Personal Theology: Essays in Honor of Neil Gillman 9781618111906

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Personal Theology Essays in Honor of Neil Gillman

New Perspectives in Post-Rabbinic Judaism Series Editor — Shaul Magid (Indiana University)

Personal Theology Essays in Honor of Neil Gillman

Edited by William Plevan

Boston 2013

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

Copyright © 2013 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-61811-168-5 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61811-190-6 (electronic) Book design by Ivan Grave Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents

Acknowledgements7 Preface Shaul Magid

8

Introduction William M. Plevan

10

Jewish Images of God Elliot N. Dorff

18

The Certainty of Myth: The Legacy of Neil Gillman Ira F. Stone

42

The Seminary Theology Professor’s Special Responsibility Eugene B. Borowitz

50

A Neo-Hasidic Life: Credo and Reflections Arthur Green

65

Is There an Essential Theology for a Halakhic Movement? Nina Redl

88

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah? Joel Roth

104



Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth? Leonard Levin

130

Toward a Curriculum for Increasing the Active Participation of Congregants at Prayer Services Saul P. Wachs

151

Mordecai Kaplan: “The Master of Midrash” Mel Scult

170

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Felix Adler, Josephine Lazarus, and Mordecai Kaplan Shaul Magid

182

Making Peace with Philosophy: Emil L. Fackenheim’s Hegelianism Sharon Portnoff

210

Living the Death of God in the Hope of Words: On Gillman, Jabès, Marcel, and Badiou Aubrey L. Glazer

220

Index236

Acknowledgements The editor wishes to thank Rabbi Joel Roth, Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, Shaul Magid, and Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove for their guidance in seeing this project to fruition. Special thanks go to Abigail Gillman and Deborah Gillman for their support and encouragement. This volume would not have been possible without the generous financial support of Rabbi Elliot and Marlynn Dorff, Rabbi Joel and Barbara Roth, Rabbi Ira Stone, Rabbi Leonard Levin, Rabbi Aubrey Glazer, the Park Avenue Synagogue Community, and Robert Rifkind. Thanks also to Nina Kretzmer for her editorial assistance and to Sharona Vedol and Deva Jasheway at Academic Studies Press for their skilled editorial guidance.



Preface It is my distinct honor and pleasure to be able to contribute to the publication of this volume of essays in honor of my colleague and friend Neil Gillman. Neil and I got to know one another in 1996, when I joined the Jewish Theological Seminary faculty as a member of the Department of Jewish Philosophy, where he served as chair. By that time, Neil had been teaching at the seminary for over three decades. His theological work was widely known and he was a beloved teacher to at least two generations of rabbinical students, undergraduates, and graduate students. As a colleague Neil was gracious, passionate, and generous with his time. He had often complained that our discipline, Jewish philosophy and theology, was not given proper recognition at the seminary, and to a large degree he was correct. What many outside the seminary do not know is that he waged a decades-long battle with the seminary administration to raise the stature of our department and develop a Rabbinical School curriculum that would expose seminarians to the world of Jewish thought and enable them, with undergraduate and graduate students, to cultivate their own theological positions, defending them in seminars where both he and his students challenged them to articulate coherent theological arguments. This exhausting enterprise bore much fruit. Many graduates of JTS look back at their time there and appreciate Neil’s effort to push them to think theologically, not only for professional reasons but, perhaps more important for Neil, for personal ones as well. As a young assistant professor who worked mostly in the Jewish mystical tradition, material Neil was not familiar with, he was always open, proving to be as good a listener as he was a teacher. Neil fought many intellectual battles with his esteemed colleagues over the years and I always admired his steadfastness, integrity, humor, and an undying commitment to his principles. It is appropriate that this volume includes essays from his peers, his colleagues, and his students. All three groups experienced Neil differently but all three came to appreciate his mind, his daring, and his 8

Preface

intellectual generosity. Neil spent his entire career at JTS, from his rabbinical ordination in 1960 until his retirement in the 2000s. Generations of students stood outside his door, waiting for advice, criticism, or just conversation. I sincerely hope he finds this volume a fitting tribute to his intellectual and spiritual life and I want to personally thank Bill Plevan for his tireless efforts to see this through to publication. It is our humble gift and our small gesture to a beloved colleague, mentor, teacher, and friend. Shaul Magid Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Professor of Jewish Studies Indiana University/Bloomington

Introduction William Plevan

This volume is published to celebrate and honor the work of Neil Gillman, his years of service to the Jewish Theological Seminary and his contribution to the study of Jewish philosophy and theology. The title of the volume, Personal Theology, alludes to Neil’s distinctive contribution to Jewish education in North America. In the afterword to his book, Sacred Fragments, Neil invites his readers to put their own personal theological commitments into writing, something he would do for generations of students at JTS and in adult education classes.1 For Neil, encouraging the writing of a personal theological statement was not just an educational technique, it was the realization of his mission as a teacher. When Neil began his own career at JTS, theology was not a formal part of the rabbinical school curriculum. That this has changed is due in large part to Neil’s efforts to make theology a central part not only of the course of rabbinical study, but a part of the experience of every student who comes to JTS. Neil’s teaching has had an enormous impact on generations of students who came to the Seminary hungry to learn classical Jewish texts and to be able to relate the teachings in those texts to their religious lives. For these future rabbis, cantors, teachers, and Jewish leaders, personal theological reflection opened up well-springs of spiritual and educational possibilities that were not possible in the rest of the Seminary curriculum. Neil’s passion for theology anticipated the turn towards introspection and spirituality in American religious life. For Jews who were raised in an era when American synagogue participation was largely driven by ethnic Jewishness and God was not discussed with any seriousness, this invitation to personal theological reflection was exhilarating and revolutionary. For the future Jewish professionals that he taught—rabbis, cantors and educators—the personal theological 1

See Neil Gillman, Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 275-279. Hereafter, the Jewish Publication Society will be written as JPS. 10

Introduction

statement compelled them to articulate their commitments, to note the differing images of God in the Jewish textual sources they studied and to develop a way of speaking about God that could respond to people’s spiritual longings. Thus, “personal theology” is not only Neil’s signature contribution to Jewish education, it is also the watchword of his career as a teacher and writer. Deeply influenced by existentialism in philosophy and theology, Neil believed that both philosophical inquiry and religious life should center on what one has personally at stake in the matter of inquiry and belief. In his writing and teaching, Neil was nothing if not personal. Spending his entire teaching career at an institution, JTS, known for promoting a dispassionate and objective approach to the study of Jewish texts, Neil always spoke of his own theological commitments with a refreshing personal honesty. For his many students and colleagues, Neil brought personal theology into the open, stimulating conversations between students and teachers that might have been previously marginalized to quiet corners of Seminary life, or never raised at all. This volume is an outgrowth of many years of those conversations between Neil and his students and colleagues. In this sense, all the contributions to this volume are personal: everyone has something at stake in their inquiry, and contributors have brought something personal to their essays in two ways: all have something personal at stake in their subject of inquiry, and in their gratitude to Neil Gillman. My own encounter with Neil began when I was an undergraduate student studying philosophy while a contemplating a career in the rabbinate and possibly teaching Jewish studies. I read Sacred Fragments while in college, and had an opportunity to take a class with Neil in the summer of 1995. Writing a personal theology for that class was one of the most invigorating intellectual experiences of my college years and set me on the path of rabbinical studies at JTS prepared with a set of questions and problems that motivated my deepest learning and spiritual experiences. In my later rabbinical school years, he and I studied Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Job together in his office, allowing us the opportunity to delve into questions of faith with the ancient Jewish masters of those questions. I have been blessed to have him as my teacher. 11

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* Neil’s influence on American Jewish life and thought has been widespread, and cannot be fully accounted for in one volume such as this. Conservative Judaism, the journal published by the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative Rabbis, published a volume honoring Neil in 2008.2 This volume seeks to complement that effort by drawing on Neil’s colleagues and students in the world of academic Jewish studies and seminary education. Their contributions are a tribute to his impact on American Jewish thought in Jewish theology, philosophy and Conservative Judaism. The goal of a theology course taught by Neil Gillman was, ultimately, to help students to become comfortable with their own language for speaking about God in the context of a committed Jewish life. Neil’s teaching and writing has turned increasingly to examining these images of God in Jewish textual sources. Elliot N. Dorff has taught Jewish thought and ethics at the American Jewish University (formally the University of Judaism) for over forty years and has been a frequent conversation and debate partner with Neil in matters of Jewish theology. He and Neil shared an interest in the epistemological issues in theology, how we claim to have any knowledge about God, although Neil’s existential approach was usually at odds with Dorff’s orientation towards analytic philosophy of religion, which served as a point of departure for their compelling debates. In this essay, Dorff extends his earlier analysis of religious knowledge to the problem of idolatry: how and when do we say that some images of God are impermissible within a pluralistic and non-foundationalist philosophical and theological framework? One of Neil’s points of emphasis in theological education was making students aware of the role of human thought patterns in the way we think about God. To explain this idea, Neil used the term “myth,” meaning a narrative or thought-system that provides an overarching structure to the way we think about reality. Theological language, Neil believes, is embedded in a myth in which we think about God and our Jewish identity and practice. In classes, the term often proved to be provocative, as students so often were used to the term only referring to 2

Conservative Judaism 61 (2008-9). 12

Introduction

falsities, but the challenge presented by the term lent itself to drawing attention to the underlying philosophical assumptions about the status of our knowledge claims about God. Ira Stone’s contribution offers a critical reflection on Neil’s use of the term and its implications for contemporary Jewish theology. Stone and Dorff shared Neil’s vocation of teaching Jewish theology at seminaries of the Conservative movement. Two other contributors to this volume share that vocation at seminaries of other Jewish denominations. Eugene Borowitz of HUC-JIR has offered his appreciation for Neil in the form of a reflection on the role he and Neil have played as teachers of Jewish theology to Jewish leaders. Art Green’s essay is a statement of principles for neo-Hasidic spirituality, and represents the kind of personal theological statement Neil solicited from students and, perhaps more indirectly, from colleagues. Along with Neil, these teachers proved the value of Jewish theology as a part of a Jewish seminary education. To this point, however, it is not clear that the value of “theology” as a mode of Jewish discourse is still not fully embraced in the world of academic Jewish studies. Neil himself admits that his own hopes to win the esteem for theology and philosophy at JTS have not been fully successful.3 One of Neil’s graduate students at JTS, Nina Redl, directly confronts this problem and reflects on how Jewish theology may be properly appreciated as a rigorous field of study in Jewish academic circles. Jewish theology, she suggests, is needed to address the question of what it means to be Jewish, in all the ways that question can be asked. The academic study of Judaism can provide much material to help answer that question, but a discipline such as theology is vital to actually providing answers for the broader Jewish public. Redl also argues that theology is critical for Jews committed to halakhic observance. Halakhists may answer questions about what the halakha is, but a community committed to halakhic observance needs to consider why living according to halakha matters. This question has been part of Neil’s theological journey from the beginning. In his introduction to a collection of his theological writings, Neil describes himself as having entered JTS with a “bifurcated personal theology,” with “theological existentialism” on the one hand and “halakhic tra 3

Neil Gillman, Doing Jewish Theology (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2008), x. 13

William Plevan

ditionalism” on the other.4 Neil always maintained his commitment to this halakhic traditionalism, although neither the halakhic system itself nor legal theory has ever been part of his research or teaching. Recently, however, he has boldly recalibrated the tension in his commitments by publically suggesting that the Conservative movement move away from its identity as a halakhic movement.5 This suggestion, which remains controversial among Conservative Jewish thinkers, was not a break with Conservative Judaism, but rather an attempt to urge the movement to drop one of its most frequent monikers of selfidentification, that of being “halakhic.” A full consideration of Neil’s call to the movement is beyond the scope of this introduction, but two essays in this volume respond to it and serve as a tribute to Neil’s important role in the intellectual life of Conservative Judaism. The first response comes from Joel Roth, Neil’s friend and partner in debate for many years. Roth’s response is significant because it ultimately confirms that he and Gillman share the view that halakhic discourse and theological discourse are separate realms that can have little impact on each other. If Gillman’s claim is that the Conservative movement should define itself less by its adherence to halakhah and more by its aggadic and theological commitments, than Roth’s response is to flip this claim on its head, and affirm halakhah as the shared discourse of the Conservative movement. Leonard Levin, a student of Neil’s, also affirms the centrality of halakhic discourse for Conservative Judaism. In his paper, he develops an approach to halakhah that is not dependent on the notion that the Torah is divinely authored, or at least divinely authorized. Whatever Neil’s resistance to calling Conservative Judaism “halakhic,” he has not abandoned his appreciation for the value of classical Jewish ritual, in particular rituals associated with prayer. Neil devoted a great deal of attention to new trends in ritual studies that would shed light on the theological dimensions of Jewish prayer. He also applied these insights to his work as a teacher of Jewish educators. Neil believed that serious engagement with theological issues should happen at all levels of Jewish education. He collaborated with professors of Jewish 4 5

Gillman, Doing Jewish Theology, xi. Neil Gillman, “A New Aggadah for the Conservative Movement,” Conservative Judaism 58 (2006): 29-45. 14

Introduction

Education at JTS to enable future Jewish educators to integrate meaningful theological reflection into their teaching. He regularly attended the Conference for Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE) conferences in order to engage Jewish educators around the country in serious reflection on theological issues. In this volume, Saul Wachs presents a curriculum for prayer services that reflects the intersection of practical education and Jewish theology that has been the hallmark of Neil’s career. Several writers here have taken up themes that touch on the streams of both American and European Jewish thought that deeply shaped Neil’s theological work. Neil regularly acknowledged that Mordecai Kaplan’s pragmatic and naturalistic approach to theology was influential to his own work, even if he found it unsatisfying in many significant ways. In a fitting tribute to Neil, Kaplan’s biographer Mel Scult looks at Kaplan as a teacher of midrash at JTS. The essay reveals important ways in which Neil continued Kaplan’s role as a teacher at JTS, helping students find the meaning of the sources they studied. Shaul Magid, Neil’s colleague at JTS for many years, places Kaplan’s thought in the broader context of radical forms of ethical monotheism in America, some of which Kaplan engaged directly. The essay addresses the variety of ways American Jews have addressed their own Jewishness, and reflects the broader historical reality of Judaism in American that has made Neil’s own work possible. The vitality of American Judaism lies with Jews who renew the search to understand what it means to be a unique people with a unique heritage. Neil’s teaching has awakened that kind of thinking in his students and colleagues. Neil’s theological approach was most influenced by European existentialism, and as I indicated above, the very idea of a personal theology is indebted to the existentialist tradition. The existentialist method in philosophy and theology is primarily individualistic, but for Neil, existential confrontation with the meaning of our existence was the shared experience of a community. To borrow H. Richard Neibuhr’s phrase, Neil should be considered a “social existentialist.”6 For Neil, a Jewish theology was one Jew’s attempt to articulate their people’s communal experience with God and to share that experience with other Jews, that they might learn from it. In that sense, personal theology was always dialogical, in 6

