), is transformed, recreated after the image of the ritual itself. Ritual, like metaphor, is a highly personal experience indeed.19 Another consequence of the personalization of ritual, its context sensitivity, is that not all performances of mitzvah are metaphorical; only successful performances are. The insensitive or ignorant ritualist may derive no religious benefit at all of the sort described here from the performance of the ritual, in just the same way that an insensitive or ignorant reader may not even realize that some expression is metaphorical. In both cases neither the expression nor the performance is metaphorical for the reader or performer in question. The theory of ritual proposed here is intended to account for ritual by the highest of religious categories, by proposing how the performance of ritual can achieve a “purely religious” end. If not all ritualists perform ritual for the purest of motives, the problem resides more with the ritualist than the ritual theorist. Of course, to say that a mitzvah has not functioned metaphorically in circumstance C is not to assert that it is not a mitzvah, but only to assert that it has not functioned as such in context C. The deontic status of the mitzvah does not depend upon its metaphorical function. If one believes that mitzvot are binding, then even if the ritualist’s experience is unlikely to be restructured for whatever reason, the mitzvah must still be performed. In light of this discussion, however, it should not be hard to see how the account of the kiddush ceremony outlined here does indeed 19

Mendelssohn stresses this as well. See A. Eisen, “Mendelssohn on the Commandments,” AJS Review 15 (1991), 239-267 for a discussion of this point. — 127 —

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satisfy the “purely religious” end desideratum for a theory of ritual. First, the end in performing the ceremony is unique to the religious life-plan: the atheist would have no need to restructure his experience of God’s presence in the world. Second, the end can also be seen as indispensable to achieving the highest ends of some religious life-plan, for the religious person, it would seem, can never apprehend God, or become one with Him, if the experience of God is not as He truly is, namely, according to this tradition, evocable, immanent, and so forth. For example, I can’t experience you as you truly are, if my experience of you is distorted by past prejudices. Likewise, I can’t apprehend God, if what I experience is not Him but some misconstrual of Him. Ritual seeks to evoke God as He truly is, or, more accurately, to evoke those aspects of Him that would have remained hidden, that we would not have experienced, if not for the performance of the ritual. Ritual seeks to recreate the religious experience by jolting it out of its complacency through the metaphorical oddities of the twin experiences it generates. Experiential transformation of key religious categories is central to the ritual enterprise. Thus, the theory of ritual mitzvot proposed here accounts for the performance of mitzvot by the standard of “purely religious end.” Before proceeding to discuss other aspects of the mitzvah-asmetaphor theory, we need to consider briefly two points. First, the question of communication. In a typical metaphor, the writer (or speaker) communicates some message, C, to the reader (or listener). But in the case of ritual, who is communicating to whom? Is the performer communicating to the observers of the ritual? To himself? To God? Or is it the originator of the ritual who is communicating to the performer and the participants of the ritual? Or is it all or none of the above? These questions raise several others: Can I be said to communicate C to R if I don’t know that I am communicating C, or if R doesn’t know that I am communicating C to him? Can I communicate C to R, not by doing or saying something myself, but by having R do or say something? Answering all these questions in the context of this essay would take me far afield. Two points, however, can be made. First, if ritual is only metaphor-like rather than genuine metaphor, then it is not necessary that ritual be communicative. What is necessary is that — 128 —

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ritual share, the same function and mechanism as metaphor, which I believe it does. Second, it is not at all unreasonable to maintain that ritualists typically do intend to communicate by means of the ritual, most notably to God, that, for example, they care enough about Him to perform His ritual; or that they wish Him to respond kindly to their needs, spiritual or material; or that they wish Him to be, say in the case of the kiddush ceremony (and mutatis mutandis in the case of other rituals), immanent, loving, evocable, and so on. They may not consciously intend to communicate the entire array of experiences evoked by the ritual performance, but, just as in the case of linguistic metaphors, the writer rarely intends consciously the full array of experiences evoked by the metaphor. Moreover, some ritualists may well intend to communicate to themselves and to other participants in their performance of the ritual, to evoke in themselves and others the experiences the ritual gives rise to. It is not counterintuitive to maintain that the originator(s) of the ritual may himself (themselves) be communicating to the ritualist and participants of the ritual. Surely I can communicate a secret message to you by asking you to engage in certain activities that I know will evoke specific beliefs or attitudes in you, precisely those I wish to communicate. On the face of it, then, it seems reasonable to maintain that ritual can be communicative and that it can be communicative in any or all the senses mentioned above. When the Jew performs a mitzvah he or she may be communicating to God, to himself, or to others around him, as indeed the originator of the ritual, whoever that was, may be communicating to the ritualist. Most critically, however, the means of communication is metaphorical. Finally, we need to return briefly to the notion of bilaterality introduced earlier in regard to metaphor. I noted above that metaphorical focus is arbitrary: the principal and subsidiary subjects can always be reversed to produce (with appropriate changes) an apt metaphor. By this I mean not that, where inversion takes place, the interpretation of the inverted metaphor will be the same as the interpretation of the non-inverted metaphor, since this is patently false. What I mean is that, where inversion takes place, the inverted metaphor will be an apt one, by virtue of the interactive mechanism characteristic of metaphor. I also mean to suggest that in some circumstances the experiencer of — 129 —

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metaphor may be empirically likely to (unconsciously) perform this inversion, since he experiences the occurrence as metaphorical and metaphor works by juxtaposing two experiential sets. Nonlinguistic metaphors seem especially likely to encourage such inversion, since they are nonsyntactic and therefore, to the experiencer, more open-ended. The key advantage to this observation, not surprisingly, is in ritual. Since ritual, as I am claiming, restructures the ritualist’s experience of the principal subject by means of the mechanism of interaction, that interaction too is bilateral. In other words, in the case of ritual at least, the restructured experience of the principal subject may in turn lead to a subsidiary restructuring of the subsidiary subject. For example, in the case of the kiddush ceremony, once the experience of God has been restructured, so that He is experienced as time-bound, evocable, immanent, and so on, the experience of the kiddush ceremony may be restructured as well, so that the ceremony itself is experienced as an evoker of God’s hiddenness and immanence. The kiddush cup may come to be experienced as holding not only the wine, but also the immanence of God, hidden therein. The ritual dynamic is thus even more complex and subtle: it travels in multiple directions.

VI In this section I apply the mitzvah-as-metaphor theory in detail to the performance of another mitzvah, that of teki’at shofar. My aim is to provide further evidence for the way in which the theory illuminates the performance of mitzvot, to show how it accords with traditional interpretations of mitzvot, and, through its application, to consider other aspects of the theory itself. In order to begin the analysis, it is important to note that reflection about ritual mitzvot generally suggests that they may be divided into three classes: theistic, historical, and humanistic. A ritual mitzvah is theistic if its principal subject is the nature of God and/ or His relation to individual persons, mankind as a whole, or nature and natural processes. A ritual mitzvah is historical if its principal subject is some period, past, — 130 —

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present, or future, in the history of the Jewish people, where the ritualist’s experience of such stands in a causal relation with his experience of God. A ritual mitzvah is humanistic if its principal subject is the nature of man or the nature of human relationships, where the ritualist’s experience of such stands in a causal relation with his experience of God.

Theistic ritual mitzvot are, I think, self-explanatory, and it is not difficult to think of many examples of mitzvot that fall into these categories. A word should be said, however, about the historical and humanistic categories. If a ritual’s principal subject is only the nature of mankind, human relationships, or the Jewish people, then in what way is it unique to the religious life-plan? Secularists need to get the nature of mankind or of the Jewish people right as well. And if it is not unique to the religious life-plan, then it fails to satisfy the “purely religious end” standard. It is for this reason that I added the condition that the ritualist’s experience of the humanistic and historical principal subjects must stand in a causal relation to the ritualist’s experience of God. This condition excludes the humanistic and historical principal subjects from the secularist’s life-plan and connects it intimately with the highest ends of the religionist. The uniqueness condition would thus be satisfied. Another consequence of this system of classification emerges if we take it to be a necessary condition for the metaphoricality of ritual mitzvot that the principal subject of the ritual be theistic, historical, or humanistic. Suppose, for example, that the kiddush ceremony gives rise in me to an experience of the party I recently attended at which a toast was given to my friend using the same brand of wine, and that this then restructures my experience of the party along metaphoric lines. While here the ritual behavior functioned metaphorically, it is hardly a characteristic of ritual mitzvah-metaphoric function. What makes for characteristically mitzvah-metaphoric function is precisely the nature of the principal subject that is restructured. While this system of classification does pick out this characteristic mitzvah-metaphoric restructuring and will prove useful for an analysis of ritual mitzvot, as we shall soon see, it does have a certain — 131 —

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limitation. This arises from the complexity of the phenomenon it purports to classify, since any individual ritual may be theistic and historical and humanistic at different stages of its performance, and even simultaneously. A complex ritual, rich in traditions, may indeed have many subjects, and which one will predominate for the ritualist depends upon the ritualist’s sensitivities, background beliefs, and knowledge. I shall call this complexity the multimetaphoricality of ritual. Nevertheless, by applying this triadic model to the analysis of ritual, we can at least isolate and classify its various dimensions. Shofar is an excellent example of this multimetaphoricality, for it has been interpreted by the classical sources as having principal subjects in each of these classes. I shall in fact organize my discussion of the metaphoricality of shofar around this classification, selecting only a limited number of examples from the immensely rich explanatory literature which has arisen around shofar, to show how it can function metaphorically in each of the three categories for the religiously sensitive ritualist. First I shall consider the relevant physical properties of the ritual object and performance itself, considering how they interact with some metaphorically related principal subject. Then I will look at the literary or historical allusions attached to the performance, which the sensitive ritualist brings with him or her to the experience of the ritual, since these too will be interacted with the ritual’s (multiple) principal subjects. I shall use the noncommunicative model of ritual as metaphor, since this is somewhat less complicated than the communicative model, although it should be apparent that the analysis will work for both.

Theistic Consider first the shape of the shofar. It is bent, with the narrow mouthpiece inserted into the mouth and its body projecting outward and upward, growing wider the farther it gets from the mouth. Sound is experienced as entering its narrowest and lowest level and rising to its highest and widest point. Consider too an important aspect of Rosh Hashana, which is traditionally experienced as yom ha-din, a day of cosmic trial. In this context it is most natural that the shofar, the — 132 —

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ritual object most closely associated with Rosh Hashana, would interact with the ritualist’s experience of God as judge; the ritualist would thus experience himself as dependent upon God’s goodwill and grace for life and happiness. Just as the sound of the shofar rises from the mouth upward to the heavens, just as the sound of the teki’ah rises from the lower to the higher note, so, too, in the experience of the ritualist, the Jew’s thoughts and deeds rise upward to God. The ritualist’s experience of this rising property, as shared by the shofar (and its sound), and his thoughts and deeds which face God in judgment, cause the experience of God to be restructured, so that God is experienced as judge, weighing and evaluating all that the Jew places before Him.20 Then the shofar itself, through the bilateral interaction phenomenon, is experienced no longer as a mere instrument, but as that which helps to create the judge-defendant relation between God and the Jew. God too has, as it were, various attitudes towards man. He can closely examine the minutiae of man’s sins and, of course, find man wanting, or He can overlook and transcend those narrow shortcomings, examine him less exactingly, with generosity and mercy. The shofar starts narrow and low. God as judge can be experienced as sharing that very property: God can decide on narrow and exacting grounds. The shofar and its sound elevates and expands. God as judge can be experienced as sharing that very property: He can transcend those narrow and exacting grounds and judge munificently and bountifully. Thus the ritualist experiences these properties as shared by the shofar and by God, and, as a result, experiences God as a judge who can transcend the confines of strict justice, who can bestow mercy even when strictly undeserved. The rising sound and shape of the shofar interacts with the experience of God and restructures it. The experience of the shofar too is restructured bilaterally, as a purveyor of this message of God and redemption. Even the ascent of the blower of the shofar onto the bima is a metaphor for the ascent of man’s deeds before God and the ascent of God Himself.21 There is more. If the Jew experiences God as judge, then he experiences himself as a supplicant on trial before Him. As a supplicant, he cries out. 20 21

S. Finesinger, “The Shofar,” Hebrew Union College Annual 9 (1931), 218. Ibid., 215-216. — 133 —

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But in what language and with what words? An inarticulate cry of despair as well as hope: the broken sound of the teru’ah blast, which rises from the shofar’s lowest point, the mouth of the blower, up to the heights of the shofar’s peak and beyond, to God Himself. The shofar causes the ritualist to experience God as object of supplication, and it causes the ritualist to experience the relation between man and God as that of supplicant to listener and bestower. The broken and soaring sound of the shofar interacts with the experience of the relation between God and man in the context of the Day of Judgment, and it also interacts with the experience of prayers of supplication. The shofar in turn is experienced as the purveyor of inarticulate cries and hopes.22 Further, the tenuous bond between God and man is experienced as supported by the secret language of the shofar, as ineffable as the shofar cry itself.23 The shofar is bowed and bent. This property is experienced as shared with the human relationship to God; the interaction causes the ritualist to experience himself as bowed, bent in supplication, broken before God, just as the shofar is bowed and bent, just as the teru’ah sound breaks and wavers. The shofar itself is then experienced as the Jew’s agent, his bowed and bent representative and mouthpiece before God.24 The sensitive and informed ritualist would be steeped in the literature and traditions associated with shofar, and so the shofar would give rise to other theistic principal subjects as well. To mention just one among many examples, the shofar used by Ashkenazi Jews is typically a ram’s horn. The ram is a principal figure in one of the great biblical stories, akedat Yitzhak. At the very last moment, before Abraham sacrifices Isaac, God intervenes, Abraham sees a ram whose horns are entangled in a nearby thicket, and he takes the ram and slaughters it in lieu of his son Isaac. To the sensitive ritualist, the ram’s horn of the shofar may give rise to an experience of the primordial biblical ram, which replaced the threatened Isaac. That experience would likely give rise to others with which his experience of the shofar would interact. Thus, for example, he may come to experience 22 23 24

S. Y. Agnon, S. Y. Days of Awe, ed. Nahum Glatzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), 75. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 68. — 134 —

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himself in relation to God as entangled and immobilized too, in the thickets of anxiety and wrongdoing, as prevented from achieving his highest ends.25 He experiences too the glory of God’s presence and his consequent readiness to sacrifice himself for it, as Isaac did before him. He experiences the highest ends of his life as so valuable that the means he chooses to achieve those ends include self-denial as well.26

Historical The historical subjects of shofar as metaphor largely depend for their role in the ritualist’s experience of shofar upon their inclusion in Jewish history, especially as told in the Bible. First, there is the revelation at Sinai, a central event in Jewish history. The shofar, which was sounded at Sinai according to the Bible, may be experienced by the knowledgable ritualist as interacting with the experience of sounding the shofar on Rosh Hashana. The sound of the shofar gives rise to an experience of that people/nation-making event; the shofar is sounded before the entire congregation, standing in awed silence. The revelation at Sinai also took place before the congregation of Israel, standing in awe before God and the unceasing blast of the shofar. These shared properties restructure his experience of his lonely self (there are humanistic dimensions of this as well); he now experiences himself as bound horizontally, across to all Jews in his congregation, even to all Jews around the world, as they too on the very same day listen to the shofar. He experiences himself as bound vertically as well, back into the time of his ancestors, who throughout the ages listened as he does to the voice of the shofar, all the way back to those who stood at Sinai before God and heard there the sound of His shofar, who bore witness to God’s presence in the world, who undertook to live according to the obligations demanded by His presence, and who became one people in obligation and witness before God. The shofar ritualist thus experiences himself as heir to the theistically grounded obligations, to the national unity and purpose of the past. He then experiences the blast of the shofar not merely as the sound of the ram’s 25 26

Ibid., 66. Ibid., 72. — 135 —

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horn, but as a call to intensify his experience of that community, to act upon it, with all the heirs of that shofar blast of the past.27 The shofar in biblical literature marks not only a transforming event in the past, but also a transforming event in the future. In Isa. 27:13 the shofar blast ushers in the messianic era. The experience of the shofar on Rosh Hashana interacts with the experience of the long-hopedfor shofar blast of the messianic era, and the ritualist’s experience of the present splintered state of his people is restructured according to the heartening and challenging vision of a common and transformed destiny. The shofar, in turn, is experienced as a call to the ritualist to help realize that destiny and as a broken supplication before God to speed the process towards its realization.28

Humanistic The thoroughgoing restructuring of the shofar ritualist’s experience of God and His relation to man, as well as the ritualist’s experience of his people and his relation to them, is bound to have a profound impact upon his experience of himself. If he experiences himself as on trial, if he experiences his fate as tenuous and riding upon the ultimately unpredictable decision of another, then he experiences the vulnerability of life itself. The experience of the vulnerability of life, in turn, gives rise to a sense of urgency in life’s missions, an experience of the significance of each moment. It gives rise to the urge to evaluate the lives we lead, to engage in self-criticism, to feel anxious about the value of our accomplishments. The experience of birth, and according to tradition Rosh Hashana is the birthday of the world, gives rise in the sensitive ritualist to the experience of death, for all that is born will die. Thus this experience of being on trial for life itself, this experience of impending death, structures our experience of ourselves and our past in very significant ways, much as the existentialist writers have long stressed. The straight teki’ah sound is experienced as sharing certain properties with the blast that traditionally marked the start of a great 27 28

Ibid., 65-70. Ibid., 64, 67, 71-72. — 136 —

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trial, and the interaction results in the experiential restructuring described above. The wavering teru’ah or shevarim sound is experienced as sharing properties with expressions of incertitude, anxiety, and selfdoubt. Each staccato sound lasts but a short moment; life too lasts but a short moment over the long stretch of God’s eternal time. The teru’ah stops and starts; it is experienced as sharing properties with hesitant, anxious self-questioning. It interacts with the experience of life itself: each moment is experienced as taking on its own urgency, as sharp and demanding as the short cry of each staccato note. The ritualist introspects, bends into himself, much as the shofar is bent. The ascent of the shofar, the ascent onto the bima by the shofar blower, interacts metaphorically with the ritualist’s own personal growth, as he recognizes the inherent limitations of life and his own personal limitations. His experience of himself, his potential and his mission, is restructured. And he feels an urgency to act forcefully upon these new experiences, a feeling as forceful and urgent as the teki’ah blast itself.

VII We have seen how the mitzvah-as-metaphor theory provides an explanatory framework and a theoretical underpinning for the rich array of classical interpretations that have grown around the shofar ritual, as well as for new ways of seeing it. The account not only allows for this richness, but also encourages it. Unlike the symbolist school, which tends to look for fixed referential relations between a ritual and its subject, the metaphor approach personalizes ritual, making it radically context-dependent. The maximally sensitive ritualist will experience many things when he performs ritual, and all these experiences contribute to the metaphoricality of ritual, provided they are theistic, historical, or humanistic. There is no one set of “correct” referents to ritual; ritual is what the ritualist makes of it. But what the typical sensitive and knowledgeable ritualist makes of it metaphorically does indeed contribute to the highest ends of the religious life, as I believe the shofar example makes clear. Ritual has often been criticized on pragmatic or existentialist religious grounds. Ritual is repetitive, runs the argument, which renders — 137 —

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it inherently unable to enrich the religious experience of the ritualist; it encourages rote, mindless, and inauthentic behavior. In practice, of course, this occurs. Ritual is indeed performed in precisely this way by at least some ritualists at least some of the time. Nevertheless, ritual, properly understood, need not function in this way. Even the most striking of metaphors, paintings, or sculptures can be lost on the insensitive reader. Similarly, ritual may be lost on the insensitive performer. Nevertheless, accounting for ritual as metaphor unleashes an immensely rich set of categories for responding creatively to ritual performance. Much as great myth retains the power to fascinate children, or adults, upon rereading, so too ritual retains this power as well. The vast multimetaphoricality of shofar reflects the myriad ways in which the imaginative, knowledgable, and sensitive ritualist can interact with ritual. The power of ritual echoes the power of metaphor, poetry, great art, and music. Just as great art long retains the capacity to stimulate fresh ways of looking, so too ritual long retains the power to stimulate new experiences, new principal subjects, new interactions, and new restructurings. Finally, it is worth adding that the intricate details of ritual performance contribute substantially to its metaphorical riches. As the analysis of shofar as metaphor shows, the numerous details of the shofar performance give rise to varied principal subjects and varied interactions. The idea is not to explain why some originator may have instituted one particular detail over another; this leads to artificiality and, as Maimonides maintains in the Guide (III:26), is in any case unknowable, at least when God is the ritual’s originator. Explaining the details of the mitzvot in terms of the ritual-as-metaphor theory amounts to explaining the ways in which the religiously knowledgable and sensitive performer is likely to respond metaphorically to the detail in question. Is it likely to help give rise to the experience of one rather than another principal subject? Is it likely to call attention to one rather than another property of the principal subject? Is it likely to result in one rather than another sort of restructuring? Answers to these questions depend upon the mindset of the sensitive and knowledgeable ritual performer. Are there any allusions within the classical literature relevant to the detail that he is likely to bring to his — 138 —

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experience of the ritual? Does the context of the ritual make it likely that the detail will generate a particular wish, desire, or attitude, which in turn will contribute to the experiential restructuring that is the task of the ritual? No doubt many of these questions may be asked in the usual symbolist interpretation. Nevertheless, the key difference is that for the ritual-as-metaphor theory, no claim is made that the answer to these questions will reveal some objectively existent referential relation or “deep meaning” to the ritual. The existence of these is not required at all (although, of course, their existence is not denied either). Rather, the assumption is that there may be many different correct answers to these questions, since, as has been maintained throughout this essay, the metaphoricality of any ritual performance depends entirely upon the particular experiential set of the performer.29

29

This paper is drawn from a larger work, entitled Ritual as Metaphor. I am grateful to participants of the 1991 meeting of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, especially to Josef Stern, for comments made on an earlier version of the paper. — 139 —

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--------------------------------- Chapter VI  ----------------------------------

Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility *

Until fairly recently, the usual view of Maimonides’ position on freedom of the will was that he was a strict libertarian. This is because he appears to assert unequivocally in several places in his Commentary to the Mishna, most notably in Shemonah Perakim 8 and in Mishneh Torah (Teshuva 5), that human choice is undetermined. Alexander Altman and Shlomo Pines challenged this view in recent years by arguing, mostly on the basis of Guide of the Perplexed II:48,1 that Maimonides maintained an esoteric view according to which human choice is determined by the natural order, which is itself determined by God.2 On the one hand, of course, it should not be particularly surprising if Maimonides adopts an exoteric view closer to religious orthodoxy in his more popular works and an esoteric view in the Guide. On the other hand, Shlomo Pines himself warns against such facile generalizing.3 *

1

2

3

I would like to thank Professor Avi Ravitzky for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper, as well as participants in a session at the Association for Jewish Studies in Boston, December 1993, where a portion of this paper was read and discussed. For quoted references to this work, I refer the reader to Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). Shlomo Pines, “Studies in Abul Barakat al-Baghdadi’s Poetics and Metaphysics,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 6 (1960), 195-98; and Alexander Altmann, “The Religion of the Thinkers: Free Will and Predestination in Saadia, Bahya and Maimonides,” ed., Religion in a Religious Age, ed. S. D. Goitein (Cambridge, MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974), 25-51. See also Warren Zev Harvey, “Perush Ha-Rambam le-Bereshit 3:22,” Da ‘at 12 (1984), 15-22. Shlomo Pines, “The Philosophic Purport of Maimonides’ Halakhic Works and the Purport of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1986), 1-14. — 140 —

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As he demonstrates, on certain issues Maimonides takes a rigorously Aristotelian and therefore more religiously heterodox position in his popular works, but softens that Aristotelianism and moves closer to a more religiously orthodox position in the Guide itself. An apparent esotericism in the Guide may thus turn out to be consistent with a position argued forcefully in the Mishneh Torah or the Commentary to the Mishna. Moreover, as I shall try to show, the main problem with the PinesAltman thesis is its failure to take into account the most serious theological argument that Maimonides in his popular works puts forward against determinism: the problem of moral and religious responsibility. I maintain that Maimonides in fact held that human choice is determined by a causal chain traceable all the way back to God, while nevertheless affirming that human beings are reponsible for the choices they make. To explain this apparently paradoxical assertion, I shall argue that Maimonides held a particular version of what recent philosophical literature has called the “sane deep self” view of human agency and responsibility.

I. Maimonides Contra Determinism Maimonides in his popular works discusses and rejects four different grounds for denying freedom of the will: astrological fatalism, kalam and other notions of the divine will and causality, psychological determinism, and divine foreknowledge. I shall focus here only on those texts from the Commentary to the Mishna and Mishneh Torah that affirm the sort of freedom Pines and Altman claim that Maimonides denies in the Guide: freedom from psychological determinism and freedom from divine causality and will. Psychological Determinism: In Shemonah Perakim 8, Maimonides asserts that: It is impossible for a person to be born endowed by nature from birth with either virtue or vice.… It is possible, however, that through natural causes one may from birth be so constituted as to have a natural predilection for a particular virtue or vice, so as to practice it more readily than any other. — 141 —

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Maimonides gives an example of someone born with a predilection toward cowardice, but he claims: “If, however, it be desired to make a brave man of him he can without doubt become one, provided he receive the proper training which would require of course great exertion.” He links this point to a discussion of astrological fatalism and in that context makes what I take to be a central argument in favor of human freedom, a recurring point throughout his popular discussions of the subject in Shemonah Perakim and Mishneh Torah: Of course, as we have said above, a person by nature may be so constituted as to find it easy or hard, as the case may be, to do a certain thing; but that one must necessarily do or refrain from doing a certain thing is absolutely untrue. Were a person compelled to act according to the dictates of predestination then the commands and prohibitions of the Law would become null and void and the Law would be completely false, since one would have no freedom of choice in what one does. Moreover, it would be useless, in fact absolutely in vain for one to study, to instruct or attempt to learn an art … or gain certain knowledge or acquire a certain characteristic. Reward and punishment too would be pure injustice.

This argument from human responsibility is a powerful one. Indeed, its language is reminiscent of Maimonides’ discussion of creation in Guide II:25, where he confronts the considerable stakes involved in denying creation ex nihilo. While in that context Maimonides does show some apparent openness to “voiding” the Law if forced to on necessary philosophical grounds, he hardly acquiesces without the most excrutiating philosophical battle. Denying freedom of choice would yield exactly the same untoward result, a “voiding” of the Law. Yet there is no evidence that Maimonides struggled with the problem. This, of course, at least suggests that his doctrine of choice, even in the Guide, does not require voiding the law. The most significant Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages to take what is usually characterized as a “soft determinist” position was Hasdai Crescas, who recognized the problem and struggled mightily to solve it. Were Maimonides to have taken a position akin to that of Crescas’s own distinctive solution, it seems likely that he would have at least hinted at it. To my knowledge, however, no such hints appear anywhere in his work. — 142 —

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In Hilkhot Teshuva4 Maimonides sharply formulates an anti-deterministic position on this issue: “Every person can be as saintly as Moshe Rabbeinu or as wicked as Yerav’am; or as wise or ignorant; or merciful or cruel; or stingy or magnanimous; and likewise for other human traits.” With respect to personality traits and moral virtue, Maimonides adopts the Aristotelian position that all moral virtues are acquired by habituated practice only. Although predispositions to certain traits are indeed inborn, Maimonides argues that these can be changed through what he calls proper “training.” The ascription of praise or blame is justifiable on precisely these grounds. Divine Causality and Will: In his discussion of the problem that divine causality can and will raise for human freedom in Mishneh Torah Teshuva 5:4, Maimonides makes the same connection between responsibility and freedom: Know that everything is in accordance with the divine will, even though we have freedom of the will. How? Just as the creator wills that fire and air ascend and water and earth descend … so he wills that humankind be free and his actions up to him, that there be no necessity or pull upon him, but that he himself of his own, with his mind that God gave him, do all that a person can do. Therefore he is judged by his actions; if he does good he is rewarded and if he does evil he is punished.

God both willed the laws of nature and willed that humankind be capable of acting freely, on account of which ascriptions of praise and blame are justified. No suggestion is made here that there is a connection between the laws of nature, psychological or otherwise, and the content of the actual choice. This connection is the key factor emerging from Maimonides’ discussion of human freedom in the Guide.

II. Maimonides in the Guide Before turning to the much-discussed passage in Guide II:48 which forms the basis of the Pines-Altman thesis, I shall cite a passage related to psychological determinism not mentioned in the secondary literature 4

Ch. 5:1. — 143 —

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but which supports a deterministic (or at least compatibilistic) reading of Maimonides. In Guide I:34, Maimonides discusses the factors that “prevent the commencement of instruction with divine science … and the presentation of [it] to the multitude.”5 The fourth cause itemized by Maimonides is that of natural human aptitudes. There are, moreover, many people who have received from their first natural disposition a complexion of temperament with which perfection is in no way compatible. Such is the case of one whose heart is naturally exceedingly hot; for one cannot refrain from anger, even by subjecting one’s soul to very stringent training…. Similarly one can find among people rash and reckless folk whose movements … indicate a corruption of the complexion and a poor quality of temperament… Perfection can never be perceived in such people. And to make an effort on their benefit in this matter is pure ignorance on the part of the one who makes the effort [my emphasis throughout].

Here, Maimonides appears to follow Aristotle’s position on the question in the Nicomachean Ethics (3.5.10-15) and to deny exactly what he affirmed in the above cited passages from Shemonah Perakim and Mishneh Torah: namely, that every person can indeed be as saintly as Moses. Note that Maimonides refers to people born with a disposition incompatible with perfection, not abnormal persons like kleptomaniacs, who acquire their compulsions at least in part through their life experiences. Is this then just a kind of cynical lapse on Maimonides’ part as he considers the limitations of human nature in the face of metaphysics’ intellectual mountains? This interpretation, while possible, seems on the whole unlikely, given Maimonides’ own claims regarding the care with which he selected every word of the Guide. I am now in a position to consider the passage in the Guide (II:48) that both Pines and Altman cite in defense of their thesis. Maimonides introduces the chapter by asserting that “everything produced in time must necessarily have a proximate cause which has produced it. In turn that cause has a cause, and so forth, until one finally comes to the First Cause of all things, I mean God’s will and 5

Guide I:34, 72. — 144 —

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free choice.” God is thus the ultimate cause of all that occurs in the universe. For this reason, he says, the prophets ascribe everything to God, omitting mention of the chain of intermediate causes between the event in question and God. Following this introduction, Maimonides warns his readers to “listen to what I shall explain in this chapter and consider it with particular attention, with an attention exceeding the attention with which you consider the other chapters of this treatise.” Something of great significance, and perhaps difficulty, is apparently about to be formulated. As the ensuing passage makes clear, the issue Maimonides addresses is the place of animal volition and human choice in the causal chain initiated by God’s will: This is the notion to which I wished to draw attention in this chapter. For inasmuch as the deity is, as has been established, he who arouses a particular volition in the irrational animal, and who has necessitated this particular free choice in the rational animal and who has made the natural things pursue their course — chance being but an excess of what is natural, as has been made clear, and its largest part partakes of nature, free choice and volition — it follows necessarily from all this that it may be said with regard to what proceeds necessarily from these causes that God has commanded that something should be done in such and such a way or that he has said: “Let it be thus.”

In this passage Maimonides draws a strict parallel between animal volition and human free choice — which he calls “necessitated” — in that both occur as an effect of God’s initial will, just as natural events occur as a result of God’s initial will. The examples that Maimonides goes on to cite regarding human choice caused by God’s will derive from an array of biblical sources, and include Nebuchadnezzar’s tyranny and Joseph’s salvation from prison, to mention just a few. All are attributable to God’s will because they were caused by motivations that have their origin in God. Indeed, the distinction between psychological determinism and determinism rooted in God’s will ultimately collapses on this account, because God’s will works through nature (as Maimonides points out again and again), and human psychology is but one expression of nature in toto. He makes this point explicitly in Guide II:6, in the course of a — 145 —

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discussion of angels. There he claims that “all forces are angels”6 and, as the context makes abundantly clear, by “forces” he means forces of nature, including psychic forces.7 All forces, including the motivational, are intermediaries between God and events that occur in the world. Maimonides applies this thesis to the midrash that asserts that Judah lay with Tamar against his own better inclination, because the angel in charge of lust made an unwanted appearance. Lust — a “psychic” motivation — is explicitly called a force whose origin is with God. It turns out, therefore, that Judah lay with Tamar as a consequence of God’s will. Accordingly, based on the formulation in Guide II:48, Judah’s choice should be characterized as “necessitated” by God’s will. It seems fair to ask, then, in what sense was it free? Jerome Gellman, in a recent article on freedom and determinism in Maimonides,8 defends the view that the philosopher was a strict libertarian and interprets Guide II:48 to be asserting, not that God is the cause of a human being’s choice, but that what follows from that choice is ascribable to God, since what happens as a consequence of the choice follows the natural order. Whatever the merits of Gellman’s reading of the passage in question, two points must be mentioned: (1) It is hard to see what surprising and difficult message Maimonides is communicating here such that he would introduce the discussion by telling the readers to pay more attention to this chapter than any other in the Guide; (2) even if Gellman’s reading of the passage is plausible, it fails to account for the first passage I discussed (Guide I:34), in which Maimonides explicitly affirms a kind of psychological determinism. These two points lead me to reject a strict libertarian reading of Maimonides. Yet how can one account for the denial of determinism in his popular works, and, most importantly, the theological argument underpinning that denial, namely, the role of freedom of choice in human responsibility, without which, as he says, the whole of the Law would be pointless? 6 7 8

Guide II:6, 263. Ibid., 264. Jerome Gellman, “Freedom and Determinism in Maimonides’ Philosophy,” in Moses Maimonides and His Time, ed. Eric L. Ormsby (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 139-150. — 146 —

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There is another passage in the Guide that may shed further light on this question, a passage that in point of fact appears to contradict the very claim Maimonides makes in Guide I:34.9 I refer to Guide III:8, which discusses the role of matter in preventing apprehension of God, and the negative effects for achieving human felicity regarding a man’s physical impulses and sense of touch. There Maimonides says: To sum up: it is easy, as we have mentioned, to control suitable matter. If it is unsuitable, it is not impossible for someone trained to quell it. For this reason, Solomon — both he and others — inculcates all these exhortations. Also the commandments and prohibitions of the Law are only intended to quell all the impulses of matter.10

In contrast to Guide I:34, this passage asserts that one can improve even unsuitable matter through training. One possible solution to this contradiction is to distinguish between two types of unsuitable matter, the moderate sort, which is subject to training, and an extreme sort so unsuitable that it does not yield even to the most assiduous of training regimens. The problem with this solution, however, is that one would expect Maimonides in Guide III:8 to stress the extreme rather than moderate sort, since the overall theme of this chapter is the severe limitations matter places upon us. Nevertheless, he goes out of his way to affirm the trainability of matter. It seems, then, that the location of the libertarian/determinist fault line in Maimonides’ œuvre is not on the border between the esoteric and exoteric works. Instead, the problem seems best characterized as a tension within the whole of his body of writings, even within the Guide itself. One strategy for resolving this tension is to distinguish not only between two types of unsuitable matter but, more importantly, between two different kinds of training programs. In Guide I:34, Maimonides speaks of a training program directed specifically at the moral weakness itself, such as anger. This, Maimonides says, will never succeed in the case 9

10

Howard Kreisel (“Individual Perfection vs. Communal Welfare and the Problem of Contradictions in Maimonides’ Approach to Ethics,” PAAJR 58 [1992], 107-141) also notes this contradiction but attributes it to contextual stresses. Guide III:8, 433. — 147 —

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of “many people.” In Guide III:8, however, Maimonides takes pains to point out that all the commandments and prohibitions of the Torah serve only to quell the impulses of matter. Might there then be a broad-based kind of training program that does not admit of the limitations of the training program of Guide I:34, and which may help many, if not all, of the persons described in that passage as afflicted with matter of the extremely inferior sort? In what exactly does this training program consist, however, and why is it more effective than the training program of Guide I:34?

III. The Sane Deep Self View of Agency and Responsibility The conceptual problem here is essentially this: On the one hand, Maimonides tells us that the particular choices human beings make are causally determined by God’s will. Nevertheless, Maimonides still insists for good theological reasons that human beings are responsible for their choices. The solution I would like to suggest, based upon evidence that I shall soon cite from Mishneh Torah, is that Maimonides may have held what some have dubbed the “sane deep self” view of human agency and responsibility. This view was first developed by Harry Frankfurt,11 Gary Watson,12 and Charles Taylor,13 among other philosophers, and further refined in ways that are directly relevant to this paper by Elenore Stump14 and especially Susan Wolf,15 who coined the phrase “sane deep self.” The “sane deep self” view of human responsibility starts with the observation that for an action to be free, it must be free not only of external compulsion, such as the threat of assassination, for example. It must be free also of internal compulsion: the will that brought about the action must itself be free. This occurs, according to the “sane deep 11

12 13

14

15

Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971), 5-20. Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), 205-220. Charles Taylor, “Responsibility for Self,” in The Identities of Persons, ed. A. E. Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 281-299. Elenore Stump, “Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt’s Concept of Free Will,” Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988), 395-420. Susan Wolf, “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility,” in The Inner Citadel, ed. John Philip Christian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 137-151. — 148 —

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self” view, only when the will to steal, for example, is itself under the control of yet another level of the person, a “deep” self that stands back from this lower-order will, that reflects about it and evaluates it, and which can reject that lower-order will to steal if it so wishes. This deeper level is in some sense who we really are: it reflects the values, ideals, and beliefs that stand at the very core of our selves and that under normal circumstances shape our choices and our lives. Humans’ lower-order wills and desires in all their variety, according to the theistic determinist, are causally determined by the psychological forces originating in God’s own will. Nevertheless, one may still be said to will freely, since the “deep self” stands apart from these wills or desires and, under normal conditions, ultimately determines whether to allow them free behavioral reign. This account explains why compulsives such as kleptomaniacs are generally exculpated from responsibility for theft: their will to steal is governed not by their deep selves, their evaluational and reflective selves, but by forces external to their evaluational and reflective selves. Normal persons, even those who end up stealing, do not experience this split between their deep selves and their lowerorder wills; kleptomaniacs and mentally ill persons do. One must add that this hierarchical conception of the self does not entail that the deep selves all humans have are undetermined. Just as all psychic motivations, according to the theistic determinist, are the result of a causal chain going back through childhood upbringing and genetic endowment all the way to God, so too deep selves that evaluate and reflect about wants, desires, and wills are themselves determined by the same causal chain. One’s deep-self response to a lower-order desire to steal another person’s wallet is itself determined by upbringing, personality characteristics, and so on. Nevertheless  —  and this is the second central claim of the “sane deep self” view — the normal or morally sane person has the capacity to respond to the world as it truly is and, in the process of so doing, to recognize right from wrong. One’s upbringing, social conditioning, moral education, and sensibilities — in short, one’s moral reasoning — provide a vantage point from which to evaluate desires and behavior. This vantage point provides the normal person with the resources upon which to base self-correction. As long as humans have — 149 —

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the capacity to correct themselves, and the proponent of the “sane deep self” view is committed to the proposition that all do have this capacity, then it makes no moral difference if the content of the deep self is itself determined by psychological forces that form part of a causal chain extending back to God. This is so for the same reason that it makes no moral difference if the lower-order self is also determined in the same way. A person’s very sanity provides a kind of observation post from which to reflect about the nature of desires, character, values, and wants, thus allowing the normal person a basis upon which to correct or improve them, if his or her reflections so warrant. Metaphysical determinism is irrelevant to human responsibility on this account, because metaphysical determinism does not preclude the possibility of self-correction for a morally sane person. The same cannot be said for compulsives such as kleptomaniacs, nor can it be said for persons raised in a profoundly impaired moral environment, such as persons raised in a society in which every member was trained from birth to be nasty to strangers and cruel to the weak and helpless. Although prima facie it would seem that these persons are acting freely, because they act in conformity with their desires, and their desires are endorsed by their deep self, a deep self that truly wants to torment the poor. Nevertheless, these persons would not have the resources to correct their behavior, because, as a result of their upbringing, they lack the basic capacity to respond to the world in a morally reasonable way to the same extent as normal persons. The “sanity” condition of the “sane deep self” view is absent. Before returning to Maimonides, one further — and for my purposes very important — consequence of the “sane deep self” view should be noted. Under what circumstances could one say of someone that his or her will was not free? When the deep self has lost all control over the lower-order will. Suppose, however, that it were possible to manipulate his lower-order will to bring it into conformity with his deep self. Even though we used external forces to manipulate his lower-order will, it would turn out according to the “deep self” view that those external forces did not constrain or impede free will. In fact, just the opposite is true: they actually restored it. This is because by intervening with these external forces we restored control over the lower-order will to the deep — 150 —

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self, that is, to the person one truly is at the most profound level of one’s being. That person is now free to behave as he or she truly wants. I am finally in a position to return to Maimonides. First assume just for argument’s sake that he held some version of the “sane deep self” view of human responsibility. This would provide a solution to the central problem with which this article is concerned. Maimonides in the Guide maintains, as Pines and Altman argued, that human choice is determined by a causal chain extending back to God’s initiating will. Nevertheless, he could still affirm that normal human beings are responsible for their behavior, because determinism, according to the “sane deep self” view, is entirely compatible with moral responsibility. Certainly, according to Maimonides, Judah’s drive to lie with Tamar emerges from the content and structure of his personality, which in turn is determined by the natural psychological laws that God initiated ultimately. Nevertheless, because Judah is not a compulsive, he has the capacity to stand back from this lower-order desire and will, and to evaluate. He has the capacity to reflect about the kind of human being he is and the kind of human being he wants to be, in part because he has the capacity to distinguish right from wrong. He can choose a course of action that will help free him from the desires with which he struggles. Exactly what this course of action might be will soon become clear. The key point I wish to emphasize now, however, is that the “sane deep self” view of human responsibility provides a coherent account of how the determinism of Guide II:48 might be compatible with the affirmation of human responsibility in the Mishneh Torah and Perush ha-Mishna. But is there any textual evidence that Maimonides himself affirms such a view of human responsibility? I would argue that there is indeed evidence that Maimonides affirms something like this view of human responsibility. In Gerushin 2:20-22, he writes: An individual who does not want to divorce his wife but according to the law may be forced to do so, a Jewish court of law may force him until he says “I want [to divorce her].” … And why is this bill of divorce not nullified because he was forced, be it by non-Jews [who acted at the behest of the Jews], or Jews? Because we do not consider someone to be forced unless he is pressured and forced to do that which the Torah does not obligate him, such as someone who is hit until he sells or gives. But someone who — 151 —

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is attacked by his evil impulse to disobey a commandment or perform a forbidden action, and he is hit until he does that which he is obligated or desists from that which he is forbidden, is not considered forced by the hitting, but he forced himself through his evil characteristics. Therefore, this individual who does not want to divorce his wife, since he does want to be a member of the Jewish people, and wants to perform all the commandments and desist from all forbidden actions, and it is his evil impulse which attacked him. Since he was smitten until his evil impulse was weakened and he says “I agree [to divorce my wife],” he is divorcing in accordance with his will.

In this passage, reminiscent as it is of Rousseau and the entire “positive liberty” tradition, Maimonides proposes a bipartite model of the self and uses it to explain how an individual who is compelled to behave in a certain way may nevertheless be said to act freely. My argument is that the clearest and most philosophically persuasive way to read this text is according to the “sane deep self” view. On this reading, Maimonides is distinguishing between two aspects of the self, a “deep self” that truly wants to be an observant Jew and a member of the Jewish people, and a lower-order self that chooses to do evil under the influence of the evil impulse. Compelling such an individual to divorce his wife weakens the evil impulse which attacked and overwhelmed his decision-making self, and liberates his true “deep self.” Compulsion thus restores the link, heretofore obliterated by the evil impulse, between what this individual truly values, what this individual at the deepest level of his or her self really wants to be, and what in fact he or she chooses to do. As I noted earlier, it is precisely the notion that compulsion can sometimes restore freedom that is a distinctive characteristic of the “sane deep self’ view, and it turns out that Maimonides affirms precisely this notion in language remarkably suggestive of the “sane deep self” thesis. I should add here that much the same idea lies behind Maimonides’ account in Mishneh Torah and Shemonah Perakim of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart: there too Pharaoh’s will was free because, in preventing Pharaoh from repenting, God was in fact restoring to Pharaoh’s “evil deep self” control over his lower-order will, which had been weakening under the assault of the plagues. — 152 —

----   Chapter VI. Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility -----

While the conceptual structure of Maimonides’ account of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart and his account of compulsion for divorce is thus isomorphic, there is an important difference between the two which should be emphasized, since it sheds additional light on Maimonides’ version of the “deep self” thesis. He believes that, unlike Pharaoh’s deep self, which was evil, the Jewish deep self wills the good. The basis of this view about the essential goodness of the Jewish self is problematic in its own right: How, after all, does it fit with Maimonides’ overall universalism?16 More to the point here, however, the view that the Jewish deep self is essentially good raises the following question: In what sense is the deep self free to choose good or evil if, in the case of the Jew, it will always choose the good? The answer to this question is twofold. First, the “sane deep self” thesis does not require its adherents to maintain that the deep self is undetermined. As noted above, the nature of the deep self may itself be determined by a variety of psychological and social factors, a causal nexus to which Maimonides would add Jewish origins. Second, it is hardly clear that Maimonides means that a Jew is forever constrained by his deep self to choose the good and can never opt out of his Judaism. Precisely this question, that of whether this law applies to an apostate, was debated by various commentators to Maimonides, and it may well turn on the correct reading of the Maimonidean text itself.17 According to many authoritative commentators, there are indeed circumstances in which the law concerning acceptable coercion for divorce does not apply, where the deep self no longer wills the good.18 A second consequence of the “sane deep self” view previously noted earlier is that an individual raised in a profoundly impaired moral or 16

17

18

See Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991). For a discussion of this point, see Eugene Korn, “Tradition Meets Modernity: The Conflict of Halakha and Political Liberty,” Tradition 254 (1991), 34-37. Michael Walzer (“A Note on Positive Freedom in Jewish Thought,” Sevara II [1990], 7-11) distinguishes two different “arguments” in Maimonides: an “idealist” argument, which takes no account of the empirical realities of the person’s actual will, and a “communitarian argument,” according to which evidence is necessary that the person in question affiliates with the Jewish community, and hence in some sense wills what the community wills. — 153 —

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religious environment, say one that rears everyone to value nastiness and surliness, cannot be held responsible for his behavior in the same way that persons raised normally are, since such an individual lacks the capacity to reform himself or herself. Maimonides takes exactly this position in a famous passage in Mishneh Torah. This passage, of course, does not prove that Maimonides affirms the “sane deep self” view, since there are other ways of explaining the position he takes. Nevertheless, I cite it to show that Maimonides applies the categories of responsibility and coercion in ways consistent with the thesis. This [that is, the laws concerning heretics] applies only to one who repudiates the Oral Law as a result of his reasoned opinion and conclusion.… But their children and grandchildren, who, misguided by their parents, were raised among the Karaites and trained in their views, are like a child taken captive by them and raised in their religion, whose status is that of someone coerced who, although he later learns that he is a Jew, meets Jews, and observes them practice their religion, is nevertheless to be regarded as someone acting under compulsion, since he was reared in the erroneous ways of his fathers.19

Maimonides here substantially extends the talmudic principle of tinok shenishbe20 to include individuals, such as the Karaites, who grew up in a Jewish society in which observing the Oral Law was absent from their religious world view. Such persons, in the language of the “sane deep self” view, lack the capacity to respond to the world with “normal” religious sensibilities and therefore are not held religiously responsible for their own behavior.

IV. Tensions within the Guide It is now possible to return to the contradiction that I raised earlier between Guide I:34 and III:8. In the former passage, Maimonides asserts that many individuals are born with temperaments that can never be improved through training, while in III:8 he asserts that all persons can 19 20

Mamrim 3.3. That is, the exculpation from responsibility under Jewish law of someone captured by non-Jews as an infant and raised in a non-Jewish environment. — 154 —

----   Chapter VI. Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility -----

improve their temperaments through training. I take it to be significant that for Maimonides in Guide III:8, freedom of the will for persons afflicted with such unsuitable matter cannot be secured through a direct act of the will itself operating on the choice in question. If, for example, I suffer a terrible weakness for cheeseburgers because of inferior matter or some other reason, yet nevertheless desire to keep kosher, the solution to my dilemma may turn out to reside not in direct struggle with my powerful impulse to eat cheeseburgers. Notwithstanding the good intentions of my deep self, this may fail if my matter is so inferior that my impulse is overwhelming. In fact, according to Maimonides in Guide I:34, it will not even help to train myself to control my desire for cheeseburgers. The psychological laws governing the behavior of inferior matter determine that matter such as mine will inevitably lead to uncontrollable urges for cheeseburgers. How then can I be held responsible for my religious misbehavior? Following Guide III:8, Maimonides’ answer would be that while my behavior is determined by the matter with which I was born, I can still be held responsible since my deep self could have led me to choose (and can still so lead me) to embark upon a training program that might eventually free me from the grip of my desires. This is a rigorous program that does not focus exclusively on my desire for cheeseburgers but aims instead to tame all of my physical and psychological impulses. By learning to discipline myself in every avenue of my life, by weakening all my material impulses generally, I may yet gain control of my desire for cheeseburgers as well. But in what does this extensive training program consist? The extensive training program to which Maimonides refers is none other than the Law in its entirety, which, he says in Guide III:8, is designed to control the impulses of matter. One might ask, however, if my desire for nonkosher food is so potent, might it not seduce me from choosing to embark upon this training program of observing the mitzvot? Might not the desires lurking in my heart be such as to prevent me from even considering the program, knowing as they do its eventual consequences? In effect, will not the same deterministic forces preventing me from controlling my desires prevent me from embarking upon the training program itself? — 155 —

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If we are sane, the “sane deep self” view maintains, then the answer is a qualified “no.” This is because any religiously “sane” person knows ritual right from wrong, knows the evil of cheeseburgers. Any religiously sane person will, therefore, want to do whatever is possible to change. Now he may not be able to slay his desire for cheeseburgers directly. Yet he can choose to embark upon a training program that might indirectly cure him of his moral illness, to use Maimonides’ metaphor in Shemonah Perakim and Mishneh Torah. If normal human beings do have the capacity for self-criticism and self-evaluation, then, while they may lack the capacity to directly control their weaknesses at any given moment, they do have the capacity to make a grand choice, and that is the choice to undertake the training of the Law. This means that they can be held responsible for behavior over which they in fact have no direct control. Are there any persons whose matter is so inferior that even the training program of the Law in its entirety will prove unsuccessful, and who therefore should be exculpated from responsibility for their behavior? My inclination is to believe that there may indeed be such individuals, according to the esoteric doctrine of the Guide (especially in I:34). They are, however, few and far between, since, as I have argued based upon Guide III:8, most persons can be improved through training in the Law in its entirety. Because such persons are few in number, their existence does not threaten to “void” the Law, much as the existence of the class of individuals exculpated from responsibility for their behavior because they are sho’tim (fools in the parlance of the halakha) likewise does not void the Law. Both are limited exceptions to the general rule that normal human beings can be held responsible for their behavior; neither would serve Maimonides’ purposes in Guide III:8, even where he aims to show the limitations of matter. Indeed, both result from the natural fluctuations in kinds of matter in a world shaped by natural causes.

V. Conclusion In conclusion, I have argued that Maimonides’ affirmation of a determinism flowing from his conception of divine causality and will is compatible with the ascription of moral responsibility, perhaps the — 156 —

----   Chapter VI. Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility -----

most important consideration Maimonides advances in favor of human free will. The difference between the Guide and Maimonides’ popular works is that in his popular works he stresses only his affirmation of free will, largely on the grounds that to deny it would be to deny the possibility of human responsibility. Only to the more elite audience of the Guide does he hint at his real view, in II:48, that human choice is determined. Nevertheless, Maimonides knows that the view that human choice is determined does not entail a denial of the possibility of human responsibility for normal human beings, his key concern in his popular works. This is because, as he writes in Mishneh Torah, the deep self of a normal Jew is essentially good — or sane. As he tells us in III:8, freedom can be restored immediately, through justifiable compulsion, or, over time, by training in the disciplines of the Law.

— 157 —

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-------------------------------- Chapter VII  ---------------------------------

Master or Slave?

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on Human Autonomy in the Presence of God*

I. Introduction Peter Berger, the sociologist of religion, has suggested that the theme of individual autonomy, more than any other, characterizes the worldview of modernity.1 It is perhaps not surprising, then, that R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, amongst the most influential and creative of twentiethcentury Orthodox Jewish thinkers, would relate to it in the course of his writings. What is surprising, however, is the extent to which he does. No other theme so dominated R. Soloveitchik’s thought as the problem of human autonomy in its many guises. Whatever the putative subject, whether it is an analysis of faith or prayer,2 the quest for God or the nature of the halakhic life,3 all of R. Soloveitchik’s major theological works are centrally concerned with this issue. Even his treatment of Religious Zionism reflects the same preoccupation.4 Study of R. Soloveitchik’s literary œuvre reveals two stages to his treatment of autonomy, an early and a late phase. The early phase is

*

1

2

3 4

A Hebrew version of this article first appeared in Emunah be-Zemanim Mishtanim: Al Mishnato shel ha-Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, ed. A. Sagi (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1996). P. Berger, B. Berger, and H. Kellner, The Homeless Mind (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 196. For example, “Ra’ayonot al ha-Tefillah” in Ish Halakhah: Galui ve-Nistar (Jerusalem: haHistadrut ha-Tsiyonit ha-ʻOlamit, ha-Mahlakah le-Hinukh ule-Tarbut Toraniyim baGolah, 1979), 239-271. For references, see below. “Kol Dodi Dofek” in Be-Sod ha-Yahid ve-ha-Yahad (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976). I have in mind the distinction between the Man of Destiny and the Man of Fate. — 158 —

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embodied in Halakhic Man5 and “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham.”6 While the former was first published in 1944 and thus is obviously early, the latter first appeared in 1978 as a lengthy contribution to the rabbinic journal Hadorom. Nevertheless, the consensus amongst students of the matter is that at least an early version of the essay was written shortly after Halakhic Man, thus pre-dating its publication by some thirty years.7 In both of these essays, Rabbi Soloveitchik portrays the ideal Jew as resolving the autonomy/heteronomy polarity in favor of what might loosely be called “an autonomous stance towards God and life.” The late phase includes, most importantly, “Lonely Man of Faith,”8 “Majesty and Humility” and “Catharsis.”9 Each of these three essays, in its own way, portrays Jews, and to a large extent all human beings, as embracing an antithetical stance towards life, in which dependence upon God, submission and self-sacrifice  —  all expressions of a heteronomous stance — are sustained in permanent dialectical tension with the majestic, creative and self-sufficient — all expressions of an autonomous stance. While a comparative study of the commonalities and differences amongst these late essays on the question of autonomy is a scholarly desideratum,10 in this essay I shall focus on the early essays, in which Rabbi Soloveitchik presents a picture of religious experience that appears to embrace an ultimately non-conflicted personality whose fundamental stance towards life is the autonomous.

5 6 7

8 9 10

Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983). In Ish Halakhah: Galui ve-Nistar, 115-235 (henceforth: UVM). See, e.g., L. Kaplan, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Halakhah,” Jewish Law Annual 7 (l988), 143 n. 7; and A. Ravitzky, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik on Human Knowledge: Between Maimonidean and Neo-Kantian Philosophy,” Modern Judaism 6:2 (1986), 182 n. 17. I wish to stress, however, that even if one regards UVM as late rather than early, since it may have been substantially altered by R. Soloveitchik, its themes are closely linked to that of Halakhic Man and treating them together seems warranted. Some have suggested that, given the difficulties in dating some of R. Soloveitchik’s works, it may be best to analyze them not from an evolutionary perspective, since this is difficult to ascertain, but from a purely conceptual perspective. My basic analysis would be unaffected by this approach, although I have used an evolutionary framework in this essay. Tradition 7:2 (1965). Tradition 17:2 (1978). See, for example, the brief survey in David Hartman, Living Covenant (New York: Free Press, 1985), 77-88. — 159 —

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The questions I intend to address are: (1) How does Rabbi Soloveitchik attempt to solve the autonomy/heteronomy problem in these essays? (2) How successful are his solutions? (3) What do these attempts reveal about Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own theological agenda and the relationship amongst his works?

II. Varieties of Autonomy Both Halakhic Man and “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” are about topics at least prima facie unrelated to autonomy and heteronomy; the former portrays the inner world of the Talmudist and the latter the quest for devekut. Yet R. Soloveitchik devotes well over half of Halakhic Man to exploring the role of creativity, mastery and autonomy characteristic of Halakhic Man, since the inner world of the Litvak Talmudist, for Rabbi Soloveitchik, is largely defined by these characteristics. Similarly, the basic rift running through the quest for devekut as portrayed in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” is a version of the problem of autonomy in religious context. Why Rabbi Soloveitchik treats the problem of autonomy in such a fashion is an interesting question, but whatever the reason, this approach creates a difficulty for his interpreters: exactly how does R. Soloveitchik understand the very problem, or problems, of autonomy which, apparently, so exercised him? Before beginning with an analysis of the works represented even in the early phase, it would be helpful to delineate varying accounts of autonomy. For the purposes of this essay, I would like to distinguish amongst three different versions of the problem of autonomy which, in varying ways and degrees, seem to surface in R. Soloveitchik’s writings: autonomy of agency; of character and personality; and of intellect. Autonomy of agency, which I have elsewhere called “Nomic Autonomy,”11 is the view maintained by Kant and his followers that a law is moral only if it is self-imposed by virtue of its rationality. The problem this raises for the halakhic Jew is two-fold. First, what is the 11

“Religious Authority and Personal Autonomy,” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992), 169-216. — 160 —

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status of moral halakhah? Is it binding if not rationally self-imposed? If moral law is independently right, why is the divine command necessary? Second, what is the status of non-moral halakhah? Are they mere obligations of interest and not true laws in the Kantian sense? The second problem relates not to autonomy as a condition of moral agency, but autonomy as a condition of the ideal human character and personality. Isaiah Berlin called something akin to what I mean by this idea “positive liberty” in his celebrated Four Essays on Liberty.12 This tradition, which has its roots in Plato, the Stoic philosophers, and even such Romantics as Rousseau, maintains that the ideal human character acts out of motivations that express its true and deepest self. Joel Feinberg lists the following attributes as making up the autonomous character in this sense of autonomy: self-possession, individuality, selfdetermination or self-creation, authenticity, self-control, initiative, self-reliance, self-fidelity, and responsibility for self and independence.13 In a religious and halakhic context, the problem then becomes to what extent can or should the ideal Jew embody some or all such virtues as he stands before an overwhelming, commanding God. Related to autonomy of character, which has a moral dimension, is autonomy of personality and the concomitant behavior that flows from that personality. How should I feel and act standing before God? Should I feel and act self-confidently, masterfully and capably, or should I feel and act as an overwhelmed, insignificant creature before the Almighty God? The third concept of autonomy, that of the intellect,14 concerns the adequacy of the human intellect to arrive at the truth. To what extent can human beings know the truth about God, and to what extent is, or must, that knowledge be achieved through the processes of independent human reason? What happens if human reason reaches conclusions inconsistent with what the tradition teaches? At this stage it must be stressed that each of these problems is, in fact, conceptually independent of the others. Thus, one might argue that the Jew must stand in prayer and at work overwhelmed by God, 12 13 14

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Harm to Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), ch. 18. What I call “epistemic autonomy” in the essay cited above, n. 8. — 161 —

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but one must come to this state, and remain in it, independently and authentically as an expression of one’s true inner convictions. Similarly, one might argue that self-reliance and independent judgment on matters of faith are a vice, that one should blindly accept traditional authority, while nevertheless feeling empowered by God to conduct one’s life and prayer with confidence and control. Again, one could affirm an autonomy of character and personality yet deny the Kantian autonomy of moral agency. In any case, it should be clear that each of these kinds of autonomy bears its own problematics in a religious and halakhic context. The questions we must then address are: (1) Did R. Soloveitchik intend to resolve philosophically any of these problems, and if he did, which ones? (2) How successful are his proposals? At this point it is important to note that two models for responding to R. Soloveitchik’s works are available to us. The first is to see R. Soloveitchik as a Jewish thinker struggling to resolve philosophically numerous problems raised by the encounter between Judaism on the one hand and modernity and secular philosophy on the other. The second model is to see R. Soloveitchik not as a Jewish philosopher, but as a contemporary figure struggling heroically to articulate a vision of Judaism — albeit in the language of philosophy  —  commensurate with his own inner religious and 15 intellectual life. The usual view of R. Soloveitchik, of course, is that of a Jewish philosopher. The extensive, often highly sophisticated philosophical discussions and references, R.  Soloveitchik’s own advanced philosophical training, the philosophical formulation of the problems he addresses, all buttress this assessment. U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham tackles head on the problem of autonomy in a religious context, and Halakhic Man, too, engages the question of autonomy over and over again. That at least an early version of the former essay was written at about the same time as Halakhic Man lends further evidence to the assumption that Halakhic Man too is centrally concerned with the 15

For a fuller discussion of this distinction, which I call “Jewish Philosopher-as-King” versus “Jewish-Philosopher-as-Hero,” see chapter XV in this volume. See also below, in this essay. — 162 —

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philosophical problems of autonomy. For all these reasons, I shall begin my essay with the following hypothesis: Rabbi Soloveitchik did indeed intend in both essays to provide a philosophical response to the many problems raised for Judaism by the modern value of autonomy. Evaluating the truth of this hypothesis may well turn out to shed light on the larger question raised above, about how best to understand the very enterprise in which R. Soloveitchik was engaged.

III. Halakhic Man: An Overview As is well known, Halakhic Man proposes a pioneering phenomenological analysis of Litvak religiosity. Deploying the typological method that so characterizes his writings, Rabbi Soloveitchik maintains that Halakhic Man is a combination of two ideal types of persons, Cognitive Man and Religious Man. As will be seen, Halakhic Man is portrayed as fundamentally similar to Cognitive Man; nevertheless, he bears within him something of Religious Man as well, and it is to this type that I wish to turn first. Religious Man yearns to break free from the chains of the physical world and find union with the transcendent God above. He apprehends the world not as an object of mastery and knowledge, but as a mystery that points to God, as well as a barrier that prevents Religious Man from finding Him. While R. Soloveitchik is at pains to point out that Religious Man seeks to cognize the world and understand it, the very lawfulness he discovers only compounds the most fundamental mystery, that there is any lawfulness at all.16 Since his aim is unio mystica, Religious Man seeks a kind of self-annihilation: The will of Religious Man gradually wanes to nothingness, and his selfhood is inexorably extinguished inasmuch as he desires to immerse himself in the totality of existence and to unite with infinity…. What Religious Man wants is unio mystica, attachment to infinity and complete immersion and dissolution in the supernal realm.17

16 17

Halakhic Man, 7, 11. Ibid., 78. — 163 —

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The experience of Religious Man is subjective and highly emotional. This subjectivity opens Religious Man to a life of inner turmoil and contradiction, to feelings of overwhelming attraction to God mixed with feelings of overwhelming awe and fear: “Religious Man is suspended between two giant magnets, between love and fear, between desire and dread, between longing and anxiety.”18 R. Soloveitchik notes that the emotional state of such a person is tinged with melancholy, that it is filled with self-negation, the sense of lowliness, constant self-appraisal and fear.19 Nevertheless, he extols the anguish of Religious Man’s conflicts, remarking that they contain within themselves the “sweetness of eternity, a taste of the world to come.”20 Immediately thereafter he asserts: On the one hand, he [Religious Man] senses his own lowliness and insignificance, his own frailty and weakness…. On the other hand, he is aware of his own greatness and loftiness, how his spirit breaks through all barriers and ascends to the very heights…. Is he not the crown of creation to whom God granted dominion over all the work of his hands? … This antinomy is an integral part of man’s creature consciousness…. The essence of the antinomy is rooted in the religious perspective, man, in his relationship to the world, oscillates between the two poles of selfnegation and absolute pride, between the consciousness of the infinity deep within him. Religious Man can never be free of this oscillation. 21

Halakhic Man, portrayed throughout the essay as an autonomous, masterful, creative and assertive person, diverges from Religious Man on precisely these points, which at least suggests that the autonomy imputed to Halakhic Man is intended at least in part to respond to these features of Religious Man. This in turn implies that, from the point of view of autonomy in the life of Religious Man, at least two and possibly three issues concern R. Soloveitchik. First, Religious Man aspires to a negation of the self in God. This appears to undercut an affirmation of the autonomy of character. How can a self-reliant, self-determined, 18 19 20 21

Ibid., 67. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 67-68. — 164 —

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independent self aspire to its own annihilation? In addition, Religious Man’s pervasive feelings of insignificance and lowliness undercut his autonomy of personality, and his response to the mystery of the universe and the unknowability of God undermines his autonomy of intellect.22 In contrast to Religious Man, Halakhic Man is projected throughout the essay as a pillar of autonomy in each of the three senses outlined above, and this is in large part due to his fundamental similarity to Cognitive Man. R. Soloveitchik’s portrayal of Cognitive Man, as a kind of mathematical scientist, is heavily influenced by the Marburg School of Neo-Kantians, about which he wrote his dissertation and under one of whose leading interpreters he studied. Just as the mathematical scientist constructs reality through an ideal world of abstract, mathematically formulated rules, so too the Litvak Talmudist constructs his version of reality out of abstract, often quantitatively formulated halakhic principles. Just as all true human knowledge, for the Marburg NeoKantians, is ultimately a product of abstract scientific laws and their interrelationships, so too, for R. Soloveitchik, true Jewish knowledge of the world is ultimately the product of abstract halakhic principles and their interrelationships. In each case, knowledge of the details of reality derives from their subsumption under the general principle, which in science is wholly created by the scientist, and in halakhah is at least partially created by the halakhist. This conception of the Litvak halakhist leads to a portrayal of the halakhist as autonomous, creative and masterful. Let us now examine each of the three species of autonomy to see how, for R. Soloveitchik, they are embodied in Halakhic Man.

IV. Halakhic Man: An Analysis Autonomy of Intellect Halakhic Man, says R. Soloveitchik, “recognizes no authority other than the authority of the intellect (obviously, in accordance with the principles of tradition).”23 Evidence for this autonomy is adduced from 22 23

“Negative theology constitutes the greatest ideal of Religious Man,” ibid., 12. Ibid, 79. — 165 —

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the famous Talmudic debate about the oven of akhnai, in the context of which the Talmud asserts, “It is not in Heaven.” “Even the Holy One, blessed be He,” says R. Soloveitchik, “has, as it were, handed over His imprimatur, His official seal in Torah matters to man.… No other cognitive discipline has woven crowns for its heroes to the extent that the halakhah has done.… The glorification of man reaches here the peak splendor.”24 This autonomy is linked to a second characteristic of Halakhic Man, his preoccupation with intellectual creativity. “The essence of Torah,” asserts R. Soloveitchik, “is intellectual creativity.”25 Or again, “Halakhic Man is a man who longs to create, to bring into being something new, something original.… The dream of creation is the central idea in the halakhic consciousness.”26 Several problems emerge from this account of intellectual autonomy in Halakhic Man. First, as Aviezer Ravitzky has argued, the knowledge of reality advocated by R. Soloveitchik, an Aristotelian/Maimonidean unity between knower and object of knowledge, is precluded by the very post-Kantian theory of knowledge affirmed by R. Soloveitchik himself.27 Second, notwithstanding the fact that all scientists must operate with some theory — some concepts — to get their own theories going, scientists are not bound by any particular starter theory or concepts. They are free to substitute or create their own. The same cannot be said for the halakhist who, as R. Soloveitchik himself notes, must operate “in accordance with the principles of tradition,” must work with the data of halakhah itself.28 Yet another point must be made. Creativity and intellectual mastery 24 25 26 27

28

Ibid., 79-80. Ibid., 82. Ibid., 99. Ravitzky, ibid. See below for a fuller discussion of Ravitzky’s argument in the context of my analysis of UVM. Both Ravitzky and Kaplan point out that the formulation of halakhic knowledge in “Mah Dodekh mi-Dod” may avoid this problem. Below, however, I take issue with this claim as it bears on UVM. For a discussion of this problem, see R. Shihor, “On the Problem of Halakha’s Status in Judaism: A Study of the Attitude of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” Forum 30-31 (1978); Zvi Zohar, “Al ha-Yahas Bein Sefat ha-Halakhah le-Vein ha-Safah ha-Tiv’it,” in John Philip Christian, ed. Sefer ha-Yovel li-Khevod ha-Rav Yosef Soloveitchik, ed. Sh. Yisraeli, et al. (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1984); and L. Kaplan, ibid. — 166 —

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in themselves are not the most philosophically significant hallmarks of intellectual autonomy. As I noted above, the real nub of the problem of intellectual autonomy in a religious context is the extent to which I can be said to know X if X is contrary to what tradition teaches or what I know God to be or to have said. Where creativity in halakhah — and surely there is much of that — does not run contrary to the teachings of accepted tradition, then it does not engage perhaps the most serious problem intellectual autonomy raises in a religious context. Where it does run contrary to accepted tradition, then even R. Soloveitchik himself admits of certain constraints. Thus, if every known halakhic authority from the Tannaitic period on down takes a certain position on a halakhic question, then no responsible halakhist, as autonomous and creative as he might be, will claim to know that the halakhah is otherwise.29 In addition, R. Soloveitchik does not even take up what is perhaps the most sensitive dimension of intellectual autonomy, the theological. Can I be said to know that God is not provident over human beings, for example, if my independent reason leads me to that conclusion? Of course, R. Soloveitchik may have chosen not to take up this question since it falls outside the purview of his discussion of the characteristics of Halakhic Man as he sees them. Nevertheless, establishing the complete intellectual autonomy of Halakhic Man would require just such a discussion, and not only is that discussion absent, it seems unlikely R. Soloveitchik would accord Halakhic Man such autonomy were he to take it up. Finally, if, as it appears, R. Soloveitchik does indeed mean to use Religious Man as a foil for the superiority of Halakhic Man in the arena of intellectual autonomy, then he is being somewhat unfair to Religious Man. This is because they operate in different spheres. The autonomy of Halakhic Man emerges in the sphere of halakhah, which is a cognitive-scientific discipline; the putative absence of autonomy for Religious Man emerges in the sphere of theology. But Halakhic 29

See Sokol, “Religious Authority,” 280, n. 28, in this volume. It should be noted that this is separate from the claim that one should act according to this knowledge and contrary to tradition. This latter question touches on the issue of moral autonomy. — 167 —

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Man may share Religious Man’s lack of autonomy in the theological arena, and Religious Man may share Halakhic Man’s autonomy in the cognitive-scientific arena. Thus, R. Soloveitchik often cites Maimonides as an exemplar of Halakhic Man. But Maimonides is probably most famous in the history of Western philosophy for his advocacy of the doctrine of negative theology, and it is precisely this doctrine that is taken to be a characteristic of Religious Man’s lack of autonomy.30 Moreover, why can’t Halakhic Man be as taken with the mystery of the universe as Religious Man, since he is not thereby surrendering whatever interest he might have in understanding the halakhic norms which govern the universe? Looking at this from the other side of the question, R. Soloveitchik is at pains to point out, as I observed above, that Religious Man too seeks the lawfulness of the cosmos, much as Cognitive Man does, although he is struck with the mysterious existence of such laws while Cognitive Man is not. Why then couldn’t Religious Man be just as cognitive and masterful as Halakhic Man and the mathematician-scientist, at least when it comes to understanding the natural workings of the universe? In short, both Halakhic Man and Religious Man can occupy pretty much the same turf when it comes to intellectual autonomy.

The Autonomy of Moral Agency Probably the most famous form of autonomy in the history of philosophy is that of moral agency. Ever since Kant, theologians, Jewish and Christian, felt the need to account for the heteronomy of the divine command. Kant himself criticized Judaism directly, maintaining that it is “not really a religion at all, but merely a union of a number of people who, since they belong to a particular stock, formed themselves into a commonwealth under political laws.”31 A defense of autonomy 30 31

Halakhic Man, 11-12. Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T.M. Greene and H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 116. For a discussion of the Kantian thesis of autonomy and its implications for Jewish law, as well as bibliographic references to other discussions in Jewish theology, see chapter VIII of this volume. — 168 —

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in Judaism, then, would surely focus intensively on this problem, and to the extent that R. Soloveitchik wishes to argue for the autonomy of Halakhic Man in its classical post-Kantian sense, he would need to respond in depth to the Kantian challenge. R. Soloveitchik does indeed appear to address this issue: Halakhic Man does not experience any consciousness of compulsion accompanying the norm. Rather, it seems to him as though he discovered the norm in his innermost self, as though it was not just a commandment that had been imposed on him, but an existential law of his own being. We do not have here a person who strains against the chains of the ethical and the reign of the norm…. Rather we have a blending of the obligation with self-consciousness … a union of an outside command with the inner will and conscience of man.… When Halakhic Man comes to the real world he has already created his ideal a priori image which shines with the radiance of the norm… And this ideal world is his very own, his own possession; he is free to create in it, to arrive at new insights, to improve and perfect.… Therefore he is free and independent in his normative understanding [emphasisis added].32

R. Soloveitchik seems to be making two arguments. First, he suggests that Halakhic Man does not experience moral laws as heteronomous commands, but as expressions of what he independently believes to be right, on the basis of his own deep moral sensibilities. Second, since Halakhic Man creates his own ideal halakhic world, and that halakhic world embraces moral norms as well, then Halakhic Man experiences its norms as his own creation, and not as heteronomously imposed. What are we to make of these arguments?33 For Kant, the really critical issue in autonomous moral agency is rationality: unless an agent imposes the law upon himself out of an understanding of its rationality, then he is still acting out of some interest, whether it is the interest of satisfying his own conscience or the interest of obeying God. However, as Rabbi Soloveitchik formulates his own thesis, rationality plays no role: Halakhic Man simply 32 33

Halakhic Man, 64-66. See also 135-36. Rabbi A. I. Kook takes a position somewhat akin to the first argument of Rabbi Soloveitchik, although it differs in certain important respects as well. — 169 —

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experiences the law as his own. But if rationality plays no role in the self-imposition of the law, then he is still not an autonomous agent in the Kantian sense. By framing the argument in purely experiential terms, without reference to the philosophical underpinnings of Kant’s thesis, the theological and philosophical problems raised by Kant are by-and-large circumvented. If, on the other hand, Rabbi Soloveitchik does mean to assert that Halakhic Man experiences the law as rational, just as the Kantian moral agent would, then he would be conceding too much. In that case, he would essentially be agreeing with Kant’s autonomy requirement, while maintaining that Halakhic Man is a good Kantian moral agent because he acts out of a rational understanding of the truth of the law. But if this is so, how then would Rabbi Soloveitchik resolve all the many serious difficulties Kant’s position raises for Jewish law? What if a real-life Halakhic Man does not experience some particular halakhah in this way? More importantly, what is the moral status of halakhah that does not emerge from the rational convictions of the agent, and what is the status of the divine command if a moral law is right, and is experienced as such, independently of the divine command? Are non-rational, ritual laws heteronomous, and obeyed out of mere interest, or do they have some special status? If they do have a special status, in what exactly does it consist? Rabbi Soloveitchik himself appears to sense that there are certain difficulties with his arguments as they are formulated in the main body of his text, and in a footnote to the above-cited passage he comments as follows: The concept of freedom should not be confused with the principle of ethical autonomy propounded by Kant and his followers. The freedom of the pure will in Kant’s teaching refers essentially to the creation of the ethical norm. The freedom of Halakhic Man refers not to the creation of the law itself, for it was given to him by the Almighty, but to the realization of the norm in the concrete world. The freedom which is rooted in the creation of the norm has brought chaos and disorder to the world. The freedom of realizing the norm brings holiness to the world.34

34

Ibid., 153 n. 80. — 170 —

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This formulation of the thesis considerably weakens the autonomyaffirming implications contained in the body of the text. Here the focus shifts from Halakhic Man’s discovery of the norm in his own self to a distinction between the creation of the norm and its practical realization in the concrete world. Halakhic Man does not create the law, but freely chooses to act upon a law derived from God. Rabbi Soloveitchik thus explicitly denies Kantian autonomy. But then, in what philosophically interesting sense is Halakhic Man morally autonomous? Everyone, whether he is a Halakhic Man or not, is free to choose how to behave. What distinguishes the Halakhic Man is that he does not feel himself compelled by God’s will. But first, these same feelings might well be true of Religious Man as well, who wishes to absorb himself into the will and being of God. More importantly, Rabbi Soloveitchik casts the autonomy of Halakhic Man in experiential categories; his autonomy is a matter of how he feels about the law. But this is what I have called above the autonomy of personality, rather than the autonomy of moral agency. It turns out, then, that despite the appearance of engaging the problem of the autonomy of moral agency, and the appearance of affirming some version of that autonomy, in fact, Rabbi Soloveitchik has substituted the autonomy of moral agency with the far less philosophically problematic autonomy of personality. This is especially clear in the second of the two arguments Rabbi Soloveitchik deploys, building on Halakhic Man as a creator and master of an ideal halakhic world. Surely in this argument, the autonomy Halakhic Man is portrayed as experiencing is that of personality, deriving from the feeling of mastery that emerges from halakhic creativity.

Autonomy of Character and Personality Even a cursory reading of Halakhic Man reveals just how much Halakhic Man as portrayed by Rabbi Soloveitchik embodies this version of autonomy. No better example of the self-control and self-possession of Halakhic Man can be found than the story Rabbi Soloveitchik tells of R. Elijah of Pruzhan, who delayed entering his dying daughter’s room so that he might first put on the tefillin of R. Tam, thereby fulfilling even this humra, before becoming an onen, who is not halakhically obligated — 171 —

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to wear tefillin.35 Even the normal fear of death does not beset Halakhic Man, because he masters death through a study of its halakhot.36 Halakhic Man, in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s words, “fears nothing.”37 His religious experience, grounded as it is in understanding, is deliberate, controlled and unwavering, not afflicted by alternating bouts of terror and love.38 Halakhic Man is intimidated by no one, no matter their influence or worldly power;39 he is also immune to the normal temptations of the evil impulse.40 Unlike Religious Man, Halakhic Man is not passive and receptive, but active and self-motivated. “Neither modesty nor humility characterize the image of Halakhic Man. On the contrary, his most characteristic feature is strength of mind.”41 These qualities of character and personality in part derive from the masterful cognitive dimension of Halakhic Man and his commitment to transforming and sanctifying the here-and-now. In the second part of the essay, however, they are deepened and connected to his creativity. At one level, of course, this creativity is purely intellectual and expresses itself in the study of Torah. At another level, however, it involves self-creation, which is how Rabbi Soloveitchik understands the concept of repentance. Through self-creation, Halakhic Man, who is now often called “the man of God,” individuates himself, separating himself from the species through dynamic reflection upon and transformation of the self. Man, at times, exists solely by virtue of the species… His roots lie deep in the soil of faceless mediocrity.… He has no stature of his own, no original, individual, personal profile.… He is receptive, passive, a spiritual parasite. He is wholly under the influence of other people and their views. Never has he sought to render an accounting, either of himself or of the world; never has he examined himself.… He lives unnoticed and dies unmourned. Like a fleeting shadow he passes through life and is gone.

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., 77. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 85. Ibid., 89-91. Ibid., 65. Ibid., 79. — 172 —

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But there is another man, who does not require the assistance of others, who does not need the support of the species to legitimate his existence.… He exists not by virtue of the species, but solely on account of his own individual worth. His life is replete with creation and renewal, cognition and profound understanding.… He is dynamic, not static, does not remain at rest but moves forward in an ever-ascending climb. For it is indeed the living God for whom he pines and longs. This is the man of God.42

Rabbi Soloveitchik’s formulation of these ideas is nourished by such diverse thinkers as Maimonides on the one hand and Max Scheler on the other, as the citations in the body of the essay and footnotes make clear. In some ways, his advocacy of these forms of autonomy in the person of Halakhic Man is the most persuasive in the essay, and I shall take up their significance towards the end of my discussion of Halakhic Man. Nevertheless, several points should be made, which taken together, I would argue, reveal a great deal about Rabbi Soloveitchik’s treatment of autonomy in Halakhic Man. It may be best to begin by re-examining the ways in which Halakhic Man is portrayed as superior to Religious Man in regard to autonomy of character and personality. Two issues emerge: Religious Man’s negation of self in unio mystica, contrasting with Halakhic Man’s affirmation of self; and Religious Man’s oscillation between extreme feelings of inadequacy and terror before God on the one hand and love of God and self-worth on the other, contrasted with Halakhic Man’s constant feelings of mastery of God’s wisdom and self-worth in sanctifying the mundane. But consider for a moment the first issue, Religious Man’s quest for self-annihilation in God. Does this really undercut autonomy of character and of personality? Why can’t an independent, selfpossessed individualist, at his own initiative, firmly choose a way of life which realizes his highest, carefully considered and authentic desire to submerge his self into God? Can’t such an individual pursue this quest for ultimate self-annihilation with assertiveness, creativity and vigor, forcefully abandoning his own highly personalized entanglements with this world and intensely focusing his attention, with all the uniqueness 42

Ibid., 126-28. Note the similarity to “Confrontation,” and to the distinction between “Man of Fate” and “Man of Destiny” in “Kol Dodi Dofek.” — 173 —

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of his personality and talents, exclusively upon God? Realizing the long-term transcendentalist goal of Religious Man does not, it seems to me, preclude an autonomous character and personality, and perhaps may even require it.43 The second issue, the feelings of worthlessness and fear characteristic of moments in the life of Religious Man, does seem to stand in sharp contrast to Halakhic Man, as portrayed by Rabbi Soloveitchik. But here several observations are in order. Alan Nadler has shown that the writings of individuals Rabbi Soloveitchik himself regards as classic exemplars of Halakhic Man, namely the Vilna Gaon and his followers, reflect intense fear of sin and temptation, a sense of worthlessness before the Almighty God, an obsession with death and the drive to transcend this world.44 But all of these characteristics are supposed to reflect the inner life of Religious Man rather than Halakhic Man. Since it is highly unlikely that Rabbi Soloveitchik was unaware of the texts and legends Nadler cites, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s portrait of Halakhic Man as being devoid of these characteristics and emotions is therefore somewhat disingenuous.45 The really interesting question is why Rabbi Soloveitchik chose to portray Halakhic Man as he did. Nadler himself cites this as evidence of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s modernity, his novel contribution to Jewish thought in this area, which embraces such modern values as autonomy. But this alone would hardly explain why Rabbi Soloveitchik appears not to take into account the above facts. Clearly, something more is afoot. This observation leads to another. Just how insulated is Halakhic Man from the sort of emotional turmoil characteristic of Religious Man? Although Rabbi Soloveitchik, of course, generally presents him 43

44

45

Cf. UVM, 172, where, as a consequence of his love for God, man freely chooses to lose himself in Him. Alan Nadler, “Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man: Not a Mithnagged,” Modern Judaism 13:2 (May 1993), 119-147. Although Rabbi Soloveitchik focuses largely on the Brisker dynasty in his portrayal of Halakhic Man, and, it might be argued, their world view differed from that of the classic mitnagdim: (a) Rabbi Soloveitchik himself cites the Vilna Gaon as an example of Halakhic Man; and (b) Rabbi Soloveitchik might, himself, at least in a footnote, have made this distinction and have justified his claims about the Brisker dynasty in some way. — 174 —

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as completely insulated, a closer look at the text reveals a decidedly more complex picture. A hint at this complexity may be found in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s treatment of the recitation of piyyutim. Consistent with his overall approach to the inner religious life of Halakhic Man, Rabbi Soloveitchik remarks that, unlike Religious Man, who is wont to burst forth in song and psalms to God, Halakhic Man is “very sparing in his recitation of the piyyutim.”46 He follows this comment with a story about his father, who took away a Book of Psalms from his young son Yoseph Dov, who had been reciting them after the evening service on Rosh Hashanah, and handed him a volume of the Tractate Rosh Hashanah instead. Nevertheless, in a very different tone, some thirty pages earlier in the text, Rabbi Soloveitchik remarks that Halakhic Man “never accepted the ruling of Maimonides opposing the recital of piyyutim.”47 Quite the contrary: In moments of divine mercy and grace, in times of spiritual ecstasy and exaltation, when our entire existence thirsts for the living God, we recite many piyyutim and hymns, and we disregard the strictures of the philosophical midrash concerning the problem of negative attributes. 48

Words far more fitting to the experience of Religious Man than Halakhic Man! Similarly, Rabbi Soloveitchik can remark that Halakhic Man is “beyond the maelstrom of the affective life, a true source of peace and tranquility.”49 Yet, on the other hand, consider Rabbi Soloveitchik’s answer to the following rhetorical question: Is Halakhic Man devoid of the splendor of that raging and tempestuous sacred religious experience that so typifies the ecstatic Religious Man? Can he attain such peaks of enthusiasm that he will cry out in rapture “How manifold are Thy works, O Lord?” Is it possible for Halakhic Man to achieve such emotional exaltation that all his thoughts and senses ache and pine for the living God? Halakhic Man is worthy and fit to 46 47 48 49

Halakhic Man, 87. Ibid., 58. Ibid. Ibid., 73. — 175 —

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devote himself to a majestic religious experience in all its uniqueness.… However, for him, such a powerful experience follows upon cognition.… But since it occurs after rigorous criticism and profound, penetrating reflection, it is that much more intensive.50

While Halakhic Man’s affective religious experience is indeed intensive, it is controlled and “strong as flint.”51 Further evidence of the real complexity of Halakhic Man’s personality and character may be found in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own account of the way in which Halakhic Man is purported to overcome the emotional qualities of Religious Man. After describing how the experience of Religious Man is beset by oscillation between the poles of self-negation and terror before God, and selfaffirmation and love of God, Rabbi Soloveitchik argues that Halakhic Man “has found the third verse,” a solution to that affective oscillation. “He too [Halakhic Man] suffers from this dualism, from this deep spiritual split, but he mends the split through the concept of halakhah and law” [emphasis added].52 Here, Rabbi Soloveitchik explicitly admits that Halakhic Man does indeed suffer from the antithetical conflicts of religious life, even if he has found a strategy to mend them. Rabbi Soloveitchik continues in this vein by walking his reader through the experience of Halakhic Man as he reads the ne’ilah prayer, which asserts man’s worthlessness. Rabbi Soloveitchik waxes eloquent in his heart-rending description of the despair and self-loathing Halakhic Man feels as he recites these prayers, how Halakhic Man later comes to feel an intense longing and yearning for God, the self-worth implied by this experience, and how awareness of the halakhah assists in this process. But surely this means that Halakhic Man too, like Religious Man, at least sometimes suffers from the same conflicts, the same antithetical experiences of self-negation versus selfworth. What then distinguishes the two? Presumably, the key difference is that Halakhic Man recovers his equilibrium more quickly, and is able 50 51

52

Ibid., 83. Strictly speaking, this does not contradict Rabbi Soloveitchik’s claim that Halakhic Man is outside the “maelstrom of the affective life.” Nevertheless, it does suggest that his affective life does indeed exist, and that it is far more complex and rich than one might expect. Ibid., 69. — 176 —

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to sustain it much longer, than Religious Man. But this is a far cry from claiming that Halakhic Man is entirely insulated from emotional swings between self-negation and self-worth, and it is therefore a far cry from the claim that Halakhic Man is a perfect expression of autonomy of personality, as Rabbi Soloveitchik understood that concept. In reality, this account of the inner life of Halakhic Man should come as no surprise. The very opening pages of Halakhic Man assert in the most forceful language that Halakhic Man is a conflicted personality. Halakhic Man reflects two opposing selves; two disparate images are embodied in his soul and spirit. On the one hand he is as far removed from Religious Man as east is from west and is identical, in many respects, to Cognitive Man; on the other hand he is a man of God … if in the light of modern philosophy Religious Man in general has come to be regarded as an antithetical being, fraught with contradictions … who struggles with the tribulations of the dualism of affirmation and negation, approbation and denigration, how much more is this true of Halakhic Man?53

For Rabbi Soloveitchik, as explained in the opening pages of the essay, and in an extended three-page footnote on this theme, inner conflict is a virtue, not a vice. There is creative power embedded within antithesis; conflict enriches existence, the negation is constructive and contradiction deepens and expands the ultimate destiny of both man and the world.54

Were Rabbi Soloveitchik to have portrayed Halakhic Man as wholly insulated from a conflicted inner life, from such feelings as self-negation and worthlessness before God as against feelings of mastery and adequacy, then he would have been diminishing rather than enhancing the religious power and authenticity of Halakhic Man.

V. An Ethic vs. a Philosophy of Autonomy 53 54

Ibid., 3. Ibid., 4. See also 139-143 n. 4. See chapter XIV of this volume for further discussion of this theme. — 177 —

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What conclusions can be drawn from this lengthy analysis of Halakhic Man? The first point which should be made is that although Halakhic Man gives the appearance of grappling philosophically with some of the key philosophical and theological issues the modern value of autonomy poses to the believing Jew, this appearance is misleading. Rabbi Soloveitchik either avoids engaging, or takes a traditional position if he does engage, those dimensions of autonomy that are the most philosophically problematic for the traditional halakhic Jew. The hypothesis with which this section of the paper began, that Rabbi Soloveitchik intended to respond philosophically to the many problems autonomy poses for the religious Jew, has turned out to be wrong, at least for Halakhic Man. This leads naturally to the alternative model for responding to R. Soloveitchik’s works suggested above. I would argue that the best way to read Halakhic Man on autonomy is as a sustained polemic, a highly sophisticated, almost Midrashic attempt to capture what has been called the heroic quality of the life of the talmid hakham.55 The exaggerations, the conceptual difficulties outlined above may be debilitating for a full-fledged philosophical theory of autonomy, but they are surely highly effective rhetorical devices. Despite the rich philosophical citations and discussion throughout the essay, I would argue that the repercussive stress on autonomy in Halakhic Man can be best appreciated and understood less in philosophical than in both cultural and personal context. From a cultural perspective, modernity, as Rabbi Soloveitchik knew so well, sounded a clarion call for autonomy. While studying in Berlin, Rabbi Soloveitchik would have been exposed to how outsiders perceived the Talmudic enterprise: submissive, other-worldly, obscure, irretrievably old-fashioned. In the 1940’s, the world of Brisk, which Rabbi Soloveitchik had left behind, was burning in the flames of the Holocaust. Halakhic Man is centrally concerned with memorializing 55

David Hartman, “The Halakhic Hero: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man,” Modem Judaism 9:3 (1989). This essay is a response to Singer and Sokol, and Dorff’s essay, cited below, n. 66. See also, for a different formulation, chapter XV in this volume, where I make a distinction between what I call a Jewish-philosopher-as-king and a Jewish-philosopher-as-hero, and argue that Rabbi Soloveitchik embodied the latter rather than the former. — 178 —

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that world by articulating its often-misunderstood power. If the figure of the talmid hakham in the 1940’s was to receive the respect it deserved, Rabbi Soloveitchik knew it would have to be conveyed as embracing that value. Rabbi Soloveitchik, heir to the great Brisker tradition, understood just how independent-minded, majestic, creative and powerful — “autonomous” in a non-systematically philosophical sense — the Litvak talmid hakham was. Therefore, drawing upon his impressive philosophical erudition, and his accurate reading of the majesty of the Brisker Litvak life, Rabbi Soloveitchik set out to depict Halakhic Man in the most “autonomous” terms. This, then, is the apologetic agenda of Halakhic Man, the sort of agenda shared by some of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the past. There is, however, another, non-apologetic agenda to Halakhic Man as well. In both cultural and personal terms, Rabbi Soloveitchik was arguing against what Lawrence Kaplan has called an “ethic of submissiveness.”56 This ethic takes submissiveness as a character trait, particularly in the context of the relationship to God and to rabbinic authority, to be a prime virtue. In many ways, Halakhic Man may be read as a sustained polemic against that ethic. To deepen this thesis, I would like at this point to introduce a distinction that I believe sheds light on Rabbi Soloveitchik’s take on autonomy, that is, a distinction between a philosophy of autonomy and an ethic of autonomy. By a philosophy of autonomy, I mean a systematic attempt to analyze the concept of autonomy and a proposal for a philosophical theory of autonomy consistent with, or implied by, the Jewish tradition in one or more of its various guises. By an ethic of autonomy, I mean the articulation of a positive attitude towards autonomy as an outgrowth of a certain view of Judaism. An ethic of autonomy need not emerge from a worked-through philosophical analysis, nor must it endorse autonomy unequivocally and systematically. By its very nature, an ethic of autonomy is defeasible and conditional, since it does not follow necessarily from a deep, philosophically comprehensive system or vision. 56

“Da’as Torah: A Modern Conception of Rabbinic Authority” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992), 1-61. — 179 —

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Rabbi Soloveitchik intended far more than an impassioned apologia for the religious and cultural significance of the Litvak personality. He sought to argue for what I shall now call an ethic of autonomy, as distinct from philosophical autonomy. That is, his objective was not only to defend his patrimony; he may have sought also to argue against a prevailing norm of submission within the traditional community, and argue for what he himself, or at least part of him, believed to be true about Judaism: its insistence on a this-worldly, assertive, cognitive stance towards the world. This is not the same as arguing for what I have been calling the autonomy of the intellect or of moral agency. It is somewhat closer to arguing for what I have called the autonomy of character and of personality, but not quite the same, since — as we have seen — his arguments do not fully justify the affirmation of those forms of autonomy in their fullest sense either. His is a polemic of the most sophisticated sort for a certain stance towards life and religion, what I am now calling an ethic of autonomy. In shaping this polemic, to whose truth an important part of him was deeply committed, he drew upon rich philosophical learning. But that is not the same as philosophically articulating a theory of autonomy. This is absent from Halakhic Man. I have added the caveat, “an important part of him,” because the tensions within the essay regarding the extent to which Halakhic Man is immune from the conflict and self-doubt of Religious Man reflect a deep ambivalence on Rabbi Soloveitchik’s part towards the value of autonomy, even of character and personality, to which it had appeared he was so committed. This ambivalence emerges most fully in the late phase of his writing, but it is apparent that it was there from the very beginning. Indeed, I would argue that this ambivalence played an important role in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s avoidance of engaging some of the critical philosophical issues involved in autonomy, as it played an important role in his consistent refusal to fully embrace even the less problematic areas of autonomy. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own personal religious experience, his own feelings of self-negation, fear of God and dependence upon Him, which emerge so forcefully in his later writings and which are hinted at in Halakhic — 180 —

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Man as well, made it impossible for him, even in his earliest works, to authentically embrace anything more than a general and conditional ethic of autonomy. In light of an ethic of submissiveness which prevails in many quarters of traditionalist Orthodoxy, and in light of the disregard with which the figure of Halakhic Man is held in many modern circles, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s formulation and advocacy of an ethic of autonomy with such power and sophistication is an achievement of considerable significance in the Jewish intellectual and cultural history of the twentieth-century. This achievement, however, should not be confused with the formulation and advocacy of a systematic philosophy of autonomy which Rabbi Soloveitchik did not, and I would argue could not, take on.

VI. U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham: Introduction Perhaps the most ambitious, even audacious, essay Rabbi Soloveitchik ever published is “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” whose goal is nothing less than a phenomenological charting of the path to devekut. The title, drawn from Deuteronomy and recited as well in the annual selihot prayers, is aptly chosen, since the essay traces the human quest for God. Given this objective, it is surely revealing that the central problematic in this quest, as Rabbi Soloveitchik articulates it, revolves around overcoming a dualism that bedevils humans in their search for God — the dualism between human freedom on the one hand and the heteronomous divine command and presence on the other. In short, we have yet another attempt to grapple with the problem of human autonomy. The essay proceeds along three phases, as does the quest for God. The first phase is characterized by the autonomy/heteronomy duality; the second, which Rabbi Soloveitchik calls hidamut — emulation of God — consists in a partial solution to the duality; and the third phase, devekut — attachment to God — consists in its final resolution. As in Halakhic Man, Rabbi Soloveitchik at this early stage in his career, and in marked contrast to his later writings, wishes to project Judaism as coming to terms with, and finally resolving, the problem of human — 181 —

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autonomy before a commanding God. I shall first consider in detail Rabbi Soloveitchik’s formulation of the problem of human autonomy and heteronomy in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” and then examine and evaluate Rabbi Soloveitchik’s account of how the hidamut and devekut stages purport to resolve it. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s terms for the two antithetical experiences that characterize religious life are toda’ah tiv’it — the natural experience, and toda’ah giluyit — the revelational experience. He defines toda’ah tiv’it as follows: The explanation of toda’ah tiv’it: the spirit of man ascends to extraordinary distances. On the one hand, there is a yearning implanted in the soul’s existence to attribute the multiplicity in time-bound, finite existence to an unconditioned first existent, who is active both within and without the world. On the other hand, there is a by-product [in the universe] sealed with the seal of the Creator which signals to man a level of existence above and beyond it. In this framework, man’s experience of the world is in essence and purpose the experience of God and the Creator of the universe. The initiative is man’s; he must seek God.57

Three elements appear in this definition of toda’ah tiv’it: the experience of God is natural to man; the grounds for that experience are built into the very nature of the universe; and human beings must take the initiative in finding God. Later, Rabbi Soloveitchik argues that this experience is biological in origin, an instinctual human response to the universe.58 Whatever its biological origins, however, Rabbi Soloveitchik seems to identify all of human culture with toda’ah tiv’it. For Rabbi Soloveitchik, human culture is essentially the quest for self-transcendence,59 and the content of human culture, namely the aesthetic, moral, philosophical and scientific experiences, all point to the existence of an infinite and unconditioned God, which grounds those experiences in a reality beyond themselves. Belief in the existence of God provides the only satisfactory answer to the question of why the world is such as to 57 58 59

UVM, 148. Ibid., 156-161. Ibid., 124. — 182 —

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sustain scientific explanation, beauty, morality and the quest for truth, and why we are capable of these sublime experiences. For this reason, intuitively and sometimes even unmediated by reflection, God is simply perceived in these phenomena.60 Thus far, I have focused on the content of toda’ah tiv’it. There is another dimension to toda’ah tiv’it, however, which may be even more important than content, and that is what I shall call “stance.” It is a fundamental orientation to the world, or stance, which at a deeper level characterizes toda’ah tiv’it, and helps explain why toda’ah tiv’it has the content that it does. This stance may be best characterized as that of the autonomous personality. In describing the toda’ah tiv’it dimension of religious experience, which is of special concern to us in this paper, Rabbi Soloveitchik remarks: In this dimension, the religious experience manifests itself as an experience of absolute freedom. Man seeks God out of a thirst for freedom in life, to broaden and deepen his existence. The search for God is an emancipation from the distress of the tyrannical laws of nature which press down upon him.… When man yearns for his God, he arrives at the border of the absolute and eternal, and he feels no compulsory force.… The religious experience in this respect is an outbreak of wondrous force of the spontaneous metaphysical spirit in all its variegated character and stormy activities.… It leaps to the peaks of being out of a passion for victory and majestic flight.… The principle of principles is that man knows that religious life is an undetachable part of his essence; action is free, and is nurtured from the secret place of his existence. All the directions of his spirit, the speculative, the moral and the aesthetic are blended into one rich unity.… The spark of the creator is hidden inside him.

Freedom is so associated with toda’ah tiv’it that Rabbi Soloveitchik sometimes even uses the phrase “the experience of freedom” as its synonym.61 The free, spontaneous quest for the “why” of the universe gives rise to human culture, which is the content of toda’ah tiv’it, as it gives rise to the experience of God as the final resting place of that 60 61

Ibid., 133-134. Ibid., 181. — 183 —

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quest. Thus it is the autonomous “stance” of toda’ah tiv’it that is critical to explaining its content. Were man to experience the world bowed and submissive, completely trapped by the determinative forces of nature, he would never be led to the kind of reflection and awareness characteristic of toda’ah tiv’it. Another dimension of the autonomous “stance” is the affective. The following passage, which argues for the importance of toda’ah tiv’it as a component of religious life, makes this point even more clearly than the passage quoted above: Man must serve God not just out of a feeling of compulsion and absolute decree, but out of a spontaneous inclination and yearning, rich in dimensions and joyous to the heart.… When he thinks of God only out of fear of punishment and with a cold intellect, without ecstasy, joy and passion, when his behavior and actions lack soul, interiority and vitality — then man’s religious life is defective.… Toda’ah tiv’it, given to man by God, is the source of man’s yearning for the infinite and for eternity. From it flow feelings of joy and excitement, from it the currents of satisfaction and sweetness in life flow, and it pushes man to share and join in the process of substantive creation.62

It is surely interesting to note that this account of the value of toda’ah tiv’it, and hence autonomy in Judaism, diverges from the autonomy of Halakhic Man.63 In this passage, the stress is on passion, joy and spontaneity, qualities which, to a large extent, are lacking in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s depiction of Halakhic Man. Thus “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” shifts its portrayal of the autonomous dimension of religious life in favor of the affective, joyous and spontaneous.64 There is yet another respect in which the affirmation of autonomy in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” diverges from that in Halakhic Man. Halakhic Man expresses his autonomy primarily as a creator of halakhic worlds; 62 63

64

Ibid., 163-164. Elsewhere in UVM, toda’ah ti v’it is depicted as intellectual and cerebral, e.g., in the opening pages of the essay, and thus closer to Halakhic Man. See below for a possible explanation of this shift. It should be noted that Rabbi Soloveitchik’s portrayal of the autonomous experience in human culture is somewhat over-romanticized. For example, one would hardly associate joy with the lives of many artists and writers, where depression, melancholy and substance abuse is probably more common than Rabbi Soloveitchik’s picture might lead us to believe. — 184 —

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theory takes precedence over practice. This is not the case with toda’ah tiv’it in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” where technology and the practical transformation of the world are elevated to the status of a divine norm. God commanded man to participate in historical and social change, in scientific-technological development to improve the lot of man. Whoever separates himself from existence acts contrary to the command of the Creator: “Rule the land and conquer it.”65

In both Halakhic Man and “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” Rabbi Soloveitchik maintains that one of the central characteristics of Judaism is a thisworldliness. However, in Halakhic Man, the emphasis on this-worldliness is problematic, since it stands in tension with the overwhelmingly theoretical orientation of Halakhic Man, according to which even the Talmudic statement that the purpose of study is action is given a novel interpretation which stresses the intellectual.66 “U-Vikkashtem miSham,” which does not set out to portray the inner life of the Brisker Litvak, can, and indeed does, provide a far richer picture of autonomy. Thus, the this-wordliness of “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” is linked to an affirmation of all essentially human qualities, whose cultural expression ranges the full gamut of the human experience, including the aesthetic and the technological. Each of the three areas of autonomy delineated at the beginning of this essay is thus given fuller and richer expression in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” than in Halakhic Man.67 Notwithstanding the affirmation of autonomy in toda’ah tiv‘it, strung out over the course of “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” Rabbi Soloveitchik identifies numerous problems with the self-sufficiency of toda’ah tiv’it on account of which God chose to reveal Himself and His message to man. These include the impossibility for toda’ah tiv’it to lead to a clear knowledge of God and the dangers in using the sort of philosophical abstraction characteristic of toda’ah tiv’it which, Rabbi Soloveitchik claims, 65 66

67

Ibid., 163-64. Halakhic Man, 64. See, e.g., Elliot Dorff, “Halakhic Man: A Review Essay,” Modern Judaism 6:1 (1986), 94-95. Interestingly, the autonomy of character seems least apparent in toda’ah tiv’it, although, presumably, it would be linked to the moral dimension of human culture. — 185 —

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leads ineluctably to pantheism;68 the existence of sin, which prevents man from finding God on his own;69 the existence of the disorderly, of evil and deprivation in the universe, which frustrate man’s independent quest for God;70 the anarchy and self-interest which attach themselves to autonomous man, and which led to the Holocaust;71 and the contradictions and inconsistencies he finds in his world view and life.72 For all these reasons, God chose to reveal Himself and His will to man in what Rabbi Soloveitchik calls toda’ah giluyit. The explanation of toda’ah giluyit: Man cannot come to God on his own with the initiative of his own spirit; existence is a sealed entrance without a passageway to the border of the absolute and eternal.… Therefore, God reveals Himself to human beings and tells them, “I am the Lord your God.” This truth, continues toda’ah giluyit, can never be extracted from cognition. The inexplicable and awesome vision of revelation occurs without human compliance and without permission. To the contrary, man is frightened by the penetration of the hidden into his simple world, and he covers his face.73

Revelation, which typically occurs when man least expects it, when he is desperate and despairs of ever achieving salvation, is not experienced as an answer to his quest. It inexplicably pounces upon man, and he reacts in abject submission and terror. Toda ‘ah giluyit, in contrast with toda’ah tiv’it, bears no relation with the creative and free spirit of man, and is uninterested in the aspirations of cultural creativity and all its developments. The revelatory experience is a territory unto itself surrounded by walls, which is beyond the grasp of man.… It seeks to enclose all of human existence and fill its essence.… It is an experience of compulsion and subjugation; it is an absolute recognition of the obligations imposed by revelation which expropriates human will.… In the dimension of toda’ah giluyit, man accepts upon

68 69 70 71 72 73

UVM, 138. Ibid., 140. Ibid., 143. Ibid., 162. Ibid., 221. Ibid., 148. — 186 —

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himself the yoke of the commandments against his will, and submits his arrogance and self-love to God.74

These words, and many passages elsewhere in the essay, are an eloquent description of the heteronomous religious experience, which stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the autonomous stance characteristic of toda’ah tiv’it, and with all the forms of autonomy embraced in toda’ah tiv’it. Yet both toda’ah giluyit and toda’ah tiv’it are dimensions of the religious experience. Given the antithetical relation between them, is it any wonder that Rabbi Soloveitchik seeks some sort of resolution? Interestingly, in Halakhic Man, the earlier work, this tension is given the shortest shrift. Halakhic Man is portrayed as having already resolved the heteronomy-autonomy conflict, although, as we saw, this portrayal is somewhat disingenuous. Moreover, the autonomy embraced in Halakhic Man is largely a cerebral one, although again, as we saw, this is not the whole story. In “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” however, the heteronomyautonomy conflict is laid out on the table in the most tragic detail, and the autonomous experience itself is portrayed in an emotionally far richer way, in which Rabbi Soloveitchik celebrates not only the intellect, but the spontaneous passion of the inner soul. It is as if Rabbi Soloveitchik is finally coming to terms with the true complexities of the spiritual life that he had left unexplored in Halakhic Man. Several reasons for this evolution suggest themselves.75 First, portraying Halakhic Man as fundamentally riven with conflict, and as spontaneous and emotional, would not have served the polemical purposes of Halakhic Man, as I pointed out above, nor would it have flowed from the model of the mathematician-scientist, which Rabbi Soloveitchik evoked to achieve those purposes. “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” which lacks, at least to the same extent, those polemical purposes, could finally engage what, I have argued, in fact troubled Rabbi Soloveitchik all along. Perhaps, too, there is a maturation in the thought of Rabbi Soloveitchik, a greater willingness to confront openly what he could not or would not confront somewhat earlier. Finally, it is possible 74 75

Ibid., 154. See below for further discussion of the relationship between Halakhic Man and UVM. — 187 —

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that Rabbi Soloveitchik, who had already made his mark as one of the foremost philosophers of halakhah, could now more comfortably relate to the fullest range of the religious experience, and finally engage the problem that so evidently troubled him deeply. Whatever the reasons for this evolution, however, and we can not really be certain what they are, there is no question that in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” the problem of human autonomy, now more richly conceived than ever, occupies center stage.

VII. A First Solution: Emulating God As I noted above, two solutions to the autonomy/heteronomy problem emerge in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” one only partial, and the other complete. Each represents a different phase in the quest for God. The first and partial solution rests in the second phase of this quest, which Rabbi Soloveitchik calls hidamut, the emulation of God. In this phase, the toda’ah giluyit and toda’ah tiv’it experiences evolve into the love and awe (yir’ah) of God, respectively. Whereas the toda’ah giluyit and toda’ah tiv’it experiences of the first phase are unrelated to one another, and are rooted in such biological instincts as terror and the need for security, love and awe of God by contrast emerge from human valuation. For this reason, they are two sides of the very same coin of religious experience. As man discovers more of God and His greatness, an outgrowth of the yearning for God characteristic of toda’ah tiv’it, he comes to understand God as the ground for all existence. This understanding of God’s indescribable greatness leads to a powerful love of Him, a desire to become one with Him. However, this very love and desire for unity with God yields awe of Him as well. The more one understands how truly great God is, the more one understands the vast chasm which separates one’s own lowly self from God; the more one recognizes how unity with God entails self-negation; then, paradoxically, the more one feels distant from God, the more one feels driven from Him. Rabbi Soloveitchik goes so far as to claim, citing the kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum, that objective and experiential distance from God is metaphysically necessary for — 188 —

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the existence of the cosmos and the individual.76 In any case, both awe and love flow from a deepened understanding of God and a deepened evaluation of his greatness.77 Both these conflicting and dialectical experiences are ineradicable components of religious life. If readers of this essay have the feeling that this dialectic between love and awe which stands at the heart of phase two of the quest for God has a familiar ring to it, they are correct. This is because it recapitulates the experience of Religious Man in Halakhic Man. Religious Man too, it will be recalled, suffered from exactly the same dialectic and exactly the same yearning for unity with God that leads to self-annihilation. The parallels are uncanny, down to the very same affirmation of the value of the dialectically torn and anguished life.78 If Phase One in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” represents human culture in its quest for God, Phase Two represents the classic type of Religious Man (although with some important modifications, as we shall soon see). This observation is significant for evaluating the relationship between “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” and Halakhic Man, an issue I touched upon above, where I argued for an evolutionary understanding of the relationship between the two essays. An alternative model for understanding the relationship, one with wide currency among students of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s thought, is that the two essays were originally written as companion pieces, in which “U-Vikkashtem miSham” was intended to supplement the picture of religious life which appeared in Halakhic Man. Avi Ravitzky provides one formulation of this approach, according to which Halakhic Man analyzes the various components of the ideal personality, while “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” synthesizes the steps along the way to achieving this ideal.79 According to this view, Halakhic Man is none other than the individual who has already achieved Phase Three in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” devekut, and has resolved all the tensions laid out with such drama in “U-Vikkashtem 76 77

78

79

Ibid., 169. Rabbi Soloveitchik locates his discussion of the love/fear dialectic in kabbalistic as well as medieval philosophic literature, most notably Maimonides. See above in this essay for references to Halakhic Man. In “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” see 167-186, and especially 179. Ravitzky, 160. — 189 —

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mi-Sham.” The problem with this account, however, is that Rabbi Soloveitchik explicitly identifies Halakhic Man not only with the third, but also with the second of the two phases, in which the autonomy/ heteronomy dialectic remains unresolved, and which is, as I have just argued, by-and-large identical with Religious Man: The man of God [Ish ha-Elokim], who is the Man of Halakhah [Ish haHalakhah] wrestles with his anxious dialectical experience, trapped in the brambles of opposites, without refuge or escape. “According to the pain is the reward.” The service of the heart is commensurate with the split in the heart [emphasis added].80

Rabbi Soloveitchik goes out of his way here to identify Halakhic Man with the man of God torn asunder by the “strange” dialectic between love and awe of God. Unless we assume Rabbi Soloveitchik to have used the phrase “Halakhic Man” imprecisely, which seems unlikely,81 Halakhic Man in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” is far closer to Religious Man than to the Halakhic Man of Halakhic Man. This passage supports my earlier argument for a more nuanced reading of Halakhic Man even in Halakhic Man, as it supports an evolutionary reading of the relationship between the two essays. According to this account, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own conception of Halakhic Man (and autonomy) undergoes development from Halakhic Man to “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” and the origins of this change are already immanent in Halakhic Man, if one attends to the tensions in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own portrayal of Halakhic Man in that essay. In any case, with the analysis of love and awe in Phase Two, toda’ah giluyit and toda’ah tiv’it are brought closer together, since at this stage in their evolution they both emerge from common soil. Nevertheless, as Rabbi Soloveitchik himself notes, this is hardly a solution to the autonomy/ 80

81

UVM, 179. Note the parallels to Halakhic Man, 4. In UVM, 177-78, Rabbi SoIoveitchik discusses the ways in which the halakhah embraces this unresolved dialectic, and on 172 he asserts of the love/fear dialectic, “both form the fundamentals of the religious-halakhic experience.” See n. 81. To this must be added: (1) the name Halakhic Man carries considerable weight in R. Soloveitchik’s lexicon; (2) he borrows many of the concepts first developed in Halakhic Man for use in UVM, which suggests that in writing the latter essay he had the former essay very much in mind. — 190 —

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heteronomy problem since in Phase Two, love and awe stand in unresolved dialectical tension with one another. What is interesting however, and this is a point that Rabbi Soloveitchik himself does not clearly stress, is that a subtle but radical transvaluation has taken place under our very eyes. At the first and lowest level of religious experience, toda’ah tiv’it was an expression of autonomy and toda’ah giluyit of heteronomy. However, at this next phase, love, although portrayed as an outgrowth of toda’ah giluyit, leads to selfannihilation in the overwhelming existence of God, and thus becomes an expression of the heteronomous experience. The autonomous quest for God paradoxically leads to the brick wall of the overwhelming greatness of God, which snuffs out the autonomous existence of the individual.82 Conversely, awe, although portrayed as an outgrowth of toda’ah giluyit, yields a drive to escape from God’s overwhelming presence so as to preserve the possibility of the continued existence of the individual. Thus fear of God becomes an expression of the autonomous, and not heteronomous, experience. Indeed, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own analysis of the nature of awe of God yields the inevitable conclusion that its relationship to the fear of toda’ah giluyit is formal, or perhaps psychological, at best. As we have seen, awe is a consequence of both understanding and love, and these in turn are both consequences of toda’ah tiv’it rather than toda’ah giluyit. What then has happened to toda’ah giluyit in this phase of the quest for God? Apparently — and this point unfortunately is barely alluded to — toda’ah giluyit serves to rein man in with unbending law as he seeks to escape from God in fear.83 It thus turns out that the heteronomy/autonomy problem Rabbi Soloveitchik must solve is now considerably more complex. Not only must it resolve a revised version of the original problem — God’s law as constraining the impulse to run from him — it must also resolve the higher-level tension between the love and awe of God.84 Let us now consider just how Rabbi Soloveitchik attempts to at least partially achieve these goals in Phase Two of the religious quest. What distinguishes Phase Two from Religious Man, and what 82 83 84

See, e.g., 172. UVM, 180. It sometimes appears that Rabbi Soloveitchik conflates these two issues in his discussion of hidamut; nevertheless, they are indeed conceptually distinct, and should be treated as such. — 191 —

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brings him closer to Halakhic Man on the one hand and constitutes a partial resolution to the autonomy/heteronomy dialectic on the other, is hidamut, the emulation of God. Out of the dialectic of hope and despair, of devekut and separation, of closeness and distance, the idea of emulation grows. It compromises between the two sentences which contradict one another, between decree and free selfcreation, between the yoke which binds man and spontaneity, between fear of the revealed decree and the beautiful vision of absolute freedom, between the revelatory experience [toda’ah giluyit] and the experience of freedom.85

Just how the idea of hidamut achieves this is somewhat difficult to understand. Apparently it works something like this: As man gets closer to God, in Phase Two, he feels more comfortable with the revelatory experience, and he tries to link it to his experience of God in the mode of love and toda’ah tiv’it.86 It is now possible for him to imagine that his obedience to the law is a result of his own freedom, although he knows that eventually he will be driven from God in awe, and will obey the law because he must. Moreover, he partially reconciles himself to the inevitable dialectic between closeness to God and distance from him, and recognizes that the best he can do as a humble, willing servant of God is to simulate God’s own behavior, exemplified in moral halakhah, thereby simulating the radical freedom of God Himself. While he recognizes that his behavior is not truly free, he feels somewhat comforted by this acceptance of his fate and by his simulation of true freedom.87 Rabbi Soloveitchik would be the first to admit that we do not have a complete resolution to the autonomy/heteronomy problem here, since the love-awe dialectic, with its consequences for toda’ah tiv’it and toda’ah giluyit, continues to rage unabated. Phase Two seems to be no more than an attenuation of the feeling of crisis attendant upon the swings between these feelings. There is no conceptual breakthrough here, but a kind of palliative for the wounded soul. While palliatives 85

86

87

UVM, 181. Note that here Rabbi Soloveitchik uses the term “experience of freedom” as virtually synonymous with toda’ah tiv’it. Ibid., 234. But note that the mode of love eventually yields self-annihilation rather than closeness. Ibid., 180, 186. — 192 —

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are surely desirable for the tormented individual stuck on the path to God, they do not provide us with a real resolution to the theological problems that confront us. This is said to come only with the ultimate stage in the quest for God, devekut, to which we shall now turn.

VIII. The Second Solution: Devekut Rabbi Soloveitchik’s analysis of devekut appears to proceed in three phases. In the first, the focus is on affect, the second, on epistemology, and the third, on the uniquely Jewish life-strategies that lead to and support devekut. Each is presented as an essential part of a solution to the autonomy/heteronomy problem. Interestingly, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s very definition of devekut is, at least at first, cast in affective terms, and designed primarily to respond to the love/awe, rather than toda’ah giluyit/toda’ah tiv’it polarity: What is devekut according to Judaism? Judaism says that the awesome fear of God, and escape from Him, are rooted only in the upper levels of the religious experience.… In the beginning, the yearning of love is attached to the repulsion of awe, but at the end a wave of pure love floats up burning with desire which expels the alarm and recoil.… The escapee suddenly feels the hand of the Divine Presence caress him like a merciful, refined mother, and he turns his face with trembling and mute wonder, covering himself with his cloak. He then uncovers a bit of his face and looks with a startled eye full of fear and astonishment, until his stare stumbles upon the smile of the Divine Presence revealing Himself, pursuing him, and immediately the escapee becomes full of love for the pursuer Who loves him without end.88

The experience of God as a merciful mother who pursues and loves him enables man to overcome his feelings of awe and distance from God, in a burst of what Rabbi Soloveitchik in another passage calls “crazy” love.89 This sort of experience of God reflects a conception of a God Who wants not human defeat but human redemption and self-expression, and the ultimate human religious experience is therefore joy, an outgrowth of 88 89

Ibid., 193-94. Ibid., 187. — 193 —

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feeling loved and of loving. This idea is an attractive one. The question is to what extent it helps solve the autonomy/heteronomy problem. If it is to be taken as a report of the personal religious experience of someone, such as Rabbi Soloveitchik himself, who has gone through Phases One and Two, who has come so close to God as to experience firsthand the awe which follows upon the understanding of just how great God is, and who yet permanently overcomes that feeling of distance from God as a consequence of feeling loved and pursued by Him, then we can not help but take it at face value as a solution for that individual to the love/awe dimension of the autonomy/heteronomy problem. However, Rabbi Soloveitchik does not present his thesis as a personal report. Indeed, knowing what we do about the conflicted and anguished nature of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own religious experience, as evidenced by his later writings and the tensions within the earlier writings,90 it seems unlikely at best that the ongoing joy which he says characterizes devekut could be an accurate characterization of his own life. What we really have here is a theory of devekut, although perhaps grounded in certain moments of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s personal religious experience. How successful is it as a theory of devekut? Perhaps a contrast with Maimonides would be helpful. On the one hand, Rabbi Soloveitchik opens his discussion of devekut with a quotation from Maimonides to describe the kind of intense love that characterizes devekut.91 However, this Maimonidean text does not really imply that awe is absent from the experience of God, but only that love, at this stage of religious development, is always present. Love could, after all, be experienced together with awe. Indeed, that seems to be exactly what Maimonides himself thinks, based upon Mishneh Torah, Yesodei ha-Torah 2:1-2  —  which Rabbi Soloveitchik himself quotes approvingly in his discussion of Phase Two.92 Quite apart from 90

91 92

Note too his self-description as melancholic, at least as it appears in Divrei Hashkafah (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1992), 135-136: “Certainly there is within me a spiritual inclination towards elegy, towards a religious melancholy.” UVM, 187 quoting Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 10:3. See also Guide III:52. While Maimonides seems to contradict himself on whether awe or love is the superior experience and the end of Torah, both are advocated. — 194 —

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the fact that Rabbi Soloveitchik cannot legitimately use Maimonides in support of the claim that awe always accompanies love, and also in support of the claim that it can exist independently (without at least making the case within the texts that the latter is a higher level than the former), there is another, greater, problem here. Maimonides’ own logic behind the claim that awe always accompanies love seems beyond reproach, and Rabbi Soloveitchik himself buys fully into it. This logic is a metaphysical one. The chasm that separates God from man is so great, that it seems altogether unavoidable that the more one understands God, the more one will appreciate that chasm and feel himself distant from God. In appropriating the kabbalistic metaphysic of tzimtzum to help formulate the thesis that no independent existence is possible outside of God, it is extremely difficult to see how Rabbi Soloveitchik can escape its consequences for the inevitability of awe as a component of the religious experience. Perhaps, however, Rabbi Soloveitchik does not mean his claims in this part of the discussion to contribute to a solution to the problem, but only to serve as a description of the state of devekut, however one resolves the tensions and overcomes awe of God. While this seems unlikely, given Rabbi Soloveitchik’s presentation of his case, let us proceed on that assumption. He does admit that at this stage he has not yet explained the “epistemological-metaphysical” basis for devekut. This, Rabbi Soloveitchik attempts to achieve by introducing — with much fanfare — the thesis of the unity of the knower with the object of knowledge. According to this view of human knowledge, articulated in the Guide (I:68) and widespread in other classical and medieval sources, there exists an object of knowledge independent of the knower, and a potential knower. As the potential knower comes to know the object of knowledge, to understand it, his intellect becomes, in this state of knowledge, that which is intelligible about the object of knowledge. Thus, the knower and object of knowledge become, in some sense, one. In the case of God, the situation is somewhat different, but the result is the same. God knows the world, as Maimonides says not only in the Guide, but in the Mishneh Torah as well (Yesodei ha-Torah 2:10), by virtue of His knowledge of Himself. Since the world depends upon God for the — 195 —

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infinite varieties of its existence, God’s knowledge of the world flows from His own self-knowledge. But this in turn implies that in knowing the world, man becomes one not only with the world, but with God Himself, since both God and man know the same object of knowledge, the intelligibility of the universe. This is Rabbi Soloveitchik’s first pass at formulating the “unity” thesis, and he devotes much of his energies to explicating it. However, interestingly enough, towards the very end of his discussion he seems to veer from this account and offer another.93 Now, the “unity” thesis is deployed not for knowledge of the universe, which, Rabbi Soloveitchik says, is static and non-normative, but for knowledge of halakhah. Rabbi Soloveitchik makes this shift to accommodate yet another unity at stake, and that is the unity between God’s knowledge, will and action. Knowledge of the universe alone — scientific knowledge — has no normative and moral dimension. Knowledge of God’s wisdom as reflected in his will towards the world and action in governing the world morally — all embodied in the halakhah — does, however, yield the desired unity with the fullest range of the God-expression, namely, wisdom, will and action. Therefore, it is only through knowledge of halakhah that devekut is achieved.94 In Rabbi Soloveitchik’s words, we have the “wondrous identity of wills.”95 Several problems with the “unity” thesis suggest themselves. First, as Ravitzky correctly points out, it is fundamentally at odds with the epistemology Rabbi Soloveitchik employs throughout his writings, namely, the by-now widely shared post-Kantian view that there is 93 94

95

UVM, 204. There may be a logical inconsistency here, however. If God’s thought is equal to His will and action, then that same equivalence must apply to all aspects of His thought, including thought about the universe. Therefore, God’s thought about the universe must also have a normative dimension, exactly the view of Maimonides, and indeed of Rabbi Soloveitchik himself (see, e.g., ibid., 223-225 and elsewhere). If so, it should be possible to derive norms from contemplation about the universe, e.g., God’s mercy and compassion for the world. Thus, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s move to halakhic knowledge appears to be unwarranted, if his whole aim is to get at the normative. Moreover, Rabbi Soloveitchik appears to contradict himself on this question, asserting here that norms cannot be derived from nature, but asserting elsewhere (ibid., 223-55) that they can. Ibid., 235. — 196 —

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no pristine “object” out there which the knower becomes “united” with.96 Rather, human cognition itself, and especially scientific theory, constructs in some sense its own structures whereby it responds to reality. But then this cognitive construct is itself a barrier between the thing itself and the knower, making unity once again impossible. In short, the epistemological framework for the “unity” thesis derives from pre-modern theories of knowledge, and this is a framework Rabbi Soloveitchik himself abandoned throughout his writings. While this epistemological problem is serious enough for Rabbi SoIoveitchik’s discussion of scientific knowledge — the first formulation of the “unity” thesis — it is hard to see how even the second formulation of the thesis would fare much better. To be sure, in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” as in Halakhic Man, halakhic knowledge is portrayed as embracing exactly the same creation of cognitive constructs as the scientific creation of theories, and thus, it might be argued, a pure idealism would be possible in the sphere of halakhah. Nevertheless, Rabbi Soloveitchik himself admits elsewhere in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” that the halakhist works with divinely revealed laws and categories, and creates his theories out of them.97 How then is it possible for the halakhist to know those divinely revealed laws, and hence become one with God and achieve devekut, if his own halakhic knowledge serves as a barrier between him and God’s will as revealed in His law?98 96 97 98

Ravitzky, ibid. UVM, 206. In this respect, I take issue with Ravitzky, who maintains that pure idealism is possible in the halakhic context. There is yet another problem with the unity thesis that should be mentioned, what philosophers sometimes call the “intentionalist fallacy.” Suppose that I never heard of the “unity” thesis, or that I believe it to be false. Will I experience awe together with love? Presumably the answer would be “yes.” I can not console myself with a conviction that I am one with God, since I do not share that belief, even if my own belief is false (since ex hypothesi, the “unity” thesis is true) and in fact, I am indeed one with God. The “unity” thesis can help solve the love-awe problem for the seeker after God only if he believes it to be true, since the problem is located in the consciousness of the seeker. Does the seeker ever feel distant from God or only love for Him? A solution to the metaphysical problem is thus not ipso facto a solution to the religious one. Given the obscurity of the doctrine and its heavily philosophical formulation, one wonders whether the prophets or the Talmudic Rabbis ever consciously believed it to be true, and therefore ever succeeded in achieving devekut. I mention this problem in footnote only, since it is perhaps unlikely that R. Soloveitchik — 197 —

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But let us assume, for argument’s sake, not only that the “unity” thesis is true, but that it is consistent with R. Soloveitchik’s other writings. I must confess that I am uncertain just how much has been achieved in resolving the love/awe polarity. Although God’s will becomes identical with mine as I contemplate and then act according to the halakhah, wouldn’t I still feel at times so in awe of God’s greatness as I have come to understand Him, so in awe of His wisdom and goodness with which I struggle to identify, that I feel a great chasm between us, that I feel inconsequential before Him? It is hard for me, at least, to see how the epistemology and metaphysics of the unity principle can undermine the feelings of awe which Rabbi Soloveitchik himself so passionately advocated and explained in Phase Two of the discussion. Nor is it clear to me whether the “unity” principle can stand up to the metaphysics which underlies that problem, the idea that in God’s presence no independent existence is possible. Has Rabbi Soloveitchik so effectively formulated the autonomy/heteronomy polarity that even he has difficulty resolving it? These considerations lead us to the final phase in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s account of devekut, what I have called the uniquely Jewish life-strategies that support it. In this phase of the discussion, Rabbi Soloveitchik reverts to the toda’ah tiv’it/ toda’ah giluyit polarity which these lifestrategies are intended to address. The Jewish yearning to elevate experience to the spiritual, which conjoins the natural yearning of man for God with his faith in revelation, finds its expression in three ways: (1) the rule of the intellect; (2) the elevation of the bodily; (3) the perpetuation of the word of God.99

In his discussion of the rule of the intellect, the first of the three ways, Rabbi Soloveitchik pretty much recapitulates the thesis he devoted Halakhic Man to, arguing for the masterful creativity and hence intellectual autonomy characteristic of Halakhic Man which, as we have seen, amounts to an affirmation of an ethic, but not a philosophy, of intellectual autonomy. In relating this thesis to the toda’ah tiv’it/ 99

himself would have thought in these terms. Ibid., 204. — 198 —

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toda’ah giluyit polarity, he argues further, that since Halakhic Man creates intellectual constructs out of the raw data of revelation, there is “a blending of two opposing principles: the revelatory principle and the intellectual principle.”100 While, as I argued above, this point does not help with the metaphysics underlying the love/awe polarity, it may indeed assuage the terror and submission one initially feels at the revelatory experience, by making it, psychologically, one’s own through creative manipulation and interpretation of its contents. What I find puzzling about the thesis is that it does not seem to be conceptually bound up exclusively with the devekut stage. At Phase Two, or even Phase One, the seeker after God can study halakhah as a Brisker and gain psychological mastery of toda’ah giluyit. The sturm und drang of the toda’ah tiv’it/ toda’ah giluyit clash can find at least this (partial) attenuation of its angst wherever the seeker after God happens to be situated in his quest. How then does devekut per se represent a resolution to the toda’ah tiv’it/ toda ‘ah giluyit polarity? If this idea is its long-awaited resolution, then it could have been introduced much earlier in the essay.101 I shall suggest a possible solution to this puzzle shortly. The same point can be made about the second of the three ways Rabbi Soloveitchik identifies, the elevation of the bodily. “The elevation of the body is the whole of the Torah; as for the rest, it is its commentary, go and study.”102 Sanctifying the physical by placing it under the guiding telos of the Law, Rabbi Soloveitchik argues, is the central motif of the halakhah. Unlike classical philosophy and certain religions, Judaism chooses not to abandon the physical in search of the spiritual, but to embrace them both as a “single, complete unit of psychosomatic man who serves his creator with his spirit and his body and elevates the living to eternal heights.”103 This account of Judaism has implications 100 101

102 103

Ibid., 206. It is possible that Rabbi Soloveitchik indeed meant this discussion to be independent of the devekut stage. Its location in the essay, however, and Rabbi Soloveitchik’s summary statement at the end of UVM which includes, at the devekut stage, language reminiscent of this discussion, make this suggestion unlikely. UVM, 207. Ibid., 215. — 199 —

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for the toda’ah tiv’it/toda’ah giluyit polarity, Rabbi Soloveitchik argues, since the content of revelation is the natural. Halakhah is directed at the physical; hence it unites the revelatory with the natural. Here too, this argument could be made independently of the devekut stage, since halakhah concerns itself with the physical whatever one’s station on the quest for God. But how successful is the argument itself? Much like the case with the first way, that of intellectual mastery, the idea of the elevation of the physical may also help assuage the initial terror and otherness one feels at the revelatory experience when one reflects about its aim at elevating one’s life. But of course, the reverse is possible as well. One might find halakhah’s manifold and intricate laws governing behavior to be intrusive and overwhelming, thus leading to feelings of submission rather than autonomy — ostensibly, exactly the way Rabbi Soloveitchik himself first portrayed the toda’ah giluyit experience. That the halakhah is concerned with the natural is in itself neutral with respect to the autonomy/heteronomy question. It is only Rabbi Soloveitchik’s spin on that concern which might help assuage feelings of terror and submission. In this way, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s argument may thus beg the question against how to read halakhah’s reach, and is not so much proof that halakhah solves the problem, as it is an eloquent polemic for reading the halakhah in an ideal way, which might help those who have heretofore responded to it in self-negation. Such an individual, who feels at first overwhelmed by the halakhah and responds submissively, then reads Rabbi Soloveitchik’s interpretation of the halakhah and is persuaded by it, may indeed find it easier to reconcile his self and body to its claims with self-affirmation rather than self-negation. At best, of course, this does not reconcile the full gamut of autonomies affirmed in toda’ah tiv’it with their negation in toda’ah giluyit, for which reason, perhaps, Rabbi Soloveitchik introduces the third way, the perpetuation of the word of God. During the course of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s extended discussion of this theme, he makes a number of points aimed at overcoming the toda’ah tiv’it/toda’ah giluyit polarity, which I shall summarize, and then comment on briefly. First, he argues that prophecy occurs only after extensive preparation involving the toda’ah tiv’it experience. Thus, revelation is experienced as a natural outgrowth of toda’ah tiv’it, a — 200 —

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response by God to man’s quest.104 This, however, is a curious argument, since it essentially amounts to a straightforward denial of the argument he made at the beginning of “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham,” that toda’ah giluyit is not experienced as a response to man’s quest. Presumably, Rabbi Soloveitchik knew even then that prophecy required preparation. What then has changed? What new insights developed during the course of the essay that might have led to this reversal?105 Next, Rabbi Soloveitchik reverts to a claim he made earlier in Halakhic Man, that man experiences the law of toda’ah giluyit as a true expression of his own deepest self. Therefore, he experiences it not as heteronomous but as autonomous. Moreover, he feels himself liberated from the demands and drives of his physical existence in committing himself to revealed law. He identifies with the law and makes it his own, so that he feels free and joyous.106 Here again, he repeats his (problematic) claim that great Jews never experienced a struggle with the yetzer ha-ra, since the law is experienced as their own inner desire. Apparently, Rabbi Soloveitchik regards these arguments as crucial, since he recapitulates their essence in his brief summary of the entire essay in the closing paragraphs of “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham.” This in itself is somewhat curious, since in Halakhic Man he makes the same point without the entire, elaborate apparatus constructed in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham.” As I noted earlier, this at best amounts to an affirmation of the autonomy of personality rather than the autonomy of morality. But even understood as a claim for the autonomy of personality, its status in regard to resolving the toda’ah tiv’it/ toda’ah giluyit polarity is much the same as that of his thesis concerning the elevation of the body. Surely, this is one ideal way to respond to halakhah. However, it is not the only way, as Rabbi Soloveitchik himself explains at the beginning of “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham.” To fully justify his claim that this solves an 104 105

106

Ibid., 217-21. He buttresses his case during the course of his discussion by observing (UVM, 218) that according to Judaism there is no complete metaphysical break between the natural and the supernatural, the finite and the infinite, and that they together make up a single homogeneous whole. The meaning of this statement, however, is not altogether clear to me. Ibid., 221-22. — 201 —

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aspect of the autonomy/heteronomy problem, Rabbi Soloveitchik would need to show that this is the only possible way to experience halakhah and that in fact the halakhah does represent the true inner desires of the Jew. As with the elevation of the physical thesis, we have here a stirring argument (in this case very brief) for an ideal vision of the halakhah, which may indeed help assuage feelings of submission and self-negation for whoever experiences the halakhah in this way. Finally, Rabbi Soloveitchik argues that the natural experience yields the revelational experience, since “the moral law is in itself the law of existence, and ethical action permeates the great creation.”107 God’s creation and governance of the world is an expression of His moral will and actions, and so through experiencing the world, one experiences the divine moral will, which turns out to be the content of the revelatory experience. As I argued above, however, following Ravitzky, this thesis is at odds with the post-Kantian theory Rabbi Soloveitchik himself affirms. Moreover, at best, it relates only to divinely revealed moral law, and not to the large class of non-moral laws that are part of revelation and halakhah. In the end, perhaps the best way to understand the function of the three ways in R. Soloveitchik’s thinking is two-fold: strategic and descriptive. I have heretofore focused on the three ways as a strategy for solving the autonomy/heteronomy polarity, and tried to demonstrate some of the problems they encounter in achieving this end. However, the three ways seem to function also as an idealized description of how, according to R. Soloveitchik, the individual who has already achieved devekut lives and experiences his Judaism. The descriptive function would provide the link I sought between the first two ways and devekut: certainly they could be experienced independently of devekut, but devekut always includes them. Understood as description, they reveal R. Soloveitchik’s vision of the ideal Jewish experience. Understood as a strategy, they play a role in helping he who seeks God to resolve the toda’ah tiv’it/ toda ‘ah giluyit polarity tension in his religious life and thereby help him achieve devekut. For some people, then, they may indeed contribute, if only partially, to a resolution of the autonomy/heteronomy polarity which is the central problematic of “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham.” 107

Ibid., 225. — 202 —

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IX. Conclusion What conclusions can be drawn from this analysis? I have tried to show that Rabbi Soloveitchik’s many and varied attempts to address the autonomy/heteronomy polarities in “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” does not appear to stand up to his own way of formulating the problem. It is absolutely critical for us to remember that Rabbi Soloveitchik need never have embraced so overwhelmingly heteronomous a characterization of the revelatory experience to begin with. After all, someone with an affinity for autonomy has numerous possible options open to him. For example, he could argue that the aim of revelation is to empower the Jew by making him a covenantal partner with God.108 Or, he might argue that the submission one must feel to God is but one small aspect of the complex religious experience, which is most characterized by dignity and assertiveness. Or again, he could argue that autonomy is a central value in the tradition, but a defeasible one under certain circumstances or at certain times.109 Whether or not any of these approaches would ultimately work is in part beside the point. After all, creativity is one of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s strongest intellectual virtues, and without a doubt he could have arrived at alternative ways of thinking about the problem that would have been far less problematic. It is precisely Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own formulation of the nature of the revelatory experience, his own deep personal conviction that Judaism really does require its adherents to submit themselves in defeat before God, that led him to set up the polarity which, in the end, he found so difficult to resolve.110 “U-Vikkashtem mi-Sham” takes 108 109 110

This is essentially the strategy of David Hartman in Living Covenant. For an extensive discussion of these issues, see chapter X of this volume. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s reasons for understanding the religious experience as essentially submissive (while also assertive) almost certainly rest in his own personal faith experience as much as they do in a dispassionate reading of the sources. Why his faith experience was such is itself an interesting question that cannot be answered with any certainty. One factor that may have contributed, however, is the challenge that modernity posed to his religious faith. Some of the greatest problems R. Soloveitchik would have had to confront are the claims of Wissenschaft scholarship in the study of the Bible, Talmud and halakhah. Yet, at least in the case of biblical criticism, R. Soloveitchik says in “Lonely — 203 —

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an important step beyond Halakhic Man in laying bare the autonomy/ heteronomy tensions which were in large part — but by no means completely — submerged in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s idealized portrait of Halakhic Man. Surgically laid bare as they are in “U-Vikkashtem miSham,” Rabbi Soloveitchik has great difficulty in closing these gaping wounds. The next and final step in this literary-philosophical evolution is thus hardly surprising. In all of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s later works, no attempt at resolving the polarities is even made. Human beings, Jews included, are portrayed as fundamentally and irreconcilably conflicted beings who must live out the autonomy/heteronomy polarities in a dialectical fashion, fully embracing each side of the dialectic. This final conclusion was in fact immanent at the very beginning and represents, I would suggest, the most authentic expression of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own religious sensibilities, even early in his career.111 The problems I have tried to identify throughout Halakhic Man and “U-Vikkashtem miSham” may of course indeed be just that — theological and philosophical problems; however, they may also amount to more. They may reflect Rabbi Soloveitchik’s own ambivalent feelings about the very enterprise in which he was engaged. At some level, he may have sensed some of these difficulties, for which reason, in part, he may have abandoned even the attempt at resolution. In other words, despite the apparently great disparities between the early and late writings, I am arguing that there is, perhaps paradoxically, greater unity to Rabbi Soloveitchik’s works than first meets the eye.

111

Man of Faith” (8-9) that he was never troubled by it. In this context, it is important to remember R. Soloveitchik’s admiring portrayal of the simple faith of the “man-child” in “The Remnant of Scholars” (Epstein, Shi’urei ha-Rav [New York: Hamevaser, 1974], 16). We have argued elsewhere (chapter XIV of this volume) that R. Soloveitchik’s response to some of the challenges of modernity was a fideistic, traditionalist faith affirmation, which of course amounts to a submission of self and intellect to the claims of classic Judaism. Thus the challenges of modernity may have led him to embrace a submissive stance towards God in his own personal religious experience. See above, n. 110. — 204 —

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The Autonomy of Reason, Revealed Morality and Jewish Law I have found that religious philosophers sometimes commit what might be called the fallacy of misplaced argumentation. Permit me to explain. Any fully developed system of thought contains many assertions about the world. Yet this proliferation of assertions can be traced back to several underlying propositions which are their logical forebears. This is because large-scale theories generally grow out of fundamental intuitions or conceptual stances. These fundamental intuitions become formulated into theory-embedded, second-order propositions. Understanding the centrality of second-order propositions is essential to understanding the theory which they generate, with its numerous first-order assertions about the world. When two large-scale systems of thought conflict, more often than not the conflict is rooted in fundamental differences of intuition or conceptual stances rather than in inconsistencies between one or more first-order assertions. This is surely true in the case of religious versus secular world views. Here the conflicts between the two are clearly rooted in fundamentally different conceptions of the way the world is. But, it is exactly here that religious philosophers are prone to committing the fallacy of misplaced argumentation, for in the numerous debates and attempts to reconcile these two systems of thought, much energy is focused on conflicts concerning first-order propositions. The real conflicts, however, are rooted in fundamental intuitions, in second-order propositions; so much of the argumentation is therefore misplaced. If really significant consistencies or inconsistencies are to be found, they are generally to be found at the level of the fundamental differences between the religious and secular world views. — 205 —

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If all this seems very abstract it should soon become clear, for an important and interesting case study of the fallacy of misplaced argumentation is the widespread discussion of the Kantian principle that Reason is (and must be) autonomous, and the problems that principle raises for Jewish ritual law in general and revealed moral law in particular. Although I shall soon spell all this out with much greater attention to detail, Kant held, roughly, that no law is moral or categorical unless the source of that law, its legislator, is the person himself. In our context, this principle has two important consequences, as follows. 1. No divinely revealed law can command categorically. This, it appears, would reflect poorly on the very conception of divine laws. 2. God seems out of place in moral discourse, for if moral law is autonomously imposed, then God’s purported revelation of it has no force; and if moral law is not autonomously imposed, then it cannot be moral. The latter problem has attracted more attention than the former;1 but Kant himself seemed to realize that it strikes at the very heart of the Jewish religion, for underlying much of his pungent critique of Judaism in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (RW) is a disdain for the law which, in his view, is essential to Judaism. In the first brief section of this paper I shall discuss that key passage in RW. In the second section I shall analyse with some care the Principle of Autonomy and the two problems it raises for religious thought, as well as try to show 1

Emil Fackenheim’s views on the matter have appeared in numerous places, but his basic thesis remains the same. See his “The Revealed Morality of Judaism and Modern Thought,” reprinted in his Quest for Past and Future: Essays in Jewish Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), which first appeared in Rediscovering Judaism, ed. Arnold Wolf (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1965). See also his Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (New York: Basic Books, 1972), for a slightly revised version of the same thesis. Norbert Samuelson has discussed this problem in his “Revealed Morality and Modern Thought,” CCAR Journal (June 1969). Fackenheim’s position is discussed at some length from the existentialist perspective by David Ellenson in his “Emil Fackenheim and the Revealed Morality of Judaism,” Judaism 25 (1976), 402-413. — 206 —

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that the most influential treatment of the problem in modern Jewish thought is inadequate. In the third and final section I shall argue that the fallacy of misplaced argumentation I described briefly above applies in all its force to the problem of autonomy. I shall argue that Kant’s own reasons for affirming the Principle of Autonomy (PA) are successful only within the framework of a secular humanism. If Kant were to admit the central presuppositions of the theist, then his very own arguments for adopting the far-reaching PA would fail. In other words, I shall argue that the battle over the Principle of Autonomy is being fought on the wrong battlefield.

I. Kant on Judaism Kant held that Judaism “… is not really a religion at all, but merely a union of a number of people who, since they belonged to a particular stock, formed themselves into a commonwealth under political laws.… ”2 Although his arguments for this view are threefold I shall concern myself here only with the first and (what I take to be) most important one: “… all its [Judaism’s] commands are of a kind which a political organization can insist upon and lay down as coercive laws, since they relate merely to external acts [italics mine]; and although the Ten Commandments are to the eye of reason valid as ethical commands … they are directed to absolutely nothing but outer observance.…”3 These remarks are an outgrowth of several Kantian theses. First, Kant held that religion is justifiable and valuable only if it is natural; that is, if its beliefs and practices are rationally derivable. Kant also held that what is natural about religion is its moral content alone. Therefore only the moral content of religion has significance. But if only the moral content of religion is significant, then (1) Judaism, which contains many ritualistic, non-moral laws, contains much which is not significant; (2) since (Kant held) only a person’s will is subject to moral 2 3

RW, trans. T. Greene and H. Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 116. Ibid. For a discussion of Kant’s other arguments see, among others, Jewish Identity in an Age of Ideologies (New York: Jacob Agus, 1978), 38-81. — 207 —

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evaluation, whereas the consequences of his will, say any actions which he performs, are not in themselves subject to moral evaluation (except insofar as they reflect the person’s will), what Judaism emphasizes, external actions, does not really count from the moral perspective;4 (3) no law can be moral or categorical unless it is autonomously imposed, and since in Judaism God imposes laws commanding external action, these laws are not self-imposed, and hence they are neither moral nor categorical but heteronymous, mere amoral actions to achieve some amoral purposes. Kant, I think, intended each of these points as a mark against Judaism, but even if he did not actually have them in mind he could have, for they all flow from his philosophical convictions. Although I shall focus here upon the third of the above-mentioned arguments, my remarks will have at least an indirect bearing upon the first as well. As to the second, suffice it to say that since, in the Jewish view, God did apparently want man to live together in a cohesive and workable society, and since such a society can be best achieved by the practical means of requiring certain kinds of behaviour, God chose to emphasize behavioural rather than intentional standards upon people in society. If Kant would reply that behaviour is less important from the moral perspective than is the will, God, even according to Judaism, might agree; He would respond only that from the practical perspective of achieving a certain form of society, behavioural standards are crucial as well. Now if Kant were to carry the debate to its next logical step and ask why the practical aim of achieving a certain form of society is an important religious objective, the debate would then in effect revolve around the material/practical question, which is Kant’s second, non-moral, argument for the view that Judaism is not a religion. And while it is surely worth discussing this question, it is still peripheral to my more limited concerns here. The point I wish to emphasize is that Judaism’s emphasis on external behaviour does not in itself entail that external behaviour rather than pure will is what counts from the moral 4

In the first section of Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals he argues that “nothing in the world … can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will” (Ak. 393). To have moral worth, Kant argues, an action must be done from a submission of the will to duty, regardless of the worth of the purpose to be achieved from the action (Ak. 399). For references, see footnote 6. — 208 —

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perspective. On the contrary, the Talmud, which contains thousands of detailed and technical discussions on the minutiae of Jewish law, asserts that “It matters not whether you do much or little, so long as your heart is directed to heaven” (Berachot 17a); Rabbi Meir, one of the great Tannaim of the fourth generation, likewise claimed that “all depends upon the intention of the heart” (Megillah 20a).5 We are left, then, with the problematic implications of the Principle of Autonomy for Jewish ritual law and revealed morality, and it is to this principle that I shall now turn.

II. The Principle of Autonomy and Religious Thought6 1. [The PA] is the Idea of the will of every rational being as a will which makes universal law (Ak. 431). 2. Never choose except in such a way that the maxims of the choice are comprehended in the same volition as a universal law (Ak. 440). 3. The will is therefore not merely subject to the law, but subject in such a way that it must be considered also as self-legislated, and only for this reason [italics mine] subject to the law of which it can regard itself as author (Ak. 431). The gist of the idea here, especially as expressed in the form of a command (2), is that no choice is moral if its guiding principle (maxim) is not universalizable into a general law which the chooser could of his own accord impose upon himself and all other moral agents. 5

6

See A Rabbinic Anthology, Montefiore and Loewe, Chapter x, for numerous additional sources in Rabbinic literature which emphasize the importance of the will. Kant is a notoriously difficult philosopher to understand, because of his style, the complexity of his views, their interrelationship with other aspects of his overall philosophical system, and the sometimes maddening opacity in his key points. I do not claim to have avoided all (or even most) interpretive pitfalls in my discussion of his views. I shall, however, acknowledge my indebtedness to R. Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Mortals (New York: Harper, 1973). I shall focus here on Kant’s discussion of the Principle of Autonomy in the Groundwork. All quotations are from the Lewis White Beck translation; pages refer to the Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenchaft (Ak.) edition (Berlin, 1902-1938). — 209 —

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The third statement, and other statements Kant makes like it, goes even further and makes the troublesome claim that we are subject to the law only if we have imposed it upon ourselves. Kant seems to be saying that our categorical obligation to obey some law derives only from the commitment we make in imposing that law upon ourselves; no categorical obligation can arise which is not self-imposed, although, of course, a heteronymous obligation of interest can arise. That is, if I wish to satisfy some interest, say self-preservation, then it may be imperative that I do such and such. But no pure moral (categorical) obligation, no obligation which in itself places duties upon us independent of the furthering of some mere interest, can arise unless I place it upon myself. If this is indeed what Kant is saying, then so far as the problem of revealed morality is concerned, it follows that God’s commanding us not to murder does not in itself place any pure obligation upon us. It is only our choice not to murder which can place that pure obligation upon us. Of course, it would be impossible to choose to murder and still satisfy the PA, for that choice (Kant thinks) would fail the universalizability criterion in (2): no universal law that all persons must murder would be self-consistent, according to Kant, for it would be self-defeating, since it would (likely) end in the death of its legislator, by murder. Thus the Principal of Autonomy does provide a rational criterion for making the morally correct choice. But what morally obligates me not to murder is the choice I make legislating that murder is wrong. If I choose to murder then I am acting against the dictates of reason (and often against a hypothetical imperative as well). If I choose not to murder, then I am forever morally bound by my commitment to the universal law I in effect legislated myself.7 On the basis of this analysis, the problem for the theist is a straightforward one: there appears to be very little room left for God. No pure obligation can arise as a consequence of God’s command alone, for obligation can only be autonomously imposed; therefore, His commands carry no obligatory force. This problem applies directly to moral law, but its extension to all Jewish law is obvious: if obligation 7

I have taken the beginnings of a stand on a matter of some difficulty in Kant: why ought I to choose to obligate myself to act morally if only my choice does the obligating? — 210 —

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arises only from self-commitment, then God’s commandment, say, to eat unleavened bread on Passover does not in itself place any pure obligation upon us. It is only our choice to eat only unleavened bread which can obligate us.8 What then is the force of God’s command? This is in part what underlies Kant’s disparagement of Jewish law. Emil Fackenheim is amongst the most influential of contemporary Jewish philosophers to call attention to this dilemma, but, insofar as I understand it, I find his solution problematic, if revealing. Fackenheim, for whatever reasons, does not take this as a challenge to all Jewish law, as Kant himself does (perhaps because he is of the view that in fact God Himself has not made, or could not make, non-moral commandments), but he does see it as a challenge to revealed morality. Fackenheim’s solution to the problem is couched in (and, I think, somewhat obscured by) existentialist jargon, and reads as follows: The freedom required in the pristine movement of the divine commanding Presence, then, is nothing less than the freedom to accept or reject the divine commanding Presence as a whole, and for its own sake — that is, for no other reason than that it is that Presence.… The divine commanding Presence may force the choice on a singled-out man. It does not force him to choose God, and the choice itself, as was seen, is not heteronymous, for it accepts or rejects the divine commanding Presence for no other reason than that it IS that Presence. But this entails the momentous consequence that IF AND WHEN MAN CHOOSES TO ACCEPT THE DIVINE COMMANDING PRESENCE, HE DOES NOTHING LESS THAN ACCEPT THE DIVINE WILL AS HIS OWN. 9

His point, as I understand it, is that man autonomously imposes upon himself the duty to make God’s will his own will; therefore, all divinely originating duties are obligatory, since they are autonomously imposed. But revelation is still necessary, and for two reasons. First, it forces man to make a choice. Without revelation, man would have no choice to make. Second, it informs man as to the nature and content of God’s will, so that man is in a position to make God’s will his own. 8

9

Whether or not ritual laws satisfy the universality condition is (fortunately) not important for our concerns here. Rediscovering Judaism, op. cit., n.1, 67. — 211 —

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The chief problem with this approach10 is that it ignores the apparent sense, made weighty by tradition, of divine revelation. A straightforward reading of the Torah strongly suggests that its moral and ritual content is not informational but normative. The Israelite is commanded to eat only kosher foods, commanded not to murder. That, after all, is what the term Mitzvah means — a command. The Torah’s intent was to place obligations upon the Israelite, to demand of him that he live according to a rigidly defined lifestyle. To assert either that the author of the Torah didn’t mean that God placed pure obligations upon him, or that even if God had wanted to place such obligations He couldn’t have, seems to me to be at best unfaithful to the plain sense of the Torah (and at worst theologically unacceptable. Can we really say of God that He was unable to place pure obligations upon us?). Thus it would appear that Kant’s views are inconsistent with the plain sense of the Torah. What then are our alternatives? One option is to face Kant head on and simply deny the Principle of Autonomy altogether. While this is indeed a viable option,11 it avoids the really interesting question, which is, how Kantian can a good Jew (or Christian) be? That is, how much can we retain of Kant and still be within the bounds of philosophic rigour and religious tradition? A second alternative is to affirm the Principle of Autonomy and admit that Jewish non-moral law has no independent obligatory force, and that Jewish moral law does not even merit the term ‘moral.’ Needless to say, this is an alternative to be avoided, at best a court of last resort. A third alternative, which I shall develop here, is to affirm (if only for argument’s sake) the Principle of Autonomy, but nevertheless to hold that divinely imposed laws are different from humanly imposed laws in that they are somehow purely obligatory and categorical despite their being imposed from without. That this position is wholly puzzling goes without saying; in order to develop it, I shall have to examine with 10

11

Samuelson (loc. cit.) raises several other problems, none of which I find very troubling. See too the article by Ellenson (loc. cit.). Samuelson, cited above, adopts this approach, but for a different reason. — 212 —

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great care Kant’s own arguments for the Principle of Autonomy. If we do this, I believe that we shall ultimately return to some of the central propositions of religious philosophy of which I spoke at the very onset of the paper.

III. The Principle of Autonomy: Religious and Secular Moralities Why does Kant hold that the Principle of Autonomy is true? Why does Kant think that a law can of its own accord impose obligations upon a rational agent only if that agent autonomously imposes that law upon himself? A careful reading of the Groundwork reveals two arguments which Kant puts forth in its favour:

I. The Disinterestedness Argument (AK. 431 ff). This argument, the deepest and most difficult of the two, reaches into the core of Kant’s conception of ethics. It seems to follow the following line of reasoning: 1. if a law is externally imposed upon an agent, then that law is such that the agent is not obeying it for its own sake, out of duty, but only for the sake of some interest or incentive, such as fear of punishment or desire for reward; 2. if the agent autonomously imposes that law upon himself as a universal law applicable to all rational agents regardless of personal interest, then that law is such that he who imposes it is not acting for some interest, but only for the sake of the law itself, out of duty. In short, autonomy is necessary (and, it seems, even sufficient) for disinterestedness. Now disinterestedness as here conceived is the hallmark of categoricality (Ak. 414, 419-20, 432 and passim), and categoricality is the hallmark of the moral (Ak. 416 and passim); thus autonomy is necessary (and sufficient) for a law to be moral. Now, externally imposed laws are by definition not autonomously imposed; — 213 —

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therefore, externally imposed laws are not moral. And even if the agent does choose to obey them for their own sake, despite their having been externally imposed, he is then in effect autonomously imposing them upon himself, and their external imposition lacks all pure obligatory force. Thus the dilemma, it seems, falls back into our laps. Fortunately, however, the matter is not quite as simple as these Kantian formulae would lead us to believe. Kant has made what turns out to be his central claim: a law is moral only if it is such that it is obeyed for its own sake, out of duty, and not for the sake of some other interest. It is this principle which underlies the Disinterestedness Argument, and if it cannot be justified, then neither can the Disinterestedness Argument. What justification, then, does Kant offer? Kant himself gives us only two reasons, one of which (the Universality claim) he appears to emphasize where it belongs, in his discussion of autonomy (Ak. 431 ff.), and one of which (the Concept of Duty) hearkens all the way back to the beginning of the Groundwork (Ak. 397 ff.). Unless we ourselves can come up with reasons not offered by Kant, then the force of the Disinterestedness Argument rests on the convincingness of these two reasons, and we must therefore examine them with the utmost care. 1. Universality. If a law is such that it can only be obeyed for the sake of some interest, then since it is possible that some persons will not have that interest (for example, it is logically if not causally possible that some persons have no fear of punishment, no matter how severe), it is possible that some persons will not be bound by the law. And, says Kant, to hold that the moral law is conditional upon the vagaries of human nature, binding upon some people and not binding upon others, is contrary to the very nature of morality: “For with what right could we bring into unlimited respect something which might be valid only under contingent human conditions?” (Ak. 408). 2. The Concept of Duty. “The first proposition of morality is that to have moral worth an action must be done from duty” (Ak. 399). A moral action, say returning a lost object, which is motivated by fear or desire for reward, is devoid of moral worth. According to — 214 —

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Kant, the morality of an action depends only upon motivation, not upon its outcome, and therefore an action not motivated by moral considerations of duty and respect for the moral law has no moral value. An action takes on the moral texture of its motivation. And a law which of its nature can have no moral motivation is not a moral law. Therefore, externally imposed laws are not moral. Now a great tradition in moral philosophy has disagreed with Kant here, the teleological ethical theorists, but the point Kant makes is persuasive and, for our purposes, we can grant him it. What sort of laws will satisfy both the Universality and Concept of Duty reasons? What are the conditions for a law to have real worth and to be obligatory for all rational beings? Only laws which, says Kant, are a priori and “… derived from the universal concept of a rational being generally” (Ak. 412). It is at this crucial juncture that Kant, I believe, makes, if only indirectly, his unjustified step into the territory of the theist. For the theist may well argue that since God is quite different from man, the laws He imposes are different from those man might impose, and even if other persons, say the state, cannot impose universal laws binding of their own accord and worthy of obedience, God can! It is the point of this long exercise that while Kant may be right in that both the Universality and Concept of Duty reasons are sufficient to show that no law externally imposed by man is moral or worthy, Kant is not right to make the further, more extreme claim that even God’s laws are neither moral nor worthy. We have finally arrived at one of the central issues which divides the religious and secular systems of thought, those second-order propositions which have major ramifications throughout the network of first-order propositions. I shall argue that while we can (if we wish) grant Kant the Principle of Autonomy from the standpoint at which he began, a secular humanism, from the perspective of the theist even Kant himself would admit that the Principle of Autonomy has severe and far-reaching limitations; for the reasons Kant himself gives for affirming the Principle of Autonomy do not carry as much weight from the theistic perspective as they do from the secular perspective. — 215 —

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We shall first consider the Universality reason. God addresses Himself to all rational agents and unconditionally commands them to be truthful. The theist would claim that if God, as an omnipotent being, pointedly addresses each and every rational agent, and claims that His command stands for all agents at all times, then it is logically impossible that some rational agent exists who is free of the obligation to tell the truth. And this is so even if all those agents obey out of some interest, for a sufficient condition of their being obligated is their being an agent. God, in the traditional view, suffers no limitations, and hence it is within His capabilities, even if not within human capabilities, to obligate each and every rational agent, bar none. Thus even though God’s commands are externally imposed, no person can ever escape their force, and the Universality reason is satisfied in the case (and only in the case) of divinely imposed morality. To the Concept of Duty reason, which cuts far more deeply into the Kantian conception of morality, the theist has a different but I think no less satisfactory sort of response. The theist, even if he agrees with Kant that the moral worth of an action is determined by the agent’s will, by his motivation for doing that action, need not agree with Kant that the action has no worth if not done for moral reasons. God commands man to act morally. The theist’s motivation for acting morally may well be just that God commanded him to. But in what way is that motivation not worthy? It may not be moral but, according to the theist, it is on that account no less worthy, for acting out of obedience to the divine will is perhaps even more worthy than acting out of respect for the morality of the law itself. Indeed, there is the view in the Talmud, albeit not universally subscribed to, that God’s reason for legislating the moral laws was not the morality of the law; His purpose was merely to promulgate (what could in fact be arbitrary) decrees, so as to demand obedience from man solely on account of the divine origin of the decree.12 Herein lies a crucial, central difference between the theist and the secularist. The secularist, who denies (or professes ignorance of) the existence of God, can have no higher motivation for acting morally 12

Berachot 33b. — 216 —

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(according to Kant) than acting out of respect for the moral law which, for Kant, is acting out of the conceptions of a priori reason, out of laws “derived from the concept of a rational being generally.” But the theist recognizes another authority, an authority whose demands might be outside what can be inferred from the universal concept of a rational being, but whose authority does not itself derive only from what can be rationally inferred a priori. To act morally out of the interest of a respect for His will alone is at least as great a virtue as acting out of respect for the rational merits of whatever it is that He wills. Thus divine laws can be binding even if they are not autonomously imposed for, in this view, even if they lack pure moral force their divine force more than makes up for it. Of course not all religious persons act solely out of respect for the divine will; all too often fear of punishment, hope for reward, or social sanctions creep in as well. Nevertheless, since the purely religious will can act solely out of respect for the divine will, the law is such that it can be of great (religious) worth, and hence it is a worthy law. (The law’s binding force, however, irrespective of its worth, derives from God’s ability directly to impose obligations upon us. I shall return to this point later.) Of course the theist is not justified in arguing that the Kantian secularist is acting unworthily or immorally. Just the reverse is true; even according to a theist (of a Kantian bent), only persons who autonomously impose the law upon themselves act morally. Thus even though the theist is not justified in denigrating the morals of the Kantian secularist, he still has every reason to press the ultimate worth of his own actions as well. Interestingly enough, it is often argued that without belief in God there can be no moral obligation. So far as I can tell, this thesis is a false one:13 but for the Kantian theist, it is not only false but topsy-turvy. With a belief in God, there need not be any such thing as moral obligation! All human obligations can reduce to the religious. Sufficient for the obligation to be binding is that God has commanded it. All moral laws are obligatory, then, even if they are not autonomously imposed. That they cannot appropriately be called moral, the theist argues, does not detract from their value: the source of value 13

See William Frankenas’ article, “Is Morality Logically Dependent Upon Religion?” in Religion and Morality, ed. G. Outka and J. Reeder, Jr. (New York: Anchor Press, 1973). — 217 —

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shifts, from the moral to the religious. The point of revealing morality, rather than leaving it for human self-imposition, is that regardless of our motives and beliefs we have a duty to behave morally, for moral behaviour is now mandated by God. In fact, if we think about it, we can see that human motivation to act morally can be divided into four classes, as follows. 1. It can be purely religious, that is, one can act only out of respect for God’s will, and on that account the action is worthy; 2. it can be neither religious nor moral, that is, one can act out of fear of punishment or hope for reward, and on that account the action lacks both moral and religious worth; 3. it can be purely moral, that is, one can act only out of respect for the moral law itself, regardless of its divine origin, and on that account the action is morally worthy; 4. it can be simultaneously both moral and religious, that is, one can act both out of respect for God’s will and out of a recognition that what it is that God willed is worthy of respect regardless of the fact that God willed it, on account of its being derivable from the general nature of rational beings (in other words, each of these motivations is sufficient in itself to determine our action). On this account it has both moral and religious value. Now some might question whether this last alternative, (4), is in fact plausible: does recognizing the intrinsically obligatory nature of morality somehow detract from the awe one must hold of the divine will? Does recognizing the duty to respect God’s will irrespective of what it is that He wills somehow entail that I am not being sufficiently motivated by respect for the law itself? These questions, reminiscent of the medieval debates amongst Jewish philosophers concerning the appropriateness of the inquiry into “ta’amei ha’mitzvot,” reasons for the divine commands, are indeed very difficult to answer conclusively. My own intuition is that both these questions should be answered in the negative. An act can, I believe, be simultaneously both moral and religious, doubly worthy, perhaps the very paradigm for all human action. Indeed, it might be argued that the ultimate end of the divinely — 218 —

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imposed moral laws is just that they be autonomously imposed, that while God does command us to act morally, His intention in so doing is to put us on the right moral track, as it were, to provoke us into imposing those laws upon ourselves, autonomously, so that we do them for their own sake and not only (or perhaps not at all!) for the sake of their divine origin. There is, in fact, a rabbinic tradition to this effect, according to the Midrash: Whoever performs one Mitzvah for its own sake [lit., “its truth”] is as if he gave it himself at Sinai, as it says, “you shall keep them and do them” [Deut. 26:16]; and what is the intent of “and do them”? It is only to teach you that whoever fulfills the Torah and does it for its own sake, is as if he decreed it and gave it at Sinai.14

In conclusion, it turns out that the question of autonomy and revealed morality turns not upon the clash between lower level assertions within the secular and religious systems of thought (as both Fackenheim and Samuelson held), but upon that most basic question of all — does an omnipotent, transcendent and commanding God exist? A final point before moving onward: it might be argued that in the view I have defended here the Principle of Autonomy has been so vitiated as to be without force. For with respect to divine commands, a law can be binding even if it is not autonomously imposed, for even if it lacks pure moral force, its divine force more than makes up for it. Thus all moral laws need not be imposed autonomously to be binding. Where then does the Principle obtain? Have we not in effect denied it? Although this challenge deserves serious attention, several important points might be made in response. First, the Principle of Autonomy does require that any moral law without specific revelatory backing must be autonomously imposed. Therefore where there is doubt about the reliability of the transmission of the revelatory tradition, or where, as so often happens, there is doubt about the specific application of some revelation, a law must be autonomously imposed even for the theist in order to be binding. Second, the Principle asserts that in order for a law to be moral it must be autonomously imposed, and so to the 14

Midrash Tanhuma, Ki Savo, aleph; Buber edition, 3:46. Translation mine. — 219 —

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degree that the theist recognizes the a priori nature of the moral law, and acts out of respect for it, he is acting morally as well as religiously. The Principle of Autonomy places certain conditions on an action which must be met for the action to be moral; the theist too can meet those conditions, and must meet them in order for his action to be moral too. Thus the Principle has significance for the theist as well as the secularist; they both must satisfy its demands in order to act morally. Indeed, as I suggested above, it could be that the theist must satisfy its demands too if he is to act religiously as well, for it may just be God’s intent that we impose His moral laws upon ourselves autonomously. Third, it has been argued that according to the Principle of Autonomy no governmental laws are ever in themselves binding; that it entails an anarchistic theory of political obligation.15 In this view, the distinction between human and divine laws is easily maintained. Fourth, according to the Principle, it is irresponsible for us to abdicate to others our responsibility to make our own decisions, be that other the captain of a ship, a teacher or a leader of government. In this respect the Principle still carries immediate and far-reaching force. Until now we have been considering only one of Kant’s arguments for the Principle of Autonomy, the Disinterestedness Argument. In order fully to justify the position we have advocated for the Kantian theist, we must also consider a second although less important argument advanced by Kant, the Kingdom of Ends Argument. It should not be surprising if we take a very similar approach in treating this argument as well.

IV. The Kingdom of Ends Argument (Ak. 431 ff.) According to Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative, it is our duty to “treat humanity whether in [our] own person or in that of another, always as an end, and never as a means only” (Ak. 429). Since all persons stand under this imperative, all persons are systematically united under a common moral law as ends to themselves and each other (Ak. 433-4). Kant then argued that if morality is (in 15

See R. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York: Harper, 1971). — 220 —

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some sense) a kingdom of ends, then all men must be autonomous legislators of the moral law. This is so because no man can be an end in himself, and hence have the dignity that attaches to being an end in himself, if he must humbly submit to the laws of another. In other words, Kant held that if he is right about man being an end in himself, then he must be right about the Principle of Autonomy as well. We must ask ourselves, however, if this inference is valid from the perspective of the theist. Although the conception of man as an end in himself, as possessing what Kant calls intrinsic worth, is difficult to understand thoroughly, it is nonetheless extremely attractive and has long been held to be an appropriate foundation for morality. However, it is on that account no less troubling to the traditional theist who believes that God created man to serve His own purposes, as a means to some further inscrutable end.16 Although it may be true, even for the theist, that with respect to my own interests and needs you are not only a means but an end as well, it is false that you are an end in yourself simpliciter, for with respect to God and His purposes, it seems more than likely that you are a means to some further, higher end. For the theist, then, the conception of man as an end in himself may indeed obtain, but only within the domain of morals, only when we judge the means/end relationship of man and his fellow-men. While men may indeed be related to each other only as ends, that is not the character of their relationship with God. On this theistic view, it seems wholly appropriate that man should submit to the Laws of another, if that other is God, for, with respect to Him, man is not an end in himself, but only a means; hence, obeying God’s law does not, as Kant claimed, defeat his status as an end, for with respect to God, he simply does not have that status, nor the peculiar sort of dignity that attaches to it. Has man on this account lost his human dignity? The theist would answer with a resounding “no!,” for according to the theist no greater dignity could be ascribed to man than by granting him some great and important role in the divine scheme. From the religious point of view man’s dignity is enhanced if it derives from nothing other than the dignity of God himself. 16

See J. F. Ross, Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1969). — 221 —

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By way of summary, we might conclude that even if we grant Kant the consistency and even adequacy of his system when analysed within the framework of a secular humanism, when we analyse it within the framework of a traditional theism his own arguments fail to justify the conclusions he arrives at. If Kant is to prove his own system right, the philosophical battle must take place not at the level of his ethics, as Fackenheim and Samuelson suppose, but rather at the level of a philosophy of religion: does God as traditionally conceived exist? The answer to that question will determine the true status of the Principle of Autonomy. If God (so conceived) does indeed exist, then even Kant must admit that with respect to His commands man is not autonomous; instead, he is forever bound by the duties his creator imposes upon him. Before moving on to the final few points I shall raise, I should like at least to note the following interesting and pertinent question: what are the grounds for the obligatory force of God’s commands? To answer this question would take us far beyond the scope of this paper, but that answer in part involves God’s omnipotence. If God is omnipotent, then He can create obligations. Even those who hold that God is bound by the laws of deductive logic would be hard put to show that there is something contra-logical in God’s imposing obligations. Grounds for the obligatory force of divine commands might also rest, as some medieval Jewish philosophers thought, on the moral obligation of showing gratitude, in this case gratitude to God the creator and preserver of life and its bounties. However, this kind of analysis, even if its details could be worked out, places moral obligation at the root of divine obligation, and we have argued here that divine obligation is binding independently of moral obligation. There is much to be said about this important problem, but for now I shall merely presuppose that God can, in whatever way, impose His obligations upon man. That God can and does do so accounts for the extension of our remarks from the domain of moral revelation to that of all Jewish law. Just as God places moral obligations upon man, He places purely religious obligations as well, and as we have argued, those obligations are no less worthy for their purely religious genesis. Thus, if we have succeeded in solving the problem Kant’s Principle of Autonomy raises for moral revelation, we shall have also succeeded in solving the problem — 222 —

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it raises for all Jewish ritual law as well. As we pointed out earlier, the same philosophical issues underlie them both. Until now we have only considered those arguments Kant himself advances for the Principle of Autonomy, but if we are to be certain that from the theistic perspective no good reasons exist for applying the Principle to divine commands we must examine any arguments in support of it that we can think of, even if Kant himself did propose them. Upon reflection there are in fact two other, perhaps even deeper reasons for the Principle of Autonomy which strangely enough Kant himself ignores. I say strangely enough because the two arguments I shall soon spell out are imbued with a deeply Kantian sensibility. The first argument runs as follows: the fundamental moral fact that man is responsible for all his actions entails that man must, to meet that responsibility, decide rationally for himself, what he ought and what he ought not to do, for to rely on another’s decision is in effect to abandon his responsibility.17 There are numerous problems with this argument, but it is most relevant for our purposes to point out that when we say that man is responsible for his actions we mean, most importantly, that he is responsible to see to it that his actions are moral. Now that responsibility, for the theist, is best and most rationally carried out by acting according to God’s revealed judgment of what is and what is not moral. What better evidence could there be that some action is moral than an omniscient God’s telling us? We, of course, can err in our reasoning; God, the theist asserts, cannot. We are not forfeiting our responsibility to choose a rationally decided moral course of action; we are rationally deciding that the surest means of knowing what is moral is by relying on (clear and reliably transmitted) revelation. Of course, where there is a significant question about the reliability of the tradition whereby the revelation was transmitted, or where there is doubt about the specific application of some general revelation, then even the theist would agree that, as the Principle of Autonomy asserts, we can carry out our moral responsibilities only by deciding rationally, for ourselves, 17

See R. Wolff, Autonomy of Reason, 180-181. For a limited discussion of this argument, see Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, 12-15. — 223 —

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what it is that we ought or ought not to do. God neither expects nor wants us to be mindless automatons; in expecting us to abide by clear revelations, He is doing no more than expecting us to act rationally, as I argued above. Thus, we are bound by the moral revelation. A convinced Kantian might argue from yet a different perspective, that it follows from man’s being a rational agent who is free, that he is responsible only if he chooses to make himself responsible. Man is, as it were, born free, responsible only to whatever it is that he rationally concludes to be morally necessary and a priori.18 Now this view of the nature of man is not so much logically necessary as it is intuitively convincing. And the theist is just as convinced that man is not born wholly free, that while man is indeed free to choose what he wills, he is not free of the responsibility to choose in a particular way. Man, says the theist, is a rational creature of his very nature bound by obligations and duties, and those obligations and duties are placed upon his capable shoulders by God Himself, his creator. The debate between the theist and secularist on this point could not, I believe, be taken much further. We arrive, once again, at a rock-bottom difference between the secularist and the theist. If any general conclusion can be drawn from my arguments in this paper it is that the theist and secularist can agree with each other on more than they might at first think, but that where they do disagree, those disagreements are seminal. Both the convinced theist and the convinced secularist can agree that in principle laws are binding only if they are autonomously imposed, but where they do disagree, the case of divine laws, their disagreement is a matter of no small import. As always, the difference between God and man makes all the difference in the world.

18

This is connected with Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal selves, and his solution to the problem of determinism. Unfortunately I cannot go into these difficult matters here. — 224 —

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--------------------------------- Chapter IX  ----------------------------------

Theoretical Grounds for Tolerance in the Jewish Tradition I. INTRODUCTION In secular, liberal societies, it is by now commonplace that tolerance is a virtue. However, the justification for this view of tolerance is notoriously problematic. Why, after all, tolerate a position you are convinced is wrong, if not downright pernicious? This problem, often called the “paradox of tolerance,” is particularly acute if the context is not a secular, liberal society, but a religious society or tradition. This is because one common refuge from the paradox is a form of agnosticism: The reason I should tolerate your view on abortion is because I am sophisticated enough to know that no one can ever really be absolutely certain about such difficult matters as abortion. Add a dollop of postmodern consciousness about the culturally and socially constructed nature of beliefs and values, and a justification for tolerance is readily at hand. Whatever the merits of this strategy, and they are somewhat limited (what happens if you really are certain — post-modern sensibilities aside — about some view or other, e.g., that torturing innocent children is always wrong? Should you tolerate those who advocate otherwise?), it is far from evident that the strategy would work in the context of a religious society or tradition. Presumably religion not only affords its adherents a measure of certainty, religion requires it. If, for example, I am a committed Orthodox Jew or Catholic, and I am convinced that my tradition teaches divinely sanctioned truth about some particular matter, then why should I tolerate views I am convinced are wrong?1 1

For a qualification of this point see below in the section on tolerance and truth. — 225 —

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My aim is to examine the Jewish tradition2 for theoretical resources to answer this question which has so exercised Western philosophers since the Enlightenment. Let me make clear from the outset, however, that my aim is no more ambitious than that. That is, I am not concerned with developing a general theory of tolerance out of the Jewish sources, which would necessitate laying out the parameters of tolerance, explaining when tolerance as a practical matter is affirmed by the tradition and when it is not. Indeed, under certain conditions the tradition is decidedly intolerant. One could marshal evidence both for tolerance and intolerance within the tradition, and a paper of much wider scope would need to examine all the data on this question in their complex historical contexts.3 Along the way, of course, I shall cite various examples of practical positions taken by various Jewish authorities which I take to reflect an endorsement of the value of tolerance and which will illustrate what I mean by practical tolerance, providing some flesh and bones to an otherwise fairly abstract presentation. Nevertheless, my concern here is theoretical: Are there intellectual resources within the tradition that provide at least some justification for asserting that, at least under some circumstances (here undefined), one should in principle tolerate views which one believes on “religious” grounds to be wrong? When tolerance is justified requires further halakhic study. Before seeking to answer this question, an introductory comment is in order. Most writers assume that the concept of tolerance applies only where the tolerator has the power to repress views with which he disagrees.4 In part, this is because classical discussions of tolerance, such as that of Locke, arose in a political context and concerned the role of the sovereign in tolerating religious and other minorities. Nevertheless, when most of us speak of tolerance as a moral virtue, such as when we 2

3

4

The thinkers I shall look at are limited to those who take themselves to be operating primarily in the Jewish rather than Western intellectual tradition. Thus I will not be examining the thoughts of Mendelssohn, Spinoza, Cohen, and others. For a broad-gauged study of this see Alexander Altmann, “Tolerance and the Jewish Tradition” (Heb.), in Altmann, Panim shel Yahadut (Tel Aviv: 1983). Much more careful work remains to be done on this topic, especially in light of the halakhic sources. For one discussion among many of the conditions for toleration, including power, see Nicholson, “Toleration as a Moral Ideal” in Aspects of Toleration, ed. Norton and Mendus (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), 160. — 226 —

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identify a particular individual as being tolerant, we do so properly, it seems to me, even if the person in question has no power to repress views with which he disagrees.5 I take it that when we do so we mean to say, minimally, that as a matter of principle the tolerator desists from taking aggressive action, verbal or otherwise, against the individual holding such views as he disagrees with on matters of value or deep conviction, despite his capacity to take such action. Over the course of this essay we shall take up various interpretations of the phrase “as a matter of principle,” examining what the motives of the tolerator might be, and whether they properly count as principled reasons for toleration. It seems reasonably clear, however, that at least some version of the “matter of principle” condition must obtain when we use the term “toleration” in a moral (or religious) sense. Thus we wouldn’t say of X that he tolerated Y if X’s motive for refraining from taking aggressive action against Y’s views was exclusively to assure promotion at the job, or any other purely self-interested consideration. Of course, we may mean much more than this minimalist reading of tolerance. We may also mean, just to take one example, that the tolerator is open to listening seriously to different points of view on matters of value or conviction, and to considering arguments in their favor, even if already convinced (reasonably or unreasonably) that those arguments will in the end prove indecisive, a kind of “tolerance as openmindedness.” For my purposes in this work it is irrelevant whether these various usages of the term “tolerance” are metaphoric or analogous, or whether they are literal. The question I seek to answer regarding theoretical grounds for tolerance in the Jewish tradition should be understood as a question about tolerance in the varying maximalist and minimalist senses of the term.