H. Richard Niebhur, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 241. 15

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Buber’s full sense of that term. Two students of Neil’s from JTS share work, inspired in part by Neil’s guidance, that touches on the realization of existential questions in the life of the Jewish people. Sharon Portnoff’s essay looks at Emil Fackenheim’s return to Hegel’s thought and reveals some existentialist elements in Fackenheim’s philosophy. In returning to Hegel, Fackenheim embraced a struggle between history and philosophy and affirmed the value of the witness of our concrete existence and experience against a purely reductive historicism. Portnoff’s reflections on Fackenheim point the way towards a historically situated existential orientation in Jewish theological reflection. Aubrey Glazer’s essay places the work of French poet Edmund Jabes in conversation with Gabriel Marcel, the French Christian existentialist who was the subject of Neil’s doctoral dissertation. The essay takes up a challenge Neil once gave Glazer, namely to find resources in Jewish thought and theology to challenge the Death of God theology of Richard Rubinstein. For Neil, no personal theology could be complete without confronting death and the problem of undeserved suffering. Neil has often said that he was more vexed by “natural evil” such as disease, as opposed to evil committed by free-willing human beings. However, the Holocaust gives the theological problem of undeserved suffering a communal and historical scope, and questions whether God could be aware of human suffering if such large-scale murder could be perpetrated. For Neil, the notion of God’s death was too great a break with the Jewish past. In his own work he sought Jewish responses to the problem of undeserved suffering that provided continuity with classical Jewish images of God while still being true to the experiences of modern Jews. Neil articulated his own views about Jewish responses to suffering in his book The Death of Death. There, Neil looks to the ancient Jewish belief, enshrined in the rabbinic liturgy, that God will resurrect and return us to full bodily life at some future time. To Neil, the idea of resurrection expresses the most important Jewish images of God. For God to truly be the living God, a God of life, Elohim Chayim, then God must be able to ultimately overcome death. Moreover, the life that God will restore is my embodied life as I have had in this world, in which I love, suffer, share joy with others and perform God’s mitzvot. What Neil says of God, I think, is what he has taught us about what we think of God. For theology to truly be worth the name and its association with God, it must be 16

Introduction

truly personal. Theology must draw us into life, and not away from life; theology must value the real embodied life we live as human beings and not some abstraction of that life. The tendency to forget what we have personally at stake in our work is of course a particular pitfall of those who work within the academy, as Neil himself saw clearly and spoke about honestly. This volume has brought together the voices of his colleagues and students who work within the academy and share his commitment to not lose sight of what we have at stake in academic work in Jewish studies. In the spirit of Neil’s work, all the contributors to this volume have written about a subject in which they have something personal at stake, something of “ultimate concern,” to use Tillich’s phrase which is a favorite of Neil’s. Furthermore, all the essays reflect Neil’s personal impact on the intellectual and spiritual journey of each contributor. My hope is that this book will stand as a public expression of gratitude for Neil’s teachings to us all, and a humble attempt to give them greater life.

Jewish Images of God1 Elliot N. Dorff

Neil Gillman taught me how to chant Eikhah (the Book of Lamentations) for the fast of Tisha B’Av at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin when I was thirteen. Ever since then, he has been my teacher in more ways than I can count or recount. His innovative thinking about how to construe Jewish faith and how to justify it, his use of anthropology as well as philosophy in approaching questions of God and life after death, and his ability to combine complete intellectual openness and honesty with a commitment to Jewish tradition mark his work as truly important, indeed, a real gift to Jews and non-Jews alike. His educational achievements as a teacher who has motivated two generations of rabbinical students, undergraduates, and lay leaders to articulate what they believe and why and then to probe their initial statements to make them clearer and sounder have shown us all the role that philosophy was meant to take in our lives—not just to study what other people think, but to see their relevance for our own lives and thought. His real interest in his students, and his open door to them at a time when few Seminary faculty would spend time outside of class with students, has made him a mentor to thousands of people who were lucky enough to count him as their teacher. As Rabbinical School Dean, he created the first truly structured rabbinical school curriculum at the Jewish Theological Seminary, which has benefited all those who studied under that curriculum and any of its successors, for he was the first to insist that what students learn be determined by carefully articulated goals for rabbinic education that then shaped a curriculum to meet those goals. His use of modern science and anthropology, together with his interactions with Jews of 1

The following abbreviations apply to all notes below: M. = Mishnah (edited by Rabbi Judah, the President of the Sanhedrin, c. 200 C.E.). B. = Babylonian Talmud, edited by Ravina and Rav Ashi c. 500 C.E. M.T. = Maimonides’ law code, the Mishneh Torah, completed in 1177 C.E. S.A. = Joseph Caro’s law code, the Shulhan Arukh, completed in 1565 C.E. 18

Jewish Images of God

all streams of thought as well as non-Jews, has reminded all of us in a very graphic way that our approach to Judaism cannot be narrowly confined to Jewish texts but must rather take account of the broad world as we now know it. For all of these lessons, Gillman’s work is a real gift to us all. Like oh-so-many people who have encountered Neil Gillman, I treasure him not only as a teacher and colleague, but as a wonderful friend. He is one of the most caring and genuine people I know. I thus consider it a privilege to be able to contribute to this volume in his honor. Gillman’s Sacred Fragments, The Way Into God, and The Death of Death are all statements of his interest in, and contributions to, theology. As a result, I thought that this essay, which also deals with the foundations of Jewish faith and how we talk about it, would be an appropriate tribute to him and his work. Readers will find in this essay echoes of his insistence on spelling out and defending the grounds for our belief in God and his suggestions of using symbols and myths to describe God, the object of our faith. Thus, even though I cannot guarantee that he would agree with me here—I eagerly anticipate the phone call in which he tells me, “Elliot, you can’t believe that!”—I offer it in tribute to him as an essay that very much fits the topics of our shared interests and approach.

Sources of Knowledge of God Because this essay is a continuation of my thinking about God described in my book, Knowing God: Jewish Journeys to the Unknowable (1992),2 I  must first describe the topics and general approach that I take in that book. While Jews have used reason to know God, it has not been the primary way in which Jews have found God. Nevertheless, in Knowing God I devote a chapter to how contemporary Jews who know modern analytic philosophy might learn about God through the use of reason in that new way. Specifically, I argue that it is not appropriate to try to know God through reason in the mode of hypothetical discovery that is characteristic of science, in which a person knows what kind of evi 2

Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992; republished Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. 19

Elliot N. Dorff

dence will confirm or disconfirm their hypothesis, searches for such evidence, and then comes to a conclusion as to whether the hypothesis is true or false. Instead, to know God we need to use non-hypothetical discovery, in which we already know all the relevant evidence, and have no piece of evidence that will demonstrate something with certainty, but make a discovery by seeing the evidence in a new pattern. As an analogy, by the time a jury begins deliberations, it knows all the information it is going to have, and the question before it is whether to see in that evidence a pattern of actions that amounts to guilt or innocence. In that chapter, I invoke the Gardener Parable created by John Wisdom to illustrate the point. In that parable, a believer and a nonbeliever are both observing a garden. The believer sees the order and beauty of the garden while the non-believer sees only its weeds and unkempt parts. Wisdom’s point was that whether one is a believer or not depends on one’s blik (perspective), the patterns one sees or fails to see in life. Anthony Flew used that parable to assert that the believer will continue to believe in the invisible Gardener even if the two observers remain in the garden a long time, set up devices to catch an elusive gardener, and yet never see him or her. That is, even if the evidence is overwhelmingly against belief in the Gardener, Flew says, ultimately the theist is committed to a belief system that “dies the death of a thousand qualifications.” My own view, though, is that life as we know it is not nearly as clear as Flew thinks—that there can be tests to determine whether there is a Gardener or not in a hypothetical mode. Rather, there is indeed evidence to support atheism (especially the problem of evil), but there is also evidence to support belief in a personal and caring God (i.e., theism)—most notably, the facts that we exist at all, that creativity takes place in nature and by human beings, that we depend daily for our lives on immensely complex orders in our bodies and in nature, that people can and do discriminate morally good and bad behavior and act according to that perception, that people can reason and understand things, and that we can have relationships with others. Consequently, to affirm theism is not irrational in defiance of all evidence; it is rather to choose one pattern of seeing the world, with many grounds to support it, over another view of the world, with some evidence for that as well. That is exactly what we do when we decide to marry someone, when we conclude that a business deal is worth pursu20

Jewish Images of God

ing, and when the federal Food and Drug Administration decides that a given medicine is safe and effective despite reports of negative side effects and even if it works for, say, only 30% of patients with a given disease. One other important point about this intellectual way of knowing God is that it does not exist in a vacuum. While each of us individually might assess a given way of looking at life, most of the time we do that not as isolated individuals but rather as part of a community. The community helps us recognize what to look for in the first place by giving us an education and by pointing out the significance of areas of our experience that we might otherwise not have noticed; that happens, for example, when school systems decide what subjects to include in their curriculum and when colleges institute liberal arts requirements. Communities also impart their own view of the significance of various aspects of life through their stories and songs, their literature, their science, their history, their laws, their morals, their customs, their forms of government, and their religion. Communities teach people not only what to look for, but also how to take in a given area of experience with more sensitivity (e.g., how to see the various features of a painting) and how to think about such phenomena so that one can assess the strengths and weaknesses of alternate explanations and evaluations of them (in our example, how to distinguish good paintings from bad ones beyond bald statements like “I like it” or “I hate it.”). Thus the patterns of religious belief that we adopt—whether theistic, polytheistic, atheistic, or agnostic—are usually based on the patterns we see in life as a member of a community. The community does not determine our beliefs—thinkers in every tradition perform a vital function for both the tradition itself and for its adherents by pushing the envelope of the received tradition and thus keeping it dynamic—but the community does play a critical role in shaping our beliefs and testing them. Reason, though, is not the primary Jewish way of knowing God. Rather, the Jewish conviction that God is personal, having personal characteristics, led Jews to discover God and interact with Him in the same ways we learn about and relate to human persons. Specifically, we come to know people by talking with them and by doing things with them. Similarly, Jews come to know God through God speaking to us (revelation), through our speaking to God (prayer), through God doing things with us (God acting in history), and through our doing things 21

Elliot N. Dorff

with God (the life of acting in accordance with God’s commandments). As a result, there is a chapter in my book on each of these four modes of knowing God. In each case I not only describe how the Jewish tradition understands the particular phenomenon, but also how it uses revelation, prayer, God’s acts in history, and the life of mitzvot (commandments) to give us knowledge of God. I will leave it to those interested in these epistemological questions to consult that book. It is important to note two things about that discussion, though, that are important for interfaith dialogue. First, precisely because human beings are not all-knowing, we cannot have full and complete knowledge of most things in life, least of all God. Any avenue to knowledge of God will necessarily give us only partial knowledge, and sometimes we may even find that what we learn through one method is not compatible with what we learn from another. Still, if we are going to have the fullest knowledge possible to us as human beings, we must employ all the methods to learn about God available to us. In this, I am endorsing the classic Jewish stance in contrast to the Greek approach to knowledge—that is, I am preferring truth to consistency, acknowledging and dealing with whatever we find to be true even if all our experiences do not fit well together. (This has a parallel in Anglo-American systems of thought, which also prefer truth to consistency, in contrast to many German philosophies.) Second, we can affirm our own beliefs about God—even to the point of being willing to die for them—while still being open to learning from people who hold other beliefs. How is that possible? Should it not be the case that if I am right, anyone who holds a different belief must be wrong? My answer to that question is “No,” although some people think so. The position I am advocating is, in Van Harvey’s terminology, “soft perspectivism” rather than “hard perspectivism” or “non-perspectivism.” Non-perspectivists claim that we look at the world through epistemologically transparent eyeglasses, that our cultural and personal differences make no difference whatsoever in how we see the world. Hard perspectivists, on the other end of the spectrum, maintain that one’s perspective so strongly affects what one sees that it inevitably makes it impossible to understand, let alone learn from, those who hold other perspectives. In contrast to these two extremes, we can say, as soft perspectivists do, that we each have a perspective that influ22

Jewish Images of God

ences how we think and act but that that perspective is permeable enough so as to make it possible to understand others and even to learn from them.3 Later, Hilary Putnam and Robert Nozick articulated the same approach from the other end, emphasizing the realism involved in it, even though the real world is always perceived through a lens. Thus, as they point out, it is erroneous to think of knowledge as our social conventions about what is true, where a statement is true if, and only if, it accords with a given society’s “language game.” That severs knowledge from any explicit tie to the real. On the other end of the spectrum, it is also wrong to assert that human beings can apprehend that which is beyond all human conception (“metaphysical realism”). Such a view ignores the limitations of human knowledge, especially the fact that none of us is an objective observer of the world: we all see the world through conceptual lenses of one sort or another, and there is no escaping the limits of those lenses. Instead, we should embrace “conceptual realism,” where one affirms both the tie to the real and the need for a perspective to access it.4 As Gordon Tucker has pointed out,5 this last theory about knowledge avoids the tyranny that both of the other theories produce, and it opens the way for dissent, debate, and, I would add, democracy. This approach comes out of a philosophically accurate assessment of our knowledge of God: we can and do say some things about God 3

4

5

For the terms “hard” and “soft” perspectivism, cf. Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 205-230; cf. also James W. McClendon, Jr. and James M. Smith, Understanding Religious Convictions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 6-8. It is interesting to note that even a medieval, hard-line anti-rationalist like Yehuda HaLevi was open to considering the claims of other faiths and recognized that part of his inability to accept them stemmed from the fact that they were not his faiths, that he had not had personal experience with them; cf. Yehuda HaLevi, Kuzari, Book I, Sections 5, 6, 25, 63-65, 80-91; reprinted in Section Three of Three Jewish Philosophers, ed. Isaak Heinemann (Philadelphia: JPS, 1960), 31-32, 35, 37-38, 41-45. Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987), esp. 17-19. See also Robert Nozick, The Examined Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 49-51. Gordon Tucker, “Metaphysical Realism: Theoretical and Practical Considerations,” Conservative Judaism 51, 2 (Winter, 1999): 84-95, esp. 93-95. 23

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and act on our convictions, and our beliefs and actions can be justified by reasons that can be shared and appreciated by others; but other, equally rational, moral, and caring people might differ with us and might have good reasons for what they say and do. This is the result to be expected in all areas of knowledge, but especially where our knowledge is, by the very nature of the knower and the subject to be known, incomplete. Asian faiths underscore this point, for, by and large, they have historically not been as exclusive as the Western faiths have been. They have rather stated their convictions and practices and allowed individuals to adhere to several faiths at the same time. Westerners are used to an “either/or” approach to truth in both philosophy and religion, and feel decidedly ill at ease with the “both/and” approach common in the Far East. The epistemological humility for which I am arguing, however, and which I see as being the only philosophically responsible position to take, should goad us to learn an important lesson from our brothers and sisters in Asia. At the same time, it should not lead us to a position in which we maintain that people should believe whatever suits them at the moment and stand for no lasting convictions, where, in other words, there is no such thing as knowledge. The realism in the position I am espousing makes it possible to be right or wrong—and to debate with others about which position is correct. Thus, having strong convictions about the true and the good is compatible with a pluralistic approach to people of other faiths: I must just acknowledge that however much I believe in what I affirm, I am not omniscient and therefore may be wrong. I must therefore be open to discussions with people who hold other views in order to understand them and learn from them. I must also understand that, if my convictions are to be intellectually and religiously responsible, I cannot just assert whatever I believe; I must rather provide grounds for my beliefs that can be examined and critiqued by other people in my own tradition and outside it. In the end, I may think that the confirming evidence for my beliefs far outweighs their problems, which explains why I believe what I do; in contrast, others may weigh things differently, which explains why they hold other convictions. But for faith to be rational and responsible, it must not be blind and unquestioning, but rather grounded and examined. 24