II. The Philosophical Background Another way of stating my aim is to bring the Jewish tradition into dialogue with Western philosophic attempts to justify tolerance. It 5

Joseph Raz takes a similar view in “Autonomy, Toleration and the Harm Principle,” in Justifying Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 163. — 227 —

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would be helpful at this point, therefore, to outline briefly the sort of justifications for tolerance which have appeared there. The two most influential discussions of the issue are British: that of John Locke, in his “Letter on Toleration,” and that of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. Locke’s central argument is that it is irrational for a sovereign to coerce religious belief since religion aims at the salvation of its adherents, and salvation is possible only if the adherents of a religion choose their beliefs freely. It is in this context, among others, that Locke puts forward his enormously influential doctrine concerning the separation of church and state, arguing that the state generally has no right to interfere in the beliefs and practices of its citizens. While students of Jewish philosophy will note that Hasdai Crescas in many ways prefigured Locke by some two-and-a-half centuries in arguing, contra Maimonides, that belief in God cannot be commanded, the Lockean strategy is nevertheless seriously limited as a general justification for tolerance in several ways:6 (a) It does not show that the sovereign, or any institution with authority and power, must tolerate beliefs and practices which emerge not from religious, but from other sorts of convictions (e.g., prudential), where salvation, and hence free choice, are not issues. (b) It also fails to show that a sovereign may not coerce citizens to engage in practices which are likely over time to give rise to religious beliefs which he endorses, even if they don’t directly coerce religious beliefs and practices themselves. Thus Locke’s argument does not preclude requiring citizens to read religious books of the sovereign’s choosing; it precludes only requiring citizens to believe them. (Students of Jewish philosophy will recognize this as strategically akin to Abarbanel’s defense of Maimonides, that the obligation to believe in God consists in undertaking those practices which will yield knowledge of Him, the true obligation, i.e., the study of philosophy.) (c) Finally, Locke’s argument fails to justify what I have called “tolerance as openmindedness” which obtains outside the political setting, and which applies to non-religious as well as to religious contexts. 6

See Jeremy Waldron, “Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution,” in Justifying Toleration, ed. Susan Mendus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 61-85. — 228 —

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The reason for these limitations in Locke’s central justification for tolerance is straightforward. Locke does not show that tolerance is a moral good; he shows, at best, only that coercion of religious beliefs and practices is irrational. Where that irrationality is absent, coercion may be justified. Locke also mentions in passing, at the very outset of the “Letter” and later on, a second argument for toleration. Toleration, Locke maintains, is a Christian virtue alongside other virtues such as meekness, charity, benignity and so on, and all devout Christians should therefore be tolerant. Commentators have generally given philosophical short shrift to this argument, considering it to be ad hominem and addressed to Christian authorities only.7 I shall have more to say about this theme in the Jewish context later. A second sustained and highly influential set of justifications for tolerance appears in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. These arguments, not surprisingly, proceed largely along instrumentalist lines and provide far greater reach than Locke’s. They fall into three main categories. First, Mill argues, by tolerating dissent we are more likely to arrive at the truth. On the one hand, there is the argument from skepticism: “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion.”8 On the other, even if the opinion we hold is true, the very debate, the need to defend oneself, refines and deepens our knowledge, as it opens us to the possibility that we may hold only part, but not all of the truth. Second, Mill argues, there is the manner in which an opinion is held. Even assuming that my opinion is the whole truth, how I hold it matters as well. “If [my opinion]… is not fully, frequently and fearlessly discussed it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”9 Finally, Mill maintains that self-actualization is the highest end of man, and in a society in which diversity is not tolerated and dissent and individuality repressed, it will be impossible for humans to achieve self-actualization. Despite the overall persuasiveness of Mill’s impassioned arguments, they too meet up with certain limitations. First, their force is somewhat 7 8 9

Waldron, ibid., 62-63. On Liberty (New York: Meridian/New American Library, 1963), 161. Ibid. — 229 —

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blunted in a religious context, where presumably the argument from skepticism would at least sometimes fail, although we shall have more to say about this assumption later. More importantly, the value of the manner in which one holds one’s religious belief may be overridden by the greater value of constructing a society in which everyone is at least assured of holding some religious beliefs. In other words, the religionist might argue that it is better to repress dissent, thereby assuring widespread commitment to religious beliefs even if only as “dead dogma,” than to encourage dissent, and thus beliefs held by at least some as “living truth,” but thereby running the unacceptable risk of widespread abandonment of religious belief, even if held only as “dead dogma.” Considerations of utility sometimes cut both ways. Finally, Mill gives us no real justification for the view that self-actualization is the highest human good, an assumption which grounds the third of his three arguments.10 A third strategy for justifying tolerance, deployed only more recently in the philosophical literature, is linked to the doctrine of respect for persons.11 While Mill’s analysis is consequentialist in nature, and focuses on the tolerator and his obligations, this approach is Kantian in origin and focuses on the subject of toleration (the “tolerated”) and his right to be treated with toleration. This right to be treated with tolerance is variously derived from the principle of autonomy in Kantian ethics, and the obligation to treat each person as an end in himself and never only as a means. Treating persons as ends in themselves capable of autonomously shaping their own lives entails, so the argument runs, permitting them the freedom to express and explore those goals as they see fit. This strategy has the virtue of conceiving tolerance as intrinsically valuable, rather than as a means to achieving only some extrinsic good. 10

11

For a discussion of some of these points, see David Edwards, “Toleration and Mill’s Liberty of Thought and Discussion” in Mendus, op. cit., 87-114. See Mendus, op. cit., “Autonomy, Toleration and the Harm Principle,” Joseph Raz, 155-176, and “The Intolerable,” D. D. Raphael, 137-154. In Aspects of Toleration, ed. Horton and Mendus (London and NY: Methuen, 1985), see Albert Weal, “Toleration, Individual Differences, and Respect for Persons,” 16-35; and Peter Nicholson, “Toleration as a Moral Ideal,” 158-173. — 230 —

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III. Tolerance and Truth The Jewish halakhic tradition has been aptly characterized as a culture of controversy. Virtually every page in the Talmud is replete with makhloket, and that is only the beginning. Throughout the ages, the halakha has developed out of a matrix of passionate give-and-take and rich and long-standing debate. Even the views of the rejected minority were recorded time and again in the mishna, which in tractate Eduyot is justified on the grounds that even rejected positions may come to life once again under the discerning eyes of a subsequent court of law.12 Although the legal institution of the Rebellious Elder appears on its face to be completely repressive, in fact the Mishna makes clear that it applies only to a member of the Court, who persists himself in acting contrary to the decision of the Sanhedrin, or who instructs his students to so act. He is nevertheless still permitted to teach his dissident views, even in public, and to publicly criticize the decision of the court, so long as he toes the line in practice. Controversial, dissident halakhic positions, as distinct from practices, are not repressed even when the institutions to do so are available.13 Rabbinic attitudes towards controversy and its origins are mixed.14 One view in particular is of special interest to a discussion of tolerance in the Jewish tradition. The mishna in Avot (5:17) reads: Any controversy which is for the sake of heaven will endure and any controversy which is not for the sake of heaven will not endure. What is an example of a controversy for the sake of heaven? This is the controversy between Hillel and Shammai. And a controversy which is not for the sake of heaven? The controversy of Korach and his entire congregation.

12 13

14

See Eduyot 1:5-6 and commentaries of Maimonides and Rabad. See Mishna Sanhedrin 11:2. But see Maimonides MT Mamrim 3:7 where he maintains that the courts should repress even dissident opinions, even though the Zaken Mamre institution formally does not apply. The basis for Maimonides’ unusual position is unclear. See comments of Radbaz and R. Z. H. Chajes, Hidushim U-Mekorim, ad. loc. For a general discussion, see Jeffrey Roth, “Responding to Dissent in Jewish Law,” Rutgers Law Review 40:31 (1987), 54-56. For a survey of different approaches see Jeffrey Roth, “The Justification for Controversy in Jewish Law,” California Law Review 59:784 (1988). — 231 —

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This mishna seems to maintain that halakhic controversy is a positive phenomenon provided it is conducted for the “sake of heaven.” Such at least is suggested by the ascription of endurance, usually thought of as a positive quality, to controversies for the sake of heaven, and so the mishna is understood by most commentaries. But if I am convinced that you are wrong, why should I, pace the mishna, regard your disagreement with me as positive? Since I am convinced I am right, would it not be more rational for me to maintain that the most desirable outcome would be a resolution of the controversy in my favor? In other words, why should I tolerate your position? Would I not be better served by taking whatever steps I could to resolve the controversy in my favor, rather than, as the mishna teaches, see value in its perdurance? The Meiri, in his commentary on the mishna, writes: And the intention is that the disputant will be aroused [by the controversy] to make an effort in establishing the truth, and to dispute all those who attempt to nullify his position, without being afraid of anyone….

The Meiri maintains, much like Mill, that controversy enhances the prospects for establishing the truth, and thus its perdurance is a good for each party even if convinced the other is wrong. Each party to the controversy ought to tolerate the expression of contrary positions, since so doing will sharpen his own position in the process. Thus, Meiri appears to affirm the value of tolerance on grounds of its utility.15 The Talmud itself records a similar view. R. Yohanan, it is told, was mourning the death of his friend and study partner Resh Lakish. He resisted the attempts of his friends to console him with the following comment: When I taught a law the son of Lakish used to raise twenty-four objections, to which I gave twenty-four responses, which led to a fuller understanding [ravha shematteta] of the law.16

15

16

See the commentary of R. Obadiah Bartenura, ad loc., for a similar, although perhaps less explicit, view. TB Baba Metzia 84a. However, the Aramaic may also mean that quantitatively, rather than qualitatively, more Torah was produced. — 232 —

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Can Meiri’s remarks be generalized outside of the halakhic context? The answer is, almost certainly, yes. The mishna itself does not limit makhloket to halakha; its contrasting example of a makhloket not for the sake of heaven is that of Korach, which despite a range of midrashic comments, is not at least obviously halakhic. The mishna’s affirmation of controversy is generic: All controversy will endure, provided it is for the sake of heaven. And it is this generic affirmation of controversy which Meiri seeks to explicate. As a practical matter, it is not clear to me just how far the mishna, and the Meiri, would go in affirming the value of tolerating disagreement, and the answer to this question depends in large part upon an analysis of the key condition the mishna itself stipulates, that the controversy must be “for the sake of heaven.” There is yet another way in which a Millian sort of argument about the connection between truth and tolerance finds a Jewish variant. One of Mill’s overall strategies is to argue that one can never be certain that one has the complete truth. Why not? One possible answer is that the quest for truth is inextricably bound up with features of the human person. Different personality types, one might argue, will necessarily evaluate certain circumstances, or even certain kinds of arguments, differently. A kindly person may respond one way to a situation — even intellectually — and a strict person another way. It follows from this position that at least under certain circumstances — where there is reason to believe that personality may play a role in the decisionmaking process — one can never be certain one has the complete truth. From this it follows, in turn, that under such circumstances one should tolerate the views of one’s antagonist, since each position is equally shaped by ineradicable personality traits. This is so, however, only when each is convinced that the other’s motivation in the quest for truth was sincere, and that self-interest played no role in their inquiry. Self-interest illegitimately perverts the intellectual process; ineradicable personality traits, since they are ineradicable, do not. Essentially this argument was made by R. Israel Salanter, the eighteenth-century founder of the mussar movement.17 He attempts 17

Kedushat Levi makes a similar point. For discussion see chapter XVII of this volume. Numerous authorities explain the phenomenon of controversy by noting that “no two — 233 —

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to answer why it was that Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel so frequently differed, and why it was that the individual members of each group always saw things alike. The cause of their debate was the differences in their personality traits [kohot naf ’shan] (which no person can eradicate from his mind, as I wrote above, and the researcher into God’s Torah has only what his eyes see.… in the purity of his intellect according to human capacities), [and] generally the members of the group shared the same personality traits. This is what the rabbis meant when they said “e’lu ve-elu divrei Elokim hayyim”; since there is no contradiction in personality traits.

Later in the same passage and elsewhere Rabbi Salanter stresses the importance of overcoming one’s own personal interests, needs, and biases in the quest for truth. Nevertheless, some personality traits, he maintains, are ineradicable, and at least under certain unspecified conditions, they unavoidably shape perceptions of the truth. Therefore, as Rabbi Salanter argues elsewhere, the controversies endured: Each group understood the limitations of its perception of the truth. In particular, that is why Hillel, the Talmud says (TB Eruvin 13b), always intellects are identical” and controversy is the unavoidable result. See, e.g., Maimonides, Intro. To Commentary on the Mishnah ed. I. Shilat (Shilat, Maaleh Adumim: 1996), 41; Sefer HaHinukh 331; Nahmanides Commentary on to the Torah of Deut. 17:11; and Meiri Commentary to Yevamot 14a. The idea that no two humans think alike has its origins in several rabbinic sources. The Mishna (Sanhedrin 4:5) teaches that no two human beings look alike. The Talmud in TB Berachot 58a requires a blessing upon seeing a crowd of people because “just as their faces are not alike, so their thoughts are not alike.” (For a discussion of individualism in Judaism, and citation of other sources, see Louis Jacobs, Religion and the Individual, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]). However, the claim that no two human beings think alike does not in itself justify toleration. We may all think differently, but some of us may think better than others. To justify toleration one must also show that in principle no human being can arrive at the objective truth. That claim follows from R. Salanter’s view that the human quest for truth is necessarily limited by personality types, which inherently vary. For this reason I have focused my discussion on R. Salanter. It should be noted that several authors on the subject of pluralism fail to take full cognizance of this point. See, e.g., Simon Greenberg, “Pluralism and Jewish Education,” Religious Education 81 (Winter 1986). Elliot Dorff, “Pluralism,” in Frontiers in Jewish Thought, ed. S. Katz (Washington: B’nai Brith Books, 1992), also argues for individualism (p. 228), but does go on, without articulating the difference, to argue for the stronger version of skepticism which is required to justify what he calls pluralism. — 234 —

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cited the views of Shammai. While R. Salanter formulates his discussion in the context of halakha, the logic of the argument would apply to other contexts as well. It should be noted that R. Salanter’s argument is not a classically subjectivist or relativist one, since he does not maintain that objective truth is impossible to arrive at. The Houses of Shammai and Hillel did not disagree about everything. His claim is only that some arguments endure, those that are, in the words of the mishna, le-shem shamayim, that is, those arguments which are (a) intellectually penetrating and (b) unsullied by personal interest. Of course the practical implications of this argument for R. Salanter himself, particularly outside the realm of halakha, are quite limited, since it is unlikely in the extreme that R. Salanter would have applied the argument to any but the most righteous of antagonists or dissidents: The capacity to eradicate self-interest, and to decipher and contain self-deception, is a lifetime, usually, of unsuccessful labor. He himself certainly would not have applied the argument to non-Jewish or non-Orthodox positions of any sort. The agnostic justification for tolerance, as I noted earlier, does have its limitations in a religious context. Nevertheless, the point is not without its theoretical interest.

IV. Tolerance and Pluralism Central to an analysis of toleration, especially in the context of the Jewish tradition, as I shall try to show, is the question of its relation to pluralism. Some philosophers have argued that toleration is conceptually impossible if one is a moral pluralist, while others have argued just the reverse, that toleration is possible only if one is a moral pluralist.18 Let us consider the issue more fully.

18

Joseph Raz, ibid., for the view that tolerance requires pluralism and, for the other view, Menachem Lorberbaum, “Learning from Mistakes: Resources of Tolerance in the Jewish Tradition,” in Democratic Education in the Multicultural State, ed. Yael Tamir, Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 116, and “Ha-Dat Ha-Yehudit: Sovlanut ve-Ephsharut Ha-Pluralism,” Avi Sagi, Iyyun 44 (April 1995), 176-186. — 235 —

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While there are varying versions of moral pluralism,19 for our purposes here I shall focus on one of the most influential formulations, that of Isaiah Berlin, who wrote in his famous “Two Essays on Liberty” that “human goals are many, not all of them commensurable, and in perpetual rivalry with one another.”20 Berlin argues that many human values are irreconcilably in conflict with one another in their application to human life, for example the value of justice versus that of generosity, or the value of an efficient and orderly society versus the value of individual liberty. Each of these incommensurable goals possesses value, and individuals who devote their lives to the attainment of one or another of them therefore deserve respect. Berlin also maintains, as do other moral pluralists, that unless one is committed to some overarching metaphysical system, such as Platonism for example, there is in principle no means of adjudicating amongst these values according to some principle through which they will all be seen as components of a single, coherent moral vision. Berlin finds no overarching metaphysical system compelling, and he also finds grave danger to others in the imposition of such systems. Therefore, he argues, “pluralism, with the measure of ‘negative’ liberty that it entails, seems to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek in the great, disciplined authoritarian structures the ideal of ‘positive’ selfmastery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of mankind.”21 What then is the link between pluralism and tolerance? The argument that pluralism precludes tolerance runs as follows: The very concept of tolerance properly applies only if X believes that the views of Y are wrong as a matter of value and conviction, yet nevertheless, as a matter of principle, desists from repressing or aggressively criticizing those views. If, on the other hand, X believes that the views of Y may be, or are, indeed right, then he can hardly be said to be tolerant of them if he desists from their repression. You can’t properly be said to tolerate a view you yourself concede is, or may be, right. But that is exactly the stance of the moral pluralist. Therefore, moral pluralism precludes tolerance. 19

20

21

See, for a study and comparison of some of these versions, J. Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). In “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 171. Ibid. — 236 —

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I find this argument unpersuasive for a variety of reasons. First, not all moral conflicts are about ultimate ends, nor are they all reducible to ultimate ends. We may both agree that justice is the highest human good, yet you may have a view of what counts as justice with which I vigorously disagree, on the grounds that it is logically inconsistent with premises to which we both adhere. Therefore, even if I am a moral pluralist I can still be said to be tolerant where we disagree only about means but not about ultimate ends. This point draws from a general observation that Berlin’s moral pluralism does not entail that all moral disagreements are irrefragable, but only those connected to ultimate ends. There is thus ample room left for a moral pluralist to be tolerant, even about matters of the greatest significance. More important to us here, however, is a second problem with this argument: It fails to take sufficient account of a distinction I should like to highlight between two different versions of pluralism, which I shall call hard and soft pluralism.22 The hard pluralist, and Berlin is amongst them, maintains that there are in principle no grounds for finally adjudicating amongst competing life goals, or conceptions of the good. The soft pluralist, on the other hand, maintains that there are in principle grounds for adjudicating amongst competing conceptions of the good, but that many such conceptions, even if they are inferior by whatever criteria the pluralist uses, are nevertheless of value.23 For example, I may believe that the highest form of life is the contemplative. Nevertheless, I understand that the contemplative life sacrifices the 22

23

Sagi, op. cit., draws a different distinction, between what he calls strong and weak pluralism. The weak pluralist view emerges from moral skepticism, while the strong pluralist view does not. See note 23, below. Elsewhere I have discussed what grounds might be available to (what I am now calling) the soft pluralist for adjudicating amongst competing ends. See my “Personal Autonomy and Religious Authority,” chapter X of this volume. Note that soft pluralism as formulated here derives not from epistemic considerations but from what might be called metaphysical ones. That is, one might argue that multiple ends must be tolerated in practice because no one can be sure that his perspective on right and wrong or true and false is correct, or because in principle it is impossible to be certain that one has the whole truth. That is an epistemic consideration, which I considered above. However it is not equivalent to the soft pluralism I consider now, which affirms a positive value to multiple ends (Sagi, op. cit., calls the distinction I am drawing here between epistemic and metaphysical considerations “weak” and “strong” tolerance respectively). — 237 —

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value — that I affirm — of beneficence towards the needy, a sacrifice I am nevertheless convinced must be made by those capable of the highest, contemplative form of life. Now suppose that someone, of great contemplative talent, vigorously disagrees with my contemplative life, sharply criticizes me for abandoning the poor, and devotes his entire life to assisting the homeless. I see no reason why I can’t properly be said to tolerate his choice, since I deeply disagree with it, even though, as a pluralist, I recognize, and even affirm, the values which motivated it. In fact, I would argue not that pluralism precludes tolerance, but that it justifies it.24 Indeed, soft pluralism may represent at least part of a solution to the very paradox of tolerance.25 Why tolerate that with which you deeply disagree? Because, as a soft pluralist, you affirm the values which motivate the tolerated’s choice, while at the same time vigorously disagreeing with the choice itself. The tolerator is intensely inclined to repress those views, to insist that all who are capable must undertake the contemplative life. Nevertheless he controls himself, and tolerates those who advocate alternative ends, precisely because he recognizes the — defeasible — good which they express.

V. Grounds for Pluralism in the Jewish Tradition I argued in the previous section that soft pluralism represents a fruitful theoretical basis for justifying tolerance. Are there grounds within the Jewish tradition, then, for affirming soft pluralism? Let me stress once again that my concerns here are theoretical. That is, I am interested not in the practical questions of whether, to what extent, and in what ways and contexts traditional Jewish sources affirmed pluralistic practices and beliefs. Rather, I am interested in exploring philosophical and theological positions which give rise to a soft pluralistic perspective, irrespective of the extent to which those perspectives yield practical effects. In fact, 24

25

Raz makes a similar point in explaining what might justify toleration of another’s limitations, e.g., his deliberate speech and behavior. Limitations, he maintains, are often the flip side of virtues. (In certain circumstances deliberateness is a virtue.) I say “part of a solution,” since it does not resolve the paradox in the case of toleration of differences over means and not ends. — 238 —

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the distinction between theory and practice is crucial with respect to tolerance. Even assuming that in the realm of practice the traditional sources are only monist rather than soft pluralist (which in fact is not the case), if some embrace a soft pluralism in the realm of theory, then solid grounds for justifying tolerance are readily available. In other words, even if (counterfactually) the tradition admits the legitimacy or truth of only one set of behaviors or beliefs a Jew may hold in practice, there might still be grounds within the tradition — according to those sources which affirm soft pluralism — for tolerating at least some dissidents. I shall concentrate here on an axis in Jewish thought which first received its fullest expression in the sixteenth-century and then continued into the twentieth. I have in mind R. Judah Leow of Prague, the Maharal, who in turn apparently influenced R. Zadok Ha-Cohen of Lublin in the nineteenth-century, who in turn apparently influenced Rabbi A. I. Kook in the twentieth. Other thinkers may have shared these ideas to one extent or another, both before that time frame and during it, but to my knowledge these three gave fullest expression to the issue at hand. The Maharal26 comments on a famous passage in TB Hagiga 3b: Ba’alei asufot. These are the sages who sit in groups studying the Torah, these asserting impure and these asserting pure; these forbidding and these permitting; these asserting pasul, these asserting kasher. And if you will say, “How then can I study Torah?” We are taught “They are given from one shepherd.” One God gave them, one leader said them in the name of the Master of all creatures, as it says, “And God uttered all these words saying.”

The problem, of course, is a logical one: How is it possible for a single God to have revealed that the same object is both pure and impure, or kosher and nonkosher?27 The Maharal’s solution is that the universe which the halakha responds to is itself indeterminate. A tree, to use the Maharal’s example, is both liquid and solid. It is liquid in that it is softer 26

27

The Maharal discusses this theme in Be’er Ha-Golah 1 (Jerusalem: 1968), 19-21 and his Derashot on the Torah (Jerusalem: 1968), 41-42. I have treated this overall issue in chapter XVII of this volume. My discussion of the Maharal’s position is drawn from that essay. See also Avi Sagi, “‘Both are the Words of the Living God’: A Typological Analysis of Halakhic Pluralism,” HUCA (1994). — 239 —

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and more flexible than stone and has a higher water content, and it is solid in that it doesn’t flow like water. It is therefore true to assert of a tree that it is both solid and liquid, and false to assert that it is only one and not the other. The same holds for any object in the universe. Since there is no one exclusive description under which any object in the world falls, the halakha, which ascribes normative value to objects in the world, will assign different values according to the description of the object (or event or state of affairs) to which the halakhist responds. Therefore every object is under one description impure and under another description pure.28 In the Maharal’s words: When God gave the Torah to Israel, he transmitted each matter of the Torah according to what it is, and He said: This law has within it an aspect of innocence and an aspect of guilt.… Just as in the world things are compounded of opposites, and you can say of a tree that it relates to the element of water — and this is true — so too it has within it the element of air, and that is true; and you will not find anything completely simple.… But in regard to halakhic decisions, there is no doubt that one [of the positions] is more fundamental [yoter ikkar] than the second, according to the actions of God, even though the thing is compound, nevertheless one position is not like the other. A tree is compounded of four elements [but nevertheless] the element of air predominates, as is well known.29

It is not difficult to see how the Maharal’s thesis supports a soft pluralism and a concomitant justification for tolerance. If there are indeed many ways the world is, and if those ways indeed properly yield different normative conclusions, then even rejected norms should be tolerated. They are, after all, grounded in one of the ways the world is, even if that way is less “ikkar.” The Maharal’s soft pluralism is further enriched by his claim that “... it is impossible that the intellects of all people are the same, and 28

29

This formulation of the Maharal’s position is indebted to Nelson Goodman, Ways of World-Making (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1978). In general this view would find itself at home with such philosophers as Goodman, Hackett, Wilfred Sellars, Richard Rorty, W. V. O. Quine and others. Be’er Ha-Golah, op. cit., 20. See also the comments of R. Ephraim Luntshitz, a successor to the Maharal as Chief Rabbi of Prague, in his Keli Yakar, Deut. 17:11. — 240 —

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therefore each person receives the aspect [of reality or Torah] according to the portion of his intellect.”30 Since there is no way the world is, and there is no one way people think, there can be no exclusive way of responding to an indeterminate world. Thus the Maharal’s individualism reinforces his soft pluralism.31 Two caveats are in order at this point. I am making no historical claims about the extent to which the Maharal himself was personally tolerant. Indeed, on occasion we know he was quite vituperative, for example in his critique of Azariah di Rossi.32 Nor am I claiming that the Maharal himself explicitly drew any conclusions about tolerance from his commitment to what I am calling soft pluralism. So far as I know, he did not. Indeed, it was not until R. Kook some four centuries later that the implications of this view of reality for tolerance were fully drawn. My argument is only that this view of reality does indeed provide a justification for tolerance (the concern of this chapter), and that subsequent Jewish justifications for tolerance are rooted in the intellectual soil of these ideas. The Maharal does not, at least explicitly, draw upon kabbalistic sources in the formulation of his doctrine, and indeed the categories he does borrow are drawn mostly from philosophical sources, for example the idea of the four elements. R. Zadok Ha-Cohen, however, does draw upon Kabbalah, and indeed it is not difficult to see how certain trends in mystical thought (e.g., the diversity within unity which characterizes kabbalistic descriptions of sefirot) would provide a fertile framework for a soft pluralistic picture of the world. R. Zadok’s own soft pluralism is complex and interesting and emerges from a set of three, probably linked, considerations: His analysis of divine wisdom, his unusual brand of determinism, and his doctrines of evil and zeh le-umat zeh. Each of these is deserving of extensive analysis and separate scholarly studies. I shall necessarily confine myself here to a relatively brief exposition of their basic contours.

30 31

32

Ibid. But see above note 17 for a discussion of the limitations of individualism alone for justifying tolerance. Be’er Ha-Golah 6. — 241 —

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R. Zadok, like the Maharal and many other thinkers, was bothered by the logical paradox implicit in the e’lu ve-elu divrei Elokim hayyim doctrine.33 He attempts to solve the paradox by distinguishing between the human and divine intellects, and between unarticulated and articulated wisdom. In God’s mind, all opposites are one: There [in God’s mind] it is possible for two opposites to coexist. Not only that, but it is virtually [ki-me’at] necessary according to how God established creation, with each thing and its opposite [zeh le-umat zeh], as is known from Sefer Yetzira. There is no thing in the world without its literal opposite, and there is certainly an impression [reshimu] of this in God’s wisdom, which is the root of the will which brings things to actualization. But in the actualized state two opposites cannot coexist. When it is day it is not night, and when it is night it is not day, unlike in the source, where all is one.34

As soon as this unitary divine wisdom becomes articulated in speech, it leaves the realm of divine wisdom and enters an actualized state in which differences appear. Verbalized thought, language itself, is fundamentally limited. In the case of halakha this entails that some rabbis will maintain one position, and other rabbis the reverse. The deeper the insight of the sage, the better able he will be to discern both sides of the question since both inhere in the mind of God. R. Zadok cites the famous talmudic claim, an important basis for all soft pluralistic views of halakha, that there are rabbis capable of providing forty-nine reasons for and against a particular position, even a prohibition made clear by the Torah itself (TB Eruvin 13b).35 The picture which emerges is that of an essentially complex universe 33

34 35



He treats this question in Resisei Layla (Bnei Brak, 1967) 18-19, and in Dover Tzedek (no date or publisher given), 7-11 and 148. Resisei Layla, 18. This talmudic passage and others like it are important for formulating a soft pluralistic theory of Torah and halakha. Since my aim in this paper has been to bring the Jewish tradition into dialogue with the Western philosophic tradition on tolerance generally, I have considered in this paper only those interpretations of this principle which have relevance outside theories of revelation and halakha proper. R. Zadok links the point he makes here with an important distinction between prophecy and halakhic reasoning, a distinction which he develops elsewhere at considerable length. For a discussion of this issue see Yaakov Elman, “R. Zadok HaCohen on the History of Halakha,” Tradition 21:4 (1985). — 242 —

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full of contradictions, which are all resolved in the mind of God. Implicit is the view that human beliefs too, even those rejected, are rooted in the unitary divine wisdom. The world, after all, does contain these diverse beliefs, and everything in the world, R. Zadok implies, has its origins in God’s will and wisdom. Elsewhere, R. Zadok draws at least a version of these conclusions explicitly. First, there is his direct application of the doctrine of zeh leumat zeh, alluded to in the passage quoted above, to Greek philosophy. According to this doctrine, which permeates R. Zadok’s voluminous writings, and which draws upon mystical sources, the world inherently consists of conflicting forces. All good in the world is paralleled by evil, but this evil is only partially so, since all evil has its origins in God. What we perceive to be evil is, in the mind of God, good, since all is one in the mind of God. Our perception of evil comes only because what we perceive has left the mind of God, so to speak, in creation, on account of which we fail to apprehend its connection to God. Therefore, even what we take to be evil must have a dimension of good. It is the unitary quality of God’s mind, and the ultimately unitary quality of what must emerge from the mind of God, which accounts for the parallelism of what in our world is zeh le-umat zeh. There is much wisdom also in hokhma hitzonit and it is also well-ordered, because that is the way God established things, zeh le-umat zeh literally, so that there will be a place for falsehood and truth, good and evil, and choice for the good.36

In this passage, R. Zadok asserts on grounds of zeh le-umat zeh that hokhma hizonit contains “much wisdom,” although apparently conceding that it contains less truth than Torah itself. The free choice argument he uses to justify zeh le-umat zeh is somewhat misleading since, as we shall see below, R. Zadok is a determinist. The limitation R. Zadok appears to ascribe to hokhma hizonit is also somewhat misleading, taken by itself. Later in the very same passage R. Zadok maintains that the primary distinction between hokhma and Torah rests not on any 36

Likutei Amarim (Bnei Brak: 1973), 83. — 243 —

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objective difference in the truth value of their claims, but on a subjective difference between the holders of the respective forms of wisdom: Whether or not they understand that the origins of what they know to be true derive directly from God.37 In another passage he states his views about hokhmot hizoniyot even more unequivocally, in defending Maimonides’ claim that the Account of the Creation and the Account of the Chariot are identical with certain tenets of Aristotelian philosophy: The truth is that there is wisdom among the nations of the world, and that is wisdom about the truth [hokhmat ha-emet]. However, that wisdom is not felt in the heart, and isn’t Torah to guide the heart, unlike the Torah of the Jewish people … where the most important thing is the feeling of the heart in the light of God…. The Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot and the hidden activities of creatures and all the varieties of the learned wisdom of the Jews are identical with the divine, natural and learned wisdom of the nations of the world, but [the difference between them] is only their flow from the understanding of the heart.… I heard that all the wisdom of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the Zohar they … also knew from the wisdom of the Greeks which was contemporaneous, zeh le-umat zeh, and the sephirot are identical with the ma’ammarot which are known to the masters of logic, only they are perceived through externals, and they are not divrei Torah.38

In this passage R. Zadok starkly asserts the identity of philosophical and mystical knowledge, once again applying his zeh le-umat zeh doctrine. The difference between the truth claims of the Torah and Greek philosophy in this formulation rests less on whether the knower recognizes the origins of his wisdom in God, as in the previous passage, and more on whether the knower apprehends his knowledge “in his heart,” as a guide to life. A third crucial factor in R. Zadok’s soft pluralism is his determinism. R. Zadok applies this determinism to Torah knowledge in the first 37

38

This is consistent with R. Zadok’s determinism, on which see below. In this passage, R. Zadok appears to waver a bit between the subjectivist account noted above and elements of objectivism. In the passage about to be quoted R. Zadok expresses his subjectivism more unequivocally. Here is not the place to explore fully the subtleties of these differences. Ibid., 109. — 244 —

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passage cited above: We think that [these differences in halakhic opinion] are in the mind of the sage himself, but this is not so. Even this too is in the hands of God Who enlightens his [the sage’s] eyes, and turns his heart according to the will and desire of God alone.39

Just as Torah knowledge is determined by God, so too all human knowledge should be equally determined by Him. This is because, for R. Zadok, everything is determined by God, even sin. Repentance — derived from the Hebrew root for return — means, for R. Zadok, recognizing the true origins of one’s sin in God’s own will. In so doing the sinner “returns” the sin to God: Through regret and repentance ... [the sinner] recognizes that all his strengths are from God. He recognizes that the evil itself was also from God.40

The doctrine that God determines all human behavior, even sin, is widespread in R. Zadok’s writings, and was influenced by the views of his teacher, R. Mordechai Joseph Leiner, the Izbiczer.41 In a position echoing his remarks cited above about the difference between Torah and hokhma hizonit, R. Zadok appears to maintain that human freedom consists only in the capacity to fully understand that all human behavior is truly God’s and ultimately not our own. Our sense of behavioral freedom is only an illusion, built into human consciousness from the moment of creation, and is probably a consequence of the distance from God necessary for creation. The closer we are to Him, the humbler we are, the more we recognize just how much of an illusion that sense of freedom truly is. Sin, in this view, consists not in misbehavior, but in 39 40 41

Ibid. Dover Zedek, 127. See, for example, in addition to the discussion surrounding the above quotation, Zidkat ha-Zadik sections 40 and 100 and Takkanat ha-Shavim, 14, 26, amongst many others. The entire subject requires much more extensive analysis. For a brief but clear discussion see Jerome Gellman, The Fear, the Trembling and the Fire (Latham: University Press of America, 1994), 54-71. For a discussion of the views of R. Leiner, see Gellman, op. cit., Joseph Weiss, “Torat ha-Determinism ha-Dati shel R. Mordechai Joseph of Izbica,” Sefer haYovel shel Yitzhak Baer (Jerusalem: Maynes, 1964), 447-453. — 245 —

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misperception, in erroneously thinking that one has a will and choice of one’s own. Of course, the vast, vast majority of sinners do indeed believe this, and so when they misbehave they also sin. The only real exception to this correlation is when one sins for the sake of heaven, averah lishma, a subject of great significance to R. Zadok and his teacher.42 There is, no doubt, a paradox here. The logic of R. Zadok’s position would require that even human thought is determined by God, since human thought too is ultimately a product of God, exactly as R. Zadok maintains explicitly in regard to halakha. How then can we be held responsible for our failure to recognize that even our sins are determined by God? Why should this particular insight be privileged?43 Whatever the answer to this question, the basic outlines of his determinism are clear enough, as are its implications for soft pluralism and hence tolerance. If all human behavior and beliefs are rooted in God’s wisdom and His will, then all must have some value, although the nature of that value may be inscrutable to us. Indeed, although so far as I know R. Zadok does not draw the conclusion in quite this way, it should follow in principle that reflecting about heretical doctrines, listening to them, might enable one to understand the good and the Godly which must, for R. Zadok, necessarily inhere in them, much like the view he takes regarding Greek philosophy.44 42 43

44

See Gellman, op. cit., chapter three, for an extensive discussion of this theme. Gellman maintains that the only freedom of which persons are capable is attitudinal: “We have two choices. We can assume an attitude of haughtiness, in which we think we ourselves originate the actions we perform … or in contrast we can achieve humility, perceiving God to be the origin and true agent of our action. Our attitudinal stance relative to these two choices constitutes the range of our freedom” (56). But why should attitudes be privileged over thought or action with respect to freedom? This entire matter requires considerably more research and analysis. It should further be noted that this question is linked with R. Zadok’s complex theory of the origins of evil, discussed, inter alia, in Dover Tzedek 119-135. A fuller treatment of all these questions is a major desideratum, but is outside the scope of this essay. A distinction might be drawn between Greek philosophy and hokhma hitzonit on the one hand, which R. Zadok maintains contain positive truth paralleling, in the case of Greek philosophy, Kabbalah, and de’ot hizoniot which are not hokhma, on the other. Nevertheless, even if the logic of zeh le-umat zeh does not apply to such beliefs, and I’m undecided about this but inclined to believe it does (given my explanation of the principle in the text above), the logic of R. Zadok’s determinism and divine wisdom doctrine should. — 246 —

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It is of special interest to note at this point what may appear to be a paradoxical result of this investigation. We naturally tend to think that monism and pluralism are contrary positions, yet here we find that monism leads to pluralism! The explanation of this apparent conundrum is straightforward. The monism of R. Zadok, and, as we shall see, of R. Kook, is metaphysical: All that exists is, in some sense, one. The pluralism to which we refer in this investigation is moral: There exist multiple incommensurate goods or ends which are valuable in themselves. Metaphysical monism, I have argued, leads naturally to moral pluralism. If all is one in God, then all that exists, including the competing ends advocated by different persons, must have some good as well. R. Zadok’s metaphysical monism is distinguished from other forms of Jewish mystical monism by its determinism. The psychological and behavioral dimensions of that determinism, I have argued, bear significant theoretical implications for soft pluralism and tolerance, as does R. Zadok’s doctrine of zeh le-umat zeh. R. Kook’s monism, on the other hand, is not deterministic, and is related to one of the central features of his own mystical thinking, his epistemology.45 For R. Kook, all human knowledge is necessarily fragmentary: All the defects of the world, the material and the spiritual, all derive from the fact that every individual sees only the one aspect of existence that pleases him, and all other aspects that are uncomprehended by him seem to deserve purging from the world. And the thought leaves its imprint

45

Rav Kook’s approach to tolerance and pluralism has been studied by Benjamin Ish Shalom in “Tolerance and its Theoretical Basis in the Teaching of Rav Kook,” in Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality, ed. Kaplan and Shatz (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 178-204. My remarks here are drawn in part from this important study, and are briefer than my comments on R. Zadok, who has not received the same scholarly attention. Sagi, op. cit., 192, proposes that R. Kook’s views were more paternalist than tolerant, but I am unconvinced of this for a variety of reasons, at least with respect to his theory of tolerance. See too the very fine article by Tamar Ross on Rav Kook’s pluralism and tolerance, “Between Metaphysical and Liberal Pluralism: A Reappraisal of Rav Kook’s Espousal of Tradition,” AJS Review 21:1, 61-111 (1996). Ross argues for a more nuanced view of Rav Kook’s writings on the subject, and develops a number of distinctions which parallel some of those made here. For an additional reference, see below, note 53. — 247 —

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in individuals and groups, on generations and epochs, that whatever is outside one’s own is destructive and disturbing. The result is the multiplication of conflict.46

Human beings, because of the limitations of their mental capacities, apprehend only the outward appearances of things and not their inner, spiritual reality. From this it follows that all human claims to the truth are provisional, “hasha’arot,” or suppositions, in R. Kook’s own language.47 This epistemology, not surprisingly, provides one basis for R. Kook’s tolerance, since no one philosophy or ideology has a complete picture of the truth. It is also linked to R. Kook’s monism: It is in the nature of a spiritual perception to embrace everything in a harmonious way. This is its distinctive characteristic, which differentiates it from an ordinary perception, which is always concerned with particulars and which brings them together with difficulty into general categories. Those souls which are especially drawn to see things in their inwardness are attached to universality with all their strength.48

Elsewhere, Rav Kook says that “all existence is contained in one point.”49 This metaphysical monism is similar to that of R. Zadok, and to many other Jewish mystical thinkers,50 and it bears all the implications for pluralism discussed above. However, R. Kook gives his monism a distinctive twist, which considerably expands the grounds for tolerance. 46

47

48 49 50

Orot HaKodesh I, 120. For an overview of R. Kook’s mystical thinking and an attempt to situate his views in the Jewish mystical tradition see Lawrence Fine, “Rav Kook and the Jewish Mystical Tradition” in Kaplan and Shatz, op. cit., 23-40. Fine identifies the epistemological as one of the three central themes of R. Kook’s mysticism, and discusses it on pp. 25-30. The translation of the well-known passage quoted here was taken from the Fine essay, 26. Quoted from a letter, written by R. Kook, cited in Ish Shalom’s Rav Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990), 48. (This volume has been translated into English and published by SUNY Press.) For a discussion of R. Kook’s epistemology and its relationship to skepticism see chapter one. Orot ha-Kodesh 1, 41, in Bokser, 201. Orot ha-Kodesh II, 391. As to whether R. Kook affirms the acosmism of Habad Hasidic thought, see Ish Shalom, ibid., 55-56, who maintains that he does not, and Larry Fine, op. cit., 32, who suggests that he does. For a general discussion of R. Kook’s monism, see Ish Shalom, ibid., 228-237. — 248 —

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He applies it specifically to revelation. For R. Kook, revelation is not limited to the Torah, or even to the interpretations of the Torah offered by the sages over the centuries. All of creation is a manifestation of the divine light, a kind of revelation. This permits him to maintain: All systems of thought, laws, concepts, moralities, naturalness, arrangements, codes of conduct, poetry, will, life-turbulence, movements of existence, their establishment and grasp on existence are only treasure houses full of happiness, where the will which is above all … will be revealed and appear in them in its full glow.51

This quotation should not mislead one into thinking that R. Kook applies his broad-gauged view of revelation only to the highest expressions of human culture, such as philosophy, art, or literature. R. Kook elsewhere explicitly extends it to the “multitudes.”52 This perspective permits him to find the good, i.e., the Godly, in a mass movement such as secular Zionism. It is thus not difficult to see the theoretical grounds of R. Kook’s famous, if sometimes limited, openness to and tolerance of the widest variety of philosophical positions, cultural expressions, and political and ideological movements.53 Certainly, the pluralism of the Maharal was different from that of R. Zadok, and that of R. Zadok different from R. Kook. Nevertheless, there is a continuum here, and it seems reasonable to say that R. Kook took the pluralism latent in the Maharal and made more explicit in R. Zadok, and developed it into a significant component of his mystical thinking and practical activities. 51 52 53

Orot ha-Kodesh 2, 228-289. Arpelei Tohar, 24; Orot ha-Kodesh II, 364-365. For a far more detailed study of this, including the limitations of R. Kook’s tolerance, see Ish Shalom, ibid.; Zvi Varon, Mishnato shel Ha-rav Kook (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1974), 323-372; and especially the article by Ross, ibid. Jerome Gellman has argued that R. Kook adopted the Habad doctrine of the “upside down world,” according to which whatever appears to be lower in kedusha is in its deepest reality higher in kedusha and whatever appears to be higher in kedusha is in deepest reality lower in kedusha. See his essay “Zion and Jerusalem: The Jewish State in the Thought of Rabbi A. I. Kook,” in Kaplan and Shatz, 280-284. This startling position, which requires further independent study, is somewhat reminiscent of the zeh le-umat zeh doctrine of R. Zadok, and has obvious implications for pluralism and tolerance as well. — 249 —

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VI. Tolerance as a Virtue and the Obligation of Respect In the first section of this chapter I remarked that Locke’s discussion of tolerance included the claim that it is a Christian virtue, alongside meekness and benignity, which therefore ought to be embraced by Christian sovereigns. The argument, as Locke formulates, is indeed ad hominem, since Locke fails to justify the claim that tolerance is a virtue other than by appeal to the Christian tradition. But this really begs the question of whether or not the claim that tolerance is a virtue can indeed be justified on grounds other than appeal to a sacred text, which has valence only for a particular religious tradition. In this section I examine tolerance as a virtue in the Jewish tradition, with special attention to this concern. I should note at the outset, however, that there are inherent limitations in an agent-centered, virtue-based justification of tolerance, just as there are inherent limitations in any virtue-based ethic.54 It is notoriously difficult to assess the range of application of the virtue where it comes into conflict with other virtues or values. Aristotle noted the high degree of context- and subject-relativity in the application of the virtue to a particular case at hand, and relied on the guidance, or role modeling, of the phronimos, the morally wise man, to navigate these complexities.55 Moreover, the application to practical circumstances of agent-based toleranceas-virtue theories is probably not coextensive with the practical applications of act-based theories of tolerance. For example, under normal circumstances the virtuously tolerant person will not denigrate or actively repress the views of someone with whom he disagrees, because he is not the sort of person who does that sort of thing, given that his character is a tolerant one. However, under extenuating circumstances he might feel compelled to act contrary to his character, such as when he believes that too much that he holds dear is at stake, for example, the very survival of his family/ country/ community/ 54

55

For a general discussion see Robert Louden, “On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics,” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (July 1984), 227-236. Nichomachean Ethics, Books II and VI. — 250 —

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faith. Other commitments or values may well be supervient upon a defeasible virtue such as tolerance. Thus, our contemporary notion of tolerance is probably broader than would be warranted by most virtuebased justifications of tolerance. In addition, the character of the virtuously tolerant person may be such that while he is tolerant of other persons, he may be less tolerant of their particular views. In short, virtue may not require “openmindedness.” Certainly, the details of a virtue-based theory of tolerance remain to be worked out independent of this paper, which of course is focused on the Jewish sources. Nevertheless, we shall see how some of these issues play themselves out in the Jewish context. Tolerance (the Hebrew term frequently used is savlanut) generally appears in Jewish ethical literature in discussions of humility, suggesting that at least in the Jewish tradition these virtues are in some way linked. It may not be accidental, then, that just as the concept of tolerance is burdened by paradox, so too is the concept of humility. Presumably, humility makes sense only if someone has something to be humble about, that he or she is superior in some way. But then why affect humility when one is justly superior?56 Various strategies for solving the paradox appear in Jewish sources. One in particular has implications for our own inquiry. This strategy holds that the virtue of humility is grounded not in any lessened evaluation of the self, but in a particular view of what amounts to proper conduct towards others, irrespective of whether or not they are inferior to oneself. TB Megillah 31a ascribes anivut (modesty, humility) to God in His relationship with human beings, especially the downtrodden. Surely this reflects not on the stature of God relative to humans, but on what God counts as proper behavior towards humans, even behavior of His own. A famous aggada about Hillel brings this out, and has special bearing on the question of tolerance:

56

This problem has been extensively discussed in recent philosophical literature. For a survey of the main positions, and a study of humility in Jewish tradition, see Daniel Statmen, “On Various Solutions to the Paradox of Humility in Jewish Sources,” (Hebrew), Iyyun 44 (October 1995), 355-370. — 251 —

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The Rabbis taught: A person should always be meek (patient?) [anvatan] like Hillel and not impatient [kapdan] like Shammai.57

A series of stories follow to substantiate the claim that Hillel was indeed an anvatan. One in particular is worthy of note:58 The rabbis taught: there was an episode with a non-Jew who came before Shammai and asked, “How many Torot do you have?” He told him: “Two, the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.” He said: “The Written Torah I believe, the Oral Torah I do not. Convert me on the condition that you teach me the Written Torah.” Shammai rebuked him, and drove him out in anger. He came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him. The first day [Hillel] taught him aleph, bet, gimmel, daled. The next day he reversed the order. The convert said: “But yesterday you said otherwise!” Hillel answered him: “Didn’t you [then] rely upon me? Rely upon me also on the Oral Law.” [Ibid.]

Here the virtue of anivut is applied even where the object of anivut maintains a heretical position. (Assuming, of course, that this story is told in the Talmud to further exemplify the claim that Hillel was an anvatan.) Although Hillel disapproved of the potential convert’s views about the Oral Law, he nevertheless chose not to attack or denigrate him, but instead welcomed him, in the hope of converting not only his person, but his views. It would seem fair, then, to characterize Hillel’s stance towards the heretical non-Jew, unlike that of Shammai, as tolerant. But, it might be objected, is this really an instance of tolerance, or is it just paternalism? Perhaps Hillel didn’t really take him seriously, but welcomed him only for strategic purposes, because he was convinced that the potential convert would eventually be won over. Moreover, Hillel almost certainly didn’t take the potential convert’s views seriously. Hillel may have embodied the virtue of tolerance, but we have no evidence that the range of the virtue’s application included the tolerated’s position. Putting aside the question of whether paternalistic behavior is 57 58

TB Shabbat 30b. The connection between this opening claim and the following story may well have been drawn by the stamma, rather than the author of the opening claim itself. — 252 —

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properly considered to be tolerant,59 evidence for interpreting Hillel’s behavior as closer to classic tolerance (even tolerance as a virtue, with the constraints of that model noted above) than paternalism may be found in the story preceding this one, in which Hillel goes to extraordinary lengths to take seriously a series of apparently silly questions (e.g., Why are the heads of Babylonians circular? Why are the feet of Africans broad?) despite the inopportune timing of the questions (Hillel was in the bathhouse). No strategic value is evident here. The virtue exemplified in the bathhouse story is humility and respect for another, and if one assumes that both stories are intended to exemplify a common virtue, then the import of the conversion story would likewise be far closer to an affirmation of tolerance than paternalism. Further evidence for this interpretation derives from another passage in the Talmud which similarly ascribes a kind of humility to Hillel: Abba said in the name of Samuel: The houses of Hillel and Shammai carried on their debate for three years, these saying the law is like us, and these saying the law is like us. A bat kol emerged and said “Both these and these are the words of the living God, and the law follows the house of Hillel.” But if both these and these are the words of the living God, why was the house of Hillel worthy for the law to follow it? Because they were nohin and aluvin, and they used to teach not only their own position, but that of the house of Shammai and not only that, but [in so doing] they would first teach the position of the house of Shammai and then their own position.…60

The key terms nohin and aluvin are difficult to render in English. “Quiescent” or “tranquil” are sometimes used for the first. “Humbled” may be one translation for the second, but in context it appears to connote something else. Rashi uses the term “savlanim” in rendering (or explaining) aluvim, a term derived from the root s-v-l, meaning to bear, as in a burden, and usually translated as “patient.” This rendering seems on the mark here, and its closeness to the modern Hebrew term for tolerance is hardly accidental. The House of Hillel indeed tolerated the 59

60

See also Sagi, op. cit., “Ha-Dat Ha-Yehudit…,” 192 ff and passim. See below for a related discussion about whether or not indulgence of error is tolerance. TB Eruvin 13b. — 253 —

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House of Shammai, in actually teaching the views of their opponents although convinced they were false, and in citing them first. This passage thus reinforces the tolerance-grounded reading offered above of the TB Shabbat stories. No explanation is offered by the Talmud itself as to why these virtues proved decisive in the selection of the house of Hillel over the house of Shammai. One explanation may be that the arguments of both houses had equal intellectual merit, and so the heavenly voice was forced to choose on intellectually irrelevant grounds, those of moral virtue.61 Another, perhaps more natural, interpretation would be that the virtue of tolerance makes it more likely that the house of Hillel would be right, similar to the sort of arguments made by Mill and echoed by Meiri.62 The text of the Talmud itself, however, while suggestive, is nevertheless opaque. What we have established so far, I believe, is that these passages in the Talmud may be reasonably interpreted as affirming the view that tolerance is a close cousin of humility, and that both are moral virtues. We have also established, although with perhaps a lesser degree of certainty, that tolerance as a virtue extends to persons (if not views) espousing heretical doctrines, at least in the context of a potential convert, where there is some gain to be had by acting tolerantly. What we have not as yet done is found in the sources a theoretical justification for the view that tolerance is a moral virtue. In other words, the argument made against Locke, mentioned above, has not yet been solved. As it happens, two classical and highly influential Jewish moralists, one late medieval, the other early modern, interpret some of these Talmudic passages as we have, and also enable us to carry the project forward. I shall focus here on only one of these sources, the discussion of

61

62

See R. Wolf Halevy, Seder Mishna (Prague: 1820), part 1, 22b-23 cited in Sagi, “Both are the words…” (op. cit., 134). Compare Maharal of Prague, Be’er Ha-Golah, op. cit., note 26, 20-22, who explains that the moral quality of the Hillelites described in Eruvin embodied “simplicity,” and is a feature of truth. In support of this intellectualist interpretation, it is worth noting that we have no evidence that Shammai ever changed his views as a result of an exchange with Hillel, except perhaps once, but there is ample evidence that Hillel did. See Kimelman, “Judaism and Pluralism,” Modern Judaism 7:2 (1987), 138 and note 36. — 254 —

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this issue as it appears in the influential and widely circulated Tomer Devorah, perhaps the first Jewish ethical treatise explicitly organized around kabbalistic ideas and themes.63 Authored by R. Moshe Cordovero, one of the leading figures of the circle of mystics in Safed during the sixteenth-century, this work influenced virtually all other works of Jewish ethics in the kabbalistic tradition. In taking up various moral virtues from a kabbalistic perspective, particularly in light of the obligation to emulate God as He manifests Himself in the sefirot, R. Cordovero analyzes the virtue of humility as well, which he takes to embrace all other virtues. Interestingly, R.Cordovero uses the Hebrew term savlan almost interchangeably with anav, since for him these qualities are connected. This virtue is manifest, for R. Cordovero, in several ways: loving all persons, no matter their religious or moral stature, beneficence towards them, and respecting all creatures. Several passages exemplify the thrust of his remarks:64 So too should man behave, that no cause whatsoever prevent him from doing good to others, and any sin or the misdeeds of unworthy persons be barred entrance in order to prevent him doing good to all who need it at all times and in every moment…. So man should be good to all creatures, despising none, that even the most insignificant assumes importance in his eyes and he be concerned with it (pp. 70-71). Man should train himself … to honor all creatures, in whom he recognizes the exalted nature of the Creator Who in wisdom created man. And so it is with all creatures, that the wisdom of the Creator is in them. He should see for himself that they are therefore exceedingly to be honored for the Creator of all the most exalted wise one has busied Himself with them and if God forfend man despises them he touches upon the honor of the Creator.… It is fitting that man see in them wisdom, not cause for them to be despised (p. 78). 63

64

The second source is Messilat Yesharim by R. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, in Chapter 22, where the stress is placed on human dignity. R. Cordovero’s treatment is the fuller of the two. Compare also the Petiha to Ha’amek Davar, Bereshit, by R. Naftali Zvi Berlin (New York: A.Y. Friedman), xiii. Translations are from The Palm Tree of Deborah, trans. Louis Jacobs (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1960). — 255 —

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[Man] should bring the love of His fellow men into his heart, even loving the wicked as if they were his brothers and more so until the love of his fellow men becomes firmly fixed in his heart. He should love even the wicked in his heart saying “Would that these were righteous.…” How can he love them? By recalling in his thoughts the good qualities they possess, by covering their defects and refusing to look at their faults and only at their good qualities… (pp. 78-79).

R. Cordovero makes clear throughout that respect, love and beneficence should be directed even towards the wicked, for two basic reasons. Perhaps most important, because God Himself is beneficent towards all His creatures, sustaining them despite their wickedness. Keter, the highest of the sefirot and the basis for humility and savlanut, is unconditionally beneficent; qualifications to love and beneficence emerge only lower in the sefirotic process. In regard to respect, another consideration is put forward: All creatures are created by God, and express to various degrees and in various ways His wisdom. Moreover, in regard to love, and perhaps respect as well, although here R. Cordovero is less explicit, there is always some good in man which warrants the response of love. This account of humility and savlanut reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of a Jewish tolerance-as-virtue theory. On the one hand, we have a justification for tolerance, or more precisely, two justifications: (1) all human beings deserve to be tolerated since they are the handiwork of God, reflect His wisdom and share, at least in some small part, His goodness. (2) Imitatio dei, as understood by R. Cordovero, requires tolerance, because God Himself tolerates even the most wicked, continuing to provide them with sustenance until their death, timely or untimely. I wish to stress that the first of these two justifications for tolerance should not be confused with the Kantian justification discussed earlier in this essay. It will be recalled that the Kantian argument that human beings deserve respect and toleration emerges from the notion of autonomy, and the view that the autonomous life requires the capacity to choose one’s own life plans and to express and explore one’s goals without hindrance. R. Cordovero’s argument entails no such broad — 256 —

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claim.65 One can respect another without according him the altogether expansive freedoms which emerge from the Kantian argument. Indeed this observation points to some of the limitations of R. Cordovero’s model for a general justification of tolerance. First, we do not have here a defense of the view that heretical ideas should be tolerated, and certainly not that heretical ideas should be taken seriously, a “tolerance as openmindedness.” The argument here is ad hominem in a different sense, in the sense that all persons should be treated with dignity, respect, and love, whatever their views. This claim ought not to be underrated, but it isn’t quite the position we associate with classic post-Enlightenment models of tolerance. Moreover, R. Cordovero himself writes explicitly that there are circumstances when this stance towards the wicked does not obtain. Of course we know that it is impossible to conduct oneself in obedience to these qualities [middot] continually for there are other qualities in which man has to be well versed, namely the lower qualities of Power [Gevurot Ha-Tahtonot], as we shall explain.

The lower sefirot, which constrain the unrestricted divine flow of the highest sefira, keter, play a role in the formation of the ideal Jewish character as well. The challenge then becomes to balance these various traits, the “tolerant” and the “intolerant,” into a single virtuous personality, and, especially, to know when to apply each.

VII. Tolerance, Blameworthiness, and Religious DISSENT A well-known discussion by a famous medieval halakhist directly takes up the question of tolerating Jewish thinkers who advocate positions conventional wisdom regards as heretical. I have in mind R. Shimon b. Zemach Duran on what is sometimes called inadvertent 65

I have found no Jewish sources which justify toleration on grounds of autonomy, which is perhaps not surprising since, as I have argued elsewhere, Jewish sources do not affirm a strong enough sort of autonomy to make this case out. See my “Personal Autonomy and Religious Authority,” chapter X of this volume. — 257 —

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heresy. While his views were accepted only by some, but not all authorities,66 I am concerned here particularly with the nature of his argument and its relevance to the theoretical concerns of this paper. R. Duran’s discussion begins with, and is, I believe, predicated on, a distinction between fundamental beliefs, which he called “roots,” and less fundamental beliefs, which he called “branches.” The “roots” to which he refers are belief in the existence of God, in revelation and in reward and punishment. “Branches” are other beliefs, such as in resurrection, creation ex nihilo or the coming of the messiah, which relate in various ways to these three roots. R. Duran’s essential claim is that the halakhot governing the (very negative) treatment of a heretic apply only if the individual in question either (a) denied one (or more) of the “branches” knowing that its belief was required by Judaism; or (b) denied one (or more) of the “roots,” whether or not he knew its belief was required by Judaism. Of course, the most important part of his claim, his novum, is (a). (I assume that (b) flowed from a logical consideration, namely, that it is impossible to be inadvertent about denying God’s existence, revelation, or reward and punishment. Since, Duran believed, these “roots” are so evidently required by Judaism, no one could possibly be mistaken about them.) If someone denies one of the “branches” because he is sincerely convinced that Judaism teaches otherwise, or because he is convinced that his views are indeed consistent with Jewish teachings, then he does not have the status of a heretic. Menachem Kellner understands this position to rest on the halakhic distinction between shogeg and mezid, between inadvertent and intentional sin.67 Ignorance is exculpatory, even on matters of belief. Therefore, the heretic be-shogeg does not have the halakhic status of a heretic, and should be “tolerated” (in Duran’s 66

67

For a study of this question see M. Kellner, Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Kellner traces the view back to R. Abraham ben David Posquier, points to Albo’s ambivalence, and argues that Crescas may have affirmed the same position. Maimonides, Abarbanel, and R. Isaac b. Sheshet Perfet, among others, disagreed. Op. cit., 98. My exposition of Duran differs from that of Kellner, who maintains (passim and note 131) that his views about inadvertent heresy apply even to the “roots,” with the possible exception of belief in God. Duran is quite clear, however, that his doctrine of inadvertent heresy applies only to the “branches.” See the text quoted below. — 258 —

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terms, “we are not permitted to denigrate” him — see below in text). Examples of individuals who fall in to this category, according to Duran, include Gersonides (because of his views about creation), Maimonides (because of his views about Balaam’s donkey), R. Eliezer the Great (whom Maimonides quotes in the Guide II:26 as affirming that the world was created from something), and R. Hillel (who in TB Sanhedrin 99a asserts that the Messiah will no longer come). I do not disagree with Kellner that the distinction between intentional and inadvertent sin is crucial here. However, I believe that a careful reading of Duran’s text shows that there is more to his position than this consideration alone. Following are certain relevant selections from Ohev Mishpat 9 (using Kellner’s translation, 88-90): You also ought to know that one who has properly accepted the roots of the Torah but was moved to deviate from them by the depths of his speculation … and tries to explain the verses of the scripture according to his belief, even though he errs he is no denier. For he was not brought to this deviation by heresy at all and if he found a tradition from the sages to the effect that he ought to turn from the position he had adopted, he would do so. He only holds that belief because he thinks it is the intention of the Torah. Therefore, even though he errs he is not a denier….

After citing cases of rabbinic figures who fall into this category, and contrasting them with the famous case of Elisha ben Abuyah, Duran goes on to say: The discussion has now brought us to [the point where we can] rise to the defense of scholars of our nation who adopted alien ideas which we are forbidden to believe. We are not permitted to denigrate them because of this and say they belong to sects which reject the Shekhinah, heaven forbid — may there be none like that in Israel — for they have perfect faith, they are careful to avoid violating [the commandments of] the Torah and they strengthen themselves to observe the commandments properly.

Later he compares philosophers like Maimonides and Gersonides to the Rabbis of the midrash: both were sometimes led to err according to “conventional belief,” the former by “deep speculation,” the latter by — 259 —

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biblical exegesis. However, both “believed in the principles [presumably, the ‘roots’] with perfect faith.” There is clearly a polemical tone and purpose to these remarks, which amount to a stirring apologia for great Jewish figures much admired by Duran. Several conditions stipulated by Duran in his defense of the inadvertent heretic deserve special attention. First, as I noted above, the inadvertent heretic believes in the “roots,” the three foundational dogmas of Judaism, with “perfect faith.” Second, he accepts not only religious, but rabbinic authority. If he were presented with evidence from the Sages contrary to his position, he would abandon it. Third, he is punctilious in his observance of the commands, not only in the negative sense, of avoiding sinful behavior, but in the sense of “strengthening” himself in his positive fulfillment of the commands. Fourth, his motives were pure, that is, it was pure speculation, following reason to its inexorable conclusions, which led him to his inadvertently heretical conclusions. He is presented by Duran as honestly believing that his conclusions are consistent with, or even required by, Judaism and its sacred texts. What would be the status of an inadvertent heretic who fails to meet one or more of the last three of these conditions? One way to read the text is as a polemic in defense of several Jewish greats, all of whom satisfied these conditions. According to this reading, Duran didn’t mean to stipulate them as real conditions sine qua non for exculpating the inadvertent heretic. His aim in articulating them was merely to show just how pious these Jewish greats were, how classifying them as real heretics would be a kind of religious absurdity. The real justification for not “denigrating” the inadvertent heretic rests not on these conditions at all, but elsewhere, on the shogeg/mezid distinction. Not denigrating the inadvertent heretic is much like not denigrating any unintentional wrongdoer. If out of excusable ignorance you either take a position on any matter with which I disagree, or you behave in any way I regard as wrong, then I shouldn’t denigrate you: Ignorance exculpates. On the other hand, if you can be blamed for your ignorance then, presumably, denigration would be warranted. Duran here maintains that Maimonides and Gersonides were led to their conclusions by “deep speculation” and seems to excuse them, in part, for exactly that reason. — 260 —

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The question, however, is whether such self-restraint on grounds of ignorance counts as tolerance. Tolerance of course is not identical with blamelessness; tolerance applies, at least also, to those we do hold responsible. But is withholding denigration on grounds of blamelessness toleration, at least as that term has been understood since the Enlightenment? Or is this confusing indulgence with tolerance? We may indulge people who couldn’t help themselves, because they were ignorant, but do we really tolerate them? The answer to these questions at least in part turns on whether or not toleration is thought of as a moral ideal, as behavior deserving special moral praise. If toleration is indeed thought of as a moral ideal, then indulging the erroneous is not especially praiseworthy, and does not, especially, reflect morally ideal behavior. One is expected to indulge the merely erroneous. If, on the other hand, toleration is thought of as restraining denigration on any principled grounds, whether or not that restraint is motivated by some moral ideal, then we may have here an instance of what would currently be called toleration. In any case, on this reading, Duran has drawn attention to the connection between blame and restraint, whether or not that restraint is properly called toleration. There is another way to read the text, however, to which I am inclined, and that is to interpret these conditions not only as points in a polemic, but also as stipulations strictly necessary for realizing the status of the exculpated inadvertent heretic. That is, I am inclined to believe that if an inadvertent heretic refused to accept rabbinic authority, or was less than punctilious in his observance of the mitzvot, or was motivated not only by the disinterested pursuit of the truth, but, say, out of a desire to rebel in some way, then Duran would not object to “denigrating” him. In short, blamelessness is not only not the equivalent of tolerance, it doesn’t alone even justify it. There is an ad hominem dimension to heresy and religious faith to which I believe Duran wishes to call attention. Toleration — to return to that term once again — in matters of religious faith and dogma, for Duran, is predicated at least in part upon the sort of person the tolerated is. Is he sincere in his religious convictions and behavior, is he, in a sense, a “truly religious” person who just happened to hold, by dint of his own conscience and intellect, beliefs conventionally held to — 261 —

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be heretical? The question of responding to heresy, for Duran, is not computational: If x holds belief y, then x must necessarily be denigrated as a heretic. Heresy (at least when it comes to the “branches”) is truly evil only when it reflects an overall religious mentality which finds its particular expression in the affirmation of certain beliefs. When that “heretical mentality” is absent, when the denier’s overall religious mentality is pious, then conscience-driven denial of one of the “branches” is not religiously blameworthy. Put more positively, such a religiously pious and deeply contemplative person deserves toleration. To act otherwise would be to deny that person, “one of the perfect ones” in Duran’s language, his due. Some people, under certain circumstances, may be said to deserve toleration for views wrongly held by virtue of the kind of person they are, their intellectual and moral or, in this case, religious stature. Thus, at least according to this reading of Duran’s arguments, we have another justification for tolerance: tolerance as religious desert. By way of conclusion, it is worth observing that justifications for tolerance in a religious tradition such as Judaism provide a perspective absent or lacking in the western philosophical tradition, one both richer and more limited at the same time. The limitations imposed by a religious framework are perhaps obvious, the riches less so. These include the metaphysical monism of the mystical stream within Judaism; rabbinic reflections about the culture of controversy so characteristic of Judaism; the prominent place of virtue ethics in religious traditions; and the need of religious thinkers themselves to confront the phenomenon of deeply pious and profound thinkers who adopted theological positions conventionally regarded as heretical. Sometimes one finds insight where one least expects it.

— 262 —

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---------------------------------- Chapter X  -----------------------------------

Personal Autonomy and Religious Authority

THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM For most halakhic Jews the idea of personal autonomy is likely to seem extremely remote. The halakhic life, after all, is characterized by strict obedience to a remarkably extensive system of laws governing every detail of life, from the most public to the most intimate, down to the order in which one cuts one’s fingernails. When the halakhic Jew is in doubt about what to do, he typically asks his or her rabbi or posek, halakhic decisor, for guidance. Thus, there hardly seems to be room for even the most minimal exercise of personal autonomy. It will be the thesis of this chapter, however, that this view of the halakhic life is wrong for at least one influential way of understanding Judaism. I will also argue, however, that an uncritical affirmation of the value of personal autonomy, as found in the writings of many non-halakhic, and even some halakhic, writers, is also wrong, and that it fails to do justice to the force of the Jewish revelatory idea and its halakhic embodiment. Most discussions of this subject, I believe, tend to be somewhat primitive in their conception of autonomy. By clarifying the very concept of autonomy, via a series of distinctions to be drawn in what follows, we shall be in a far better position to show which sort of autonomy may be compatible with Judaism, and which not. Having established that a certain form of autonomy is indeed compatible with, and probably embraced by, the tradition within which I shall be working, my argument will conclude by sketching out a theological model for explaining the importance of autonomy in Judaism, and for the role of halakhah in Jewish life. Given the constraints of this paper, however, full justice cannot be done to all the complex issues involved, — 263 —

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and the reader should view the following analysis as a first step in what must clearly be a far more ambitious project. A prefatory note: One of the most common flaws in philosophizing about Judaism is what might be called the fallacy of homogenizing. Those guilty of this fallacy make sweeping claims about Judaism based upon a limited number of texts, and, most significant of all, upon certain preconceived notions of what Judaism is all about. Thus, all of Judaism gets polemically homogenized into a single, complacent whole. Of course, Judaism is in fact much too complicated for that, and important differences between schools of thought, periods of history, individual Jewish thinkers and leaders, and religious movements get obscured. Therefore, I should like to situate my approach explicitly, at the very outset: it is that of the halakhic rationalistic philosophical tradition which has its origins in the middle ages and which has continued in one form or another until the present day. I have in mind the sort of rationalism characterized by such Jewish philosophers as Saadya, Maimonides, and Bahya ibn Pakuda, all of whose views were articulated within a halakhic framework. Certainly there can be little doubt that an analysis of personal autonomy out of the mystical tradition will yield a very different picture, and this is especially so in light of Moshe Idel’s claims, contra Scholem, that for many mystics unio mystica is in fact a central ideal.1 Similarly, an analysis of the question of personal autonomy out of an entirely nonhalakhic framework, such as that of Reform Judaism, and perhaps some versions of Conservative Judaism, would appear quite different.2 And again, there is a voluntaristic strand within 1

2

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor David Shatz for the very insightful comments he made on an earlier draft of this chapter delivered at the Orthodox Forum Conference, and to the participants of that Conference as well for their helpful comments during the discussion. I would also like to thank Professors Norman Lamm, Aaron Kirschenbaum, Norbert Samuelson, Eugene Borowitz, and Ya’akov Fuchs for their reactions to earlier drafts of this chapter. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). See, for example, two articles by Eugene Borowitz, “The Autonomous Jewish Self,” Modern Judaism 1 (1984) and “The Autonomous Self and the Commanding Community,” Theological Studies 45 (1984), and the articles by Emil Fackenheim and others cited below, n. 18. These thinkers, Borowitz in particular, draw heavily on the — 264 —

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Judaism, not limited to the mystics, according to which personal autonomy is of no value whatsoever. All that counts in this view is strict obedience to God’s inscrutable command. This tradition extends back to the rabbinic period, and perhaps further, and is expressed very clearly, among other places, in one amoraic interpretation of the famous mishnah in Berachot concerning kan tzippor, according to which, whoever says that God’s mercies extend to the bird’s nest “makes God’s qualities merciful, and they are only decrees” (Berachot 33b). This Ockhamistic vision of Judaism has always had its supperters, from the medieval antirationalists to those of the modern era, most notably in the person of Yeshayahu Leibovitz.3 I shall, however, not be able to take up Leibovitz’s arguments here, except indirectly.4 What, then, are my assumptions? Put positively, it seems to me prima facie reasonable that personal autonomy in some form is — or at least ought to be — consistent with, if not essentially constitutive of, at least some standard versions of normative Judaism. This is so for two basic reasons, one external to Judaism and the other internal to it. The reason external to it is the very power of the concept itself. The idea that each human being by virtue of his rationality should think through and carry out a life-plan that expresses his authentic self; that each human being ought to be free to choose how to lead his own life; that what we truly believe ought to be the only real basis for choice; that human beings ought to take full responsibility for their choices and lives by virtue of their rational capacities; that ceding the power over choices to another person or institution evacuates the most peculiarly human of capacities, the ability to think and reason; these are all interrelated concepts (which I shall seek to separate out somewhat later on in this

3

4

work of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, both of whom, although especially Buber, write outside the framework of binding halakhah. See Walter Wurzburger’s article, “Covenantal Imperatives,” n. 50 below. See especially Yeshayahu Leibovitz, Yahadut, Am Yehudi u-Medinat Yisrael (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1975). While I shall be considering the issue from the nonvoluntaristic stance, it is imperative that the sorts of arguments the voluntarists use be considered. While it is wrong to homogenize, and best to make clear one’s assumptions at the onset, the voluntarist position, it seems to me, represents something authentic about Judaism to which even the nonvoluntarist must be responsive. I shall return to this point later. — 265 —

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chapter) that carry with them a great deal of weight. That is, there seems prima facie to be something right about it all, and therefore, again prima facie, it ought at least partially and in some form to be consistent with, if not an essential part of, some standard Jewish teaching. So much for reason one. Reason two is internal to Judaism, and rests on evidence from its classical sources. These have been marshalled extensively in a variety of places; I shall cite only several examples as illustrative of a larger body of material. The interested reader might consult these texts for a fuller rendering of the evidence.5 Starting with the Torah, perhaps the most striking evidence for the role of some form of autonomy in human life is the example of Abraham. In the process of bargaining over Sodom, Abraham tells God: “That be far from You to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be like the wicked; that be far from You; shall not the judge of all the earth do justly?” (Genesis 18:25). Here Abraham has the independence to challenge God Himself on the basis of what he autonomously believes to be correct. Even if Abraham learned the general imperative to act justly from God directly, the application of that general principle to this particular instance certainly appears to be autonomous. Moses too says much the same thing: “O God, source of the breath of all flesh! When one man sins, will You be wrathful with the entire community?” (Numbers 16:22). Whereas autonomy in the biblical period involved man’s stance 5

See, for example, David Hartman, A Living Covenant (New York: Free Press, 1985), and Louis Jacobs, ‘The Relationship between Religion and Ethics in Jewish Thought,” reprinted in Contemporary Jewish Ethics, ed. M. Kellner (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1978), 41-57. Some of these sources come up in discussions concerning the autonomy of ethics in Judaism, and the question of whether the natural law doctrine finds a home in Jewish teachings, about which there has arisen a huge body of literature. It is important to distinguish the issue of personal autonomy, which is the subject of this chapter, from the issue of the autonomy of ethics in Judaism. Put somewhat baldly, the latter question is concerned primarily with whether ethical laws are right apart from whether God commanded them. The former question is concerned not only with ethical laws, but with all of life’s decisions, with knowledge and with laws of all sorts, ethical or otherwise, and its concern in this regard is largely with how individuals appropriate and determine what is right or true, whether it is God who is the ultimate source of their rightness or truth, or whether they are right of their own accord apart from God. — 266 —

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directly toward God, in the rabbinic period man’s relation to God had become mediated by the Torah. Therefore, many (although not all) expressions of autonomy in the rabbinic period reflect a relationship to God via the sacred text, via God’s laws as revealed in that text, and via the oral law which accompanied it. Perhaps the most famous of these, and certainly one of the most striking, is the story relating to the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the Sages concerning the oven of Akhnai: On that day Rabbi Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument, but they did not accept them. Said he to them: “If the law is as I say, let this carob tree prove it!” Thereupon the carob tree was torn a hundred cubits out of its place — others say, four hundred cubits. “No proof can be brought from a carob tree,” they retorted.… Again he said to them: “If the law is as I say let it be proved from heaven!” Whereupon a heavenly voice cried out: “Why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the law is as he says!” But Rabbi Joshua arose and exclaimed: “It is not in heaven” [Deuteronomy 30:12]. What did he mean by this? Said Rabbi Jeremiah: “That the Torah had already been given at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a heavenly voice, because You have long since written … ‘After the majority must one incline’ ” [Exodus 23:2]. Rabbi Nathan met Elijah and asked him: “What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do at that moment?” He replied: “He laughed, saying ‘My sons have defeated Me, my sons have defeated Me.’” (Baba Metzia 59b)

While the text and dating of this famous aggadah are problematic, it nevertheless constitutes a ringing affirmation of autonomy from God’s will and knowledge in ascertaining halakhic truth, one which had a profound impact on medieval and modern conceptions of halakhah. Numerous other aggadot reflect much the same attitude in regard to halakhah; here, however, I shall cite a rabbinic text in which some form of human autonomy appears to be endorsed in a non-legal context. The following midrash describes Hannah’s prayer for children at the Tabernacle: Rabbi Eleazar said: “Hannah said before the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘Sovereign of the Universe, if You will look [answer my prayers], it is well, and if You will not look, I will go and shut myself up with [another — 267 —

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man], with the knowledge of my husband Elkanah. And since I shall be alone with [this man who is not my husband] they will make me drink the water of the sotah, and You cannot falsify your Torah, which says “[If she is innocent of adultery] she shall be cleared, and shall conceive seed” ’[Numbers 5:28].” (Berachot 31b)

Here Hannah vigorously demands, rather than submissively beseeches, what she autonomously determines to be her just due, and threatens to force God’s hand by a procedurally correct manipulation of the law in order to insure conception. One final rabbinic text should be cited here in this abbreviated marshaling of prima facie evidence for some form of autonomy in the Jewish tradition; it relates to motive in carrying out the mitzvot. The Midrash Tanhuma quotes the following assertion: Whoever performs one mitzvah for its own sake [literally, “its truth”], it is as if he gave it himself at Sinai, as it says “you shall keep them and you shall do them” [Deuteronomy 26:16]; and what is the intent of “do them”? It is only to teach you that whoever fulfills the Torah and does it for its own sake, is as if he decreed it and gave it at Sinai. (Ki Tavo aleph; Buber ed., 3:46)

While this text admits of many interpretations, certainly one plausible interpretation is that performing a mitzvah with the right motive is akin to virtuous self-imposition of the mitzvah, which sounds very much like an endorsement of autonomy. During the medieval period many of the themes cited above from rabbinic sources recur. New to the period, however, is a stress on autonomous reason in nonhalakhic contexts. Under the influence of Greek and Islamic philosophy, the medieval Jewish rationalists stressed the competence of the human intellect and the central role human reasoning should play in life. Certainly one of the more striking examples of this phenomenon appears in Maimonides’ Letter on Astrology. Criticizing those who rely on astrology, Maimonides writes: What we have said about this [astrology] from the beginning is that the entire position of the stargazers is regarded as a falsehood by men of science. I know that you may search and find sayings of some — 268 —

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individual sages in the Talmud and Midrashim whose words appear to maintain that at the moment of man’s birth the stars will cause such and such to happen to him. Do not regard this as a difficulty; ... it is not proper to abandon matters of reason that have already been verified by proofs, shake loose of them and depend on the words of a single one of the sages from whom possibly the matter was hidden.... A man should never cast his reason behind him, for the eyes are set in front, not in back.6

In this passage Maimonides expresses his willingness to set aside a rabbinical teaching if it is contradicted by the laws of scientific reasoning. These laws are of course discoverable by unaided human reasoning, which says a great deal about the value Maimonides places on autonomous thinking. In fact, Maimonides asserts that the central mitzvah of love of God cannot be fulfilled without the use of human reason, by which Maimonides means philosophical speculation. As he says in his Mishneh Torah: One only loves God with the knowledge with which one knows Him. According to the knowledge will be the love.… A person ought therefore to devote himself to the understanding and comprehension of those sciences and studies which will inform him concerning his master, as far as it lies in human faculties to understand and comprehend — as indeed we have explained in the Laws of the Basic Principles of the Torah.7

This theme is a recurrent one in Maimonidean literature, and appears in one guise or another in almost everything he wrote, philosophical, halakhic, and otherwise. It is also a recurrent theme in rationalist medieval Jewish philosophical literature generally. Bahya ibn Pakuda, for example, devoted the introduction and first two chapters of his classic Hovot ha-Levavot to this issue. Bahya even goes so far as to compare those who believe in God’s existence and unity on the basis of tradition alone, rather than on reason, to “blind men” walking single file, “each with his hand on the shoulder of the man preceding.” 6

7

Moses Maimonides, “Letter on Astrology,” trans. R. Lerner, in Medieval Political Philosophy, ed. R. Lerner and M. Mahdi (New York: Free Press, 1963), 234-35. Mishneh Torah, Yesodei ha-Torah, Teshuvah 10:6. See also Sefer ha-Mitzvot, positive 3. — 269 —

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If the leader, or one of the middle members of the chain, should go astray, everyone following will be lost, and may even fall into the pit.8 Bahya, Maimonides, and many others maintained that the only way to fully satisfy the obligation to know God  — no small matter  — was by engaging in independent human reasoning.9 Even these limited illustrations drawn from premodern sources should suggest that there is prima facie evidence that at least some important classical thinkers and texts affirmed some form of personal autonomy. It would be altogether wrong, however, to make any sweeping generalizations about the Jewish tradition as a whole on the basis either of the argument external to Judaism or of the evidence internal to Judaism. This is so because there are also arguments, both internal to Judaism and external to it, which suggest quite the opposite, that personal autonomy cannot be a central Jewish value. First of all, there is the hard evidence that certain important traditions within Judaism largely or entirely deny the value of autonomy, as noted earlier in this essay. Even in the context of the tradition being considered here, however, there are three prima facie arguments internal to Judaism that run counter to the claim that personal autonomy is a central Jewish value. First, there is the brute fact that Judaism is a religion at whose theological core stands God’s revelation. The Torah conveys God’s heteronomous commands addressed to the Jewish people. The heteronomous character of mitzvot suggests that personal autonomy cannot be a central Jewish value. Second, there is the extraordinary scope of the halakhic life, and third the widespread role of the rabbinic decisor, both noted in the opening paragraph of this chapter. These three internal arguments, to which I shall return later, are of course only prima facie arguments themselves, and certainly much can be said in evaluating them. Nevertheless, they should lead us at least to suspect any sweeping claims made for autonomy: indeed, they stand at the heart of the voluntaristic

8 9

Hovot ha-Levavot 1:2. See, for example, Saadya Gaon, Emunot ve-De’ot 1:6; Bachya, Hovot ha-Levavot, op. cit. and 1:3; Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed I:50 and III:51, and Mishneh Torah, Yesodei ha-Torah 1:1-6; Yosef Albo, Ikkarim 1:19, 24. — 270 —

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approach to Judaism (particularly the first two arguments). Supplementing these internal arguments are a set of external arguments, all of which grow out of a historical consideration. While the concept of autonomy may be rooted in the scholastic tradition of Aquinas, as some have suggested,10 in its fully fleshed out form, with all its philosophical, theological, and political ramifications, it is clearly a creation of the Enlightenment. Jeffrey Stout has argued11 that the development of the idea of autonomy is grounded in what he calls “the flight from authority.” The breakdown in religious authority and consensus which characterized the Reformation, with all its attendant political upheaval and violence together with the need of certain minorities such as the Huguenots in the sixteenth-century to maintain their religious rights, gave rise to the need to ground moral and political behavior in a nonreligious (and therefore noncontroversial) framework. The concept of autonomous “rights” that the individual bears independent of any religious or political authority emerged precisely to supplant the failures of religious authority. The modern concept of autonomy was thus born on the pyre of traditional religious authority. If this historical account of the rise of autonomy is correct, then attributing autonomy to halakhic Judaism should surely give us pause. Halakhic Judaism, whatever else it is, is surely rooted in authority, both the authority of the halakhah itself, as well as the authority of the interpreters of halakhah. The putative marriage of halakhic Judaism and autonomy may in historical perspective thus be a particularly problematic one.12 Moreover, this historical account might suggest that were religious authority to have functioned effectively, as it surely sometimes did and certainly was meant to, then the concept of autonomy might never have been born. Indeed, perhaps authority, justly exercised, isn’t such a bad thing after all — and here we come to the heart of the matter. Perhaps justly exercised authority serves to correct 10

11

12

W. Ullmann, The Individual and Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), especially 127. Jeffrey Stout, The Flight From Authority (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), chap. 11. Stout defends this sort of “historicist” philosophical reasoning in Flight From Authority; see his introduction to the book and pt. 3. — 271 —

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self-indulgent error with the wisdom of accumulated experience, and with the insight of people not captured by the particular intellectual fashions of the day (even if they remained captives of the fashions of an earlier day), and with the perspective of individuals not pressed by the urgency of a particular situation. Perhaps it serves to prevent the anarchic potential of rampant individualism. Perhaps, as Alasdair MacIntyre argues, if society shared a common conception of the good and of the sort of virtue needed to achieve that good, as it once did, then shared moral discourse and behavior would be possible, and the fractured moral discourse embodied in individualism and autonomy would be seen as utterly counterproductive.13 The historical perspective might thus suggest that even if the concept of autonomy is a powerful one, perhaps it ought not to be embraced with altogether uncritical enthusiasm. Where does all this leave us? After summarizing what is, all told, fairly considerable evidence that strongly suggests that autonomy is indeed affirmed by at least some authoritative Jewish teachings, I have presented a range of considerations which suggest just the reverse. It seems to me that this leaves us in need of clarifying the very concept of autonomy itself. Thus far, the term autonomy has been used somewhat indiscriminately, largely to set up the problems that the remainder of this essay will attempt to solve. In fact, as noted earlier, many treatments of the subject, particularly those in the Jewish context, use the term quite imprecisely, resulting in a good deal of confusion not only about what autonomy is, but also about what place it has in the context of Judaism.

SOME PROPOSED DISTINCTIONS In order to clarify the concept of autonomy, it may be useful to begin to distinguish among various kinds of autonomy. The three broad categories that can be sorted out at first pass I call Nomic Autonomy, Epistemic Autonomy, and Haeretic Autonomy.14 13 14

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). I shall first describe these three kinds of autonomy somewhat broadly. Following the — 272 —

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Nomic Autonomy, from the Greek word for law, nomos (whence the “nomy” in autonomy), relates to an individual’s autonomy with respect to law. Thus, one might claim as does Kant that no law in itself places moral obligations upon a human being (apart from furthering some mere interest) unless it is self-legislated.15 Epistemic Autonomy, from the Greek word for knowledge, episteme, relates to an individual’s autonomy with respect to knowledge. Thus, one might claim that I can only be said to truly know something if I proved it to myself, whereas if I blindly accept it on someone else’s authority, then I don’t really know it. Finally, Haeretic Autonomy, from the Greek word haeresis, or choice, relates to an individual’s autonomy with respect to personal decisionmaking and the choice of life-plans. Thus, one might claim that if a particular way of life or important decision was forced down my throat, or was unthinkingly adopted by me out of superficial social conformity, then that way of life or decision has no value at all. What emerges from these distinctions is that autonomy is a complex concept — it can mean at least three different things. To prove that one form of autonomy is consistent with or affirmed by Judaism is not necessarily to prove that another form of autonomy is consistent with or affirmed by Judaism. We shall soon see how this pertains to the problems at hand. The next distinction to be drawn is between what I shall call Hard Autonomy and Soft Autonomy. Broadly speaking, by Hard Autonomy I mean the strict view that holds that wherever autonomy is at all wanting, all is lost. A law is no law at all if not autonomously imposed (Hard Nomic Autonomy); a belief cannot be counted knowledge unless one proves it for oneself (Hard Epistemic Autonomy); a choice is no real choice at all unless chosen autonomously (Hard Haeretic Autonomy). A further distinction, to which we shall return, should be drawn between hard autonomy as a necessary condition and hard autonomy as a sufficient condition.

15

distinction I draw between “Hard Autonomy” and “Soft Autonomy,” I shall attempt to define them with more precision. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Lewis Beck White, Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenchaft ed. (Berlin, 1902-1938), 431. — 273 —

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By Soft Autonomy I mean the more moderate view that considers departures from the ideal of autonomy to be significant, but not fatal. A law that is not self-imposed lacks the important value of autonomous self-imposition, but nevertheless may still be a binding law (Soft Nomic Autonomy); a belief not rationally self-demonstrated lacks the important value, the epistemic force of self-demonstration, but it may nevertheless be knowledge (Soft Epistemic Autonomy); a choice externally imposed lacks the important value of autonomous self-imposition, but nevertheless may still be a choice of value (Soft Haeretic Autonomy). Again, the key point to bear in mind here is that proving that one or more forms of soft autonomy are consistent with (some strands of) Judaism does not imply that other forms of soft autonomy are consistent with Judaism. Far more important, it doesn’t imply that any form of hard autonomy is consistent with Judaism, a very critical point.

THE DISTINCTIONS APPLIED: HARD AUTONOMY Armed with the distinctions we have delineated, we are now in a position to consider more precisely the relationship between personal autonomy and religious authority in the Jewish tradition. Ultimately, as will be seen, I shall argue that by using these distinctions a strong case can be made out for affirming the importance of some versions of personal autonomy, one of the central claims of this chapter.

Nomic Autonomy Let us first look at the various forms of hard autonomy, beginning with hard nomic autonomy. The classic formulation of the principle of hard nomic autonomy is that of Kant: “The will is therefore not merely subject to the law, but subject in such a way that it must be considered also as self-legislated, and only for this reason subject to the law of which it can regard itself as author.”16 Kant is saying here that no (categorical) obligation can arise which in itself places duties upon us independent of furthering some mere 16

Ibid. — 274 —

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interest, unless that obligation is self-imposed. Of course, if I wish to satisfy some interest, such as self-preservation or meriting some reward, then it may be heteronomously obligatory for me to take a certain course of action. However, non-self-interested obligation, or law, requires self-imposition. What kinds of laws merit selfimposition? Kant would answer, according to one formulation of the Categorical Imperative, only those which are universal, which are stripped of all personal interest and are applicable to all human beings by virtue of their being rational agents. As Alasdair MacIntyre points out, Kant is responding in part to the breakdown of authority and the traditional worldview characteristic of the Enlightenment.17 If no satisfactory form of authority exists outside the individual, it must reside somewhere within. Hence, (what I am here calling) hard nomic autonomy. This Kantian thesis has generated perhaps the most extensive Jewish philosophical discussions regarding autonomy.18 I have argued elsewhere that Kantian autonomy is indeed inconsistent with the revelatory character of the Jewish legal tradition: classical Judaism has always understood its adherents to be bound by God’s laws irrespective of whether or not those laws are self-imposed. Even if the Jew doesn’t autonomously accept kashrut he is still legally obligated to keep it, by virtue of God’s omnipotence and, hence, ability to legislate irrespective of one’s feelings about the matter. For Kant, however, heteronomous obligations are not true law but mere reflections of self-interest. For the Jewish tradition, these are true laws, and not mere obligations of self-interest. Nevertheless, I suggest that careful analysis of Kant’s own reasons for affirming his Principle of Autonomy shows that if Kant were to accept basic theistic beliefs and premises, he himself might admit that God-derived norms satisfy his very own arguments

17 18

MacIntyre, After Virtue, chaps. 4-5. See, for example, Emil Fackenheim, “The Revealed Morality of Judaism and Modern Thought,” in Quest For Past and Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970); Norbert Samuelson, “Revealed Morality and Modern Thought,” CCAR Journal (June 1969); David Ellenson, “Emil Fackenheim and the Revealed Morality of Judaism,” Judaism 25 (1976). — 275 —

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for the Principle of Autonomy.19 In any case, hard nomic autonomy is inconsistent with classical Judaism, and surely with halakhic Judaism. What this shows is that even if personal autonomy is a great value, it is not constitutive of true legal authority. According to traditional monotheism, there is an authority outside the individual, a commanding God whose overarching plan for human life orients that life. In the formulation of hard nomic autonomy I have used thus far, autonomy is conceived as a necessary condition for the obligatoriness of a law: a law is binding only if self-imposed. However, one might conceive hard nomic authority also (or only) as a sufficient condition for the obligatoriness of a law. One might argue, for instance, that a law is binding in case it is self-imposed, so that if I accept an obligation, I am in fact obligated to carry it out. Where this is an obligation of interest — say to get a raise I commit myself to work extra hours — then the obligation is not autonomous but heteronomous. But if I commit myself to something because I believe it to be the right thing to do, quite apart from whatever benefit I derive — or trouble I get myself into — then such a self- imposed obligation would be binding according to this formulation of hard nomic autonomy.20 In many instances, this formulation of the hard nomic autonomy principle is by and large consistent with classical Jewish tradition of all varieties. Humra is a time-honored Jewish religious category, and with certain important exceptions (such as where it is accepted for the wrong reasons or is lacking certain formal criteria), humra practices become binding.21 Where the practice is accepted with certain formulae, then 19

20

21

Moshe Sokol, “The Autonomy of Reason, Revealed Morality and Jewish Law,” chapter VIII of this volume. I am bracketing for present purposes the question of whether any nonmoral law can be autonomous in the Kantian sense. See chapter VIII of this volume for a full discussion of the issue. For an extensive listing of classical sources relevant to humra, see Yehuda Leo Levi, Shaarei Talmud Torah (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1982), 83-84, 103-22. An issue that merits further consideration is whether the formal limits placed upon humra, and the difference between kabbalah be-lev and engaging in humra practices three times, are consistent with the central idea of autonomy, which is simple self-imposition. My hunch is that they are, because these halakhic requirements are probably at least in — 276 —

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the obligation may even have the halakhic status of a binding oath (a neder or shevuah). Conscience thus binds. The more serious question in the context of this chapter is what the scholastics called “erring conscience.” What happens when I autonomously impose upon myself behavior I believe to be right knowing that halakhic sources say it is wrong? Or when I refrain from doing something because I believe it is wrong knowing that the halakhic sources say it is right? Is such autonomously imposed behavior obligatory? The problem here needs to be considered in two contexts.22 First, there is the more general, philosophical one: can any individual dissent from the halakhah on clearly nonhalakhic grounds, or on grounds that do not flow from “standard halakhic analysis,” however we are to define that phrase? For example, if I am convinced that a certain law flows from a dated, ancient near-eastern practice, and is inconsistent with contemporary standards of morality, but I do not use any sort of halakhic analysis to prove the validity of those contemporary standards of morality, may I disregard that law? Second, there is the more technical context of halakhic decision-making: can a halakhic expert, the posek, using “standard halakhic analysis,” dissent from halakhic precedent, accepted practice, or accepted contemporary authority? I shall consider each context in turn, starting with the more general one. On the face of it, it would be inconsistent for an individual to affirm the obligatory nature of the halakhic system and yet dissent from it when he chooses. All legal systems are taken to be binding, halakhah included, unless it can be shown otherwise. Thus sufficient hard nomic autonomy, in the general philosophical context, seems prima facie incompatible with halakhic Judaism. Nevertheless, one important contemporary Jewish thinker who professes an affirmation of the halakhic framework maintains that the halakhah in these cases would not be binding, and that is Michael Wyschogrod.23 Wyschogrod

22

23

part intended to legally establish self-imposition. I am grateful to Professor David Shatz for pointing to the significance of this distinction. Michael Wyschogrod, “Judaism and Conscience,” in Standing Before God, ed. A. Finkel and L. Frizzell (Hoboken: Ktav, 1981), 313-28. Wyschogrod develops the argument — 277 —

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presents an independent and interesting argument for hard nomic authority in its sufficient condition formulation; that is, he argues for the view that in Judaism erring conscience binds. It is worth considering his argument with some care, since if it is correct it will turn out that where my conscience tells me the halakhah comes out wrong, for example, in particular instances of an agunah, or a mamzer, then I will be obligated to follow my conscience and not the halakhah.24 Rabbinical halakhic judgment, says Wyschogrod, must be capable of being in error; if the rabbis can never be wrong, he argues, then they can never be right either. But what is halakhic error? Getting God’s will wrong. Thus, it turns out that the rabbis must be capable of getting God’s will wrong. But if my obligation as a halakhic Jew is precisely to obey God’s will, and the rabbis are capable of getting God’s will wrong, then in relying exclusively on the rabbis I may end up not obeying God’s will. Therefore, if I am convinced that the rabbis are getting God’s will wrong, it would be wrong for me to obey them: after all, the only criterion for my behavior can be obeying God’s will.25 The problem I find with this argument is that it equivocates about the meaning of the phrase “God’s will.” God’s will, in fact, can encompass many things. It can be His will that abortion for reasons of maternal mental health is wrong, and it can simultaneously be His will that if it is the consensus of rabbinic opinion that abortion for reasons of maternal mental health is right, then it is right for me to have an abortion. There can be no doubt that each individual, as Wyschogrod suggests, stands before God under the obligation to do His will, and stands responsible to Him for doing it. Nevertheless, the halakhah may very well be so constituted (as the aggadah concerning the oven of Akhnai suggests) that this responsibility is satisfied precisely by

24

25

more fully in his later book, The Body of Faith (Minneapolis: Seabury Press, 1983), 18990. Hartman, in A Living Covenant, makes a similar claim, for different reasons, in his chapter on ethics. (See my brief discussion of Hartman’s views below, n. 50.) Wyschogrod suggests an approach similar to the one I take here, but whereas he formulates an argument intended as a response to that approach, I argue that such an approach does not succeed. For parallels to this issue in the sources see Sifre, Deuteronomy 17:11; the comments of Nachmanides and Abarbanel ad loc., and Horayot 1:1. These sources relate to the question of legal procedure. Wyschogrod, of course, is making a far broader claim. — 278 —

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scrupulously following the halakhic procedures for adjudicating halakhic questions. Does this mean, as Wyschogrod suggests, that halakhic Jews can find blanket security in blindly following these halakhic procedures? If the scrupulous search for satisfactory halakhic adjudication is easy, then perhaps yes, although I am not so sure how easy it really is. More important, however, if some form of soft nomic autonomy is in fact consistent with Judaism, which we shall soon consider, then his life will not be so easy after all. He will be charged with the task of figuring it all out for himself, of seeking to encounter God’s will in the halakhic process on his own, of personally struggling with questions of right and wrong, of facing the terrifying quandary of Rabbi Eliezer who couldn’t bring himself to follow the majority even though he knew just as well as Rabbi Joshua that the majority will prevails. If Wyschogrod’s argument is unconvincing, as I think it is, then we are left with the prima facie assumption that legal systems are binding, and hence the conclusion that the laws of the Torah and halakhah are binding on the individual Jew whether or not they are autonomously imposed, and whether or not the individual’s conscience urges otherwise. As will be seen, the classical sources cited earlier, and others like them, support no more than a soft autonomy principle. If that is correct, then we must at least tentatively reject the principle of hard nomic autonomy in its more general, philosophical context. Considering this question in the technical, halakhic context, however, yields a somewhat different conclusion. The autonomy of the posek who follows “standard halakhic procedure” is great indeed. One of the most influential Jewish legal authorities in the history of halakhah, R. Moshe Isserles of sixteenthcentury Poland, asserts in his glosses to the Shulhan Arukh: “If it appears to a judge and to members of his generation on the basis of decisive evidence that the law is not as was decided by [earlier] authorities, he may disagree with them, since it was not mentioned in the Talmud.”26 Menachem Elon and others have argued that in Jewish law, precedent

26

Hoshen Mishpat 25:1, following R. Asher ben Yehiel (Rosh) Sanhedrin 4:6. — 279 —

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is not binding: each individual judge has “only what his eyes see.”27 Various writers have stressed the remarkable autonomy accorded to the decisor of Jewish law.28 While the issue is complicated, there is strong evidence that in practice the posek indeed has substantial autonomy — whether or not he chooses to exercise it — a critical point in considering the question of hard nomic autonomy. Nevertheless, affirming this hard nomic autonomy of the posek does not entail affirming hard nomic autonomy as a general principle. This is because it is precisely the halakhic sources and system which grant him what autonomy he has. It seems safe to say that were the halakhic system to deny him that autonomy, then the posek would not have it. And where it does deny him autonomy, i.e., where the posek fails to follow “standard halakhic procedure,” such as where he dissents from a decision recorded in the Talmud itself, then his decision is regarded by the halakhic system as illegitimate — in every sense of the word. An analogy to playing a game by the rules may be apt. The rules of the game may be very broad, granting the players a great deal of autonomy in creating novel, unprecedented moves. Despite this autonomy, they must still play by those rules, as broad as they are. If they fail to abide by them, they are no longer regarded as legitimate contestants. Similarly, the halakhic system may grant its experts substantial autonomy, a point of great significance. Nevertheless, they must abide by the procedural rules of the system, rules that cannot be autonomously disregarded.

Epistemic Autonomy The principle of hard epistemic autonomy, however, is a different matter altogether, and a very complicated one in its own right. The principle of hard epistemic autonomy, formulated as a necessary condition for 27

28

Menachem Elon, Ha-Mishpat ha-lvri (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1978), 223-38. See also his Principles of Jewish Law (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), 115-16. Elon, Ha-Mishpat, n. 26; N. Lamm and A. Kirschenbaum, “Freedom and Constraint in the Jewish Judicial Process,” Cardozo Law Review 1 (1979), 99, and J. Roth, “Responding to Dissent in Jewish Law: Repression versus Self-Restraint,” Rutgers Law Review 40 (1987), 31. — 280 —

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knowledge, holds that no individual can be said to know something unless he finds it out for himself.29 I may hold the true belief that London is the capital of England because my teacher told me, but unless I go to London myself, make inquiries, inspect the Parliament, and so on, I can’t truly be said to know it. More relevantly, I may believe that God exists because that is what I was taught, or I may know that it is wrong to cheat on my income taxes because that is what I was told, but unless I reason out for myself that God must exist, or examine the halakhic sources myself which yield the conclusion that it is wrong to cheat on my income taxes (or reason it out for myself on the basis of my ethical convictions), then I cannot be truly said to know any of these things. Formulated as a sufficient condition for knowledge, the principle of hard epistemic autonomy holds that if after demonstrating something to my own satisfaction I am certain that it is true, then I can be said to know it is true, even if it contradicts other propositions I was taught or had reason to believe. For example, if I am convinced after a great deal of thought and what I regard as conclusive research that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa, then I can be said to know that it is true even though certain passages in the Bible suggest otherwise. Is hard epistemic autonomy as here formulated consistent with any strands of the tradition? Is it embraced by any? The central locus for these discussions in the tradition is of course that of medieval Jewish philosophy. In the case of theological knowledge, I am aware of no rabbinic sources that clearly maintain that self demonstration is a necessary or sufficient condition for theological knowledge. Hints of the value of theological self demonstration, which appear in isolated midrashim such as the midrash concerning Abraham who, it is said, reasoned out on his own that God exists,30 are no more than that: hints, touching on the possibility of such an achievement, and 29

30

Of course, what counts as an adequate “finding out for yourself,” or “selfdemonstration,” is itself an interesting and important question: Is deductive reasoning necessary, or is inductive reasoning using empirical evidence sufficient? And what degree of certainty, or probability, is required? Bereshit Rabbah 14:2. — 281 —

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perhaps its value, but certainly not asserting its necessity. Even if they do show sufficiency, it is far from evident that they would show sufficiency where self-demonstrated belief would contradict revealed belief, which is the really interesting question. The great medieval rationalists, such as Maimonides, who had encyclopedic knowledge of rabbinic materials, would have produced such evidence if they had had it; apparently they didn’t. Indeed, Saul Lieberman has demonstrated the extremely limited influence of Greek philosophical thinking on the rabbis of the Talmud.31 Hard epistemic autonomy is a product of philosophical thinking (as against soft epistemic autonomy, which is not dependent upon abstract reasoning about the nature of knowledge, a typically philosophical enterprise). Its absence from the rabbinic (and of course biblical) tradition is therefore to be expected. Furthermore, biblical and rabbinic Judaism conceive of knowledge of God as deriving initially from direct revelatory experience, and then, for almost every Jew, from reports about revelatory experiences mediated by reliable transmission  —  the chain of tradition  —  or by sacred texts. The centrality of tradition would leave little room for self-discovery. If hard epistemic autonomy in its necessary condition formulation is to be found anywhere in premodern Judaism, it is in the writings of the medieval rationalists, whom I cited earlier.32 The extent to which it is present, however, is far from clear. Among the most influential of the medievals, Bahya ibn Pakuda seems to go the furthest in approaching, if not actually adopting, the hard epistemic position, as the text cited earlier about the blind man leading everyone into the pit would suggest. Yehuda Halevi of course would deny hard epistemic autonomy. Saadya and Maimonides fall somewhere in between.33 31

32

33

Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1942); Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950). In the context of Torah knowledge, I am aware of no tradition holding that knowing a halakhic conclusion requires understanding the reasoning leading up to that conclusion. Therefore, I have limited the discussion to the philosophical literature. The issue is a complicated one in regard to both Maimonides and Saadya. Saadya, in his introduction to Emunot ve-De’ot, proposes four roots of knowledge, one of them being the root of reliable tradition (ed. Kapah, 14), a position he argues for in chapter 3 (13031). Nevertheless, in numerous instances he suggests that speculative demonstration — 282 —

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The issue of hard epistemic autonomy as a sufficient condition for knowledge is joined in both the philosophical and the halakhic contexts. In the philosophical (and scientific) context it amounts to what is perhaps the central issue of Jewish philosophy: what happens if I am convinced that some (or all) Jewish teachings are false?34 In Maimonides’ Letter on Astrology we saw that Maimonides was ready to reject at least certain traditional teachings on the basis of rational, scientific demonstration.35 In many respects, the entire history of medieval philosophy, Jewish or otherwise, revolves around the question of the sufficiency of human reasoning against the background of tradition. It seems fair to say, however, that a limited number of medieval Jewish rationalists may have been willing to go quite far in



34

35

produces a “superior” form of knowledge. For example, he calls knowledge derived from demonstration “actual,” as against what is taught via the prophets (24). Even more striking, in connection with the sufficiency condition formulation, he seems to maintain that if no fallacy can be found in an argument put forward by “someone who is not a member of our people,” then “it is clear truth,” which even Jews must accept (22-23). With regard to Maimonides, the issue is similarly complicated. At the beginning of his Letter on Astrology, he maintains that it is reasonable to accept as trustworthy that which is received “from the prophets or from the righteous.” Nevertheless, in the Guide (I:50) he seems to suggest that the only true knowledge of God derives from speculative reasoning. This is suggested as well by the famous palace metaphor in the Guide (III:51), according to which only men of speculation can enter God’s palace. In connection with the sufficiency condition formulation, in 2:25 Maimonides asserts, “That the deity is not a body has been demonstrated; from this it follows necessarily that everything that in its external meaning disagrees with this demonstration must be interpreted figuratively.” In this famous chapter regarding the creation of the world, the Straussian debate is fully joined. For (early, but classic) discussions of Saadya’s theory of knowledge see I. Efros, “Saadia’s Theory of Knowledge,” and A. Heschel, “The Quest For Certainty in Saadya’s Philosophy,” both published in Jewish Quarterly Review (1943). For a comparison of Saadya with other medieval philosophers, see Wolfson’s early article, “The Double Faith Theory,” reprinted in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Religion, ed. I. Twersky and G. Williams, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973). For a summary of medieval attitudes toward rabbinic aggadah and science see M. Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), chap. 1. Whether Maimonides would reject more central Jewish teachings, such as the creation of the world, indeed whether he actually did reject certain central teachings on the basis of philosophical reasoning, hinges on the extent to which one adopts a Straussian reading of the Maimonidean oeuvre, an issue extensively debated in the scholarly literature on the subject, and one we cannot possibly even begin to summarize here. — 283 —

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according sufficiency to human reasoning;36 it is altogether unclear, however, how many, if any at all, would have been willing to accord it total sufficiency, as hard epistemic autonomy requires. To use Wolfson’s phrase, they were all engaged in “scriptural philosophy,” and scriptural philosophy of its very essence pays attention to Scripture.37 In the halakhic context (or any case of Torah knowledge, aggadic or purely theoretical) the issue is whether I may be said to know as true a conclusion arrived at on the basis of pure reasoning even if that conclusion is contradicted by traditional authority. The epistemic question is of course different from the nomic, where the conclusion has no normative consequences but is purely theoretical, such as the kind of analyses characteristic of many contemporary yeshivot, or where the halakhic conclusion has no practical ramifications. Can I be said to know something about the Torah which God Himself, or which traditional Torah authority, denies? While the answer to this question surely depends upon what counts as “traditional Torah authority,” it would be difficult to accept 36

37

Especially relevant here is the debate in late medieval Jewish philosophy concerning what has been called “inadvertant heresy”: Is someone a heretic if he denies what I believe to be true of Judaism, or affirms what I believe to be false of Judaism, in both cases inadvertently (i.e., he does not intend to rebel, but after careful reflection sincerely believes himself to be correct)? Shimon b. Zemah Duran maintains that he is not a heretic, a view that borders on, but does not quite embrace, according full sufficiency to human reasoning (the person in question is still a heretic). Menachem Kellner, in his Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), traces this view back to R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres (twelfth-century), notes Yosef Albo’s ambivalent stance toward it, and argues that Hasdai Crescas may have affirmed the same view (both fifteenth-century). Professor Norbert Samuelson has suggested to me that Crescas’s view that belief cannot be commanded may also suggest the sufficiency of human reasoning. I am unsure if this is so, however. Cf. I. Twersky, Introduction to the Mishneh Torah (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 500 n. 373. It should be noted that an influential trend within contemporary philosophy, especially as articulated by such philosophers as W. V. O. Quine, W. Sellars, T. Kuhn, N. Goodman, and others, casts some doubt on the total sufficiency of human reasoning and scientific discovery to get at the truth. See, for example, Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). In considering the question of epistemic authority, R. T. De George argues that it is reasonable under certain circumstances to rely on the authorities, much as Saadya argued in Emunot ve-De’ot (Kaplan ed., 130-31). See his article, “Epistemic Authority,” in Authority: A Philosophical Analysis, ed. R. B. Harris (Birmingham, AL: Alabama University Press, 1976), 76-93. — 284 —

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unconditionally sufficient hard epistemic authority. The oven-of-Akhnai debate shows that, remarkably enough, it does indeed seem possible to know something about the Torah which God Himself, so to speak, denies. This is surely a powerful endorsement of sufficient human epistemic autonomy vis-a-vis God. Nevertheless, this does not entail unconditional affirmation of the thesis in question, since autonomy from God is not the same as autonomy from the standards of halakhic procedures and reasoning, as I noted earlier in regard to hard nomic autonomy. Rabbi Joshua’s point is precisely that those procedures must be followed, in his case that the majority rules. It therefore seems altogether likely that, notwithstanding the oven-of-Akhnai dispute and the wide-ranging literature generated over the centuries reflecting “autonomous” halakhic pesak, there are some constraints upon what would count as legitimate legal procedures and reasoning, and those constraints are themselves rooted in traditional authority.38 But what if I follow those standards rigorously? Can I then be said to know a halakhic conclusion even where it contradicts the conclusion of traditional authority? Although this question surely needs further exploration, on the basis of the literature cited above it is my hunch that the answer is probably “Yes.”39 In summary, I argued above that while there is evidence for considerable practical hard nomic autonomy in the technical, halakhic context, there is no evidence for a broad theoretical affirmation of the concept itself. With respect to hard epistemic autonomy, there is some evidence that, at least in its necessary condition formulation, it is embraced by one and perhaps more influential medieval Jewish rationalists. Hard epistemic autonomy in its sufficient condition formulation is probably also accepted in some quarters, although only in the purely theoretical halakhic context, and in the writings of one late medieval philosopher.40

38 39

40

See n. 27 and 28 above. See Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983), 78-82. See n. 36. — 285 —

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Haeretic Autonomy Finally, we must consider the issue of hard autonomy in its haeretic formulation. Hard haeretic autonomy as a necessary condition holds that no choice has moral or religious value unless it is autonomously made.41 If I choose to enroll in medical school because that is what my parents always expected me to do, and I never really thought through the question of whether it was something that I really wanted to do, or should do, then my decision to enroll in medical school, while perhaps “technically” a decision that I made (no one forced me), has no value as a decision. Conversely, any decision I do make autonomously has full value as a decision — even if it turns out to have been a wrong or counterproductive one — since it was made autonomously. This of course is the sufficiency formulation of the hard haeretic autonomy principle. Both of these positions are closely associated with the existential schools of thought. To the best of my knowledge, the traditional sources address the question of choice only in a religious context: choices which have no direct bearing on the religious life are simply not addressed. Insofar as a choice is made in a religious context, I know of no influential tradition which denies the rabbinic dictum mi-tokh she-lo lishma ba lishma42 (by performing a mitzvah not for its own sake, one will be led to performing it for its own sake). While this saying is not addressed explicitly to the realm of choice, it seems to me that its inner logic would require that it be applied to precisely this realm. Performance of a mitzvah is regarded by the rabbis as a good, even if performed for other than the right reasons: the Torah explicitly commanded performance; it did not stipulate that a necessary condition for minimal performance is the right rationale. As we shall see, there can be little doubt that the right rationale enhances, perhaps immeasurably, the performance; nevertheless, provided that the person intends to perform a given act 41

42

As I see it, the claim that a choice not autonomously made isn’t even a real choice relates more to traditional philosophical (and halakhic) questions regarding freedom of the will (in the halakhic context, intentionality) than it does to the question of autonomy. Nazir 23b and elsewhere. — 286 —

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(e.g., he is not asleep when he shakes the lulav), a good is achieved. A decision to perform a mitzvah has value as a means to the end of performance, even if that decision was not arrived at autonomously. According to this argument, with respect to doing what is right, hard haeretic autonomy as a necessary condition for a decision to have value would not be consistent with the Jewish tradition. In the case of a choice that does not involve doing what is right, I am unaware of any relevant evidence internal to Judaism. The principle of hard haeretic autonomy formulated as a sufficient condition would appear to follow a similar argument, with which many existentialists might even agree. If the decision leads one to do wrong, then it seems altogether likely that the rabbis would regard it, despite its having been arrived at autonomously, as bearing a preponderance of negative value — for doing wrong is inherently bad, even if the motive is good.43 In sum, we must tentatively conclude that in a religious context the principle of hard hearetic autonomy is inconsistent with classical Jewish teachings; in a religious-neutral context it could well be consistent, since there is no internal evidence one way or the other. Overall, our review of the evidence for hard autonomy in Judaism appears to have yielded decidedly mixed results. This of course is not surprising given the central role that authority must play in a religion 43



Cf. the rabbinic saying, hirhurei aveirah kashim meaveirah (thinking about doing wrong is worse than doing it) (Yoma 29a). Note Maimonides’ interesting explanation of this assertion (Guide III:8). The concept of aveirah le-shma — performing a sin for a good reason — is relevant here (see Nazir 23b), but (1) it seems not to have had a profound impact on normative rabbinic Judaism, and (2) it is far from clear that any autonomous action would by virtue of its autonomy alone satisfy the le-shma condition. In any case, this concept merits a detailed study in its own right. Note also the comment of Sifre (Deuteronomy 26:5, 301) on the verse Arami oved avi, which asserts that since Laban intended to do evil, it is as if he did it. However, Rashi in his Commentary, ad loc., appears to distinguish between a Jew and non-Jew in this regard. Where a choice to do the right thing is autonomously made, but only because the chooser believes it to be right, exclusive of God (whose existence he denies) and His commands, the question is somewhat more complicated. This issue is joined in the context of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Melakhim 8:11), where he discusses the noachites. For the first in a long series of discussions of this subject, see Steven Schwarzchild’s now classic essay, “Do the Noachites Have to Believe in Revelation?” Jewish Quarterly Review 52 and 53 (1962). — 287 —

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grounded in revelation. The range of arguments external to Judaism, which I summarized earlier and which call into question the value of autonomy, have, it seems to me, made their mark on Judaism. Perhaps the tradition did not wholeheartedly embrace autonomy because it should not have wholeheartedly embraced it. Hard autonomy in most of its manifestations runs up against perfectly sound external reasons for questioning its validity.

Soft Autonomy In the case of soft autonomy, however, the situation is altogether different. Some form of authority is affirmed, and hence these external arguments against autonomy lose their sting. Moreover, and especially important, the internal illustrative texts cited earlier in this paper speak far more clearly. The principle of soft autonomy holds that personal autonomy is an important value, but that it is neither necessary nor sufficient in itself. A law is binding whether or not it is autonomously imposed; a belief may be knowledge even if the holder didn’t find it out for himself; a choice may have value, even if it wasn’t made authentically. Nevertheless, if I obey a law also because I deeply believe it is right, then my obedience has far greater value; if I believe something because I figured it out myself, then my belief is even more certainly held, is mine in a way that it wasn’t before; if I choose to do something because, after much reflection, that is what my most essential self wants to do, then that choice has far greater value. Soft autonomy, properly speaking, is always a property of the state of mind or behavior of the agent (and not, for example, of the law itself), and it makes the value of his behavior or state of mind partially (but not entirely) dependent upon the extent to which autonomy is exercised in any of the three spheres we have discussed here. The distinction between the necessary and sufficient condition formulations, so important for understanding hard autonomy, loses much of its relevance in the case of soft autonomy. Let us return briefly to the illustrative sources cited at the beginning of this chapter. That Abraham challenged God with a moral claim exemplifies all three forms of soft autonomy. Abraham reasoned — 288 —

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independently that God ought not to kill every Sodomite, and he chose to challenge God and His decree on that basis, presumably out of the deepest of his convictions. Nevertheless, in the end, he abided by God’s will. There is thus evidence for at least some forms of soft autonomy, and perhaps even all, but not for hard autonomy. The ovenof-Akhnai dispute, as noted above, shows the great value attached to independent halakhic reasoning, and to the sufficiency of human halakhic reasoning vis-a-vis God. It does not show, however, that human reasoning is sufficient if the rules of halakhic reasoning are not followed, nor does it show that independent halakhic reasoning may actually be followed contrary to traditional authority. The medieval rationalistic texts discussed above do show, for at least one Jewish philosopher, and perhaps more, that hard epistemic autonomy in a philosophic context is necessary for knowledge of God. What of the necessity for the self-imposition of law (hard nomic autonomy)? While we argued earlier that requiring self-imposition is inconsistent with halakhic Judaism, the value of imposing the law on oneself can indeed be demonstrated within some strands of traditional Judaism. The entire medieval (and subsequent) rationalistic enterprise of taamei ha-mitzvot, articulating reasons for the mitzvot, is an attempt to ground mitzvot in canons of rationality, and surely strongly suggests the importance of nomic self-imposition. The Jew who understands the reasons for the mitzvot does them because he understands them to be inherently right; in so doing he makes God’s wisdom his own. Indeed, Maimonides urged that the highest stage of wisdom is that “which teaches us to demonstrate the opinion of the Torah.”44 Contemplating God’s commandments leads ultimately to knowledge of God Himself.45 On this view it can even be argued that God’s intention in issuing norms is precisely that the Jew come to internalize those norms as if they are his own. Only by appropriating God’s commands, by absorbing their inherent wisdom and value and by following them because of these qualities (in addition to doing them because God so

44 45

Guide III:54. Sefer ha-Mitzvot, positive 3. — 289 —

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commanded), has the Jew fully satisfied God’s will.46 This, of course, is the spiritualizing quality of the rationalistic enterprise, one which has certain latent antinomian tendencies built into it, but which was adopted by the rationalists nonetheless.47 What Isadore Twersky calls the spiritualist critique of “halakhocentrism”48 — rationalist, mystical, or otherwise — has during its long history built within it to one degree or another a quest for the inner meaning of the mitzvot rather than their rote, legalistic performance. The quest for inner meaning in all these traditions may be seen in part as an attempt to assimilate and appropriate what lies behind the mitzvah into the will and mind of the Jew, what in our terms amounts to a search for realizing the values expressed in haeretic autonomy.49 But is this really possible? Can one really freely impose upon oneself laws that were in fact already imposed from without? This, of course, is a critical question; if answered in the negative, soft nomic autonomy becomes impossible to sustain. My intuition  —  and I have no more to go on here than intuition — leads me to believe that it is indeed possible, that one can freely assimilate laws already imposed from without, that one can become so convinced of their power and rightness that one comes to believe them quite independently of their original source. If so, then at least within the tradition we are exploring in this paper, a strong case can be made for soft autonomy in all its manifestations. Contrary to our initial negative intuitions about the possibility of autonomy within Judaism, soft personal autonomy is indeed affirmed by one important Jewish tradition.

46 47

48

49

See chapter VII, where I develop this idea more fully. See, among other sources, Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Mishneh Torah (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 393-96; and Yosef Dan, Sifrut ha-Musar ve-haDerush (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), especially chap. 3. Isadore Twersky, “Religion and Law,” in Religion in a Religious Age, ed. S. Goitein (Cambridge: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974). Shabbat 88a, where the Talmud notes approvingly that during Purim the Jews accepted the Torah willingly, unlike at Sinai, where according to one tradition the Torah was accepted under duress, may suggest that according to this aggadah there is value in the autonomous imposition of the law. I am grateful to Dr. Norman Lamm for this point. — 290 —

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Theological Reflections About The Value Of Autonomy Two tasks remain. First, I shall consider briefly the kind of theological model which can best support the sort of affirmation of personal autonomy proposed here. Second, I shall consider once again a central objection to the role of personal autonomy in Judaism.50 The theological issue is at least partly addressed by R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of this century’s most important Orthodox Jewish thinkers. R. Soloveitchik forcefully projects the role of personal autonomy in the halakhic life, although clearly distinguishing the autonomy possible within halakhic Judaism from Kantian autonomy (what we would call hard nomic autonomy in its necessary condition formulation).51 The autonomy R. Soloveitchik projects is that of the halakhist who creatively and freely fashions his own image of the world via halakhic interpretation, and who then assimilates the norms of this world into his own self and soul. “The essence of the Torah,” says R. Soloveitchik, “is intellectual creativity.”52 Halakhic man in this respect is like a great theoretical physicist who creates a world of 50



51

52

See also the interesting article by Walter Wurzburger, “Covenantal Imperatives,” in Samuel K. Mirsky Memorial Volume, ed. G. Appel, in which he suggests a positive role for conscience and personal autonomy based upon what he calls “covenantal imperatives,” the message of God’s presence before it becomes concretized into law. See also David Hartman, A Living Covenant, op. cit., n. 5. Hartman devotes much of this book to arguing the case for personal autonomy in Judaism. He bases his thesis upon the husband-wife model of the covenant between God and the Jewish people, according to which God, the covenantal lover of the Jewish people, wants His beloved to achieve the fullest possible dignity and autonomy. Hartman’s theological program is a rich one; nevertheless, he does not distinguish between the various forms of autonomy, and therefore takes evidence for soft autonomy to be evidence for hard autonomy, and evidence for hard epistemic autonomy to be evidence for hard nomic autonomy. Moreover, his exclusive reliance upon the husband-wife model of the covenant excludes certain important dimensions of the relationship between the Jew and God that have been long regarded as at least partially constitutive of that relationship. See my article, “David Hartman,” in Contemporary Jewish Thinkers (Washington, DC: B’nai B’rith, 1992). Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 153 n. 80: “The freedom of halakhic man refers not to the creation of the law itself … but to the realization of the norm in the concrete world.” Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 82. See, generally, 78-82, and also pt. 2 for a fuller description of the role of creativity in Judaism, particularly self-creativity. — 291 —

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abstract theories to account for the universe. The intellectual creativity of halakhic man lies in his capacity to create abstract halakhic models. Unlike the models of the theoretical physicist, however, these halakhic models have normative implications, implications for ordering and transforming the world. Since halakhic man has himself created a model for those very norms, his identification with them is complete. We have a blending of the obligation with self-consciousness ... a union of an outside command with the inner will and conscience of man.… We do not have here a directive that imposes upon man obligations against which he rebels, but delightful commandments which his soul passionately desires. When halakhic man comes to the real world he has already created his ideal a priori image which shines with the radiance of the norm.… And this ideal world is his very own, his own possession; he is free to create in it, to arrive at new insights, to improve and perfect.… Therefore he is free and independent in his normative understanding.53

This model of (soft nomic, haeretic, and possibly hard epistemic) personal autonomy is embedded in R. Soloveitchik’s rich portrait of halakhic man. While powerful in its own right, its applicability to nonhalakhic scholars is somewhat limited. Very few halakhic Jews, even scholars, can approach the sort of wide-ranging abstract talmudic analysis necessary to embody the vast freedom and creativity R. Soloveitchik portrays. Hence, very few Jews will have the capacity to identify with the halakhic norms in the way R. Soloveitchik describes. Although R. Soloveitchik’s model is an important one, it cannot (and almost certainly wasn’t intended to) provide an inclusive theological basis for personal autonomy in Judaism.54 53 54

Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 65-66. See chapter VII of this volume. In R. Soloveitchik, “Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition 7 (1964-1965), scientific and technological achievement are theologically affirmed. A careful reading of the text will show, however, that the Adam I/Adam II distinction provides no grounds for a religious affirmation of nomic and haeretic autonomy; at most, epistemic autonomy is affirmed. Moreover, Adam II submits his “self’ in sacrifice to the covenantal community, a religious impulse quite distant from autonomy. I have, therefore, concentrated here on Halakhic Man. A fuller treatment of the subject would explore in some detail the “Lonely Man of Faith” essay, as well as several others. See my “Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith” (with David Singer), Modern Judaism (1982), for — 292 —

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At this point I should like to sketch out a different theological model, one which would provide this sort of inclusive theological basis for the role of personal autonomy in Jewish life, and which is designed to be helpful to us later as well, when we consider the role of halakhah in light of the kind of affirmation of soft personal autonomy I have argued for.55 This approach, which is a kind of theistic humanism, is grounded in the doctrine of imago dei. According to this doctrine, human beings were created in the image of God, from which it follows that since God is all good, all human characteristics must be essentially good as well. This is, of course, not to say that people cannot do evil, since they obviously do. Rather, each human characteristic, while essentially good, has the capacity to degenerate into evil if not given proper attention.56 Samuel, in this famous midrash, appears to have taken a similar view: And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good [Genesis 1:31]. R. Nahman said in the name of Samuel: “Behold it is very good” —  that is the yetzer ha-ra (will to evil). But is the yetzer ha-ra good? That is astonishing! Yet were it not for the yetzer ha-ra man would not build homes, or take wives, or propagate, or engage in business.57

Samuel thus regards even the yetzer ha-ra as good. Presumably, this is not to say that all human characteristics are equally good, but only that they are all inherently good. One way of ranking the goodness of human characteristics may be the extent to which they match the basic description of God’s attributes as expressed in the thirteen middot. We shall soon consider another, perhaps more important way.

55

56 57

a lengthy discussion of the overall philosophical views of R. Soloveitchik. See chapter IV of this volume, in which I spell out this approach in slightly greater detail. Given space constraints, I am unable here to locate this theological sketch within the classic sources, or within any theological traditions. It should be apparent, however, that my approach owes a great deal to the thought of Samson Raphael Hirsch, the nineteenth-century neo-Orthodox German thinker and communal leader. For a discussion of this issue, and for a number of important references to Hirsch’s writings, see I. Grunfeld’s introduction to Horeb, vol. 1 (London: Soncino, 1961), lxxxilxxxiv and lxxxix-xcvii. This distinction, of course, requires far more elaboration than is possible here. Bereshit Rabbah 9:9. — 293 —

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In any case, if all human characteristics are essentially good, it further stands to reason that to express and develop those characteristics is inherently good as well, since in doing so one is expressing and developing that which is essentially God-like. Thus, for example, it is inherently good to refine and express human capacities for art, music, or just plain thinking, and they should therefore be pursued for their own sakes, and not only as a means to a higher spiritual end.58 It is at precisely this juncture that theistic humanism parts company with secular humanism. To claim that expressing human qualities is a good is not to claim that it is an unqualified good; put differently, to say that expressing human qualities is an end in itself is not to say that it is only an end in itself and not also a means to some higher end. For the theist, only God can be an end in Himself. Anything else is idolatry. If a source of value existed apart from God, then God’s value would be partially dependent upon that source. This, of course, is inconsistent with traditional theism: at the very heart of the classical monotheistic belief in God is the belief that only He can be a source of value. Therefore, to claim that developing the human capacity to think is an end in itself cannot be to claim that it is only an end, that its value is self-sufficient. Rather, the theistic humanist would maintain that it must also be pursued as a means to the highest of goods, to that which is an end in itself, namely to God. For the theistic humanist, therefore, while it is inherently good to express and develop human capacities, this is only one good among many, subordinate to the highest good whereby all other goods in life are measured and ordered. To the extent that the pursuit of lower order goods impinges upon the pursuit of God, then the value of pursuing that lower order good is diminished, even nullified. Thus, although the capacity to be aggressive is a human trait and therefore good — God Himself is described in Exodus 15:3 as a “man of war” — nevertheless, like all other human characteristics its expression is not an unqualified good, that is, it is not good in all contexts. Indeed, in most instances 58

In chapter IV, I suggest that this thesis can be extended to account for what I call there the liberal attitude towards bodily pleasure, which one finds in certain rabbinic and medieval sources. — 294 —

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the expression of aggressiveness would on balance be wrong, precisely because in most instances, motivated by selfishness, egoism, and the like, it subverts the higher order pursuit of God. We can now see how the doctrine of imago dei provides a theological model that affirms the value of personal autonomy, while situating it within the overall constellation of Jewish values. We have been considering the question of personal autonomy largely within a rationalist framework. Within that framework, human reason is that human characteristic which most mirrors God. All forms of autonomy express human reasoning, the thinking through on one’s own of how one should behave and what kind of life one should lead. Moreover, God is, after all, the very paradigm of the autonomous being. For both these reasons, then, autonomy in its various forms would surely be a high-ranking good. Nevertheless, it is not only an end in itself; it must also be pursued as a means to some higher end, an end intimately related to God and defined by Him in His Torah. In our terms this point accounts for the different approaches we found in the sources between hard and soft autonomy. In order to explore this more fully, however, we need to return to what is perhaps the strongest internal argument against the value of personal autonomy in halakhic Judaism.

HALAKHAH, PERSONAL AUTONOMY, AND PLURALISM At the very outset of this chapter I pointed out that the halakhic system seems to govern every detail of Jewish behavior, down to the order in which one cuts one’s fingernails. Isn’t this abstract philosophical discussion of the value of autonomy, then, utterly belied by the reality of the halakhic life? Why is the halakhah so all-embracing, and reliance on halakhic authorities so extensive, if autonomy is really valuable? A number of points need to be made in response. First, it is simply mistaken to construe halakhah to be as all-embracing as this argument would have it appear. After all, what percentage of the typical Jew’s time is actually spent praying, studying Torah, and eating matzah on Passover? The fact is that most of one’s waking hours are spent at work, or with one’s family. Certainly these situations call for obedience to appropriate standards of behavior: it is wrong to cheat at work, for — 295 —

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example, or hurt a spouse’s feelings. Nevertheless, for great stretches of the day each individual must decide for himself how he will work, with what commitment, how warm he will be toward his children, how much time he will spend working for good causes, and so on. There is thus far more freedom than one might at first suspect. Related to this point is another: there is in fact a whole range of Jewish categories that are normative but nonhalakhic, and which serve to orient the way in which each Jew will decide on his own to fill in these stretches of time. These categories include such values as lifnim me-shurat ha-din (acting within the line of the law), kedoshim teheyu (be sacred), hasidut (piety), and so on.59 I have suggested elsewhere that lifnim meshurat ha-din, which taken loosely has extremely broad ramifications, is best construed as an extra-halakhic category, and represents what might be called a Jewish ethic of virtue as against a Jewish ethic of action. That is, halakhah governs behavior or action. But God directs His norms not only to the things Jews do, but to the kind of person He wants each Jew to be, the kinds of virtues he expects each Jew to embody. There are, to paraphrase Bahya ibn Pakuda, obligations of the limbs and obligations of the heart. Both kinds of obligations are mitzvot, but only quantifiable obligations of the body — of behavior — are, properly speaking, halakhah. The rest reflect God’s expectations about the kind of human beings He wants us to be. Are we generous or stingy, temperamental or easygoing, diligent or lazy? While the halakhah addresses certain behaviors that may reflect these qualities (e.g., giving a specified percentage of one’s income to charity), God also addresses each Jew as a human being and, via the categories of lifnim me-shurat hadin and others like them, commands the Jew to embody certain virtues, virtues which will naturally flow over into certain forms of behavior. Nevertheless, it is the virtues rather than the behaviors which are the subject of God’s norm. How each individual embodies those norms, to 59

For an extensive listing and detailed discussion of these categories, and this issue generally, from within a classical perspective, see Shaarei Talmud Torah, 55-91. An analysis of this subject is extremely important, and quite relevant to this undertaking, but unfortunately impossible in this chapter. For a discussion of an aspect of this problem, see my article, “Jewish Ethics,” in the Encyclopedia of Ethics (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 647-653. — 296 —

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what extent, in what context and in what ways, is necessarily left up to each individual to decide. The normative life is not coextensive with the halakhic life, and that huge extra-halakhic side of life is ample domain for the serious expression of personal autonomy.60 It should also be noted that the Jewish people, and hence the halakhah they live by, has a history. The halakhic life of the Israelite in the desert was different from the halakhic life of the Jew of Samuel’s time, which in turn was quite different from the halakhic life of the Jew living in fifth-century Babylonia, and so on. Changing circumstances gave rise to new halakhic needs, which became embodied in the form of takkanot, gezerot, halakhically sanctioned humrot, and other mechanisms. Thus was halakhah extended and further quantified. A good example of this quantification phenomenon is the first mishnah in Pe’ah, which teaches of the obligation to study Torah but does not prescribe the amount of time one should devote to it. By the Middle Ages, however, Maimonides could write that each Jew should study Torah nine hours a day.61 The pressure to quantify is a persistent one in halakhah for a variety of context-specific as well as general reasons. One of the most important of these general reasons is the evergrowing concern on the part of halakhists that each new generation is not quite up to the achievements of the previous one. It is worth pointing out, therefore, that halakhah in its earlier and less, so to speak, worried form might have allowed for even more autonomy than the halakhah does as it presents itself today. Insurance policies necessarily constrain. A further point: since, as we have argued, soft personal autonomy is indeed affirmed by at least one important Jewish tradition, it would surely be of great value to be able to make halakhic decisions on one’s own, without depending upon others, and with the creativity and autonomy so eloquently described by R. Soloveitchik. Of course, where the necessary skills are not achieved, it is certainly justifiable to have recourse to a 60

61

See my article, “Jewish Ethics,” op cit. This is, of course, no more than a summary of a complicated subject. The approach I take here is different from the one taken by Aharon Lichtenstein in his “Is There an Ethic Independent of Halakha?” reprinted in Contemporary Jewish Ethics, ed. M. Kellner (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1978), 102-123. Mishneh Torah, Talmud Torah 1:14. — 297 —

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halakhic expert, and to abide by his halakhic opinion, in much the same way that it is justifiable to have recourse to expert medical opinion when in need of medical care. Still, to the extent that halakhic Jews are unable to arrive at their own halakhic decisions, they fail to fully realize the value of personal autonomy (not to mention Torah study). Finally, and here we come to the very heart of the matter, historical Judaism presents not a single, unitary conception of the good, but multiple conceptions of the good. The good for some sacred Jewish figures has been intellectual knowledge of God; for others it has been ecstatic union with Him. For some the good has been making life better for fellow human beings; for others it has been furthering Jewish national aspirations. All of these conceptions of the good — and there are more to add to the list — have been embodied in Jewish hagiography by varying saintly figures, and all have been fervently endorsed by classical Jewish sources. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are taken by the rabbinic tradition to embody the lives of loving-kindness, service to God, and intellectual knowledge of His Torah, respectively. The mystical ecstasy sought by such figures as Abulafia is quite different from the sober Torah knowledge sought by Rashi, the philosophic knowledge sought by Maimonides, or the national salvation sought by Jepthah. Each of these figures as enshrined in the tradition clearly maintained a different conception of the good, and from these widely varying conceptions of the good there flowed widely varying patterns of life. Rabbi Simon Bar Yohai was so intensely involved in Torah study that he was under no obligation to pray.62 On the other hand, the “early pietists” described in the baraita prayed nine hours a day; their Torah knowledge was miraculously preserved.63 Surely the lives of the heroes of the Book of Judges (whatever faults they had, they were portrayed in the Bible as largely heroic figures) were quite different from the lives of Rashi, the Tosafists, and the Gaon of Vilna. Different conceptions of the good thus yield widely divergent life-plans, and halakhic Judaism does not mandate any one of them. 62 63

Shabbat 11a. Berachot 32b. — 298 —

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It should be stressed that this is not simply a function of historical change, in which for historical reasons new models gain ascendancy and eclipse older ones. While this surely occurred, it is likely that within each major historical period itself multiple models existed, if not always in practice, then at least in theory. The following derash suggests as much, at least for the rabbinic period: “Like goats on the grass”: Just like these goats go down on the grass and bring it up, some [grass] is green, other grass is red, some is black and some is white. So it is with the words of the Torah. There are those who have great analytic capacities; those who possess wide knowledge; those who are righteous; those who are pious; [and] those who are proper.…64

The author of this statement did not evaluate the relative merits of these ways of leading a Jewish life (however they are to be interpreted). Each was equally affirmed as deriving from the Torah.65 It might be objected here that the pluralistic model I have proposed, which affirms the possibility of multiple legitimate Jewish conceptions of the good, would probably be denied by many advocates of these individual conceptions themselves. For example, Maimonides explicitly argues against what we today might call a Litvak conception of the good, according to which knowledge of (nonphilosophical) Torah is the highest of Jewish goods; similarly, advocates of the Litvak conception of the good have argued vigorously against the Maimonidean conception. According to the thesis advocated here, is there no truth of the matter? Are they all equally good? If they aren’t all equally good, how then does one argue in favor of one position while conceding the “legitimacy” of the others, particularly for the rationalist, who would be committed to some form of rational adjudication?66 These problems inhere in all pluralistic models, and it would be impossible in the context of this particular essay to analyze the matter fully. Nevertheless, several preliminary points are in order. 64 65

66

Sifre to Deuteronomy 306. See Shaarei Talmud Torah, 63-64 n. 22, where other sources are cited reflecting the same idea. I am grateful to Professor David Shatz for raising these issues with me. See too chapter IX of this volume. — 299 —

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First, my argument here is primarily a historical one. The raw data of Jewish history unequivocally show that multiple conceptions of the good were embraced by Jewish figures whose centrality to Judaism has been endorsed by serious constituents of the Jewish normative tradition. My claim is that the historically conscious advocate of any of these positions would be forced by the weight of Jewish history to advocate his position nonexclusivistically. Certainly, many partisans of a particular conception of the good have been exclusivistic, but many of these partisans were not historically conscious in the modern sense, often because they lived in premodern times. Historical consciousness has forever altered the contours of Jewish thought. Second, to concede that the Jewish tradition embraces multiple conceptions of the good is not to concede that these conceptions are all equally good. The contemporary Maimonidean would still argue that knowledge of God is superior to all other goods, but unless he wanted to write off such figures as Rashi, who was a model for millions of serious Jews, he would be forced to concede that knowledge of nonphilosophic Torah is sufficiently good to justify devoting one’s life to its attainment, even if in so doing one forfeits the superior good, philosophical knowledge of God. The question, however, remains: what theological or philosophical reasons could justify this apparently paradoxical position? Oddly enough, it may well be that a theological framework provides sounder grounds for justifying a pluralistic but hierarchical stance than would a secular, non-theological framework. God, as recorded in sacred Jewish literature, revealed Himself in many guises throughout human history: lawgiver, warrior, lover of the Jewish people, source of wisdom, helper of the needy, and so on. In Aristotelian/Maimonidean terms, God exhibits multiple attributes of action. The obligation to imitate God, a linchpin of Jewish theology, is thus a complex matter. First, which aspect of God is most essentially Him such that we should devote most of our energies to emulating that aspect over the others? After all, we can’t do everything equally well. This is an essentially theological question. Second, which aspect of God is it most appropriate for human beings in general, or for specific individuals in particular, to emulate? This turns on the answers to questions about human nature — 300 —

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and society, and the personal characteristics of individual people, and is partially a theological question, and partially a social scientific one. To argue for a particular conception of the good in the language of imitatio dei is at least in part to argue over what God essentially is, or to argue over what aspect of Him it is most appropriate for Jews generally, or for the chooser particularly, to emulate. Now there are surely grounds to advocate one particular view of what God most essentially is, or what it is most appropriate for the Jew to emulate, as the works of Jewish philosophers, kabbalists, or masters of Jewish ethics amply demonstrate. These may be theological and philosophical, or social scientific and psychological, grounds; the argument may even be based upon personal religious experience. But whatever the grounds, in a theistic system criteria for evaluating conceptions of the good are clearly available. However, to argue that God is essentially a saviour of the needy, for example, as opposed to a knower of truth, is not to deny that God is, in some sense, both. The same holds when we ask what it is most appropriate to emulate in God. In neither case do we deny that these alternatives are indeed God’s attributes of action as recorded in the sacred texts of Judaism. Even though they may fail to capture what God essentially is, therefore, it would not be unreasonable to think that they are worthy of emulation, perhaps worthy of devoting one’s life to their achievement. Whatever one’s conception of the paramount divine attribute, God also is the others: God is a saviour of the needy, and a knower of wisdom, and a warrior. It turns out, then, that in a theological framework one can simultaneously affirm multiple conceptions of the good and provide grounds for arguing that one of these conceptions is superior to the rest, whether for the Jewish people generally or for the individual Jew. I argued earlier that the doctrine of imago dei may serve to ground a Jewish humanism. It seems to me that its sister doctrine, imitatio dei, may serve to ground a sister thesis, that of a Jewish hierarchical pluralism. This is of course no more than the barest sketch of a response to the paradoxes of pluralism, but one which for the purposes of this chapter will have to suffice. To return to our central concern, personal — 301 —

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autonomy and Judaism, it is my contention that the role and value of (soft) personal autonomy makes itself most powerfully felt in the choice each individual makes of a personal conception of the good. If historical Judaism affirms the possibility of different conceptions of the good, then it is up to each individual Jew to choose his own. He may choose intellectual achievement of varying sorts, the via contemplativa; or he may choose the via activa, a life of social action, devotion to family and friends or Jewish national advancement; or he may choose a life of intense spirituality of varying forms. This freely — indeed autonomously — chosen personal conception of the good will fashion his life until the end of his days, because the lifeplan he constructs will flow from the personal conception of the good he has chosen. Despite this vast freedom to shape one’s life, however, autonomy is not unlimited, nor should it be, for all the reasons put forward earlier in this chapter against an uncritical affirmation of autonomy. Although Judaism affirms multiple conceptions of the good, it also affirms the thesis that there is only one highest good. While intellectual perfection or social service may be ends in themselves, goods in their own right, they must also be pursued as means to the highest end, and that highest end, that good of goods, is of course God. Thus, for example, the pursuit of intellectual perfection, while good in itself, is not wholly good unless it also has the effect of yielding better knowledge of God or His Torah. If it has the effect of distancing one from knowledge of God or His Torah, then whatever inherent good it has is outweighed by the greater evil of distance from God. Similarly, where the pursuit of autonomy, while good in itself, results in beliefs, feelings, and actions that are independent of God Himself, a kind of rebellion against Him, then autonomy’s inherent good is outweighed by the greater evil of such results. The theistic dimension thus provides an overarching conception of the highest good, which in turn orients and shapes each individual’s personal conception of what can never be more than a penultimate good. It places all lower order goods, including autonomy, in proper perspective. It also grounds the great divide between the religious conception of personal choice, and that of contemporary secular — 302 —

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liberalism and humanism, which tolerate multiple conceptions of the good, but which provide no means for ordering or shaping them. What is left for secular liberalism, then, is the realm of fractured moral discourse, with different conceptions of the good competing for social sanction, and with no means to adjudicate these differences.67 But what prevents each individual Jew from veering off on his own, severing the bond between his personal conception of the good and God? It is here, I would argue, that halakhah plays a decisive role. Halakhah, on the model I have been exploring here, serves three discrete and critical functions. First, it serves to prevent precisely this dissociation. We can sometimes get so passionately caught up in our pursuit of knowledge or our pursuit of social justice that we lose sight of the religious dimension to that pursuit. Halakhah reinforces the individual’s link with God. As consuming as my work for the needy is, I must still pray in the morning. Halakhah thus sustains the theistic perspective on life. Second, halakhah helps to rule out of bounds certain possible conceptions of the good. Not every conception of the good can be affirmed in a theistic context. Hedonism, for example, ethical egoism, or radical individualism, are ruled out of the Jewish constellation of goods by virtue of halakhic requirements for charity, Torah study, fasting, and so on. Finally, and perhaps most important, halakhah serves to prevent the exclusion of certain goods by excessive preoccupation with others. One ought never to be so preoccupied with Torah study, for example, that one fails to attend to the needs of the starving. The image of the ivory-towered scholar insensitive to the needs of real people is unfortunately all too often justified. Halakhah thus legislates a set of minimum requirements for the complete Jewish life, preventing an obsession with one virtue from leading to the neglect of another. The need for the halakhic system, in the end, reflects the theistic origin of Judaism, its conception of the highest of goods that orders all other goods. The thesis of hard autonomy in all its dimensions thus could never be reconciled with a theistic system, in which religious 67

See MacIntyre, After Virtue, especially his introduction and chap. 1. — 303 —

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authority, via revelation and halakhah, provides the critical link between varying conceptions of the good and God Himself. Within the theological model I have proposed, it is thus entirely to be expected that hard autonomy runs into the kinds of difficulties we discussed earlier in some detail. Within this theological model, however, the good of soft personal autonomy is indeed affirmed. Each individual Jew may choose his own personal conception of the good, and he may choose among the myriad ways in which to carry out that conception throughout his life. Indeed, the thesis of soft personal autonomy affirms the value of making that choice, and of taking responsibility for its consequences.

— 304 —

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--------------------------------- Chapter XI  ----------------------------------

The Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources: A Philosophical Analysis of the Halakhic Sources* I What is Jewish ethics? Is there a distinct academic discipline under the rubric of “Jewish studies” or “Jewish philosophy” which can properly be called “Jewish ethics”? The answer to these two related questions is more elusive than one might think. Indeed, it has recently been argued that there really is no such thing as Jewish ethics at all.1 On the one hand, if a principle of action is truly ethical, then it must be universal, and if it is universal, it cannot be distinctively Jewish. On the other hand, if Jewish ethics is really halakhah in disguise, as so many writers in the field of medical ethics, for example, seem to believe, then why bother with the disguise if one can get the real thing? While it would be impossible, in the context of this essay, to chart a full-fledged theoretical course that would carry us safely past this Scylla and Charybdis of Jewish ethics,2 these problems in a sense constitute the essay’s subtext. What I shall in effect be proposing here is one way of doing Jewish ethics (amongst others) that, it seems to me, slips between the two disciplinary perils. My treatment of the problem *

1

2

I am grateful to Prof. Dov I. Frimer for referring me to a number of the contemporary responsa cited in this paper, and for his insightful comments on an earlier draft. Dr. Ronnie Warburg also made several valuable suggestions. Abridged versions of the paper were read before the New York Jewish Theology Group and the Association for Jewish Studies Conference in Boston. The comments I received on both those occasions proved most helpful. Menachem Kellner, “Reflections on the Impossibility of Jewish Ethics,” Bar-Ilan 22-23 (1987). For a somewhat fuller treatment of the question, see my article “Jewish Ethics,” in The Encyclopedia of Ethics (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1992). — 305 —

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of allocating scarce medical resources, quite apart from its critical importance, is thus intended to be a case study in a particular approach to the enterprise of Jewish ethics. The methodology advocated here involves the analysis of classical Jewish texts, largely of a halakhic nature, in light of moral theory. Broadly speaking (I shall formulate this more precisely below), the idea is to use moral theory to explain in some sense the positions taken by the halakhic sources. In so doing, Jewish ethics is engaged not as a normative enterprise, in which context the issues raised above become problematic, but rather as an explanatory enterprise that uses the philosophical tools of modern ethical theory. But is this legitimate? Is it legitimate to use the categories of modern ethical theory to explain ancient or medieval texts, whose authors clearly could not have thought in terms of these new categories? Doesn’t modern historical consciousness preclude the sort of textual interpretation characteristic of, for example, the medieval Jewish philosophers, who used Greek philosophical categories to explain biblical texts, an enterprise very similar to the one proposed here? While this question too cannot be fully treated in the context of this essay, it does require at least some attention. Classical texts of any period may be approached from a variety of perspectives. The philologist has one set of concerns, the formcritical analyst quite another. The social historian asks certain kinds of questions, the intellectual historian others. No one of these approaches has an intellectual monopoly; each contributes in its own way to the fullest possible understanding of the text. Indeed, no approach is entirely self-sufficient. The intellectual historian who ignores the findings of the philologist does so at his own peril. The methodology employed here is philosophical and jurisprudential in character. The philosopher or jurisprude who analyzes a legal text makes no direct historical or philological claims about the text, although the tools of such analyses will certainly be used where they are available. Rather, the aim of this interpreter is to explain the text, by recourse to philosophical or jurisprudential theories, distinctions, and concepts. Of course, the notion of “explanation” here itself needs explanation. Do we mean by explaining a text the recovery of — 306 —

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the author’s original intent? Recent hermeneutic theory has shown just how difficult, if not impossible, all attempts at recovering an author’s intent are. This general hermeneutic problem is multiplied a hundredfold if what one seeks to do in the explanatory process is employ the latest legal or philosophical theory in understanding an ancient rabbi’s teachings. Clearly, the categories and concepts of contemporary theory are entirely outside the pale of his intellectual framework, no matter how brilliant he might have been. One could argue, then, that the traditional academic disciplines of jurisprudence, and of the history of philosophy generally, are defeated by the demon of anachronism. Elsewhere I have taken this point up, and noted that even historical treatments of texts seek to explain authorial positions by recourse to historical forces of which the author may have been entirely ignorant.3 Historical forces often operate outside the pale of human awareness. In that essay I suggest that the philosophical explanation of a text is modeled after the scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon: in both instances, the researcher seeks to account for the data at his disposal — in the one case, the results of scientific experiments, in the other, statements made by the same author — by recourse to an explanatory theory. Textual explanation, in this view, is largely justificatory; that is, the philosopher or jurisprude will “explain” Rabbi Akiva’s assertion by justifying it. Certain concepts or theories will be trotted forward to show just how much sense Rabbi Akiva’s position makes. Such an effort is further strengthened by the scope of the explanatory theory — by the extent to which it is able to account for other statements Rabbi Akiva or members of his school might have made. This account, however, needs further refinement, since, in an important sense, it leaves Rabbi Akiva curiously out of the picture. A theory might be resoundingly successful in justifying Rabbi Akiva’s views, and it may even have the requisite scope, yet if we know on other grounds that Rabbi Akiva would likely have vigorously denied it were he asked (for example, because it assumes theological positions which 3

See “Some Tensions in the Jewish Attitude Toward the Taking of Human Life,” chapter XII of this volume. — 307 —

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an ancient rabbi would likely have regarded as heretical), then there ought to be something seriously wrong with applying the theory to Rabbi Akiva. Yet, as formulated above, there wouldn’t be. I would like to suggest here that the link to Rabbi Akiva may be at the level of pretheoretic intuitions. Underlying most — probably all  —  complex philosophical or jurisprudential theories are certain fundamental, undifferentiated intuitions. The natural law theorist has one way of looking at the law, the legal positivist quite another. These basic intuitions can be formulated in one or another of the countless ways in which natural law theory or legal positivism have been put forward over the years. These complications arise as the theorist seeks to make the theory ever more responsive to a growing body of empirical data, logical or philosophical arguments, and more nuanced or deeper theoretical concepts. While these complications and the differences between formulations are often critical, the point which should be emphasized is that in many instances, at the deepest and most fundamental level, they are variations on a single intuitive theme. Sometimes, of course, the different formulations themselves reflect different intuitions. But in any case, it is the intuition which gives rise to what often becomes a highly complex and exceedingly sophisticated theory. While the concept of a pretheoretic intuition itself requires further analysis (What, exactly, is it? What is its relation to the linguistic categories needed for its formulation? What is the precise relation between a pretheoretic intuition and the theory which is its articulation?), it seems fair to say that most of us have — if the word may be used — an intuitive grasp of the concept. For our purposes here, this will have to suffice. Thus, attributing a sophisticated theory to an ancient source is not anachronistic if the theory is an attempt to formulate and capture certain fundamental legal or philosophical intuitions, and if those intuitions are such as could have been held by the ancient source. This is, of course, provided that the explainer is not claiming that the source actually intended, or could have intended, the modern formulation. In brief, the position proposed here is that a classical source is well explained by a modern theory to the extent that the explanation satisfies three conditions: — 308 —

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1. The theory justifies the source, showing why one would want to take the position it takes. 2. The theory has scope, in that it provides an explanatory framework linking up numerous assertions by the source, or members of his school. 3. The theory is a successful formulation of an intuition or set of intuitions about the issue in question, such that the source could have had those intuitions. Where there is independent evidence that the source did have such intuitions, the explanation is commensurately strengthened. While this concept of explanation, and the methodology it suggests, has been only cursorily sketched here, I shall assume it for the remainder of this paper, if only so that we can proceed to its more substantive aspects.4

II This concern for methodological issues should not obscure the enormous practical significance of the problem itself. With the advent of all kinds of new experimental medications, organ transplant procedures, and exotic technologies, the question of how these are to be allocated is of acute contemporary importance. Where there are two candidates for a liver transplant and only one liver, or where there are two AIDS victims who are candidates for a limited supply of AZT, who is the lucky 4



See B. Jackson, ed., Modern Research in Jewish Law (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980) for discussions of some methodological issues in Mishpat Ivri. Note in particular the articles by Jackson and Albeck, who draw a parallel between the methodology of Mishpat Ivri and that of the linguist, who formulates rules of grammar as an interpretation of the linguistic intuitions of speakers. This is analogous, too, to moral epistemology, where the moral epistemologist seeks to account for moral intuitions through ethical theory. In stressing the condition of justification I am veering somewhat from this approach. The question of interpreting ancient texts is of course different from interpreting the putative intuitions of some hypothetical moral agent, as it is different from interpreting the linguistic conventions of the speaker who stakes out no position on anything at all, but merely uses the language. For a sophisticated contemporary account of legal interpretation, see Ronald Dworkin’s Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). Dworkin stresses what I call here the justificatory role of interpretation, although in a somewhat different way, drawing upon recent hermeneutic theory. See in particular chaps. 2 and 6-10. — 309 —

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one, and who dies? The problem, of course, is not dependent upon new technologies. Where two accident victims arrive in the emergency room, and there is only one physician available, a classic case of triage, who gets the scarce medical resource — the physician’s attention? The problem as formulated here is one of micro-allocation, selecting from amongst individuals who will live and who will die. There is another level to the problem as well, what has been called the macro-allocation question. How should society at large allocate its health care resources? What percentage of the GNP should be directed toward health care? Should more funds be invested in preventive medicine, in curing exotic diseases, or in making CAT scans available to all community hospitals? This essay will focus only on the micro- rather than the macro-allocation problem. One final point concerning the scope of this paper. By far the most common micro-allocation problems involve a third party, normally a physician, sometimes a health care team or committee, which allocates the scarce medical resource. While this point seems obvious, discussions of the problem in the halakhic context sometimes go astray here, since a good many of the original halakhic sources (such as the travelers case below) involve only two parties. This consideration limits the range of applicable halakhic sources only to those which bear on third-party allocation questions, and hence provides a greater focus to this study. The rabbinic and medieval sources, perhaps not surprisingly, do not address the question directly. Nevertheless, two important morally isomorphic analogues do exist within the halakhic tradition. The first source is one of the classic “life-for-life” texts in the halakhah, the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petura concerning two people traveling on the road with only enough water for one of them. The Talmud records the story as follows: Two people were traveling on the road, and one of them has a flask of water. If both drink, they will both die; if one drinks he will arrive at the town. Ben Petura expounded [darash]: it is better that they both drink and die, and one of them not witness the death of his companion. Until Rabbi Akiva came and taught, “and your brother shall live with you” [Lev. 25:36]. Your life takes precedence over the life of your brother.5 5

TB Baba Metzia 62b. — 310 —

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We shall return to this text shortly. The second set of sources appears in the context of pidyon shevu’yim or zedakka, and relates to the last mishnayot in Horayot. A man takes precedence over a woman when it comes to saving a life and to restoring something lost. A woman takes precedence with regard to provision of clothes and to be redeemed from captivity. When both stand equal chances of being degraded, then the man takes precedence over the woman. A kohen takes precedence over a levi; a levi to a yis’rael; a yis’rael to a mamzer; a mamzer to a ne’sin; a ne’sin to a convert; a convert to a free slave. When [do we say this]? When they are all equal. But if there were a talmid hakham mamzer and a ko’hen gadol a’m ha’aretz, the mamzer talmid hakham takes precedence.6

There is much to say about these mishnayot, which I shall reserve until later. Before beginning an analysis of these sources, however, a brief comment about their interrelationship is in order. Should the system of priorities outlined in Horayot (and related halakhic material not yet mentioned) apply to the dilemma of the travelers? None of the major talmudic commentaries suggest that it should. Why not? One possible answer has to do with ownership. In the travelers case, one of the endangered persons owns the scarce resource. In the Horayot context, we appear to be dealing with a third party who wishes to allocate scarce funds to save a captive or who wishes to save one of two people drowning in a river.7 While this is a distinction of the first importance, according to certain interpretations of the travelers case dispute, it is not relevant, as we shall see. A second distinction, whose significance is not often realized, concerns whether the resource is physically divisible. A quantity of water can be divided in two, and each person can drink half. However, only one person can be redeemed from captivity; there is no half redemption, as there is no half salvation from the raging waters of the

6 7

Horayot 3:7-8. See Bet Yoseph, Yoreh De’ah 251, s.v. ma she’katab. — 311 —

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river. For the purposes of this paper, this distinction will be taken as basic, and the analysis proposed here will be organized around it. In dealing with the travelers case, we shall in effect be dealing with the allocation of divisible scarce resources. The first question that must be addressed is whether or not Ben Petura’s view should be taken as a halakhic pesak. Aaron Enker, in an extremely provocative chapter on life-for-life issues in halakhic sources in his book Hekhrekh ve-Zorech be-Dinei Onshin,8 has suggested that Ben Petura’s position is moral rather than halakhic in nature. That Ben Petura uses the language “it is better that they both drink and die” suggests moral advice, not pesak halakha. This point is further buttressed by the fact that the Rambam, Tur, and Shulhan Arukh delete the law, and that the Maharsha cites it in his hiddushei aggadot rather than in his hiddushei halakhot. If this suggestion is correct, then we really have only one view in halakhah, that of Rabbi Akiva. As will be seen, this point would make some difference in our analysis. While this suggestion is surely an interesting one, it is far from decisive. Insofar as this story is reflected in the halakhic sources, Ben Petura’s position is taken by all the sources to be legal in character. Moreover, and of special significance, the parallel passage to this talmudic debate which appears in Sifra, cited by Enker, suggests otherwise.9 As Enker himself notes, the phrase “it is better that” is not used. Rather, Ben Petura is quoted as saying simply, “they should both drink and die.” At least Sifra’s version of the debate suggests that Ben Petura’s position is legal. It seems safe to assume then, with most commentators, that the argument, at least for Sifra, is halakhic. The question we must now address is: What are they arguing about? What precisely is the logic behind each of the positions? Neither R. Akiva nor Ben Petura explains himself, and so if we are to analyze the text with an eye to getting at a Jewish view of the allocation of scarce medical resources, we must turn to the halakhic tradition itself. How did the halakhic sources understand the debate, bracketing for our purpose the question of whether the text itself means those understandings? My own survey of the sources revealed at least five and perhaps six 8 9

Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1977. Sifra (Torat Kohanim), Leviticus, Be-Har 5 (in Weiss’s edition, [Vienna, 1862], 109). — 312 —

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different interpretations of the R. Akiva-Ben Petura debate.10 While many are interesting in their own right, and a thorough treatment of the halakhic tradition evolving out of the Tosephta/Sifra would be a rewarding exercise, only two interpretations are relevant to the question of third-party allocation of scarce medical resources. The first interpretation is that of the great nineteenth-century scholar Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (known as the Ne’tziv).11 Rabbi Abraham Karelitz, popularly known as the Hazon Ish, one of the leading twentieth-century halakhists, appears to take this position as well in one of his works.12 They understand the debate to revolve around the following issue: Suppose A and B are at risk of their lives, and one of two actions, X or Y, can be performed to assist them, either by A or B themselves, or by some third party, C. If X is performed, then the lives of both A and B will be temporarily extended. If Y is performed, then the life of one of them will be permanently saved and the other will face immediate doom. Which is the better choice? Is it better to extend two lives temporarily or to save one life permanently, even where doing so results in the immediate death of the other? Rabbi Akiva, in this explanation, is of the view that it is better to permanently preserve one life, even if at the expense of the other, and thus only one should drink. Ben Petura is of the view that it is better to temporarily extend the lives of both, and therefore both should drink. In the words of the Ne’tziv, explaining Ben Petura, “if both drink, at least they will both live another day or two.… and perhaps by then water will be found.”13 10

11 12

13

Besides those mentioned below in the text, they are: Minhat Hinukh, mitzva 296; Hiddushei R. Hayim ha-Levi al ha-Rambam, 2a; Rabbi Y. Gershuni, Responsa Kol Tsophayikh (Jerusalem, 1980), 391-395. See the fine article “Kedemiyut ve-Adifiyut be-Hatzalat Nefashot le-Or he-Halakha” by S. Dichovsky, Dinei Yisrael, vol. 7 (Tel Aviv), 45-66, in which some of these, as well as other relevant sources, are cited. Rabbi S. B. Werner, Responsa Mishpetai Shmu’el (Jerusalem, 1980), 21-61, provides comprehensive rabbinic treatments of the issue and all its many ramifications. Ha’amek She’ela, She’ilta 147:3. See Hoshen Mishpat, Baba Metzia, Likutim 20, 62a. In his comments on R. Hayyim Soloveitchik’s Hiddushei GRAH al ha-Rambam, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, however, he seems to take another view. See R. Shmuel Vosner, Responsa Shevet ha-Levi, vol. 6, resp. 242. Shelah, par. 147. — 313 —

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As formulated, the logic of the argument is such that it makes no difference whether A, B, or some third party, C, is in possession of the water: Rabbi Akiva’s reasoning, that only one should drink, would apply no matter who had possession of the water, as would Ben Petura’s reasoning, that both should have a temporary extension of life. Possession is relevant only in determining which of the two should drink; were Ben Petura to agree with Rabbi Akiva’s basic logic, that only one should drink, then he too might well agree that it should be the owner of the water who does the drinking. At issue between them is whether one drinks or two drinks, not whether the owner drinks or they both drink. The Hazon Ish in his volume on Hoshen Mishpat is quite explicit in asserting that the debate between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petura is neutral on the question on ownership: “And it appears that if one person has water, and before him are two people dying of thirst, this too depends upon the dispute [between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petura].”14 This analysis of the dispute yields the conclusion that the question of micro-allocating divisible scarce medical resources depends upon the Rabbi Akiva-Ben Petura dispute. Since most are of the view that the halakhah follows Rabbi Akiva,15 only one would receive, say, the scarce medication. Later we shall take up the question of which of the two persons in need of the medication receives it. Before proceeding with our analysis, one final point should be made. On the face of it, Rabbi Akiva’s view makes good common sense: after all, why should both die, when at least one can live? The likelihood that additional water will be found in the middle of a desert, or that more AZT will be miraculously made available, is remote. Aren’t we sacrificing one human life for poor odds? In short, Ben Petura’s position, according to this interpretation of the dispute, is in need of explanation. The second interpretation of the debate relevant to the allocation of scarce medical resources question is that of one of the leading earlytwentieth-century poskim, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski.16 Rabbi 14 15 16

Ibid. See Rif, Rosh, and Meiri ad loc., in Baba Metzia. Ahi’ezer, in Yoreh De’ah 16 (Vilna, 1925), 35. — 314 —

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Eliezer Waldenberg, one of the most influential contemporary poskim in the field of medical halakhah, arrived at a similar conclusion, apparently independently.17 This analysis (particularly as formulated by Rabbi Waldenberg) takes as its starting point an observation of Rabbi Shmuel Edels, in his late-sixteenth-century talmudic commentary,18 to the effect that if A and B were partners in the water, then Rabbi Akiva would agree with Ben Petura that the water should be split between them. Rabbis Grodzinski and Waldenberg reason that Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petura disagree only where one of the two parties owns the water; at issue between them is whether property rights are morally relevant in life-and-death situations. The verse ve-hai ahikha im’kha teaches Rabbi Akiva that A’s ownership of the water is morally relevant, and thus that A keeps it. Ben Petura denies the moral relevance of ownership in life-and-death situations; therefore, for Ben Petura, A and B stand in morally equivalent positions with respect to the water, and they must split it. However, where A and B indisputably stand equal with respect to the water, i.e., where A and B are partners in the water, or where neither A nor B owns the water, then both would agree that the water must be split.19 A similar halakhic result, although for somewhat different reasons, is maintained by Rabbi Zadok ha-Cohen of Lublin in the nineteenth-century,20 and apparently by the Hazon Ish himself, in another treatment of the same subject.21 The direct relevance of this analysis to the allocation of divisible scarce medical resources is obvious. Neither patient A nor patient B owns the scarce medication. C, the physician, would thus be obligated, according to both Rabbi Akiva and Ben Petura, to apportion the medication equally. Let us consider the implications of this pesak. C, the physician, has four alternatives: 17 18 19

20 21

Responsa Ziz Eliezer, vol. 9, chap. 28. Baba Metzia 62b. Rabbi Grodzinski relates this to the question in TB Baba Kamma 60b concerning saving oneself with someone else’s money, and the interpretation of Rashi and the Tosafists ad loc. Ozar ha-Melekh, Yesodei ha-Torah 5:5. Gilyonot le-Hiddushei R. Hayim ha-Levi, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah (B’nei Brak, 1974). — 315 —

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1. He can give all the medication to A. 2. He can give all the medication to B. 3. He can split it between A and B. 4. He can withhold it from both A and B. If C withholds the medication, then both A and B will die soon, say in three hours. If he splits the medication between them, they will both gain a limited reprieve, say they will both live another twelve hours, and then die. If, on the other hand, he gives it all to either A or B, then one will die in three hours and the other will live until 120. Common sense would seem to dictate that C should give all the medication to one of them. After all, if he divides it, then both will get only a short reprieve, whereas if one gets all he will lead a long and blessed life. Nevertheless, according to this authoritative interpretation of the debate everyone would agree that the water/medication must be split. Indeed, some of the most influential twentieth-century poskim take precisely this view.22 This compounds the puzzle raised earlier in discussing the interpretation of the Ne’tziv. If this is counterintuitive, imagine the following: A is a high priest and talmid hakham, a family man and pillar of society. B, on the other hand, is an unmarried drug addict. To whom must C give the medication? None of the poskim cited above make such distinctions. Where the life-saving resource can be split, it must be split even if someone as distinguished as A must lose his life. What explanation can there be for this striking pesak? I would suggest that underlying this thesis is an insight of some significance for halakhah and Jewish ethics. To see this, we must temporarily leave halakhic analysis and consider aspects of general ethical theory.

22

In addition to the authorities cited in the text, see also R. Moshe Shternbukh, Responsa Teshuvot ve-Hanhagot (Jerusalem, 1986), Hoshen Mishpat, resp. 858 (301-302), who takes the same view. A contrary position is taken by Rabbi Y. Unterman, in Shevet Yehuda (Jerusalem, 1955), 18, and Rabbi Moshe S. Shapira in R. Moshe Shmuel ve-Doro (New York, 1964), 236. — 316 —

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III Normative ethics is split down the middle by a great debate between teleologists and deontologists.23 Teleologists (or, as they are sometimes called, consequentialists) maintain that the moral rightness or wrongness of an action is determined exclusively by its consequences, i.e., by the nonmoral good or evil it produces. For example, utilitarianism, the most popular form of teleologism, holds that it is happiness which is the nonmoral good by which the morality of an action is measured. If an action maximizes the sum total of happiness in the world over its alternatives, then it is moral; if it reduces the sum total of happiness in the world relative to its alternatives, then it is immoral. The action in question has no moral features in itself; its morality derives exclusively from what it does in the world. To put it differently, actions are not moral ends in themselves; they are only means to producing some moral (or immoral) end. Deontologists, on the other hand (or, as they are sometimes called, absolutists), maintain that actions are in themselves moral ends; that certain features of the action itself make it right or wrong. Thus, in this view, an action is moral if it is just, keeps a promise, or is truthful. Acting justly is good not because it has wonderful consequences for society; it is good because it has the property of being just, or of conformity to the moral law “Act justly!” In Kantian terms, the action is good if performed out of respect for the moral law, which requires that all humans be treated not only as means to some end, but as ends in themselves. Deontologists take considerations of justice, responsiveness to the moral claims of interpersonal choice situations, and respect for human worth and dignity with radical seriousness. That an action has good consequences for society, or generally maximizes life, is far less important — according to some views, not inherently important at all — than the moral properties of the action itself. In a very perceptive article, Thomas Nagel suggests that the 23

This exposition of the teleologist/deontoiogist debate is drawn from my article “Some Tensions in the Jewish Attitude Toward the Taking of Human Life,” chapter XII of this volume. — 317 —

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difference between the two positions involves more than abstract moral theory.24 Rather, the difference, he suggests, is grounded in fundamentally differing conceptions of what it is to be a moral being operating in human society. Specifically: [Deontologism] is associated with a view of oneself as a small being interacting with others in a large world. The justifications it requires are primarily interpersonal. Utilitarianism is associated with a view of oneself as a benevolent bureaucrat distributing such benefits as one can control to countless other beings with whom one may have various relations or none. The justifications it requires are primarily administrative. The argument between the two may depend upon the priority of these two conceptions.

According to Nagel, then, what is at stake in the deontologist/ teleologist debate is no less than our conception of the very essence of moral agency. The relevance of this debate to the travelers case  —  and to the allocation of divisible scarce medical resources — should be clear. My claim is that deontological ethical theory provides an excellent account of the final halakhic position according to Rabbis Grodzinski and Waldenberg and others, and of the position of Ben Petura, according to the Ne’tziv. The physician is faced with two morally equivalent claims. Justice, says the deontologist, would require treating them equally. Treating the two of them equally means dividing the medication, despite the fact that in doing so each will live only a few more hours. To the teleologist, this is foolish: providing all the medication only to one would enable him to live a full life. Dividing the medication would thus violate the principle “Maximize life!” The deontologist argues, on the other hand, that this principle is a bureaucratic abstraction, imported from outside the choice situation, and is not responsive to the immediate and equal claims of A and B. Despite the consequences of dividing the medication, divide it the physician must. Thus, deontological considerations lead naturally to the halakhic positions discussed above.25 24 25

Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 2 (1972), 123-144. See my article, chapter XII, “Some Tensions in the Jewish Attitude Toward the Taking of Human Life,” for other instances in Jewish sources in which the teleologist/ deontologist debate may be reflected. Note also Ramakh’s puzzle, cited in Keseph — 318 —

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One final point should be made here, about the opposition. Those who disagree with the view explained here as deontological, i.e., those who maintain that the medication should be allocated only to one of the two needy persons, could of course be said to be taking a teleological position. This is perhaps the most obvious interpretation. It should be noted, however, that they might also hold some sort of blend of the two theories, a position some recent ethicists have sought to maintain. As will be seen in the final section of this paper, even those who maintain that the resource should be divided — the view explained here as deontological — do not adopt a pure deontologism. In order to see why this is so, however, we must proceed with our analysis.

IV Up until now we have considered the question of allocating divisible scarce resources. What happens when the life-saving resource is indivisible, when there is only one heart available for transplant, or time enough to save only one person from drowning in the river?26 It is here, I would argue, that the prioritization hierarchies found in the rabbinic sources, most notably the mishnayot in Horayot, and those found in the poskim come into play. That is, considerations such as yihus or sex are relevant only where the resource in question cannot be divided between, for example, the kohen and the yis’rael. Where the

26

Mishna, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 5:5, as to why, according to Rambam, following the Tosephta and Resh Lakish in the Yerushalmi, if heathens come upon a group of Jews, and threaten the lives of the entire group unless they turn over a particular — guiltless — individual, the law is that they must all lose their lives rather than turn over the individual. As Ramakh and many others point out, this seems remarkably counterintuitive: why sacrifice so many lives, when by turning over the individual everyone else can be saved? Here, too, deontological considerations help account for this position, and other related sources. The divisibility or indivisibility of the resource of which I speak here should probably be understood functionally. That is, if the liquid medication can help each one a bit if each receives half, then the resource is divisible. If, on the other hand, the medication can be divided quantitively, but there is a minimum dosage such that if one takes less than that dosage he is not helped at all, then it should not be counted as divisible if the respective portions of medication fall below the effective threshold. I am grateful to Prof. Dov Frimer for this point. — 319 —

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resource can be divided, however, such considerations are irrelevant. My argument for this claim is twofold. First, with respect to the travelers case, where the resource is divisible, the poskim who maintain that the water should be split do not, at least in that context, suggest that yihus or sex is relevant to deciding the allocation. Second, with respect to the sugya in Horayot, the Bet Yoseph cited earlier (n. 7) specifically asserts that when the mishna speaks of le-hahayot (“to save a life”) — i.e., life-for-life situations — it refers to a case of saving one of two people drowning in a river, where the resource is obviously not divisible. Although, as we shall see, the halakhah does apply the prioritization principles to the obligation to provide charity for people in need of sustenance, and normally charity funds are divisible (give one penny to each of two people in need of the meal instead of two pennies only to one), Bet Yoseph specifically asserts that such cases are not life-for-life issues. The only example he has for life-for-life issues is the case of two people drowning in the river.27 My goal in this portion of the paper is to trace the development of the prioritization hierarchies in the halakhic sources from the rabbinic period on down. I shall argue that the halakhic development here takes on a specifiable moral shape. Since my aim is only to draw certain general conclusions about the halakhah’s development, rather than to resolve in a practical way the many complex issues involved, I shall consider only the halakhah’s broad contours, without attempting a fully comprehensive treatment of every relevant source. Let us begin, as we must, with the rabbinic period. An analysis of the most relevant rabbinic sources reveals that six prioritization principles operate in life-for-life situations. 1. Yihus. This category leaps out at the reader from the words of the mishna in Horayot cited earlier: “A kohen takes precedence over a levi; a levi over a yis’rael….” Thus, when faced with a choice between saving someone with a higher yihus value over someone with a lower yihus 27

Presumably, in a case where two people literally on the verge of death from starvation appear simultaneously before someone with only two pennies in his pocket, even for Bet Yoseph, we have a direct analogue to the travelers case/third-party allocation. — 320 —

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value, and only one of the two can be saved, then all other things being equal, the person with the higher yihus value must be saved first. Of course, the qualification “all other things being equal” is of great importance: already in the rabbinic period substantial limitations are placed on yihus as the determining factor in allocating indivisible scarce resources, as we shall soon see. 2. Social need. This category, as well as several others that follow, does not announce itself as such in the rabbinic sources. Nevertheless, certain rabbinic halakhot seem best interpreted as reflecting the categories in question. With respect to the social-need category, the Tosephta, cited in the Talmud on the mishna in Horayot quoted above, asserts that the “mashuah milhama [priest anointed as, in effect, chief chaplain of the army] takes precedence over the se’gan [vice high priest].” No explanation is given in the Tosephta itself, nor in the talmudic discussion in Horayot. Rashi, however, following the Talmud in Nazir 37b, comments ad loc. that the reason is “because the community needs him”: i.e., he is necessary for successful warring, where the survival of the community is at stake. If this interpretation is correct, as it seems to be, the Tosephta is introducing the value of social need into the prioritization hierarchy. That the Tosephta places the king and other officials relatively high on the priority scale suggests a similar idea. There is, of course, no explicit affirmation of this as a category, and therefore no incontrovertible evidence that the category can be applied to other instances or kinds of social need, e.g., persons valuable to society but not especially in times of war; or persons valuable to society in ways other than saving lives, such as political figures, judges, and so on. Nevertheless, generalizing from mashuah milhama is surely not unreasonable. In any case, we do have evidence of the existence of the category, even if we give it the narrowest possible interpretation, and that is the main point. 3. Capacity for mitzvot. Here too, the rabbinic texts do not announce this as a category. Evidence for its existence, however, may be drawn from the mishna’s assertion, cited above, that a man takes precedence over a woman for the purpose of saving a life. No explanation for this claim is provided in the rabbinic period, and it is therefore difficult to know what, precisely, the — 321 —

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rabbis had in mind. The text itself is consistent with the view that gender itself is the functional category. However, the medieval commentators, starting with Maimonides, explain that the reason men are preferred over women is that “men are obligated in all the mitzvot, whereas women in only some of them.”28 This account of the mishnaic ruling seems most reasonable, and in ascribing the category of capacity to perform mitzvot to the rabbis (as distinct from the medievals, where it is explicit), I am assuming it. Here, too, we can ask whether one can generalize for the rabbinic period on the basis of this category to other kinds or instances of capacity-to-perform-mitzvot differences. Thus, faced with a choice between saving a male with Down syndrome and a normal male, what would the rabbis say? I would argue that the generalization is a safe one, even safer than with respect to the social-need category. The distinctions which might be drawn between the male/female and normal/abnormal choices seem far less significant than the distinctions to be drawn between mashuah milhama/vice high priest and, e.g., surgeon general/politician choices.29 4. Talmid hakham. The classical expression of the value placed upon Torah learning from the rabbinic period on down is the mishna in Horayot cited above: “A bastard learned in the Torah takes precedence over an ignorant high priest.” According to biblical law, a bastard may not even marry into the Jewish community (except to another bastard), and thus with respect to yihus is at the bottom of the social barrel, particularly in light of the fact that yihus is largely a social institution whose impact is most sharply felt in the context of marriage. A high priest, on the other hand, stood at the very top of the social scale during rabbinic times. Nevertheless, when faced with a choice between saving the life of an ignorant high priest and a bastard talmid hakham, the mishna teaches that the talmid hakham takes precedence. While this teaching may be understood in the historical context of the Pharisee-Sadducee conflict and the attendant Pharisaic critique of priestly corruption in Roman times, as well as the widespread distrust of the am ha’aretz on the part of rabbinic scholars, its force, as well as its subsequent 28 29

Pherush ha-Mishna, ad loc. Rabbi Ya’akov Emden, discussed below, draws out the same conclusions. — 322 —

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impact on rabbinic Judaism, should not be underestimated. One might suggest that the category of talmid hakham should be seen as a subset of the category of social need rather than as a separate category of its own. After all, the talmid hakham performs a critical function in Jewish life: who else would teach the Jewish people the Torah and provide decisions for daily life?30 I would argue, however, that a distinction should be drawn between social utility and religious utility. The text from which the rabbinic category of social utility is derived seems best characterized as relating to specifically social rather than purely religious concerns. The category of talmid hakham, on the other hand, is clearly closer to the religious than the social, even if valued for its utility. I would also argue that the value of the talmid hakham is not merely a subset of a larger class of religious values, which would include, for example, the capacity to perform mitzvot. Rather, it seems best to construe Torah knowledge, as understood by the rabbis, as an end in itself; and hence it is best seen as a category unto itself. My argument is threefold. First, the mishna lists the talmid hakham separately from the other categories. Secondly, throughout rabbinic literature, extraordinary value is placed on Torah knowledge and study. Third, and especially important, is a second proof-text which should be cited as evidence for the talmid hakham category in rabbinic literature: the striking comment in the Jerusalem Talmud on the mishna in Horayot attributed to R. Yehoshua b. Levi in the name of R. Hanina b. Antignos: [When faced with a choice between] the life of an am ha’aretz and clothing for the wife of a talmid hakham, clothing for the wife of the talmid hakham takes precedence over the life of the am ha’aretz, because of the dignity of the talmid hakham.31

The value of Torah knowledge is here extended even to the wife of the talmid hakham, whose mere clothing takes precedence over the very life of one ignorant of the Torah. Bracketing for present purposes the moral problematic of this teaching, it graphically illustrates the power 30 31

See Rambam’s Pherush ha-Mishna, loc. cit. TY Horayot 3:7. — 323 —

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of the talmid hakham value. Moreover, it suggests that the value here is just that — talmid hakham — rather than religious utility generally. No similar claim is made for other religious or social values: clothing for the wife of the mashuah milhama, the nonignorant high priest, or the hazzan required to enable the community to satisfy its prayer obligations is not given precedence over the life of an am ha’aretz.32 5. Relative degree of need. This category is derived from the mishna in Horayot. A man takes precedence over a woman when it comes to saving a life and to restoring something lost. A woman takes precedence with regard to provision of clothing and to be redeemed from captivity. When both stand equal chances of being degraded, then the man takes precedence over the woman.