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Indeed, the only people who are philosophically ruled out of an accepting, pluralistic approach are either those who assert their convictions without being willing to expose them to analysis or those who maintain a brand of metaphysical realism, for people of both sorts insist that only they can be right. That cocksure stance is not only philosophically unfounded and intellectually narrow, often leading, when such people have power, to political fascism; it is also, in essence, an idolatrous worship of their own intelligence and views. For pluralism and interfaith dialogue to take place, all people involved must have a much more accurate and humble understanding of their own knowledge, accompanied by the awareness that they may be wrong, while at the same time the intellectual wherewithal and thoughtfulness to affirm convictions that they are prepared both to defend and to evaluate.6 That stance, embracing both soft perspectivism and conceptual realism, has the double advantage of realistically describing human knowledge while simultaneously making pluralism possible. (I discuss the historical, philosophical, and theological bases for interfaith discussion and cooperation in Chapter Four of my book, To Do the Right and the Good: A Jewish Approach to Modern Social Ethics.7) In this essay, then, I want to go further than I do in the last chapter of Knowing God, in which I discuss how we describe the God we come to know through the five modes of experience I have examined as avenues to the Unknowable—reason, revelation, prayer, divine acts in history, and fulfilling God’s commandments. Specifically, I will below first present one problem with describing God at all—namely, the danger of limiting God to our descriptions and possibly even becoming idolatrous—and then I will explore how our images of God gain their meaning, how we can assess the truth or falsity of our images of God, and how images of God gain authority within a religious community like that of the Jews, all in a way that can avoid intellectual and religious idolatry. The Jewish tradition, after all, sees it as our duty not only to recognize, praise, 6

7

Gordon Tucker has made this point (see the previous note), and, in discussions with me, Dr. Hanan Alexander has emphasized it. I would like to thank them both for making me aware of these philosophical (and political) limits of pluralism. Elliot N. Dorff, To Do the Right and the Good: A Jewish Approach to Modern Social Ethics (Philadelphia: JPS, 2002), Chapter Four. 25

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and thank the transcendent aspects of life that we name God (actually, Adonai) and to follow the divine commandments to make this a better world, but also to describe God correctly.

Anthropomorphism as a Form of Idolatry How shall we picture God? Some prominent medieval philosophers held that we can know with certainty of the existence of God, but the limitations of human intelligence and the infinite character of God make it impossible for us to know the nature of God altogether. Maimonides, for example, claimed that we can only know that God is not characterized by any finite attributes such as the ones that humans possess. Indeed, the problem goes even deeper. Not only is it philosophically unreasonable to expect to know the character of God; it is also, according to some interpretations, religiously forbidden to depict God in human terms. This stems from the biblical laws against idolatry. Three related, but distinct, matters are included in these prohibitions: the worship of idols, the worship of God with pagan rites, and the making of idols. The first of those, the worship of idols, includes prohibitions against idol worship conforming to pagan rituals; bowing down to an idol; offering a sacrifice to another god, including those represented by an idol; and paying homage to an idol.8 The second injunction, that against worshiping God with pagan rites,9 reflects the biblical view that only divinely ordained methods of worship can be assured of according with God’s will. And finally, making idols is explicitly prohibited, although only images to be used for worship.10 This reflects the common practice in the ancient world of requiring a ceremonial consecration before a graven image could become an embodiment of a god.11 8

9 10 11

Prohibitions against idol worship conforming to pagan rituals: Exodus 34:14; Deuteronomy 12:30; cf. B. Sanhedrin 61b. Prohibitions against bowing down to an idol and against paying homage to an idol in other forms: Exodus 20:5. Prohibition against offering a sacrifice to another god, including those represented by an idol: Exodus 22:19. Deuteronomy 12:31. That making idols is prohibited: Exodus 20:4, 20. That this applies only to objects used for worship: cf., for example, Leviticus 26:1. I have used here the categorization found in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1st ed, s.v. “Idolatry.” 26

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It is the last of these biblical prohibitions that addresses our issue, in particular the later rabbinic and philosophic expansions of it. The rabbis proscribed making idols for anyone’s worship, not just one’s own,12 but they also went beyond the context of worship in prohibiting the making of any human image: Why has it been taught: “All portraits are allowed except the portrait of a human being”? Rav Huna, the son of Rav Idi, replied: “From a discourse of Abaye I learned: ‘You shall not make with me’ (Ex. 20:20) [implies] you shall not make Me.”13

Since human beings were made “in God’s image,”14 making a human image would be tantamount to making a likeness of God. The later codes restrict this prohibition to sculpted images that protrude like idols (excluding those on indented or flat surfaces) and to representations of the full human being and not just the head or a part of the body,15 but the principle remains the same: since human beings partake in the likeness of God, to create a graven image of a human being would be, as it were, to create a likeness of God. Modern Jews may be startled by the prohibitions described here. Even the most observant Jews take photographs of one another; in fact, children in the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community trade “rebbe cards” with photographs of famous rabbis prominently displayed in much the same way that many children trade baseball cards. Moreover, many understand these laws to prohibit only intentional representations of God. The fact that the rabbis prohibited images of human beings under these laws underscores the importance they ascribed to the biblical verses attributing a divine image to human beings. It also makes it clear that the rabbis conceived of God, in turn, in human form. While the injunction against making images of human beings is perhaps the starkest expression of the classical tradition’s belief that God is 12 13 14 15

Sifra 7:1, end. B. Rosh Hashanah 24b; B. Avodah Zarah 43b. Genesis 1:26, 27; 5:1; 9:6. M.T. Laws of Idolatry 3:10, 11; S.A. Yoreh De’ah 141:4-7. They follow the Talmud (B. Avodah Zarah 43b), although Mekhilta, Yitro, Ch. 6 on Exodus 20:4, seems to prohibit indented representations too. Cf. Hagahot Maimoniyot on M.T. Laws of Idolatry 3:10. 27

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to be conceived in human form, it is by no means the only one. In both biblical and rabbinic literature, God is portrayed in human images. In the Bible, God has a face, nose, mouth, eyes, ears, hands, fingers, an arm, and feet.16 The rabbis continue this use of human imagery to describe God. For example, they assert, in one of my favorite rabbinic passages, that on the occasion of the wedding of Adam and Eve, God plaits Eve’s hair and serves as best man for Adam to indicate God’s intimate involvement in their wedding and, by extension, in every couple’s wedding. In other passages, God wears phylacteries and wraps Himself in a prayer shawl; He prays to Himself and studies the Torah during three hours of each day; He weeps over the failures of His creatures, visits the sick, comforts the mourner, and buries the dead.17 This stands in sharp contrast to the rationalist tradition in medieval Jewish philosophy. Maimonides, perhaps most of all, cannot tolerate any depiction of God in human form lest that limit God. Bodies and bodily parts, after all, are finite in extension and ability. Therefore any ascription of a body to God, however strongly one qualifies the comparison, implies a limitation on God’s extent and power. Instead, according to Maimonides,18 one must read the Bible’s bodily descriptions of God as 16

17

18

A face: e.g., Exodus 33:20, 23; Numbers 6:25, 26. A nose: e.g., Exodus 15:8; 2 Samuel 22:9, 16; Psalms 18:9, 16. A mouth: e.g., Numbers 12:8; 14:41; 22:18; 24:13; Deuteronomy 8:3; Isaiah 1:20; 40:5; 45:23; Jeremiah 9:11; Psalms 33:6. Eyes: e.g., Genesis 6:8; Deuteronomy 11:12; 32:10; Isaiah 43:4; 49:5; Psalms 17:8; 33:18. Ears: e.g., Numbers 11:1; 14:28; 1 Samuel 8:21; Ezekiel 8:18. Hands: e.g., Exodus 3:20; 15:6; I Samuel 5:6; Psalms 8:7; Job 12:9. Fingers: e.g., Exodus 8:15; 31:18; Deuteronomy 9:10. An arm: e.g., Exodus 6:6; Deuteronomy 4:34; 5:15; 26:8; 33:27; Isaiah 40:11; 51:9; 52:10; Jeremiah 21:5; 27:5; Psalms 77:16; 79:11; 89:22. Feet: e.g., Exodus 24:10; 2  Samuel 22:10; Nahum 1:3; Habbakuk 3:5; Isaiah 60:13; 66:1; Psalms 18:10; 99:5; 132:7. God plaits Eve’s hair and serves as best man for Adam: B. Berakhot 61a. God wears phylacteries and wraps Himself in a prayer shawl: B. Berakhot 6a; B. Rosh Hashanah 17b. He prays to Himself and studies the Torah during three hours of each day: B. Avodah Zarah 3b. He weeps over the failures of His creatures, visits the sick, comforts the mourner, and buries the dead: B. Haggigah 5b; Genesis Rabbah 8:13. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Part One, esp. chapters 1, 26, 28, 31, 35, 46, 50-60. 28

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negative attributes and, as he summarizes in his Thirteen Principles of the Faith, one must believe in a God who “is no body and . . . who is not affected by bodily characteristics.”19 One does not have to adopt Maimonides’ position to appreciate the problem that motivates it. If we depict God, either physically or mentally, as having human form, are we not simply writing ourselves large? Are we not engaging in an act of human hubris and divine diminution at one and the same time? God, after all, must be infinite and omnipotent in order to be God, or so it would seem, and that effectively precludes God’s having any shape, human or otherwise. On the other hand, though, the rationales behind the biblical and rabbinic depictions of God in human form are also clear. If we cannot picture God in some form, how are we to conceive of the Eternal at all? Moreover, what is to distinguish a believer from a non-believer if both assert that God cannot be conceived? Surely the belief in God must have some cognitive content for believers to assert it so strenuously and for non-believers to deny it just as vigorously. Moreover, God becomes awfully abstract and distant if we can only say what He is not; the God of the Bible and Rabbinic literature is so much more alive and emotionally real for us. For all of the problems that the rabbis had with idolatry, they thought that it had been conquered. “God created two evil inclinations in the world, that toward idolatry and the other toward incest. The former has already been uprooted, [but] the latter still holds sway.”20 This undoubtedly reflects the historical fact that after the Maccabees, there was little tendency on the part of the Jews to succumb to idolatry in its physical forms. The rabbis clearly did not mean that psychological forms of idolatry had vanished, for human beings in all ages have made gods of a whole host of objects of finite worth, including especially money, fame, power, and, particularly in modern America, work. People may not physically bow down to such things or even call them gods, but they surely treat them as such with equally devastating effects. Nothing matters in such people’s lives except their idol; all other worthy things and relationships are ignored or even dismissed as insignificant. 19 20

Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, Introduction to Sanhedrin, Chapter 10 (Ha-Helek), Section 5, Fundamental Belief 3. Song of Songs Rabbah 7:8; cf. B. Yoma 69b. 29

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When viewed from the standpoint of the conceptions that motivate us to act in given ways, this kind of idolatry is at the root of much of the immorality and decadence in modern society, just as it was in ancient society. Confusing the unimportant with the important, the finite with the infinite, leads us mistakenly to devote our time and energy to what are at best only partial or instrumental goals. Only grasping what is ultimately important in life—in theological terms, learning to discern the difference between idols and God—can save us from such serious mistakes. In practice, we human beings are all too often tempted by the sirens of temporary and improper goals, and it is the ongoing function of religion to remind us of what is really important. One can readily recognize the practical problems entailed in avoiding idolatry and instead living lives directed to appropriate goals; we struggle with that each day. Idolatry, though, is an intellectual challenge just as much as it is a practical one. We gain knowledge of God through the various avenues I discuss in my book, Knowing God, and that knowledge presumably suggests that certain understandings of God are more apt reflections of such experiences than others. Because both the Jewish tradition and our own experiences attest to a God who is infinite, though, we can never gain a total understanding of the Divine. Instead, we must formulate images of God based on our own, limited experience of the world and of God. Our epistemological position—our capacity to know and the limitations on that ability—gives us no choice in this; we simply have no other way to assimilate the knowledge our experiences give us of God. The same, of course, was true of the authors of the Bible and rabbinic literature: they too had to translate their experiences into images they could understand, feel, and communicate to others. How, then, do we judge whether we have done this as appropriately and accurately as possible? How do we avoid mistaking our image of God— whatever it is—for God? That is, how do we protect against idolatry in our very conception of God? In this paper, then, I shall address the cognitive status of Jewish images of God. Are they properly understood as literal descriptions of God, as totally metaphoric language, or as something in between? If we choose the last of these alternatives, how is that usage of language to be construed, and into what context of life does it best fit? How does it signify anything in that context? And finally, if God remains beyond 30

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human comprehension, can we at all distinguish proper images of God from idolatrous ones and between belief and unbelief? If so, how? 21

What Images Mean How, then, do we understand the meaning of religious images? Paul Tillich claimed that everything we say about God is symbolic,22 but, as Wilbur Urban has maintained, without “some literal knowledge of divine things, symbolic knowledge is an illusion.”23 Without the ability to translate, however inadequately, the meaning of symbols to more literal language, one has no way of determining whether they refer to anything at all, and certainly cannot discriminate between more or less adequate symbols for a given datum of experience. 24 Tillich and many others who speak of the symbolic nature of our discourse also neglect the difference between the meaning of religious symbols when contemplated philosophically and when used in religious acts. Theologians have been worried about limiting God through anthropomorphic images, and some have therefore sought to interpret religious images allegorically. The classic Jewish instance of this among the rationalists is, as I mentioned earlier, Maimonides; but Jewish mystics were at least as reticent to depict God in anything but metaphors, claiming that even their descriptions of the Godhead as divided into specific spheres told us some important things about the nature of God and how we should interact with Him but did not actually describe the Infinite, the Ein Sof. 21

22 23 24

See Chapter Seven of my book, Knowing God (at note 1 above), which is an earlier formulation of what I am wrestling with in this paper. There, I discuss the differences between images, creeds, and symbols, but I have eliminated that section here due to limitations on space. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 9. Cf. Vol. 1, 237-286 passim. Wilbur M. Urban, Humanity and Deity (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1951), 238. In one critic’s words, “Tillich’s via symbolica becomes a via negativa.” See Lewis S. Ford, “Tillich and Thomas: The Analogy of Being,” The Journal of Religion 46:2 (April, 1966), 244. Cf. also John Y. Fenton, “Being-Itself and Religious Symbolism,” The Journal of Religion 55:2 (April, 1965), 79; Paul Edwards, in Philosophy of Religion, Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Norbert O. Shelder (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 186-205. 31

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When religious people use images, however, they want to depict God in concrete language in order to make the experience of God vivid and at least partially intelligible in terms of their daily lives. They therefore literally picture God as their father—or, perhaps, their grandfather, or some other powerful and sagacious-looking man—when they use the father image to refer to God, and they have an ordinary rock in mind (albeit an impressive one) when they talk of God as their rock. For the religious person using these images, the experience of God, however indescribable ultimately, is like that of a father and a rock in some ways. Moreover, religious people are generally not bothered all that much by conflicts in their images of God. Is God a just or merciful judge, hard like a rock or flexible and vibrant like water, majestically transcendent or affectionately imminent? For the religious Jew, God is all of these things. The inconsistencies are not disturbing for religious people using such images for at least one of two reasons. First, God can be manifest in one characteristic on one occasion and its opposite on another, just as parents can appear to their children as almost different people depending upon the child’s age and the particular way in which the parent is interacting with the child now in contrast to yesterday. Moreover, religious people assume that no ascription of a characteristic to God can possibly be adequate in describing the Eternal. Not only is our knowledge limited, our very language, drawn from human experience as it is, is inevitably incapable of capturing that which is beyond it. As a result, in practice religious people have little difficulty in making a tangible use of images without being idolatrous. Of course, any word or object can be used for idolatrous purposes by those who wish to do so, and virtually any human expression has most probably been abused that way at one time or another. The strong emphasis on God’s transcendence, however, particularly in Judaism and Islam, have meant that historically vast numbers of believers in the West have used concrete images without mistaking them to encompass God. In widespread practice, then, the use of concrete imagery is not tantamount to idolatry; it is, instead, a way of making the experience of God immediate and vivid.25 25

See Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), Chapter 4, for a discussion of how religious language is analogical in its meaning, and see Chapter 5  there for a discussion of how conflicting images can complement each other without negating the quest for a unified, coherent, integrated model. 32

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The Truth of Images Even if we can discern what an image means, how shall we determine its truth or falsity? All human statements, whether intended to be taken literally or metaphorically, will, of course, be limited in their truth to what human beings can know, but how can we know whether a given image reflects reality more than it distorts it? That is, how can we decide whether a particular image is helpful or harmful in revealing the truth to us? Some have thought religious images should be treated as metaphors expressing hypothetical claims awaiting further confirmation. Their truth value would then be assessed according to the usual procedures for testing scientific propositions.26 So, for example, God pictured as a rock might be construed as a claim that God is strong. That claim would then be confirmed if our experiences of God showed that to be true. This approach, however, misconstrues the meaning of the images in the first place. They are not stated in the hypothetical mood; on the contrary, those who use them want to make declarative statements about their faith, not hypothetical ones. Moreover, one wonders how scientific methods would apply to the analysis of religious images. How, for example, can you definitively determine on scientific grounds whether or not God is a rock or water or a fire? At the other end of the spectrum, other thinkers have asserted that religious language, presumably including religious images, never intends to describe. It instead is used to evoke emotions and/or moral behavior.27 Picturing God as a rock, for example, is not expected to describe God in any way. The user of the image rather wants to make us feel overawed by God’s power and comforted by God’s ability to protect and sustain us. For those thinkers who take a moral rather than an emotional tack, the purpose of the image is to confirm our assurance that we must be moral because the divinely ordained moral standards that govern the 26

27

For example, Earl R. MacCormac, Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1976), 93; Lyman T. Lundeen, Risk and Rhetoric in Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 192-193. Emotive: A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (London: Dover, 1936), Ch. 6. Ethical: R. B. Braithwaite, “An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955); reprinted in many anthologies of articles in contemporary philosophy of religion. 33

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world are as reliable and unchangeable as bedrock and because God, like a rock, will steadfastly enforce them. As Dorothy Emmett has said, however, religion “loses its nerve when it ceases to believe that it expresses in some way truth about our relation to a reality beyond ourselves which ultimately concerns us.”28 We certainly are moved emotionally by many images of God, and sometimes such images reinforce our desire to act morally. They can do this, though, only if we believe that in some manner they describe the reality of God. Moreover, the people who use them intend to describe such a reality. The people of the Bible and the rabbis who used images certainly wanted thereby to convey the truth about the world—or at least their perception of it—and the same is true for religious people today. If religious people pretend that they do not aim to denote the real world through the images they use, they have both deceived themselves and lost their nerve, for they are then backing away from claims they really want to make. Denying these extreme positions, though, brings us back to our original questions: how do religious images carry a truth value (that is, make a claim that is either true or false), and how are we to judge that claim? When people say, “God is our father,” they are saying that reality as they perceive it has some characteristics of a father. They may be referring to the fact that their needs are provided for, or that they are protected from harm in parts of their lives, or that there are rules to be obeyed, or that they feel personally related to the larger reality they sense—all aspects of their relationship to their own, human father that they experience with regard to the transcendent element of experience as well. When they say that God is a fire, they are saying that ultimate reality enlivens us (“fires us up,” as it were) and that it is both warm and dangerous. A similar analysis could be made of all other religious images, for, after all, they all come from human experience. As an initial description, then, determining whether a given image by which God is described is true would amount to deciding whether ultimate reality is as the image describes. “God is our Father” would then be true if ultimate reality is, indeed, providing, protective, and so on, and false if it is not. Similarly, “God is our Mother”—one of the 28

Dorothy M. Emmett, The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (New York: MacMillan, 1957), 4. 34

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feminine images of God that have taken on new meaning with the rise of feminism—is true to the extent that reality as we know it manifests characteristics that we associate with human mothers. In both cases, of course, we must recognize that human fathers and mothers differ among themselves in their nature and that the very project of identifying some characteristics as fatherly and others as motherly is, in our time, fraught with difficulties—although not, I think, ultimately meaningless. The problem, of course, is that ultimate reality is many things, including some that are contradictory. That is why God is described in conflicting images. Moreover, while most people acknowledge the fullness of human experience, most also emphasize one or another aspect of reality in their visions of the world. For people like the seventeenth-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, for example, the world is generally a nasty place with only a few, transient glimmers of something better, while for people like twentieth-century American philosopher John Dewey the world is a positive, growing place whose negative characteristics are equally few and transient. This has an immediate effect on the truth of images. Hobbes and anyone who shares his view of life might say that God is not much like a rock and that that image does not ring true, for life is “nasty, brutish, and short,” as Hobbes said, and there seems little surety in it, even from God. The image of fire to describe God, on the other hand, might come closer to the truth for such people, but only in fire’s destructive aspects and not in its warm and enlivening character. For Dewey and like-minded people, in contrast, God depicted as a rock would truly convey the confidence that one can have in God and in objective moral standards. The rock image would, however, hide the dynamic character of God and of life in general. It would thus articulate only a partial truth—but so do many, if not most, images and propositions. It would still be valuable for the truth it communicates, but it must be used with its limitations in mind. God described as a fire would have less shortcomings in the eyes of such people, for fire correctly discloses the warm and invigorating character of life, together with its potential for destruction. It does not, however, reveal life’s stationary, dependable aspects as the image of God as a rock does, and so we would need both to transmit a relatively full picture of reality. Consequently, we must modify our criterion for the truth of an image to read as follows: Determining whether a given image by which God 35

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is described is true would amount to deciding whether ultimate reality is as the image describes from the perceiver’s perspective. We then need to assess the fidelity of that viewpoint by comparing it with others. Einstein showed us that we must take perspectives into account when assessing our sense perceptions of objects and forces, and what I am describing is a parallel process with regard to evaluating our images of God. We must also recognize that, as with propositions, images often tell the truth, but not the whole truth, and, depending upon how they are understood, they may even mask some truths while revealing others. Nevertheless, one should speak of the truth of specific religious images to emphasize that in religion one is still, after all, focusing on reality, and that religion’s claim to truth is no weaker than that of any of the social sciences and humanities where broad perspectives influence what one sees and how one assesses that. Even recognition of the role of one’s viewpoint, however, is not enough. Language, like rituals, laws, and customs, is a social phenomenon. A large part of the power of images is a function of how they are understood and used in a community. Human beings can communicate across communal lines, and hence some images are intelligible in multiple communities or even in a general context. God imagined as a rock, for example, would immediately appeal to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, although it probably would make less sense, if any at all, to Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and Jains. Some images communicate effectively only in the context of one community’s vision of the world. God plaiting Eve’s hair and serving as Adam’s best man provide examples of this. The Eastern religions do not speak of Adam and Eve. I am honestly not sure how Catholics would respond to such an image, for, on the one hand, in Catholicism a celibate clergy is held out as the ideal for human beings, and the rabbinic world of midrash is considered to make God too familiar; on the other hand, marriage for Catholics is a sacrament, vested with significant theological meaning. For Islam (except, perhaps, for Sufi Islam), God is too unequivocally transcendent to be involved in this way in the wedding of any couple, even the original one. Therefore, we must say this: To determine whether a given image by which God is described is true, one must decide whether ultimate reality is as the image describes it to be in the communal perspective through which the world is seen. This revised formulation of our criterion of truth communicates that judgments of the truth of images 36

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are functions of both the intersubjective experiences we all have and the communal, metaphysical glasses through which we see and understand our experiences. There is yet one other important component in the truth of images. It is indicated, in part, by the fact that religious people in the West do not generally speak of “ultimate reality,” but rather of “God.” There are theoretical reasons for doing that. Religious Jews, for example, name ultimate reality “God” to say, in part, that ultimate reality, as they perceive it and interact with it, is personal. In recognition of this personal quality they have traditionally called it “He,” and they conceive of God as having an intellect, conscience, will, and emotions. God’s personhood enables Him to ordain the commandments recorded in the Torah and to act in history. Religious Jews often also assert that God is transcendent. Philosophically, they mean that He is beyond the limits of possible experience and hence beyond human knowledge and/or that God exists apart from the material universe. The distinction between “ultimate reality” and the term “God” as used in religion, however, is greater than these philosophical points describe. In the practice of religion, “God” signifies that the speaker is not just contemplating ultimate reality, but relating to it personally, usually in the context of a convictional community.29 What makes a perspective religious is, as the etymology of the term indicates, the fact that it binds (Latin, ligare) the perceiver to the content of his or her perception and to the community that shares it. In theology, one emphasizes the intellectual component of this link, sometimes, unfortunately, to the exclusion of other forms of relationship; but the ongoing practice of religion does not stress any component of our being over any other. On the contrary, according to the Torah, one is to love God “with all one’s heart, all one’s soul, and all one’s might.”30 Thus, to continue our example, religious people encounter God’s transcendence most, rather than in the context of theology, in worship, where it denotes God’s continuing adverse judgment of people’s false centers of loyalty, their idolatry. In this setting, God’s transcendence 29 30

Cf. James W. McClendon, Jr. and James M. Smith, Understanding Religious Convictions, esp. ch. 1. Deuteronomy 6:5. This is part of the Shema, one of the core prayers of Jewish liturgy. 37

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is referred to as His holiness, and, as such, it takes on implications for action. The proper responses to God’s holiness are not only recognition of the limits of our intellectual understanding of God, but also commitment to fix the brokenness of the world, to education, to family, and to community, together with humility and repentance, for all these taken together are the means by which one gains a proper center for one’s life.31 The truth of a religious image, then, will depend not only on its ability to reflect an aspect of our experience, but also on its coherence with a communal framework of belief and action to which the particular experience is linked and through which it is understood. As I have discussed in my book, Knowing God, experiences and actions are revelatory of God if, and only if, a given community perceives and interprets them to be so.32 This means that the truth of religious images will depend not only upon their correspondence to reality as we all experience it, but also upon their compatibility with the world view of a particular religious community and with the actions through which it gives expression to its philosophy. Issues of truth in religion are thus ineluctably and indissolubly connected with issues of authority.

The Authority of Images How does an image become authoritative for a community—say, the Jewish one? In essence, in much the same way as a law does. Although the Bible acts as an original source for Jewish images and laws, it is not the final authority. What ultimately matters is how the community has interpreted and applied the Bible in their lives. To determine that, one 31

32

See Clyde A. Holbrook, The Iconoclastic Deity: Biblical Images of God (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1984), 202-211. I have been greatly influenced by chapters 4 and 14 of his book, especially pp. 61 and 192-198, in writing this section of this paper. I make this point most explicitly with regard to God’s words in Chapter Four of my book, Knowing God (see note 1 above), but it carries over also to human actions (Chapter Three), human words (Chapter Five), and divine actions (Chapter Six). See also an earlier expression of this thesis in my article, “Revelation,” Conservative Judaism 31:1-2 (Fall-Winter, 1976-77): 58-68, although there I did not acknowledge that actions in accordance with communal laws and customs can be revelatory. 38

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must pay attention to all of the following: what the community has, over time, selectively chosen to ignore and, in contrast, to emphasize in its educational and liturgical life; how passages are narrowed or extended in the community’s interpretations of them in the face of new circumstances or new sensitivities; what new images or practices have been appended by the legal and literary leaders of the people; and the extent to which all of this affects the actual thinking and practice of the masses and, conversely, the extent to which the conceptions and customs of the masses affect the decisions and creativity of the leaders. While this process may be strange to fundamentalist Protestants, it should be familiar to Jews, for it is nothing but the ongoing work of midrash, the biblical interpretation and expansion that is at the heart of rabbinic Judaism. The authority of images, then, like the authority of law, rests upon an interaction between the constitutive text (in the case of Judaism, the Bible) and the community that lives by it. The text gives all subsequent discussion a focus and a coherence. Interpretations may vary over a wide range, but they can still be Jewish if they are based on the Bible. As the classical rabbis maintain: Lest a person say, “Since some scholars declare a thing impure and others declare it pure, some pronounce a thing forbidden and others pronounce it permitted, some disqualify the ritual fitness of an object while others uphold it, how can I study Torah under such circumstances?” Scripture states, “They are given from one shepherd” (Ecclesiastes 12:11): One God has given them, one leader [Moses] has uttered them at the command of the Lord of all creation, blessed be He, as it says, “And God spoke all these words” (Exodus 20:1) . . . Although one scholar offers his view and another offers his, the words of both are all derived from what Moses, the shepherd, received from the One Lord of the Universe.33

An image or a law must also, however, acquire social confirmation to become authoritative for the community. It may not be easy to discern whether or not an image has gained social acceptance, especially in a community, like the Jewish one, that lacks a centralized body to 33

Numbers Rabbah 14:4. 39

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make decisions, but it is not impossible. In any community—even highly centralized ones like that of Roman Catholics—the authority of a law or image depends ultimately upon the degree of its acceptance by the community as a factor in their thought and in their lives. Old and new images are subjected to continuing evaluation of their rationality, their truth, their theological coherence and adequacy, their ethical probity and effectiveness, and their practicality. This process may last for a long, indeterminate period of time, but it may also be rapid and final. Imagining Jesus as the Messiah is a clear example of an image that was proposed and quickly rejected by most of the Jewish community in the first century of the Common Era, and discussion in the 1960s of God as dead was also either ignored or roundly rejected in Jewish discussions because of its heavy Christian connotations.34 On the other hand, the rabbinic image of God as one who studies and the Kabbalistic development of the picture of God as the Shekhinah, a warm presence with a distinctly feminine feel, are examples of how a new image can become implanted in the consciousness of a community. Ultimately, the authority of an image of God rests in its ability to evoke experiences of God. An image may have impeccable biblical and/ or rabbinic authority, but it will not influence thought and behavior for long if it fails to link people with God. Then it is a broken image, one that no longer functions to remind individuals and the community as a whole of the facts and values embedded in their perspective of reality and to motivate them to try to actualize their vision of what should be. Images come from the devotional and practical needs of the religious individual and community; and, when clearly formulated and emotionally alive, they command our allegiance in thought, emotion, and action. As Clyde Holbrook has said, “Awe, wonder, adoration, and the elevation of the human spirit are . . . [their] milieu, perhaps better confessed in song than trivialized by rote repetition as prose or made the subject of the proddings of an inquisitive reason.”35 34