Degradation here refers to rape; in the case of males, the rape is homosexual.33 In general, the mishna teaches, a woman should be redeemed before a man because the likelihood of female rape is greater than male rape, and therefore the female stands in greater danger than the male. Where the likelihood of rape is equal, then the male must be redeemed first, since, as the commentators explain, it is likely that the male will experience greater anguish due to the abnormality of the act.34 The mishna thus seems to be using the criterion of relative degree of danger in determining who should be saved first: Where it is more likely that X will be harmed than Y, X is saved first. Where the probabilities are equal, other considerations are taken into account. It should be noted that the harm from which X and Y are to be saved here is not imminent death (lehahayot) but physical and psychological harm. The prioritization scheme is 32

33 34

For additional evidence of the category of talmid hakham, see: (1) Baba Metzia 2: II, which decides that if one’s father and rabbi are in captivity, the rabbi should be redeemed first, unless the father is a hakham; (2) TB Baba Batra 8a, where Rabbi Yehuda ha-Hanassi provided food from his storage houses during a famine only to those learned in the Torah; (3) the Tosephta in Horayot, cited above, according to which saving a hakham takes precedence over saving a king. Cf. Rashi ad loc. See, e.g., the comments ad loc. of Rambam, R. Obadiah of Bartenura (Pherush haRa’av), and Tiferet Yis’rael. — 324 —

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here being used more broadly than in strict life-for-life situations. It should be noted here that a narrower reading of the mishna would suggest a somewhat more limited formulation of this category: instead of relative degree of need, we could speak of relative degree of danger. The mishna, strictly speaking, is prioritizing only in cases of imminent physical danger. Nevertheless, the category has been formulated more broadly here because there is other evidence from the rabbinic period which prioritizes on the basis of need, even where no danger is present. Thus, the following passage: Two boats that are passing in the river … where one is loaded and the other not, the unloaded one should be preceded by the loaded one.…35

Meiri’s explanation seems to be the simple reading of the text: whichever can least tolerate the delay should take precedence, just as a sick person takes precedence over a healthy person. A loaded ship normally needs to get to the port sooner, and therefore the Talmud accords it preference. A caveat must be added here: this text, as noted above, does not deal with prioritizing in cases of danger, and a distinction can in fact be made between prioritizing on the basis of need in cases of danger and prioritizing on the basis of need in other cases. It is Meiri who makes the connection explicit; the rabbinic text itself is mute. While this is surely a possibility, the analogy between the two is so close, and the distinction mentioned above so barely significant, that the category seems best formulated as one: relative degree of need. 6. Relation to rescuer. This, the final category in the rabbinic period, derives not from the Horayot context, but from a teaching related to charity. Rav Yoseph taught: [It says] “If you lend to my nation, to the poor persons with you” [Exodus 22:26]. [When faced with a choice between] members of my nation and idol worshipers, members of my nation take precedence; a poor person and a rich person, the poor person takes precedence; your poor (i.e., relatives) and the poor of your city, your poor take precedence; the poor of

35

TB Sanhedrin 32b. — 325 —

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your city and the poor of another city, the poor of your city take precedence.36

Rav Yoseph teaches that with respect to allocating scarce charity dollars, certain categories of persons take precedence over others. The distinction between the categories seems to hinge on the relation of members of that category to the donor, e.g., family member or resident of the same city. I would argue that it is safe to generalize for the rabbis on the basis of this principle to other sorts of categories. Thus, for example, it seems reasonable to claim that according to Rav Yoseph residents of the donor’s neighborhood take precedence over residents of another neighborhood in the same city; or, similarly, that a brother takes precedence over a first cousin.37 The same logic applies.

V The categories formulated above as reflecting prioritization hierarchies in the rabbinic period undergo relatively little change through the medieval period. The categories of yihus and capacity for mitzvot remain pretty much the same. Social need, interestingly enough, is by and large not extended from ancient categories of social function such as mashuah milhama or king into categories meaningful to a medieval Jew, such as shtadlan or parnas. The only reflection of the category is in the discussion in the Tur as to whether a rabbi or a hazzan should be hired if the community has only enough funds to hire one of them.38 The category of relative degree of need is expanded by Ritva, who asserts that if an am ha’aretz appears to be dying of hunger during a famine, then the giver of charity is obligated to feed him even if there is a possibility that as a result of feeding the am ha’aretz there will be insufficient food for the talmid hakham. This is because the am ha’aretz is certainly in need of the food, while it is uncertain whether or not the 36 37

38

TB Baba Metzia 71a. See, for example Tur, chap. 251, where an intrafamily hierarchy is worked out, i.e., self before father and mother, who in turn take precedence over children, and so on. While this is not a rabbinic-period source, generalizing as the Tur did seems safe even as an exercise in rabbinic interpretation. Ibid. — 326 —

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talmid hakham will need the food.39 (Of course, where there is a certainty that there will be insufficient food for the talmid hakham, the food must be saved for the talmid hakham.) Ritva does not abstract from this ruling a general principle to the effect that where X is in definite need of some resource, and Y only possibly needs the resource, then all other things being equal, X takes precedence over Y. This generalization appears for the first time in the modern period, as we shall see. Nevertheless, his ruling is clearly a precursor to the more general principle, which counts as a substantial enlarging of the scope of the relative degree-of-need category. As noted above, the category of relation to rescuer is explicitly expanded by the Tur to include an intrafamily hierarchy,40 although, as we argued, that expansion seems implicit in the rabbinic category itself. The category of talmid hakham is extended somewhat by Maimonides, who writes in his Pherush ha-Mishna on Horayot 3:7-8 that all other categories are secondary to talmid hakham: if X is a greater hakham than Y, then X takes precedence over Y, even if Y is superior to X by any one of the many categories mentioned in the Mishnah and Tosephta except king, father, and teacher. As Maimonides puts it in the Mishneh Torah, “Whoever is greater in wisdom takes precedence, except if one is his father or rabbi,” where it makes no difference who is greater than whom provided the father is also learned. Substantial changes in the prioritization scheme first begin to emerge during the early modern period. One of the more striking changes to occur during this period relates to the category of talmid hakham, which played such a central role in the rabbinic and even medieval texts. Rabbi Moshe Isserles, in his glosses on Shulhan Arukh (251:9), codifies the Talmud Yerushalmi’s decision that clothing for the wife of a talmid hakham takes precedence over the life of an am ha’aretz. Rabbi Shabsai Cohen, in his highly influential seventeenth-century commentary on Shulhan Arukh, the Shakh (251:16), asserts the following: It appears that this is according to the law. However, in these times where there is not even a talmid hakham with respect to the law of a golden liter,

39 40

TB Baba Batra 8a. Tur, chap. 251. — 327 —

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as above 243:7, all the more so saving a life should take precedence before him, and it is in the same category as a man in need of clothing and a woman in danger of dying, or vice-versa, where it says in the Yerushalmi that the person in danger of dying takes precedence.

While it is not clear that Rabbi Shabsai Cohen intends to do away entirely with the category of talmid hakham, its force is surely limited by his claim that in our days the halakhic category of talmid hakham barely exists, if it does at all.41 A second striking shift — more accurately, set of shifts — appears in the eighteenth-century writings of Rabbi Ya’akov Emden, who discusses the issue at length in his Migdal Oz.42 With respect to the category of yihus, he makes the following revolutionary statement: A kohen takes precedence over a levi, and levi to a yisrael … although in truth the superiority [ma’alot] of the priesthood and leviteship have declined in these generations such that even for males we do not give precedence on these grounds, and this because they are kohanim only by presumption [hazaka]. Nevertheless, I am undecided about the matter [emphasis added].

In this passage, Rabbi Emden seriously considers dropping the entire category of yihus, which by his day had lost the valence it had while the Temple was still in existence and shortly thereafter.43 The category of capacity for mitzvot is altered by Rabbi Emden as well, in this case expanded rather than contracted. Rabbi Emden states that a normal male takes precedence over a minor, someone who is deaf or someone who is a halakhic shoteh (idiot). Similarly, a normal male takes precedence over a male missing an arm and therefore unable to wear tefillin. The category of talmid hakham is expanded so that in choosing between “[a woman who is] modest, intelligent, a woman of 41 42 43

Pithei Teshuva, ad loc., cites Resp. Yad Eliyahu, resp. 43, who disagrees with the Shakh. Perek “Even Bohen,” pinah aleph. It should be noted that Rabbi Emden’s view is a minority one; almost all other treatments of the subject do use yihus categories. See the various responsa cited throughout this paper. Nevertheless, that such a view is entertained by as important a figure as Rabbi Emden is quite significant. His position is echoed in the responsa of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, discussed below. — 328 —

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valor over against an ordinary woman, certainly the woman who fears God” takes precedence.44 Of special importance is the fact that Rabbi Emden appears to add an entirely new category, which might be called the capacity to maximize life. This can be instantiated in one of two ways: either X himself has a greater likelihood of living over against Y, because, for example, Y is mortally ill, and X is not; or, X has the capacity to create other life, by reproduction, whereas Y does not, because he is either sterile or too old. Examples of the first sort, drawn from Rabbi Emden’s words, include selecting a young person over against an older person; an older person in good health against an older person in poor health; a sick person over against a person whose sickness places his life in danger; a sick person whose life is in danger over against a sick person who is mortally ill. Examples of the second sort include a male who can reproduce over against a sterile male; and a female who can reproduce over against a sterile male.45 Rabbi Emden’s views are noteworthy not only because he introduces critically important new categories (especially that of selecting the person who is most likely to live as a result of treatment, a position which many contemporary poskim also take), and not only because of his questioning of the paramount rabbinic category of yihus. They are methodologically noteworthy as well, in that he argues largely from common sense, using the sort of considerations commonly found in lay or consequentialist discussions of allocating scarce medical resources. To conclude our discussion of the early modern period, one other change in the categories should be noted. As mentioned earlier, the category of relative degree of need is expanded so as to be formulated as a general principle that the person in certain danger of losing his life takes precedence over the person whose life is not certainly endangered. 44

45

One might suggest, of course, that this is not an instance of the talmid hakham category, but either a new category altogether or an important conceptual revision of the category that reflects not only Torah learning but piety. It has been suggested that a parallel to this last category can be found in the works of Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (see Dichovsky, op. cit., 63). It seems clear, however, that Rabbi Emden took the positions he did on the basis of reason rather than by appeal to the authority of anyone else. — 329 —

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Contemporary halakhic discussions of the problem introduce a consideration which, in at least one highly influential formulation, has the remarkable effect of making the entire elaborate prioritization scheme irrelevant in most cases of allocating scarce resources. All contemporary poskim of whom I am aware are in agreement that where the physician has already started treating one of two patients, X, then even if, by any of the prioritization standards, Y ranks higher than X, X still takes precedence, and it would be wrong to leave X and treat Y.46 The practical ramifications of this pesak are significant, since in emergency room situations it is frequently — although by no means always — the case that treatment of the one patient begins before treatment of the other. The arguments for this position, interestingly enough, are not so much halakhic or legal in nature as moral or philosophical. That is, precedent, either direct or indirect, is not cited. Rather, the considerations advanced are more general. In Rabbi M. Hershler’s words: It appears on the basis of reason that if he began to treat the one who is only in possibly life-threatening danger … he should not leave him and treat a second one [who is in certainly life-threatening danger], since he has become obligated in the first one’s treatment. And even though there is no evidence for this position, reason dictates it [emphasis added].47

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein similarly uses the language of moral obligation: “… and once he has been admitted to the emergency room, he has acquired a right to his place” (emphasis added).48 Rabbi Feinstein, probably the most influential posek to deal with the problem, carries the pesak one critical step further.49 He maintains that the first person to arrive at the hospital acquires the right of treatment, 46

47 48 49

Rabbi M. Feinstein, Igrot Moshe, Hoshen Mishpat, vol. 3 (New York, 1985), resp. 73, 74; Rabbi M. Hershler, Halakha u-Refu’ah, vol. 4 (Jerusalem, 1985), 79-84; Rabbi Sh. Vosner, Responsa Shevet Levi, vol. 6 (B’nei Brak, 1986), resp. 242; Nishmat Avraham, Yoreh De’ah (Jerusalem, 1986), 156. Hershler, op. cit., 84. Feinstein, op. cit., 304. Ibid. Although the text is somewhat unclear, it is possible that Nishmat Avraham, cited above, takes the same position. — 330 —

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even before the treatment actually begins. The question he addresses specifically concerns two patients, A and B, seeking admission to the emergency room, which has a bed available only for one of them. A, who is mortally ill, clearly needs emergency room treatment, but it will only extend his life somewhat. B, in the judgment of the physicians, can be cured entirely, but it is as yet unclear whether or not he needs emergency room treatment. Rabbi Feinstein decides that while if they were to arrive simultaneously B should be treated first, since he can be cured, nevertheless if A arrives first, then he should be admitted. His argument for this position is a psychological one: should A, who arrived first, discover that B, who arrived after him, has been admitted, than A might believe that his physicians despair of curing him and therefore have decided to admit B even though he arrived first. Such thoughts might in turn cause a further deterioration of his condition, thereby hastening his death. Since it is halakhically wrong to hasten anyone’s death, A should be admitted first, even though he will die soon in any case. I might add here that by parity of reasoning, the same result should obtain for any scarce resource, such as an organ required for transplantation: if A and B are both in need of a kidney, and A registers for the kidney before B, then A should receive the kidney first if his death might be hastened upon learning that B was chosen before him. What then of the elaborate prioritization scheme developed in the classical sources? To quote Rabbi Feinstein: And even with respect to prioritizing, there are only those principles cited in the mishna in Horayot, and even with respect to these it is difficult to act upon them without very careful consideration [i’yun]. And even where it is certain that there is priority according to the law, that is relevant only where they are equal with respect to time [of arrival]; and the physician should go to whomever calls him first… [emphasis added].50

Rabbi Feinstein urges great caution in applying the prioritization system of the rabbinic sources to real-life situations, perhaps echoing, in part, Rabbi Emden’s views. It should be noted as well that he cites only the mishna in Horayot, and none of the ancillary sources explored in 50

Ibid., 312. — 331 —

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the previous two sections of this essay. One gets the strong impression that Rabbi Feinstein feels general reluctance to apply the classical prioritization criteria.51 According to Rabbi Feinstein’s view and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the views of other contemporary poskim, the prioritization schemes for allocating scarce resources which grow out of the rabbinic sources are relegated to a severely circumscribed set of cases. Are the views of these poskim, then, inconsistent with the earlier tradition? Certainly not. Earlier sources just do not raise the question of what A should do if he starts swimming out into the river to save B, a yisrael, then notices that C, a kohen, is drowning in another part of the river. Or of whether the yisrael or the kohen should be redeemed first when the former was captured by the enemy before the latter. Thus, strictly speaking, there is no inconsistency. Nevertheless, the great stress contemporary poskim, and particularly Rabbi Feinstein, place on chronological priority is clearly a halakhic hiddush (innovation) of the first order, whose practical significance cannot be overstated. Can we make any general observations about the halakhah’s development on this issue from the rabbinic period on down? Taken as a whole, I would argue, the halakhah has to a certain extent moved away from its early preoccupation with yihus (note the extremely long list in Horayot) and Torah scholarship, via Rabbis Emden and Cohen in particular, to considerations that are more universal in nature. These include various elaborations on the degree-of-need category and, especially, the contemporary stress on chronological priority and time of arrival. The justification for many of these considerations, it will be remembered, is universal as well: general moral intuition. It seems clear, then, that there are identifiably moral contours to the shape of the halakhah’s development on the issue in question.

VI To conclude our analysis we must backtrack temporarily and consider the 51

In this respect, Rabbi Feinstein may differ from such authorities as Rabbi Unterman, cited above in n. 22. — 332 —

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moral-theoretic consequences of the classical prioritization hierarchy, which emphasized yihus, Torah scholarship, and the like. We argued earlier that where the resource is divisible the halakhah, according to some of its most influential interpreters, took what appeared to be a deontological position: the owner of the water divides it into two equal parts, so that each of the travelers can live a bit longer. But how can deontological ethics, which takes with absolute seriousness respect for individual human worth, dignity, and justice, adopt as allocation criteria such considerations as yihus, for example, which is utterly foreign to its grund principles? Surely my value as a human being is not dependent upon my yihus! Isn’t the entire sugya in Horayot, then, a striking counterexample to the thesis argued for earlier? More importantly — and these two questions are linked — aren’t some of the classical categories morally problematic in their own right, at least by contemporary standards, apart from moral-theoretic considerations? The Yerushalmi’s position, codified in the Shulhan Arukh, that providing clothing for the wife of a talmid hakham takes precedence over feeding an am ha’aretz is only the most troubling of the classical considerations; it is by no means the only troubling one. Of course, this question is in its own way anachronistic, in that it projects late-twentieth-century American moral values onto ancient Near Eastern texts. It is a truism that the ancient rabbis did not think like contemporary Americans. Nevertheless, the question still needs to be addressed, in light of our discussion of methodology in the first section of this essay. If explaining a classical text at least in part involves justifying it, then the question raised here is a quest for justification: why would one want to take the rabbinic position? What can be said to make it inherently plausible? In light of the quest for justification, we can also ask ourselves whether the rabbis themselves may have had some deep underlying intuition which would shed new light on their position, and suggest an explanatory framework separate from their obvious cultural predispositions about such values as yihus. Dismissing questions such as these about classical sources on grounds of anachronistic projection is just too easy, and blocks deeper inquiry into the sources. At this point in our analysis, it would be helpful to place the halakhic approaches to allocating scarce resources in the context of the general — 333 —

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legal and philosophical approaches to the problem.52 These have fallen into two main schools: those who advocate criteria of social worth, and those who advocate an egalitarian method of allocation. The socialworth school, following the teleological ethicists, takes into account, in deciding who shall live and who shall die, such considerations as past and future contributions to society, volunteerism, size of family, and the like. These categories certainly bear a resemblance to the classical halakhic considerations of Torah scholarship, social need, and even yihus. However, the social-worth school has been widely criticized on a number of grounds, but most importantly for violating the incommensurate worth of a human being by reducing his value to mere social utility. Does the halakhah also in effect reduce human worth to social utility or genealogical rank? The egalitarian school, following the deontologists, takes as fundamental uncompromising respect for human worth and dignity— the view that human beings can never be treated only as means to some socially useful end. Therefore, say the egalitarians, each patient must be treated equally. How then is the resource to be allocated? By some arbitrary means which does not rank people according to utility. This may take the form of a lottery, or better yet, a first-come-firstserved system, similar in effect to the position taken by Rabbi Feinstein (although for somewhat different reasons). On this summary analysis, then, it would seem that the halakhah developed over the years from a largely consequentialist/social worth view in the rabbinic period, to a position akin to deontologism/egalitarianism, as at least partially embodied in the views of Rabbi Feinstein.53 This analysis, however, is seriously flawed. It must be remembered that where the resource is divisible, we argued that the halakhah takes a deontological position as early as the rabbinic period, at least according

52

53

There is an enormous amount of literature dealing with the problem in legal and particularly philosophical sources, and to cite even the most important studies here would be excessive. The best summary and bibliography I am aware of is in Maxwell J. Mehlman’s “Rationing Expensive Lifesaving Medical Resources,” Wisconsin Law Review, no. 2 (1985), 239-303. I recognize that Rabbi Feinstein’s reasoning is not deontological (although it is consistent with deontologism). My point is that the practical position he takes is one that would in some important respects follow from deontologism/egalitarianism. — 334 —

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to many halakhically best interpretations of the rabbinic texts. It will not do, then, to distinguish between an early consequentialist period and a late deontological period if even important early sources are, from the halakhic perspective, best explained as deontological. The central question really is, why does the halakhah, according to the views we have considered here, employ largely deontological considerations when the resource is divisible, and employ, at least up until the modern period, largely consequentialist considerations when the resource is not divisible? Why shift moral-theoretic gears when shifting kinds of resources? This question leads us into the very heart of the matter. I would suggest — and herein lies the nub of my analysis — that in all cases of allocation three moral/halakhic imperatives may be postulated as explaining the halakhic decision: 1. The equal-respect principle. All human beings must be treated with equal respect for their human worth. 2. The maximize-life principle. Act always so as to extend the sum total of human life. 3. The nonarbitrariness principle. Do not make arbitrary decisions in matters of life and death. The equal-respect principle is deontological, and derives from our account of the travelers case. The maximize-life principle is teleological in formulation, and derives ultimately from the biblical command not to stand by while someone’s life is endangered (lo ta’amod al dam re’ekha). The nonarbitrariness principle is what I propose to account for how the halakhah deals with certain conflicts between the equal-respect principle and the maximize-life principle, as occurs when the resource to be allocated is indivisible. Let us see how this is so. Our analysis of the travelers case has shown that where the resource is divisible, the base-line principle which governs the choice situation for many poskim is deontological — the equal-respect principle. All the water is not given to just one person, as the maximize-life principle, in good teleological form, would require. Rather, the claims of each traveler must be treated with absolutely equal moral seriousness. Nevertheless, life can be maximized to a certain extent, within the constraints set by — 335 —

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the base-line principle, by giving some water to each. In that way each life is extended. The second principle is thus at least partially satisfied, and not voided of all moral impact. Finally, since giving equal amounts of water to each is surely not arbitrary, the nonarbitrariness principle is satisfied as well. All this changes, however, where the resource is not divisible. Here, the equal-respect and maximize-life principles come into tragic conflict. If human beings are to be treated with equal respect for their human worth without exception, then it would be wrong to give it to either of them, since giving it to one favors the recipient over the one abandoned to die. It should turn out, then, that neither would receive the water or medication, and both would die. Some deontologists do in fact take this extreme position. The halakhah clearly does not. In these difficult circumstances the maximize-life principle makes its claim. While the equal-respect principle carries great halakhic force, the halakhic tradition simply valued life too much to sacrifice it entirely on the altar of justice. Sacrifice it partially, yes; we saw as much in the case of divisible resources, where the water is divided in two parts, giving each just a few more hours to live, rather than giving one a full 120 years. Where the sacrifice would be total, however, and neither would get the medication, the moral force of the maximize-life principle would be voided entirely, and this the halakhah would not tolerate. Thus the choice is forced: Only one can receive the kidney. By what criteria should one choose? The most common egalitarian/deontological answer to this question is that under these conditions the choice should be arbitrary, so that considerations irrelevant to basic human worth and dignity are never taken into account. If the choice is arbitrary, then no features of the recipient are picked out as causally determining the choice, and human worth is thus not reduced to any such features. Arbitrary criteria include lotteries or a first-come-first-served system. This too, I would argue, is a position the halakhah, certainly in its classical formulation, would not sustain. In matters as monumentally significant as life and death, it is wrong to make arbitrary choices: life is just too important to be treated arbitrarily. Hence, the nonarbitrariness principle. Given this conviction, the halakhah found itself forced to — 336 —

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grasp at what are, in effect, morally irrelevant criteria, such as yihus. For the halakhah, these are far better than no criteria at all. It is, I would argue, only where the halakhah’s arm is twisted by its belief in the importance of life, and its abhorrence of arbitrariness, that teleological considerations are taken into account. It should be added that many of these considerations are not artificial inventions for present purposes. Rather, they are fully developed, generally religious categories, with their own independent, anterior logic and justification. The value of Torah study and the laws governing the talmid hakham were not produced for the sake of the mishna in Horayot, nor were the categories and laws relating to yihus. These are all fully articulated elsewhere, and borrowed here in service of what amounts to a morally coerced choice. That the halakhah does import these considerations is not at all surprising, given its endorsement of the three principles. What is surprising — even startling — is the extent to which the halakhah avoids them. Where A is a talmid hakham and B is an alcoholic misfit, and the medication they both need can be divided, then according to many influential poskim, divide it the physician must, although both will shortly die. Radical respect for human equality and justice here prevail above all else.

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-------------------------------- Chapter XII  ---------------------------------

Some Tensions in the Jewish Attitude Toward the Taking of Human Life: A Philosophical Analysis of Justified Homicide in Jewish Legal and Aggadic Literature I. Some Preliminary Comments About the Application of Philosophy to Jewish Texts The intellectual enterprise we call Jewish philosophy can serve either a Jewish or a general philosophical end. That is, Jewish philosophy sometimes functions as a discipline which brings the light of Jewish sources and traditions to bear on an understanding of philosophical or religious problems which throughout history have animated general philosophical or religious thinking. Jewish medieval discussions of the nature of faith or the creation of the world are fine examples of this sort of intellectual labor. Here the explanatory arrow travels from the Jewish to the universal. On other occasions (and sometimes on the very same occasion) Jewish philosophy travels from the universal to the Jewish. Here, the methodology and categories of thought characteristic of general philosophical or religious thinking are applied to Jewish sources. Thus, Rambam applied Aristotelian methodology and thought categories to specifically Jewish concerns such as taamei hamitzvot. When the arrow travels in this direction, the Jewish sources are sometimes merely explicated, and in a fashion not inconsistent with a traditional understanding of those sources. Sometimes, however, a radical reinterpretation of the tradition results. Since in this paper the explanatory arrow will travel from the universal to the Jewish, I should like to say a few more preliminary methodological words about the kind of inquiry I shall engage in. — 338 —

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The methodology I employ in this paper may be best understood as analogous to the inquiry of a natural scientist. The scientist first discovers a wide array of empirical data concerning some natural phenomenon, and then seeks to account for the data by constructing an explanatory scientific theory. Thus, Newton observed apples falling and celestial bodies moving and, through mathematical techniques, constructed a single theory which accounted for falling apples and celestial movement. I, too, shall first examine certain data contained in the Jewish traditions, in Jewish legal and non-legal texts, and through the techniques and categories of moral theory seek to account for those sources by proposing an explanatory theory. The methodology I use is analytic in that it makes no claim to revealing the intent of the author who wrote the text in question. It is non-historical in that it does not propose to account for the data by recourse to explanatory categories normally employed by the historian, i.e. changing economic, social or political conditions. The methodology is philosophical rather than legal in that it seeks to explain non-chronologically the data of the tradition by recourse to philosophical rather than legal categories, in this case moral theory. Because my subject matter is partly legal, however, it might be said that my methodology is in the strictest sense that of a philosophy of Jewish law: the application of analytic, nonhistorical categories of philosophy to explain various positions in the Jewish legal tradition. I shall have more to say about this methodology and its utility during the course of the paper. Indeed, this essay is intended to serve a dual substantive and methodological purpose. I trust, however, that the success of one is independent of the success of the other.

II. The Taking of Life in Jewish Law: An Introduction The illegality of homicide in Jewish law is biblical in origin.1 Very early on in Genesis, the Torah speaks of the reprehensibility of bloodshed, 1

Exod. 20:13; Deut. 5:17. For a fuller discussion of biblical laws of homicide see, e.g., M. Sulzberger, Ancient Hebrew Laws of Homicide (Philadelphia: J. H. Greenstone, 1915). — 339 —

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and the repetition of this attitude throughout the Torah, and its formulation as one of the Ten Commandments, bespeaks the cardinality of the crime.2 Despite the illegality of homicide, Jewish law recognizes that under certain exceptional circumstances it is indeed permissible to take human life. In fact, a survey of the literature suggests that homicide is justified under at least three broad conditions: (a) execution, (b) rescue, and (c) war.3 Execution includes court-enforced capital punishment and the participation in public executions,4 as well as the killing in public of persistent heretics and apostates.5 Rescue includes self defence6 as well as preventing a murder or rape.7 War includes wars of self defence, which really belong in the second category, as well as wars against Amalek,8 and wars against the seven nations whom the Israelites were commanded to exterminate in order to inhabit the land of Israel.9 This category also includes wars whose purpose is to expand Israel’s borders, which while not obligatory are nevertheless permissible.10 Despite the perfectly clear status of homicide as justified by the tradition under these conditions, Jewish literature nevertheless reflects a very real ambivalence. In fact the sources reveal either implicit tension or quite explicit conflict concerning the morality of killing in each of these classes. I shall argue here that the underlying currents of moral worry which the sources reveal reflect a kind of underground Jewish morality, a morality which manages to surface halakhically only in the Jewish legal discussion concerning capital punishment. Moreover, I shall suggest that these tensions are best characterized as tensions between two fundamentally different versions of moral theory, which 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Gen. 4:10; 9:5; Num. 35-36; Deut. 19:10, 13; 21:28; 27:25. See M. Elon, ed., The Principles of Jewish Law (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), 476. It has been suggested to me that there may be additional categories beyond these three. Nevertheless, it seems fairly clear that these are the most inclusive. Lev. 20:2; 24:14; Deut. 17:7; 27:22; 22:21. Maimonides, Yad, Rotseah, 4:10; Tur H. M. 425. Sanh. 72a. Sanh. 8:7. Deut. 25:17-19. Deut. 20:16-18. Sot. 44b. — 340 —

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in themselves reflect two fundamentally different philosophical and moral stances towards the world.

III. Tensions in the System With these words of introduction we may turn to an analysis of each of the three classes of justifiable homicide. Let us begin with war. From the historian’s point of view, if not that of the moralist, war has been a part of the human condition for a very long time. Apparently recognizing its occasional utility, Jewish law sanctioned aggressive war under certain limited conditions. One form of such sanctioned war, as noted above, is war to expand Israel’s boundaries. Despite its clear sanction, however, no less than the Torah itself appears ambivalent about it, an ambivalence expressed in relation to the Davidic wars. While King David’s stature in the tradition is unimpeachable, he did not, in the end, build the Temple. This omission must have troubled his contemporaries deeply; biblical explanation for it is found in II Chron. 22:8. Nathan the Prophet11 tells David that he may not build the Temple because “dam larov shafakhta” “you have spilled much blood” This appears to be an allusion, as most commentators point out,12 to David’s extensive warring. If homicide in the context of sanctioned war were completely without moral blemish, these words would have no force. It appears then that homicide, even in the context of sanctioned war, is in at least some respect morally blemished. Of course, Nathan’s critique of David can be taken as a moral critique of war whose justification is not morally derived but religiously derived. That is, wars of expansion may indeed be unjustifiable on 11

12

See the commentary of David Kimhi, loc. cit.; as he points out, an alternative explanation of the verse, and one which may be most consistent with a straightforward reading of the text, has David accusing himself of excessive killing. See, e.g., Metsudot. Kimhi includes war in a longer list of killings for which David was responsible. — 341 —

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purely moral grounds; their justification may derive only from special divine sanction, and while God may sanction such wars He might in fact prefer that we not engage in them. It could be argued, then, that it is to this dimension of David’s warfare which Nathan objected. Nevertheless, elsewhere we find similar ambivalence expressed in the case of wars sanctioned on clearly moral grounds: wars of rescue. I refer here to the comments of several midrashim on Abraham’s participation in the War of the Kings, cited by Everett Gendler in his “War and the Jewish Tradition.”13 First, the Midrash Tanḥuma: Still another reason for Abraham’s fear after killing the kings in battle was his sudden realization: “Perhaps I violated the divine commandment that God commanded all men, ‘Thou shalt not shed human blood’ (Gen. 9:6). Yet how many people I killed in battle!” (Lekh Lekha 19, ed. Buber)

Rabbi Levi in the Midrash Rabbah claims that: Abraham was filled with misgiving thinking to himself, “maybe there was a righteous or God-fearing man among the troops which I killed.”… (Gen. 44:4)

Abraham participated in the wars to rescue Lot, his “brother,” which the Torah apparently presumed to be a morally legitimate reason for waging war. Nevertheless, the Rabbis had Abraham expressing clearly moral misgivings over what amounts to morally justified homicide. If the homicide is justifiable — and perhaps even obligatory — then why express moral misgivings? One does what one needs to, and that should be the end of it. Ambivalence also appears in regard to the second class of justifiable homicide, that of rescue, no less than in regard to war. I refer here to midrashic comments on the Jacob-Esau cycles in Genesis. Upon his return from the house of Laban, Jacob hears that Esau is approaching with 400 men. Commenting on the verses: “And Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed…” (Gen. 32) the Midrash Tanḥuma notes: 13

This essay originally appeared in A Conflict of Loyalties, ed. James Finn (Boston: Bobbs Merrill Co. Inc., 1968), 78-102. The essay is reprinted in Contemporary Jewish Ethics, ed. M. M. Kellner (New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1978), 189-211. — 342 —

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“And Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed.” One might think that Jacob was literally afraid of Esau … but this was not the case. Why then was Jacob afraid? Because Jacob took seriously the prohibition against murder (shefikhat damim). And so Jacob reasoned as follows: If I succeed and kill him, behold, I have trespassed against the commandment “Thou shalt not murder.” And if he kills me, woe is my lot!…

Thus in a clear cut instance of self-defense, the second of our classes of justifiable homicide, the Rabbis have Jacob saying that he would be committing the transgression of murder. While this is probably not to be taken literally, Jacob still seems to be saying that there is at least some dimension of wrong or blameworthiness even when homicide is justifiable. While this blameworthiness would not entail legal culpability, it nevertheless obtains, at least for Jacob. Ambivalence is revisited. The most explicit instance of moral tension concerning the taking of life, and the only one with legal consequences, arises in connection with the final class of justifiable homicide: execution. Here, my remarks grow out of the extremely fine essay by Gerald Blidstein, “Capital Punishment — The Classic Jewish Discussion.”14 Blidstein first approaches the problem of capital punishment from the semantic point of view. He notes that in English the word “kill” designates any taking of human life, while “murder” designates only unauthorized killing. Nevertheless, in both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, Blidstein argues, the same root r-ts-h ranges over both killing and murder. Blidstein cites a variety of texts which seem to show that the term ratsaḥ or retsihah can apply to both justifiable and non-justifiable homicide: there is no universally applied semantic distinction in Hebrew between “murder” and “kill.” This suggests for Blidstein that there is some deeply rooted moral vision in the tradition which refuses to splinter homicide into the unjustifiable and the justifiable. He applies this insight to the famous clash between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon with Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: “were we in the Sanhedrin (during that period when it possessed capital jurisdiction), no man would ever have been killed.” Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel says: “They, too, would multiply spillers of blood in Israel.” (Makk. 7a). 14

Judaism 14/2 (1965), 159-171, at 164, reprinted in Kellner, ibid. — 343 —

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On the basis of a careful analysis of the text, Blidstein demonstrates, quite conclusively I believe, that Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon’s opposition to capital punishment is rooted not in fear of killing the innocent, but rather in a reluctance to kill even those who are guilty. If Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon were concerned about the possibility of executing an innocent person, then Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel’s public safety argument would not be to the point. As Blidstein says, “once the possible innocence of the men in the docket is admitted, one cannot have his head merely to insure public safety.”15 Therefore, the concern of Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon must have been over executing the guilty. In further support of this analysis, Blidstein cites Rabbi Akiva’s claim in Tosefta that “Whoever spills blood destroys the image of God” (T. Yeb. 8:4). Similarly, Rabbi Meir, a student of Rabbi Akiva, claims that the sight of an executed criminal hanging from a tree provokes the thought that the king (God) himself is hanging.16 Now Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon nowhere dispute Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel’s empirical claim that the public good might be harmed if the person who deserves execution is not executed. It would therefore turn out that in their view killing is a wrong despite the admitted ill consequences for the public good of not killing the murderer. In any case, we have here a quite explicit conflict concerning the morality of what the Torah itself clearly regards as justifiable homicide: capital punishment, the third and last of our categories. The recurrent ambivalence we have pointed to thus extends to each of the three classes of justifiable homicide.

IV. The Absolutist/Consequentialist Debate Let us reflect a bit further about the Akiva, Tarfon and ben Gamliel debate. The former appear to hold that the moral character of capital punishment is such as to be inherently wrong, irrespective of the consequences of not executing the murderer for the public good. The latter holds that since more public good will come of capital punishment than harm, capital punishment is justified. According to 15 16

Blidstein in Kellner, supra n. 13, at 316. See A. J. Heschel, Torah Min Ha-Shamayim (New York: Shunzin Press, 1962), 220-223. — 344 —

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this formulation of the argument, it would appear that what is at issue here is exactly what is at issue in one of the fundamental “partings of way” in moral theory. I am referring to the great chasm in moral theory between Deontological or Absolutist ethics and Teleological or Consequentialist ethics. (In the course of this essay I shall take Deontological theory to be the equivalent of Absolutist Theory and I shall use the terms interchangeably. The same will hold for Teleological Theory and Consequentialist theory.)17 Consequentialism (in its strict form) holds that the moral rightness or wrongness of an action is determined exclusively by the consequences of the action, i.e., by the non-moral good or evil it produces. For example, Utilitarianism, the most popular form of Consequentialism, holds that it is happiness which is the non-moral good by which we measure the morality of the action. If an action maximizes the sum total of happiness in the world over its alternative, then it is moral; if it reduces the sum total of happiness in the world relative to its alternatives, then it is immoral. The action in question, say paying back a loan, has no moral features in itself; its morality derives from what it does in the world. To put it in other words, actions are not moral ends in themselves; they are only means to producing some moral (or immoral) end. Absolutism, on the other hand, maintains that actions themselves are moral ends; that certain features of the act itself make it right or wrong; i.e., that it is just, keeps a promise or is truthful. Acting justly is good not because it has wonderful consequences for society; acting justly is good because the act has the property of being just, or of conformity to the moral law “Act justly!” Perhaps the best way to see the difference between these two theories is to consider an example where they conflict, and where the conflict is especially painful. H. J. McCloskey18 considers the case of a sheriff in a small town who can prevent a serious riot in which hundreds of people will certainly be killed only by framing and executing an innocent man, a scapegoat. The case can be drawn up in such a fashion 17

18

The formulations which follow owe a great deal to William Frankena’s Ethics (Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973), chapter 2. “A Note on Utilitarian Punishment,” Mind 72 (1963), 599. — 345 —

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that the sheriff is faced with two options: kill the scapegoat and save hundreds of lives, or refrain from killing the scapegoat and watch helplessly as hundreds of lives are lost.19 The Absolutist would say that framing and executing an innocent man is simply wrong, irrespective of the consequences of not executing him. The Consequentialist would say that the net lives saved by framing the scapegoat morally justify his execution by the sheriff. I might add here that the painfulness attached to the consequentialist imperative of framing the scapegoat in this case partly contributed to the abandonment of pure forms of Utilitarianism or Conseqentialism by most contemporary ethicists. In any case the parallels between the sheriff case and the capital punishment debate in the Talmud should by now be apparent. It would appear that the position taken by Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon against capital punishment can be accounted for by the Absolutist position, and that the position taken by Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel, and especially the argument he himself proposes, is a Consequentialist one. Before addressing this account of the debate more fully, however, I should like to make a number of additional comments about the positions themselves. In a very perceptive article,20 Thomas Nagel suggests that the difference between the two positions may be far more than abstract philosophical theory. Rather, the differences may be grounded in fundamentally differing conceptions of what it is to be a moral being operating in human society. Specifically, he suggests that: Absolutism is associated with a view of oneself as a small being interacting with others in a large world. The justifications it requires are primarily interpersonal. Utilitarianism is associated with a view of oneself as a benevolent bureaucrat distributing such benefits as one can control to countless other beings, with whom one may have various relations or none. The justifications it requires are primarily administrative. The argument between the two moral attitudes may depend upon the priority of these two conceptions.

19 20

Note the similarity of this case to T. Ter. 7:23. We shall return to this point later. “War and Massacre,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1/2 (1972), 123-144. For the following quotation, see 137f. — 346 —

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According to Nagel, then, what is at stake in the Absolutist/ Consequentialist debate is no less than our conception of the very essence of moral behaviour. Of special importance to our discussion here is an additional observation which might be made about the Absolutist/Consequentialist debate. A general feature which distinguishes the two schools in all their variety appears to be the possibility of morally ambiguous action, by which I mean ambiguity which grows out of ignorance of matters of value. According to the Consequentialist, say a Utilitarian, ignorance of matters of value is theoretically impossible. Once committed to the principle “Maximize happiness!” all the Utilitarian can and must do in ascertaining the morality of some action is calculate its happinessrelated consequences. While this is often extremely difficult to do in practice, the difficulty is only an empirical one, not a moral one. Will action A have consequence B for person C under complex set of circumstances D? Even where action A will in fact make some people unhappy, if the sum total of happiness is maximized by doing A over doing (or not doing) the alternatives, then the action is unambiguously good, for it clearly and unambiguously satisfies the fundamental moral principle “Maximize happiness!” Such clarity, while characteristic of the Consequentialist point of view, is not characteristic of the Absolutist point of view. Indeed, on the Absolutist position, an action may simultaneously have both moral and immoral properties. This is because an action may be simultaneously deceitful but expressive of gratitude or, to take an instance closer to home, just but destructive of human life, as in killing for self-defense. Here it is unjust for me to allow myself to be killed, but I nevertheless destroy human life when I kill the aggressor. Indeed, one of the challenges faced by the Absolutist and not the Consequentialist is the need to establish a hierarchy of rules or values in order to determine what course of action to take where moral rights or obligations come into conflict, as in the above-mentioned examples. Absolutists have long sought to do this, either by appeal to some higher rule or set of rules, by appeal to moral intuition, or even by appeal to divine revelation. But by-and-large, any attempts at prioritization still leave a set of at least prima facie conflicting obligations, conflicts which point — 347 —

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to the deep ambiguities of the moral life. Thus, even where I am justified in protecting my own life against an aggressor by killing him, there is still an element of evil — unavoidable evil, but evil nonetheless —  which accrues to my action. Of course, we are not blamed for doing such actions; indeed, sometimes we are even obligated to kill. This is because, in the morally imperfect world which we inhabit, we are often unable to avoid morally ambiguous situations. And when we are in such situations, we have no recourse but to choose a course of action; even refraining from acting has moral valence. When we choose a course of action we cannot but choose according to our hierarchy of value, even where one legitimate value in effect rides over another legitimate value. We may therefore be doing exactly the right thing in our morally imperfect world, where value conflicts are unavoidable, by killing the aggressor. But killing is no less murder for its being justified. Perhaps the best analogy to this kind of ambiguity is in the all too common instance of medication with undesirable side effects. Many forms of chemotherapy for cancer cause nausea, temporary baldness and other side-effects. The remission or cure which may result from undergoing chemotherapy does not erase the undesirable side effects, or void the value of not feeling nauseous or keeping one’s hair. Nevertheless, in this clash of values, the value of gaining a cure for cancer clearly takes priority over the value of avoiding ill side effects. According to the Absolutist, moral life is similarly full of essentially conflicting values, and our choices may be equally painful.

V. Additional Comments on Methodology Before applying these comments to justified homicide, I should like to raise the specter of methodology once again, if only briefly. It is exceedingly difficult, if not downright impossible, to know what the Rabbis had in their minds when taking one position or another with regard to capital punishment, or when they expressed reservations concerning justified homicide. The only evidence we have are the texts in front of us, and all too often they are not conclusive. Even when the historian brings cultural, political, economic, or even personal and family data to bear in explicating, say, the position of Talmudic rabbis, he is doing no more than proposing a — 348 —

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theory which he believes accounts well for the position taken in the text. Interestingly enough, we would generally regard some adequate historical analysis with favour, even where the historian does not claim that the rabbi was consciously aware of the influences of political or personal forces in the determination of his position. This is because historical forces may operate outside the pale of human awareness. Similar considerations pertain where the explanation is not historical (in the broad sense mentioned above), but analytic. When the jurist or philosopher analyzes a particular text he need not claim that the author intended the theory he proposes. First, such claims are exceedingly difficult to justify, no matter what the form of explanation. Second, and most important, positions are often taken on purely intuitive or textual grounds alone. The analytic approach of the philosopher or jurist seeks to provide a theoretical formulation which accounts for those underlying convictions. For example, I may believe that (a) capital punishment is wrong, and (b) justified homicide is morally blemished, and cite verses in the Torah to prove my position. The ethicist might then propose a theory which accounts for my strong intuitions concerning A and B. The ethicist does not claim that I knew of his theory when I took the positions I did. That may or may not be the case. He does claim, however, that his theory provides an excellent explanation for why one would want to take those positions. To put it differently and more precisely, the theory should seek to establish the scope and grounds for the position taken: by scope I mean the attempt to establish the connection between A and B, and to show that they are not randomly held positions but that there is some explanatory framework which encompasses them both. Similarly, Newton’s theory of gravity succeeds in showing that falling apples and planetary motions are both expressions of a single law and are both accounted for by that law. The more data (or positions) which can be explained or connected by a single theory, the broader is the theory’s scope and the better confirmed it is. Second, the ethicist’s theory should provide adequate grounds for the position I took. It is meant to explain what kind of underlying reason(s) there might be for taking the position I did. By showing that (a) and (b) are expressions of a larger and reasonable theoretical framework, a justification is provided for affirming them. — 349 —

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As formulated, both these explanations make no claims whatsoever about authorial intent, yet they are no less valuable in not doing so. We have, then, an explicit formulation of the explanatory aims of a philosophical (or legal) analysis of Jewish texts: it seeks to provide both scope and grounds, where each of these aims is understood as formulated above.21

VI. A Return to the Sources The position taken by Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon concerning capital punishment seems best accounted for by an Absolutist position, which would hold that there is always wrong in the taking of life. In the case of punishment, this wrong would not be overridden by concerns for the public good. While Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon concede Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel’s empirical argument that not executing murderers results in future murders, they nevertheless claim that capital punishment should be banned. This is good Absolutist ethics. Absolutism would also account for other statements quoted above by Akiva and his students, and explicate the theoretical connection between them. Absolutism also appears to be behind the expressions of pain attributed to Jacob and Abraham by the Midrash. Because the Midrash formulates that pain in religious and moral categories, rather than in purely emotional terms (note the quotation from the Ten Commandments), it seems likely that the pain was religious and moral rather than purely emotional; and for the pain to have such moral 21



I hope to treat this methodological issue more fully in a separate essay. For a treatment of similar (but not identical) issues in Jewish law, see Modern Research in Jewish Law, ed. B. Jackson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980, The Jewish Law Annual Supplement One). An interesting parallel to this concept of formulating a theory to account for human intuitions about some aspect or other may be found in moral epistemology, where the moral epistemologist seeks to account for moral intuitions through ethical theory, and conversely seeks to justify the theory by appeal to intuitions. For a brief summary and explanation of this process, which probably started with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, see, e.g., J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), Chapter 9, and especially footnote 26 (p. 51). Rawls, as well as Jackson and Albeck (In Modern Research in Jewish Law, above), all draw a parallel to the rules of grammar as an interpretation of the linguistic intuitions of speakers. Jackson and Rawls refer also to “deep structure” as a linguistic phenomenon. — 350 —

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force the Midrash must take an Absolutist moral position. Indeed, only Absolutism can capture the moral ambivalence of the dilemma Abraham and Jacob faced. As argued above, Consequentialism admits of no moral ambivalence; the greater public good is clearly served by self-defense, and so if Jacob were a Consequentialist, he would feel no ambivalence.22 Consequentialism therefore would be unable to account for an action which is morally obligatory yet morally blemished as well. Similarly, Nathan’s critique of David may be accounted for by an Absolutist position, although it is not as clear an expression of Absolutism as the others because it may represent, as noted above, a moral critique of wars not sanctioned on moral grounds. Where then is a Consequentialist position entailed by the tradition? After all, the ambivalence reflected in those is consistent with the right to defend myself, my family, or others, a right which is embodied in halakhah and which the Absolutists themselves affirm. First, there is the position of Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel concerning capital punishment. As suggested above, the debate there seems to be no more nor less than the debate between the Absolutist and the Consequentialist. Second, Jewish laws governing war generally seem cast in a Consequentialist frame. It should not be forgotten that wars of self-defense make up only one limited slice of a much wider range of wars which are justified in the tradition. For example, there is the category of permissible wars, which Maimonides (based upon Sotah 44b) says are “… (wars) to expand Israelite borders and increase its fame and greatness.”23 Such wars are justified not on account of some moral property attaching to the war itself, but on account of the consequences of waging war — the expansion of Israel’s boundaries — which the tradition regards as desirable. Even obligatory wars involving the conquering of Canaan for Jewish settlement (milḥamot zayin am’mamin) are regarded as good only because of their consequences — vacating the 22

23

An analogue to this clash of values in the religious sphere, where the religious value overrides another, but where the religious force of the overridden value is still binding, may be found in Tosafot Taanit 11a (beginning word amar). There, Tosafot claim that the value of fasting overrides the value of not fasting, but that when one fasts, one is still regarded as a sinner. Yad, Melakhim, 5:1. — 351 —

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land for Israelite occupation. The element of punishment seems to be secondary. A third instance of Consequentialist ethics is the second part of the Tosefta in Terumot 7:23, which bears a striking resemblance to the story of the sheriff mentioned above. The first part of that Tosefta reads as follows: If a heathen said to a company of men: “give us one of you so that we might kill him or else we will kill all of you,” they should let themselves be killed rather than deliver a single soul in Israel.24

This is good Absolutist ethics. Nevertheless, even the Consequentialist might justify this point, on the grounds that delivering one person to the heathen, particularly in the trying political circumstances of those times, might promote further lawlessness on the part of heathens who would see and act upon the ease with which one can terrorize a group of Jews. In modern times, this consideration appears to lie behind the refusal of the government of Israel to make significant concessions to gain the release of Israeli hostages held by terrorists, on the grounds that making such concessions would promote further acts of terrorism. The second part of the Tosefta, however, seems to be consistent only with a Consequentialist position: But if they specified a certain person, as they specified Sheba ben Bichri (II Samuel 20:1-22), they should not allow themselves to be killed and they should hand him over.

Since the Tosefta speaks of heathens, it seems highly unlikely that the Jew deserved death (unlike Sheba). Under these circumstances, the Absolutist could never justify unjustly delivering the specified innocent Jew, even where so doing would save many lives. Therefore, it seems fairly clear that this Tosefta takes a Consequentialist position. In sum, then, classical Jewish literature ranges over two 24

This text has been discussed extensively by David Daube in his Collaboration with Tyranny in Rabbinic Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), and more recently by Aaron Enker, Hekhreh Vetsorekh Bedine Onshin (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1977). It is worth noting that the argument between R. Yohanan and Resh Lakish in Y. Terumot 3:26 may well revolve around the Absolutist/Consequentialist debate. — 352 —

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fundamentally conflicting positions concerning the taking of life, a conflict which appears to be well accounted for as the conflict between Absolutist and Consequentialist ethics. To use Thomas Nagel’s felicitous formulation, each of these positions may in turn reflect two fundamentally different moral outlooks, the outlook of the individual person interacting with other persons, and the outlook of the bureaucrat seeking how best to distribute the goods at his disposal.

VII. Some Closing Observations Several observations are in order before our analysis is complete. First, with the notable exception of Akiva and Tarfon on capital punishment, the Absolutist position within Judaism appears far more extensively in aggadic than in halakhic literature. Second, because the Absolutist position takes individual human rights more seriously than does the Consequentialist position, it is generally regarded by most contemporary ethicists as in some sense a “higher” ethic. Utilitarian ethics, because it is more open to objective decision making, because it is less obstinate about individual rights when the safe and efficient functioning of society is at stake, is generally regarded as more practical and reality-centered. Taking these two observations together, the following claim emerges naturally: our aggadic materials concerning the taking of life advocate the higher, Absolutist ethic; halakhic materials, on the other hand, with their generally Consequentialist ethic, take on a more practical, realistic orientation towards morality. Thus the halakhah sanctions certain forms of war, for example, for the greater good of society. The tensions in the tradition might then be described as tensions between practical halakhah, which seeks to govern the minutiae of daily living and can do so only when sensitive to its practical demands, and the aggadah, which projects an ideal moral standard towards which all Jews ought to aspire. While attractive, this formulation is too facile. Capital punishment is surely a halakhic issue, yet the tension between Absolutism and Consequentialism stands explicit in Talmudic debate. The counterexample is too striking. Perhaps a better formulation might look to the halakhah itself as — 353 —

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stretching between the ideal and the real. It has been argued by some theologians of halakhah that (1) the halakhic system is a compromised one in that it embodies a compromise between the practical demands of daily life and the highest spiritual and moral ideals; and (2) that through its “stretch” between the practical and the ideal, halakhah seeks to nudge reality ever closer to the ideal. In taking-of-life issues, the aggadic materials cited above express an ideal ethic which, in the capital punishment issue, halakhah itself sought progressively to embrace as it developed through Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon. Capital punishment would thus reflect halakhah as it questioned the practical, utilitarian argument of Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel and edged toward an absolute respect for human life in the context of punishment. If this analysis is correct, then the capital punishment debate snaps a picture of halakhah, and the Jewish people, as they undergo a fundamental moral stretch in relation to the taking of a human life.

— 354 —

Jewish Theological Conceptions of the Natural World ----------   Chapter XIII. Jewish Theological Conceptions of the Natural World ----------

-------------------------------- Chapter XIII  --------------------------------

What Are the Ethical Implications of Jewish Theological Conceptions of the Natural World? I My aim in this paper is programmatic and methodological. In studying the (slowly) growing literature on environmental issues in the Jewish tradition, I found myself asking certain questions about the objectives of many of the papers I read, as well as about the methods used by the authors to achieve their objectives. I would like to raise some of these questions, and, by way of conclusion, make some suggestions for furthering inquiry in this crucial area. Perhaps the best way to begin is to try to clarify a core tension many perceive to exist within the Jewish tradition, between Judaism and nature. In a by-now classic essay (cited mostly for the purposes of quasi-apologetic refutation), Steven Schwarzschild puts this in characteristically pungent terms: “The main line of Jewish philosophy (in the exilic age) has paradigmatically defined Jewishness as alienation from and confrontation with nature.”1 Schwarzschild’s argument is (again, characteristically) both rich and elusive, but mostly reduces to what he regards as the theologically normative Jewish conception of a transcendent God, which he believes stands in tension with nature. The main reason for this tension derives from a conception of nature as amoral, coupled with the conviction that Judaism is centrally concerned with imposing a moral order upon nature. This places Judaism in opposition to nature. Michael Wyschogrod, while far more careful in many ways in his formulation of the tension than Schwarzschild, likewise writes that “the 1

Steven Schwarzschild, “The Unnatural Jew,” Environmental Ethics 6 (Winter 1984), 349. — 355 —

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conflict between history and nature is fundamental to the development of Judaism.”2 For Wyschogrod, this conflict originates in the intense biblical polemic against pagan nature religions and extends through the moral perils of affirming a Nietzschian evolutionary morality. Ultimately, Wyschogrod suggests, the nature/history conflict turns on the question of whether the world was created by God. Placing to one side for the moment the merits of their respective positions, I wish to argue that this putative opposition between Judaism and nature, at least as here formulated, is to my mind incoherent. How can Judaism, or any religious tradition, be in “conflict” with (Wyschogrod’s phrase) or in “confrontation” with (Schwarzschild) nature? What, after all, do we mean by the term “nature”? Do we mean the objects and processes which constitute the natural world, that is, trees and grass and their growth, rivers and the speed with which they flow, dogs and people (for they too are objects in the natural world) and their growth, birds and the gravity they overcome while flying, and so on? If this is what we mean, then I fail to understand how Judaism can be in conflict with nature. Does it make sense to say that Judaism disapproves of trees or grass, or the processes which account for their growth and decline? No more than it makes sense to say that Judaism is opposed to the Pythagorean theorem, or to the physical relation captured in the formula f=ma. Trees, and all constituents and processes of the natural world, are just there, irrespective of religious beliefs, and to me it makes no sense at all to be in conflict with them. We might try to control these objects or processes for our own purposes, by curing disease to prolong life or tilling the soil to grow wheat. But that is not the same as “confronting,” or being “in conflict” with them. For the terms “confrontation” or “conflict” suggest a moral or ideological or ideational relationship, as if there were a disagreement or clash of values between the farmer and the soil he tills. But surely that is absent from the farmer and his soil, except in a metaphoric sense, in which the farmer’s labors are a kind of “battle” against the unyielding soil. This is not a battle of 2

Michael Wyschogrod, “Judaism and the Sanctification of Nature,” The Melton Journal (Spring 1992), 5-7. Wyschogrod is considerably more careful than Schwarzschild in the way he formulates the tension, and for him the problem may be more linguistic than conceptual. — 356 —

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values or ideas, but a battle of (metaphoric) “will,” as if the soil has a will of its own which runs contrary to the will of the laboring farmer. If there is any lingering sense at all to the idea of a valuational conflict between the soil and the farmer, I think it is borrowed from, and parasitic upon, another usage which does make sense. There is no reason why we can’t coherently discuss a possible opposition or tension between Judaism and certain ways of thinking about objects or processes in the natural world. For example, many ancient pagans believed that objects in the natural world are sacred and their processes are deities. It surely makes sense to say that biblical religion opposed these conceptions of the natural world. It likewise makes sense to say that Judaism opposes a conception of nature according to which trees are more valuable than God, or than human beings. But it is to these conceptions of nature which biblical religion or Judaism objected, and not to nature’s constituents. This point leads me to another. Upon further reflection, can one really sustain this very distinction between the constituents of nature and conceptions of nature? For how I apprehend a tree depends upon my conception of the natural world. If I am a romantic, I will apprehend a tree one way; if I am a nineteenth-century Hasidic rabbi ecstatic in the forest, I will apprehend the same tree differently; and if I am a twentieth-century industrialist, I will apprehend it yet another way. Surely there are trees out there, but, as Kant argued long ago, we have no access to them unmediated by our mental structures. It is now widely accepted that our culture, too, mediates between reality and ourselves, and that there really is no culture-independent way of knowing a tree. If this is true for such relatively simple objects as trees, what then should we say of “nature”? To the extent that “nature” is a noun which either denotes or connotes anything other than the aggregate of all constituents of the natural world — which it seems to do — then it is an abstraction. As such its sense is even more dependent upon culture than objects like trees. There simply is no such thing as nature as a kind of Ding an Sich. Human beings experience what they do of the world, and out of that experience they construct the category of nature, and indeed have varyingly constructed that category over different periods in history, among different classes of people with different conceptions — 357 —

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of the world, and in different geographic locations.3 The content of discourse about the natural world is itself not “natural,” but is rather an artifact of human intervention and culture. This implies that there simply is no “nature” out there to which Judaism can be opposed even if it so desired. Judaism’s is one set of possible constructions of nature out of many, and if Judaism is in conflict, it is in conflict with these alternative constructions of nature. I think we can conclude from this line of argument that Judaism neither dislikes trees nor flowers themselves, nor does it stand in opposition to “nature” as such. To speak simplistically of a “conflict” between Judaism and nature is thus misconceived. Indeed, it seems to me that the popularity of this way of thinking about the relationship between Judaism and nature is rooted more in the sociology of the Jews than in the beliefs they hold. For large periods of their history, Jews were urban creatures. People who live in cities are by the nature of things not always at home in the world of nature. Thus, there arose a kind of cultural alienation from the natural world which in the mind of some came to be perceived not as a relatively recent, socially conditioned sensibility, but as something deeper and more valuational or ideational. It is to this probably unconscious and uncritical transition from sociology to theology that I object. The real theological questions which should engage us, I believe, are: (1) What are Jewish constructions of nature and how do they relate to others? (2) What, if any, are the implications of these varying constructions of nature for developing a useful environmental ethic? It is to this latter question that I wish to devote the remainder of my essay.

II Two central theological issues shape current Jewish discussions of environmental issues. First, there is the immanentist/transcendentist 3

In Neil Evernden, The Social Creation of Nature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Neil Evernden traces the changing constructions of nature from the classical world through the medieval, renaissance, and modern periods. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960); and C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). — 358 —

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polarity and, second, the anthropocentric/theocentric/biocentric polarity. While I shall briefly explain, and explore, each separately, it should be noted at the outset that the general structure of the discussions of these polarities runs as follows: “If you take position X on question Y of Jewish theology, then you are well situated to take position Z on environmental ethics.” I wish to argue in what follows that the move from X to Z is made in far too facile a fashion. In general, I shall suggest that the relationship between theology and any branch of normative or applied ethics, not only environmental ethics, but biomedical ethics, business ethics, and so on, is more complicated than first meets the eye. One of the earliest essays on Jewish environmentalism, Norman Lamm’s “Ecology in Jewish Law and Theology,” published in 1971,4 focused attention on the implications of the immanentist/ transcendentist controversy in Jewish theology for environmental issues, a perspective which continues to centrally occupy those who write on the subject.5 Let us call those who apply this controversy to environmental issues the “Where-Is-God?” theologians and briefly trace their position. Ancient pagans had more or less believed that nature and its forces were living powers which required propitiation by humans to ensure the latter’s beneficent treatment. While biblical religion subsequently rejected this way of thinking about nature, the question which has long preoccupied religious thinkers is: Rejection in favor of what? The biblical materials themselves are not as clear about the question as one might wish, and the rabbinic sources are multidimensional and nonsystematic. The first systematic, philosophical, and widely available reflections on Judaism (with the major exception of Philo) appeared in the medieval world. Most of the great medieval Jewish (and Christian) philosophers took the view that God was in some sense wholly other than the natural world, a 4

5

In Norman Lamm, Faith and Doubt: Studies in Traditional Jewish Thought (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1971 ), 162-185. For a recent survey of this and other theological discussions on Judaism and the environment, see Eilon Schwartz, “Judaism and Nature: Theological and Moral Issues to Consider While Renegotiating a Jewish Relationship to the Natural World,” Judaism 44, no. 4 (Winter 1995), 437-447. — 359 —

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position which came to be known as transcendentalism, or, better, transcendentism. In part under the influence of these philosophers, this conception came to be taken by post-Enlightenment scholars of Judaism as the “orthodox” (lowercase “o”) one, although it required downplaying, or figuratively interpreting, certain biblical and especially rabbinic texts. Jewish mysticism, on the other hand, provided a framework for conceiving a more intimate link between God and the natural world. This is because of kabbalah’s hierarchical conception of God, according to which only the highest manifestation of God — the ein sof — is wholly other and unknowable. The existence of “lower” manifestations of God, however, makes a “closer” link between God and nature possible. This “closer link” has been variously described as pantheistic, panentheistic, or immanentist, depending upon the mystical figure studied and the scholar engaged in the study. Hasidic mysticism is often held to be more frequently immanentist than earlier sources, and, indeed, one prominent scholar argues that immanentism is one of Hasidism’s characteristic doctrines.6 Surely a careful analysis of each of these terms, and the extent to which each is affirmed by which sources, is a crucial undertaking, but one which need not detain us here. The overall thesis of those who draw environmental conclusions from this discussion, the “Where-IsGod?” theologians, is straightforward enough. The view that God is in some sense immanent in the natural world gives rise to an ethic which shows great reverence and awe toward the natural world, through which God’s sacred presence is manifest and can be experienced. In Lamm’s widely influential formulation, “For Hasidism, which is immanentistic and panentheistic, man has a kinship with other created beings, a symbiotic relationship with nature, and hence should maintain a sense

6

Rachel Elior, “The Affinity between Kabbalah and Hasidism: Continuity or Change?,” in Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division C (Jerusalem, 1986), 107-114. See, too, Rivkah Shatz, Hasidism as Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). This entire question has been the subject of considerable scholarly discussion. See, for example, Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Quadrangle, 1974), 144-152; Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 144-146, 153-154, and idem, Hasidism: Between Magic and Ecstasy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 17-18 and references cited there. — 360 —

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of respect, if not reverence, for the natural world which is infused with the presence of God.”7 The transcendentist view, by contrast, is taken to evacuate the natural world of God’s presence. Contemporary environmental literature is rife with condemnations of this theological position, attributing the exploitation of the environment to its widely influential desacralization of nature. Lamm identifies Hasidism’s opponents, the “Mitnagdim,” as classic Jewish proponents of the transcendentist view which, in Lamm’s characterization, leaves nature “completely profane.”8 For our purposes in this essay, we can put aside the question of whether this characterization is fair, and whether the Mitnagdim should be singled out as prime expositors of the transcendentist position in Jewish thought. The “Where-Is-God?” theologian proceeds to draw certain environmental conclusions from the transcendentist thesis. In Lamm’s words: The Mitnagdic view, emphasizing divine transcendence, leaves no place for such feelings [viz., respect and reverence for the natural world — see quotation cited above], and conceives the Man-Nature relation as completely one of subject-to-object, thus allowing for the exploitation of nature by science and technology and — were it not for halakhic restraints which issue from revelation, and not from theology — the ecological abuse of the natural world as well 9

Let us assume, for argument’s sake, that halakhah does not issue from theology but from revelation. Does this passage then mean that Jewish law which governs the environment is a gezerat ha-katuv, a divine decree lacking any rationale? It seems altogether likely that Jewish laws governing the environment do have some explanation — and emerge from, as well as help create — a comprehensible worldview, even for the transcendentist. If so, why couldn’t that worldview, one which the transcendentist himself would buy into, justify treating the environment with great respect? Indeed, I can imagine various 7 8 9

Lamm, Faith and Doubt, 177. Ibid., 176. Ibid., 177. — 361 —

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theological strategies available even to the transcendentist which would yield the same results regarding the natural world which the “WhereIs-God?” theologian attributes to the immanentist. Perhaps the most obvious strategy is to assert that the natural world deserves respect and awe because it was created by God, who Himself is so awesome as to transcend the very world He created by an act of His will. Maimonides is in many ways the philosophical father of transcendentism within the Jewish tradition. Throughout his voluminous works, Maimonides argues again and again that God is metaphysically other in the most fundamental ways from all other existents. Indeed, for Maimonides, God’s metaphysical otherness is so radical that it yields stark epistemological consequences as well: human beings can in principle never fully know God’s essence or even assert anything directly of it.10 Now the “Where-Is-God?” theologian should be bound to conclude from Maimonides’ transcendentism that he would not endorse awe and respect for the natural world. In point of fact, however, just the reverse is true. Maimonides maintains that contemplating the wonder of the created world leads to love and awe of God: And what is the means to achieve love and fear of God? When a person contemplates God’s actions and His great and wondrous creations, and apprehends through them God’s infinite and invaluable wisdom, immediately he loves, praises and exalts God, and desires with a great desire to know His great name.11

This passage suggests that the proper attitude toward the “wondrous” natural world is one of contemplative awe, as a vehicle to know and love God, its creator. This view of the natural world is reinforced by another position Maimonides takes, in the Guide of the Perplexed. He argues there against a view widely held among theists, that everything was created for the purpose of human beings: 10

11

This is so recurrent a motif in the Maimonidean oeuvre that almost any list of references falls short. But see, for example, Mishneh Torah, Yesodei Ha-Torah chap. 1; Guide of the Perplexed, book I, chap. 50-60, and book III, chap. 8-9. Mishneh Torah, Yesodei Ha-Torah 2:2. — 362 —

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It should not be believed that all the beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of something else…. In respect to every being He intended that being itself….12

Following each day of creation in Genesis, God calls everything that He had made “good.” Maimonides interprets this to mean that each created kind conformed well to its own purpose, and not the purposes of some other kind. This view follows from Maimonides’ thesis that creation is an act of God’s will, which is beyond human reason: Thus we are obliged to believe that all that exists was intended by Him, may He be exalted, according to His volition. And we shall seek for it no cause or other final end whatever. Just as we do not seek for the final end of His existence, may He be exalted, so do we not seek for the final end of His volition….13

A word of caution: the significance of this perspective should not be overstated, since in the very same chapter Maimonides says that God “stamped” into human nature the role of ruling over the fish of the sea, and that “plants were brought into existence only for the sake of animals, for those of necessity must be nourished.”14 Indeed, this very tension indicates that the chapter is a difficult one, and fully explicating it would involve us in a complex discussion of different levels and kinds of final ends as well as of the impenetrable nature of God’s will, an undertaking far beyond the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, Maimonides does provide us with a theological perspective on the natural world which promotes reverence and respect, since all species “exist for their own sake” and were all intended by God’s own will. What I have tried to demonstrate thus far is that the most influential exponent of transcendentism in the Jewish philosophical tradition advocates an attitude toward the natural environment which is no less reverential than the attitude “Where-Is-God?” theologians 12

13 14

Guide of the Perplexed, III:13, page 453 in Shlomo Pines’s translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). Ibid., 455. Ibid., 454. — 363 —

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maintain is the exclusive province of the immanentist. Maimonides represents a counterexample to the “Where-Is-God?” claim which, I would argue, illuminates a fundamental flaw in their whole line of reasoning: reverence and awe for the natural world need not flow only from immanentist considerations. Consider now the other half of the “Where-Is-God?” claim, that immanentism leads to an attitude of reverence and awe for the natural world. But what does that purported reverence or awe amount to? Hasidism does not advocate vegetarianism, and to my knowledge none of the great Hasidic theoreticians of immanentism were vegetarians. That means that eating part of a cow is consistent with treating it with reverence and awe. I must confess that I’m not sure what “reverence and awe” toward something really amounts to if eating it isn’t precluded. Are Hasidim any “greener” than non-Hasidim? Indeed, just calling Hasidism “green” seems odd, if not slightly comical. In short, there seems to be something amiss with this whole way of thinking. Both immanentists and transcendentists believe that God created the world for His own purposes, and those purposes, according to virtually all major schools of thought, envision a hierarchy of being, according to which some forms of being have greater potential for godliness than others. Since virtually all schools of Judaism hold that plants and animals have less potential for godliness than humans, human well-being is valued above the well-being of plants or animals. This difference between the value of humans and animals is so great that, historically, immanentists and transcendentists alike have agreed almost universally that animals can be killed to satisfy human interests, even such interests as making leather shoes. What then becomes of the “reverence and awe” to be felt for the natural world? I think that these emotions, and emotion-based attitudes, do have real significance, and that they do indeed flow from affirming immanentism, and certain versions of transcendentism, too. Nevertheless, there is a crucial difference between emotions and emotional attitudes, on the one hand, and moral principles, on the other.15 It may be morally correct for me to punish my child for swiping 15

Unless, of course one is an Emotivist, a school of ethics popular in the wake of logical — 364 —

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the cookies even if I love her and my heart is not in it. Emotions, and emotion-based attitudes, are defeasible by normative rules. There is a certain looseness, a vagueness or abstraction, to feelings of awe and respect which places them a step removed from the world of concrete moral adjudication. When I make a decision about whether I should eat this salad (for lettuce is no less part of the natural world than cows), I may remember my general feelings of awe toward the natural world, and recall that this lettuce was once part of the natural world. But I recall too that God created human beings with a capacity to realize a distinctive form of holiness. In order for human beings to achieve that end they must eat, and God created lettuce (at least in part) so that it can be eaten by human beings. Although I think that I myself maintain at least some of this respect for the natural world, I don’t feel myself violating that respect one iota when I eat my salad even while picnicking at the top of a mountain in awe of a particularly sublime sunset. Perhaps this is a failure on my part, but I don’t think so. Rather, I think it is a reflection of the distance between general feelings of awe or reverence for the natural world as a whole, on the one hand, and concrete moral decisions emerging from entrenched moral or religious principles, on the other. I don’t maintain that all morally sensitive environmentalists feel as I do, but I would venture to suggest that the greatest majority of Jewish immanentists and transcendentists do, and they are the ones who concern us here. Perhaps another example will make this point even sharper. Even the most sensitive environmentalist is unlikely to insist that the pneumonia which is suffocating her should not be treated by antibiotics. But of course, bacteria are causing the infection, and bacteria are no less a part of the natural world than human beings. Thus, reverence and awe for the natural world do not preclude killing at least some of its constituents for good reason, according to even the most sensitive of environmentalists. The real question is where to draw the line, and general feelings of reverence and awe are less helpful than one might suppose in drawing the line in the real world of environmental policy. positivism, but long since out of fashion, and surely inconsistent with the religious tradition under discussion here. — 365 —

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What then leads to the misapplication of these perfectly legitimate, indeed highly important, feelings of reverence and awe toward the natural world implicit in classical theism? I suspect that lurking behind their misuse, at least in part, is what logicians call the “Fallacy of Division.” What one asserts of the whole need not apply to individual parts of the whole. For example, you may assert that IBM is an efficient company, but it doesn’t follow from your claim that each individual employee of IBM is efficient. Now, the conviction that God created the natural world and cares for it should, I believe, lead to a deep feeling of respect for the natural world. But this feeling of respect need not apply — at least in equal measure — to each individual constituent of the natural world. Must I revere or feel in awe of cow dung? Must I feel the same measure of reverence and awe for the snail darter as for the sun or the Amazon? And if the glisten of the sun through a field of moist spider webs astonishes me on a brisk walk in the morning, and evokes in me an awe for God and his creation, does this mean that I must revere the black widow crawling up my leg? The reverence and awe that the theist justly feels for the natural world as a whole need not transfer to each of its parts. More precisely, the extent to which it transfers, and the practical implications of that transfer, depend upon many factors. I shall return to this theme once again in the concluding section of this essay to sharpen this discussion and draw some general methodological conclusions. But before doing so, it would be helpful to turn our attention to that other major polarity which engages Jewish theologians of the environment: anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and theocentrism.

III While theologians who speak of the relevance of Judaism’s theocentrism to environmental issues are on far safer ground than the “Where-IsGod?” theologians, several cautionary remarks are nevertheless in order. First, however, we should define our terms. The environmental anthropocentrist, in the words of Paul Taylor, maintains: … it is to humans, and only to humans, that all duties are ultimately owed. We may have responsibilities with regard to the natural ecosystems, — 366 —

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and biotic communities of our planet, but these responsibilities are in every case based on the contingent fact that our treatment of these ecosystems and communities of life can further the realization of human values and/or human rights.16

Western monotheistic religions in their classical form could never affirm this view, since they maintain that human beings owe obligations not only to other human beings, but to God as well. The alternative to anthropocentrism which Taylor develops in his influential essay — a view paralleled by other environmental thinkers, and carried even further by the deep ecologists — is environmental biocentrism, which holds that: … we have moral obligations that are owed to wild plants and animals themselves as members of the Earth’s biotic community. We are morally bound (other things being equal) to protect or promote their good for their sake…. Such obligations are due those living things out of recognition of their inherent worth. They are entirely additional to and independent of the obligations we owe to our fellow humans.17

The question which plagues the environmental biocentrist is why plants and trees should be owed obligations. Human beings are usually thought to possess certain distinctive qualities by virtue of which moral obligations are owed them. But what accounts for the existence of obligations to plants and trees? Taylor’s answer to this question is instructive. He argues that it emerges from what he calls a “biocentric outlook on nature” according to which humans are members of the earth’s ecosystem on terms no different than any other member of the ecosystem; that all members of the ecosystem are interdependent; and that each individual organism is conceived as a “teleological center of life,” meaning that the world can be looked at from the perspective of its own life. The conjunction of these three theses yields a fourth, crucial one: “… the claim that humans by their very nature are superior to other species is a groundless claim and 16

17

Paul Taylor; “The Ethics of Respect for Nature,” Environmental Ethics 3 (Fall 1981), 197-218; reprinted in People, Penguins and Plastic Trees. ed. Donald Vandeveer and Christine Pierce (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986), 169-184, quotation from 169. Ibid. — 367 —

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in the light of elements (l), (2), and (3) above must be rejected as nothing more than an irrational bias in our own favor.”18 There is much to be said about the Taylor position, but I shall confine my remarks to the concerns of this essay. It should first be noted that there is an important gap between a particular ethic, environmental biocentrism, and the biocentric outlook on nature, a perspective on nature which Taylor advances to justify it. The former maintains that obligations are owed to plants and animals independent of their human utility. The second, in seeking to justify the existence of this obligation, denies that humans have any greater worth or merit than plants or animals. Now one prima facie problem with the biocentric outlook is that it can lead to according plants and animals an absolute value at the expense of human life and basic well-being. (Whether or not this can be solved or, indeed, whether or not it is even a problem, is worthy of separate analysis.) But can the basic claim of environmental biocentrism, that plants and animals are owed obligations independent of their human utility, be justified on less problematic grounds? One candidate for this task, for the theist, is what has been called an environmental theocentrism. According to this doctrine, writes Eric Katz, “God Himself, not human life or welfare, is the source of all religious and moral obligation…. Humanity cannot have unrestricted dominion over the natural world because the world belongs to God….”19 God can simply mandate obligations owed by humans to plants and animals, the basic biocentric claim, without resorting to the problematic “biocentric outlook,” or to any absolutist sacralization of nature. So far so good. But the problem here is that the theocentric environmental theologian typically goes further than I have in making out the theocentric case, and, I might add, for very good reason. Thus Katz, later in the essay from which I quoted above, writes: 18 19

Ibid., 175. Eric Katz, “Judaism and the Ecological Crisis,” in Worldviews and Ecology, ed. John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 58. Katz is summarizing the view of many writers on the subject, e.g., Jonathan Helfand, “The Earth Is the Lord’s: Judaism and Environmental Ethics,” in Religion and Environmental Crisis, ed. Eugene Hargrove (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986); and David Ehrenfeld and Philip Bentley, “Judaism and the Practice of Stewardship,” Judaism 34 (1985). — 368 —

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On a practical level, the theocentrism of Judaism … is functionally equivalent to a nonanthropocentric doctrine of the intrinsic value of nature without endorsing the sacredness of natural entities themselves. Natural objects are valued, and cannot be destroyed, because they belong to God. They are sacred, not in themselves, but because of God’s creative process.20

Katz maintains that environmental theocentrism is the “functional equivalent” of nonanthropocentric views of nature, and that natural objects, according to Judaism, cannot be destroyed. Katz is referring to the Jewish prohibition against wanton destruction, bal tashhit. But, as Katz himself points out elsewhere in his essay, the laws of bal tashhit prohibit only wanton destruction, not destruction for economic gain, and Jewish legal standards for “wanton destruction” probably permit far more than the typical biocentrist is willing to countenance. Underlying this point is another, deeper one. Theocentrism may indeed provide a basis for holding that humans owe obligations to plants and animals for nonprudential reasons. However, theocentrism does not in itself shed much light on the scope of those obligations. And the question of scope is the critical one in constructing a useful environmental ethic. It is perfectly plausible, from a purely theocentric perspective, that God, who owns the world and establishes human obligations to preserve and protect it, would also establish the human obligation to exploit the natural world for reasons of justice. Environmental literature of the theological and nontheological sort is rife with explorations of the tension between ecology and justice. If the poor will benefit from an industry which pollutes the local river, and if that pollution is not so severe as to endanger human health, then considerations of justice might require that pollution controls not endanger the financial well-being of the industry. Now, I am not arguing that this is in fact, on balance, the morally correct position. What I am arguing is that theocentrism does not in itself yield an environmental ethic which is “functionally equivalent” to a biocentric ethic. Theocentrism in virtually all, or all, forms of Judaism admits of a hierarchy among creatures, and that very hierarchy can under certain construals allow for positions on 20

Katz, “Judaism and the Ecological Crisis,” 67. — 369 —

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environmental issues which would be problematic at the very least for many environmentalists, even moderate ones. Theocentrism must be supplemented by other norms or theological considerations to yield that “functional equivalency.” So far I have focused on the implications of justice and the hierarchy of being in demonstrating the limits of environmental theocentrism. There is another perspective as well, which further illuminates the limitations of theocentrism as a sufficient basis for constructing an environmental ethic. Consider the following theological model: God is the perfectly creative, majestic Being. Humankind was created in God’s image. This means that humankind must attempt to be creative and majestic, like God. How? To quote from one of the twentiethcentury’s most important Jewish theologians, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “through his majestic posture vis-à-vis his environment.”21 R. Soloveitchik, in his highly influential essay “Lonely Man of Faith,” articulates a bipartite conception of human nature, according to which human beings must take a dialectical stance toward God and the world. The first stance, which is that of (what R. Soloveitchik calls) Adam I, after the first creation story in Genesis, is “aggressive, bold, victoryminded.” Adam I is told “to have dominion over the works of Thy [God’s] hands,” and is bidden to “harness and dominate the elemental natural forces and to put them at his disposal.”22 It should be added that for R. Soloveitchik, Adam I is a normative form of life. To be fully “Adamic,” and thereby Godly, humans must live out the mandate of Adam I. Certainly, the Adam I mode of being stands in dialectical tension with the Adam II mode of being, which submits itself, in a sacrificial act of faith, to God and His will. Certainly, too, we have no evidence that R. Soloveitchik is advocating an ethic which exploits the natural world. That said, we nevertheless do have a theological model, flowing from a well-entrenched theocentrism, which provides a ringing endorsement of technological aggressiveness in manipulating the natural world. In the words of Gerald Blidstein, “R. Soloveitchik enthusiastically endows Western scientific technology with the fullest acknowledgment Judaism 21 22

Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition 7, no. 2 (1965), 13. Quotations are from ibid., 13-15. — 370 —

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could offer.”23 There is very little doubt that R. Soloveitchik’s thinking was influenced by the prevailing ethos of the post-Sputnik era, but that is besides the point I wish to make, which is that theocentrism itself can yield an ethic which is very far indeed from the ethic of the biocentrist, and indeed the ethic of even many a moderate environmentalist. I have cited R. Soloveitchik’s theological views not only because they themselves provide a counterexample to environmental theocentrism, but more importantly because they illustrate a general flaw in the whole line of reasoning the environmental theocentrist advocates. Theocentrism alone does not tell us enough about what the deity wills, and what the deity wills — for the theocentrist — must be the crucial determinant for constructing an environmental ethic.

IV Our examination of the two central nodes of Jewish theological discourse about the environment has exposed what I take to be a common flaw: both move too un-selfcritically from theology to ethics. There simply is no algorithm which links the two. If one thinks of this from the perspective of logic, then one might say that between theological premises, at least of the sort here discussed, and ethical conclusions there are unacknowledged missing premises. But why is this so? What explains the gap here exposed? Environmental ethics as a discipline, at least as it is usually understood, must achieve two ends. First, it must articulate and justify basic moral laws, grundnorms, which govern treatment of the natural world. Second, it must articulate and justify a series of lower-order laws, derivable from the grundnorms, which provide moral decision procedures for real-life environmental issues, which often involve conflicts among different obligations, say, between those to plants and animals, on the one hand, and those to humans, on the other. In this respect environmental ethics is no different from any field in applied ethics, such as biomedical ethics or business ethics. Now, theology of 23

Gerald Blidstein, “On the Jewish People in the Writings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Tradition 24, no. 3 (Spring 1989), 24. — 371 —

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the “Where-Is-God?” or theocentric sort operates at a level which is even prior to the grundnorms themselves. These theological models are not normative but descriptive. That is, they describe a state of affairs, for example, that God is immanent in the world, or that God owns the world and establishes human obligations. But they don’t in themselves prescribe any behavior, unlike the Kantian categorical imperative, for example, which is, as its name reveals, an imperative, and does indeed function as a grundnorm. And as ethicists ever since Hume have pointed out, it is notoriously difficult to derive ought from is, even if that “is” is a description of a state of affairs one of whose components is God. Now, this is not to say that one can never derive grundnorms from theological premises. Suppose, for example, one were to hold the following two premises: (1) God’s own treatment of all plants and animals on the earth reflects a maximization of their individual well-being; and (2) humans ought to emulate God. One could make a good case that it would follow from these theological premises that humans ought to maximize the well-being of each plant and animal on Earth. Premise 2, which I would classify as theological, is nonetheless normative, and permits us to derive norms coupled with a premise such as premise 1, which describes some feature of God or His behavior. However, theological positions such as immanentism or theocentrism are very general and abstract and lack normative content, which is ultimately why, as I have argued, they are each consistent with widely divergent norms. Indeed, the abstraction of immanentism or theocentrism derives from another factor as well. They are not once but twice removed from the concrete moral situation. Environmental ethics as applied ethics must provide moral guidance for complex practical problems such as the preservation of certain species at great economic cost. Even grundnorms such as the categorical imperative are too general to do that kind of moral work (even if they can be applied to plants and animals), and they must be supplemented with a series of lower-order principles. Abstract theological principles lacking even a grundnorm level of normativity are thus twice removed from the arena of applied environmental ethics. This observation about the level of specificity required of applied ethics leads to another point. Even if our theological premises did have — 372 —

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some normative content there would still be difficulties. Consider an analogy from another field of applied ethics, that relating to medicine. The “sanctity of life” is often trotted out as a principle governing such moral dilemmas as euthanasia. Life is sacred and must always be preserved, so the argument runs, and therefore euthanasia is immoral. But almost everyone, with very few exceptions, maintains that under certain circumstances the sacredness of life does not preclude the taking of it, for example, for self-defense. The question then becomes: under what circumstances may life be taken and under what circumstances may it not be taken? Appealing to a very general principle such as the sacredness of life, then, does not get us as far as we would like. Much the same problem afflicts the use of immanentism or theocentrism as vehicles for constructing an adequate environmental ethic.

V So far, my aims in this essay have been largely critical ones. I would like to conclude with three programmatic suggestions for future work in this area. Is there any role for Jewish theology to play in environmental ethics? Well, at one level that depends in part on the theology. Theological premises which have a normative component will obviously fare at least somewhat better than those, such as immanentism and theocentrism, that don’t. So one promising avenue of study is to explore the Jewish tradition for precisely such theological premises. I believe that deeper, more sophisticated theological work in this area, which after all is still in its infancy, can overcome the limitations I have outlined in this essay. One fruitful approach to working up this kind of theology might be to focus on close readings of individual Jewish texts, to get a sense of what their theological underpinnings are, on a microscale, before (or even without) extrapolating to large-scale theological generalizing, always a somewhat hazardous undertaking. Let us call such an approach textual theology. Classical texts, with all their subtleties, nuances, tensions, and subversions, carefully and self-consciously chosen for the richness of their environmental/ethical implications, can provide methodologically sound and fertile bases for developing a useful Jewish environmental ethic. — 373 —

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Indeed, textual theology is likely to yield not one environmental ethic but a plurality of ethical perspectives, reflecting different conceptions of the natural world embedded in different texts. To my mind, this is a desirable result, and is one of the virtues of textual theology. A second programmatic suggestion turns on an equivocality in the very meaning of the phrase “environmental ethic.” Until now I have been using it to refer to the development of a set of well-justified moral laws governing human behavioral interaction with the environment. What obligations do humans owe the natural world, if any? What are the bases of these obligations? And what is the morally correct thing to do when these obligations come into conflict with one another or with other obligations? My argument so far has been that the Jewish theological premises commonly put forth fail to do this particular job adequately. But that isn’t the only job that an environmental ethic can, and even should, do. Indeed, ethical theory prior to the modern era didn’t even think in these terms. Prior to the modern era, ethical theory was not about rules for action, but about virtue, about analyzing what constitutes the moral character. Aristotle, the most influential ancient moral philosopher, devoted all his moral-theoretic energy to justifying his view of what constitutes the virtuous personality; to analyzing individual virtues, such as continence, humility, and so on, and the virtuous personality as a whole; and to reflection about how to cultivate a virtuous character. The ancient and medieval philosophers believed that guidance for morally correct action flowed not from rules, but from what a person possessing a virtuous character could be expected to do under the circumstances. In recent years “virtue theory,” as it is now called, has gained new currency in the philosophical world. If we adopt virtue ethics as our model, then perhaps we can also think about environmental ethics as an attempt to justify the cultivation, and spell out the contours, of an “environmentally virtuous” moral character. Are there specific moral virtues and sensibilities which characterize the individual who shows care and concern for the natural world? What justifies their cultivation? How do they relate to other virtues? What are their implications for engaging the natural world? My own list of environmental virtues and sensibilities would include a deep sense of humility, not only individually but species-wide; — 374 —

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the capacity for gratitude; the capacity to experience awe and sublimity; and the virtues of temperance, continence, and respectfulness, among others. Classical Jewish sources contain a vast amount of material on these virtues, and in some instances apply them to human engagement with the natural world. Future scholarship would do well to examine these resources, in order to refine our understanding of these virtues and their application to the natural world, and to develop from them answers to some of the questions enumerated above. This would enable us to draw a portrait of the “environmentally virtuous” personality. One special advantage of this way of thinking is that its impact on humans and human behavior, for those who pay attention, is probably greater than the more traditional way of going about environmental ethics. Most of our day-to-day responses to the world are pretheoretic and emerge from our personality traits and character. Cultivating virtuous character, as the ancients understood, is a highly effective route to cultivating virtuous behavior. Judaism and other religious traditions are particularly well situated for this undertaking, more so than nonreligious philosophies, not only because they have so long reflected in this mode, but because they provide a theistic justification for developing these virtues in relation to the natural world. As the Psalmist says, “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). What better justification can there be for assuming an environmentally virtuous stance toward the natural world? It is here, I believe, that theological reflection about the natural world can provide great ethical benefit. The theological worlds of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, Habad mysticism, and Bahya ibn Pakuda’s contemplative spirituality — to mention just a few — profoundly deepen, each in its own distinctive way, our thinking about God, ourselves, and the natural world. Each provides a perspective which justifies, as well as promotes, the cultivation of environmental virtues, and each perspective stresses one or another of those virtues, in different ways. My sense, too, is that the different virtues would yield differing ethical sensibilities, with somewhat different results for environmental ethics. Fully exploring these theological worlds, their nuanced implications for developing environmental virtues, and the implications of those virtues for real-world applications, strikes me as a — 375 —

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rich and fruitful avenue for future work in Jewish environmental ethics. Nevertheless, despite the effectiveness and importance of this proposed approach to environmental ethics, taken by itself it is not wholly adequate to the task at hand. In general, one of the problems with a virtue ethic is its lack of specificity. What counts as a proper amount of food for Milo the great athlete, Aristotle noted, would obviously be excessive for a seventy-five-pound child, and ultimately the practically wise person must serve as a role model for the ethical neophyte. Conversely, one of the great strengths of an action-centered ethic is its law-like specificity. Now, I find it very hard to imagine how constructing an environmental virtue ethic can solve complex ecological problems involving, for example, the economic costs of preserving the snail darter. The critical discussion about theology which forms the heart of this essay applies in some measure to an environmental ethic grounded in virtue as well. This observation leads me to my third programmatic suggestion. Overall, applied Jewish normative ethics are characterized by a strong legal rather than virtue orientation. Discussions of concrete problems in business, biomedical, or legal ethics are typically (although of course not always) found in Judaism’s vast legal corpus, which is centrally concerned with moral issues. Indeed, it has recently been argued that in Judaism, where there is a conflict between the norms of virtue and those of action — as in the case of altruistic self-sacrifice — norms of action take precedence over virtue.24 The historically strong legal orientation of Judaism, and its vast corpus of legal material and case 24

See David Shatz, “‘As Thyself’: The Limits of Altruism in Jewish Ethics,” in Reverence, Righteousness, and Rahmanut, ed. Jacob J. Schacter (Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1992), 251-275. There is a considerable literature on supererogation and virtue ethics in Judaism. See some of the sources cited in the Shatz article and the recent volume by Walter Wurzburger, The Ethics of Responsibility: Pluralistic Approaches to Covenantal Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994). For a brief overview see Moshe Sokol, “Jewish Ethics,” Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker (New York: Garland, 1992), 647-653. For a survey of the history of the revival of interest in virtue ethics in moral philosophy and some of its strengths and weaknesses (alluded to in my brief discussion in the main text of the present essay), see The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character, ed. Robert B. Kruschowitz and Robert C. Roberts (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987). — 376 —

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law, positions Judaism for responding in a substantive manner to the complexities of practical environmental ethics with an unusual richness of resources. Time will tell how fruitful this area of research will prove. But my primary concern in this paper has been the link between theology and environmental ethics. And I think that one way to develop a constructive link is to aim the theoretical arrow not from theology to ethics, as has been the case so far, but (at least at first) from ethics to theology. By that I mean that the theologian would do well to examine what the applied Jewish normative tradition — its body of case law — has to say about environmental issues and, using that as data, attempt to construct a theology which explains or grounds these normative materials. What picture of God, humanity, or the world best accounts for the normative data? How might this picture lead to fresh new thinking and help chart new directions to the challenges posed by evolving threats to the well-being of the planet? The strength of this approach is that its theological reflections are grounded in concrete Jewish normative data, and thereby connect theology to how the Jewish tradition — at least in its legal manifestation — practically responds to the natural world.25 These three suggestions are no more than programmatic, but they may be helpful in thinking about how to think about Judaism and the natural world, in the theological mode. It need hardly be added that such an undertaking is of the greatest possible moment.