35

Even Richard Rubenstein, who denies a God who acts in history, has trouble with the imagery of God as dead because it is, in his eyes and those of all other Jewish writers, much too Christian; see his book, After Auschwitz (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), chapter 14, with further references to this point in chapter 13. Holbrook, The Iconoclastic Deity, 223. See also page 218. 40

Jewish Images of God

Good and Bad Images I have probed the workings of images, their meaning, truth, and authority. Ultimately, we have no recourse but to think of God in images. The only real question is how we choose the images we use. In that process we must be on guard against images that are ineffective because they do not touch us; those that distort or falsify our experience; and those that undermine the community’s cohesiveness. On the other hand, we must seek images that have an immediately clear meaning (in contrast to creeds and symbols, which can be more enigmatic and lend themselves to multiple interpretations); we want images that evoke the emotions and actions that powerful images should; they must be true to our experience, even if they cannot be totally so; and they must enjoy the community’s validation in thought and action, motivating us to do morally good things, to, indeed, fix the world as much as we can and in as many ways that we can. Above all, we must make sure that our images are not idolatrous, that they do not represent the part for the whole, for that would distort or even undermine their truth and lead us to abandon Jews’ mandate to be a people true to God. For your own sake, therefore, be most careful—since you saw no shape when the Lord your God spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire—not to act wickedly and make for yourselves a sculptured image in any likeness whatever, having the form of a man or a woman, the form of any beast on earth, the form of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the form of anything that creeps on the ground, the form of any fish that is in the waters below the earth. And when you look up to the sky and behold the sun and the moon and the stars, the whole heavenly host, you must not be lured into bowing down to them or serving them. These the Lord your God allotted to the other peoples everywhere under heaven; but you the Lord took and brought out of Egypt, that iron blast furnace, to be His very own people. (Deuteronomy 4:15-20)

The Certainty of Myth: The Legacy of Neil Gillman Ira F. Stone

An Appreciation A personal appreciation of Rabbi Neil Gillman would exhaust the space allotted to me in this volume. Yet it is one of the lasting contributions of his approach to philosophy and to Jewish thought that the experience of the sacred is always mediated by the personal experience of the human being, therefore supplying me with the warrant to begin with a brief description of Neil’s impact on me. Like every student in the Rabbinical School at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America in the early 1970s, I knew Neil first as the Dean of the Rabbinical School. But I didn’t really know him. I  only came to know him some years later, when I attended his seminar at the Rabbinic Institute Retreat in January 1987. The seminar was his now classic one: “writing your personal theology.” In the course of that three-session seminar I wrote one-page statements on the subjects of God, Revelation and Redemption. What I wrote surprised me. I went home determined to continue the process, writing page after page of such one-page essays that I came to call theological meditations, and sending them off from Seattle to New York, where Neil would read and comment on them. He eventually submitted them to Stuart Matlins at the fledgling Jewish Lights Publications, who published them under the title Seeking The Path To Life. Neil opened the entire field of theology to me by implicitly suggesting that the truth of Torah, the Presence of the Divine, had to correspond to an experience within personal consciousness and must be able to be expressed in vocabulary that linked personal experience to some notion of the “outside,” the extra-personal. He also taught that the universal accessibility of this experience inevitably led to the creation of culturally conditioned vocabularies of the sacred that served both to carry the knowledge of this reality from generation to generation and to provide pathways by which individuals might seek this experience in the course of their individual journey toward living meaningful lives. These culturally conditioned vocabularies he chose to call “myths,” relying on the 42

The Certainty of Myth: The Legacy of Neil Gillman

language of serious religious studies in the academy despite the risk implicit in this usage, which in popular language described precisely what was false, rather than that which was profoundly true. It is this problem of myth that, in part, the remainder of this paper will address. But to complete the personal reflection: Circumstances subsequently led to my teaching theology and philosophy under Neil’s direction in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at JTS that he chaired for so many years. During those years I had the benefit of his mentoring as I discovered that while personal statements of theology may serve as an entry into the world of the sacred, they often suffer precisely in their “personal-ness,” or subjectivity. My journey required a language that recognized the inevitable beginning in subjectivity, but which almost immediately recognized its limitations, even its potentially tragic dangers, and sought instead to replace subjectivity with something other than objectivity, the already discredited solution of much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century, especially American and American Jewish, thought. Holding fast to the fundamental nature of subjectivity but recognizing its “other” led me to a life-long exploration of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, who, I would discover in the course of many years, substitutes subjectivity of the other for my subjectivity, thus affirming the starting point of my teacher while suggesting a solution to the solipsism to which it might lead. Finally, most recently, I have found in the writings of the great Masters of the Mussar tradition in Jewish thought an indigenous expression of the startling Levinasian insight regarding the subjectivity of the other, and have dedicated myself to making this tradition more widely known. Through all of these stages of my journey Neil Gillman has stood as chaperone. He has read my work, encouraged my thinking, probed it, questioned it and provided a safe haven for theological thinking in a social, institutional and communal environment often indifferent and sometimes antagonistic to it. His presence as an existential Rebbe to me and to scores of students and disciples will be accounted a modern miracle—the stuff of myth, no doubt.

In the Beginning Neil Gillman’s most important and enduring book, Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew,1 is first and foremost an argument 1

Gillman, Sacred Fragments. 43

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for the relevance of belief. That is to say, for Gillman the problematic of Jewish observance and the instability of Jewish community is occasioned by not only a loss of faith in the traditional sense, but by the erosion of the very notion that the loss of faith is a problem. Hence the modern Jewish indifference to what one believes. For Gillman it is precisely the recovery of meaningful beliefs that can restore the meaning of Jewish acts and Jewish belonging. Though he does not explicitly begin with an historical or sociological analysis of the state of contemporary Jewry, he pre-supposes that such an analysis would reveal the fact that contemporary Jewry has been shaped by an emphasis on Jewish behaviorism, intentionally divorced from issues of belief, because such issues can be problematic. He presumes that the intellectual battles of enlightenment thinking have yielded the false dichotomies of stubborn traditionalism in the face of enlightened science on the one hand, and post-enlightenment apologetics like those of Mordecai Kaplan, whose natural religion robs Judaism of any distinctive meaning. Left unsaid is the fact that given such shape the contemporary Jew cannot endow his or her religious choice with any recourse to what he or she believes without undermining those religious choices; hence the irrelevance of theological thinking in contemporary Jewish discourse. Gillman’s life work may be said to intend to counter this perception of theology’s irrelevance. He will argue instead that it is precisely when we begin to think about meaning seriously, theologically, that we can begin to enter into a creative relationship with the elements of Jewish tradition, both intellectual and performative. In this sense, Sacred Fragments is a response to his teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel’s description of the crisis of Jewish modernity: The most serious obstacle which modern men encounter in entering a discussion about revelation does not arise from their doubts as to whether the accounts of the prophets about their experiences are authentic. The most critical vindication of these accounts, even if possible, would be of little relevance. The most serious problem is the absence of the problem. An answer to be meaningful presupposes the awareness of a question, but the climate in which we live today is not congenial to the continued growth of questions which have taken centuries to cultivate.2

2

Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1955), 168. Italics in original. 44

The Certainty of Myth: The Legacy of Neil Gillman

And Adonai Spoke… The belief structure of Judaism, its central myth, according to Gillman, is what it has to say about revelation. He points out that the other major themes of theology are obviously intertwined with this one, namely, the nature of God, the meaning of creation, and the end toward which reality itself is heading, if any: an eschatology or story of salvation; yet primary among equals is revelation. As he will make clear, the reason revelation is so central is that it brings to the fore an experience in human consciousness. Revelation is an event that can only occur with and through the engagement of human beings. We do not have to construct a mental picture of physical nature in order to inhabit the earth, to feed and shelter ourselves. We do not require the certainty of a goal beyond survival to persist in being. However, according to Gillman, the claim that we have encountered God and God has spoken to us (even metaphorically, it turns out) requires an act of human cognition, at the very least an act of imagination and therefore is inherently subjective. It is this subjectivity that defines the problematic for Gillman. Ironically, his methodology and philosophic strength for his contemporary Jewish audience, his affirmation of the centrality of subjectivity as the starting point of religious seriousness, is also the inherent weakness of his solution. Like all modern thinkers, including those he uses to construct and support his analysis, the need to reject the literal tradition, leading first to seeing it as mythic, and then seeing the myth as minimally broken rather than seeing it as dead (without stipulating the criteria for this choice beyond the personal preference of group loyalty), leaves Gillman struggling to posit the existence of objective, if incommunicable events, events in history, if beyond reason, language and description, to which Scripture stands as witness. What we learn of revelation is that it embodies God’s will: As for revelation, if we are serious in affirming that no myth is a fiction, then we have in the same breath affirmed both the principle and the fact of revelation. Since there is an objective dimension to the myth, since the patterns are discovered not invented, however much they may be “read” by the community, that objective dimension is what we call “revelation.” In fact, the very use of that term is the best indication that the myth is at work.3 3

Gillman, Sacred Fragments. 45

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Indeed, it may well be that the very use of the term “revelation” (particularly in scare quotes) is the best indication that the myth is at work. The use of the term “revelation” is also tacit admission of the primacy of the categories of the Western enlightenment tradition in evaluating the truth-values of any and all products of human experience. Whether used by Buber, Rosenzweig, Kaplan, Heschel, Gillman or me (in previous work) we have already fallen into the late-modernist trap of describing reality in terms of subjectivity and objectivity. Yet, if the failure of modernity to engage the human heart, to create human community, to create integrated human beings within a web of nurturing human relationships, and, perhaps most importantly, to refuse the existence of justice and individual obligation leading toward peace, is to be taken seriously, then the language of subjectivity-objectivity as the primary tool of critique of pre-modern wisdom must finally be abandoned. As long as “revelation” is our subject then myth will be our explanation of it. As long as myth is our explanation of it, even Gillman’s sophisticated notion of myth as the subjective manifestation of an objective web of facts, we continue to stand outside, protected by our objectivity, from the life of the real world in which God speaks. It is something of this distinction that Franz Rosenzweig attempted to describe, if not in his Star of Redemption (at least, not clearly), then in his Understanding the Sick and the Healthy.

…Saying It would be foolish to contest the role of metaphor and myth in culture, and equally foolish to contest the idea of communities as fundamentally “reading” communities, whether they are reading texts or the world. That cannot be and isn’t my intention. Rather, it is my intention to suggest that Gillman’s analysis is located, as all analysis must be, in what Levinas called “the said.” The said is always at least one step removed from the saying. It is the representation of the fact that the present passes and only its passage can be reflected, recorded, ritualized and remembered. All Scripture, no less than all systematic theology, shares the same mythic space: it contains different examples of reflection on a real present. Scripture does not require theology, it is one. It may require a different cultural discourse, in our case, the language of post-enlightenment analysis, but both are equally theologies. They are the application 46

The Certainty of Myth: The Legacy of Neil Gillman

of human reason (including imagination) on the present that was and will be (ehiyeh asher ehiyeh). The distinction between subject and object, whether one starts from the one and works toward the other or vice versa, begins in the inevitability of our habitation of the said. If there is, however, an education that the contemporary Jew of any stream, and the contemporary human of any cultural tradition, needs, it is an education in the realm of the saying. Is it possible for us to suspend our unending fascination with endless versions of the said to learn again to take the saying seriously? That is the question boldly but inadequately hinted at by the work of Buber, Rosenzweig, and Heschel, but muted in Gillman’s presentation of their work. It has been precisely the promise of encountering this saying in the structure of Jewish texts and ritual that Gillman describes and that has fueled the explosion of orthodoxy, traditionalism and neo-traditionalism across the spectrum of the Jewish community in the years since the publication of Sacred Fragments. Unfortunately, the preponderant tendency in this regard has been to reify some particular said, rather than to direct oneself to the saying, coupled with an ongoing entrapment in the subject-object dilemma. The saying (as Buber first pointed out) cannot occur between a subject and an object (I-It), but only between a subject and a subject (I-Thou). And as Rozenzweig understood and Heschel artfully expressed, the subjectivity of the other, which is the fleeting passage from present to future before becoming past and therefore initiates time (bereishit bara) is enacted as a command. My subjectivity and my life in time are enacted by the command of the other’s subjectivity (for Heschel, Divine Pathos). Hers is the burden that I bear.

You Shall Be Holy for I, Adonai, Am Holy The experience of the subjectivity of the other is expressed in biblical and rabbinic tradition by the word kedusha, “holiness.” The central chapters of the Five Books of Moses are shaped by the articulation of this experience. In and through the ethically demanding expression of human relationships described in these chapters, generally called “the holiness code,” the subjective experience of the other, “Adonai,” is made manifest in the individual Israelite’s/Jew’s acceptance of these demands. This subjectivity derives from the other and is expressed in my real-life relations with others. My experience is entirely derivative of these facts. Yet, in 47

Ira F. Stone

this derivative experience I discover the meaning of my own subjectivity, that is, the expression of who I “really” am, and therefore I am connected to myself through and in the experience of another. I encounter the holy and I am transformed. I encounter the holy, and protective of my isolated subjectivity I shrink before it like Moses or Isaiah initially. The choice I have to make is whether to be for the other or not; and when I choose affirmatively my response can only be: “I am here.” That is, I am here, my subjectivity is here because I have recognized both its source and object outside of me. My “being here” is experienced in the present tense precisely because I can only be for the other in the present. If I am not with him/her in the present I am too late or too early. If religious literature, story, law, and commentary, as well as philosophy, ancient or contemporary, have a purpose, it is to inscribe as a “said” this experience of “saying” located in the acceptance of the responsibility for the other, which is the subjectivity of another calling me to my own subjectivity. It is, equally, the responsibility of any such literature to recognize itself precisely as a “said” and to provide tools whereby it can be unraveled in such a way as to lead back to the original “saying.” That has been the strength of the Jewish literary canon since antiquity. The more directly contributions to this literature can signal this unraveling, the stronger they are in sustaining the community. The community can ultimately only be sustained by the “saying,” not “the said.” In Sacred Fragments, Neil Gillman presents in contemporary discourse methodologies by which this unraveling can be creatively applied to a floundering generation of Jews. It is, in that sense, holy work, albeit it with a critical misstep.

You Are All Standing Here Today Whether we approach religious experience as myth or metaphor makes no difference. Despite having had to battle against those of little understanding because of his choice of the term “myth” in much of his writing and speaking, it is not the word that is the problem. Perhaps it is not the word that actually gave rise to the discomfort that so many felt with its use. To speak of myth or metaphor is to speak in the language of subjectobject dichotomy and that is the problem. As long as his analysis leads us back to positing an objective reality for which our subjective experience, our language, and our culture is a symbol, then we are relegated 48

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to living vicariously, symbolically. Through this mode of analysis we can hope to achieve a semblance, an inkling of an objective reality that is itself illusive and incommunicable except in symbols. However, if the enlightenment taught us anything, it is that such chimerical objectivity is disposed of by the methods of science rightly applied to the objective world. Gillman has only delivered us back to the great divide between faith and reason. In doing so he has missed the opportunity to deliver us to something far more real and far more powerful. That is the experience of the holy. It is the insistence of Scripture that such an experience, a present, a “saying,” call it what you will, is not only possible but imperative. The central claim of the Torah tradition, as Gillman sensed is indeed revelation, but not as a myth or a metaphor, not as a symbol for an objective event in an unrecoverable history. Rather as the experience of the subjectivity of another that calls my subjectivity into being, as a call to which I can respond hineni, “I am present.” The content of this subjectivity is neither mysterious nor dependent upon my understanding, my use of reason or imagination. It is the express need of the other for justice, for support, for me to share in the carrying of his or her burden. In that moment when I perceive the burden, and the subjectivity, of the other as my own, the moment of Sinai is re-enacted and requires no myth, no metaphor, no symbol, only response. That there is a metaphoric or mythic language that serves as memory, reminder, and carrier of this moment is indisputable. However, it is not a reminder of an objective historical moment, but of a moment that precedes history and objectivity in my consciousness: a moment of holiness. It is that moment of holiness that makes sense of the symbolic behavior and the commitment to community that Jewish tradition shapes. It is the claim that Israel as a community carries the ongoing history of this moment in human culture, translating the obligation to serve the subjectivity of the other in the institutions of culture, that dignifies its claim to uniqueness.

The Seminary Theology Professor’s Special Responsibility Eugene B. Borowitz

Neil and I (and a few others) share an uncommon duty in our academic posts. While no one has ever said as much, we know it is an important part of our jobs to try to explain to lay Jews—and do so convincingly— what we and other scholars have learned about Jewish believing. We hope this knowledge will make them more devoted to God and the practices our people have evolved to serve God. As a result we are—may God help us—dedicated popularizers, a role spurned by most academics. Of course, a good number of our seminary colleagues, as well as Jewish Studies professors at secular institutions, seek from time to time to communicate their love and knowledge of Judaism to Jews who rarely crack a non-fiction book on Judaism. Nonetheless, we Jewish theology professors not only want people to understand what thoughtful Jews believe these days but, uniquely, I believe, we want to move them to use their deepened insight into Jewish faith to increase their personal commitment to Judaism and the way of life it calls us to. So I propose to celebrate Neil’s many years of admirable service by clarifying somewhat how we have tried to blend conviction with limited knowledge. I shall do so by analyzing a document I am preparing for thoughtful lay people about believing in a good, powerful God when there is terrible evil in God’s world.

Why is There Evil? When hearts are broken by a stillbirth, an untimely death, or the lingering suffering of the elderly, when tornadoes or floods destroy families and communities, when peoples and nations malevolently strike at some “other”—of which the Holocaust is the preeminent example— when we are enveloped in one of the thousand varieties of anguish life can bring, we cry out, “Where is God?” That is the problem of evil. No wonder that from Bible times on, Jewish teachers have sought to help us 50

The Seminary Theology Professor’s Special Responsibility

with it, often offering us sustaining solace though, it must be said, never finally providing us with a heart-mending answer. As Rabbi Yannai said some 1700 years ago, “It is not in our power to explain the well-being of evildoers and the suffering of the righteous” (Pirkei Avot 4:15). Rabbi Yannai was, of course, referring to theory, to the kind of religious ideas I am essentially concerned with here, but the first part of modern Jewish wisdom about suffering is that presence, a relative or friend’s being there, always precedes theology. Behind all the theory I shall be exploring here there must always be compassion, even if it is expressed wordlessly, say, in the casserole or platter we bring to the house of the mourner “sitting shiva.” Caring for one another is the unmentioned but indispensable foundation of everything we shall be saying here. The approach here is far more personal than it would be in an academic paper. By calling attention to the felt, inner experience of the issue to be faced, I seek to enlist not only the mind of the readers but their hearts as well. Indirectly, I am also commending Jewish practice while focusing mainly on Jewish thinking.

The Uncommon Logic Behind Everyday Tragedy Rarely in discussions of Jewish belief does logic play as crucial a role as it does in the problem before us. Jews hold three beliefs that make sense independently but when affirmed together clash with our experience: (1) evil is real (2) though God is good and (3) uniquely powerful. (Neither the authors of the Bible nor the rabbis of the Talmud and midrash use abstractions like “omnipotent” or “omniscient.”) If you keep these Jewish premises about evil’s reality and God’s goodness and power in mind as we continue, you will see how each major effort to solve this problem modifies one or another of these clashing beliefs. The critical procedure in this kind of discourse is its reliance on the condensation of the known data, which encourages one to make sweeping generalizations. That is contrary to the careful concern for corroborative data which characterizes good scholarship. It takes a certain responsible daring to venture such broad descriptions when one is acutely conscious of all that has been obscured in doing so. But if one does not appeal to the lay readers in terms of their general interests, they will stop reading. 51

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Some people become uneasy when they hear that Jewish beliefs changed over the years or that our wisest teachers had differing interpretations of a topic. They find it disturbing that Judaism has not always been the same as what they have understood it to be. But even traditional readers of Judaism’s sacred books recognize that they contain a remarkable variety of religious ideas. Liberal Jews, as part of their effort to leave their ghetto existence behind them, embraced the modern notion that human history—including its religions—is characterized far more by change than by stasis. They therefore learned to read their old books with the new lenses of dynamism. They quickly saw that the stability of Judaism over the centuries was mostly due to the emphasis Jewish teachers gave to stabilizing Jewish practice rather than to keeping Jewish beliefs unchanged. In what follows then, I present what I see as the five major lines of Jewish thinking about the problem of evil. The first three of these are, in fact, aspects of what we believe deserves to be called the classic approach, that is, the biblical-Talmudic approach to this ever-troubling theme. I have separated this complex unity into three separate parts so you can clearly see what constitutes its religious diversity. The last two sections of the discussion present the rather radical ways medieval and modern writers have creatively sought to resolve the contradiction of a good God and an often evil world. It is important to anticipate the problems that readers may have with this presentation despite what are, from the academic point of view, the obvious premises of any discussion of the Jewish past. However, if some clarifying attention is not paid to the readers’ probable way of construing the material, one cannot hope to bring them to a more sophisticated understanding of the Jewish past.

(1) Evil Is God’s Justice, Our Punishment for Sinning From the Torah’s opening tale of Adam and Eve in Eden through to its steady repetition in Deuteronomy, we are cautioned about retribution. God cares greatly about what people do. If we do good God will reward us—rain in its season, bountiful harvests, triumph over our enemies—but if we don’t, God will justly punish us—farming will be back-breaking, childbirth painful, and our foes will rule over us. Note, 52

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please, that the calculus of guilt is social as well as personal; people do not exist as isolates. The book of Judges and thus much of the rest of the Bible intones a sober message: idolatry by the Hebrews leads God to subject the community to servitude, whose pain brings them to repent, which induces God to send them a redeeming leader like Gideon or Samson, only their prosperity then leads them to backslide into idolatry and the cycle begins again. Here, the decision to eliminate specific verse references and to generalize on biblical themes eases the readers’ passage through the basic point of view but at the cost of the thoughtful readers being able to go check the specific statements of the Bible. There are inevitable losses in all such decisions and thus no single way in which the work of providing a generally reliable insight into the topic can be confidently provided. The rest of the Bible, though less formulaically, preaches this retributive view of Israelite suffering and, later, rabbinic literature substantially echoed the message: do ill, get ill, do good, get good. When we suffer, we do so for a reason, a doctrine ingrained in the Jewish psyche by the siddur, the Jewish prayer book, and the climax of the calendar, the High Holy Days with their somber message of judgment, repentance and, through God’s mercy, atonement. In what follows I took the risk of jumping from the biblical material to our own time and anticipating some of our contemporary problems with the biblical teaching. This clearly complicates obtaining a clear view of the historic development of Jewish thinking about evil. Despite that loss it seemed to me that most of our people have such a strong negative response to the ancient theory of retribution that it needed immediate acknowledgement and what I consider as appropriate a validation as I can offer. Since I keenly feel the limitations of what can be said here, I am grateful that other sections will follow in which I can round out my fuller point of view. Though retribution in this tight construction long dominated Jewish teaching about evil, modern Jews, decades before the Holocaust, found it unrealistic. Thus, the suggestion some years ago that an Israeli school bus accident that killed some children and badly injured others was likely due to their having faulty mezzuzot on their doorposts provoked 53

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a storm of protest even among Israeli Orthodox rabbis. Similarly, when an ultra-Orthodox rabbi declares that the Holocaust was God’s punishment of the Jewish people for its wholesale abandonment of Jewish law, as some have, most Jews can only gape in astonishment. Blaming the victim instead of the perpetrators seemed to most Jews a profanity to be shunned. However, saying that much evil is not God’s just punishment, did not lead most Jewish believers to say there was no justice at all in the world. Much of the time—as we often can see looking back on our lives—it was our behavior that brought a certain evil upon us. We cannot expect to drink and drive safely, spend profligately and remain financially secure, or “grind the face of the poor,” as the Bible puts it, and not have social unrest. There is some justice in the world—but “some” justice, even “much” justice, is not really what justice ought to be, and certainly less than we properly expect from the God who is the standard of goodness.

(2) Biblical Objections to the Standard Theory of Retribution While the Bible’s soaring idealism has made it immortal, it is equally impressive for its realism. Again and again, a psalmist or prophet, all staunch believers in God’s micro-management of the universe, insists that the divine justice system is faulty. Mostly they chide God for their long waits for justice, for God to requite their oppressors or otherwise end their suffering. Abraham uniquely challenges God’s justice in dealing with Sodom and Gomorrah and some dejected psalmists lament lest there be no justice at all. Those who eventually decided what tales and poems should be included in our Sacred Scripture must have had a piety so realistic that, though these passages contradicted a central biblical emphasis, they were included alongside the more pietistic ones. While this is an effort of popularization, that does not mean that no new or otherwise significant thinking might be given utterance here. I  will not claim that my sentiments about the daring religious realism of the Bible’s redactors is a new or important truth. Yet I do not recall having read it elsewhere, though I do recall Rosenzweig’s quip about the Documentary Hypothesis that we should really call R, the Editor/s of the J, E, D and P documents, not “Redactor” but “Rabbenu.” And I do not recall having articulated 54

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it somewhere else. Because this is not academic writing does not mean there is nothing significant in it. In what follows I continue blending the contemporary and historical material for the reasons given above. I note this here because I often find people react better when the historical development is kept in reasonably tight order. Thus, this presentation is a deviation from what I would normally do to encourage clarity of understanding and resultant ease of retention. Some biblical traditionalists and, more so, the rabbis of later centuries, tacitly acknowledging that the retribution doctrine was faulty, sought to justify its defects by arguing they would prompt us to do good, or that the rewards awaiting us for enduring them would more than compensate for our pain. Some years ago this theology led to the assertion that though the Holocaust was unutterably heinous, it had the glorious result of making possible the founding of the State of Israel— a notion indignantly rejected by almost everyone seriously concerned with the Shoah. The rabbis of the Talmud and midrash had long before taken this line of thought in another direction by their teaching that death did not end our existence but we would move on to the life of the world to come where our earthly anguish would be more than made up to us. The rabbis made this doctrine as close to a required Jewish belief as they could, ruling that anyone who spurned it would be omitted from their teaching that “all Jews have a place [awaiting them] in the afterlife.” This became so significant an aspect of all later Judaism that in the early Middle Ages, despite Maimonides’ unparalleled status as an authority on Jewish law, a fierce struggle broke out over his philosophy because it was suspected of denying the resurrection of the dead. Until modern times, this doctrine, that God’s justice had to be measured over the total span of our existence—in this world and the next—provided most caring Jews with a satisfying answer to the problem of evil. This summary statement is more fully authorized by the material which follows in section 3 below. Nonetheless, I felt it important to introduce it here, where the development of the topic authorizes it. There is some risk of confusion in using the final “biblical” section below to emphasize this point rather than simply move the argument forward, as each section seeks to do. But I felt that there was good rhetorical reason for doing it this way. 55

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(3) The Book of Job: The Foundation of Classic Jewish Piety about Evil The theological underpinnings of the traditional Jewish belief in God’s two-world justice rested on the climactic argument of the book of Job (though the book itself denies an afterlife). The bulk of its poetic chapters consists of almost three full cycles of exchanges between Job and his pious friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. Their traditionalistic defense of retribution and their pleas that since he was being punished he admit that he must have sinned were steadfastly rejected by Job. (Elihu, a fourth defender of the old justice-system, appears later but adds little new.) Job, reasonably certain of his righteousness—as the text has testified about him—will have none of their blind orthodoxy. Rather, he challenges God to explain to him—and thereby to all us sufferers and doubters—why he is being unjustly punished. God finally responds “out of a whirlwind”—an awesome setting indeed—and in four extraordinary chapters challenges Job’s capacity to understand how creation came to be, how its everyday wonders operate, and how its mammoth natural forces are controlled. This barrage of unanswerable questions overwhelms Job as does the level of power behind them. Can Job or any human being hope to understand the near-infinite complexity of God’s justice? Job admits that he has been foolish to ask for an explanation of good and evil; he could not comprehend it if it were given him. Instead, he will be satisfied that he has been in God’s presence, and that will content him, although he does not know why the righteous suffer and sinners prosper. There is a certain foolhardiness in seeking to reduce the argument of one of the Bible’s deepest and most awesomely articulated books to one page of flat prose. It is such appropriate judgment which keeps most professors from risking such simplifications of major themes in Jewish faith. Yet if our caring but ill-informed laity are to make any progress in understanding and appreciating what our sacred texts seek to impart to us, we must sometimes take the risk of accommodating our soaring faith to their limited capacity. And may we, by an ambition which exceeds our capacity to communicate our beliefs, not convince them that Judaism makes little sense or that they cannot really hope to understand it. In this extraordinary book, biblical realism about the deficiencies of God’s justice-system reaches its spiritual climax. Its authors do not 56

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reject or try to modify the biblical doctrine of retribution and they deny that there is another life to resolve its problems. Rather, they acknowledge that we cannot hope to understand the calculus of God’s justice, which appears so flawed to us. What we can know is that God is real and near, and that must content us. Thus, later Jewish teachers urge us and—since the rabbis taught that Job was not a Jew—all humankind to live in pious acceptance of what we cannot hope to understand, an acquiescence built on appreciating the shower of unmerited wonders that God gives us day after day. Something like this simple piety, reinforced by the promise of reward in the world to come, characterized classic Jewish spirituality and still fills the heart of many a believing Jew today.