25

For discussions about this as a method for Jewish ethics, see chapters XI and XII of this volume. — 377 —

R abbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------- Chapter XIV  --------------------------------

Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith1 Creation springs from primordial chaos; religious profundity springs from spiritual conflict. The Jewish ideal of the religious personality is not the harmonious individual determined by the principle of equilibrium, but the torn soul and the shattered spirit....

 — Joseph Soloveitchik, “Sacred and Profane”

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik is undoubtedly the most respected intellectual figure within Orthodox Judaism today. His Orthodox admirers, found mainly in the “modern Orthodox” camp, always refer to him reverentially as “the Rav,” the teacher par excellence. As for nonOrthodox views, we have the testimony of novelist Mark Mirsky that Soloveitchik is “the greatest storyteller I have ever heard,”2 and the prediction of Reform theologian Arnold Wolf that “people will still be reading [Soloveitchik] in a thousand years.”3 In large part, Soloveitchik’s reputation is built on a firm foundation of talent. His strengths are many, and in combination they make him a truly formidable — and quite unique — intellectual figure. As Eugene Borowitz has put it: “He is more halakhic than Baeck, more sophisticated than Kaplan, more erudite than Buber, more rationalistic than Heschel.”4 Those in a position to judge the matter state 1

2 3 4

Written in collaboration with David Singer. Note that since the original publication of this essay a rich trove of essays and books by Rabbi Soloveitchik on theological and halakhic topics drawn from manuscripts and recordings has been published. However, these do not affect the thrust of the arguments in this chapter. Several minor changes here have been made to the original article. Mark Mirsky, My Search for the Messiah (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 69. Arnold Wolf, “On My Mind,” Sh‘ma (September 19, 1975), 295. Eugene Borowitz, “The Typological Theology of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Judaism (Spring 1966), 205. — 378 —

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unreservedly that Soloveitchik is the outstanding talmudic dialectician of our time. Since most Orthodox talmudists today show little interest in theology, it comes as a pleasant surprise to discover that Soloveitchik is centrally concerned with it. His theological writings, characterized by great sensitivity to the problematics of human existence, insightful reference to both classical Jewish sources and Western philosophical ideas, and the creative use of a typological methodology, hold out the promise of something rare in Jewish thought — an explication of the theology implicit in halakhah. Finally, Soloveitchik is, in the words of Arnold Wolf, a “midrashist of inordinate power and skill.”5 Whether expressing himself in English, Hebrew, or Yiddish, he has an unusual ability to make ideas, even those most abstract, come alive. If the factor of sheer talent goes a long way toward explaining the adulation which surrounds Soloveitchik, it is most certainly not the whole story. The other element which has to be considered here is his importance as a symbolic figure within the American Orthodox community. For virtually all modern Orthodox Jews, i.e., those who seek to combine a commitment to traditional Jewish law with an openness to modern secular culture and society, Soloveitchik, or more precisely Dr. Soloveitchik, is the one recognized religious authority who can serve to validate their way of life. Authority within Orthodoxy rests fundamentally on prodigious talmudic scholarship, and the contemporary masters of the Talmud are nearly unanimous in their rejection of “modernist” tendencies, most particularly advanced secular education. At the least, they regard university training as a waste of precious time that could otherwise be devoted to the study of religious texts; at worst, they see it as a dangerous exposure to heretical ideas. Soloveitchik, on the other hand, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Berlin, and maintains a strong interest in such diverse subjects as mathematics, philosophy of science, Christian religious thought, and literature. This does not mean that Soloveitchik himself is, necessarily, a modern Orthodox Jew. On the contrary, as we shall see, he is in many ways an Orthodox figure of the old school. The very fact, however, that he has a doctorate in philosophy, and that he is willing to function within a modern Orthodox framework at New York’s Yeshiva 5

Wolf, op. cit., 295. — 379 —

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University, the leading religious institution of the Orthodox modernists, makes Soloveitchik a crucially significant figure for countless numbers of Orthodox Jews. Were it not for him, they would have to bear an extremely heavy burden of guilt over their involvement in the secular world. Small wonder, then, that they put Soloveitchik on a pedestal. Given the nature of the relationship between the various Jewish religious denominations in the United States, Soloveitchik has also become something of a hero to non-Orthodox Jews. The key factor here is the willingness of modern Orthodox rabbis to work on a cooperative basis with their Conservative and Reform colleagues, something which the Orthodox traditionalists resolutely refuse to do. Since Soloveitchik is the acknowledged leader of the former, the etiquette of Jewish ecumenism has dictated that he be elevated to the position of a leading “official” religious spokesman for all of American Jewry. Perhaps more importantly, many non-Orthodox Jews, who tend to think of Orthodox rabbinic leaders as Yiddish-speaking patriarchs with long white beards and black coats, are quite taken with Soloveitchik as a man of Western ways and obvious sophistication; they find him both charming and intriguing. Finally, Soloveitchik’s “modernity” functions to quell any lingering doubts that Conservative and Reform Jews might have about their own involvement in secular society. What is troublesome about the adulation that surrounds Soloveitchik is that it has stood in the way of efforts to assess critically his thought. Precious little has been written about his theological position, and what little we do have tends toward mindless praise.6 Almost always, Soloveitchik is cast in a Maimonidean mold, as a systematic philosopher centrally concerned with the interrelationship between Jewish and Western thought. While this image jives well with the symbolic role that Soloveitchik has been assigned by modern Orthodox Jews (indeed, it 6

Three articles which do offer serious insight into Soloveitchik’s overall theological stance are Borowitz, op. cit., 203-210; Lawrence Kaplan, “The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” Tradition (Fall 1973), 43-64; and Steven Katz in his edited volume Jewish Philosophers (New York: Bloch, 1975), 215-221. Valuable biographical information is provided in Aharon Lichtenstein, “Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” in Great Jewish Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, ed. Simon Noveck (Washington, DC: Bnai Brith Dept. of Adult Jewish Education, 1963), 281-297. — 380 —

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is they who have created the image), there is in fact little evidence to support it. On the contrary, a reading of Soloveitchik’s oeuvre makes it clear that his theological concerns are quite selective in nature; that they are characterized by tensions, polarities, and outright contradictions; and that they are not shaped in any fundamental way by Western intellectual sources. The one consistent element in Soloveitchik’s thought — and the one which requires most careful delineation — is his preoccupation with a religious problematic uniquely his own. Any attempt to set forth the main elements of Soloveitchik’s thought must begin with a frank acknowledgement that the largest part of his intellectual output is simply not available for assessment. Soloveitchik, after all, is first and foremost a talmudist; as professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University, he has guided several generations of rabbinic students through the thickets of talmudic argumentation. While all of his ḥiddushe torah have been carefully recorded on tape, it will be several decades, or even longer, before they see the light of day in a usable form.7 At the same time, however, it is important to bear in mind that the glamour and excitement which surround Soloveitchik have their source in precisely those aspects of his intellectual enterprise which are reflected in his published essays: his interest in theology and his involvement with Western culture. Were Soloveitchik only a talmudist, he would be far less known and admired. Moreover, part of the importance of Soloveitchik’s theological writings is that they enable us to understand the role that he assigns to Talmud study within the overall context of Judaic life and faith. Not since Rabbi Ḥayyim of Volozhin in the early nineteenth-century has a major Jewish thinker been so preoccupied with this issue. Finally, studding all of Soloveitchik’s published works are small samples of his ḥiddushe torah, which offer at least a hint of what is contained in the larger body of talmudic scholarship. All in all, then, Soloveitchik’s theological essays provide a significant opening into his world of thought.

7

One specimen of Soloveitchik’s ḥiddushe torah that has made its way into print is “Fixing the Holidays on the Basis of Sight or Calculation,” Or Hamizrach (Fall 1980), 7-24 [Hebrew]. — 381 —

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II Given Soloveitchik’s family background, it seems likely that he would have achieved significant prominence within Orthodoxy even if he had never set foot in a university. Soloveitchik is the scion of an illustrious rabbinic dynasty which played a crucial role in promoting the “Litvak” or ”Mitnagged” outlook of Lithuanian Jewry. The symbolic godfather of the Litvaks is the Vilna Gaon, but the man who did the most to give their point of view ideological expression and institutional form was the Gaon’s chief disciple, Rabbi Ḥayyim of Volozhin. In 1803, he set up a yeshivah which became the prototype of all the great talmudic academies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The dynamic behind the Volozhin Yeshivah lay in Rabbi Ḥayyim’s stress on the cognitive purpose of Torah study, as distinguished from the functional (religious practice) or the devotional (communion with God). In his view the proper focus of Jewish life was the study of Torah in general, and of Talmud in particular, “for its own sake,” i.e., for the sake of knowing and understanding. It was at Volozhin and its various outposts that the members of the Soloveitchik family made their signal contributions in strengthening Litvak religiosity. Soloveitchik’s great-grandfather, Joseph Baer (18201892), served as co-head of the Volozhin Yeshivah for some years and produced several volumes of novellae on the Talmud. An article in the Encyclopedia Judaica characterizes him as a “dynamic personality, sharpwitted, preferring acumen to erudition.”8 The same description applies with even more force to Soloveitchik’s grandfather, Ḥayyim (1853-1918), known universally in the world of traditional Jewish learning as Rabbi Ḥayyim Brisker. He spent close to twenty years at the Volozhin Yeshivah (settling, thereafter, in Brisk [Brest-Litovsk], where he served as communal rabbi), and developed a unique, highly analytical method of Talmud study emphasizing “incisive analysis, exact definition, precise classification, and critical independence.”9 Ḥayyim was, quite simply, a talmudic genius; he attracted thousands of students 8 9

Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 15, 131. Lichtenstein, op. cit., 283. — 382 —

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who promoted the “Brisker” method until it became predominant in European yeshivot. After Ḥayyim’s death, the Brisker approach to Talmud study was carried to Palestine and the United States by his two gifted sons, Isaac Zeev (1886-1960) and Moses (1876-1941) — respectively, Soloveitchik’s uncle and father. The former (after serving for many years as communal rabbi in Brisk, in succession to Ḥayyim) settled in Jerusalem in 1941 and quickly became the leading figure in yeshivah circles there, while the latter, who arrived in New York in 1929, was appointed head of the Talmud faculty at Yeshiva University. Soloveitchik himself was born in Pruzhan, Poland, on February 27, 1903. He was initiated into the Brisker method of Talmud study by his father, who was his one and only teacher until his late teens. When the Soloveitchik family took up residence in Warsaw in 1920, Joseph began to engage in secular pursuits; he studied with a series of tutors until he attained the equivalent of a gymnasium education. In 1925, Soloveitchik enrolled as a philosophy student at the University of Berlin, specializing in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. Soloveitchik remained at Berlin for six years, capping his academic work with a doctoral dissertation on the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen. In 1932, Soloveitchik emigrated to the United States, becoming “chief rabbi” of the small Orthodox community in Boston. He must have been a striking figure at that point, since he was a man who was fully at home in two very different intellectual worlds — the worlds of Torah learning and Western culture. Thus, the traditionalist rabbi, Abraham Kahane-Shapiro of Kovno, could state of Soloveitchik (in a letter written in 1931): The spirit of his illustrious grandfather, the leading rabbi of his time, Rabbi Ḥayyim Soloveitchik, rests upon Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, Just like his grandfather, he, too, is a master of the entire range of Talmudic literature…. Happy is the country that will be privileged to be the home of this great sage. The sages have ordained him to be the true interpretor of all religious problems, and the halakhah shall always be in accordance with his rulings.10

10

Quoted in Aaron Rothkoff, Bernard Revel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1972), 128. — 383 —

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At the same time, Soloveitchik was able to join with such prominent academics as Harry Wolfson and Solomon Zeitlin in a 1935 lecture series celebrating the Maimonides octocentennial; the subjects on which he spoke were nothing less than “Maimonides and Kant on the Conception of Freedom of the Will and the Problem of Physical Causality in the Modern Theory of Knowledge” and “Maimonides’ Philosophic and Halakhic View on Homo Sapiens and the Modern Philosophy of Value”! Upon succeeding his father as the senior talmudist at Yeshiva University in 1941, Soloveitchik quickly gained renown among modern Orthodox Jews. To them, the “Rav” was a full-fledged cultural hero who had bridged the gap between Orthodoxy and modernity. But had Soloveitchik, in fact, done so? Indeed, did he wish to do so? These are important questions which need to be clarified. And there are still other questions: why did Soloveitchik seek to obtain a secular education?; why, having earned a doctorate, did he remain a talmudist in the yeshivah world, rather than pursue an academic career in philosophy?; how did an exposure to Western culture affect his self-understanding as a talmudist and, more generally, as a religious Jew?; and, finally, how did he seek to harness his secular learning so as to advance Judaism’s as well as his own religious ends? The answers to all these questions — or at least the beginnings of answers — are to be sought in Soloveitchik’s theological writings.

III It is commonplace in discussions of Soloveitchik to bemoan the fact that he has published very little. Certainly one would wish to see much more from his pen, particularly since it is reported that he has a large quantity of material ready in manuscript form but is reluctant to release it. At the same time, however, it is important to note that Soloveitchik’s list of publications has steadily grown over the years. By now, the total number of items in print stands at over twenty-five. Many of these essays are short, but others are quite lengthy, and three — Halakhic Man, The Lonely Man of Faith, and “But if You Search There” — could well be considered small books.11 In addition, there are three volumes available which present 11

Halakhic Man first appeared in Talpiot (1944), 651-734 [Hebrew] and is now available, — 384 —

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summaries or reconstructions of a large number of Soloveitchik’s public lectures.12 Caution is clearly called for in the use of the latter materials, but they do help to round out the picture of Soloveitchik’s thought. Soloveitchik’s first weighty publication, and the one which played a crucial role in establishing the regnant image of him as the “philosopher of halakhah,” was Halakhic Man. This essay, exuding intellectual sophistication and touching upon issues fundamental to religious life, is a pioneering attempt to explain the inner world of the talmudist in terms drawn from Western culture. Indeed, it may fairly be said that only Soloveitchik could have written Halakhic Man, in that it employs the concepts and vocabulary of neo-Kantian philosophy to give expression to the Litvak religiosity of Rabbi Ḥayyim Brisker. There is not the slightest exaggeration in this statement; having Brisk speak in the language of Berlin is the very essence of the problematic in Halakhic Man. Small wonder, then, that the essay radiates excitement. To fully appreciate the ground-breaking nature of Halakhic Man, it is necessary to bear in mind that virtually all modern efforts at constructing a Jewish theology have been based on the non-legal sources of Judaism — aggadah, philosophy, Kabbalah, etc. Yet, it is the Law, in fact, which stands at the center of Jewish life. Quite clearly, then, the very first task of Jewish theology as an enterprise ought to be to theologize about the Law, its nature and significance. But to speak of the Law is to speak of the talmudist, the man for whom the halakhah is the breath of life. What is the nature of his endeavor? Why is he drawn to the Law? What does the talmudist experience as he

12

together with five other essays, in Pinchas Peli, ed., In Aloneness, In Togetherness (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), 39-188 [Hebrew]. (All page citations from Halakhic Man in the notes refer to this volume.) An English translation of Halakhic Man, brilliantly prepared by Prof. Lawrence Kaplan of McGill University, will be published by the Jewish Publication Society in 1983. The Lonely Man of Faith was published in Tradition (Summer 1965), 5-67, while “But if You Search There” appeared in Hadorom 47 (1978), 1-85 [Hebrew]. The Spring 1978 number of Tradition carried five essays by Soloveitchik. See also David Telsner, ed., Five Sermons (Jerusalem: Tal Orot, 1974) [Hebrew]. The remainder of Soloveitchik’s writings are scattered in a variety of English and Hebrew language sources (see note 1 above). Joseph Epstein, ed., Shiurei Harav (New York: Hamevaser, 1974); Pinchas Peli, ed., On Repentance (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1974) [Hebrew] (Now available in an English translation [Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1980]); Abraham Besdin, ed., Reflections of the Rav (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1979). — 385 —

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labors over an intricate halakhic problem? Why is he convinced that in studying the details of often obscure laws, he is dealing with matters of ultimate religious importance? Halakhic Man is in a class by itself in the modern literature of Judaism in being centrally concerned with just these questions. It is the one major study we have which gives halakhocentricity its proper theological due, and clearly sets forth the program and rationale of talmudism. At first glance, it would appear that the philosophical abstractions of neo-Kantianism are absolutely irrelevant to an understanding of the nature of the talmudist’s endeavor. What possible connection could there be between talk about Being, a priori ideas, mathematics and science, and an appreciation of the labors of a man who pores over ancient texts in order to better understand the details of religious laws? Yet, quite amazingly, Soloveitchik manages with a single — brilliant — interpretative twist to make neo-Kantianism fully relevant to the analysis of talmudism. How does he do so? By arguing that the talmudist, no less so than the mathematician-scientist, makes use of an a priori system of ideas in approaching reality. In the case of the mathematician-scientist, the a priori system consists of the theorems and laws which he brings to bear in his research efforts. For the talmudist, the equivalent system is the halakhah, which is not only a set of behavioral norms, but also — and more importantly — a logical, conceptual structure. As Soloveitchik expresses the matter: When he approaches reality, halakhic man comes with his Torah, revealed to him at Sinai, in hand. He engages the world with set laws and established principles. A complete Torah of precepts and laws guides him to the road which leads to existence. Halakhic man approaches the world well furnished with statutes, laws, principles, and judgments, in an a priori relation. His approach is one which begins with an ideal creation and concludes with a real one. To what can this be compared? To a mathematician who fashions an ideal world, and uses it for the purpose of establishing a relationship between it and the real world…. The essence of the halakhah, which was received from God, lies in the creation of an ideal world, and in recognizing the relationship which holds between it and reality…. There is no phenomenon or object for

— 386 —

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which the a priori halakhah does not construct an ideal standard.13

Thus, in a flash, is the halakhah converted into a series of epistemological and ontological principles; the Law is endowed with cognitive significance; it speaks to the intellect. Having posited a basic identity between the mathematician-scientist and the talmudist in terms of the methodologies that they employ, Soloveitchik seeks to show that their general intellectual orientations are also strikingly similar. Thus, he argues that the talmudist, no less so than the theoretical physicist, is engaged in “pure” research; he is a speculative thinker who is little interested in the practical consequences of his studies.14 The “ultimate” for the talmudist, Soloveitchik tells us, is “not the realization of the halakhah, but the ideal construction which was given to him at Sinai, and which stands forever.”15 Or again: “Theoretical halakhah — not action; ideal creation —  not reality represent the longing of the master of halakhah.”16 Carrying his comparative analysis a step further, Soloveitchik maintains that the mathematician-scientist and the talmudist share a this-worldly outlook. The latter, for his part, has no use for a separate transcendental realm, since his beloved a priori halakhic principles exist specifically in order to be applied in the “real” (natural-sense) world. At the same time, however, Soloveitchik insists that the talmudist, again like the mathematician-scientist, is interested in natural-sense phenomena only insofar as they relate to his unique a priori categories of thought. In this context, he presents a near parody of the Psalmist’s “the heavens declare God’s glory”: When halakhic man lifts his eyes to the western or eastern horizon and sees the light of the sun while it sets, the dawn when it arises, or the rays of the sun as it shines, he knows that this shining or setting imposes upon him anew obligations and commandments. The rising of the dawn or the appearance of the sun obligate him to fulfill those commandments that are performed during the day: recitation of the morning shema, fringes, phylacteries, morning prayers, etrog, shofar…. Sunset imposes 13 14

15 16

Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, op. cit., 64. This position becomes problematic for Soloveitchik when, at another point in Halakhic Man, he seeks to stress the normative nature of the talmudist’s endeavor. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, op. cit., 68. Ibid., 69. — 387 —

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upon him those obligations that are performed at night: recitation of the evening shema, eating matzot, counting the omer…17

Finally, Soloveitchik points to a passion for quantification as a common characteristic of the talmudist and the mathematician-scientist; both types of scholars seek to translate infinity into “finite creations, delimited by numbers and mathematical measures.”18 Given Soloveitchik’s portrayal of the talmudist as the intellectual twin of the mathematician-scientist, it is not surprising that he focuses on creativity as the defining characteristic and supreme virtue of his hero. That, of course, is exactly what the neo-Kantians did in dealing with the mathematician-scientist. And, indeed, how could it be otherwise when one is seeking to underscore the role of autonomous reason in developing bold systems of thought? In the case of the talmudist, Soloveitchik argues, creativity is manifested in every aspect of his existence. On the intellectual side, he is a great conceptualizer, who frames all reality within the a priori categories of the halakhah. As a byproduct of this process, Soloveitchik points out, the talmudist becomes the master of the objects of his thought: The mysterious relationship which obtains between the subject which cognizes and the object which is grasped, even though it is logical and not psychological, nevertheless causes man to regard himself as sovereign and master with respect to the object which stands ready to be grasped. The subject rules over the object, the person over the thing. Cognition is to be explained as the subjugation of the object to the mastery of the subject.19

On the behavioral side, the talmudist is a self-determining personality who uses halakhic norms to shape the direction of his life. The process that is at work here is neatly summarized by Soloveitchik in the following equation: “the realization of halakhah = the concentration of transcendence in the world = holiness =

17 18 19

Ibid., 65. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 120. — 388 —

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creation.”20 All in all, then, the talmudist exemplifies a life based on the assumption that “the most fundamental principle of all is that man must create himself.”21 Quite obviously, the talmudist, as he is portrayed in Halakhic Man, is an exalted religious figure. Yet even this statement fails to do justice to the full extent of the claim that Soloveitchik puts forward on his behalf. The key point here is that Soloveitchik’s discussion of talmudism is developed within the framework of a typological analysis of human experience. He is dealing, in the first instance, not with things as they are, or even as they might be, but rather with pure possibilities of existence. Specifically, Soloveitchik posits two basic universal human types, “intellectual man” and “religious man.” The former is characterized by a boundless zeal for explanation, by a vast determination to remove the unknown from the cosmos. The latter, in contrast, is held spellbound by the mystery of the universe which points obliquely to the presence of a transcendental realm. It is in the talmudist — or as he is referred to typologically, “halakhic man” — Solovietchik argues, that these two types come together. Thus he states: On the one hand, … his [the halakhic man’s] countenance and expression are comparable to that of intellectual man, who, with the joy of discovery and the thrill of creativity, occupies himself with ideal constructions, and compares his ideal concepts to the real world…. Yet, on the other hand, halakhic man is not a secular, cognitive type, whose mind is not at all concerned with transcendence, but is bound only to temporal life. God’s Torah has planted in halakhic man’s consciousness both the idea of everlasting life and the yearning for eternity…. He is religious man in all his loftiness and splendor, for his soul thirsts for the living God, and these streams of yearning surge and flow to the sea of transcendence. The only difference between religious man and halakhic man is that … they go in opposite directions. Religious man begins with this world and ends up in supernal realms; halakhic man starts out in supernal realms and ends up in this world. Religious man longs to ascend from the vale of tears, from concrete reality, to the mountain of God. He attempts to 20 21

Ibid., 156. Ibid., 157. — 389 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

extricate himself from the narrow straits of the perceptible world and emerge into the wide-open spaces of a pure and pristine transcendental existence. Halakhic man longs to bring down transcendence to the vale of distress that is our world, and to transform it into the land of the living.22

Halakhic man, then, as a type, represents a synthesis of the hardheaded thinking of intellectual man and the passionate spirituality of religious man; halakhic man uses the intellectualism of the former to achieve the spiritual ends of the latter. If intellectual man and religious man are “ideal” types in terms of human potential, then halakhic man is the ideal “ideal” type! Could the talmudist possibly be placed on a higher pedestal? In explaining the nature of the typological analysis that he employs in his essay, Soloveitchik states that the various human types never exist in pure form in the real world. Yet, having said this, he does not hesitate in the least to point to specific individuals as the embodiment of halakhic man. Not surprisingly, all of them — the Vilna Gaon, Ḥayyim of Volozhin, Elijah of Pruzhan, Ḥayyim Soloveitchik, and Moses Soloveitchik — are Litvak virtuosi. Soloveitchik places particular stress on his father and, even more so, on his grandfather, citing several stories about each to illustrate various aspects of the nature of halakhic man. He notes, for example, that his father and grandfather never set foot in a cemetery, because the thought of death would have interfered with their contemplation of the ideal halakhic system. Wishing to draw a sharp contrast to the subjectivism of “mystical man” (illustrated by several citations from Hasidic sources), Soloveitchik notes how his father reprimanded a Lubavitcher Hasid who was overcome with religious emotion as he prepared to blow the shofar on the New Year; Moses’ only concern was that the shofar be sounded in a halakhically correct manner. Finally, Soloveitchik underscores his grandfather’s derisive view of mussar as a species of introspection irrelevant to a life based on the study of the Law. This, then, is halakhic man. As a modern restatement of the program and rationale of talmudism, Halakhic Man is a brilliant tour de force. Soloveitchik succeeds in greatly enhancing the status of the talmudist (at least in the eyes of 22

Ibid., 85-86. — 390 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

the modern audience that he is addressing in his essay) by portraying him as an analogous figure to the mathematician-scientist, and by focusing on creativity as his defining characteristic. The key factor in this effort, of course, is Soloveitchik’s use of neo-Kantian thought as the framing medium of his analysis. Yet, it must be noted, the mesh of talmudism and neo-Kantianism in Halakhic Man is far from perfect. Thus, Soloveitchik treads gently over the fact that the mathematicianscientist fully creates his own system of thought, whereas the talmudist, even at his most creative, works with halakhic principles that have been revealed to him by God. Certainly, this has important implications for an evaluation of the relative creativity of the two types of scholars. In addition, it raises serious questions about the use of the term a priori in connection with the halakhah. In the neo-Kantian scheme, a priori refers to a condition of human consciousness, and a body of revealed truth such as the Torah can certainly not be that. Still another problem with Soloveitchik’s comparison of the mathematician-scientist and the talmudist is that the conceptual system of the former is completely objective and self-contained, while that of the latter includes subjective elements (since a number of halakhic categories, e.g., “ways of peace” and “ways of pleasantness,” are inherently subjective) and is influenced by outside factors (i.e., such non-legal sources as philosophy, Kabbalah, and aggadah). Finally, Soloveitchik sidesteps the point that the mathematician-scientist deals with an open body of knowledge that is evolving toward greater truth, while the talmudist concerns himself with a closed system of thought that is seen as perfect ab initio. In general, then, Soloveitchik overstates his thesis in Halakhic Man.23 It should be noted in passing that in another of his essays24 — published nineteen years after Halakhic Man  —  Soloveitchik does succeed in fully bridging the gap between the mathematician-scientist and the talmudist in terms of creativity. In “How is Your Beloved Better than 23

24

For critiques of Soloveitchik’s position in Halakhic Man see Rachel Shihor, “On the Problem of Halakhah’s Status in Judaism,” Forum (Spring-Summer 1978), 146-153; Jacob Agus, Guideposts in Modern Judaism (New York: Bloch, 1954), 37-44; and Kaplan, op. cit., 51-52. Joseph Soloveitchik, “How is Your Beloved Better than Another?” Hadoar (September 27, 1963), 752-759 [Hebrew] (reprinted in In Aloneness, In Togetherness, op. cit., 191-253). — 391 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

Another?,” Soloveitchik argues at length that his grandfather, Ḥayyim Brisker, revolutionized Talmud study in precisely the same manner that Galileo and Newton transformed the nature of scientific inquiry. Just as the latter developed abstract-formal mathematical systems on the basis of which they explained natural-sense phenomena, Soloveitchik maintains, so also did his grandfather introduce highly abstract conceptual structures within which he organized and explained the particulars of the Law. In this view, the revealed halakhot are the raw data which the talmudist patterns through the use of autonomous reason. Since Soloveitchik was fully conversant with the Brisker method of Talmud study (indeed, he was a master of it!) at the time that he wrote Halakhic Man, it seems strange that he did not point to it then as a way of strengthening his argument for a mathematician-scientist/talmudist analogy. Apparently, at that juncture, he had no desire to portray his grandfather as a talmudist who broke with the past. Two aspects of Soloveitchik’s enterprise in Halakhic Man that merit special attention are the way in which he harnesses his secular learning and his reliance on a typological analysis of human experience. With regard to the former, there has been considerable confusion. Because Halakhic Man is replete with references to the full panoply of Western thinkers and ideas, and because the essay leans heavily on neo-Kantian philosophy, it has been generally assumed that Western thought plays a key determinative role in Soloveitchik’s thinking. Thus, virtually all discussions of Halakhic Man refer to the “influence” of neo-Kantianism on Soloveitchik, as if a reading of Hermann Cohen had provided the basis for his theological position and agenda. In fact, however — and this is true of all of Soloveitchik’s theological writings — the arrows run in the exact opposite direction; it is Soloveitchik, standing on firm Jewish ground, who uses Western thought to serve his own (Jewish) theological purposes. Thus, as we have seen, Halakhic Man is anything but a radical reinterpretation of Judaism in the light of neo-Kantian philosophy. Rather, Soloveitchik latches on to neo-Kantianism as a way of adding to the prestige of talmudism; he dresses up talmudism in neo-Kantian garb so as to make it more appealing to a modern, secularized audience. Soloveitchik’s aim in the essay is thoroughly conservative, and he uses neo-Kantian philosophy as a mere packaging — 392 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

device. Soloveitchik himself underscores this point when he states (in a footnote in Halakhic Man that has been ignored in all discussions of his work) that he is drawing upon neo-Kantian thought so as to make talmudism more “palatable” to the reader.25 Exactly! For Soloveitchik, then, neo-Kantian philosophy specifically, and Western thought generally, exist as resource materials to be pressed into the service of Judaism. It is a matter, so to speak, of presenting the old Jewish wine in new Westernized bottles. There is yet another form of intellectual packaging which is exhibited in Halakhic Man. All the learned footnote references to the history of Western thought, all the brief excursuses examining abstruse philosophical, theological, and scientific issues, all the citations of Greek in the original (sometimes without accompanying translations!) — these are devices that Soloveitchik uses to establish his own credentials with the reader. Soloveitchik is fully aware in Halakhic Man that he faces a serious credibility problem in making a case for talmudism. How does an Orthodox Jew even begin to convince a modern sophisticated audience that the talmudist is a figure worthy of admiration? Part of the answer, of course, is to make talmudism appear intellectually attractive — attractive, that is, by the standards of modernity. And that is where neo-Kantianism, with its talk of science and creativity, comes in. Yet, Soloveitchik wisely understands that this is not enough, that he has to establish his own authority in this area if he is to be a truly effective spokesman for talmudism. Hence the impressive show of secular learning which Soloveitchik puts on in Halakhic Man.26 And it is impressive, because Soloveitchik is fully at home in the Western intellectual tradition; he knows what he is talking about. While Halakhic Man ends on an apologetic note, with 25

26

Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, op. cit., 63 n. 16. Great significance is attached to the fact that Soloveitchik did his doctoral dissertation on Hermann Cohen. In fact, however, he had hoped to prepare a dissertation on a very different subject: Plato and Maimonides. The project never materialized because no one on the philosophy faculty of the University of Berlin felt qualified to supervise it. “Puts on” is the precisely correct term here. Soloveitchik has a remarkable ability to make selective use of his secular learning. There are times, such as in his yearly lectures on repentance, when he studiously avoids any mention of Western thought, even if it is directly relevant to his subject. See Peli, ed., On Repentance, op. cit., passim. — 393 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

Soloveitchik expressing the hope that he has not let down the cause of the talmudist, his worry is completely superfluous. Dr. Soloveitchik is a masterful propagandist for talmudism. Having stressed the functional nature of Soloveitchik’s overall approach to Western thought, it is important to point out that at times he puts aside the criterion of utility and makes use of a specific idea or methodology for the simple reason that it appeals to him. A clear case in point is his reliance on a typological analysis in Halakhic Man. As Soloveitchik himself acknowledges in a footnote,27 his typological methodology is based on the work of Eduard Spranger, a philosopher and educator who taught at the University of Berlin during the 1920s. Why is Soloveitchik so taken with typologies? Certainly there is no organic link between their use and his effort to portray the talmudist as an analogous figure to the mathematician-scientist; neo-Kantian philosophy is quite sufficient for that purpose. What a typological procedure does make possible, however, is a form of analysis which is highly abstract and which results in neat categorization — elements, it should be noted, that are prominently featured in the Brisker method of Talmud study which Soloveitchik champions. Could it be, then, that Soloveitchik turns to typologies when he is doing theology because they allow for the same play of the mind that he enjoys when he is engaged in the analysis of talmudic texts? This must remain a matter of speculation. What is clear, however, is that Soloveitchik derives significant personal satisfaction from the use of typologies as an analytical tool, hence their recurrence throughout his theological oeuvre quite independently of any functional consideration.28 27 28

Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, op. cit., 39. Among the typologies that Soloveitchik puts forward are “majestic man” and “covenantal man” in The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit.; “cosmic conscious man” and “origin conscious man” in “Majesty and Humility,” Tradition (Spring 1978), 25-37; “natural man” and “confronted man” in “Confrontation,” Tradition (Spring-Summer 1964), 5-28; “New Year man” and “Day of Atonement man” in “How is Your Beloved Better than Another?,” op. cit.; “New Moon man” in “The Hidden and the Revealed,” in Zion From the Torah, ed. Zevi Tabory (New York: n.p., 1963), 15-43 [Hebrew] (reprinted in In Aloneness, In Togetherness, op. cit., 297-330. All page citations from “The Hidden and the Revealed” in the notes refer to this volume); “man of fate” and “man of destiny” in “Hark, My Beloved Knocks,” in Torah and Kingship ed. Simon — 394 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

IV Halakhic Man has been characterized by Eugene Borowitz as a “Mitnagged phenomenology of awesome proportions.”29 This statement is right on target — provided, that is, that one ignores the very opening pages of the essay. These pages, which serve as an introduction, stand in bold contrast to the main body of the work. An important component of Soloveitchik’s argument in the Halakhic Man, as we have seen, is that the talmudist in his typological mode, i.e., as halakhic man, represents a synthesis of the best elements of intellectual man and religious man. In the introductory section, however, Soloveitchik stakes out a very different position; he maintains that the talmudist, precisely because he incorporates within himself aspects of two radically different “ideal” types, is a conflicted personality. Moreover, Soloveitchik stresses that the tensions within the talmudist are unavoidable, that they are a constituent element of his being. Thus, Halakhic Man opens on the following note: Two opposing selves are embodied in halakhic man; two disparate forces vie within his soul and spirit. On one hand, he is as far removed from general religious man as is east from west, and is identical in many respects to prosaic intellectual man; on the other hand, he is a man of God, who possesses an ontological approach sanctified to heaven and a world view saturated with the radiance of the divine presence.30

As if this were not strange enough, given what Soloveitchik goes on to say about the talmudist in the main body of the essay, he adds significantly that the conflicted nature of halakhic man, while painful, has positive value in that it serves as a spur to religious growth. Out of the “furnace of perplexity and contradiction,” out of the “fires of

29 30

Federbush (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1961), 11-44 [Hebrew] (reprinted in In Aloneness, In Togetherness, op. cit., 333-400. All page citations from “Hark, My Beloved Knocks” in the notes refer to this volume); and “king-teacher” and “saintteacher” in “A Eulogy for the Talner Rebbe,” Boston Jewish Advocate (June 1972) (reprinted in Epstein, ed., Shiurei Harav, op. cit., 18-26). Borowitz, op. cit., 209. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, op. cit., 39. — 395 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

spiritual conflict,” Soloveitchik maintains, there emerges a personality of “incomparable splendor and glory.”31 The principle that is at work here is clear cut: “Inconsistency enriches existence, contradiction renews Creation, negation builds worlds, and denial deepens and expands consciousness.”32 Quite obviously, there is a side to Soloveitchik’s religious thinking which is not even hinted at in the main body of Halakhic Man. Two questions immediately arise: why are the theological views expressed in the opening pages of the essay not reflected in the work as a whole?; and why, given the fact that they are not reflected there, does Soloveitchik broach them at all in the introduction? The first question is posed with a sense of puzzlement, the second with a feeling of absolute amazement. Could it be that Halakhic Man ended up being a very different essay than the one Soloveitchik originally set out to write? That seems most improbable; Soloveitchik gives every impression in the work of being fully in command, of knowing exactly what he is up to. At the same time, it is clear that Soloveitchik could have produced an antithetical theological statement to Halakhic Man had he so wished. The evidence for this is readily in hand in The Lonely Man of Faith, which while it appeared more than twenty years after the publication of Halakhic Man, is, in fact, that statement. The Lonely Man of Faith takes as its point of departure the theological position set forth in the introductory section of Halakhic Man. It thus reveals that “other” Soloveitchik who is carefully kept from view when he is discoursing at length on the nature of talmudism. An appreciation of The Lonely Man of Faith as the theological counterpoint to Halakhic Man extends to matters of style as well as substance. Thus, in The Lonely Man of Faith, Soloveitchik eschews the direct form of argumentation which he employs in his discussion of talmudism, and relies instead on a philosophical exegesis of the Bible. Specifically, he focuses on the two versions of the creation story in the opening chapters of Genesis, arguing that they offer radically differing perspectives on the nature of man. The most likely source for Soloveitchik’s methodology in The Lonely Man of Faith is Maimonides’ 31 32

Ibid., 40. Ibid., 41-42. — 396 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

Guide of the Perplexed, the Jewish philosophical work most dear to his heart, and one which proceeds very much along the same lines as his essay. At the same time, Soloveitchik may be seeking to capitalize on the currency given to biblically-based philosophical analysis in the writings of Karl Barth, the neo-orthodox Protestant theologian. Soloveitchik was aware of Barth’s work at an early date, and admiringly referred to him in the introductory section of Halakhic Man. What both Maimonides and Barth could offer Soloveitchik were models of how to use the biblical text as a springboard for an intellectually sophisticated discussion of the human condition. That, precisely, is what we have in The Lonely Man of Faith. If the framework of The Lonely Man of Faith is strikingly different from that of Halakhic Man, all the more so is this true of the tone. The latter essay is written in a cool, impersonal, academic style, one fully appropriate to a man who has done a doctoral dissertation in philosophy at the University of Berlin and who is seeking to explain the nature of talmudism by drawing analogies to mathematics and science. Everything about Halakhic Man suggests the cerebral: the author’s stance; his choice of subject; his terms of reference. As against this, in The Lonely Man of Faith, we are offered the whole man: Soloveitchik writes in a deeply personal manner; moreover, he provides an account of human nature which does justice to the emotions as well as the intellect. Thus the essay begins: I want … to focus attention on a human life situation in which the man of faith as an individual concrete being, with his cares and hopes, concerns and needs, joys and sad moments, is entangled. Therefore, whatever I am going to say here has been derived not from philosophical dialectics, abstract speculation, or detached impersonal reflections, but from actual situations and experiences with which I have been confronted…. Instead of talking theology, in the didactic sense, eloquently and in balanced sentences, I would like, hesitantly and haltingly, to confide in you, and to share with you some concerns which weigh heavily on my mind and which frequently assume the proportions of an awareness of crisis.33

33

Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 5-6. — 397 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

If all this seems very “existentialist,” it should, since that is the mode in which Soloveitchik consciously chooses to write in The Lonely Man of Faith. In doing so, he is directly echoing the point of view expressed in the introduction to Halakhic Man; there Soloveitchik praises Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Rudolf Otto — all of whom stand within the broad stream of existentialist thought — as the three modern thinkers who best appreciate the “antinomic” quality of the religious experience. That experience, as Soloveitchik puts it in the very same passage of The Lonely Man of Faith which we have just cited, is one which is “fraught with inner conflicts and incongruities, [as man] oscillates between ecstacy in God’s companionship and despair when he feels abandoned by God, [as he] is torn asunder by the heightened contrast between self-appreciation and abnegation….”34 Existentialism indeed!35 The one common element in The Lonely Man of Faith and Halakhic Man is Soloveitchik’s use of a typological analysis. In his existentialist mood, he introduces us to “Adam the first” and “Adam the second,” who are also referred to, respectively, as “majestic man” and “covenantal man.” As already noted, Soloveitchik bases his analysis on the two versions of the creation story in Genesis (chapters 1 and 2), which are notably different in several ways: in the account of the manner in which man is created (in the first version, man is created in the “image of God”; in the second version, man is formed out of the dirt of the ground and God breathes life into him); in the depiction of the first human being(s) as a male-female pair (the first version) or as a single individual (the second version); in the nature of the commandment which is given to man (in the first version, man is told to “fill the earth and subdue it”; in the second version, man is charged to “serve and keep” the creation); and, finally, in the names by which God is designated (in the first version, the name “Elohim” is used; in the second version, “Elohim” appears in conjunction 34 35

Ibid., 6. In A Layman’s Introduction to Reiigious Existentialism (New York: Delta, 1966), 18, Eugene Borowitz offers a definition of existentialism which perfectly highlights the differences in perspective between The Lonely Man of Faith and Halakhic Man: “… the concern for real man as against abstract ideas; the passion for the jagged texture of concrete reality as against the clean contours of mental construction; the insistence upon the self’s being involved in thinking as against the objective, detached observer’s stance….” — 398 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

with the tetragrammaton). What the Bible is offering us here, Soloveitchik argues, are “two Adams, two men, two fathers of mankind, two types, two representatives of humanity….”36 Thus, Adam the first/majestic man is creative, functionally oriented, and enamoured of technology; his aim is to achieve a “dignified” existence by gaining mastery over nature. Adam the second/covenantal man, in contrast, eschews “power and control”; as a non-functional, receptive, submissive human type, he yearns for a redeemed existence, which he achieves by bringing all his actions under God’s authority. Majestic man, in short, glories in the assertion of human will, while covenantal man seeks its extinction. If majestic man and covenantal man as “ideal” types have a familiar air about them, it is because they are strikingly similar to, respectively, intellectual man and religious man, who appear in Soloveitchik’s study of talmudism. To be sure, the matched types are not fully identical. Thus, intellectual man is preoccupied with theoretical knowledge, while majestic man seeks to translate it into the practical realm. Or again, religious man turns away completely from the natural world, while covenantal man retains strong links to it. These differences, however, (which are fully explicable in terms of the diverse ends toward which Soloveitchik is theologizing in Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith)37 only serve to underscore a larger pattern of similarity. The most important characteristic which majestic man shares with intellectual man is creativity. Thus, Soloveitchik states: “There is no doubt that the term ‘image of God’ in the first account [dealing with majestic man] refers to man’s inner charismatic endowment as a creative being. Man’s likeness to God expresses itself in man’s striving and ability to become a creator.”38 As for covenantal man, he is most like religious man in yearning for a direct experience of the divine. “The biblical metaphor referring to God breathing life into Adam [the second],” Soloveitchik tells us, “alludes to the actual preoccupation of the latter with God, to his genuine living experience of God…. His existential ‘I’ experience is

36 37

38

Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 10. E.g., Soloveitchik has to portray intellectual man as a theoretical scholar if he is to succeed in enhancing the status of the talmudist as a theoretician of the Law. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 11. — 399 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

interwoven in the awareness of communing with the Great Self whose footprints he discovers along the many tortuous paths of creation.”39 An awareness that Soloveitchik is dealing with very similar typological pairs in The Lonely Man of Faith and Halakhic Man is important precisely because it brings into focus the sharply contrasting ways in which he relates to them in the two essays. In Halakhic Man, Soloveitchik is clearly in sympathy with the Adam the first type, i.e., intellectual man. It is intellectual man who provides the basic model for the talmudist; the latter, like the former, is this-worldly oriented, given to quantifying, and always creatively involved with a priori ideas. To be sure, Soloveitchik also introduces religious man into his typological scheme, but that is by necessity, since intellectual man (who is best represented in the mathematician-scientist) evinces no interest in anything smacking of transcendence. A longing for transcendence, then, is what religious man contributes to the makeup of the talmudist. Yet, as we have seen (and it is a point which Soloveitchik repeats time and again in Halakhic Man), the talmudist refuses to follow the lead of the religious man type in locating transcendence in a realm beyond the natural. Rather, he seeks to achieve it in the world of the here and now by using the tools which intellectual man has bequeathed to him. Hence the peculiar secular cast to the talmudist’s religiosity, a cast which testifies to the dominant impact of the intellectual man type in shaping his outlook. How different is The Lonely Man of Faith! When Soloveitchik expresses himself in an existentialist mode, he completely reverses things; he sides squarely with Adam the second. The diminution in status which Adam the first/majestic man suffers in The Lonely Man of Faith has nothing to do with the fact that he varies in some way from intellectual man as the latter is portrayed in Halakhic Man. Rather it reflects a transvaluation of values in which Soloveitchik now denigrates the very same human qualities which he had previously lauded. Thus, the secularity of majestic man takes on a negative coloring: it results, Soloveitchik tells us, in a “surface” existence, in a “fenced-in egocentric

39

Ibid., 17-18. — 400 —

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and ego-oriented” life.40 Indeed, at its most extreme, it brings to the fore a “demonic” personality, “[whose] pride is almost boundless, [whose] imagination [is] arrogant, and [who] aspires to complete and absolute control of everything.”41 As against this, covenantal man is a repository of virtue alone. He is an “in-depth personality” who manifests an “all-embracing sympathy” for other human beings even while experiencing the “grandeur of the faith commitment.”42 Not surprisingly then, covenantal man has much to teach majestic man: “(His] unique message speaks of defeat instead of success, of accepting a higher will instead of commanding, of giving instead of conquering, of retreating instead of advancing, of acting ‘irrationally’ instead of always being reasonable.”43 For his part, majestic man has nothing to teach covenantal man. To say the least, it is startling that Soloveitchik assigns radically different weights to the Adam the first and the Adam the second types in Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith. Even more eyeopening, however, is the fact that in the former essay, he ultimately brings his types together, whereas in the latter work, he resolutely refuses to do so. The unity which is achieved in Soloveitchik’s study of talmudism comes about through his positing the existence of a third type — halakhic man — who, as has been pointed out, synthesizes elements of intellectual man and religious man. In The Lonely Man of Faith, however, majestic man and covenantal man remain permanently at war with each other; there is no end to the conflict between them. Moreover, Soloveitchik insists that both types exist simultaneously within every religious Jew and, beyond that, that God regards this situation as fit and proper. Why is this so? Why should the religious Jew not try to cast out secular majestic man from his inner being? Because, Soloveitchik argues — in what is certainly a key interpretive point of The Lonely Man of Faith — Adam the first’s secularity has religious sanction, the stamp of God’s approval; majestic man, after all, is created in the

40 41 42 43

Ibid., 23, 38. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 23, 28. Ibid., 63. — 401 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

“image of God” and commanded to “fill the earth and subdue it.” Thus, Soloveitchik arrives at a “tragic” view of the nature of religious life as entailing a “staggering dialectic”: [God] wants man to engage in the pursuit of majesty-dignity as well as redemptiveness. He summoned man to retreat from peripheral, hardwon positions of vantage and power to the center of the faith experience. He also commanded man to advance from the covenantal center to the cosmic periphery and recapture the positions he gave up a while ago. He authorized man to quest for “sovereignty”; He also told man to surrender and be totally committed. He enabled man to interpret the world in functional, empirical “how”-categories…. Simultaneously, He also requires of man to forget his functional and bold approach, to stand in humility and dread before the mysterium magnum surrounding him, to interpret the world in categories of purposive activity instead of those of mechanical facticity….44

It only needs to be added that the Soloveitchik of the main body of Halakhic Man would find this statement totally alien, while the Soloveitchik of the introduction to the essay would fully endorse it. What about loneliness? How does it fit into Soloveitchik’s typological scheme? Here again we have a striking illustration of the vast gulf in outlook separating Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith. In Soloveitchik’s analysis of talmudism, the religious virtuoso exhibits intellectual prowess; he is the thinker par excellence. In The Lonely Man of Faith, on the other hand, the model religious individual (sometimes labeled by Soloveitchik the “knight of faith,” a Kierkegaardian term) manifests an acute feeling of loneliness; he is the sensitive soul par excellence. This loneliness, Soloveitchik argues, has its source in the covenantal man side of the human personality and reflects an “I” awareness of “exclusiveness and ontological incompatibility with any other being.”45 Soloveitchik expands upon this point in the following way: “The ‘I’ is lonely, experiencing ontological incompleteness and casualness [sic], because there is no one who exists like the ‘I’ and because the modus existentiae of the ‘I’ cannot be repeated, imitated, or experienced 44 45

Ibid., 49-50. Ibid., 25. — 402 —

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by others.”46 Not surprisingly, existential loneliness is a source of pain; it evokes a sense of the “absurd,” thus leading the individual to doubt his “ontological legitimacy, worth, and reasonableness.”47 It is something, Soloveitchik stresses, which must be overcome.48 The way in which the individual overcomes loneliness is by establishing a “covenantal relationship” with God and fellow humans. This mode of existence, Soloveitchik emphasizes, is unique to the covenantal man type within the individual, since the majestic man side of the human personality never experiences loneliness. There is an irony in this, in that majestic man is by nature a “social being, gregarious, [and] communicative.”49 (This is why in the first account of the creation story, dealing with majestic man, Adam and Eve are described as coming into existence together.) However, his sociability has nothing to do with the need for dialogue. Rather, it represents a “creative social gesture”: he joins forces with others because he believes that “collective living and acting will promote his interests”; he forges a functional community in which he can better display his dignity and majesty.50 At bottom, then, majestic man remains self-sufficient, “ontologically complete,” even while living in a “natural community.”51 In that community, Soloveitchik tells us, … Adam and Eve act together, work together, pursue common objectives together; yet they do not exist together. Ontologically, they do not belong to each other; each is provided with an ‘I’ awareness and knows nothing of a “We” awareness…. The in-depth personalities do not communicate, let alone commune, with each other.52

If the majestic man type within the individual points him in the direction of the natural community, the covenantal man type prompts 46 47 48

49 50 51 52

Ibid., 27. Ibid., 22. In “The Community,” Tradition (Spring 1978), 7-24, Soloveitchik evinces a more positive attitude toward loneliness, seeing it as the source of creativity and “heroic defiance.” Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 19. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 22, 23. Ibid., 23. — 403 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

him down the path toward the “covenantal community.” It is in the latter mode of relationship that true dialogue is achieved and the circle of existential isolation broken. Since covenant-making takes place on two levels — between man and God and between fellow humans — it may be wondered which comes first. Soloveitchik’s answer here is clear — the lonely individual has to reach out to God before he can open himself to other human beings. Paradoxically, though, this reaching out comes about through an act of “recoil,” in which the covenantal man side of the human personality humbly submits to God’s will. It is when covenantal man “lets himself be confronted and defeated by a Higher and Truer Being,” Soloveitchik argues, that “finitude and infinity, temporality and eternity, creature and creator become involved in the same community. They bind themselves together and participate in a unitive existence.”53 Having made an initial “sacrificial gesture”54 vis a vis God, the inner covenantal man now turns to fellow humans and repeats the act: he “give[s] away part of himself” in “surrender and retreat,” with the result that true human companionship is born.55 What emerges from all this, in Soloveitchik’s view, is a “community of commitments … compris[ing] three participants: ‘I, thou, and He,’ the He in whom all being is rooted and in whom everything finds its rehabilitation and, consequently, redemption.”56 Given Soloveitchik’s insistence in The Lonely Man of Faith that the model religious individual is a great emoter, it is to be expected that he would have difficulty in integrating Torah study into the overall scheme of the essay. What possible connection could there be between the emotional need to overcome existential loneliness and the intellectual probing of sacred texts à la the talmudist? Apparently, Soloveitchik himself is aware of this, since he does not so much as mention Torah study in The Lonely Man of Faith. Rather, in a fashion that would do honor to a Hasid but is totally out of character for a Litvak, he focuses on prayer as the central religious act of the religious virtuoso. In this 53 54

55 56

Ibid., 24, 28. The notion of a “sacrificial gesture” is elaborated upon in a beautiful manner by Soloveitchik in “Catharsis,” Tradition (Spring 1978), 38-54. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 26. Ibid., 28. — 404 —

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analysis, prayer is linked to prophecy, and the two are presented as twin components of the man-God dialogue. What prayer and prophecy have in common, Soloveitchik argues, are three key elements: a “confrontation of God and man takes place”; powerful feelings of “human solidarity and sympathy” are evoked; and a “normative ethico-moral message” is issued.57 Since prophecy no longer exists, Soloveitchik stresses, it is prayer alone which permits the “covenantal God-man colloquy” to be maintained at present. Prayer, in fact, is the “continuation of prophecy and the fellowship of prayerful men is ipso facto the fellowship of prophets.”58 What a claim for a champion of Litvak religiosity to make! While Torah study finds no place in The Lonely Man of Faith, Torah observance does — but in a manner that is very far removed from the way it is presented in Halakhic Man. In Soloveitchik’s essay on talmudism, the halakhah, to the degree that it is functional, represents the concretization of the ideal a priori Torah. The halakhah is the divine blueprint for reality brought down to earth, and as such can serve as a vehicle for achieving transcendence in the world of the here and now. While something of this view (minus the a priori element) is also suggested in The Lonely Man of Faith when Soloveitchik refers to the “normative ethico-moral message” which issues in prophecy and prayer, this is not the main thrust of his discussion of the Law in his existentialist theological statement. Rather, in The Lonely Man of Faith, Soloveitchik depicts the halakhah as a tool which God uses to maintain the tension between the majestic man and covenantal man sides of the human personality. The “halakhic gesture,” he informs us, embodies a “paradoxical yet magnificent dialectic…. When man gives himself to the covenantal community the halakhah reminds him that he is also wanted and needed in another community, the cosmic-majestic, and when it comes across man while he is involved in the creative enterprise of the majestic community, it does not let him forget that he is a covenantal being who will never find self-fulfillment outside of the covenant and that God awaits his return to the covenantal 57 58

Ibid., 34, 37, 38. Ibid., 36. — 405 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

community.” This, then, is Soloveitchik’s existentialist version of the teleology of halakha.59 It is in connection with his discussion of the halakhah that Solovei­ tchik expresses momentary — and that is all it is, momentary — doubt about the bold existentialist claims that he is putting forward in The Lonely Man of Faith. Having just made the point that the halakhah functions to reinforce the individual’s ontological turmoil, Soloveitchik suddenly pulls back, apparently afraid that he has created an opening (or at least the appearance of an opening) for a theological dualism.60 Could it be that reality is divisible into secular and hallowed sectors, and that majestic man functions in one, while covenantal man operates in the other? Certainly, this view might be implied when the halakhah is depicted as entailing a dialectical movement. Soloveitchik is quick to add, therefore, that Judaism has “a monistic approach to reality, and ... unreservedly reject[s] any kind of dualism.”61 However, he now goes much further, stating that the “steady oscillating of the man of faith between majesty and covenant” is, in fact, a “complementary movement,” and that the halakhah serves as a “uniting force.”62 These astonishing claims are followed by the remarkable assertion that the task of the religious Jew is to “be engaged not in dialectical surging forward and retreating, but in uniting the [natural and covenantal] communities into one community where man is both the creative, free agent, and the obedient servant of God.”63 Shades of Halakhic Man. Yet, having said all this — which completely contradicts his existentialist exposition of the teleology of the halakhah — Soloveitchik simply drops the matter, and proceeds once again to dwell at length on the unending conflict between majestic man and covenantal man. His loss of confidence is of the shortest duration.

59

60

61 62 63

Cf. “Majesty and Humility,” op. cit., 35, where Soloveitchik avers: “We do have two moralities, one of victory and triumph, one of withdrawal and retreat.” Interestingly enough, the one serious critique of The Lonely Man of Faith that has appeared to date — Jonathan Sacks’s brilliant “Alienation and Faith,” Tradition (SpringSummer 1973), 137-162 — focuses specifically on the issue of monism vs. dualism. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 51. Ibid., 51, 52. Ibid., 51. — 406 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

The reason why Soloveitchik is so confident about what he has to say in The Lonely Man of Faith is that he — in good existentialist fashion — is drawing upon his own experience as a religious Jew. Soloveitchik, as we have seen, underscores this point in the very first paragraph of the essay. A bit further into his analysis, he makes it clear that he, indeed, is lonely: I am lonely…. It is a strange, alas, absurd experience engendering sharp, enervating pain…. I despair because I am lonely and, hence, feel frustrated. On the other hand, I also feel invigorated because this very experience of loneliness presses everything in me into the service of God. In my “desolate, howling solitude” I experience a growing awareness that … this service to which I, a lonely and solitary individual, am committed is wanted and gracefully accepted by God in His transcendental loneliness and numinous solitude.64

It is evident from statements like this that Soloveitchik’s existentialism is something very far removed from a detached philosophical outlook. His is an existentialism born of life rather than intellectual study. To be sure, Soloveitchik borrows a broad array of concepts and terms from such thinkers as Kierkegaard and Martin Buber65 in giving expression to his existentialism, but what he has to say is based on his personal religious experience. Existential thought, then, plays the same role in The Lonely Man of Faith that neo-Kantian philosophy does in Halakhic Man — it is a packaging device. Soloveitchik is quite explicit about this: “Whatever I am about to say, [in The Lonely Man of Faith] is to be seen as a modest attempt on the part of a man of faith to interpret his spiritual perceptions and emotions in modern theologico-philosophical categories.”66 64 65

66

Ibid., 6-7. Soloveitchik is strangely silent about Buber. On the one hand, he fails to acknowledge the obvious fact that his discussion of the nature of covenantal existence (the “covenantal community”) leans heavily on Buberian thought. On the other hand, he avoids criticizing Buber’s anti-halakhic stance even when he has the perfect opportunity to do so. Thus, Soloveitchik takes Kierkegaard to task for lacking an appreciation of the “centrality of the act of objectification of the inner movement of faith in a normative and doctrinal postulate,” but does not mention Buber in this context. See ibid., 61. Ibid., 10. — 407 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

Given the existentialist credo that subjectivity is truth, Soloveitchik might well have been satisfied to simply express his religious feelings and let it go at that. As an Orthodox Jew, however, he clearly finds himself under a compulsion to demonstrate that his personal religious experiences are in line with classic Judaic teaching. Hence the elaborate typological analysis of the two versions of the biblical creation story which he puts forward in The Lonely Man of Faith. Needless to say, Soloveitchik is not offering us the plain meaning of Scripture in his essay. Rather, he presents an extremely sophisticated philosophical drash which plumbs the depths of the biblical text. The total effect is stunning — Soloveitchik enables us to see dimensions of the biblical story that we never dreamed were there. Yet, the radical newness of what Soloveitchik has to say should not obscure the fact that his intent is thoroughly conservative. He is seeking to anchor his personal religious sensibility in the Jewish tradition.

V A comparative analysis of Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith makes it abundantly clear that Soloveitchik’s theological stance is extremely complex. Additional evidence for this may easily be provided by turning to an examination of the traditional and modern elements in Soloveitchik’s religious outlook. Despite the popular impression to the contrary, Soloveitchik is not fully committed to a “modern” approach to Orthodoxy. Indeed, there is a strong traditionalist bent to his thinking which manifests itself in a variety of ways. Moreover, even when Soloveitchik operates within a modernist framework, his discussion often veers off in an unanticipated, i.e., unmodern, direction. Orthodox admirers and critics alike agree that the modern side of Soloveitchik’s religiosity is best expressed in his openness to Western culture. As was pointed out above, Soloveitchik is unique in this regard among contemporary masters of the Talmud, those men who wield ultimate authority within the Orthodox community. At the same time, however, it is crucial to note that Soloveitchik is not an ideologist of secular learning, as was Maimonides in his day or as was Samson Raphael Hirsch in nineteenth century Germany. We do not possess — 408 —

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a single essay by Soloveitchik in which he advocates that Orthodox Jews obtain a secular education. Of course, Soloveitchik takes his own knowledge of Western culture for granted, and happily makes use of it to better present his theological views. But that is as far as it goes; he is not in the least interested in convincing others to follow his path. For Soloveitchik, in short, secular learning is a matter of personal preference — or better yet, personal need — but not a religious imperative. Even as regards himself, Soloveitchik is not an unqualified enthusiast for Western culture. Mathematics, science, philosophy, theology, literature  —  these are areas of Western thought which strongly appeal to him. On the other hand, he has not the slightest use for modern historical scholarship. Thus, when Soloveitchik sits down to study a Jewish text, be it Talmud or Bible, his approach is utterly traditional: a talmudic sugya is always examined in terms of the logical categories developed by the classical commentators; a biblical narrative is always seen through the prism of rabbinic (midrashic) interpretation. While Soloveitchik was introduced to the historical-critical method of Talmud study during his student days in Berlin, when he enrolled in the “modern” yeshivah headed by Rabbi Ḥayyim Heller,67 he clearly did not find it to his liking. As for modern biblical criticism, which calls into question the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, Soloveitchik considers it to be nothing less than “heresy.”68 Not only is Soloveitchik highly selective in choosing which elements of the Western intellectual tradition to appropriate, but he is also very careful in the uses to which he puts them. Since he is such an ardent admirer of Maimonides, one would expect him to be greatly influenced by the latter’s religious rationalism — the attempt

67

68

Heller, a brilliant practitioner of both the old and the new styles of Jewish scholarship, was greatly admired by Soloveitchik. The two men eventually became colleagues on the faculty of Yeshiva University. See Soloveitchik’s moving memorial essay for Heller, “The Remnant of the Scholars,” Hadoar (April 21, 1961), 400-405 [Hebrew] (reprinted in In Aloneness, In Togetherness, op. cit., 257-294. All page citations from “The Remnant of the Scholars” in the notes refer to this volume). A partial English translation is available in Epstein, ed., Shiurei’ Harav, op. cit., 7-17. Soloveitchik, “The Remnant of the Scholars,” op. cit., 286. — 409 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

to logically demonstrate the truth of what Judaism teaches. In fact, however, Soloveitchik completely eschews any such aim, offering, as Lou Silberman has noted, dogmatics in the place of apologetic theology.69 When Soloveitchik harnesses his secular learning, Eugene Borowitz adds significantly, it is to “illustrate and amplify … ideas, not to demonstrate them.”70 In part, this rejection of religious rationalism reflects Soloveitchik’s sense that logical proofs are really beside the point when it comes to the fundamental claims of religion. As he states in a footnote in The Lonely Man of Faith: The trouble with all rational demonstrations of the existence of God, with which the history of philosophy abounds, consists in their being exactly what they were meant to be by those who formulated them: abstract logical demonstrations divorced from the living primal experiences in which these demonstrations are rooted. For instance, the cosmic experience was transformed into a cosmological proof, the ontic experience into an ontological proof, et cetera. Instead of stating that the most elementary existential awareness as a subjective “I exist” and an objective “the world around me exists” awareness is unattainable as long as the ultimate reality of God is not part of this awareness, the theologians engaged in formal postulating and deducing in an experiential vacuum.71

Even though Soloveitchik wishes to address a modern audience, then, he presents his theological views on an essentially take it or leave it basis. While skepticism about the utility of the logical proofs goes part of the way in explaining Soloveitchik’s chosen mode of theologizing, there is an additional factor that has to be reckoned with. Strange as it may seem, Soloveitchik is to some extent a simple man of faith, a naïve religious believer. Of course, one would hardly guess this from reading such high-brow theological works as Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith. Yet, the fact remains that time and again in his essays and speeches, Soloveitchik focuses on the “man-child” as the ideal religious

69

70 71

Lou Silberman, “Concerning Jewish Theology in North America,” American Jewish Year Book (1969), 54. Borowitz, “The Typological Theology of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” op. cit., 204. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 32. — 410 —

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personality.72 Abraham and Moses, he tells us, were such figures, as were, to leap to the modern period, Ḥayyim Soloveitchik, Moses Soloveitchik, and Ḥayyim Heller. What is a “man-child”? Soloveitchik describes this exalted religious type in the following manner: The great man, whose intellect has been raised to a superior level through the study of Torah, gifted with well-developed, overflowing, powers — depth, scope, sharpness — should not be viewed as totally adult. The soul of a child still nestles within him. On the one hand he is knowledge-sated, strong of intellect, rich in experience, sober-sighted, crowned with age, great of spirit. On the other hand, he remains the young and playful child; naïve curiosity, natural enthusiasm, eagerness and spiritual restlessness, have not abandoned him. If a man has aged and completely become adult, if the morning of life has passed him by, and he stands, in spirit and soul, at his high noon, bleached of the dew of childhood, if he has grown up completely, in thinking, feeling, desire, trust ­— he cannot approach God. The adult is too smart. Utility is his guiding-light. The experience of God is not a businesslike affair. Only the child can breach the boundaries that segregate the finite from the infinite. Only the child with his simple faith and fiery enthusiasm can make the miraculous leap into the bosom of God. The giants of Torah — when it came to faith, became little children, with all their ingenuousness, gracefulness, simplicity, their tremors of fear, the vivid sense of experience to which they are devoted.73

The force with which this is put should make it clear that Soloveitchik is talking about a religious gestalt that is known to him through first-hand experience. And it is that experience, most certainly, which provides the explanatory background for the remarkable claim which he puts forward in The Lonely Man of Faith: I have never been seriously troubled by the problem of the Biblical doctrine of creation vis-a-vis the scientific story of evolution at both the cosmic and the organic levels, nor have I been perturbed by the confrontation of the mechanistic interpretation of the human mind with 72

73

See, e.g., Epstein, ed., Shiurei Harav, op. cit., 52-53, 97 and Soloveitchik, “The Remnant of the Scholars,” op. cit., 289-291. This passage is drawn from the English translation of “The Remnant of the Scholars” appearing in Epstein, ed., Shiurei Harav, op. cit., 16. — 411 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

the Biblical spiritual concept of man. I have not been perplexed by the impossibility of fitting the mystery of revelation into the framework of historical empiricism. Moreover, I have not even been troubled by the theories of Biblical criticism which contradict the very foundations upon which the sanctity and integrity of the Scriptures rest.74

Soloveitchik, in sum, is a “man-child,” and the child-like side of his personality stands in no need of rational proofs in the religious sphere. While one can point to ambiguities in Soloveitchik’s attitude toward the Western intellectual tradition, this is certainly not true of his view of Western technology. Here Soloveitchik’s modernity comes to the fore in a truly striking fashion — he is totally approving of any and all technological endeavor. The carte blanche approval that Soloveitchik gives to technological striving in an essay like The Lonely Man of Faith, it is important to note, has nothing to do with tolerance of an essentially secular enterprise. Rather, Soloveitchik sees Western civilization’s technological thrust as a noble attempt to carry out God’s command to Adam the first: “fill the earth and subdue it.” He adds: Man of old who could not fight disease and succumbed in multitudes to yellow fever or any other plague with degrading helplessness could not lay claim to dignity. Only the man who builds hospitals, discovers therapeutic techniques, and saves lives is blessed with dignity. Man of the 17th and 18th centuries who needed several days to travel from Boston to New York was less dignified than modern man who … boards a plane at the New York Airport at midnight and takes several hours later a leisurely walk along the streets of London.75

Soloveitchik’s religious appreciation of technology extends, in fact, even beyond the earthly realm: “Adam the first transcends the limits of the reasonable and probable, and ventures into the open spaces of a boundless universe…. Man reaching for the distant stars is acting in harmony with his nature which was created, willed, and directed by his Maker. It is a manifestation of obedience to rather than rebellion against

74 75

Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 8-9. Ibid., 14. — 412 —

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God.”76 In the light of this, one can only wonder how Soloveitchik would interpret the biblical story of the tower of Babel. The fact that Soloveitchik portrays Adam the first as a “creative esthete”77 as well as a technological virtuoso serves to alert us to yet another aspect of his religious modernity. Alone among major Orthodox figures today, he is keenly aware of the esthetic, both as a mode of consciousness and as an interpretive category. This awareness, no doubt, reflects Soloveitchik’s immersion in Kantian philosophy at the University of Berlin (both Kant and Hermann Cohen wrote massive tomes dealing with the subject); it is hardly something that he could have absorbed in an Orthodox environment in Eastern Europe. To say that Soloveitchik is aware of the esthetic realm, however, is not to imply that he is totally enamored of it. Here, in fact, the evidence is contradictory. On the one hand, it is certainly significant that Adam the first — an ideal type whose nature is God-willed — is depicted as “always an esthete,” his “conscience … energized … by [the idea] of the beautiful.”78 Moreover, in “But if You Search There” Soloveitchik explicitly states that the esthetic is a key element in all religious experience.79 Finally, Soloveitchik’s own written work, which is carefully crafted so as to achieve a strong esthetic effect, points to a positive attitude.80 On the other hand, he approvingly cites Maimonides’ view that the sin of Adam and Eve consisted in their sacrificing the ethical on the altar of the esthetic.81 Related to this is Soloveitchik’s objection to esthetics as working against the halakhic concern for detail: In esthetics the overall configuration, the gestalt, is important, not the detail. Indeed, one steps back to view a painting so that the detail disappears. If the detail is too compelling it disrupts the overall effect. Halakhically, the detail is important. One minute before sunset Friday 76 77 78 79 80

81

Ibid., 16. Ibid., 15. Ibid., 15. Soloveitchik, “But if You Search There,” op. cit., 4. See, for example, “But if You Search There,” ibid., where Soloveitchik uses a variety of biblical verses (most especially from Song of Songs) to poetically frame a highly sophisticated philosophical-theological analysis. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, op. cit., 15. — 413 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

eve and one minute after is the difference between identical acts being permitted or forbidden.82

All in all, then, Soloveitchik appears to be of two minds about the esthetic. Yet even his negative judgments, it is important to stress, represent an involvement with a realm of experience that is beyond the ken of Orthodox traditionalism. What about Soloveitchik’s Zionism? Is it not still another element of his religious modernity? Certainly, confirmed Orthodox traditionalists would maintain so, since they regard Zionism, in its modern political form, as a secular heresy  —  an arrogant human attempt to act independently of God’s will (as expressed in the coming of the Messiah). This anti-Zionist point of view — which was institutionalized in the Agudath Israel organization — was communicated to Soloveitchik as part of his family heritage. In strictly personal terms, then, there is no question that Soloveitchik’s move into the Zionist camp represented a break with the bonds of tradition. And a painful break at that; in joining forces with the Mizrachi (the religious Zionist movement), Soloveitchik tells us, he had to “sacrifice peace of mind and ties of community and friendship.”83 As for Soloveitchik’s mature Zionist position, it includes an affirmation of modern Jewish nationalism as the fulfillment of the biblical command to conquer and settle the land of Israel. The State of Israel itself, he maintains, is invested with the full sanctity of the holy land; indeed, its very existence is a token of God’s loving concern for his people in the wake of the Holocaust.84 Having made the point that Soloveitchik’s Zionism seems radically new when seen from a traditionalist Orthodox perspective, it remains to be said that it appears remarkably old-fashioned when judged by typical 82

83 84

The words are not Soloveitchik’s own, but are taken from a summary of a lecture which he gave in 1972. See Epstein, ed., Shiurei Harav, op. cit., 57. Telsner, ed., Five Sermons, op. cit., 25. Soloveitchik’s views on Zionism and the State of Israel are set forth in Telsner, ed., Five Sermons, ibid.; “Hark, My Beloved Knocks,” op. cit.; “On the Love of Torah and the Redemption of the Soul of the Generation,” Hadoar (May 27, 1960), 519-523 [Hebrew] (reprinted in In Aloneness, In Togetherness, op. cit., 403-432); and “The Eternal Link Between the Jewish People and the State of Israel,” Or Hamizrach (Fall 1957), 27-31 [Hebrew]. — 414 —

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Zionist — even religious Zionist — standards. The key point here is that Soloveitchik does not regard the rise of the State of Israel as an event that has fundamentally (let alone permanently) altered the nature of Jewish life. To be sure, he rejoices in the fact that the Jews now have a place of refuge and an army with which to defend themselves, and that the State of Israel has bolstered Jewish morale throughout the world. At the same time, Soloveitchik does not believe that the Jewish state can offer a solution to the problem of antisemitism, or that its existence creates any new imperatives or standards of judgment for Jews. There is, in short, not the slightest whiff of messianism in Soloveitchik’s Zionism. Now as in the past, he insists, Jews remain obligated to study and practice the Law — that is the yardstick by which the success or failure of the State of Israel will be measured. As Walter Wurzburger explains: “In the final analysis, [Soloveitchik] sees in the Jewish state not an end in itself but an instrumentality for the realization of the value system which is ultimately grounded in the Sinaitic revelation.”85 Woe unto Zion, Soloveitchik warns, if Torah does not proceed out of it! Since Soloveitchik does not view the rise of the State of Israel as an event that has decisively reoriented Jewish life, it is not to be expected that he would look upon the Holocaust in a different manner. This point needs to be underscored because an effort has been made of late to enlist Soloveitchik into the ranks of the “Holocaust theologians,” i.e., those Jewish thinkers who see the destruction of European Jewry as an event that has shattered the traditional framework of Judaic existence. Thus, Irving Greenberg, in arguing that the conjunction of the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel marks the opening of the “third cycle of Jewish history,” points to Soloveitchik’s “major and seminal response to the Holocaust” in “Hark, My Beloved Knocks” as his source of inspiration.86 In truth, however, there is nothing at all radical about the essay; “Hark, My Beloved Knocks” is a sophisticated restatement of an utterly traditional position. The basic premise of 85 86

Walter Wurzburger, “The Holocaust,” Shoah (Spring-Summer 1980), 16. Irving Greenberg, “Orthodox Judaism and the Holocaust,” Gesher (1979), 55-82. For a critique of Greenberg’s position see Steven Katz’s essay in Alvin Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg, eds., Thinking about the Holocaust (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997). — 415 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

the work is that it is not only metaphysically futile to question God’s ways, but also Jewishly unauthentic to do so. Indeed, Soloveitchik goes Job’s friends one better by criticizing Job for even daring to ask why he suffers. Such is the way of the “man of fate,” Soloveitchik maintains, whereas the authentic Jew is called upon to be the “man of destiny.” The latter, viewing his suffering as a challenge and call to action, asks only one question: “what should I do now?” Here Soloveitchik’s answer is absolutely clear: repent! As he states: Suffering comes to elevate man, to purify his spirit and sanctify him, to cleanse his thoughts of the dregs of superficiality and vulgarity; to refine his soul and broaden his horizons. A general principle: suffering — its purpose is to correct the flaw in man’s personality…. Suffering appears in the world to contribute something to man, to make atonement for him…. Suffering obligates man to return in full repentance to God.87

This then is Soloveitchik’s ultra-traditional response to the “absolute hiddenness of God’s face” in the Holocaust, to “suffering unparalleled in the history of exilic millenia.”88 Among the things that the Holocaust swept away was the world of East European Jewish piety into which Soloveitchik was born. This, no doubt, goes a long way toward explaining yet another aspect of his religious traditionalism — his nostalgic idealization of the past as embodied in “Brisk.” “Brisk” in this context does not refer to the method of Talmud study that was developed by Soloveitchik’s grandfather, but rather to the religious lifestyle of Lithuanian Jewry. Consistently in his essays and lectures, Soloveitchik invokes “Brisk” as a yardstick by which to measure true Orthodoxy; it is the paradigm of authentic Judaic existence. Yet it is most certainly not a fair yardstick, in that it denotes an imaginary world. Here, for example, is how Soloveitchik describes the “Brisk” of his youth, at the same time comparing it to the current Orthodox scene in America: … I remember a time when ninety percent of the Jews were observant and 87 88

Soloveitchik, “Hark, My Beloved Knocks,” op. cit., 339-340. Ibid., 347, 354. — 416 —

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the secularists were a small minority…. I still remember — it was not so long ago — when Jews were still close to God and lived in an atmosphere pervaded with holiness. But today what do we see? The profane and the secular are in control wherever we turn. Even in those neighborhoods made up predominantly of religious Jews one can no longer talk of the “sanctity of the Sabbath day.” True, there are Jews in America who observe the Sabbath…. But there are no “eve of the Sabbath” Jews who go out to greet the Sabbath with beating hearts and pulsating souls. There are Jews who observe the precepts with their hands, feet, and mouths — but few who truly know the meaning of service of the heart. What is the percentage of religious Jews today in contrast to the ninety percent only two generations ago? Absolute zero.89

This is sheer romanticism, of course, romanticism born of nostalgic longing, and fueled by a sense of irrevocable loss. In comparison to “Brisk,” then, modern Orthodoxy cannot help but appear as “rootless,” as having “snipped wings.”90 How ironic that the leading Orthodox advocate of openness to the new should be so tied to a model of Jewish life of the past. Given Soloveitchik’s idealization of “Brisk,” it is not surprising that his career choice was to become a talmudist, rather than to pursue an academic career in philosophy. How could he in good conscience have opted for the latter alternative? After all, Soloveitchik had to honor the claims of the past. In becoming a talmudist, it needs to be stressed, Soloveitchik set the pattern for his everyday existence, a pattern that continues unchanged as he enters his fifth decade of teaching at Yeshiva University’s rabbinic training school. Thus, any attempt to assess the traditional and modern elements in Soloveitchik’s religiosity has to come to grips with the fact that day in and day out the vast bulk of his time is given over to the pious examination of Judaism’s sacred texts. Any secular interests that Soloveitchik may have — and they are far-reaching, of course — have to be pursued in his spare time; they are, by definition, secondary. Beyond this, Soloveitchik’s involvement in the yeshivah side of Yeshiva University means that his activities are carried out in a hothouse of religiosity. All of Soloveitchik’s students and colleagues are 89 90

Peli, ed., On Repentance, op. cit., 57-58. Soloveitchik, “The Remnant of the Scholars,” op. cit., 273. — 417 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

Orthodox, and some of the latter even sport long black coats. Anyone who has seen Soloveitchik participating in the afternoon prayers with his students (in the classroom!) following one of his Talmud lectures knows how comical it is to think of him as a modern academic type. Such behavior is fully appropriate to “Brisk,” but would be unimaginable at Harvard, Berkeley, or the University of Chicago. Is it going too far to maintain that Soloveitchik’s strangely negative attitude toward inter-religious dialogue is prompted by a lingering concern over what they would say in “Brisk”? Of course, there is nothing strange per se in the view that Jews should desist from discussing matters of faith with Christians or others. This position may easily be sustained on both prudential and theological grounds. Soloveitchik himself has chosen the latter route, arguing in “Confrontation” that “the word of faith reflects the intimate, the private, the paradoxically inexpressible cravings of the individual for … his Maker. It reflects the numinous character and the strangeness of the act of faith of a particular community which is totally incomprehensible to the man of a different faith community.”91 Fair enough, but how can Joseph Soloveitchik say this? Has he not read widely in Christian theology? Does he not point to Kierkegaard, Barth, and Otto as thinkers who have plumbed the depths of religious experience? Most importantly, has he not drawn on these Christian theologians in formulating his own Jewish theology? If, despite all this, Soloveitchik can take a stand in opposition to inter-faith discussions, it seems likely that, deep down, he feels a certain amount of guilt over what he is doing. After all, in “Brisk” the talmudists did not read Christian religious works. That much restraint — and here Soloveitchik’s modernity again comes to the fore — he is not prepared to show. But at least, Soloveitchik apparently feels, there is no need to talk to the goyim in public. There is yet another area where Soloveitchik’s idealization of “Brisk” would appear to serve as a conservative brake on his outreach to modernity. This involves his view of the proper role of women in Jewish life. Judging by his actions alone, one would have to conclude that Soloveitchik is squarely in the modern camp of Orthodoxy on this 91

Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” op. cit., 23-24. — 418 —

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issue: he married Tonya Lewit, the recipient of a Ph.D. in education, and put her in charge of a day school (the Maimonides School in Boston) in which girls and boys study all Jewish subjects, including Talmud, together. Yet, in his writings, Soloveitchik fails to provide even the barest rationale for a greater involvement of women in those areas of Jewish life which have traditionally been male preserves. On the contrary, he makes possible a staunch defense of the status quo by arguing that men and women have very different roles in transmitting the Jewish heritage. It is the father, Soloveitchik maintains, who teaches the child “discipline of thought as well as … discipline of action. Father’s tradition is an intellectual-moral one.”92 The mother, in contrast, as Soloveitchik sees it, is involved with the emotions, helping the youngster “to feel the presence of God ... to appreciate mitzvot and spiritual values, to enjoy the warmth of a dedicated life.”93 The conservative implications of such a view of male-female religious roles hardly need to be spelled out in detail. What does need to be stressed, however, is that Soloveitchik puts forward this position in the course of memorializing the wife of a Hasidic rebbe, a woman of the old school, a woman who, he tells us, was very much like his own mother. Is this not a clear indication of the powerful hold that “Brisk” has on Soloveitchik’s thinking?