(4) Medieval and Modern Revisionism: Evil is Not Real: Part One Is it responsible to imply that the rabbis of the Talmud had little more to say about the problem of evil than what has been alluded to above? Is it fair to suggest that there were no major Jewish writings on evil in the thousand plus years that went by from the time of the Book of Job to the appearance of the first major books of Jewish philosophy and mysticism? And were that not indictment enough, is it true to what we know to suggest that either Jewish philosophy or Jewish mysticism, or, more daringly, both of them together, create a new strategy for dealing with evil? I confess I had not seen this possibility until I came to write this piece, but once the literary challenge opened it up to me, I, though not an expert in either field, felt emboldened to set it forth and see if my intellectual betters would decry the pragmatic license I had exercised. Some medieval Jews were so troubled by the illogic built into their people’s piety that they felt compelled to resolve its central assertion that the evil in the good God’s creation was truly real. They boldly asserted that it was only an illusion brought on by a faulty understanding. They created two radically different intellectual therapies to remedy this self-deception, the one philosophic, the other mystic/Kabbalistic. Liberal Jewish thinkers in modern times have bolstered this strategy by adding what may be called a psychological dimension to this line of thinking. We will begin our discussion of these evil-is-only-an-illusion theories with the contemporary one. 57

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Almost all of us have complained bitterly about a deep disappointment. We were eliminated early in a tournament, or gained a size or two, or were rejected by a group we had long angled to join, or had a project we had long dedicated ourselves to snubbed by the experts, and we felt “it was like the end of the world,” or its equivalent, “I could die,” or, climactically, “Why did God do this to me?” When the evil is great, it is easy to blame God for it, but very often the blows that sadden us so say more about our misplaced sense of values than about God’s purposes. Deep though the transient setback now hurts us, it hardly deserves a theological explanation. Some evils surely merit complaint to God, but before bringing our case to God we ought to make sure that what pains us so is, so to speak, worthy of God’s attention. A more significant example of inappropriately blaming God arises with the question of responsibility. When we drink or take drugs and then lethally smash up a car or two, when we wind up destitute because we were profligate with our money, when we pay women less than men for similar work, or when peoples abuse their power and oppress others as in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and too many other places to name, when genocide threatens or nearly succeeds, as in the Holocaust, we should not quickly ask, “Why does God do such things?” All this moral ugliness arose because of perverted human choices. God did not force us to be such monsters; overwhelmingly, evil is testimony to our own perverse exercise of our freedom. Was it evil then of God to have given us free will, unique among created things? Would we think it good of God to have programmed us with as little freedom as, say, our animal cousins the chimpanzees? Except in our bitterest moments, we are grateful for God’s goodness in giving us the freedom which glorifies our love and ennobles our righteous acts. And though our free will allows us to do evil—a “talent” all of us have indulged to a greater or less extent—we normally consider it a momentously precious gift and thus have no grounds for abusing God when it is we who freely caused the havoc.

Evil is Not Real: (Part Two) Compressing intellectual developments, which has, in my view, so well served my aim here of popularizing the great developments in Jewish faith, at this point becomes a handicap. I now need to speak of two notions which most lay 58

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listeners will likely find utterly foreign to their experience: the philosophic idea of privation and the mystic teaching that there are, in fact, four levels of reality. It would be reasonable to expand the exposition to make these strange ideas understandable but we would lose in fatigue what was gained in accuracy. Brevity still remains critical to retaining the reader’s attention, so we must continue to limit the exposition for fear of losing the readers by our highbrow accuracy. The distinctive medieval philosophical approach to evil contends that evil is not real in the sense that good is, but merely the absence of good. Yes, it is disturbing, at times desperately so, that our loved one’s body does not flourish as it might, or that concern for others is conspicuously absent in a certain group. But, a number of our medieval philosophers teach that these are merely lacks waiting to be filled, vacancies awaiting a proper substance. Often, these issues of inadequacy are challenges to human initiative, invitations to moral ingenuity, rather than matters basically amiss in God’s creation. Good, by contrast, has substance, reality, and, because it mirrors God’s being, the hope of endurance, and is thereby the inspiration of our messianism. This notion of evil as mere emptiness, though appealing to abstract thinkers, has never achieved a widespread Jewish following. The bonedeep anguish many have experienced in Jewish history seems to radically contradict the theory that evil is essentially an absence. And after the extraordinary pains of the Holocaust, a view which denies them true reality seems utterly counter-intuitive to most Jews. By contrast, the Kabbalistic/mystic approach to evil, which is based on inner experience and only then moves to intellect, has always appealed to a significant minority of Jewish believers, not only in the past but also today. While Kabbalah has many interpreters and it is difficult to call any one view its most authoritative statement, its doctrine of the four levels of reality is widely cited in speaking of the problem of evil. It pivots on the three terms the Torah uses to describe creation— beriyah (creating), yetzirah (fashioning), and asiyah (making)—and on a later coinage, atzilah (emanating). While most thoughtful Jews over the centuries have taken the four terms as synonyms for a unified act of bringing the cosmos into being, mystic interpreters have said that each term refers to another level of reality. The spiritual flow to the world as we know it actually begins with atzilah, the most ethereal movement 59

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from Godhead to reality (as we ordinarily experience it). The next three stages of creation have increasing “thing-ification,” down to the gross corporeality of the lowest universe, asiyah, the one in which we normally exist. Alas, our world-level being so material, we are regularly beset by evil. But Kabbalah also teaches that God is Eyn Sof, the Unlimited, the One who is so far beyond us that nothing we can say about God is truly adequate, even this. Inadequately but truthfully, we dare to proclaim that Eyn Sof is Reality, the One and Only reality. Everything else—such as the four universes—is a mixture of reality and illusion, of which our universe is the most gross. We can increasingly ascend from its spiritual poverty if we follow the Torah’s behests and the teachings and practices of the great Kabbalistic masters. By such dedicated action we may rise to a more God-full universe of being, one therefore increasingly beyond evil. We ordinary folk may not, like the greatest Kabbalists, ascend to a realm close to God’s untrammeled goodness, but, if we are their faithful adherents, their merit can lift us far beyond what we can accomplish on our own. This monism, that ultimately there is only God and goodness, lies behind many Kabbalistic approaches to overcoming suffering and evil. However, to gain some sense of the breadth of Jewish esoteric insight in this area it will help to have even a brief understanding of some other mystic interpretations of God’s relation to evil. At the pessimistic side of the spectrum of views—and thus not widely popular among liberal Jews—some Kabbalists assert that God’s ten good sefirot are matched by ten evil ones, which explains why evil is rampant in our world and why it is so difficult to transcend it. Were it not for the occasional mystical communion with Eyn Sof and the messianic trust that “On that day…” God will finally be fully One and the world fully good, this dark view would be a thoroughgoing dualism. The contrary, optimistic side of the spectrum of views—and thus more palatable to some liberal Jews—is the theory that evil results from a temporary imbalance among the Divine sefirot, and we, by our observance of mitzvot plus various mystic exercises, can restore God’s inner unity and thus diminish the evil around us. This is the sixteenth century Kabbalistic notion of tikkun olam, the mystical idea of world-mending. The term has in recent years been applied to the modern notions of ethical and political messianism which have long been central to various forms of non-Orthodox Judaism. 60

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(5) We Must Radically Revise Our Ideas about God Older readers will have some personal sense of this final section. Though they may not have been acquainted with the emergence of this idea, it has had so much attention in the last decades of the twentieth century that they will likely recognize the rhetoric of this effort to think of God in radically new terms. My hope in putting it in the context of the long-term development of Jewish thinking about evil is to suggest that what may initially sound like Jewish blasphemy is, considering the provocation, an acceptable extension of the unceasing efforts of Jewish thinkers to finally reach some understanding of how our God could allow such horror. In the late 1960s, when North American Jews finally permitted the searing evil of the Holocaust to enter their consciousness, religious belief suffered a major trauma. How could there be a God if such horror could occur? Many Jews took up the current Protestant notion that (in reaction to society’s secularization—and originally oblivious to the Holocaust!) late twentieth-century religion must now preach a postNietzschean “Death of God” theology. Jewish partisans of this position, expecting the imminent death of the synagogue as it had been, created the Jewish Humanist movement. To be sure, as Jews had modernized in the generations prior to the 1960s, the prevalence of evil had been a major argument for the growth of Jewish atheism and agnosticism. The earlier development had stemmed from the increasing number of Jews going to universities. There, they entered a culture which emphasized the bankruptcy of religion brought on by the ever-increasing scientific picture of nature as mathematically determined, and thus humanly indifferent. Its human bleakness was often offset by advocating a rationally generated philosophic ethics. Modern literature and drama humanized these abstractions with their emotional depictions of the universe’s unconcern with human suffering. When the new Holocaust consciousness arose, it confirmed the old university and cultural derogation of religious belief and made the case for God’s death appear irresistible. Authors face special problems in seeking to characterize contemporary culture and its spiritual character. The reader can surely claim to be as much of an expert in what is transpiring as the author. Moreover, in seeking to make God more believable, despite evil, the appeal here involves not only an 61

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intellectual change but, in effect, an effort to bring readers to greater personal belief and Jewish practice. Facing such an appeal, most readers will be quite defensive if not resistive and whoever seeks to bring them to fuller belief must be particularly sensitive to the readers’ likely guardedness. By the 1980s, a radical shift of mood had begun and the unbelief that was so triumphant for a decade or so lost its certainty, as it found no sure way to generate the values a humane society required. Of course there were and still are atheists and agnostics in abundance, but science increasingly began to lose its purported omniscience, and philosophical rationality became far more a source for thoughtful doubt than for ethical certainties. From the late twentieth century on, Western civilization has been characterized by a widespread search for personal meaning through highly diverse forms of “spirituality” including, of course, religion. This infiltrated contemporary existence so broadly that it spawned a small movement seeking to discredit it. At the same time, this new openness to spiritual search enabled liberal Judaism, with its respect for the individual conscience, its emphasis on human responsibility, and its openness to different ways of thinking about God, to flourish. In this development, a radically new way of envisioning God opened a post-Holocaust way of belief for many. Basing themselves on some currents in early twentieth-century American religious thought, some Jewish thinkers, most notably Mordecai Kaplan and, more recently, his disciple Harold Kushner, have argued that God is best thought of as finite rather than as infinite. That is, while God is the most powerful force in the universe, God needs to be thought of as having limited power, as does everything else. God may be great enough to give creation its form, its dynamism, and its stability, but God, in this view, does not have the capacity to eliminate the evil in the universe; that is why there is so much of it. Henry Slonimsky added a significant touch to this idea by suggesting that we think of God as growing, as all living things do, and human righteousness as the medium of God’s maturation. These views of God entail a special emphasis on human activism for now the task of overcoming evil, which God alone cannot do, devolves on us, on humankind. Liberal Jews who follow this theology reinterpret the second part of the Adoration prayer, the alenu, and see themselves as well as God called to the task of tikkun olam, of “mending the world,” specifically of its evil. In these and other variations on God’s finitude, God has become a living presence in liberal Jewish lives. 62

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6. Or Should Job’s Relationship with God Still Be Our Model? Academically, one might well believe that the fifth and final major Jewish point of view regarding God and evil having been explained, the paper has finished its proper work. In some special contexts I believe Neil and I would agree. But most of our popularization seeks not merely to inform our Jewish readers or hearers but to win them for a more involved and dedicated Jewish religious life. Hence, speaking for myself, I wish to continue and explain why I think most liberal Jews will rightly not be satisfied either with the mystic or the philosophic resolutions of the problem of evil. So, though I recognize the Jewish legitimacy of other points of view than my own, I want to conclude by explaining where I stand on this matter and why I think other Jews should consider joining me in my belief. Though the mystic or philosophic views of God have quieted the problem of evil for a good number of Jews, many others have found them unsatisfying. The Kabbalistic denial of evil’s ultimate reality flies in the face of the great anguish many a soul has faced, and suggests that the traumas of the Holocaust were essentially a matter of inadequate perspective. Many people cannot attain an inner life so rich or trust a rebbe so unquestioningly that they can deny the harsh evidence of the everyday. The rationalistic solution of shrinking God’s power similarly seems to raise problems as troubling as the one it purports to solve. If God is in fact finite, Who or What is responsible for the reality that is beyond the limited God’s control? And the suggestion that people can now mend the world that God cannot seems unreasonably optimistic. Considering all the evil even well-intentioned human beings (much less malevolent ones) have created in recent decades, it seems irresponsible to hope that humans can make up for what God lacks. Questions such as these have led many Liberal Jews to model their faith on that of Job. Following the insights of Martin Buber, they realize that deep relationships are based on personal intimacy rather than intellectual understanding. Most of us have learned that from our experience with good friends or loved ones. True closeness begets attachment and responsibility, but rarely discloses all that “makes the other tick.” Sadly, we have also discovered that even the richest relationship does not guarantee that one’s partner will never do something which con63

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tradicts what the two of you have come to mean to one another. Even then we may experience the extraordinary resilience of relationships, for they often survive such blows. All that can be true of our relationship with God and help us live with the evils that come our way. Thus, as some feminist theologians have pointed out, there were many small acts of human kindness in the Holocaust death camps and they testified to the presence of God in that black human hell. So today, in less extreme times, cultivating the nearness of God is once again as much an “answer” to the problem of evil as people are ever likely to find. Yet this Job-ian turn to relationship has its own limitations: it calls for great faithfulness precisely when our relationship appears shattered. And because it often is, Judaism countenances divorce—though not from God. It is also true that waiting for signs that our old intimacy with God is reviving may make us passive just when there may be much that human initiative could usefully accomplish. Facing all these suggestions, each with its piece of the truth, many a Jew has built an eclectic mix of all or parts of them, relying on whichever one or combination of these traditions enables them to survive their present trauma in Jewish faithfulness. Despite their wounded piety they find a way to live by the truth of Rabbi Yannai’s dictum, “It is not in our power to explain…”

A Neo-Hasidic Life: Credo and Reflections Arthur Green

Personal Introduction When I turned seventy years old earlier this year, I did not realize how fully the occasion would turn into a time of reflection. While I have every hope that my productive years are far from over, there is no question that reaching this big number tells one that the final phase of life has begun. There is no more saying “late middle age” or “sixty is the new forty.” The Psalmist’s words, however tempered by medical advances, still resound loudly in the ears of the septuagenarian. Yemey shenoteno shiv’im shanah. Anything more is surely hesed hinam, a pure divine gift. Although my years have been marked by a number of shifts of direction in both my writing and my professional roles, in the perspective of hindsight I now realize they constitute a single project, one that has taken a number of forms but nevertheless bears a consistent message. Since Neil Gillman has known me almost since the beginning of this half-century journey, and since we share a commitment to the personal nature of the theological enterprise, I thought I would offer my comments here in a more personal tone than is usual in Festschriften. I was twenty years old, a senior in college, when I read Hillel Zeitlin’s essay Yesodot ha-Hasidut, “The Fundaments of Hasidism.”1 I no longer remember whether it was Zalman Schachter or Alexander Altmann who put it in my hands, but they are the most likely candidates. To say that I fell in love is something of an understatement. I realized then and there that his words were giving expression to a deep truth that my heart already knew, and that this would be my religious language throughout my life. I promised myself (and Zeitlin) that I would trans 1

Originally published Warsaw, 1910, and included in the posthumous volume Be-Fardes ha-Hasidut veha-Kabbalah (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1960). 65

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late this essay into English, a promise I fulfilled only half a century later.2 Although I did not yet have the term in my vocabulary, I have ever since then been a committed Neo-Hasidic Jew. Zeitlin joined with Buber, Heschel, and Schachter, whose writings and teachings saved Judaism for me, much as the Hasidic Rabbi Pinhas of Korzec once said that the Zohar had “kept him a Jew.” Collectively, they moved me toward a rather defined faith-stance (I intentionally choose this term over “theology”), from which I have wavered rather little. Zeitlin was the most important, and thus remains my rebbe, because he showed me the abstract truth that lay behind the mask of personalist God-language, which was already problematic for me. He led me to a search within the primary texts of Hasidism, one that has never ceased. My purpose here is to articulate the nature of that quest and to flesh out in specifics my lifelong project of bringing to birth a Neo-Hasidic Judaism that would have broad appeal to contemporary seekers. These seekers include many present and future rabbis, with whom I have tried to share my love of the original Hasidic sources, and who I hope will open this path to others. But I write also for the many spiritually serious Jews (and others) of my and more recent generations who have turned away from Judaism and toward Eastern spiritual paths in despair of finding anything useable in our own spiritual patrimony. My heart goes out especially to this latter group, and I constantly have them in mind as I write. It is for them (though I daresay for myself as well, since I am spiritually so close to them!) that I have sought to use Hasidism in creating what I sometimes call a “seeker-friendly” Judaism. Elsewhere, most recently in Radical Judaism,3 I have outlined a theological position that takes as its departure-point an evolutionary approach, both to human origins and to the origins and development of religion. I take for granted that as the twentieth century ran its course, the two great century-long battles fought by traditional religious forces, one against Darwin and the other against Biblical criticism, have both been decided, neither coming out the way those forces might have 2

3

It will appear in my volume of Zeitlin’s writings called Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era, to be published by Paulist Press in the Classics of Western Spirituality series in 2012. Radical Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 66

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hoped. In articulating a religious language that will speak to twentyfirst-century people, we have to leave both of those struggles behind us, accept their conclusions on the scientific/scholarly plane, but then seek out a way of expressing our sacred truth that reaches beyond them. In the course of doing this, I make frequent recourse to the Kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions, since I believe they provide tools that make such a transition possible. Here I would like to work in the opposite direction. Rather than beginning situationally with the present, I want to lay out what I consider to be the key principles of Neo-Hasidism. I offer both original text and commentary, following a format occasionally found in the Kabbalistic corpus. The comments will be historical, theological, and personal, but always with the intent of drawing forth their implications for our contemporary religious situation. Zeitlin’s introduction to Hasidic thought was published just over a century ago. A bit later he published an “interview” with himself in which he described the new Hasidism he sought to create in interwar Poland, emphasizing its continuities with and differences from the old.4 He also wrote fourteen admonitions for members of his intended community, Yavneh, a sort of Neo-Hasidic hanhagot. Although there is no text called a “credo,” one can certainly surmise one from a reading of these in tandem. (All are included in the volume of Zeitlin’s writings I have just edited.) Schachter wrote something called “A Modern Hasid’s Credo” back in the 1950s, which formed the basis for many of his later writings.5 Here is mine, in the shortest form to which I am able to reduce it, followed by my commentary. It is very much a personal statement, but one that I hope will be useful to others as well.