VI If Soloveitchik manifests a remarkable tolerance for theological contradictions, it is most likely because they are his very own — they reflect the reality of his personal religious situation. It is one thing, however, to assert that Soloveitchik is a conflicted personality, and quite another matter to define the precise nature of that split. An obvious stumbling block here is that Soloveitchik offers us little in the way of direct guidance on the matter. While there are some tantalizing autobiographical tidbits scattered throughout his theological oeuvre, they only take on significance when seen in the context of the larger religious issues that are being addressed. And these issues, in turn, 92 93

Joseph Soloveitchik, “A Tribute to the Rebbitzen of Talne,” Tradition (Spring 1978), 76. Ibid., 78. — 419 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

need to be viewed in the broad religio-cultural framework in which Soloveitchik operates for their true biographical importance to emerge. Thus, a methodology adequate to the task of probing Soloveitchik’s personal religious dilemma requires a constant shuttling back and forth between the man and the work, and vice versa. Seen in this light, however, all of Soloveitchik’s theological writings turn out to be quite revealing in a personal way. Indeed, they may be said to constitute multiple installments of his spiritual autobiography. Every analysis has to begin somewhere, and when dealing with Soloveitchik the surest foundation is to be had in his forthright declaration that The Lonely Man of Faith is based on his personal religious experience. It is in this essay, of course, that Soloveitchik projects a religious type conflicted to the core  —  a fact of crucial importance. Beyond that, Soloveitchik’s statement that he is the model for the lonely man of faith makes it crystal clear that he has a deep personal stake in the bold existentialist claims which he puts forward in the essay. Yet, it is just this element of personal involvement, directly expressed, which is conspicuously absent in Soloveitchik’s defense of Litvak intellectualism in Halakhic Man; nowhere does he suggest that he is the model for halakhic man. Soloveitchik, to be sure, labors mightily to make talmudism appear attractive to a modern audience, bringing to bear on the effort his broad secular knowledge in general and the perspectives of neo-Kantian philosophy in particular. Yet he does so, quite clearly, out of a sense of duty, of obligation, rather than personal religious need. Halakhic Man, it is to be remembered, was written in the early 1940s, at a time when Lithuanian Jewry was being destroyed by the Nazis, and when Soloveitchik was still mourning the death of his father, a supreme Litvak. In a very real sense, then, the essay stands as a memorial to “Brisk,” a distinctive religious culture, and to the Brisker (Soloveitchik) dynasty, which played a crucial role in shaping Litvak intellectualism. It is hardly an accident that members of the Soloveitchik family are prominently featured in Halakhic Man. Piety, both familial and cultural, dictates Soloveitchik’s theological position in the essay. If use of the word “dictates” in connection with the theological views that Soloveitchik sets forth in Halakhic Man suggests a man acting under compulsion, that is fully appropriate. Evidence for this — 420 —

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is readily at hand in the talmudic citation that Soloveitchik uses as the epigraph for his essay. In context (Sotah 36b), the passage — “At that moment his father’s image came and appeared to him through the window” — refers to the biblical Joseph, who, while in Egypt, was sexually enticed by Potiphar’s wife. As Joseph edged toward sin, the Talmud tells us, Jacob appeared to him in a vision and issued a stern warning: pass the test at hand or be forever cut off from the children of Israel. This, then, is the situation in which Soloveitchik finds himself in Halakhic Man: he is a Joseph,94 with a father looking over his shoulder, who will either uphold the honor of the Brisker dynasty — or else; Soloveitchik simply cannot afford to fail the test. Small wonder, then, that having worked prodigiously to provide an elaborate rationale for talmudism, he concludes Halakhic Man on the following prayerful note: “… it is revealed and known before He who created the world, that my sole intention was to defend the honor of the halakhah and the halakhists…. And if I have erred, may the Lord of mercy forgive me.”95 But is there not something fundamentally wrong here? Why should Soloveitchik require any special incentive to make the case for talmudism? Does he not stand foursquare behind the values of Litvak intellectualism, values that are so powerfully projected in Halakhic Man? The answer to the last question, apparently, is a qualified “no.” Most certainly, there is a side of Soloveitchik that responds with total enthusiasm to his familial-cultural heritage of undiluted intellectualism, of a fierce commitment to mind as the one sure guide to truth. Soloveitchik the Litvak is no figment of the imagination; he does exist. But there is yet another side to Soloveitchik, and this side is incapable of endorsing what the Litvak in him affirms. Litvak intellectualism may speak to Soloveitchik’s mind, but it ignores the reality of what he feels — feelings so strong that they eventually burst through the dam in The Lonely Man of Faith. The Litvak tradition is simply too cold, too rational, too unyielding to the emotions. What is a Litvak to do if his own religious experience tells him that the truth lies elsewhere? 94

95

In “The Hidden and the Revealed,” op. cit., 312, Soloveitchik states explicitly that from early youth on he strongly identified with the biblical Joseph. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, op. cit., 188. — 421 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

Try as he might to keep his non-Litvak side carefully under wraps in Halakhic Man, Soloveitchik does not succeed in doing so.96 It comes to the fore both directly and indirectly; directly in the existentialist introduction to the essay; indirectly in the anecdotal material that is scattered throughout the work. As to the introduction, we have already had occasion to indicate — and the significance of this should not be lost on the reader — that it depicts a conflicted religious type very much like the one portrayed in The Lonely Man of Faith. What needs to be added here is that this type is centrally, even radically, involved with the emotions. Caught in a permanent tug-of-war between the intellectual man and religious man types within his personality, the “ideal” type of the introduction experiences severe psychological stress, ongoing emotional turmoil. Yet, far from viewing this in a negative light, as a good Litvak would, Soloveitchik sees it as something positive, arguing that a “deep split of the soul” promotes religious growth, ultimately producing a personality of “incomparable splendor and glory.”97 In short, if the message of the main body of Halakhic Man is use your mind, that of the introduction is trust your feelings. Turning now to the main body of “Halakhic Man” itself, we may ask: how does Soloveitchik view those Jews — the confirmed Litvaks — who refuse to place any trust in feelings? A surface reading of the essay would certainly seem to indicate that he is completely approving; that here Soloveitchik’s Litvak side is powerfully manifested. We refer specifically to the anecdotal material that he presents to illustrate the nature of halakhic man. This material — briefly described above — is strikingly consistent: time and again Soloveitchik, with apparent relish, shows us a model Litvak, usually a member of his own family, emphatically rejecting the siren call of the emotions. Yet, there is something strange

96

97

Our assumption here — and that is all it is, an assumption — is that Soloveitchik is not consciously manipulating the reader, i.e., Soloveitchik is unaware that his nonLitvak side is showing. Still another possibility would be that he is carefully planting subversive hints so as to undermine the main line of the argument in Halakhic Man. This view cannot be dismissed lightly; a man divided against himself, who feels compelled by circumstances to suppress a whole side of his personality, might well turn resentful. There is no way of making a definitive judgment about the matter. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, op. cit., 40. — 422 —

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about Soloveitchik’s tales of the Litvaks. The behavior he describes is so radical, so extreme, as to make his presumed heroes almost seem grotesque. Who, for example, wishing to portray Litvak intellectualism in a positive light, would boast that his father and grandfather set aside all human sentiment and refused ever to enter a cemetery, because a stark encounter with death would have distracted them from the contemplation of the Law?98 Or again, who would tell with pride the following story about his maternal grandfather: The beloved daughter of Rabbi Elijah of Pruzhan became ill about a month before she was to be married, and after a few days was near death. Rabbi Elijah’s son entered the room where Rabbi Elijah was praying, wrapped in his prayer shawl and phylacteries, to inform him that his daughter was in her death throes. Rabbi Elijah went to his daughter’s room and asked the doctor how much longer it would be before the end. When he received the doctor’s reply, Rabbi Elijah returned to his room, removed his Rashi’s phylacteries and quickly put on the phylacteries of Rabbenu Tam, for immediately upon his daughter’s death he would be subject to the law that an onen [a mourner whose dead relative has not as yet been buried] is exempt from all the commandments. After he removed his second pair of phylacteries, wrapped them up, and put them away, he entered his dying daughter’s room, in order to be present at the moment that her soul departed.…99

Stories like this, while ostensibly presented in order to glorify the Litvak, cannot help but evoke strong disapproval in many readers. And this disapproval, it seems safe to assume, is shared in part by Soloveitchik himself, specifically by that part of him which rebels against the Litvak tradition’s spurning of the emotions. There may well be a vein of anger that runs through the anecdotal material in Halakhic Man which is not to be missed. Seen in a broad cultural context, the stories that Soloveitchik tells in Halakhic Man seem like nothing so much as Hasidic parodies of the brainy but soulless Litvak. The thematic link with Hasidism that is 98 99

Ibid., 81. Ibid., 124. It is interesting to note in this context that in Soloveitchik’s own life, death functions as a great galvanizing force. A large part of his published oeuvre is made up of memorial essays. Were it not for death, then, we would have far fewer works from his pen. — 423 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

evident here should alert us to a still larger truth: Soloveitchik, within his own personality, recapitulates the religious debate between the Hasidim and the Mitnaggdim. To say this is not to imply that Soloveitchik is in any way a closet Hasid. Rather the point is that his critique of Litvak intellectualism exactly parallels that put forward by the Hasidic movement. In both cases the argument is made that the Litvak tradition is excessively cerebral, not allowing sufficient play to the emotions; that the Litvaks, as the Hasidim were wont to express it, honor Torah (study) at the expense of yirah (religious feeling). But for Soloveitchik to say this is to reject that part of himself which is unreservedly committed to the Brisker heritage of pure talmudism, of a self-sufficient intellectualism that seeks nothing beyond study, study, and still more study. Small wonder, then, that when, in the introduction to Halakhic Man and in The Lonely Man of Faith, Soloveitchik gives greater weight to the emotions than the intellect, he also projects conflicted religious types. Soloveitchik, most certainly, is speaking to his own religious dilemma. Given the fundamental split in Soloveitchik’s theological outlook, it is not to be expected that he would follow the lead of the Hasidim in emphasizing the joyous side of religious experience. On the contrary, in both the introductory section to Halakhic Man and in The Lonely Man of Faith, he stresses the inevitable pain that accompanies an honestly-lived religious life. The former writing, for example, contains a lengthy footnote in which Soloveitchik rails against the view that religion offers an “escape from the turbulence of life to a magical, still, and quiet island.”100 Such a view, he argues, is “intrinsically false and deceptive,” masking the truth that “religious experience, from beginning to end, is antinomic and antithetic.”101 As for The Lonely Man of Faith, it depicts religious life as painfully wrenching at every turn; the “knight of faith,” according to Soloveitchik, is ontologically torn, existentially lonely, and engaged in repetitive sacrificial gestures. For good measure, Soloveitchik adds that the sensitive religious individual today feels particularly alienated because the covenantal man side of 100 101

Ibid., 42. Ibid., 43. See also Joseph Soloveitchik, “Sacred and Profane,” Gesher (June 1966), 5-8. This essay appeared originally in Hazedek (May-June 1945). — 424 —

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his personality goes largely unappreciated in a society given over to the achievements of majestic man. All in all, Soloveitchik’s emphasis on the painful nature of religious experience is clearcut. What is also obvious is that this stress reflects the personal burden of pain which he carries as an individual torn between the claims of Litvak intellectualism on the one side and a Hasidic-like affirmation of the emotions on the other. Once the specific nature of Soloveitchik’s religious dilemma is fully grasped, various elements of his larger theological enterprise begin to fall into place. A striking example is his insistence that a group of commandments exist which have both an inner and outer dimension. As he states: [T]here are two kinds of precepts, the first consisting of those whose fulfillment and performance are combined, as for example the precept of taking four species on the Feast of Tabernacles…. [When) one actually takes the palm branch in hand one performs the precept and fulfills it at the same time. The same is true, for example, of the precept of sacrificing the Paschal lamb or the precept of counting the omer, the 49 day period between Passover and the Feast of Weeks. But there are other precepts [including prayer, repentance, mourning, and love of neighbor] whose performance and fulfillment are not identical, for example when the performance of the precept is through specific action of some kind or through a verbal utterance, but its fulfillment is up to the heart. The precept is, in fact, performed by means of an utterance or an external act, but fulfillment is dependent on attaining a certain degree of spiritual awareness.102

Distinguishing between performance and fulfillment is standard in a Brisker-inspired halakhic analysis. In this case, however, Soloveitchik clearly has a specific goal in mind: to secure a place for the emotions within the four ells of the Law. Indeed, by arguing that a number of commandments that are basic to religious life require both halakhic precision and inner feeling for their proper observance, he succeeds in making them over in his own image. How wonderful: the Litvak in Soloveitchik can stand firm on the need for legal rigor, while his nonLitvak side can rejoice that a surge of emotion is not only tolerated but actually mandated. 102

Peli, ed., On Repentance, op. cit., 40. — 425 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

Having carved out a niche for the emotions in the hallowed precincts of the Law, Soloveitchik plunges ahead, offering brilliant analyses of the affective component of prayer, repentance, mourning, etc. The extent of his involvement with these matters, as well as the passion that he brings to them, are hardly fortuitous: Soloveitchik, quite obviously, has found a channel for expressing his powerful emotional side. In dealing with prayer,103 Soloveitchik consistently stresses the point that it is “bound up with the human needs, wants, drives, and urges which make man suffer.”104 He explains: Prayer and trouble are inseparably linked. Who prays? Only the sufferer prays…. To a happy man, to contented man, the secret of prayer was not revealed. God needs neither thanks nor hymns. He wants to hear the outcry of man, confronted with a ruthless reality. He expects prayer to rise from a suffering world cognizant of its genuine needs.105

In line with his view that prayer represents a “doctrine of human needs,”106 Soloveitchik interprets the classic controversy between Nahmanides and Maimonides about the obligatory nature of prayer as a dispute over what properly may be said to constitute “trouble.” According to him, the former thinker (who considers prayer to be biblically mandated only in time of great distress) is concerned exclusively with a “surface crisis” brought about by external factors, i.e., war, famine, etc., while the latter thinker (who regards prayer as ordained by the Bible on a daily basis) also takes account of a “depth crisis” reflecting man’s permanent condition of existential pain.107 The attention that Soloveitchik pays to the affective component of prayer, while considerable, seems rather scant when compared to that which he lavishes on the affective element of repentance. Indeed, in the “reconstructed” lectures gathered together in On Repentance, 103

104 105 106 107

Soloveitchik’s views on prayer are presented in “Thoughts on Prayer,” Hadarom 47 (1978), 84-106 [Hebrew]; “Redemption, Prayer, Talmud Torah,” Tradition (Spring 1978), 55-72; and Besdin, ed., Reflections of the Rav, op. cit., 77-87. Soloveitchik, “Redemption, Prayer, Talmud Torah,” op. cit., 65. Ibid., 65-66. Ibid., 65. Besdin, ed., Reflections of the Rav, op. cit., 79-82. — 426 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

Soloveitchik deals with this subject so exhaustively that one is led to wonder whether anything else remains to be said about it. He makes pointed distinctions of every imaginable sort: between atonement and purification; between individual atonement and communal atonement; between repentance out of love and repentance out of fear; between intellectual repentance and emotional repentance; between repentance that wipes out the past and repentance that builds on the past; and between gradual repentance and instantaneous repentance. What is truly remarkable about all this is that Soloveitchik is working with dry halakhic materials; he claims to be doing nothing more than explicating various passages in Maimonides’ law code. As for the central message of On Repentance, it comes across loud and clear: “[Repentance] is a precept whose essence is not in the performance of certain acts or deeds, but rather in a process that at times extends over a whole lifetime, a process that begins with remorse, with a sense of guilt, with man’s increasing awareness that there is no purpose to his life, with a feeling of isolation, of being lost and adrift in a vacuum, of spiritual bankruptcy, of frustration and failure — and the road one travels is very long, until the goal of repentance is actually achieved.”108 The same impulse which prompts Soloveitchik to stake out a claim for the emotions as part of the halakhic enterprise leads him to search for an ideal Jewish type that can somehow strike a balance between the affective and cognitive elements of religious experience. The closest he comes to achieving this goal — and it is, in fact, far from the mark — is in “The Hidden and the Revealed,” where he depicts “New Moon man,”109 a type characterized by a cold, intellectual exterior and a warm, emotional interior. New Moon man is totally alive to the full gamut of religious feelings, but he resolutely refuses to express them outwardly lest they be cheapened in the process. His guiding principle is that “the more holy and intense the emotion, the more it must be hidden 108 109

Peli, ed., On Repentance, op. cit., 44. This type gets its name from the one- or two-day New Moon (rosh hodesh) celebration which inaugurates each month of the Jewish calendar year. While the New Moon is invested with special sanctity, it differs little in outward appearance from an ordinary workday. The holiness of the New Moon, Soloveitchik maintains, is hidden rather than revealed. — 427 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

within”;110 to the world he will show nothing but his cold, rational side. This striking formulation reveals in a stark manner the depth of the split within Soloveitchik’s personality. Were he capable of envisioning any sort of genuine synthesis between thought and feeling, between Torah and yirah, in the life of the religious Jew, he would have no need for New Moon man’s self-denial. The fact that this type is required to repress his passionate side is proof positive that Soloveitchik, however much he might wish it to be otherwise, can see no way of establishing a stable equilibrium between the emotions and the intellect. Once the claims of the emotions are recognized, once religious feelings are accorded legitimacy and permitted expression, they immediately call into question the fundamental postulates of Litvak religiosity. Is there not a connection between Soloveitchik’s failure to find a way out of his religious dilemma and his effort in “But if You Search There” to chart a complete phenomenology of the spirit, to trace, step by step, the process by which man links up with the divine? Such an undertaking, though forbidding in so many ways, cannot help but prove attractive to Soloveitchik: by starting at ground zero in the analysis of the religious experience, it enables him to make a completely fresh start in striving to harmonize the claims of the intellect and the emotions. Small wonder, then, that Soloveitchik labors hard, producing more than eighty tightly printed pages that read like a cross between Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy and Maimonides’ discussion of the stages that lead to prophecy. Central to Soloveitchik’s analysis is the distinction between “natural” and “revelatory” experience. The former has its source in the “logic, order, and light which shine forth from … great and mighty Creation”; it is fueled by a “yearning implanted in [man’s] spiritual being to attribute the multiplicity in time-bound, limited existence to the first unconditioned existent….”111 The latter, in contrast, involves the “penetration of the mysterious into [man’s] simple world”: “God reveals himself to man… [in an] incomprehensible and awesome revelatory vision which takes place without his willing it and without

110 111

Soloveitchik, “The Hidden and the Revealed,” op. cit., 312. Soloveitchik, “But if You Search There,” op. cit., 15, 19. — 428 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

his permission.”112 In reaching out to the divine, Soloveitchik argues, man moves steadily between these two types of experience, until they are at last united in a culminating devekut stage. A process that begins with the posing of fundamental ontological questions about the nature of the cosmos comes to an end in a burst of “mad” love that brings about attachment to God. While the scheme of “But if You Search There” is extremely broad  —  broad enough to encompass such diverse elements as ontological questioning, instinctual drives, revelatory experience, Torah study, halakhic observance, devekut, etc. — it fails to effect the desired conceptual breakthrough: a true rapprochement between the cognitive and affective aspects of religious experience. Not that the two stand opposed to each other. Rather, it is that they are rigidly segregated. While Soloveitchik permits both the intellect and the emotions to fully play themselves out in his analysis, he allows for no dynamic interaction between them. Perhaps this is due to a fear of failure or of creating an explosive theological mix. In any case, Soloveitchik makes sure that thought and feeling go their separate ways while moving toward the same goal. In the end, then, the whole enterprise of “But if You Search There” is rendered otiose. For all its sophistication, Soloveitchik’s religious phenomenology leaves his own inner conflict wholly untouched.

VII Because of the particular circumstances of his family background, Soloveitchik experiences the conflict between the intellect and the emotions with special intensity — for the grandson of Rabbi Ḥayyim Brisker it could not be otherwise. Most certainly, however, he is not unique among Jewish thinkers in being greatly preoccupied with the thorny problem of the relationship between thought and feeling in religious life. We have already had occasion to note that Soloveitchik’s critique of Litvak intellectualism runs exactly parallel to the one 112

Ibid., 19. — 429 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

articulated by Hasidic spokesmen. More generally, it echoes a theme that Isadore Twersky has identified as being recurrent in Jewish intellectual history: “gnawing dissatisfaction with extreme talmudism.”113 As he explains: [In the face of repeated calls for an exclusive emphasis on Talmud study] there is apprehension and anxiety lest the halakhic enterprise become externalized and impoverished…. We hear resounding calls for vigilance to assure that the halakhic system remain rooted in and related to spirituality…. The spiritual concern, with its eye on the balance between essence and manifestation, trigger[s] a sustained tendency to censure halakhic intellectualism and to downgrade talmudism which crowds sensibility and spontaneity out of the picture.…114

Twersky points to a broad range of outstanding Jewish figures across the ages — from Bahya ibn Pakuda in the eleventh-century to Abraham Isaac Kook in the twentieth-century — who belong to this tradition. But why, to begin with, should there be a need for an ongoing “spiritual insurgence”? Why is it that, time and again, extreme talmudism comes to dominate Jewish religious culture? An explanation is to be had in Judaism’s pronounced legalistic bent: talmudism is the child of halakhocentricity. “A major corollary of halakhocentricity,” Twersky notes, “is the repeated demand for … a curriculum oriented toward religious practice and hence weighted with Talmud, Talmud, and more Talmud. Study is the handmaiden of practice and talmudic lore is the prerequisite for and source of religious performance.”115 To a Litvak like Soloveitchik, this is, of course, self-evident; an awareness of Judaism’s halakhocentric nature is basic to his religious consciousness. Hence his preoccupation with the Law in Halakhic Man, and his insistence in that essay that the talmudist is the ideal religious type. But hence also his terrible anguish when, in a very different mood, he feels compelled to offer a spiritualist critique of Litvak intellectualism. In the talmudist-spiritualist debate, Soloveitchik finds himself squarely on both sides of the issue. 113

114 115

Isadore Twersky, “Religion and Law,” in Religion in a Religious Age, ed. S. D. Goitein (Cambridge, MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974), 69. Ibid., 71. Ibid., 70. — 430 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

Something yet more needs to be added here about the nature of Soloveitchik’s religious dilemma. Most exponents of the spiritualist viewpoint look upon themselves as the true champions of the Law; they are convinced that a measure of spiritual leavening will render the halakhic enterprise all the more effective. Soloveitchik, however much he might wish it to be otherwise, cannot bring himself to affirm this position. As he sees it, the talmudist-spiritualist debate is an either/or proposition; there is no way in which spiritualist concerns can feed into the work of the talmudist. This narrow reading of the issue points up a striking irony in Soloveitchik’s theological stance: even as he rebels against the Brisker tradition, he continues to accept its point of view as normative. Soloveitchik’s perception of the talmudic endeavor as a purely cognitive affair clearly reflects the standpoint of Litvak intellectualism. Were he willing to adopt a less rigid definition of talmudism, he might well be able to effect a reconciliation between thought and feeling in the religious realm. Why, then, does Soloveitchik paint himself into a theological corner? Quite obviously, it is because he is held in thrall by Litvak intellectualism; he has fully internalized the Litvak outlook. The Litvak in Soloveitchik is determined to make things as difficult as possible for his non-Litvak side. The pain that Soloveitchik experiences in attempting to reconcile thought and feeling within a Judaic framework, it needs to be emphasized, is that of a man seeking to forge a new identity for himself. We tend, of course, to think of Orthodox Jews as having a fixed Jewish identity; it is the non-Orthodox, presumably, who have Jewish identity problems. Soloveitchik, however, is a striking example of an Orthodox figure who feels an urgent need to define, or better yet redefine, his personal religious identity within the very orbit of Orthodoxy. “What kind of Orthodox Jew am I” — that is the question that Soloveitchik asks himself; indeed, it is the question that animates his whole theological enterprise. If, in the end, he is unable to come up with a satisfactory answer, it is not for lack of trying. It is simply that Soloveitchik wants and needs the impossible: to be both a full-fledged Litvak and a man of great religious passion. The Orthodox Jew who offers us the following autobiographical vignette is constitutionally unsuited to accept anything less: — 431 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

Father’s lectures were delivered in my grandfather’s parlor, where my bed stood. It was my custom to sit on the bed and to listen to my father talk. He spoke regularly about Maimonides. This is what he did: he would open the Talmud and read the passage. Then he would say something like the following: ‘This is the explanation of Rav and the Tosafists; now we will examine Maimonides to see how he explained the Talmud.’ Father would regularly find that Maimonides did not explain the Talmud as they did, and that he deviated from the simple approach. My father would say, almost in complaint against Maimonides: ‘I understand neither Maimonides’ conceptualization nor his approach to explaining the passage.’ It is as if father accused Maimonides himself: ‘Our teacher Moses, why did you do this?’ ‘It would appear,’ father continued, ‘that Rabad [in his critical commentary on Maimonides] is right.’ Members of the group would leap from their seats and each one would propose his idea. Father would listen, then reject their words, and say again: ‘The words of our teacher are as hard [to understand] as iron.’ Nevertheless, he would not say that we should despair. He would lean his head on his fist and sink deep into thought. The group remained quiet and did not disturb him. After a long time he would lift his head and slowly begin: ‘My friends, let us see …’ and he started to speak. Sometimes he would speak at length, at other times just a short while. I strained my ears and listened to his words. I understood nothing about the substance of what was said. Nevertheless a double impression was woven into my young mind: (1) Maimonides was surrounded by those who opposed him, ‘enemies’ who sought to harm him; (2) the single defender of Maimonides was my father. Without my father who knows what would happen to Maimonides. I felt as if Maimonides himself were with us in the parlor, listening to father’s words. Maimonides was sitting with me in my bed. What did he look like? I do not know exactly. But his countenance was similar to father’s good and handsome face. He also had the same name as father — Moses. Father would speak; the students, with eyes fixed upon him, would listen intently to his words. Slowly the tension would dissipate; father proceeded with power and strength. New concepts came forth; laws were articulated and formulated with wondrous precision. A new light shined. Problems were resolved and the topic explicated. Maimonides emerged victorious. Father’s face shone with great joy. He had defended his ‘friend,’ Moses, son of Maimon. A smile of contentment appeared on Maimonides’ lips. I too joined in the joy. I was bursting with happiness. I would jump from my bed and run quickly to my mother’s room with the joyous news: ‘Mother, mother, Maimonides is right. He has overcome Rabad. Father helped him. How wonderful is father!’ … — 432 —

------------------------  Chapter XIV. Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith ------------------------

This was a childhood experience. Nevertheless it is not the golden fantasy of a young boy; these feelings are not mystical. It is a past psychological reality which lives even now in the depths of my soul. When I sit and study Talmud, I immediately find myself in a group of the wise men of tradition. The relationship between us is personal. Maimonides is on my right, Rabbenu Tam on my left, Rashi sits in front and explains, Rabbenu Tam asks a question, Maimonides decides the law, and Rabad criticizes. All of them are in my room sitting around my table. They look at me with love, join with me in conceptualizing, and encourage and strengthen me like a father.116

This is the quintessential Soloveitchik — an Orthodox Jew fully involved with the Law, but bringing to that involvement passionate feelings that a Litvak would never understand. What needs to be added here by way of conclusion, of course, is that the source of Soloveitchik’s pain is also the source of his theological creativity. Soloveitchik is that rare Jewish thinker who has produced outstanding writings on both sides of the talmudist-spiritualist debate. This achievement is anything but fortuitous; it is a direct outgrowth of his conflicted religious situation. As a Litvak, Soloveitchik has given us Halakhic Man, the definitive modern formulation of the program and rationale of talmudism. As a man of great religious passion, on the other hand, he has offered us The Lonely Man of Faith, a wonderfully original spiritualist manifesto. While one might expect deep inner conflict to lead to a paralysis of the mind and the will, in Soloveitchik’s case it has the exact opposite effect — it spurs him on to greater and greater achievement. In this connection, special mention should be made of Soloveitchik’s creative use of typologies, his sensitive exploration of the affective dimension of various commandments, and his striking elaboration (in “But if You Search There”) of a complete religious phenomenology. Soloveitchik, in sum, is a driven man, and as such has created a theological oeuvre that is rich, complex, and sparkling with insight. He suffers, but we are the beneficiaries of his unending religious quest.

116

Soloveitchik, “But if You Search There,” op. cit., 63-65. — 433 —

Ger Ve-Toshav Anokhi

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------- Chapter XV  ---------------------------------

Ger Ve-Toshav Anokhi: Modernity and Traditionalism in the Life and Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik I Even during the lifetime of Rabbi Soloveitchik, a debate arose amongst his interpreters and closest disciples as to just how modern a figure he was. This debate has only intensified following his death. Was Rabbi Soloveitchik essentially a traditional rosh yeshiva who dabbled in philosophy and whose affirmation of certain “modern” positions are exceptions which only prove the rule? Or was R. Soloveitchik essentially a modern figure in outlook and conviction, although anchored in the sea of Talmud and the Brisker tradition? My thesis in this essay is that Rabbi Soloveitchik was a paradigmatically modern figure for the Jews of his era, and that his enduring contribution to Jewish history derives precisely from that modernity. Nevertheless, I hope to show that the traditionalist reading of R. Soloveitchik gets something profoundly important about him right, namely, that in many fundamental ways he remained a traditional rosh yeshiva. However, I shall argue that the choices he made to retain that past were themselves highly personalized expressions of his own special brand of modernity. There is of course a sense in which all contemporary Orthodoxy, from the extreme left to the extreme right, is a modern phenomenon, as the historian Jacob Katz and others have noted.1 The Hungarian Haredi heirs of Hatam Sofer represent a distinctive response to modernity no less than the followers of Torah im Derekh Eretz; each group is therefore 1

“Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry II, ed. Peter Medding (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 3-17. — 434 —

Ger Ve-Toshav Ve-Toshav Anokhi -------------------------------------------------   Chapter XV. Ger Anokhi -------------------------------------------------

a modern phenomenon. In this respect, R. Soloveitchik is, of course, no different. Nevertheless, R. Soloveitchik’s response to modernity differs from that of the Hungarian heirs of Hatam Sofer and many of their ideological foes in that, first, he chose not to deny all of modernity’s values, a point I shall return to later; and, second, his response to modernity’s challenges was, as I shall try to show, quite distinctive. We can begin by contrasting R. Soloveitchik with Rabbi S. R. Hirsch. Whatever one thinks of the Torah im Derekh Eretz intellectual program, there is a certain comprehensiveness to it, a univocal worldview which surfaces in just about all of R. Hirsch’s writings. R. Hirsch, after the fashion of the nineteenth-century, believed he had a comprehensive solution to the challenges of modernity, and the ideational initials of that solution are embedded to one degree or another in his entire æuvre. The same cannot be said of R. Soloveitchik. However one judges the success of the varying attempts to reconcile the underlying contradictions in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, and I am a bit skeptical about some of them, there can be very little doubt that there are serious differences amongst the writings, even if they do not in the end amount to actual contradictions. The existentialist soul of “Lonely Man of Faith” is altogether different from the neo-Kantian structures of Ish haHalakha and both diverge from the phenomenology of uBikashtem miSham. This is so even if the audiences for each of the essays are different, the languages are different, or whether R. Soloveitchik is addressing himself to the human condition generally, or to the Jewish condition specifically.2 As I shall argue throughout this essay, I believe that in each of R. Soloveitchik’s major essays he takes up a problem in Jewish religious life and thought with which he is struggling at a particular period in his life and which he feels himself equipped to illuminate, and seeks to solve it using the approach which he judges to be most appropriate to the problem (in the context, perhaps, of the intended audience), or 2

See, for example, A. Ravitzky, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on Human Knowledge: Between Maimonideanism and Neo-Kantian Philosophy,” Modern Judaism 6:2 (May 1986); Eugene Borowitz, “A Theology of Modern Orthodoxy: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” in Choices in Modern Jewish Thought (New York: Behrman House, 1983), 218-242; Lawrence Kaplan, “The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Tradition (Fall 1973), 43-64. — 435 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

the approach to which he is then most attached. The sometimes wholly unrestrained (and sometimes restrained but always present) passionate and personal tone of his essays reflects not purely abstract intellectual inquiry, but rather fierce intellectual and spiritual struggle. Indeed, it is precisely for this reason that the essays are so powerful. In effect, then, we have multiple installments of the intellectual and spiritual autobiography of one of the most creative and fertile Jewish religious minds of the century. And this characterization remains true even if the underlying contradictions can be solved one way or another. The key point I wish to stress now is that this essential approach makes him even more characteristically a twentieth-century figure, more current than the nineteenth-century “modernists.” For amongst the hallmarks of the twentieth-century intellectual are the eschewal of comprehensive systems, the dissatisfaction with easy solutions, the readiness to try yet again, with different approaches, and by focusing on different issues. In many ways, then, he is the paradigm of the contemporary thinker in segmented search of a satisfactory stance towards modernity, self, and tradition. It must also be stressed that whatever the position ultimately taken, each of the major essays deals with religious Judaism in light of modernity. Whether it is to explain the halakhic life and mind, the religious significance of technology and activism, or the role of creativity, science, nature, and the aesthetic in religious experience, what we find is a consistent struggle to make peculiarly modern theological sense of these themes which recur in his writings, many themselves characteristic of modernity. The varying installments of R. Soloveitchik’s intellectual autobiography, then, are themselves varying attempts to come to terms with different aspects of modernity in different ways. It is as if R. Soloveitchik keeps on gnawing away afresh at different dimensions of the problem, and sometimes even the same dimension without even bothering to footnote his own relevant writings, and without ever being fully satisfied that at last he’s got it, fully solved the problem of modernity for the halakhic Jew. This characterization is further reinforced by R. Soloveitchik’s use of typology as a philosophical method. For example, Adam I and Adam II in “Lonely Man of Faith” make opposing claims upon the individual, as — 436 —

-------------------------------------------------   Chapter XV. Ger Anokhi ------------------------------------------------Ger Ve-Toshav Ve-Toshav Anokhi

do Ish Dat and Ish Da’at in Halakhic Man and the natural and revelational experiences in uBikashtem miSham. The openness to antithetical experiences so essential to R. Soloveitchik’s understanding of religious life leads necessarily to a segmented vision and to intellectual and spiritual struggle, which in some instances can in principle never be resolved (Adam I/Adam II in “Lonely Man of Faith”) and in others can be resolved if at all only at the end of a long and difficult quest (Ish Dat/Ish Da’at in Halakhic Man and the natural experience/revelational experience in uBikashtem miSham). Yet another point must be made regarding R. Soloveitchik’s modernity: his simultaneous and passionate affirmation of many values of both Brisk and Berlin should not be taken for granted. To use the language of Peter Berger, R. Soloveitchik “heretically” affirmed Brisk while in Berlin, and “heretically” affirmed many values of Berlin while leading the life of a Brisker rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University. The typical modern religious person, in Berger’s analytic framework, is acculturated to modernity yet nevertheless “relativizes the relativizers” and “heretically” chooses religious faith.3 By virtue of his family heritage, the “heretic” departure to Berlin (for many members of his family, of course, the quotation marks should here be deleted), then return to the life of the rosh yeshiva, R. Soloveitchik made not one but two “heretic” choices, two self-conscious commitments — he chose not only Berlin while in Brisk, but also Brisk while in Berlin. In R. Soloveitchik, then, we have the distinctive religious faith of modernity squared. It must be stressed that this is far more difficult and existentially resonant than the choice of so many others who are heir to a path already taken, who may learn daf yomi but also dabble with the impact of Dostoyevsky or Kant for their understanding of the daf’s latest aggadah. R. Soloveitchik, who embarked alone on the long, long journey to Berlin, took his Kant and Dostoyevsky with infinite seriousness: he fully internalized Berlin, as he had fully internalized Brisk. This makes him as well a powerful paradigm of the peculiarly modern religious quest for a theological vision commensurate with the problematics of constructing an identity which simultaneously affirms both past and 3

See, for example, A Rumor of Angels (New York: Doubleday, 1969), chap. 2. — 437 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

present. It is hardly surprising, then, that the theological and existential end product for R. Soloveitchik is a highly personalized quest and worldview. The radical embrace of Berlin and radical re-embrace of Brisk would mean, as we shall see, that R. Soloveitchik can never be fully at home in either, that he must be a “ger ve-toshav” in both.

II I have argued up to this point that R. Soloveitchik must be seen as a thoroughly modern figure. However, this does not imply that the choices he made as a thoroughly modem figure are all that might usually be called modern. A thoroughly modern figure can, in his quest for theological and existential self-definition, make some very traditionalist choices, and that R. Soloveitchik most assuredly did. Perhaps the best way to see this is by reflecting about an essay by Walter Wurzburger entitled “Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik as a Posek of Postmodern Orthodoxy.”4 While Dr. Wurzburger identifies numerous instances in which R. Soloveitchik takes a conservative position in halakhic matters as evidence of his traditionalism, conservative halakhah itself is not ipso facto traditionalist. Why shouldn’t the modernist, too, be mahmir where his reading of the sources or even his reading of the times leads to humra? Instead, I should like to focus on those three areas that R. Wurzburger itemizes as evidence of his modernity: (1) R. Soloveitchik’s endorsement of secular studies and the study of philosophy, (2) his espousal of religious Zionism, and (3) his advocacy of intensive Jewish education for women. There can be very little doubt, as R. Wurzburger maintains, that each of these areas reflects R. Soloveitchik’s modernity. Nevertheless, there are strong traditionalist elements in R. Soloveitchik’s views on each of these issues. Consider first his programmatic advocacy of intensive Jewish education for women, including the study of Talmud. What theoretical framework does R. Soloveitchik use to justify this position, either 4

Engaging Modernity: Rabbinic Leaders and the Challenge of the Twentieth Century, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1997), 119-136. — 438 —

-------------------------------------------------   Chapter XV. Ger Anokhi ------------------------------------------------Ger Ve-Toshav Ve-Toshav Anokhi

halakhic or theological? We have no teshuva or theological essay from R. Soloveitchik which lays the conceptual groundwork for egalitarianism on this or related issues. Quite to the contrary. Theologically, R. Soloveitchik insists on role differentiation rather than egalitarianism. In his “A Tribute to the Rebbitzen of Talne,”5 R. Soloveitchik maintains that it is the father’s task to instill in his child “discipline of thought as well as ... discipline of action,” whereas it is the mother’s task to reach the child emotionally and spiritually, to help him “feel the presence of God ... to appreciate mitzvot and spiritual values, to enjoy the warmth of a dedicated life.”6 Talmud study for women hardly emerges naturally from this conception of the female role. A similar observation must be made concerning the second area Wurzburger cites as evidence of R. Soloveitchik’s modernity: his religious Zionism. Without question, R. Soloveitchik here has made a radical break with Traditionalist Orthodoxy and with his own family, a point he makes with great poignancy in Hamesh Derashot.7 Nevertheless, R. Soloveitchik’s Zionism is of a clearly traditionalist stripe. As Wurzburger himself correctly notes, R. Soloveitchik justifies the State of Israel by conservative religious categories, and these include the amelioration of Jewish suffering after the Holocaust, the biblical command to conquer and settle the Land of Israel, and the promotion of Jewish pride.8 We have none of the potent eschatology implicit in R. Kook’s writings or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the reconceived religious challenges central to the thinking of David Hartman. Finally, and I think most importantly, we come to the first area Wurzburger delineates: R. Soloveitchik’s openness to secular culture 5

6

7 8

Tradition (Spring 1978). While this appears in a eulogy for a hasidic rebbetzin, and the setting is surely relevant to the traditionalist formulation, it was published later as a formal essay in Tradition, and does, I believe, reflect at least one aspect of his thinking about the subject. Ibid., 76, 78. I hasten to add that characterizing R. Soloveitchik’s views here as traditionalist is not at all pejorative. The traditionalist perspective, it can be argued, may be entirely right on this question. But even to assert that it is correct is not to deny its traditionalism. D. Telsner, ed. (Jerusalem: Tal Orot, 1974), 25. See especially Kol Dodi Dofek, ed. Peli, in Be-Sod ha-Yahid ve-ha-Yahad (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976) and Hamesh Derashot, op. cit., passim. — 439 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

and philosophy. The significance of his position in this area, especially in light of his family heritage and the prevailing values of Traditionalist Orthodoxy, cannot be overstated. As I noted above, R. Soloveitchik does not simply appropriate a nifty bit of philosophical lore to explain the random midrash: his entire worldview was shaped by his encounter with secular culture, as his theological essays make readily apparent. Even where he specifically asserts that he is making use of philosophical ideas le-saber et ha-ozen, to explain halakhic man to the uninitiated reader,9 which, of course, is a thoroughly conservative aim, his systematic use of neo-Kantianism reflects more than a mere casual intellectual parlor trick. The ideas themselves re-orient the conception of halakhic man, and it seems likely that R. Soloveitchik himself intellectually identified to at least some extent with the doctrines he used.10 This is surely the case with “Lonely Man of Faith” and many of his other major essays. While R. Soloveitchik may have harnessed his secular learning in some instances to traditionalist aims, that learning itself fashioned his own theological world view to a significant degree. This said, the picture which emerges is still not altogether straightforward. While R. Soloveitchik assimilated secular culture to a remarkable degree, he did so in a highly selective manner. Perhaps the most striking lacuna in this regard is the almost complete absence of historical sensibility in his picture of Judaism. To confront secular culture but to ignore the findings of Wissenschaft scholarship, especially with respect to the influence of historical factors in both the development of texts and the development of halakhah, is nothing short of remarkable. To assert, as Wurzburger does, that for R. Soloveitchik halakhah follows its own logic and a priori categories hardly solves the problem. No doubt R. Soloveitchik did believe that halakhah follows its own logic and a priori categories. But even if this is true, what the halakhic text actually says — understood of course within the parameters of its own logic — surely depends upon getting the text right. And critical 9 10

Ish ha-Halakha, Be-Sod ha-Yahid ve-ha-Yahad, ed. Peli (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), 63, n. 16. Here I have altered my views somewhat on this issue in D. Singer and M. Sokol, “Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” Modern Judaism (October 1982), 237-238. — 440 —

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scholarship has much to say about precisely this question. This is not a matter of applying alien scientific categories to halakhic reasoning, but rather, in the case of lower criticism, following common sense in making sure the text one reads is correct, a methodological principle for which there is ample classic Jewish precedent, as is well known. Moreover, by Wurzburger’s own testimony, R.  Soloveitchik’s halakhic decisions were profoundly, and often apparently even selfconsciously, influenced by his perception of the needs of the times, for example, his opposition to announcing pages during hazarat hashatz; his advocacy of Talmud study for women; his approach to membership in the Synagogue Council of America; and his attitude towards celebrating Thanksgiving, to cite just several examples. As Wurzburger himself notes, “A posek is not a computer,” and subjective elements necessarily play a role in the halakhic decision-making process. But to concede this is surely to concede too much, for if this is all true, then historical factors do indeed play a role in halakhic decisionmaking. The needs of the times from the perspective of 1965 amount to historical influences from the perspective of 2010. Of course, it isn’t that R. Soloveitchik was ignorant of the positions of the biblical critics and Wissenschaft scholars. He was surely exposed to them during his student days in Berlin, while at the yeshiva headed by R. Hayyim Heller, and later at Yeshiva University. At least in the case of biblical criticism, he simply asserts that he was never troubled by it.11 His lengthy discussion of the a priori nature of halakhah is at very best an argument by indirection only. He never in his published writings confronts head-on the challenges posed by history and Wissenschaft. The problem becomes even more striking when one considers that Wissenschaft spawned the major denominational and intellectual competitor to Orthodoxy, Conservative Judaism, and, of course, did much as well to nourish its other major competitor, Reform Judaism. Here, surely, we have challenges to Orthodoxy which cry out for a response. Several factors may have played a role in R. Soloveitchik’s avoidance of the problem. First, there is his overwhelmingly philosophical orientation, in which abstract ideas and logical categories rather 11

“Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition (Summer 1965), 8-9. — 441 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

than history and text criticism predominate. Second, he may have understood the grave dangers to the tradition which these disciplines posed, and without any clear-cut solution to the problems, which in any case would have fallen outside his personal and professional expertise, he may have felt it would be best simply not to take the problem on. But according to this second explanation, what might R. Soloveitchik’s own rationale have been for denying the problem? This leads me to the third, and I think central, consideration. R. Soloveitchik portrays the simple man of faith, the “man-child” to use his felicitous formulation, as a religious ideal: The great man whose intellect has been raised to a superior level through the study of Torah, gifted with well-developed, overflowing powers — depth, scope, sharpness — should not be viewed as totally adult … he remains the young and playful child, naive curiosity, natural enthusiasm, eagerness and spiritual restfulness have not abandoned him. Only the child with his simple faith and fiery enthusiasm can make the miraculous leap into the bosom of God.12

In this depiction of the religious life, R. Soloveitchik was capturing his own faith with stunning accuracy. R. Soloveitchik secured for himself at least one tranquil island of faith amidst the torrent of existential and theological issues with which he mightily struggled and which occasioned his most creative and brilliant theological works. Halakhic Mind13 is a far more sophisticated statement with much the same thesis: that the life of religious faith is epistemically justifiable. It must be stressed that R. Soloveitchik’s affirmation of the faith of the “man-child” is distinctively modern. It represents a “heretic,” autonomous, and even creative choice in the face of intellectual pressure from those precincts of Berlin which he was unprepared to confront with the philosophical weapons he had at his disposal. Surely, this should not be surprising. It seems altogether likely that most Modern Orthodox Jewish intellectuals have said to themselves at some point in their intellectual 12

13

“The Remnant of Scholars” in Shiurei ha-Rav, ed. Epstein (New York: Hamevaser, 1974), 16. New York: Free Press, 1986. — 442 —

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odyssey: “In the end, after all is said and done, with a solution or without, I just believe.” Or, in the pungent Yiddish variant, “Fun a kashe shtarbt min nisht” — “One doesn’t die from a question.” Given all the penetrating intellectual honesty of the Brisker dynasty to which R. Soloveitchik was heir, we find in his writings no lame excuses, no half-hearted attempts to whitewash a truly serious problem. We find instead a fideistic affirmation of faith, out of the secure corner of the man-child’s soul. How self-conscious was R. Soloveitchik in this regard? Did he choose to make a “heretic” faith affirmation in self-conscious response to the challenges of Wissenschaft? Unfortunately, this question is difficult to answer with any certainty. Either way, however, I wish to stress that his stance is in many ways a prototypic strategy in the Orthodox struggle with modernity. This in turn helps make R. Soloveitchik into a prototypic Modern Orthodox Jewish intellectual whose personal struggle with modernity became paradigmatic for the Modern Orthodox of his generation. But here we may run into an objection. Isn’t R. Soloveitchik the Maimonidean figure of twentieth-century Judaism, courageously rising to confront the full set of challenges that modernity poses, working out comprehensive solutions to the nevukhim, the perplexed of the generation? In my judgment this is the myth of R. Soloveitchik, a myth which for good sociological reasons found enormous currency amongst many Modern Orthodox Jews, who required an authority figure to make sense of, and to some degree justify, their participation in modernity. Who better could serve this role than the Rav, brilliant talmid hakham, bearer of the august Soloveitchik name, devoted Brisker interpreter of the Rambam, and philosopher par excellence? I shall have more to say about R. Soloveitchik’s success in fulfilling this role shortly, but for now I want to stress that this Maimonidean image of R. Soloveitchik is a mistaken one. To see this, it would be instructive to start by comparing Maimonides’ response to the most serious challenge he faced in his worldview with R. Soloveitchik’s response to the challenge of history and Wissenschaft. I refer, of course, to the problem creation ex nihilo posed for Maimonides. However one reads Maimonides’ true position on this subject, a question of continuing debate amongst Maimonides scholars, there can be very little doubt that he met the challenge head-on. Some thirty — 443 —

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chapters of the Moreh focus in one way or another on this question, and Maimonides submits the dilemma to the most rigorous philosophical analysis. The absence of a similar discussion in R. Soloveitchik’s writings on a central divide between Orthodoxy and its rebellious children is altogether telling. And this is indicative of a much more fundamental difference. Maimonides took up the full range of challenges posed by the philosophy of his day, and wrote a comprehensive, if somewhat veiled, treatise to serve as a guide to the perplexed of his generation. S. R. Hirsch undertook much the same task for his own time, although he carried out the project in a very anti-Maimonidean way. The key point I wish to make, however, is that we get no such comprehensive treatment of the challenges posed by modernity in the writings of R. Soloveitchik. Quite apart from the really critical problem of Wissenschaft, we have no published essay by R. Soloveitchik on the question of whether engaging in secular studies is legitimate, on the very doctrine of synthesis so central to the self-understanding of Modern Orthodoxy, as his son-in-law R. Aharon Lichtenstein produced over thirty years ago,14 and as Dr. Norman Lamm published more recently.15 We do not have full-fledged studies on the nature of authority and autonomy, and of ta’amei ha-mitzvot, nor do we even have a fully-worked out philosophy of halakhah.16 In addition, as I noted above, we have no full-fledged theological or halakhic study of the role of women and egalitarianism, as we don’t have a study in political philosophy on the role and function of the State of Israel, to cite just several more examples of issues which press hard in the self-understanding of Modern Orthodoxy. The probable reason for these lacunae, I believe, is that R. Soloveitchik simply wasn’t interested in producing a comprehensive 14 15

16

“A Consideration of Synthesis from a Torah Point of View,” Gesher (June 1963), 7-15. Torah U’Mada (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1990). Gerald Blidstein, in his “On the Jewish People in the Writings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Tradition 24:3 (Spring 1989) makes a similar observation, 24. I emphasize fully worked out, since R. Soloveitchik does, of course, touch upon a number of these issues in various essays. With regard to a philosophy of halakhah, a particularly surprising omission, as Lawrence Kaplan notes, even Halakhic Mind and Ish ha-Halakha are not full statements. See Kaplan’s essay, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Halakha,” in Jewish Law Annual, ed. B. S. Jackson (New York: Routledge, 1988), 139-197. — 444 —

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guide to the perplexed of his era. This is either because some of the issues weren’t dilemmas he was struggling with when he chose to pick up his pen and write, or because he may have believed he hadn’t anything “Soloveitchikean” to add to the discussion. By and large, I believe he wrote about matters (a) that touched to the core of his own personal struggles with Jewish self-definition in the modern era, and (b) about which he believed that with his unique blend of Brisk and Berlin he had much to contribute. As he explains in the beginning of the “Lonely Man of Faith,” he wrote in personal confession; if others benefit, then, of course, all the better.17 While there may be an element of coyness here, beneath the coyness lies a profound truth.

III My argument so far has been that while R. Soloveitchik is a thoroughly modern figure, his modern stance towards modernity, so to speak, is selective, reflecting his own highly personal faith commitments. I have also argued that the engine which drove his extraordinarily rich theological output is itself selective, reflecting his own intellectual dilemmas and his own capacity to contribute. Now I want to focus on the question of R. Soloveitchik’s role as authority figure for the Modern Orthodox Jews of his era. The point I wish to emphasize is that my analysis should not lead to the mistaken conclusion that R. Soloveitchik was somehow flawed as an authority figure for Modern Orthodoxy, that he didn’t or couldn’t serve as a posek or intellectual role model for a non-traditionalist stance to modernity. Compelling testimony to R. Soloveitchik’s great success in these spheres may be found in Walter Wurzburger’s essay cited above. On issue after issue, R. Soloveitchik’s pesak served as the basis for the behavior and choices of countless Orthodox rabbis and their congregants. By Wurzburger’s extensive account, R. Soloveitchik, with acute sensitivity to the needs of the time and to his own values, formulated numerous piskei halakhah which help define the stance of Modern Orthodox Jews 17

Op. cit., 5-6. While “Lonely Man of Faith” is the most personal of his major essays, I believe that this point nevertheless applies to much of his literary output. — 445 —

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to the halakhic and policy issues of the day.18 It should not be thought that the traditionalist dimension of R. Soloveitchik’s response to modernity impeded his ability to serve as an effective posek and powerful role model for Modern Orthodoxy. Indeed, I would argue that it was precisely his highly personal blend of traditionalist and modern elements which contributed to his success. This is so for two reasons, one more superficial and the other deeper. At the more superficial (although no less important) level, R. Soloveitchik’s undeniable traditionalism and — although this is a different matter — his capacity for humra, contributed to the perceived legitimacy of his pesak. His day-in-and-day-out engagement in classic talmud Torah as a rosh yeshiva, his rosh yeshiva-like bearing, and, on occasion, Brisker humrot, his faithful denial of some aspects of modernity, his elegiac and potent portrayals of the faith, life, and values of the Brisk of his youth and the gedolim of another, lost, era, quite apart from his truly vast, classical halakhic erudition, all contributed mightily to the legitimacy crucial for Orthodox Jews to accept him as a posek. Indeed, were R. Soloveitchik to have bought fully into modern methods and values, he probably would have failed as a posek for Modern Orthodoxy at that stage in the history of its development in the United States. The same is true for his equally important role as a model for countless students and nascent intellectuals struggling with the claims of modernity and tradition. His exacting, even stellar, standards in both Talmud and philosophy made him a kind of hero for the modern Orthodox Jew in much the same way as, say, Hazon Ish was a hero and role model for yet a different kind of Orthodox Jew. The importance of this point cannot be overstated. This leads me to the second and deeper way in which R. Soloveitchik’s highly personal blend of modernity and traditionalism made him the paradigmatic authority for the Modern Orthodox Jew of his generation.

18

Here it should be noted that the position R. Wurzburger attributes to myself and David Singer, that because of R. Soloveitchik’s traditionalism he could not function as a posek for Modern Orthodoxy, is simply inaccurate, as a perusal of the article (op. cit., n. 10) will reveal. — 446 —

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Here again, the contrast with Maimonides is instructive. Both, of course, were thinkers of the first rank in their respective generations. Yet each functioned differently in his confrontation with the intellectual challenges of the time. To borrow (and abuse) Plato’s concept of the philosopher-king, Maimonides was a kind of Jewish philosopher-asking. By this I mean that Maimonides regally confronted the full set of intellectual and religious challenges to the Jews of his era, and produced systematic intellectual and legal guidance on every facet of Jewish life for his needy people. Thus we have his comprehensive Mishneh Torah, on the one hand, and his comprehensive Moreh, on the other. I have argued above (in effect) that to understand R. Soloveitchik as Jewishphilosopher-as-king is to embrace the myth of R. Soloveitchik. But that is not the only model for Jewish intellectual and religious leadership. I would argue that R. Soloveitchik embodied what I shall call the Jewish-philosopher-as-hero.19 By this I mean that R. Soloveitchik’s own passionate intellectual and spiritual life made him a full-fledged heroic figure to the legions of students and intellectuals he touched. Surely, the ingredients for heroism are there: his struggle to find philosophically illuminating solutions to the dilemmas he confronted in the deepest reaches of his own mind and soul; his desire as a great teacher to share these personal struggles and powerful insights with his students; his uncompromising intellectual rigor and mastery in Talmud and in philosophy; his drive to contribute his special blend of Brisk and Berlin to the ongoing quest of Jewish philosophy, an achievement, it should be added, which would justify his own adventures in Berlin; and finally, of special importance, his heretical affirmation in the face of critical challenges of a very traditionalist spirituality, faith, and love and method of learning. The Jewish philosopher-as-hero need not solve intellectually every problem that comes his way, nor must he project a univocal worldview in solving the problems he does tackle, nor must he teach all there is to teach, in order to achieve success. The “heretic” faith affirmation

19

This distinction, minus the philosopher part, may also be useful in considering the roles of other rabbinic authority figures in modernity. I should add that the distinction is different from that drawn by R. Soloveitchik himself between the “king-teacher” and the “saint-teacher,” in his “A Eulogy for the Talner Rebbe” in Shiurei ha-Rav, op. cit., 24-26. — 447 —

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can be as heroic, as important for the student and follower as the comprehensive regal disquisition. Indeed, it is precisely the selectivity of the intellectual enterprise, the sense that the project is not yet complete, that there is yet more work to be done, that sometimes it may be necessary to start over once again, which makes the philosophical task more alive, more engaging. As in Greek tragedy, the agon itself is heroic. Moreover, as I have argued above, it is precisely this segmented quest, in which sweeping and perhaps too easy solutions are eschewed, which is so characteristic of the twentieth-century.20 This approach would surely be most appropriate for the Modern Orthodox Jew who must struggle with his own problematic identity, with the need to make sense of the claims of modernity in the context of his attachment to the past. Who could be more suitable as a hero than R. Soloveitchik, himself struggling in lecture after brilliant lecture and, later, essay after brilliant essay, with precisely these problems, with the themes of modernity and the dilemmas they raise for the Orthodox Jew? And to top it all off, who could simultaneously serve as a world class rosh yeshiva and posek on the one hand, and a legitimizer of such desirable values as Zionism and secular studies on the other? In this very special sense, R. Soloveitchik was the perfect authority figure and role model for the Modern Orthodox of his generation.

IV No discussion of this subject can be complete without considering some

20

Perhaps it should be added that this model for understanding R. Soloveitchik’s significance sheds light on another phenomenon as well. Even many of R. Soloveitchik’s closest personal disciples perceive him quite differently. The more Brisk-minded take him to be the great Brisker rosh yeshiva who, of course, dabbled in philosophy. The more Berlin-minded take him to be a great Jewish philosopher who, of course, was also a great rosh yeshiva. Absent the comprehensive articulation of a world-view, the critical essay on “synthesis,” he can be variously read by various disciples. Complex, multidimensional heroic figures, in the sense I’ve described, lend themselves to variant readings even by close disciples, to interpretations which reflect the interpreter as much as the individual interpreted. Such widely variant readings certainly occur in the case of the Jewish philosopher-as-king, and Maimonides is a striking example of this, but it is my impression that they take more time to evolve. — 448 —

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of these questions, if only briefly, sub specie aeternitatis, or, a bit more shortsightedly, from the perspective of 2097 rather than 1997. What will be the enduring legacy of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik? Unfortunately, we will then no longer have the anecdotal evidence, the rich lore of Torah shebe-al peh which has been so critical (and it must be added, problematic, since there are often conflicting accounts, with concomitant revisionism) to conveying his piskei halakhah and his positions on various and sundry issues. Some of these already have been, and undoubtedly will continue to be, recorded in various books, but they may well lack the halakhically authoritative status necessary to persuade some future rabbi, since they will not be conveyed with the full halakhic apparatus. Certainly some halakhic traditions and public policy positions will be passed down from student to student, but how many of these will be passed down, how accurately, and with what authority in the face of whole new generations of poskim and gedolim it is very hard to predict. On the other hand, perhaps in the future some talmid of a talmid of R. Soloveitchik will himself succeed in becoming a world class posek, and will do so despite (because of?) his sensitivity to historical influences and textual criticism. Does this strain credulity? But if it does occur, it, too, in its own odd way will be a legacy of R. Soloveitchik, even if R. Soloveitchik himself would have disapproved. We will, it is to be hoped, have more and more of the hiddushei Torah produced by R. Soloveitchik, either by his own pen or by his students. These, again it is to be hoped, will be studied by generations of talmidei hakhamim and considered on their own merits, along with the hiddushim of R. Borukh Ber Leibowitz, R. Yitzhak Z. Soloveitchik, R. Shimon Szkop, and numerous other future and past world class roshei yeshiva. Jewish life in the mid-late twentieth-century will have been shaped by R. Soloveitchik’s impact as Jewish philosopher-as-hero on several generations of students and students of students, and by his role in the creation and nurturing of the whole Jewish culture we have been calling Modern Orthodoxy, at least in its American guise, with its affirmation of Zionism and secular learning. What this amounts to in the long sweep of Jewish history, however, I leave to others to judge. And, of course, we will have the philosophical writings. Perhaps — 449 —

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in the future, in some post-post-postmodern era, the problems of modernity will reassert themselves once again, and the essays will be as anguishingly pressing then in exactly the same way that they have been for so many today. But whether or not that is so, I am convinced that future generations will look to R. Soloveitchik’s essays for rich insight into a host of issues raised by his encounter with modernity. There is R. Soloveitchik’s resonant account of the theological significance of technological advancement and human initiative. There are his powerful, multiple portrayals of the quest for God and the life of faith; his sensitive exploration of the religious significance of loneliness and community and of the nature of prayer; and his discussions of the role of science, reason, and the aesthetic in the journey towards religious enlightenment. There are his highly complex treatments of human creativity and this-worldliness, themes which run through a number of his essays, and there is his illuminating articulation of the worldview of the Litvak talmid hakham, the nature of halakhah and its functions in Jewish life. Surely, he has left us a rich intellectual legacy. Scholars of the future have much work ahead of them, studying his writings and reconstructing his theological views on a wide variety of subjects, some just mentioned above. Constructive theologians will start where R. Soloveitchik left off, carrying forward their own theological programs by reinterpreting, for better or worse (that is the way of theological programs) his essays. Indeed, work has already begun in many of these areas, although much remains undone. And finally, some one hundred years from now, a student or class at Hebrew University or Harvard, a yeshiva bahur at Gush Etzion or even Mir, and a class at Yeshiva University will pick up “Lonely Man of Faith” or Ish ha-Halakha, read it, and stand back in awe and illumination, just as so many did, all those years ago.

— 450 —

Transcending Time

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-------------------------------- Chapter XVI  --------------------------------

Transcending Time: Elements of Romanticism in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik I There is by now a fairly large secondary literature on the thought of R. Soloveitchik. For very good reason, scholars speak of Neo-Kantian and Existentialist phases or dimensions of his theological writings. Thus, Halakhic Man shows the influence of Neo-Kantianism on R. Soloveitchik — hardly surprising, since he wrote his dissertation on that school of thought. Later writings, such as Lonely Man of Faith and many others, bear a profoundly Existentialist imprint. What I shall argue here is that the impact of yet another movement in Western intellectual and literary history finds its expression in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, especially in his sermons, in those intellectual essays which share sermon-like qualities, and in his eulogies. That movement is Romanticism, and my contention is that R. Soloveitchik, the man and his writings, can be better understood if they are examined not only from Neo-Kantian and Existentialist perspectives, but from the Romantic perspective as well. For much of the remainder of this article I shall spell out those elements in his writings which may be said to reflect strands within the Romantic tradition. Before I do so, however, I wish to make several prefatory comments. First, it is fair to ask if R. Soloveitchik ever specifically mentions Romanticism, or explicitly draws upon its main proponents. The answer to this question is threefold, and I shall lay the answers out in what I believe is an ascending order of importance. First, in fact R. Soloveitchik does indeed refer to the school of thought, favorably.1 Second and more important than these explicit 1

For example, one of the central themes of The Emergence of Ethical Man (EEM) — 451 —

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references, however, is the deeper and less self-conscious way in which ideas can find their way into the thinking of an intellectual. A man of R. Soloveitchik’s broad education would have encountered such thinkers as Rousseau, as well as the German Romanticists Schleiermacher, Shelling and Schlegel, whom he cites explicitly or by whom he seems to have been influenced.2 He would surely have read such classics of Romantic literature as the works of Goethe, had frequently spoken of Peretz,3 and indeed was exposed by his mother from his early childhood to the works of Pushkin and Lermontov.4 These texts may have resonated deeply within him, consciously or not, influencing his way of looking at the world, because they reflected aspects of his own personality, character, and experiences. Third and finally, one might argue that the whole question of origins is misbegotten, in that R. Soloveitchik’s Romanticism may have come from within rather than from without. Even if — counterfactually as it happens — R. Soloveitchik had never even encountered a single Romantic writer or thinker, and even if he never consciously thought of himself as a Romantic — and I doubt that he did — he might still have deep Romantic sensibilities. This is because he might well have been, as it were, born a Romantic, or by virtue of his early experience evolved a Romantic sensibility. R. Soloveitchik’s reading of Romantic literature and philosophy may have helped provide him with certain conceptual categories, formulations or

2

3

4

(Jersey City, NJ: KTAV, 2005) is that Judaism considers man to be part of the world of nature. In that context, R. Soloveitchik writes on 17, n. 11, “With the return of certain philosophers to the aboriginal sensuous apprehension of reality, and the primitive immediacy of naïve knowledge, the contact between man and the outside world becomes more intimate. Such a romantic [emphasis mine] upsurge of man toward primordiality and oneness with the world outside has its effect upon political philosophy (Bergson’s élan vital, intuition).” The overall approach he describes here supports the central thesis of the first portion of the book. Out of the Whirlwind (Jersey City: KTAV, 2003), 173; See Dov Schwartz, Haguto HaPhilosophit shel Ha-R. Soloveitchik, (Alon Shvut: Tevunot, Mikhlelet Herzog, 2004), 32. Halakhic Man (HM) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983), 167, n. 114; Community, Covenant and Commitment (CCC) (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV, 2005), 89. Aharon Lichtenstein, “Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” in Great Jewish Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, ed. Simon Noveck (Washington, DC: Bnai Brith, 1963), 281-297 for a full biography of R. Soloveitchik. — 452 —

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elements of a literary style, but that is not the same as claiming that he became a Romantic because of that reading. Did Keats or Shelley become Romantics because they read Romantic poetry, or were they Romantics because they were who they were, Keats and Shelley? This may be very difficult to sort out with precision, but in the etiology of their Romantic sensibility there may be no difference between Keats and Shelley on the one hand and R. Soloveitchik on the other. In any case, an acceptable definition of Romanticism is notoriously elusive, as it means many things in many contexts, and scholars cannot even agree on whether or not there is a common definition applicable to all forms of Romanticism. Some speak of a Romantic sensibility, a phrase I have used above, rather than a formal school of thought, and this characterization may indeed be most apt for R. Soloveitchik. In any event, that R. Soloveitchik does possess this sensibility should not be altogether surprising to the historian of ideas, since he is self-consciously Existentialist in some of his writings, and Existentialism is the direct descendent of Romanticism. While in some respects they overlap, in others they are quite different, and as we shall see, R. Soloveitchik adopts not only those elements of Romanticism that overlap with Existentialism, but some elements that differ as well, and in so doing abandons his Existentialist mode of thinking for the Romantic. What elements, then, of the Romantic sensibility — as delineated by scholars of Romanticism — find their expression in the writings of R. Soloveitchik? I shall focus here in varying degrees on the following themes: Nostalgia; romantic heroizing; the centrality of the subjective and romantic individualism; the importance of creativity; the romantic sufferer; and the importance of the emotional. Of course, this list of themes does not exhaust Romanticism, and certain Romantic themes are to one extent or another absent, or at least not prominent, in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, such as the exaltation of nature and love, faith in the essential goodness of humans, the liberating power of art and the imagination, and so on. But this should not be surprising. First, not all Romantics advocate all Romantic themes; indeed, for a variety of reasons, almost none do. Second, and far more important, my argument is not that R. Soloveitchik was a — 453 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

self-conscious Romantic through-and-through, because, put simply, he was not. First, there are the Brisker Litvak, Existentialist and Neo-Kantian dimensions to his thought. These schools of thought frame many important essays, and Romanticism does not. Indeed, in an important footnote in Halakhic Man,5 R. Soloveitchik even sharply criticizes what might be regarded as some of the excesses of formal Romantic philosophy, seeing in it the intellectual forebear of Nazism. Thus, my claim is not the simplistic one that R. Soloveitchik was a card-carrying Romantic, whatever that might mean. Rather, I wish to argue that many central elements of Romanticism find recurring expression in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, and that when composing them R. Soloveitchik possessed what might loosely be described as a Romantic sensibility. While the presence of none of these elements alone in R. Soloveitchik’s writings would constitute evidence for a Romantic sensibility, that so many of these themes are present, and recur again and again, does. It is worth stressing, however, that even these purportedly absent themes are in fact not wholly absent at all. While I shall not dwell on this point here, it is worth noting that some of R. Soloveitchik’s writings do echo even these “absent” Romantic themes, such as his lush descriptions of the beauty of nature in many passages throughout his writings,6 his eloquent statements about the majesty and potential of humans,7 his almost romantic advocacy of the power of a “redeemed” sexuality, and frequent references to the importance of the aesthetic.8 However, for the purposes of this particular paper, I 5

6 7 8

P. 141. It should be recalled that Halakhic Man was written and published during the Holocaust, and it is not unlikely that R. Soloveitchik’s antagonism toward aspects of Romanticism then was conditioned by the circumstances of its writing, and Halakhic Man’s role as an elegy to Litvak European life undergoing devastating destruction. It is impossible to know whether R. Soloveitchik maintained this attitude later in life, but even if he did, it would not undercut the central thesis of this essay. While the intellectual pedigree of Romanticism may have had a nefarious impact, other elements of it R. Soloveitchik clearly favored. For more on this point, see below. E.g., HM, 20-21. E.g., “Majesty and Humility,” Tradition 17:2 (1978), 25-37. For the former, see, e.g., Family Redeemed (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV, 2005), chapters 1-3, and for the latter EEM, part 3. — 454 —

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shall focus my attention on the more prominently expressed themes in his writings, cited above. One final introductory point: Since I write here of “Romantic sensibility,” these themes are all linked, and to isolate one from the other is necessarily to partially misconstrue each. They must be understood as a gestalt. Nevertheless, for analytic purposes isolate these elements we must, ever bearing in mind that they cannot be understood fully in isolation.

II R. Soloveitchik’s writings, and especially his sermons and eulogies, are rich with nostalgia. To cite but one of countless examples, consider the following passage:9 On [the High Holy Days] my eyes are lifted to my childhood experiences that are revealed behind the thick darkness of my age. Only these, when they return alive in my memory, revive the joy and authenticity of my spirit. Only then can I pour out my crying heart before God. And it appears to me that the Divine Presence supports me with the smile of a dear mother. When I see my father sitting and studying the temple rituals of Yom Kippur … on Yom Kippur eve, with a modest intimacy, in sadness mixed with festivity … with the shadows of song, that were both a source of hope and pain for him, shining and rising from a distant yesterday, I am drawn with powerful pangs of yearning for another world, far from my own contaminated one, and love stirs in me.

This passage continues for many more lines, with equally moving descriptions of his grandfather in prayer, and his father praying amongst Habad Hasidim. The evocative language, itself so characteristic of Romanticism as a literary movement, the intense emotions, and yearning for a long-lost idealized past recur again and again in R. Soloveitchik’s writings. There can be no questioning the authenticity of the feelings and the powerful role they play in R. Soloveitchik’s own experience. 9

“Al Ahavat Ha-Torah U-Geulat Nefesh Ha-Dor,” in Be-Sod Ha-Yahid Ve-Ha-Yahad (BYY) (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), 415-416. — 455 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

In this same passage, R. Soloveitchik links his depiction of the past to another important point: Religious faith has a child-like intensity, purity, spontaneity, and naturalness. To be a religious adult is in some respects to be a man-child, to experience faith with the naïveté and simplicity of a child. The sophisticated adult, he says, reverts to childhood. The person who yearns for God, is no longer an adult, weighty of mind and in control of his emotions, but a young child, entirely aflame and impassioned, agitated by the desires of a child and from hidden yearnings that cannot be grasped by clear logic.… For him all existence is a wonder … he lives his life with God and is one with Him not through ideas but through the spontaneous passions of a child, a simple and whole faith.… Like a crying child who runs into the arms of his loving mother, so too the man-child hastens to his God.10

I have argued elsewhere that this nostalgia for an idealized past and valorizing of a simple, child-like faith is part of R. Soloveitchik’s response to the challenges of modernity.11 It is also an important element in the Romantic sensibility, for we could just as well have spoken of a “romanticization of the past” and a “romanticization of childhood,” themes characteristic of the Romantic tradition. Geoffrey Hartman, in an essay entitled “Romanticism and Anti-Self Consciousness,” observes that “this idea of a return, via knowledge, to naiveté — to a second naïveté — is a commonplace among German romantics.”12 German romanticism, A. O. Lovejoy had argued in a famous essay, is distinct from its English cousin precisely in the extent to which it affirms complexity and richness of experience and conflict.13 As Hartman puts it later in the same essay, “The romantic ‘I’ emerges nostalgically when certainty and simplicity of self are lost.”14 I cannot imagine a better one-sentence formulation of the role of nostalgia and naiveté in R. Soloveitchik’s oeuvre than this. Surely it is not coincidental 10 11

12 13 14

Ibid., 412-413. “Ger Ve-Toshav Anokhi: Modernity and Traditionalism in the Life and Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” in chapter XV of this volume. Romanticism: Points of View (RPV) (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974), 288. “On the Discrimination of Romanticisms,” in RPV, 66-81. Ibid., 292. — 456 —

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that R. Soloveitchik, educated at German universities, would have resonated with this form of romanticism in particular, given his own life experiences. Romantic nostalgia for the past and for the verities of childhood enable R. Soloveitchik to rise above the conflicted life he describes in his essays, to transcend the complicating ravages of time, education and sophistication, and to return emotionally to a safer, happier, unconflicted era in his life, rich with the verities of faith, Torah study and Torah giants and, it must be added, to return to an era not yet burned and gassed in the conflagration of the Holocaust. As he himself says in the passage quoted above, these vivid memories anchor him, provide ballast through the turmoil of an immensely complicated inner life. Of course, sermons, and their close cousin, eulogies, are particularly well-suited vehicles for the expression of this romantic nostalgia. It is part for this reason, perhaps, that R. Soloveitchik was so partial to their use. It might be argued, then, that R. Soloveitchik’s Romantic sensibility is but one element of his complex response to modernity, and that his use of sermons is for this reason part and parcel of his response to modernity as well. This is not only because the sermonic form enables him to engage controversial ideas, as Pinchas Peli has argued in an essay on R. Soloveitchik as a master of the sermon,15 but also because sermons, Romantically inflected as they often are for R. Soloveitchik, provide a safe haven from which to escape from modernity, a refuge from the conflicts to which it gives rise. I do not mean to argue that Peli’s suggestion is wrong, but rather to argue that it is only partially right, in that it misses the diametrically opposite way in which sermons function as a response to modernity. Paradoxically, the very same sermon that engages controversial ideas may safely anchor its author — and audience — in a Romantic escape to the perfect past of simple faith and powerful emotional and spiritual experiences. Scholars have long studied the various Jewish intellectual responses to modernity. Romanticism is one such response, and I’m not sure it has so far received the attention it deserves. 15

“Hermeneutics in the Thought of Rabbi Soloveitchik: Medium or Message,” Tradition, 23:3 (1988), 9-31. — 457 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

It should be added here that for R. Soloveitchik, time has not only an objective, quantifiable dimension, but a subjective, qualitative dimension too. In R. Soloveitchik’s words, “The Jew of tradition has another perspective entirely on the topic of time. Revelation and tradition as it were erase the boundaries of time. Distance in time no longer exists. Thousands of years may have passed, but the Jew steps with confidence in the space between the past and present.”16 R. Soloveitchik’s capacity to re-live the past through its nostalgic evocation is crucial not only to his Bergsonian and characteristically Romantic conception of time, but to his inner religious life and personal response to modernity, and this emerges with special power in his sermons. For this reason this essay is partially titled “Transcending Time.” The nostalgic element in R. Soloveitchik stands in contrast to the ideas of Kierkegaard, whose writings so obviously influenced him, and for whom the element of nostalgia is absent. More importantly, this romanticization of childhood and its naiveté is in some ways a reaction against the overwhelming self-consciousness, the fear and trembling so characteristic of Kierkegaard and the Existentialist movement in general, and indeed of R. Soloveitchik himself. While both Kierkegaard and the Romantics stress feeling over cold rationality, and valorize faith over reason, the German Romantic in particular takes refuge in an idealized, nostalgic, simple past, and child-like faith. Thus the ideal inner life of the romantic is altogether at odds with that of the Kierkegaardian, and the nostalgic sentiments expressed in so many writings of R. Soloveitchik represent an anti-Kierkegaardian sensibility, and to put it mildly, a very different side of the man and the thinker than emerges from his purely existentialist writings.

III One of the most characteristic elements of romantic literature, and the philosophical writings which inspire or reflect romanticism, is the stress on the emotional alluded to above, and the rejection of the 16

He-Adam Ve-Olamo (AVO) (Jerusalem: Eliner Press, 1998), 155. — 458 —

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exclusively rational as standing at the core of the human spirit. This theme resonates deeply in the writings of R. Soloveitchik. Of course, neither the Romantics nor R. Soloveitchik reject the rational. As Albert Gerard has argued in “On the Logic of Romanticism,” “Although feeling plays a major part in Romantic poetry and thought, it is an error to think it the protagonist… It is the tyrannical primacy of reason they attacked, not reason itself. On the contrary, they are deeply conscious of the importance of the ratiocinative faculty in all its aspects.”17 R. Soloveitchik himself affirms the importance of both, but his affirmation of the importance of the emotional, and the way in which he expresses it, are characteristically Romantic. There are countless examples of this in R. Soloveitchik’s oevre, but let us begin with a paragraph related to (although not formally part of) a sermon R. Soloveitchik delivered in which he argues that Moses died without being permitted to enter the Land of Israel because the Jews failed to understand their great teacher Moses. Moses suffered the tragedy, he says, of failure, the failure of the great teacher to reach his students. In that context, R. Soloveitchik recalls the following episode from his childhood: “I remember from my childhood that when I learned the biblical portion ‘Va-Ethanan’ together with my friends in class how our eyes would pour hot tears about the tragic fate of Moses our Master, who was deprived of the opportunity to enter the land of his desires.”18 Now for a personal confession: This author cannot recall ever “crying hot tears” over any episode in the Torah during his apparently emotionally impoverished childhood. Not so for R. Soloveitchik, whose childhood was full of emotionally rich experiences described in so many haunting passages scattered throughout his published work. Consider this selection from a lengthy recollection from the past, drawn from a letter R. Soloveitchik wrote to a Habad hasid who was also head of a yeshiva: As I speak I recall the visions of my youth, paved with the pure impressions of childhood, enveloped by romantic splendor (italics mine). Behold, the likeness of my mentor, R. Barukh Yaakov Reisberg z”l, appears to me. I can still picture his facial expression, which radiated with both solemnity 17 18

RPV, 265. AVO, 217. — 459 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

and intelligence, as well as sweep and imagination. To this day I hear his voice in the silence of the twilight, sad, saturated with sorrow and longing, his words emerging from the distance — words full of passion and fascination.… I still carry in the recesses of my soul the image of the Alter Rebbe which gazed upon us … from the whitewashed walls of the cheder, a broad forehead, commanding intelligence, deep eyes gazing at divine infinite distances, fastened upon wondrous visions. The beard which flowed upon his garments enchanted us with its majesty and mystery.… As I continue to dream I see the image of elderly hassidim on the night of Shemini Atzeret dancing around my father and teacher of blessed memory in a quick rhythmic beat. Images such as these will not be erased from my heart; they are deeply rooted in the mystery of my being.19

Note that R. Soloveitchik himself describes these memories as romantic, and indeed the lushness and lyricism of their expression, the sheer emotional intensity they convey, the very use of the phrase “the mystery of my being,” makes this passage a fine example of Romantic literature. Later in the same letter he confesses “Believe me, my friend, that this schism — thought and feeling — sunders my soul as well. At times I tend to listen to the murmur of my heart. A strand of hassidut is buried deep within me.”20 R. Soloveitchik stresses again and again the importance of the passionate dimension of Jewish religious experience, and on several occasions expresses anxiety about whether American Jewry will succeed in transmitting this from one generation to the next. In our days, in regard to American Jewry, I am among those who are extremely worried about how confident we can be that the emotional tradition of Judaism will continue. I feel not infrequently before Yom Kippur that I am incapable of transmitting to my students the experiences of my souls and feelings of my heart that are my heritage and my portion. If I were nevertheless to attempt to do so I would be forced to bare my entire inner self, to dissect before an assembled congregation everything I feel within me and to speak of my spiritual self in all its detail. That is a 19 20

CCC, 289-290. Ibid, 291. See chapter XV of this volume for a full discussion of the tension between thought and feeling, and between Litvak and Hasidic sensibilities, in R. Solovetchik’s life and thought. — 460 —

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difficult matter, but it is crucial for us.…21

His anxiety about the future of American Jewry, he says, drove him to overcome the reticence he claims to feel about expressing intense personal emotions in public. Express them he obviously did, for the greater good of the Jewish people.

IV Another idea that many Existentialists and Romantics share is the primacy of the individual and the individual hero, although this idea is expressed and experienced differently in each of these traditions. Certainly, the Existentialist writings of R. Soloveitchik convey this core idea with great force. Nevertheless, I wish to argue that it finds expression in a very different, characteristically Romantic way as well. While examples of this abound in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, let us focus on R. Soloveitchik’s depiction of Joseph’s quarrels with his brothers, and of his own twentieth-century abandonment of his antiZionist family and colleagues in favor of the Zionism of the Mizrachi movement.22 There is considerable pathos in this depiction, in which he reveals the personal pain his decision brought him. Joseph son of Jacob is portrayed by R. Soloveitchik as abandoning his brothers over ideological differences foreshadowing exactly those ideological differences between himself, Joseph the Second, as it were, and his antiZionist brothers. Left both stated and implied is the pain each suffered as a result. This lengthy passage brilliantly exemplifies R. Soloveitchik’s method and power as a master of the sermon. He tells the tale of Joseph and his brothers with all the drama it deserves, and interprets their conflict in the rich and profound ideological and theological categories of his own worldview, embedded in his generation’s great challenges and in the pathos-riven experiences of his own life. There is great individualism here, but more even than that, there is heroism too, and a form of heroism far more Romantic than Existentialist. 21 22

AVO, 97. The Rav Speaks: Five Addresses (Jerusalem: Tal Orot, 1983), 25-36. — 461 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

The suffering of our hero is not over inner existentialist conflict, but rather the suffering of a hero who risks so much to do what he personally believes is right, against the thrust of family and friends. This reflects one of the great types in Romanticism. As Howard Mumford Jones argues in Revolution and Romanticism, “From about 1775 forward, romantic individualism developed, it seems to me, at least three cardinal types other than the revolutionary one…. Allowing for national variations and philosophic differences, the types seems to me to be (1) the sufferer; (2) the rebel; (3) the liberated woman.”23 While the third type is wholly absent from R. Soloveitchik’s writings, the first two resonate deeply. For another perhaps even more instructive example of both Mumford Jones’ first two types wrapped up in one, consider R. Soloveitchik’s portrait of Abraham in The Emergence of Ethical Man. Abraham is there depicted as a “charismatic personality,” “forced to be the loneliest, most detached person from society, and driven from its nest,” hardly a source of comfort. What are the characteristics of the “charismatic personality,” apart from its loneliness? “The charismatic person is anarchic, freedom-loving and anti-authoritarian” (p. 152), a person who “frees himself from all the fixed formulas and rhythms of an urbanized civilization and joins a fluid, careless, roving nomad society” (p. 153). Now this anarchy does not involve disobedience to the moral law, of course. “[He] revolts against a non-moral legalistic society … he refuses to obey an external authority … he prefers spontaneity to artificiality, improvisation to routine” (p. 154). What then of moral law? “The charismatic person discovers the ethos himself. As a free personality he goes out to meet the moral law with his full collected being; he chances to find it in himself.… Only later does he find out to his surprise that with the moral law in himself he has discovered the God of morality beyond himself.… God encroaches not upon his personal freedom; on the contrary God helps him to develop his moral spontaneity and creativity” (ibid.). Politically, “The charismatic personality is a political and social anarchist who negates the authority of conventional institutions and man-made mores.…” (p. 156). 23

Revolution and Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1974), 243. — 462 —

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These remarkable lines could have been lifted almost in their entirety from Rousseau and his many followers, and exemplify the themes of individualism, heroic rebellion, creativity and spontaneity so characteristic of Romanticism. Even Romantic anti-urbanism and its suspiciousness of civilization find their echoes in these passages. All the more remarkable is that for R. Soloveitchik these qualities are embodied in no less a hero than iconoclastic Abraham, persecuted by his society, and founder of the Jewish people. There can be no question that this particular portrait of Abraham was inspired by Romanticism rather than Existentialism. The language, the categories, the challenges are far removed from the Abraham of Kierkegaard and the Lonely Man of Faith, and far more comfortable in the universe of Rousseau and the Romantics. Indeed, it could be argued that halakhic man himself, in R. Soloveitchik’s famed early essay by that name, is in certain important ways an early example in R. Soloveitchik’s writings of a romantic hero, who against all conventional social and cultural norms remains faithful to the world of the Litvak scholar. The concluding section of that important essay stresses the creativity and spontaneity of halakhic man, his daring, individualism and independence. Halakhic man even discovers the halakhic norm within himself, exactly like the “charismatic personality” described above. While the anti-urbanism of that portrait is not present as in his portrait of Abraham, nor is Romanticism the overriding intellectual thrust to the portrait of halakhic man, partially deriving from the Neo-Kantian framework of the essay and its own distinctive stress on creativity. Nevertheless, the similarities between these types, especially the emphasis on spontaneity, must still not be obscured. This characterization of Abraham is but one example of another romantic theme that echoes again and again in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, especially his sermons and eulogies: The romanticization of Jewish heroes. Even a cursory reading of R. Soloveitchik’s writings will reveal that he depicts Jewish figures from the distant and recent past in almost mythic terms, as embodying in their lives ideal types. Just as Abraham embodies the type described above, and Joseph embodies the individualist, the Talner rebbetzin becomes the embodiment of lovingkindness, the Talner rebbe becomes the embodiment of the “saint-teacher,” and so on and on. While this is related to the — 463 —

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typological method R. Soloveitchik so frequently deploys, it also evokes idealized portraits of Jewish figures, who take on an almost mythic halo in R. Solovietchik’s resonant, literary, and yes, Romantic re-telling of their tales.

V What of the reference to creativity in this passage about Abraham? As noted above, this echoes the creativity stressed at the end of Halakhic Man. Certainly, creativity is a central theme in R. Soloveitchik’s writings as well, but this has typically been understood in a Neo-Kantian framework. While that framework is surely apt, as we have just seen it does not do justice to the Romantic dimension in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, and thus does not do justice to the man and to the richness of his inner life and thought. Let us examine yet another manifestation of this misreading of creativity. Scholars have long noted problems with R. Soloveitchik’s conception of halakhic creativity in the Neo-Kantian intonations of Halakhic Man, as they have observed that this formulation shifts in the eulogy he delivered for his uncle R. Yizchak Zev Soloveitchik (known as the Brisker Rav), subsequently published as “Ma Dodekh Me-Dod.” There R. Soloveitchik distinguishes between two different relationships between the Torah and those who study it, which he calls erusin (betrothal) and nesuin (marriage). While erusin is achieved through classic Torah study and rational analysis, for the person who enters into a relationship of nesuin with the Torah, things are different. “The Torah is absorbed into the hiding places of his being and becomes integrated with it… Halakhic thought is nourished from a pre-intellectual vision, which bursts forth like a storm from the depths of his person…. Mysterious intuition is the source of creativity and the halakhic novum.… At this stage the Torah is revealed not only through … tranquil intellectual effort, which clarifies and criticizes, but through the sefira of Hokhma, from which flows the intuition of the creative genius.”24 24

BYY, 218-219. — 464 —

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As Dov Schwartz has already noted, “In Ma Dodekh Mi-Dod genius is presented in romantic style.”25 This depiction of creative genius driven by intuition and inspiration rather than cool intellectual analysis is characteristic of Romantic portrayals of the creative genius, and especially the poet, artist and romantic thinker, and is decidedly different from the Neo-Kantian framework that dominates Halakhic Man. My argument is that the romantic portrayal of creative genius in Ma Dodekh Me-Dod is not atypical for R. Soloveitchik, but rather wholly characteristic of the larger Romantic themes woven into so many of his writings, and especially his sermons and eulogies.

VI One of the central claims of this article has been that quite apart from the disparity between the Neo-Kantian and Existentialist dimensions of his writings, there exists yet another disparity in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, between the Romantic and the Existentialist. The next question, then, is obvious. How could R. Soloveitchik embrace both Existentialist and Romantic sensibilities when, as we have seen, they sometimes stand in conflict with one another? Of course, this question is of a piece with the question of reconciling his Romanticism with his Neo-Kantianism, and with the life he lived as a Brisker Litvak rosh yeshiva.26 One answer, it might be suggested, is that the question makes certain false assumptions about how best to understand R. Soloveitchik and his contribution to Orthodox Jewish life of the twentieth-century. As I have argued elsewhere, R. Soloveitchik is better understood in the impact he had on his followers as more a “Philosopher-Hero”

25 26

Hagut Ha-Philosophit shel Ha-R. Soloveitchik, 385. There is by now a rich secondary literature on the alleged contradictions in R. Soloveitchik’s writings. See David Singer and Moshe Sokol, “Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” chapter XIV of this volume; Marvin Fox, “The Unity and Structure of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Thought,” Tradition 24:2 (1989), 44-65; David Hartman, Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2001), and in Hebrew, Haim Navon, Ne’ehaz Be-Sevakh: Shi’urim Be-Haguto shel Ha-R. Soloveitchik (Ma’aleh Adumim: Ma’aliyot, 2006), chap. 1. — 465 —

-----------------------------------------------------  Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik -----------------------------------------------------

than a “Philosopher-King.”27 By that I mean that R. Soloveitchik never attempted to be the Maimonides of the twentieth-century, taking up and solving in one systematic philosophy the full complement of halakhic and philosophical problems his followers faced. Rather, he sought to illuminate the dilemmas he himself confronted, using the best philosophical and rabbinic insight he could muster for the task at hand, serving as a kind of heroic role model for thousands of students themselves struggling with theological problems of their own. R. Soloveitchik did possess deep Existentialist sensibilities, and they did indeed capture important elements of his inner religious life. However, R. Soloveitchik’s inner life was too complex and his felt experiences too rich to be captured exclusively through one philosophical school. For there were elements of his inner emotional life and experience that were Romantic and not Existentialist. He chose to stress the one over the other when that choice seemed to illuminate best the inner experience at hand, and the texts he wished to explain. No single Procrustean bed of philosophical thinking could capture for him the richness of his own lived religious and emotional life. It was, after all, the great American Romantic poet Walt Whitman who wrote, at the end of his famous poem “Song of Myself,” “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” One of the great dilemmas scholars of R. Soloveitchik have faced is taking the measure of the many apparently opposing dimensions of R. Soloveitchik’s writings, and the opposing personae which gave them life. Paradoxically, by adding yet another opposing dimension to contend with, the Romantic, we may have a new perspective on the dilemma itself. For it may be that Romanticism partially accounts for R. Soloveitchik’s ability to live with, even nurture, those very tensions. Indeed, it could be argued that few other major modern Jewish thinkers equal R. Soloveitchik as, in Whitman’s telling phrase, “containing multitudes.”

27

“Ger Ve-Toshav Anokhi,” chapter XV of this volume. — 466 —

Inter preting Jewish Texts --------------------------------------   Chapter XVII. What Does A Jewish Text Mean --------------------------------------

------------------------------- Chapter XVII  --------------------------------

What Does A Jewish Text Mean? Theories of E’lu Ve-Elu Divrei Elohim Hayim in Rabbinic Literature Recent scholarly literature has shown an increasing interest in the philosophy of halakha generally and in the nature of halakhic truth in particular.1 Theoretical reflection about the nature of Jewish law is surely a scholarly desideratum, and this trend is to be welcomed. Linked with this development is a growing methodological awareness that theories of textual interpretation bear mightily on how we interpret Jewish texts as well. This is an adjunct of the raging contemporary controversies in literary theory, which have made scholars ever more sensitive to issues of hermeneutics. Explorations of these themes in Jewish legal contexts have only just begun to surface.2 1

2

See Shalom Rosenberg, “Ha-Hitgalut Ha-Matmedet — Shelosha Kivunirn,” Hitgalut Emunah Tevunah, ed. M. Hallamish & M. Schwarcz (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1976), which has been partially summarized and translated into English as “Tradition and Chiddush,” Jewish Action (Winter 1988-1989), 12-15; “Torah Elokit She’lo Ba-Shamayim Hi’ — Birur Typologi,” Yohanan Silman, Bar IIan Annual, ed. M. Hallamish, 22-23 (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1988), 261-286 (henceforth, “Torah Elokit”); idem., “Torat Yisrael Le-Or Hiddusheha — Birrur Phenomenologi,” PAAJR, 90-91, 49-67; “Iyyun Bi-Shnei Modelim shel Musag Ha-Emet Ha-Halakhatit U-Mashma’utam,” Avi Sagi-Schweitzer, Higgayon (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1989), 69-90; idem., “Be’ayat Ha-Hakhra’a Ha-Halakhatit Ve-ha-Emet Ha-Halakhatit: Likrat Philosophia shel Halakha,” Dinei Yisrael (Tel Aviv: 1989-1990), 15:7-38. Among the most influential writers on this subject in general jurisprudence is Ronald Dworkin, who has explored these issues in a series of books, especially in Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); and Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1986). For recent discussions in a Jewish legal context see “Woodchoppers and Respirators: The Problem of Interpretation in Contemporary Jewish Ethics,” Louis Newman, Modern Judaism 10:1 (February 1990), 17-42; “The Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources: A Philosophical Analysis of the Halakhic Sources,” Moshe Sokol, AJS Review 15:1 (Spring 1990), 63-93 (chapter XI of — 467 —

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Both Jewish hermeneutic theory and philosophy of Jewish law would be illuminated by an analysis of the famous rabbinic principle “e’lu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayim,” which appears to assert that two conflicting opinions can both be true.3 Of course, this often amounts to asserting that a single text can have two conflicting meanings. Perhaps the most famous — although by no means only — occurrence of the principle is in TB Eruvin l3b:4 R. Abba said in the name of Samuel: “For three years Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel debated, these saying the law is like us, and these saying the law is like us. A heavenly voice emerged and said e’lu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayyim hen, and the law is according to Bet Hillel.”

The aim of this paper is to examine the Rabbinic career of the e’lu veelu principle, and the method employed will be primarily typological. That is, I shall try to show the multiple ways in which the principle has been explicated in various jurisprudential and theological schools, distinguishing conceptually amongst the accounts. As will be seen, the results of this analysis should shed light on how different strands of the tradition understood such central ideas as halakhic truth, the content of revelation, the possibilities of textual interpretation, the nature of human knowledge and even the ontic structure of the universe. If this is a rather tall order, the analysis presented here should, I believe, bear it out. That the e’lu ve-elu principle requires explanation is obvious, since prima facie it violates the Law of Non-Contradiction: X cannot be both Y

3

4

this volume); A Living Tree, Elliot Dorff and Arthur Rosett (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988); and from a somewhat different perspective, Peshat and Derash, David Weiss Halivni (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Very little on this subject has appeared in the scholarly literature. For the only essay I am aware of, see Michael Rosensweig, “E’lu ve-Elu Divrei Elohim Hayim: Halakhic Pluralism and Theories of Controversy,” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992). See also the brief discussion in “The Justification for Controversy in Jewish Law,” Jeffrey Roth, Rutgers Law Review 40:31, 31-99. A. J. Heschel, in the recently published vol. 3 of his Torah Min Ha-Shamayim be-Ispaklariah shel Ha-Dorot (Jerusalem: JTS, 1990), 83-98, cites and discusses briefly some of the sources analyzed in this essay. See also TY Berachot 1:4; TY Kiddushin 1:1; and TB Gittin 6b, where the context is not a legal one. — 468 —

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and not Y at the same time and in the same respect. That is, where Bet Shammai asserts that some object is tahor and Bet Hillel asserts that it is tameh, they cannot both be right for the same object, at the same time, and in the same respect. Of course, implicit within this very formulation of the problem are strategies for its solution. Perhaps Bet Hillel is right for one time and Bet Shammai for another; perhaps they are right in different, rather than the same respects. As we shall see, the varying approaches to the problem do adopt one or another — or both — of these strategies. An examination of the sources suggests that Rabbinic explanations of the e’lu ve-elu principle fall into three main types, which I shall call the Contextual, the Epistemological and the Ontological. Each of the last two categories falls into multiple sub-types as well, but more about that later. First, the Contextual.

I. THE CONTEXTUAL The basic strategy of the Contextual school is two-pronged: to insist upon the context-sensitivity of halakhic decisions; and to insist upon a distinction between the halakhic decision itself, and the ratio decedendi, the reasons for the decision. While Rabbi A’s reason for taking the position he does contra Rabbi B may not in the particular case at hand be apt, that very same reason may be apt, and indeed decisive, in somewhat different circumstances. Rashi, in his commentary to TB Ketubot 57a (s.v. ka mashma lan) puts it this way: When two are arguing about the attribution of a doctrine to an individual authority … one of them must be taking a false position. But when two amoraim are debating a point in civil law or issur ve-heter, each one provides a reason for his view and neither position may be wrong. Each one proposes a reason for his view, one a reason to maintain heter, another a reason to maintain issur. One draws a halakhic analogy in one way, the other in another way, and it is appropriate to declare that e’lu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayim. There are times when one reason applies, and times that another reason applies, because the reason can change with a change in circumstances, even if the change in circumstances is only slight.

In this analysis the two conflicting decisions are not both held to be the — 469 —

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words of the living God; the reasons for the decisions are. The serious halakhic argument will find some context in which its ratio will be halakhically decisive.5 R. Moses Sofer too is an adherent of this school, as his comments in the Hatam Sofer to TB Pesahim 3b (s.v. ke-gedi) indicate, thus showing that the Contextual approach survives some eight centuries and quite disparate cultures. The Hatam Sofer goes so far as to suggest that the other context in which the law would be otherwise might be the messianic era, or even some different gilgul. And it is known that which is written “e’lu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayim.” There is nothing in all the Torah which has no significance … and what appears now to be contrary to reason nevertheless will be true in some other place or gilgul… Therefore the pig is called hazir because [in the messianic era] it will return [from the root hazar] to its original state of permissibility.

The Hatam Sofer thus liberates legal truth from its this-worldly moorings, so convinced is he that all serious halakhic teachings must be true.

II. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL The Epistemological School maintains that the two conflicting decisions themselves are in fact both the words of the living God. Nevertheless, the e’lu ve-elu principle does not violate the Law of Non-Contradiction because the decisions are each assertions about the case in question in different respects. That is, Rabbi A who says tahor is correctly asserting that the object is tahor from the apt perspective in which he evaluates the object, and Rabbi B is correctly asserting that the object is tameh from the apt perspective in which he evaluates the object, but these two perspectives are different, even though they are both apt. Thus, to borrow an example used in the twentieth-century by R. Eliahu Dessler,6 5

6

R. Moshe Isserles, the Rama, in his responsa, seems to take a similar view. See She’elot U-Teshuvot Ha-Rama no. 107 (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1971), 448. Mikhtab Me-Eliyahu (Bnei Brak: Hever Talmidav, 1964), vol. 3, 353. R. Dessler himself, a leading mussar master, may well have been influenced by R. Israel Salanter, the founder of the movement, about whom see below. R. Dessler also had considerable exposure to kabbalah and to the writings of the Maharal of Prague, about whom see below as well. — 470 —

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A can assert that the paper which he is holding is 11” wide but only 1 mm high, while B can assert that the same paper is 11” high and 8” wide, and they are both right, because both accurately describe the dimensions of the paper from two different but equally apt perspectives. Three different versions of the Epistemological School can be distinguished, two of which are pre-modern and mystical and the third of which is modern and, interestingly enough, finds its articulation in both Hasidic and Mitnagdic sources. I. Subjective: The Subjective approach is conceptually identical to the description of the Epistemological School above, except that in its earliest formulation it uses mystical concepts and categories. What follows is from the sixteenth-century work Avodat Ha-Kodesh by Meir ibn Gabbai, the Turkish kabbalist.7 Meir ibn Gabbai is one of an interestingly large number of sixteenth-century figures who address this issue. That ever-flowing fountain [of emanation from which the Torah originates] has different sides, a front and a back; from this stem the differences and the conflicts and the varying conceptions regarding the clean and the unclean, and so on. The great continuing voice contains all these diverse ways of interpretation for in that voice there can be nothing missing. According to the size and strength of the voice the opposing interpretations appear within it and confront one another. For the one has seen the face of that voice as it was turned toward him and made his decision for purity, and the other for impurity, each according to the place where he stood and where he received it. But all originates from one place and goes to one place, as is explained in the Zohar.

While there is admittedly some ambiguity in the way this is formulated, the basic idea seems to be that different views emerge in the halakha because there are different, equally legitimate perspectives from which to respond to the unitary revelation. Therefore, neither rabbi errs in asserting that the object in question is either tahor or tameh. His only error would be where he asserts his view exclusivistically; that is, if he maintains that only he, but not 7

The translation derives from Gershom Scholem’s essay “Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories,” which appears in his The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 300. — 471 —

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his opponent, is correct. Such exclusivism is ruled out by e’lu ve-elu. What he might maintain, consistent with his own convictions and with e’lu ve-elu, is that his view is the more relevant one than that of his opponents, or that it captures more, or more important, aspects of divine revelation.8 Certainly this approach explains the rabbinic inclination to take opposing views with such radical seriousness: they each respond to ongoing divine revelation. But is there any general or systematic way to account for these different perspectives? Moreover, what accounts for the halakha in the end following one authority rather than the other? At least this text leaves the matter open. Perhaps to answer these questions two other approaches emerged in the Epistemological School. II. Objective: The Objective approach maintains that there is something objective about the nature of divine revelation itself which explains why discrete approaches to halakhic issues emerge. Moreover, according to this approach, this complex objective reality corresponds to complex subjective realities as well, providing further insight into the grounds for halakhic difference. This position, again formulated mystically, appears in the introduction to the Yam Shel Shelomo on Hulin, an important sixteenth-century commentary on several tractates by R. Shelomo Luria of Poland, commonly called the Maharshal, one of the most influential and independent-minded halakhic scholars of his generation: The mystics provided an explanation for the matter [i.e. how two conflicting views can both be God’s words] because all the souls stood at Sinai and accepted [the Torah] through 49 conduits [tzinorot], and these are seven times seven purified l4-fold; and these are the voices that they heard as well as saw. All Israel saw the voices — these are views divided, in the conduits. Each one saw through his own conduit according to his apprehension and accepted according to the strength of his upper soul depending upon its

8

This approach, as with the others in the Epistemological school, can be read either as “explicative” or “creative,” following the typology used by Silman in “Torah Elokit,” but only as “revelatory,” following the typology of Sagi-Schweitzer, in their essays cited above, note 1. Note also the parallels between the Epistemological and Ontological approaches analyzed in this essay and some of the characteristics of the third approach to hiddushei Torah identified and discussed by Silman in his essay “Torat Yisrael Le-Or Hiddusheha,” cited above, note 1. — 472 —

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height or limitations, this one far from that one, until one person arrives at a conclusion of tahor, a second at the opposite extreme, tameh, and a third in the middle, far from both extremes, and they are all true. Understand this.

According to the mystical tradition cited by Maharshal, who may have been influenced by a new edition of the Zohar which had just been published, three factors account for conflicting halakhic positions despite their equivalent origin in God’s word: (1) halakhic truth is objectively conveyed in 49 different ways, through the tzinorot; (2) different halakhic scholars, based upon the source of their soul, will hear the Torah through one or another of these conduits; (3) even within each conduit, different halakhic scholars will apprehend the Torah differently according to the “height” of his particular soul. The first point, the existence of the conduits which distinguish aspects of halakhic revelation, sets off the Objective approach most sharply from the Subjective one. Even the subjective element in the Objective approach, however, especially as articulated in the second point above, differs from the basic Subjective approach as well. The Objective approach maintains that there are natural, and in principle specifiable, distinctions between types of human beings which at least in part account for different halakhic positions, distinctions which reside in the particular tzinnor to which the individual halakhic scholar’s soul has access. No such distinctions emerge in the Subjective approach. Unfortunately we have here no precise explanation for the way in which halakhic truth and its apprehension is shaped by these tzinorot, or exactly how, in the final analysis, they account for the unitary divine source of conflicting halakhic opinion. These problems are of course linked to broader themes in kabbalistic thought. Nevertheless, the basic strategy of the approach is clear enough. III. Psychological: The Psychological school essentially psychologizes the objective and subjective characteristics of the Subjective or Objective Schools. The mystical version of the Psychological school affirms that God’s revelation, and the world itself, is objectively differentiated, and that halakhic authorities disagree by virtue of how they are situated with respect to this differentiation. The principle of differentiation used here is the sephirotic — 473 —

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system, and in particular the sephirot of hesed and gevurah. The psychological aspects of this approach become apparent in this selection from Kedushat Levi by the famed nineteenth-century R. Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev. … a person studies the simple meaning of the holy Torah according to his perspective. If he is from the world of hesed then all is pure, permissible and kosher, according to the determination of his intellect in the holy Torah. So too in the opposite direction: if he is of the attribute [middah] of gevurah then [his determination will follow] the opposite direction. Bet Hillel’s attribute was hesed, and therefore Bet Hillel took the lenient view; Bet Shammai were of the attribute of gevurah, and therefore Bet Shammai took the strict view. But the truth is that each according to his level expressed the words of the living God. And this is the meaning of the principle e’lu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayim. Now our sages, may their memory be blessed, who lived after the generation of Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel saw that the world required behavior according to the attribute of hesed, and so they established the law according to Bet Hillel.9

R. Levi Yitzhak maintains that poskim have naturally different orientations to halakhic questions, some being more inclined to rule permissively and others more inclined to rule stringently. These differing inclinations, which may be thought of as psychological, since they are rooted in the posek’s psyche, are in turn dependent upon whether the source of the posek’s soul is hesed or gevura. Because both the hesed and gevurah attributes are equally legitimate, divergent halakhic views which emerge from them are equally legitimate as well, although different generations may have their own halakhic needs, which results in the halakha following one authority rather than the other. It should be noted that R. Levi Yitzchak would not, I believe, maintain that a halakhic decision is wholly shaped by these orientations; after all Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel do not disagree about everything. But where a straightforward reading of the halakhic sources and arguments underdetermines an outcome, the psycho-spiritual (to coin a phrase) orientation of the posek shapes his response to the data. Hasidism generally psychologized kabbalistic categories, and in effect R. Levi Yitzchak psychologized the earlier, sixteenth-century 9

Kedushat Levi (Jerusalem: Ha-Mosad le-hotsa’at sifre musar va-Hasidut, 1958), vol. 1, 155. — 474 —

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kabbalistic approach he may have found in R. Meir ibn Gabbai or R. Shelomo Luria. The mussar movement, that parallel spiritualizing force which developed in mitnagdic circles in Eastern Europe in the eighteenthcentury, was also characterized by strong psychological tendencies. It is therefore quite interesting, but perhaps not surprising, to find a similar account of “e’lu ve-elu” in the writings of R. Israel Salanter, the 18th-century founder of the mussar movement.10 His account differs significantly from that of R. Levi Yitzhak in that it lacks the mystical underpinnings of the latter’s approach, with its objectively existent structures. R. Salanter’s is a purely psychological account, grounded only in the subjective differences amongst types of halakhic interpreters. … How did it come about, and what reason could there be for the fact that the students of Bet Shammai, and the students of Bet Hillel, would agree by and large to [their own] views, and what is the idea behind the “groups” [haburot]? Since the reason for their controversies was the difference in their personality traits [kohot nafshotan] (which no person can eradicate from his mind …), therefore by and large the members of the group, who shared these personality traits, marched together.11

A critical theme in R. Salanter’s writings in a later part of this passage and elsewhere is the importance of overcoming one’s personal feelings, interests, needs and biases. But here R. Salanter concedes that some traits are ineradicable, are simply fundamental to the personality despite one’s best efforts to rise above them. These differences account for fundamentally differing judgments on certain halakhic matters, and it is legitimate, because it is unavoidable, for the posek to respond accordingly. Both Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel offer equally valid interpretations of the halakha, because each interpretation emerges from disinterested, but different psychological makeups. 10

11

For a discussion of whether R. Salanter studied kabbalah, see Hillel Goldberg, Israel Salanter: Text, Structure, Idea (New York: KTAV, 1982), 209-219, and in the same volume pp. 123-125, for a discussion of the text cited below. Whether or not R. Salanter studied kabbalah, he may well have encountered R. Shelomo Luria’s thesis, since the Maharshal on Hulin is a standard work which he would likely have studied as a Talmudist. Sefer Tevunah vol. 1 (New York: Grosman, 1965), 88. See also pp. 55-56, 64, and 71-72. For additional references to the role of subjective differences amongst interpreters of halakha, see Silman’s essay “Torat Yisrael Le-Or Hiddusheha,” op. cit., n. 1, 64 n. 38. — 475 —

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III. THE ONTOLOGICAL The third school differs from the first two in that it accounts for e’lu ve-elu without reference to features of the interpreter of the Torah and his perspective on the truth. For the Ontological School there is something about the nature of the Torah itself, or even the universe as a whole, which accounts for the legitimacy of multiple points of view. Two versions of the Ontological view appear in the sources, one according to which the Torah is indeterminate, and the other according to which existence itself is indeterminate. I. The Indeterminacy of the Torah: Two different versions of a memra by R. Yannai serve as the basis of this approach. First, the version in the Yerushalmi [Sanhedrin 4:2]: Rav Yannai said: “Had the Torah been given in discrete portions [hatukha] no leg would be able to stand.” What is the reason for the verse “And God spoke to Moshe saying …”? Moshe said before Him: “Ribbono Shel Olam, inform me what the halakha is.” God told him: “Follow the majority [aharei rabim le-hatot]. If those that assert innocence are in the majority, follow them; if those that assert guilty are in the majority, follow them, so that the Torah can be nidreshet 49 ways tameh and 49 ways tahor.”

In some ways this is a structurally difficult memra: where does R. Yannai end and the stam begin, if there is indeed a stam? What exactly is the intent of the question preceding the citation of the verse “And God spoke to Moshe saying,” and the use of the verse itself? Nevertheless, the following analysis seems reasonable. In the Yerushalmi’s version, Rav Yannai maintains that a clearly formulated Torah would make its human application impossible. He thus seems to be bothered — and I underline “seems” because there is no way to be certain about this — by a jurisprudential problem discussed in philosophical circles as long ago as Aristotle, and perhaps even earlier: Clearly formulated legal generalizations have a rigidity and inflexibility about them which makes their application in some individual cases inequitable. This problem, as we know, is exacerbated by continuous social and economic changes — 476 —

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through time. Who is to say that the perfectly just law of one generation will be equally just in another generation?12 The jurisprudential orientation of this version of R. Yannai’s memra is reinforced by Moshe’s request of God: Inform me, Moshe says, what the halakha is. Moshe makes this request because, and this is R. Yannai’s underlying thesis, the Torah is not given hatukha. What exactly this means is again uncertain. But we do have a hint, and that is in God’s answer to Moshe: The halakha is what the majority of halakhic scholars make of it.13 We have, then, echoes of the tannur of akhnai dispute, with a similar lo ba-shamayim hi orientation. We also have echoes of the motif, which appears in TB Eruvin 13b and elsewhere, that there are 49 ways to prove the purity of a sheretz. Here, these motifs are linked to the non-hatukha character of revelation, and, of special relevance for us, to ongoing halakhic debate. Although no connection is explicitly drawn in the talmudic text between this memra and the e’lu ve-elu principle, its connection seems apparent, as the Ritva in his commentary to Eruvin (ad loc) suggests, although oddly enough without explicit reference to the memra, but only to the idea expressed therein. Before pursuing our analysis any further we would do well to look at a second version of the Rav Yannai memra, this one appearing in the Midrash Tehillim (12): Rav Yannai said: “The Torah was not given in discrete portions [hatikhin], but for every dibbur which God said to Moshe He would tell him 49 reasons for tahor and 49 reasons for tameh. He [Moshe] said before Him: Ribbono Shel Olam, how then can we ever arrive at clarity in the matter [birruro shel davar]? [God] said to him: ‘Follow the majority.’ If those that say tameh are in the majority it is tameh, and if those that say tahor are in the majority, it is tahor.”

The Midrash continues by pursuing the theme, mentioned above, of the capacity by some to purify a sheretz in 49 ways. Linked to the many literary and structural differences between these two versions is an important conceptual difference. In the 12

13

For a comprehensive discussion of this issue in Jewish law see Aaron Kirschenbaum, Equity in Jewish Law (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1992; New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1991). This of course is the basic feature of Silman’s “creative” and Sagi-Schweitzer’s “conventional” types, cited above in note l. — 477 —

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Midrash Tehillim’s more radical version God’s revelation of the Torah is sufficiently indeterminate for Moshe to ask how it is possible to ever know with certainty what the Torah even means. Moshe’s problem is not jurisprudential but epistemological: if for every dibbur God provides 49 reasons pro and con, how then can one come to know what the normative content of revelation is? Indeed, is there discrete normative content to the Torah? God’s answer is that the majority of the Rabbis construct halakha, construct normativity out of the raw materials of revelation. What exactly these raw materials are is left unclear. There is, after all, a dibbur related to which God reveals his arguments pro and con. My assumption — and it is no more than that, since there are other ways to read this — is that the dibbur is the content of the revelation as recorded in the text of the Torah. However, God seems to have provided a deconstructive reading of the text alongside it, providing 49 reasons why what the text says should be wrong, and perhaps can’t even mean what it says. He then in effect told the Rabbis to construct their own interpretation onto a deconstructed text. God may well have had His own transcendent halakhic truth as the fourteenth-century Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi maintained in his Derashot.14 Whether or not this is so, and the question has been hotly debated over the years, according to the Midrash Tehillim, Moshe received no such halakhic truth. Interpretation constructs normativity onto a divinely deconstructed text. If interpretation constructs normativity onto the text, then presumably there is no one right way to read that text: if there were, then that right way should be a constraint on the construction of normativity. Halakha ought to depend not only on the majority view, but on what the text actually means. But, as Moshe says, there is no birruro shel davar. Thus, textual meaning itself appears to be constructed by the halakhist as well. Whether the problematic is jurisprudential, as in the Yerushalmi, or epistemological and hermeneutic as in the Midrash Tehillim, the end result as far as e’lu ve-elu is essentially the same: while majority rule determines actual normativity, God tells us that there is no one right way to halakhically read His Torah. 14

For a discussion of the sources for this view, especially Derashot Ha-Ran, see the Silman and Sagi-Schweitzer articles. — 478 —

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II. The Indeterminacy of the World: According to this approach, multiple halakhic positions emerge because the universe which the halakha evaluates normatively is itself indeterminate. To use the example of R. Judah Leow of Prague, the Maharal, yet another major sixteenthcentury figure to discuss e’lu ve-elu, and one who provides perhaps the clearest formulation of this view, consider a tree. A tree is both liquid and solid. It is solid in that it doesn’t flow like water, but it is liquid in that it is softer and more flexible than stone and has a higher water content. It is not false to assert of a tree both that it is solid and that it is liquid; it is false to assert that it is solid and not liquid, or liquid and not solid. The same is true for any object in the universe. Since there is no one, exclusive description under which any object in the universe falls, halakha, which seeks to assign normative values to objects (or actions or states or affairs) will assign different values according to the particular description of the object to which the individual halakhist responds. More specifically, just as every object is under one description liquid and another solid, so too every object is under one description tameh and another description tahor. These different descriptions may be linked to the question of liquid or solid, or indeed any other such question; or the halakhic and natural descriptions may be independent. But in either case each halakhic ascription reflects one of perhaps many ways in which the object is.15 The Maharal puts it this way: When God gave the Torah to Israel, he transmitted each matter of the Torah according to what it is, and he said: this law has within it an aspect [behina] of innocence and an aspect of guilt … so too with the permissible and forbidden … and kosher and non-kosher. Just as in the world things are compounded of opposites, and you can say of a

15

This formulation of the Ontological position is influenced by the American philosopher Nelson Goodman. Generally speaking, the Ontological position would find itself much at home with such philosophers as Goodman, Richard Rorty, W. V. O. Quine, Wilfred Sellars and others. See for example, Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978); T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); and W. Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (New York: Humanities Press, 1963). — 479 —

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tree that it relates to the element of water — and this is true — so too it has within it the element of air, and that is true; and you will not find anything completely simple.16

What then accounts for the halakha in the end adopting one position over the other? The Maharal explains this as follows: … but in regard to halakha le-ma’aseh, there is no doubt that one [of the positions] is more fundamental [yoter ikkar] than the second, according to the actions of God, even though the thing is compound, nevertheless one position is not like the other. A tree is compounded of four elements, [but nevertheless] the element of air predominates, as is well known.

What happens when neither of the two descriptions under which the object falls is the more apt? Here, the Maharal says, the principle of e’lu ve-elu applies. While, according to this approach, e’lu ve-elu is limited in its application to conditions of equal aptness, the theory of e’lu veelu is rooted in a broad-based theory about the way the world is, and a concomitant theory about the grounds for halakhic debate even where the principle does not in its strictest sense apply.17

*** In summary, I have argued that three generically different approaches to explaining the rabbinic principle e’lu ve-elu have arisen over the years, two of which in turn have their own various species as well. A number of these approaches, especially the most “pluralistic,” if such a term may be employed, have their origins in the social, intellectual and spiritual ferment of the 16th-century and its aftermath. Which is right? E’lu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayim. 16 17

Be’er Ha-Golah 1 (Jerusalem: Mekhon Torah Shelemah, 1968). An interesting variant on this approach was put forward by R. Ephraim Luntshitz, author of the Keli Yakar commentary to the Torah and a successor of the Maharal who served as Chief Rabbi of Prague at the turn of the 17th-century. In his comments to Deut. 17:11 he appears to combine the Ontological thesis with elements of the Contextual School described above. While he does not explicitly mention the e’lu ve-elu principle, his remarks are entirely relevant. — 480 —

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------------------------------ Chapter XVIII  -------------------------------

How Do Modern Jewish Thinkers Interpret Religious Texts? I. INTRODUCTION My aim in this paper is to consider the effect of modern consciousness on the interpretation of classical Jewish religious texts. Is there a religious hermeneutic peculiar to modern consciousness, and if there is, how exactly does it differ from a pre-modern hermeneutic? In order to get at this question, I shall consider it first in the broad context of the modern Jewish thinker, of any denomination, who interprets texts religiously. This thinker may use a variety of methods in interpreting the text, historical, philological or theological, but whatever method he uses the text does have religious significance for him, however we are to define that term. Can one systematically describe the distinctive nature of his experience — conscious or unconscious — of a religious text? Does it differ in any important respects from the premodern’s experience of a religious text? If it does, how exactly does it differ? After addressing some of these questions in this broader framework, I shall then focus in on a somewhat narrower framework: that of the traditional Jew who encounters modernity, absorbs some of its most important lessons, yet reaffirms his traditionalism, and proceeds to interpret classical Jewish religious texts. Does such a thinker, who shares fully in modern consciousness, and yet acknowledges the authority of classical religious texts, experience those texts differently from one who does not share that modern consciousness, on the one hand, or one who does not acknowledge their authority on the other? If the experience is different, how precisely is that difference to be described? This eventual focus, I believe, will shed light on the — 481 —

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more general issues raised above. Finally, I might add here that many of the observations I shall make apply with equal force to non-Jewish religious traditions as well.

II. BERGER ON MODERNITY The first step in our exercise must be an analysis of modernity: before we can consider the impact of modern consciousness on the interpretation of religious texts, we must know exactly what modern consciousness is. Here I shall rely on the groundbreaking work of the sociologist Peter Berger.1 Berger’s analysis of modern consciousness and its impact on religion appears primarily in three books written over a six year period between 1967 and 1973: The Sacred Canopy;2 A Rumor of Angels;3 and The Homeless Mind.4 Three central and interrelated themes emerge in these works: (1) modern consciousness and pluralism; (2) the religious as a cognitive minority; and (3) the relativity of the religious world view. Although Berger’s analysis of modern consciousness appears in the last of the three works, it provides the theoretical underpinning to much of what he has to say, and I shall start with that first. Berger identifies four features of consciousness which he claims characterize modern man. He attributes these features largely to the modern rise of industrial capitalism, with its attendant rationality, bureaucracy and technology, although here we cannot explore why this is so. The first of these features is what Berger calls openness, by 1

2 3 4

For a slightly different perspective on some of these issues, see Gunter W. Remmling, Road to Suspicion (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967); “Modernity versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique, Vol. 22 (Winter 1981); Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983) all cited in Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Jewish Continuity in an Age of Discontinuity,” Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Fall 1988). Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), treats the rise of modernity from the perspective of intellectual history. I find Berger’s comprehensive phenomenological analysis to be the most helpful for the needs of my analysis here, and so I have relied on his three volumes on the subject. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969. Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, “The Homeless Mind” (New York: Random House, 1973). — 482 —

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which he means that modern man, unlike pre-moderns, can entertain multiple life-plans, deciding not only what he wants to do but also what he wants to be. This open-ended quality of modern life leaves the individual without any pre-determined identity, in that he can define himself in so many different possible ways. A second feature of modern consciousness is its reflective quality. If modern man can create and recreate his identity, then he is forced to reflect about what that identity can or should be. Modern consciousness is therefore “peculiarly aware, tense, ‘rationalizing.’”5 Thirdly, modern identity is individuated. If modern man creates his own identity, then his capacity to do so is critical to his self-consciousness. Thus individual freedom, rights and autonomy come to be taken for granted as moral imperatives of fundamental importance.6 The fourth feature Berger identifies, and the most important for our purposes, is that of differentiation. By this Berger means that moderns live in a multiplicity of social worlds. Premodern man, as Berger puts it, “… whether with his family or at work, or engaged in political processes or participating in festivity or ceremonial … was always in the same world.”7 As he points out, the integrating order of that world was typically religious. The net experiential result of this is that pre-moderns tended to apprehend their life world as inevitable, as part of the given: just as the world has flowers, trees and people, it simply has religious beliefs and religious social orders and values. Indeed, it is precisely these religious beliefs, social orders and values which provide the matrix through which he experiences those very flowers and trees. For modern man, however, the world is not that simple. The urbanization of modern life, with its concomitant exposure to multiple ways of seeing the world, together with the unparalleled influence of the mass media, contributes to a fragmentation of life worlds. In Berger’s words: The individual finds he must play many different roles, sometimes quite discrepant ones, and must segregate these roles from each other, since they are not all equally appropriate to the different parts of his social 5 6

7

The Homeless Mind, 79. This complex of ideas is stressed in Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the impact of modernity on moral thinking and human consciousness (see note 1 above). The Homeless Mind, 64. — 483 —

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life. And, as a result of this, he comes to maintain an inner detachment or distance with regard to some of these roles — that is, he plays some of them tongue in cheek.8

As Berger goes on to point out, this inevitably leads to a situation in which all his life worlds are partial and tenuous, in which modern man’s is a “homeless mind.” It is this pluralization of life worlds which, Berger argues, is the most important cause of the diminishing plausibility of religious belief. Religion, relegated to the private sphere, must prevail in the competitive marketplace of other religious beliefs, and more importantly, in a market where secularism exerts a powerful hold. This point is closely connected to the second theme in Berger’s analysis of the impact of modernity on religious consciousness: that of relativism. The historical scholarship of the 19th-century led to a perspective in which religion came to be seen by many as a human product. This historical relativism has been seen by many to be a fundamental and distinctive component of modern consciousness.9 Sociology of knowledge, suggests Berger, makes some such conclusion about the nature of religion even more inescapable. Here Berger introduces the concept of a “plausibility structure”: One of the fundamental propositions of the sociology of knowledge is that plausibility, in the sense of what people actually find credible, of views of reality depends upon the social support these views receive. Put more simply, we obtain our notions about the world originally from other human beings, and these notions continue to be plausible to us in a very large measure because others continue to affirm them.… It is in conversation, in the broadest sense of the word, that we build up and keep going our view of the world. It follows that this view will depend upon the continuity and consistency of such conversation, and that it will change as we change our conversation partners.10

This thesis, that there is no plausibility without a plausibility structure, has two important consequences. First, it enables one to understand 8 9 10

Rumor of Angels, 43. See the sources cited in note 1, above. Rumor of Angels, 34. — 484 —

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the community of faith as a “constructed entity,” following the laws of the sociology of knowledge. This substantially reinforces the relativizing perspective of history. Second, it explains the slippage of religion’s hold on modern consciousness. Modernity has severely hobbled the very plausibility of the religious world view, in part due to the pluralization of life-worlds described above. Yet another closely related and extremely important factor in the slippage of the religious world view’s plausibility is the status of religious believers as a “cognitive minority,” the third of the three themes which seem to emerge in Berger’s analysis. Berger’s observation in the late sixties that “… the supernatural as a meaningful reality is absent or remote from the horizons of everyday life of large numbers, very probably the majority, of people in modern society …”11 is still probably true today as well, despite the much-discussed seeming resurgence of religious life in American society. It is almost certainly true of modern intellectuals, of special concern to us in this paper. Since the plausibility of the religious world view depends upon a sound plausibility structure, that modern society’s religious plausibility structure barely exists places a great burden on those in the cognitive minority. They must, in the end, either surrender or protect themselves by self-isolation into a kind of sect or engage in what Berger calls “cognitive bargaining” with modernity. This last tactic usually results in what Berger calls “compartmentalization,” sealing off one’s religious convictions from one’s secular identity, so as to keep each as unimpaired as possible. In any case, the pressures of modernity are intense. All these three factors of course do not entail that a religious worldview is impossible. The key point here is that modern man can be quite as religious as pre-modern man; however, those religious convictions must be a matter of choice, of haeresis — heresy, in the Greek. While religious beliefs may no longer be part of the given, as they were in pre-modern times, the relativizing which did that givenness in can be turned against the relativizers themselves: if modernity relativizes religion, the religious person can come to recognize that the values of modernity are relative as well, and he can choose to adopt the religious 11

Ibid., 5. — 485 —

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world-view, just as he can choose to abandon it and opt for modernity. Nevertheless, of course, the difference between choosing the religious world-view and being born into it makes all the difference in the world.

III. SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS We are now almost ready to consider the impact of Berger’s analysis for understanding the religious hermeneutic of the modern Jewish thinker. However, several further preliminary remarks are still in order. First, a word about method. The approach I am about to use is largely phenomenological, with all the strengths and weaknesses of that method. Put in other words, my aim is to describe those elements of the modern person’s experience of the classical religious text which set it apart from the pre-modern’s experience of the text. This experience may be conscious: then I shall be describing his conscious motivation in interpreting the text as he does, and the effect of such interpretation on his consciousness. The experience, however, may be unconscious as well: then I shall be describing his unconscious motivations in interpreting the text as he does, or the unconscious effect that may have on him. In addition, I will make certain objective claims as well, about the impact of my phenomenological analysis on understanding the interpretation itself. Three provisos should be mentioned now. First, individuals to a greater or lesser extent share in the features of modern consciousness described by Berger. I shall be describing the experience of the modern Jewish thinker who on the one hand shares in modern consciousness and on the other religious consciousness, both of which are brought to bear on the interpretive act. My aim is to describe as precisely as possible what happens when secular and religious consciousness together collide onto a religious text. Second, I make no claims about canons of interpretation. That is, I attempt here to describe the interpreter’s distinctively modern experience of the text, together with some objective interpretive consequences of that experience, and not to ascertain whether such interpretation is in some sense legitimate. Third, the sharp distinction Berger draws between pre-modern and modern consciousness forms the underlying framework for my analysis. — 486 —

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Some might argue that his characterization of the pre-modern period is somewhat simplistic, and that at least certain pre-moderns may have shared to some extent certain characteristics of moderns. While I think there is some justice to this argument, and I will address it to some extent later in the paper, on the whole, I think Berger’s basic insights are correct, at least as generalizations.12 In any case, my analysis needs a starting point, and Berger seems the best available choice for that.

IV. THE REDEMPTIVE It seems to me that one can identify three basic characteristics distinctive of a modernist religious hermeneutic. These are what I shall call the redemptive, the reflexive, and the constructive. By redemptive I mean that when the modern interprets a religious text he redeems it from the oblivion to which secularism condemns it. Modernity, Berger argued, undermines the very plausibility of the religious way of constructing the world. If the message loses its plausibility, then so do the bearers of that message, the sacred texts. These texts might come to be experienced by the modernist as out-of-date, irrelevant, or even as pernicious influences on humanity; or they might be experienced as aesthetically beautiful, or as expressive of great wisdom. The plausibility of their religious dimension, however, is profoundly undermined. The pressures of the cognitive majority, together with the pluralization of life worlds and relativism, take their inexorable toll. The deepest challenge to the text in a modern world, unlike in a pre-modern world, becomes that of a great interpretive yawn. There are plenty of beautiful poems out there in the world, as there are plenty of wise books. Through the very act of religious interpretation, the modern religious interpreter, insofar as he is thereby expressing his modern religious world-view, takes the text with religious seriousness. He affirms its significance by bothering to interpret it. To the extent that the interpretation “translates” the text into categories meaningful to the modern interpreter, the interpretation “locates” the text by giving it an experiential home. 12

Other writers make much the same point as Berger. See note 1 above. — 487 —

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Sometimes this redemptive aim is consciously sought; sometimes the interpreter aims at it only unconsciously. Sometimes the redemptive effect is consciously experienced; sometimes the effect is experienced only unconsciously. It seems to me, however, that every modernist religious interpretation of a religious text, as I’ve defined that here, is accompanied by one of these four redemptive expressions. Redemptivity, I would argue, is a psychologically necessary consequence of Bergerian modern consciousness. Redemptivity, which I’ve so far described phenomenologically, has certain objective consequences. Most notably, it can be observed in the air of discovery, even surprise, which pervades much of modernist religious hermeneutic. In reading many modernist interpretations one gets the sense that the interpreter has pioneered new territory, that he has recovered something otherwise lost; that more is at stake than simply “getting it right,” or finding the “right” interpretation. Certainly, this objective consequence of redemptivity is not limited to modernist interpretations; it may be found amongst some pre-moderns as well. Nevertheless it seems to me to be characteristic of much of modernist interpretation, and not of much of pre-modern interpretation.

V. THE REFLEXIVE Reflexivity is the inverse of redemptivity. If the text needs redemption, so does the interpreter of the text. The Bergerian modern is “homeless”; his religious life-world is not a given, but is chosen — constructed — from a variety of others. While he recognizes its relativity, in an act of the will and mind he chooses it in the face of the inexorable pressures of secularism. Insofar as his conversation partners do not share his life-world, he must persistently engage in cognitive bargaining to sustain his life-world; the deconstructive pressures persist. He may, of course, compartmentalize, and when his interpretation of the religious text emerges from his pre-modern compartment, then it ceases to interest us here. But when this religious interpretation emerges at least in part from his modern compartment, then — and here I would like to make one of the central points of my paper — interpretation is always an act of cognitive bargaining. — 488 —

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This thesis, that interpretation is always an act of cognitive bargaining, plays an important role in our analysis, and I shall explore it more fully. Each modern religious person seeks in his own way to embrace the secular claims of modernity together with the claims of religion. The precarious, highly personalized life-world constructed out of that effort stands poised to shape his interpretation. He then, as it were, starts bargaining with the text. To what extent will the received religious significance of the text determine the interpretation, and to what extent will his secularism determine the interpretation? Will he read the text only as a great work of art, for example, or only as God’s word, or as both? This interpretive bargaining is a reflection of an even deeper identity bargaining. Will the religious claims of the text in some way alter the secularism of his life-world, or will the secularism of his life-world in some way alter the religious claims of the text? To the extent that his secularism undermines the religious significance of the text, then his religious life-world is undermined; to the extent that the religious significance of the text undermines his secularism, then his religious life-world is strengthened. This analysis should make clear, by the way, just why compartmentalization is a refuge so frequently sought by modern religious interpreters. It is the least painful way of evading the highstakes dilemmas raised by the two kinds of bargaining which take place over a religious text. The precise bargain the interpreter strikes over the more fundamental question of identity will yield the precise shape of his bargain over interpretation. Moreover, since he continues to interpret the text religiously, no matter what bargain he strikes (for we speak only of religious interpreters) he reaffirms the religious lifeworld, which ultimately yielded a religious interpretation. He could, after all, have relinquished that world and interpreted the text in an exclusively secular fashion. Thus in the heat of bargaining, his religious worldview, even if weakened, still emerges affirmed. In that way the interpreter redeems himself. This then is what I mean by reflexivity: the interpretation (a) reflects back onto, and has an impact on, the interpreter’s whole modern religious consciousness; and (b) redeems the interpreter. — 489 —

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It should be added here that the thesis that all modern interpretation is an act of cognitive bargaining, introduced here to explain reflexivity, sheds further light on redemptivity as well. It is the very same psychological dynamic which redeems both the text and the interpreter, and the precise bargain struck shapes the redemption of each. They are both sides of the same coin. Towards the end of this paper I shall describe more precisely the processes of redemptivity and reflexivity. The dynamic outlined above has an objective impact in two ways. First, it is obvious that the actual content of the interpretation will be profoundly influenced by the processes described above. An analysis of the distinctive religious life-world of the interpreter will go a long way towards yielding a picture of the religious/secular balance the interpretation is likely to take; similarly, an analysis of the interpretation will yield a good picture of the kind of cognitive bargaining that produced it. Second, if the plausibility structure of the life-world of the interpreter hangs at least in part on the success of each interpretive act, then each such act matters in a way that it would not normally matter for the pre-modern. What is at stake is far more than getting it right, or even reconciling two conflicting philosophical systems; at stake is the very identity — the very life-world — the interpreter has so painfully carved for himself in a religiously hostile world. If there are such things as “mattering scales,” then reflexivity shows just how high interpretation would rank for the modern. One senses this urgency in the tone of so many modern religious interpreters of texts.

VI. THE CONSTRUCTIVE Reflexivity and redemptivity are properties of the interpreter’s mental state while interpreting a text, notwithstanding our claim that these properties do have consequences for the content, tone and style of the interpretation itself. However, constructivity, the last and most important of the identifying characteristics of the modernist hermeneutic, is a property not only of the interpreter’s mental state, but of the content of the interpretation as well. — 490 —

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In order to get at constructivity, it would be best to consider first the implications of Berger’s analysis of modernity for the pre-modern interpreter of a religious text. Let us then attempt to enter into the mind of the typical medieval Jewish Aristotelian or Neo-Platonist, knowing of course that such a task can never in principle be a wholly successful one, for all the reasons that have filled many a twentiethcentury tome on hermeneutics. I believe, however, that for our purposes here, the effort will be a useful one. We shall call our typical medieval Jewish philosopher Rabbenu for short, and follow in many ways the progenitor of this kind of analysis, Harry Wolfson, who called his subject the “synthetic medieval philosopher,” in his famous work on Philo.13 We will, you might say, propose a Bergerian spin to Wolfson’s analysis. Rabbenu lives in a world whose beliefs, values and social structures are determined in very large measure by religious beliefs. Virtually everyone with whom he comes into contact is religious, that is, actually believes in and lives according to Jewish, Christian, or Islamic teachings. While his world is often full of bitter religious conflict, amongst the countless sects which make up each religion, and amongst the religions themselves, all parties believe. Basic religious convictions about God, revelation and the world are assumptions everyone shares. The exceptional individual may indeed feel conflict about his specifically Jewish convictions, and under physical threat or social or other pressures may opt out of Judaism. Except for the marranos, however, such occurrences were rare, and in any case almost never — perhaps never at all — involved opting out of western monotheistic beliefs entirely. This is because these basic beliefs were a part of his given. In epistemological terms, they are foundational — the beliefs themselves may never have been justified for the believer, but those beliefs in turn justify many other beliefs. Rabbenu could conceive no other way of looking at the world. In Wolfson’s words, “… our synthetic medieval philosopher begins with the belief that there is one infallible source of truth, and that is revelation, and that revelation is embodied in Scripture.”14 13 14

Philo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). Ibid., 446. — 491 —

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Now Rabbenu is not an intellectual naïf. He has read Aristotle extensively in Arabic translation, not to mention Alfarabi, and he is persuaded that much of what Aristotle teaches is true. He is thus faced with varying sources of truth, which sometimes yield inconsistent propositions. However, again in Wolfson’s words, “since God is the author both of the truths made known by revelation and of the truths discovered by reason, there can be no conflict between them.”15 That he might opt out of Judaism as a result of reading Arabic Aristotle is extremely unlikely: in Berger’s terms, his conversation partners and his entire plausibility structure almost require that he remain within the Jewish life-world. This can be seen in two ways. First, no medieval Jewish philosopher of note ever did opt out of Jewish life. Second, even those medieval Jewish rationalists who went furthest, and bought Aristotelian goods lock, stock and barrel, tended towards the Double Truth School: they simply permitted two sources of truth to coexist in their minds.16 Finally, the realistic alternative to Judaism for the medieval Jewish rationalist was not denial of the whole Western monotheistic tradition and the divine source of Scripture altogether. All the conversation partners of those medieval Jewish rationalists shared these beliefs. Since Aristotle’s philosophy didn’t favor Christianity or Islam over Judaism, Aristotle was therefore unable to lead them out of a religious life-world. Given their inability to leave the religious life-world, the force of the Jewish plausibility structure kept almost everyone within their particular version of it, Judaism. How then did Rabbenu deal with his two differing sources of truth? By engaging in, to use Wolfson’s felicitious formulation, “scriptural philosophy.” “Scripture,” says Wolfson of his synthetic medieval philosopher,”… is always true, if only its language could be properly understood ….”17 The Torah is a given, and therefore the truth, Rabbenu simply assumed, necessarily resides somewhere in it; the challenge was merely one of finding that truth. Hence, as Wolfson, Simon Rawidowitz,

15 16

17

Ibid., 447. E.g. Isaac Albalag, who apparently held such a view in his Sefer Tikkun ha-Deot, ed. G. Vajda (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 1973). Ibid., 447. — 492 —

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and others18 argue, the centrality of interpretation in the Jewish intellectual enterprise. Understood following Berger’s model, premodern interpretation is an act of recovery rather than discovery. Like peeling off layers of the artichoke, the pre-modern assumed that much of whatever he believed for other reasons to be true in fact resided in the Torah; in his mind the artful interpretive strategies he employs are aimed at finding true esoterica hidden behind biblical and rabbinic exoterica. In the words of Maimonides: The Sage has said, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” … A saying uttered with a view to two meanings is like an apple of gold overlaid with silver filigree-work having very small holes … when looked at from a distance or with imperfect attention it is deemed to be an apple of silver; but when a keen-sighted observer looks at it with full attention its interior becomes clear to him and he knows it is of gold. The parables of the prophets, peace be upon them, are similar. Their external meaning contains wisdom that is useful for beliefs concerned with truth as it is.19

After quoting this rich passage from Maimonides, Frank Talmage in his article on sacred texts in medieval Judaism summarizes their status with the following comments: The quest for “truth as it is” is the quest for the golden apple; … it is the attempt to retrieve the coin at the bottom of the well by attaching cord to cord until one reaches bottom (Song Rab. 1:1) to make … the inner meaning surface; it is the search for the lost pearl found with the aid of the penny candle (Song Rab. 1:1); it is, as in the Zohar, the shelling of

18

19

Simon Rawidowitz, “On Interpretation,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Studies, Vol. 26 (1957), 83-126; Gershom Scholem, “The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism” in Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken, 1965), 3286; Louis Ginzberg, “Allegorical Interpretation of Scripture,” On Jewish Law and Lore (Cleveland: Meridian; Jewish Publication Society, 1962); Frank Talmage, “Apples of Gold: The Inner Meaning of Sacred Texts in Medieval Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 313-355. See also Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis (Cambridge: 1980), especially chap. one; and Susan Handelman, The Slayers of Moses (Albany: SUNY Press, 1982), esp. chap. 2. The Guide of the Perplexed, Introduction, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 11-12. — 493 —

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the nut with its numerous shells and layers (Zohar Hadash, Midrash Ruth 39c) or the soul encased in its body encased in its garments, or the tree with its roots, bark, cortex … alluding to seven layers of meaning (Zohar 3:202a) … [it is the] palace that entices but eludes, that beckons but only to those worthy of entrance.20

I recognize, of course, that at least in the case of Maimonides, the analysis I have proposed here treads on the shoals of Straussian/antiStraussian polemics. With Shalom Rosenberg and others, however, I think there are very good reasons independent of Berger for asserting this analysis to be true even of Maimonides.21 My main point, however, is that Berger’s analysis makes such a conclusion even more likely. To my mind, a more important question about this analysis might start from reflecting about those pre-modern Jews who did live on the interstices of Jewish and non-Jewish cultures, such as the courtier class of Jews who lived during the golden age in Spain. To what extent, if at all, did they share certain features of Bergerian modernity? While I cannot explore this question fully here, I think that a review of Berger’s four conditions of modernity would place them largely within the premodern framework for the purposes of our analysis here. Arab culture did not present an alternative to the givenness of sacred Jewish texts. In any case, my arguments here are intended to be no more than generalizations; if exceptions existed, it seems to me that they are quite rare — no less interesting for their rarity, but rare nonetheless. It is important to stress at this point that the analysis here does not, of course, preclude vast innovation on the part of pre-modern interpreters of (what for them were) classical texts. Midrash, and many medieval commentators, were of course highly innovative in their reading of classical texts. The allegorical interpretations of the medieval rationalists and the mystical interpretations of the kabbalists are striking examples of what many moderns would regard as isogesis rather than exegesis. These interpreters almost certainly recognized the novelty of their hermeneutic 20 21

Talmage, note 18 above, 315-316. See Shalom Rosenberg’s illuminating monograph “Al Parshanut ha-Mikra be-Sefer haMoreh” (Hebrew), in Mehkerei Yerushalayim (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1980), Vol. I, 85-157, and the sources cited therein. — 494 —

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methods and actual interpretations. In fact, they were often forcibly reminded of this by their frequent need to defend themselves against vituperative attack. My point, however, is that while they may have seen themselves as breaking new intellectual and hermeneutic ground, they assumed that in so doing they were really recovering the latent and heretofore esoteric meaning which inhered in the sacred text. As Gershom Scholem puts it in the case of kabbalistic exegesis: It is not always easy in a given case to determine whether the Biblical text inspired the exegesis or whether the exegesis was a deliberate device, calculated to bridge the gap between the old and new vision by reading completely new ideas into the text. But this is perhaps to take too rationalistic a view of what goes on in the mind of a mystic. Actually the thought processes of mystics are largely unconscious and they may be quite unaware of the clash between old and new which is of such passionate interest to the historian. They are thoroughly steeped in the religious tradition in which they have grown up, and many notions which strike the modern reader as fantastic distortions of a text spring from a conception of Scripture which to the mystic seems perfectly natural. For the one thing that can be said with certainty about Kabbalists is this: they are, and do their best to remain, traditionalists.…22

My contention is that Scholem’s point about mystics is by-and-large characteristic of pre-modern thinking generally. In any case, we can now exit Rabbenu’s mind, and consider how different he is from the modern Jewish thinker as interpreter of a religious text, as Berger would have us understand him. First, and perhaps most important, this modern interpreter recognizes the historical relativity of the text; that the text is a product, at least in part if not in whole, of certain specifiable historical forces. Second, he understands that the text, and its author, is the product, at least in part, if not in whole, of certain social forces as well, having to do with plausibility structures, conversation partners and other such Bergerian concepts. Third, the plausibility of the entire structure which conveys significance to these texts has been profoundly destabilized for the modern interpreter. These three potent factors combine to shatter 22

Gershom Scholem, “Meaning of the Torah,” 33. — 495 —

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what I have been calling the “givenness” of the texts. In epistemological terms, these texts cease to be foundational. The interpreter no longer assumes that the text is God’s word, and therefore has hidden within it Kantian, humanist, existentialist or whatever truths, which it is his job as artful interpreter to recover. As a religious interpreter he has of course relativized the relativizers, and “heretically” chosen a religious life-world. However, I would argue that in so choosing he is consciously or unconsciously aware that he has constructed that religious significance for himself. Furthermore, I would argue that he is also consciously or unconsciously aware that every one of his modern textual interpretations is constructed as well; that they don’t just necessarily inhere in the text as his pre-modern predecessors thought their interpretations inhered in the text. Of course, if his modern belief in the religious significance of the text is a belief not that God spoke in the text, but that the text is a human record of some kind of encounter with the divine, then he would certainly believe that the text is history-bound. This modern interpreter would not likely believe that Kant resides in some rabbinic text; he would certainly recognize, at some level, that all his modern interpretations are constructed. However, our modern Jewish thinker might take a different view of revelation, that God in some way directly revealed the Torah, and also that Kant did get it right. He might therefore even believe that Kant is in the Torah in some way. Nevertheless, I would argue that this interpreter too is also distinctively modern. This is because it seems to me that even this interpreter, insofar as he is interpreting as a modern, recognizes consciously or unconsciously that to claim that Kant is in the Torah is very far from self-evident; that God did speak to a particular group of people situated in history and society, who shared a life-world particular to themselves, and that Kant may not be a part of that historical picture at all. He is therefore aware, consciously or unconsciously, in some “compartment” of his mind, that his interpretation constructs meaning into a text which may not be latently there. In sum, interpretation loses its self-evidence. This loss of self-evidence is exacerbated by yet another implication of historical relativism. Hans Georg Gadamer has argued that all meaning is history- and culture-bound: that we can never understand — 496 —

-----   Chapter XVIII. How Do Modern Jewish Thinkers Interpret Religious Texts -----

any historical text with complete accuracy, since it is the product of a particular culture of which we are not a part.23 To the extent that moderns are aware of this, and my guess is that at some level many are, interpretation is perceived to be an even more humble enterprise than the three very humbling factors cited above would have us believe. Thus far our analysis of constructivity has followed mostly phenomenological lines. However, constructivity is also a property of the interpretive act as well, and it is to this that we shall now turn our attention. The first point to make is that when modernity smashed the givenness of the text, splinters flew in a variety of directions. Wissenschaft scholars tried to find the history behind the text. Sociologists understood the text and the institutions it prescribed to serve certain specifiable social functions. Scholars of comparative religion of varying stripes sought to find in religious texts expressions of universal or culturespecific ways of ordering reality. Literary types used the techniques of literary criticism to analyze religious texts. Philosophers, of course, continued to ply their trade. Finally, legal texts gave way to legal or jurisprudential analysis. Each one of these hermeneutic schools (and I leave philosophy and law to the side for now) interprets the text using categories foreign to the text’s presentation of its own message. Premodern man understood the text to be presenting God’s revelation to the Jew. The text had a normative religious message. The categories of wissenschaft, sociology, literary criticism, or comparative religion don’t in themselves take that normativity seriously for the interpreter personally. There is thus a personal distancing made possible by the loss of the text’s givenness. This quality of distancing, which of course opens up a Pandora’s box of interpretive approaches, is the first consequence of constructivity I should like to identify. It is altogether obvious that distancing occurs when the text loses all religious significance for the interpreter, and indeed many scholars interpret the text non-religiously, using whichever techniques are appropriate to the scholarly school of which they are members. Such interpretations do not interest us here, since our concern is only with 23

Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1960). — 497 —

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a religious interpretation of the text. What is far more interesting for our purpose is that some sociologists, literary critics, etc., are religious, and their interpretation of the text is an expression of their religious convictions, the techniques they use notwithstanding. What many are then doing, in effect, is claiming that the text has religious significance and they can get a more accurate glimpse of that significance by interpreting the text as they do. My claim is that even for such interpretations distancing is necessary: the frameworks of sociology or literary theory, as I noted above, don’t in themselves respond to the normativity of the religious text. Even if the interpreter believes the texts are normative and have religious significance he must at the same time be capable of looking at them as not addressing him with a normative message in order to be able to systematically apprehend a non-normative explanatory framework. (I emphasize systematic here. Pre-moderns also engage in sociological and particularly historical explanations of sacred texts. However, such occasional interpretations do not avoid the normativity of the text, and require no distancing. It is only systematic non-normative frameworks which require distancing. The systematic schools typical of pre-moderns, captured in the peshat/remez/sod/derush categories, do respond to the normativity of the text in one way or another, and are entirely consistent with the text’s givenness.) One of the factors which contributes to distancing is the demise of the text’s givenness. It is in large part because the interpreter no longer takes the text’s divinity for granted that he can systematically look at the text as if the divine is not addressing him. As I argued above, even if he “heretically” affirms the divinity of the text, there is a conscious or unconscious awareness of his construction of religious significance, and it is precisely that awareness which makes room for the distancing phenomenon. And it is the distancing phenomenon which opens up a whole range of ways of looking at religious texts which were unavailable in the pre-modern period. This is perhaps even more clearly seen in a second consequence of constructivism I should like to identify, selectivity. It seems to me that one of the distinctive characteristics of modern religious interpretations of texts is the extent to which the interpreter both self-consciously selects out those texts which he wishes to interpret, — 498 —

-----   Chapter XVIII. How Do Modern Jewish Thinkers Interpret Religious Texts -----

as well as — and this is perhaps the critical point — considers such selectivity to be legitimate. Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen provide especially good examples of this phenomenon. Of course, pre-moderns are selective of the texts they interpret as well: no one can interpret everything (except perhaps Rashi). The key distinction, however, is whether selectivity is legitimate. If someone believes in the givenness of the sacred texts, it behooves him to reconcile his particular views with the entire corpus of texts which he believes to be sacred. The best of the medieval Jewish philosophers did precisely that. They first sought encyclopedic knowledge of sacred texts, and then went about interpreting them all — or as many as they could — with their own intellectual framework, paying attention not only to those texts which confirmed their framework, but to those which seemed inconsistent with it as well. They may even have concluded that certain positions were unauthoritative minority views, and therefore perhaps not sacred. But in any case, deal with those texts they certainly felt obligated to do. The Moreh is a prime example of this phenomenon. Even those not as systematic as Maimonides, who did not make an attempt to work out the consequences of every relevant text, would have taken it as a mark against their theory if texts could be adduced against it. The modern interpreter of the text, however, in working through his interpretation, often focuses only on those texts which best yield to his own framework. Many don’t even acknowledge the existence of other texts which lead to other ways of looking at Judaism. Even if they do acknowledge those texts they will often simply claim that they are exploring one particular way of looking at Judaism as found in some of its sacred texts, and not all ways. They may claim that their way characterizes most of Judaism’s sacred texts, or they may not. Even if they do, there rarely appears a wholesale effort at citing and confronting in some serious way all the relevant texts to justify their claims. My thesis is that the demise of the text’s givenness for the modern religious interpreter helps enable him to engage in selectivity. Since he is consciously or unconsciously aware of the religious text’s historical and social relativity, and of his construction of religious significance and meaning into the text, he consciously or unconsciously feels an interpretive freedom in selecting out the texts to construct. — 499 —

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VII. THE MODERN TRADITIONAL INTERPRETER In this portion of my analysis I shall be focusing on the hermeneutic experience of the Modern Traditionalist Jewish thinker. At first blush this sounds like an oxymoron. Nevertheless, it picks out a readily identifiable group of Jews, those who share in modern, secular consciousness on the one hand, and yet maintain a commitment to traditional Jewish practices, and to at least some traditional Jewish beliefs, as well. Were denominational labels useful for our concerns here, Modern Traditionalism might refer to many who identify themselves as Modern Orthodox or traditional Conservative. The distinctions between these groups, while perhaps important for other purposes, are not important to my analysis here. Such diverse thinkers as S. R. Hirsch, Franz Rosenzweig and Joseph Soloveitchik, amongst many others, would fit this category. These thinkers are particularly interesting because they have confronted both worlds, and seek to embrace both in their theological reflections about Judaism. As we shall see, the interpretive dynamic in these cases is a particularly intense one, and analyzing it will shed further light on all modern Jewish thinkers as interpreters of classic texts, for which reason they deserve special attention. Before proceeding I must say a few more words about the “traditional” component of the Modern Traditionalist’s thinking. While this is an issue of great theological complexity, in order to get my analysis going I shall be assuming that the Modern Traditionalist affirms the following two principles: (l) Sacred texts, which include all biblical and rabbinic texts, and some after that, are authoritative; that is, they are believed to have a certain authority over the Jew such that he must believe or obey them except where some other text of at least equal authority asserts otherwise, and then only by certain canons of displacement. (2) Sacred texts in varying ways which I cannot define here reflect divinity. This should clarify what I meant earlier when I asserted that Modern Traditionalism ranges over not only Orthodoxy, but certain forms of traditional Conservatism as well. The first point to make about the Modern Traditionalist interpreter is that his interpretation can be either secular or religious. As I noted — 500 —

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earlier, many if not all Modern Traditionalists succeed in sustaining their religious consciousness against the onslaught of modernity by separating their secular from their religious consciousness, a phenomenon Berger calls compartmentalization. Where the interpretation proceeds from a purely traditional compartment, as it often although by no means always does, then it may not be different in any important way from the pre-modern interpretation of a thirteenthcentury Rhineland Jew. Thus, a sophisticated Modern Orthodox attorney may interpret his weekly Torah portion with entirely premodern categories and techniques. My interest here is to analyze interpretation which is both distinctively religious and modern. I shall return to this point soon. To the extent that the Modern Traditionalist thinker is modern, and his religious interpretation emerges from his modern secular consciousness, then he will share in all those characteristics of the modern religious hermeneutic outlined above: redemptivity, reflexivity and constructivity, with its attendant distancing and selectivity. The main issue I shall consider here is the distinctive impact of his traditionalism on the interpretive process. One additional preliminary point should be made. For every sacred text there is a set of interpretive traditions which accompanies it. Each verse in the Torah bears with it to the modern interpreter a tradition of interpretation extending from the midrash through rabbinic and medieval exegesis. The same is true of all sacred texts. It is to this commented text that the modern interpreter reacts. It seems to me that the most striking feature of a Modern Traditionalist interpretation resides not so much in what it is, but in what it isn’t. The Modern Traditionalist interpreter, to use a term and concept borrowed from Harold Bloom,24 “swerves” from the commented text. He pointedly chooses not only, or not at all, to repeat Rashi, whom he reveres, or Rashbam. Rather, he interprets the text as a modern, importing philosophical, literary, historical or whatever categories that are clearly foreign to the pre-modern interpretive tradition. In so doing he reflexively 24

A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), passim, and in several other of his works. — 501 —

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defines for himself an identity as a Modern Traditionalist Jew quite apart from the authority of the commented text. Now I do not mean to suggest that every Modern Traditionalist interpreter seeks to overthrow the commented text in the way that Bloom envisions every poet as attempting to overthrow the aesthetic claims of an earlier poem to make room for his own identity as a poet. I would argue, however, that every Modern Traditionalist interpretive act is consciously or unconsciously motivated, or consciously or unconsciously effected, by what may be described as an attempt to “displace” the authority of the commented text and to make room for a modern interpretation of the text, and hence reflexively make room for the interpreter’s identity as Modern Traditionalist Jew. This experience of swerving, while characteristic of the Modern Traditionalist, is, I would suggest, not characteristic of the premodern interpreter of religious text. Pre-moderns certainly imported concepts foreign to the tradition which preceded them, and Aristotelian philosophy is just one of many examples of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, as I argued above, pre-moderns operated with the givenness of the text, and understood themselves to be recovering esoteric meaning they just assumed to be latent in the text. Therefore, they did not experience themselves as swerving from the text, but as recovering this latent meaning. Moderns, on the other hand, who construct meaning into the text, experience themselves in so doing as swerving from past meanings attached to the text. Constructivity is thus the crack from which the swerving experience emerges. The swerving experience, however, is not all there is to the Modern Traditionalist interpretive act. As with every modern religious interpreter, by bothering to religiously interpret the text the Modern Traditionalist redeems that text, and reflexively redeems himself as well, in the face of secularism’s debilitating claims. This is of course true of all modern religious interpretations of sacred texts. The point I wish to stress here is that for the Modern Traditional interpreter these twin redemptions are especially difficult. If the religious generally are a cognitive minority, the Modern Traditionalist is a minority of a minority. The destabilizing forces of secularism press even harder, and make the religious choice, and the religious interpretation, even more difficult to achieve. — 502 —

-----   Chapter XVIII. How Do Modern Jewish Thinkers Interpret Religious Texts -----

What is redeemed through the interpretive act? Let us suppose, as I suggested above, that the Modern Traditionalist Jew believes in the authority of the sacred text and — understood very loosely — the divinity of that text as well. What he then redeems is precisely his belief in that text’s authority and divinity. This belief of course limits in certain ways the scope of his interpretive freedom, and is therefore one of the defining characteristics of the Modern Traditionalist hermeneutic. The mitzvah-oriented framework, after all, is central for someone like Soloveitchik and not, for example, for Buber. However, if we examine the redemption more closely, I think we shall see that it can have quite the opposite effect as well. This is because a belief in the text’s divinity, however loosely understood, may help the modernist evade the claims of historical relativism. If the voice of the midrash is inspired, perhaps it is not so unreasonable to believe that lurking therein is some version of the modern concept of autonomy. Paradoxically, traditionalism can thus be hermeneutically liberating as well. Some such mechanism, it seems to me, enables many modern thinkers to ahistorically locate peculiarly modern concepts and values in ancient rabbinic texts. It should be added here that the modernity and traditionalism of such thinkers may mutually reinforce one another in an interesting way, despite the obvious inherent tensions between them. Affirming the divinity of the texts, even if only very loosely, makes it possible for the Modern Traditionalist to find all sorts of characteristically modern values therein. Finding these values in turn might reaffirm his belief in the text’s divinity: otherwise, he could argue, how would they have ever gotten there in the first place? With his belief in the text’s divinity thus reaffirmed, he can become even more secure that these values are in fact located in the text. The mutual reinforcement process thus continues to spiral. Let us reflect for a moment about where we are. If my analysis so far of the Modern Traditionalist hermeneutic is correct, then it turns out that that hermeneutic is a dialectical one. In the very same act of interpretation the Modern Traditionalist Jew embraces the authority and divinity of the text while simultaneously swerving from the commented text’s authority. Indeed, it is his very affirmation of the text’s authority which drives his swerving from that authority. Why — 503 —

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bother displacing an interpretive tradition if that tradition makes no claims on the interpreter? In fact, I would propose here the following “Principle of Modern Traditionalist Interpretation”: The force of the Modern Traditionalist interpretive swerve is directly proportional to the force of his secular sensibilities and convictions on the one hand, and the force of his traditionalist sensibilities and convictions on the other hand. If he is exclusively traditionalist, then he will not swerve from the commented text. If he is exclusively secular, then he already stands outside the commented text, and therefore won’t be swerving from it. It is only where the interpreter is both secular and traditionalist that the swerve occurs, and the force of the swerve is determined by the intersecting forces of his secularism and his traditionalism. What do I mean by the “force” of the swerve? I mean two things. First, the more passionate both his traditionalist and secular conviction, the stronger will be his conscious or unconscious need to construct a Modern Traditionalist identity apart from the commented text. Second, the more passionate his traditionalism and secularism, the more striking and comprehensive will be his interpretive swerve, that is, his strategies, techniques and actual interpretations. There is yet another important point to be made about the dialectical interpretive process characteristic of Modern Traditionalism: its instability. Compartmentalization is such a widespread religious phenomenon precisely because it is the least painful means of managing the conflicting claims of religion and secularism. My point here is that for the Modern Traditionalist this problem is multiplied a hundredfold, not only because of the greater precariousness of his life-world, but also because of the tensions inherent in his characteristic dialectic. It is, after all, psychologically difficult to sustain an action which simultaneously embraces authority and swerves from it. Thus there is a greater tendency on the part of the Modern Traditionalist than on the part of others to compartmentalize the interpretive process. Put differently, there are relatively fewer Modern Traditionalist religious interpretations of texts than non-Modern Traditionalist religious interpretations of texts. When such interpretations do take place it seems to me natural that the Modern Traditionalist requires not only a special act of the will, but — 504 —

-----   Chapter XVIII. How Do Modern Jewish Thinkers Interpret Religious Texts -----

also certain interpretive defense mechanisms, to enable him to sustain his tenuous hold on both modernity and traditionalism. Although I cannot elaborate here, I would argue that these include, amongst others: (1) marshalling an unusually extensive array of classical sources in support of a position; and (2) appealing to the authority of a personal Rebbe, or religious mentor (who would often in fact vehemently disagree with the interpretation — or set of such — made). This is not to say, of course, that such strategies play no other role, but only that they may serve as defense mechanisms as well.

VIII. GENERALIZING FROM THE MODERN TRADITIONALIST In this final section of the essay I would like to suggest that the analysis proposed above applies not only to the Modern Traditionalist, but to all modern thinkers as they religiously interpret classical texts; that the Modern Traditionalist hermeneutic is only an extreme case of what is really a far more widespread phenomenon. To see this, let us backtrack a bit and consider in general terms some of the questions we have been discussing. The interpreter who concerns us here is both secular and religious, and has constructed for himself a highly personalized life-world embracing both. We have argued that the way he interprets the text is a precise function of the relative force of his modern secularism and his traditionalism as they interact with the text. This in turn depends upon the extent to which his consciousness is more modern/secular or more traditional. The interpretation will be affected in two ways: First, there is the traditional religious versus secular content of the interpretation: how many secular concepts, values and attitudes will be employed and how many traditional ones? which will be featured most prominently? which kinds of sources will be cited most frequently? how much will the interpretation stress the religious significance of the text? which texts will he choose to interpret and which not? to what extent will historical relativism play a role? Second, the direction of the interpretive “spin” will be affected. By this I mean the extent to which the interpretation is more redemptive than swerving or more swerving than redemptive. The stronger the force of — 505 —

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his traditional religious consciousness, for example, then the stronger will be his inclination to interpret the text traditionally. In spite of this his interpretation is modern, and insofar as it is modern his swerve from tradition is of greater significance, since he succeeded in at least partially overcoming his more forceful religious consciousness. Thus, for any modern religious interpretation, the more traditional the consciousness of the interpreter the greater the force of his Bloomian swerve from the authority of the commented text. Conversely, the stronger the secular consciousness of the interpreter and the weaker his religious consciousness, the greater the likelihood that the interpretive angle of deflection will be more secular, that is have more secular than traditional Content. The likelihood is also greater that his interpretive swerve will be of less significance, since he feels the authority of the commented text less acutely. What happens, in fact, is that the dialectical spin of the interpretation is reversed. The significance of the interpretation for him is not in its modernity, but in its traditionalism. The interpretive achievement lies more in the embracing of authority than in the swerving from it. What we first described as a distinctive feature of the Modern Traditionalist hermeneutic turns out to be an aspect of a more widespread phenomenon: all modern religious interpreters sustain (1) a permanent tension between interpreting the text more secularly or more religiously; and (2) a permanent dialectic between redeeming the text and swerving from it. I would like to suggest that a single overarching principle governs this phenomenon, which, borrowing from physics, I shall call the Conservation of Interpretive Momentum. Since reflexivity follows the same dynamic as redemptivity, this principle conceptually unifies many of the points made throughout this essay. I should like to make clear that while I will spell these ideas out in the form of hermeneutical “laws,” my aim in so doing is descriptive precision: to describe phenomenologically as precisely as I can the experiential hermeneutic dynamic of the modern Jewish religious thinker. The “laws,” being descriptive, can not be used to predict how any Jewish thinker will actually interpret a text. The various forces which go into creating an actual textual interpretation are complex and subtle, and of course relate not only to phenomenological issues, but to — 506 —

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actual problems within the text itself. My aim here is only to provide a framework for understanding how these experiential forces might relate to one another. The Conservation of Interpretive Momentum can then be used as a kind of abstract model for analyzing the inner dynamic of the actual interpretations of a religious thinker. The Conservation of Interpretive Momentum is embodied in the following four hermeneutic principles: 1. Level of Dialectic Tension: The level of dialectic tension stands in direct proportion to the combined force of the interpreter’s secular and religious consciousness. If the combined force is weak, that is if he cares little about secularism versus religion, then in interpreting the text he will feel less tension; conversely, if he feels strongly about secularism and/or religion, the interpretive tension will be greater. 2. The Angle of Interpretive Deflection: The traditional versus secular content and strategies of the interpretation are directly proportionate to the relative force of the interpreter’s traditional and secular consciousness. This is no more than a restatement of the perfectly common sensical observation that the more traditional the interpreter, the more traditional the interpretation is likely to be, and the more secular the interpreter, the more secular the interpretation is likely to be. 3. The Direction of the Dialectic Spin: For any modern religious interpretation of a text, the extent to which redeeming the text or swerving from it is the interpreter’s dominant experience is directly proportionate to the relative force of his traditional and secular consciousness: The relatively greater the traditional, the greater the experience of swerving, since despite his traditionalism the interpreter has insisted upon an element of modernity; on the other hand, the relatively greater the secular, the greater the experience of redemption, since despite his secularity he has succeeded in interpreting the text religiously. 4. The Force of the Dialectic Spin: The sharpness of the interpreter’s experience of either redemption or swerving is directly proportionate to (a) the combined forces of his modern and — 507 —

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traditional consciousness, i.e. the level of his dialectical tension; (b) the actual content and strategies of interpretation, i.e. the angle of interpretive deflection; and (c) the relative force of his traditional and secular consciousness. In other words, how strongly the interpreter feels about modernity and traditionalism, and the relative strength of his traditional and secular consciousness in the context of just how traditional or secular the interpretation actually is, will yield a picture of how sharply he feels himself veering from the tradition or affirming it. What I have tried to do in this analysis is phenomenologically describe the kind of consciousness which characterizes the attempt to engage in creative modern theology in a traditional context. Jewish theology is Jewish by virtue of its use of Jewish texts. How the modern theologian uses these texts, I have argued, depends upon the extent to which the interpreter’s consciousness is secular or traditional, and the way in which his consciousness intersects with the text. What divides many modern Jewish thinkers and their critics is not only — and sometimes not at all — whether they get a particular text right or wrong. At a deeper level, what divides them is the nature of their highly personalized blend of secular and traditional consciousness. Once this point is fully understood, the task of evaluating the particulars of textbased theological debate is permanently altered.

— 508 —

-------------------------------------------------------------------   CITATIONS INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------

CITATIONS INDEX

1. Bible Gen.

1:31 106, 293 4:10  340n2 6:12  100 9:5340n2 9:6342 18:25 266 32342

26:5287n43 26:16 219, 268 27:22340n4 27:25340n2 28:948 30:12267

Jud.

5:1149

2Sam.

Exod.

20:1-22352

Lev.

11:919 27:13136 51:1121 57:1522 65:1629

15:3  294 20:13339n1 22:26325 19:249 20:2  340n4 24:14340n4 25:36310 26:3-1391

Isa.

Jer.

3585n2

Num.

Ps.

16:22266 35-36340n2

24:1375

Deut.

3:1121

Song of Songs

5:17  339n1 17:7  340n4 17:11 234n17, 240n29,  278n25, 480n17 19:10, 13 340n2 20:16-18  340n9 21:28340n2 22:21340n4 25:17-19340n8

Esth.

9:2829 9:29-3023

Job

42:1073n11

2Chron.

22:8341

— 509 —

-------------------------------------------------------------------   CITATIONS INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Mishnah

71a325n36 84a232n16

Avot

II:1297n21 V:17231 VI:490

Eduyot

1:5-6231n12

Horayot

1:1278n25 3:7-8 311n6, 327

Berachot

17a209 31b268 32b298n63 33b 214n12, 265 58a234n17

Eruvin

13b 234, 242, 253n60, 468, 477 54a103

Sanhedrin

4:5234n17 8:7340n7 11:2231n13

Gittin

6b468n4

Hagiga

3b239

Yevamot

Ketubot

8:4344

57a469

3. Tosefta

Makkot

Taanit

7a343

Terumot

20a209 31a251

4. Midreshei Halakha

23b 286n42, 287n43 37b321

323 11a351n22

Megillah

7:23352

Lev., Be-Har 5

Sifra

312n9

5. Babylonian Talmud

Nazir

Nedarim

20b104n33

Pesahim

Baba Batra

8a 324n32, 326n39 60b91n16

Baba Kamma

60b315n19

3b470 49a89

Sanhedrin

32b325n35 72a340n6 99a259

Baba Metzia

59b267 62b 310n5, 315n18

Shabbat

11a298n62 30b 19, 252n57

— 510 —

-------------------------------------------------------------------   CITATIONS INDEX -------------------------------------------------------------------88a290n49 133b43

Sanhedrin

4:2476

Sotah

36b420 44b 340n10, 351 11a

Taanit

Terumot

3:26352n24

7. Midreshei Aggadah 90, 104n33

Yevamot

14a234n17

6. Jerusalem Talmud

Gen. Rabbah

9:7106n37 9:9293 14:2281 44:4342 84104n33

Bava Metzia

Ps. Rabbah

2:11324n32

12477

Berachot

39c494

Horayot

1:1493 2:8104n32

Ruth Rabbah

1:4468n4

Song of Songs Rabbah

3:7323n31

Kiddushin

1:1468n4 II, 65 104n31

3:46 Lekh Lekha 19

Megillah

1:529

— 511 —

Tanhuma 219n14, 268 342

---------------------------------------------------------------------  General INDEX ---------------------------------------------------------------------

General INDEX

A Abarbanel, Isaac ben Judah 228, 258n66, 278n25 Abraham 40, 134, 266, 281, 288, 342, 350-351, 410, 462-464 Abraham ben David of Posquieres (Rabad) 94-95, 231n12, 258n66, 284n36, 432-433 Absolutism (Deontologism) 317-319, 333-346, 350-351, 353 Achashverosh, king 26 Adam 292n.54, 370, 398-401, 403, 412413, 436-437, 458n.16 Adam and Eve 45, 58n52, 61n59, 66, 99, 403, 413 Adams, Marilyn McCord 79-80 Aggadah 267, 278, 283n34, 290n49, 353, 385, 391, 437 Agudath Israel 414 Akedat Yitzhak 134 Akiva, rabbi — dispute with rabbi Tarfon and rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel 343346, 350, 353-354 debate with Ben Petura 310, 312-313 Albalag, Isaac 492n16 Albo, Yosef 258n66, 270n.9, 284n.36 Alfarabi 42, 492 Allen, Diogenes 80 Alter Rebbe (Shne’ur Zalman of Lyadi) 98, 460 Altman, Alexander 63n64, 140-141, 143144, 151, 226n.3

Appel, Gersion 291n50 Aquinas 271 Arnheim, Rudolf 120 Aristotle 17-18, 20, 33-34, 42, 44, 5759, 61, 64, 87-88, 98, 144, 250, 330, 374, 476, 476, 492 — Aristotelian 42n26, 43, 54, 56n54, 57, 59n.54, 64, 141, 143, 166, 244, 300, 338, 350, 449, 450, 491-492, 502 — Nicomachean Ethics 17, 33n5, 144, 350n21 Ashkenazi pietists (Hasidei ashkenaz) 8586 B Baeck, Leo 378 Bar Yochai, Shimon 244 Barth, Karl 397-398, 418 Berger, Peter 158, 437, 482-488, 491495, 501 Bergson, Henri 452n1, 458 Berlin, Isaiah 161, 236-237 Berlin, Naftali Zvi Yehuda (Ne’tziv) 255n63, 313, 316 318 Berman, Lawrence 48, 50 Bet Hillel 229, 232, 233, 249-252, 257, 426, 427, 432, 433 Bet Shammai 229, 232, 233, 250-252, 426, 427, 432, 433 Black, Max 117, 117n13 Blidstein, Gerald 13, 74n14, 343-344, 370, 371n23, 444n15

— 512 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  General INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------Bloom, Harold 501-502 Borowitz, Eugene 108n38, 264n1-2, 378, 380n6, 395, 358n35, 410, 435n2 Buber, Martin 74, 74n14, 264n2, 378, 407, 407n65, 457, 503 C Cohen Gerson 89n13 Cohen, Hermann 68, 74, (89n.13), 226n2, 383, 392, 393n25, 413, 499 Cohen Seymour J. 99n26 Cohen, Shabsai 327-328, 332 Cordovero, Moshe 255-257 Creation ex nihilo 142, 258, 443 Crescas, Hasdai ben Judah 142, 228, 258n66, 284n36 D David, king 16, 341 Davidson, Herbert 42n26, 44n32, 48, 50, 116n11, De George, Richard T. 284n37 Dessler, Eliyahu 109, 470, 470n6 Devekut 160, 181-182, 189, 192-200, 202, 428-429 Di Rossi, Azariah 241 Dorff, Eliot 178n55, 185n66, 234n17, 467n2 Dostoyevsky, Fedor 437 Douglas, Mary 115n10 Duran, Shimon ben Zemach 258-262, 284n36 Dworkin, Ronald 309n4, 467n2 E Edels, Shmuel 315 Efros, Israel 283n33 Elijah of Pruzhan 171, 390, 423 Ellenson, David 206n1, 212n10, 275n18 Elon, Menahem 279, 279n27, 280n28, 340n3 Emden, Ya’akov 322n29, 328-329, 331332

Emotivism 364n15 Enker, Aaron 312, 352n24 Environmental ethic 355, 359, 367n16, 368, 371-377 Esau 342-343 Essenes 85n2 Evernden, Neil 314n3 Existentialism 75n14, 76, 133, 134, 204, 209, 398, 407, 453, 463 F Fackenheim, Emil Ludwig 206n1, 211, 219, 222, 264n2, 275n18 Feinstein, Moshe 328n43, 330-332, 334 Fraade, Steven 90n14 Frankfurt, Harry 148 Frimer, Dov I. 305, 319n26 Fuchs, Ya’akov 264n1 G Gadamer, Hans Georg 496 Galileo Galilei 392 Geertz, Clifford 114-115 Gellman, Jerome 146, 245n41, 246n4243, 249n53 Gendler, Everett 342 Gerard, Albert 459 Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon; Ralbag) 259-260 Gnosticism 84 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 452 Goitein Shelomo D. 89n13, 140n2, 290n48, 429n113 Goodman, Lenn 57n49 Goodman, Nelson 117n13, 240n28, 284n37, 479n15 Greek Philosophy 243-244, 246 Green, Arthur 90n14 Greenberg, Irving 415 Greenberg, Simon 234n17 Greene Theodore M. 168n31, 207n2 Gregory, Richard L. 118 Grodzinski, Chaim Ozer 314-315, 318 Grunfeld, Isidor 106n36, 114n6, 293n55

— 513 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  General INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------H Habad 248n50, 249n53, 375, 455, 459 Halakha 13, 22, 41, 53n46, 67, 72-74, 82, 109-110, 153n17, 159, 161, 165-167, 170, 176, 188, 190, 192, 196-203, 231, 233, 235, 240, 242-243, 246, 263-264, 267, 271, 277-279, 292, 295297, 303, 305, 310, 312-316, 320, 330n46, 332, 334-337, 351, 353-354, 361, 379, 383, 385-389, 391, 405-406, 421, 435, 438, 440-441, 444-445, 449-450, 467, 471-472, 474480 Halakhocentrism 68, 77, 80, 290, Halevi, Yehuda 98, 112, 282 Haman 26 Ha-Nagid, Samuel 105 Harris, R. Baine 284n37 Hartman, David 159n10, 178n55, 203n108, 266n5, 277n23, 291n50, 439, 465n26 Hartman, Geoffrey 456 Harvey Shmuel 18n11 Harvey, Steven 32n2, 38-39, 40n22, Harvey, Warren Zev 41n25, 52, 58n52, 140n2 Hasidism 98, 360-361, 364, 423, 474 Hayyim of Volozhin 381-382, 390 He-Hasid, Abraham 88 He-Hasid, Yehuda (Judah the Pious) 86, 329n45 Heinemann, Itzhak 112, 112n1-2, 113n4, 122 Heller, Hayyim 409, 411, 441 Hershler, M. 330 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 37n16, 283n.33, 344n16, 375, 378, 468n3 Hirsch, Samson Raphael 106n36, 114, 293n55, 408, 435, 444, 500 Holocaust 69-70, 73, 80, 179, 186, 414416, 439, 454n5, 457

Hudson Deal W. 12n2 Hudson, Hoyt H. 168n31, 207n2 Hurvitz, Yosef Y. 86n5 I Ibn Bajja 38, 63n64 Ibn Daud, Abraham 105, Ibn Gabbai, Meir 471, 474 Ibn Pakuda, Bahya 88, 89n13, 105n34, 140n2, 264, 269-270, 282, 296, 375, 430 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel 31-32, 39, 54, 65 Idel, Moshe 264, 360n6 Imitatio dei (Hidamut) 28-29, 40, 47-48, 181-182, 188, 191n84, 192, 256, 301 Isaac 134-135, 298 Israel — Land of 18-20, 340, 414, 439, 459 — State of 70, 414-415, 439, 444 Isserles, Moshe (Rama) 279, 327, 470n5 J Jacob 298-299, 342-343, 350-351, 421, 461 Jacobs, Louis 234n17, 255n64, 266n5 Job 73, 415 Jones, Howard Mumford 462 Joseph 145, 421, 461, 463 Judah and Tamar 146, 151 K Kabbalah 241, 246n44, 264n1, 360, 385, 391, 470n6, 475n10, 493n18 Kafka, Franz 116 Kahane-Shapiro of Kovno, Abraham 383 Kant, Immanuel 65, 160, 168-170, 206215, 220-224, 228, 273-275, 357, 384, 369, 413, 437, 496 —Autonomy, Principle of 206-209, 212-215, 219-223, 230, 275 — Disinterestedness Argument 213214, 220 — Duty, Concept of 214-216

— 514 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  General INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------

— Kantian 161-162, 168n31, 169171, 206, 207, 214, 216-217, 220, 223-224, 230, 256-257, 273, 275, 276n20, 291, 317, 372, 413, 496 — Kingdom of Ends Argument 220 — Neo-Kantian 68, 74, 76-77, 165, 383, 385-386, 388, 391-394, 407, 420, 435, 440, 451, 454, 463-465 — Post-Kantian 166, 169, 196, 202 — Quasi-Kantian 74, 77, 81 — Universality Claim 214-216 Kaplan, Lawrence 13n4, 22n17, 69n4, 74n12, 159n7, 166n28, 179, 247n45, 285n39, 380n6, 385n11, 435n2, 444n16 Kaplan, Mordecai 378 Karaites 154 Karelitz, Abraham (Hazon Ish) 313-315, 446 Katz, Dov 86n5 Katz, Eric 368-369 Katz, Jacob 434 Katz, Steven 234n17, 380n6, 415n86 Keats, John 453 Kellner, Menachem 13n3, 28n24, 40n22, 258-259, 266n5, 297n60, 305n1, 342n13 Kellner, Hansfried 158n1, 482n4 Kiddush 113, 123-124, 126-131 Kierkegaard, Soren 76, 398, 402, 407, 418, 458, 463 Kimhi, David 341n11-12 Kirschenbaum, Aaron 264n1, 280n28, 477n12 Kogan, Barry 31, 36n13, 42n26, 52, 63n64, 66n68 Kook, Avraham Isaac 92, 169n33, 239, 241, 247-249, 375, 430, 439 Kreisel, Howard 34n8, 40n22, 42n26, 48, 52, 58n52, 147n9 Kuhn, Thomas 284n37, 479n15

L Laban 287n43, 342 Lamm, Norman 99n26, 264n.1, 290n49, 359, 360-361, 444 Lazaroff, Allan 89n13 Leibowitz, Borukh Ber 449 Leibovitz, Yeshayahu 265 Leiner, Mordechai Joseph (Izbiczer) 245 Lermontov, Mikhail 452 Lerner, Ralph 32n2, 39-40, 269n6 Levi,Yehuda Leo 276n21 Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev 473-475 Lewit, Tonya 418 Lichtenstein, Aharon 297n60, 380n6, 444 Lieberman, Saul 282 Lindbeck, George 79n20 Litvak (Mitnagged) 160, 163, 165, 174n45, 179-180,185, 299, 361, 382, 385, 390, 395, 404405, 420-425, 428-431, 433, 450, 454, 463, 465, 471, 474 Locke, John 226, 228-229, 250, 254 Lot 342 Lovejoy, A.O. 456 Luntshitz, Ephraim 240n29, 480n17 Luria, Isaac (Arizal) 92 Luria, Shelomo of Poland (Maharshal) 472, 474, 475n10 Luzzatto, Shmuel David 112, 113n4 Luzzatto, Moshe Chaim 255n63 M MacIntyre, Alasdair 272, 275, 303n67, 482n1, 483n6 Maharal (Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague) 239-242, 249, 254n62, 470n6, 479-480 Mahdi, M. 269n6 Maimon, Solomon 86 Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon; Rambam) 12-66, 87-99, 112, 138, 140-157, 166, 168, 173, 175, 189, 194-196, 228, 231,

— 515 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  General INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------234n17, 244, 258-260, 264, 268-270, 282-283, 287, 289, 297-300, 322, 327, 351, 362364, 380, 384, 393n25, 397, 408-409, 413, 418, 426-428, 432-433, 443-444, 447-448, 466, 493-494, 499 Maimonides School, Boston 418 Maimuni, Abraham 88-89 Maimuni, David 88-89 Manichaeism 84 McCloskey, H. J. 345 Meiri, Menachem 232-234, 254, 314n15, 325 Mendelssohn, Moses 112, 127n19, 226n2 Messianism 15-18, 20, 21, 24-27, 132, 371, 428, 429 Mill, John Stuart 228-230, 232-233, 254 Mirsky, Mark 378 Mitzvah 24, 85, 89, 95, 112-139, 212, 217, 219, 268-269, 286, 503 Mitzvot 17, 20n15, 33, 87, 92, 94, 100, 103, 107, 112-115, 122-131, 138, 155, 261, 268, 270, 277279, 289-290, 296, 321-323, 326, 328, 419, 439 Ta’amei ha-mitzvot 112-113, 122, 218, 289, 444 Mizrachi (Merkaz Ruchani) 461 Moses 25, 37, 40-41, 50n44, 52, 55, 59, 144, 266, 410, 459 Mussar 85, 108-109, 233, 390, 470, 474475 Mysticism 13n3, 92, 248n46, 360, 375, 493n18 N Nachmanides (Moses ben Nachman; Ramban) 278n25 Nadler, Alan 174 Nagel, Thomas 317-318, 346-347, 353 Nathan, prophet 341-342, 351 Nazism 454 Nebuchadnezzar, king 145

Newton, Isaac 339, 349, 392 Nietzschian 356 Novogrudok School 86n5 Nussbaum, Martha 54n47 O Obadiah of Bartenura (Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro) 324n34 Otto, Rudolf 398, 418, 428 P Patriarchs 37, 40-41, 52, 55, 380 Peli, Pinchas 393n26, 384n11, 457 Peretz, Isaac Leib 452 Perfet, Isaac ben Sheshet 258n66 Pharaoh 152-153 Philo of Alexandria 85n2, 359, 491 Pines, Shlomo 14n6, 33n4, 37-38, 63n64, 140-141, 143-144, 151 Plato 28, 57, 65, 161, 393n25, 447 — Platonism 39-40, 236 — Neo-platonism 57-59, 61n60, 66, 491 Pushkin, Alexander 52 Pythagorean theorem 356 Q Quine, W. V. O. 240n28, 284n37, 479n15 R Ramakh (Moshe Ha-Cohen) 318-319n25 Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki) 103, 253, 287n43, 298, 300, 315n19, 321, 324n33, 423, 433, 469, 499, 501 Ravitzky, Aviezer 74n12, 140, 166, 189, 196, 197n98, 202, 435n2 Rawidowitz, Simon 492 Raz, Joseph 227n5, 230n10, 235n18, 238n24 Reisberg, Barukh Yaakov 460 Rif (Isaac Ben Jaacob Alfasi) 314n15, 432 Romanticism 161, 357, 417, 451-466 Rorty, Richard 240n28, 284n37, 479n15

— 516 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  General INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------Rosenberg, Shalom 467n1, 494 Rosenthal, F. 89n13 Rosenzweig, Franz 74, 264n2, 500 Rosh Hashana 132-133, 135-136, 175 Roth, Jeffrey 231n13-14, 280n28, 468n3 Rothkoff, Aaron 383n10 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 152, 161, 452, 463 S Saadya Gaon 264, 270n9, 282, 283n33, 284n37 Sacks, Jonathan 406n60 Sagi (Schweitzer), Abraham 237n2223, 239n27, 247n45, 253n59, 467n1, 472n8, 477n13, 478n14 Salanter, Israel 233-235, 470n6, 475 Samuelson, Norbert 206n1, 212n1011, 219, 222, 264n1, 275n18, 284n36 Sartre, Jean-Paul 75-76 Saperstein, Marc 283n34, 493n18 Schacter, Jacob J. 83, 376n24 Scheler, Max 173 Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich 452 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst 452 Scholem, Gershom 264, 360n6, 471n7, 493n18, 495 Schwartz, Dov 452n2, 465 Schwartz Eilon 359n5 Schwarzschild, Steven 42n26, 43n27, 287n43, 355-356 Sefirot 241, 255-257 Sellars, Wilfred 240n28, 284n37, 479n15 Shabbat 107, 112, 124, 126 Shatz, David 31, 67, 264n1, 277n22, 299n66, 376n24 Shatz, Rivkah 360n6 Shelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 452 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 453 Shmidman, Michael 31, 32n2, 91n16 Shofar 113, 130, 132-138, 387, 390 Silberman, Lou 452

Silman, Yohanan 467n1, 472n8, 477n13, 478 Sinai, mount 59, 135, 219, 267-268, 386387, 415, 472 Singer, David 68n3, 178n55, 204n110, 292n54, 378n1, 446n18 Socrates 63 Sofer, Moses (Hatam Sofer) 434-435, 470 Solomon, king 21, 147 Soloveitchik, Hayyim (Brisker) 313n12, 390, 382-383, 385, 392, 411, 429 Soloveitchik, Isaac Zeev (Yitzchak Zev, Brisker Rav) 383, 449, 464 Soloveitchik, Joseph Ber viii, 68-82, 109110, 158-163, 167, 169-204, 291-292, 297, 370-371, 378466, 500, 503 — Cognitive Man 163, 165, 168, 177 — Catharsis 159, 404n54 — Halakhic Man 77n18, 109, 159182, 184-192, 198-199, 201, 204, 291-292, 384-410, 420430, 433, 437, 440, 451-454, 463-465 — Lonely Man of Faith 76n16, 159, 292n54, 370, 384, 385n11, 394n28, 396-413, 420-424, 433, 435-437, 440-441, 445, 450-451, 463 — Majesty and Humility 159, 394n28, 406n59, 454n7 — Religious Man 163-165, 167-168, 171-177, 180, 189-191, 389390, 395, 399-401, 422 — Talmid hakham 178-179, 311, 316, 322-324, 326-328, 333, 337, 443, 450 — U-vikkashtem mi-Sham (UVM) 159, 160, 162, 181-190, 197, 201-204 Soloveitchik, Moses 383, 390, 411 Soloveitchik, Yoseph Dov (Joseph Dov) 158, 175, 383

— 517 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  General INDEX --------------------------------------------------------------------Spinoza, Baruch 58n52, 226n2 Steiner, George 62 Stern, Josef 31-32, 60n57, 63n64, 125n18, 139n29 Stoicism 47n39, 161 Stout, Jeffrey 271 Strauss, Leo 283n33, 494 Stump, Elenore 80, 148 Sufism 16, 88, 89n13 Summum bonum 12, 20, 33, 35, 54, 77n18 Szkop, Shimon 449 T Talmage, Frank 493 Talmid hakham 267, 272, 278-280, 282284, 289, 293 Tam, Rabbenu 171, 423-433 Taylor, Charles 148 Taylor, Paul 366-368 Tefillin (Phylacteries) 171-172, 328, 387, 423 Teleologism (Consequentialism) 90, 92, 228, 273, 274, 285, 290, 291, 300-303, 307-309 Temple 13, 15-16, 23, 27, 91-92, 328, 341, 455 Tennyson, Alfred 119 Therapeutae, Sect of 85n2 Tirosh Samuelson, Hava 12, 31 Twersky, Isadore 13n4, 19n14, 31, 44n30, 48, 53n46, 68, 77n18, 284n37, 290, 429-430 Tzimtzum 188, 195 U Ullman, W. 271n.10 Urbach, E. E. 90n14-15

V Vilna Gaon (Elijah of Vilna; Hagra) 174, 298, 382, 390 Volozhin Yeshivah 382 W Waldenberg, Eliezer 315, 318 Walzer, Michael 153n18 Warburg, Ronnie 305 Watson, Gary 148 Weil, Simone 80 Whitman, Walt 466 Wissenschaft des Juedentums 203n110, 440-441, 443-444, 497 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 117 Wolf, Arnold 378-379 Wolf, Susan 148 Wolff, Robert Paul 209n6, 223n17, 254n61 Wolfson, Harry 283n.33, 284, 384, 491492 Wurzburger, Walter 264n2, 291n50, 376n24, 415, 438-441, 445-446 Wyschogrod, Michael 277-279, 355-356 Y Yerav’am, king 143 Yeshiva University 68, 379, 381, 383-384, 409n67, 417, 437, 441, 450 Z Zadok Ha-Cohen of Lublin 239, 241-249, 315 Zechariah, prophet 23-24, 27 Zeitlin, Solomon 384 Zionism 69-70, 73, 158, 249, 414-415, 438-439, 448- 449, 461

— 518 —