A Neo-Hasidic Credo 1.  There is only One. All exists within what we humans call the mind of God, where Being is a simple, undifferentiated whole. Because God is beyond time, that reality has never changed. Our evolving, ever-changing cosmos and the absolute stasis of Being are two faces of the same One. Our seeming existence as individuals, like all of physical reality, is the 4 5

“Hasidut shele-‘atid la-vo,” in Sifran shel Yehidim (Warsaw: 1928). Published in Varieties of Jewish Belief, ed. Ira Eisenstein (New York: Reconstructionist Press, 1966). 67

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result of tsimtsum, a contraction or de-intensification of divine presence so that our minds can encounter it and yet continue to see ourselves as separate beings, in order to fulfill our worldly task. In ultimate reality, however, that separate existence is mostly illusion. “God is one” means that we are all one. 2.  God’s presence (shekhinah) underlies, surrounds, and fills all of existence. The encounter with this presence is intoxicating and transformative, the true stuff of religious experience. “Serving God,” or worship in its fullest sense, means living in response to that presence. In our daily consciousness, however, divinity is fragmented; we perceive shekhinah in an “exilic” or unwhole state. Sparks of divine light are scattered and hidden everywhere. Our task is to seek out and discover those sparks, even in the most unlikely places, in order to raise them up and re-join them to their Source. This work of redemption brings joy to shekhinah and to us as we re-affirm the divine and cosmic unity. 3.  That joyous service of God is the purpose of human existence. God delights in each creature, in every single distinctive form taken by existence. But we human beings occupy a unique role in the hierarchy of being, having the capacity for awareness of the larger picture and an inbuilt striving for meaning-making. We are called upon to develop that awareness to our fullest ability and to live our lives in response to that awareness, each of us thus becoming a unique image of God. 4.  “God needs to be served in every way.”6 All of life is an opportunity for discovering and responding to the divine presence. The way we relate to every creature is a mirror of our devotion to our single Creator. Openheartedness, generosity, fairness, and humility are key virtues of the religious life. Moral courage, honesty, and integrity are also values never to be ignored. 5.  The essence of our religious life lies in the deep inward glance, a commitment to a vision of spiritual intensity and attachment to the One. Outer deeds are important; ritual commandments are there to be fulfilled. They are the tools our tradition gives us to achieve and maintain awareness. But they are to be seen as means rather than as ends, 6

Tsava’at RYVaSH (Brooklyn: Otsar ha-Hasidut, 1975), #3. 68

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as vessels to contain the divine light that floods the soul or as concrete embodiments of the heart’s inward quest. 6.  Our human task begins with the uplifting and transforming of our physical and emotional selves to become ever more perfect vehicles for God’s service. This process begins with the key devotional pair of love and awe, which together lead us to our sense of the holy. Care for the body, our own and others’, as God’s handiwork is also a vital part of our worldly task. 7.  The deeper look at reality should put us at odds with the superficial values of the consumerist and overly individualist society amid which we live. Being, unlike our Hasidic ancestors, citizens of a free society, we can and must take a critical stance toward all that we regard as unjust or degrading in our general culture. Caring for others, our fellow-limbs on the single Adamic body or Tree of Life, is the first way we express our love of God. It is in this that we are tested, both as individuals and societies. Without seeking to impose our views on others, we envision a Jewish community that speaks out with a strong moral voice. 8. The above principles all flow directly from an expansive Hasidic reading of Torah, classical Jewish teachings. We live in an abiding and covenanted love relationship to Torah. That means the text, “written Torah,” and the whole of the oral tradition, including our own interpretive voices. We are not literalists about Torah as revelation, but we know that our people have mined endless veins of wisdom and holiness from within that text, and we continue on that path, adding new methods to the old. The whole process is sacred to us. 9. We are Jews. We love our people, past, present, and future. We care that our people, bearers of a great spiritual legacy and also a great burden of suffering and persecution, survive and carry our traditions forward. We want this to happen in a creative and openhearted way, and we devote ourselves to that effort. As Jewish seekers, we have a special connection to Abraham our Father, who followed the voice and set off on a journey that we still consider unfinished. 10.  Our world suffers from a great imbalance of energy between the typically “male” and “female” energies. Neo-Hasidism needs to be shaped 69

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by the voices of women alongside men, as full participants in every aspect of its emergence. We welcome devotion to the one God through the channels of shekhinah and binah, God as saving and protecting Mother. 11.  Hasidism at its best and worst is built around the figure of the tsaddik, a charismatic holy man blessed by God and capable of transmitting divine blessing. We too recognize that there are gifted spiritual teachers in our world and we thank God for their presence and our ability to learn from them. But we live in an age that is rightly suspicious of such figures, having seen charisma used in sometimes horrific ways. We therefore underscore the Hasidic teaching that each person has his/her own path to walk and truth to discover. We encourage spiritual independence and responsibility. 12. Hasidism, like Judaism itself, believes in community. The sense of hevrayyah or fellowship among followers of a particular path is one of the greatest tools it offers for spiritual growth. Cultivating spiritual friendships that allow you to talk through your own struggles and the obstacles you find in your path, as well as developing an ear to listen well to the struggles of others, is one of the great gifts to be learned from the Hasidic tradition. 13.  We recognize that Torah is our people’s unique language for expressing an ancient and universal truth, one that reaches beyond all boundaries of religious tradition, ethnic community, or symbolic language. As heirs to a precious and much-maligned legacy, we are committed to preserving our ancient way of life in full richness of expression, within the bounds of our contemporary ethical beliefs. But we do not pose it as exclusive truth. The old Hasidism limited all of its teachings to Jews, believing that we alone had the capacity to truly serve God, and that Judaism was the only revealed path toward such service. Thankfully we live in a different era of the relationship of faiths to one another. We happily join with all others who seek, each in our own way, to realize these sacred truths, while admitting in collective humility that none of our languages embodies truth in its fullness.7 7

The number thirteen was not intentional. In fact I tried to avoid it, but failed. I take it as parallel to the thirteen middot ha-rahamim, qualities of compassion, and thus ask the reader to judge its author with mercy. 70

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Commentary 1. There is only One. All exists within what we humans call the mind of God, where Being is a simple, undifferentiated whole. Because God is beyond time, that reality has never changed. The essential faith-claim is that being is one. This is the way I understand the daily proclamation of shema’ yisra’el, the core of my Jewish liturgical practice. Note that I do not say that all being “originates” within God, as though I were offering an account of creation: it was first there, then it emerged from there. I do not believe that change has ever happened. “You are He until the world was created; You are He since the world was created,”8 i.e. unchanged. The language we speak in explaining “creation” may sound temporal, but that is only because we are telling a story. Our existence as one, within God, is a permanent condition, an underlying truth. We still exist “in the mind of God.” It is that simple wholeness of being that we call Y-H-W-H or Being. The capitalization (possible only in English, not in Hebrew, of course) indicates that we revere it, that we accept Being as an object of worship. We fall before its majesty, its mystery, including both its life-giving and it destructive power, as did Job. In doing so, we give to it the highest gift we humans can offer: we personify it; we give to Being of our most precious humanity, enabling ourselves to address it as atah, “Thou,” to render it not only object of veneration, but subject of prayer. I recognize that a phrase like “the mind of God” is the beginning of anthropomorphism; hence the qualification. What lies behind it is the Kabbalistic hokhmah, the font of existence in which all being is fully present in a not yet differentiated state. Hokhmah is, for the Hasidic sources, the first of the ten sefirot, the stages of divine self-manifestation. It is also described as ayin or “nothingness,” meaning that no specified identity is yet present in it.9 Like all of the ten sefirot of the Kabbalists, hokhmah is transcendent to both space and time, though it may be depicted in metaphors that derive from both.

8 9

From the daily morning service. This identification of hokhmah and ayin is a specifically Hasidic feature, diverging from most earlier Kabbalistic sources that identified ayin with keter and saw hokhmah as deriving from it. 71

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“God is one” means that we are one. This is sod keri’at shema’. The rest is commentary. I have elsewhere10 quoted the comment of the Sefat Emet on this, a completely unequivocal statement of unio mystica at the heart of Hasidism. This is where I depart most clearly from Heschel, who was strongly committed to theological personalism. You might say that we choose to read different parts of the Maggid of Mezritch. I (like Zeitlin) am mostly attracted to the abstract theology of early Hasidism; Heschel preferred the affectionate God-asFather language that fills the Maggid’s parables.11 Our existence as individuals, like all of physical reality, is the result of tsimtsum, a contraction or de-intensification of divine presence so that our minds can encounter it and yet continue to see ourselves as separate beings, in order to fulfill our worldly task. In ultimate reality, however, that separate existence is mostly illusion. This non-literalist reading of tsimtsum has its origins in the seventeenth and eighteenth century debates about how to understand the Lurianic myth. It was adopted by the early Hasidic masters as a key part of their mystical self-understanding.12 It may be seen as a mystical parallel to Kant’s Prolegomenon: the mind by definition cannot know or make claims about that which lies beyond its scope. We live in a mental universe shaped by individual consciousness and self-awareness. That is the way the human mind is fashioned. (The old Hasidic language would say, of course, “that is in the way God in His wisdom created us.” I am not averse to such language, but want to avoid it here in order to lessen confusion.) But how then do I dare to make the prior statement that all existence is one in the mind of God? Does not tsimtsum make it impossible for me to know or assert such a thing? Here again I need recourse to Kabbalistic language. Da’at, best translated as “mind” or “awareness,” indeed resides within the realm of tsimtsum, the reduced consciousness of our ordinary mental self. But human beings are capable of insight that comes from 10 11 12

See The Language of Truth (Philadelphia: JPS, 1998), or These Are the Words (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1999; new edition 2012). I am grateful to Shai Held for helping me to formulate this distinction. A very readable treatment of this debate is offered by Louis Jacobs in Seeker of Unity (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 49ff. 72

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a more profound realm of existence (or a deeper, pre-conscious level of mental activity). It is called binah, as in the phrase ha-lev mevin, “understanding of the heart.”13 Such insight, often coming in brief flashes and resistant to expression in the prose of da’at’s language, is the transcendent core of religious experience, leading us to an awareness that goes beyond the constricted consciousness within which we mortals are both blessed and cursed to live our daily lives. Religious teaching, often best encapsulated in the multivocality of myth, originates in that deeper level of the mind. Religious experiences, including but not limited to such flashes of deep intuition, are the primary data around which theology is to be shaped. 2. God’s presence (shekhinah) underlies, surrounds, and embraces all of existence. The encounter with this presence is intoxicating and transformative, the true stuff of religious experience. This is the other, and larger, part of religious experience. It is the sense of divine immanence, an awareness that all of being shimmers with an inner glow that marks it as fraught with sacred character. It was well known to the Psalmist and is present in the works of all great religious poets (Rumi, Whitman, and Tagore come to mind, along with a host of others). Calling this aura of holiness shekhinah requires a bit of historical footnoting. The term is first used in early rabbinic Hebrew much as kavod (“glory”) is used in the Hebrew Bible, a euphemistic way of referring to God as present in the world, where use of the term Y-H-W-H or even elohim (the generic Hebrew word for “God”) would somehow diminish divine transcendence. In Kabbalistic parlance, shekhinah took on a specifically feminine characteristic, serving as the mate to the blessed Holy One in the zivvuga qaddisha or sacred coupling that constituted divine wholeness. As this took place, shekhinah came to be seen as a cosmic entity or hypostasis, somehow separate from God but separate from the world as well. Indeed, the Kabbalistic shekhinah, as I have sought to 13

I have in mind the passage from Patah Eliyahu, the passage from Tikkuney Zohar printed in Sephardic prayerbooks as a daily credo, and recited by hasidim prior to Kabbalat Shabbat. Zeitlin commented on this text; reprinted in Be-Fardes, 147ff. This too was among my earliest readings in Kabbalah. 73

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show elsewhere,14 is precisely an intermediary between the upper and lower worlds. Not so in Hasidism. The Maggid and his disciples go back to the insistence that shekhinah ba-tahtonim mamash, that the divine presence truly infuses the lower, corporeal world. This means that the classic western division between matter and spirit, reaching back to Plato, is misguided; the physical world itself is filled with spiritual energy, which alone animates it. Martin Buber wrote that he loved Hasidism because it was the only western mysticism untinged by the Gnostic spirit. Of course, as Scholem has insisted, one has to read the Hasidic sources quite selectively to maintain this view, but it is fair to say that there are some texts that proclaim it clearly. They love the old rabbinic formula “He is the place of the world, but the world is not His place,”15 which they take as implying that this world is totally contained within shekhinah, but that God also exists beyond, in unknown ways. That means that yihud kudsha brikh hu u-shekhintey, the unification of primal “male” and “female” within God, is in effect the union of upper and lower worlds, the utter infusion of matter with spirit. No wonder it is intoxicating and transformative! (“Intoxicating,” by the way, is a translation of the Zohar’s itbassim, from the bosem of the perfumes of Eden, wafting through the verses of the Song of Songs, not the coarse intoxication of Purim and the vodka bottle.) “Serving God,” or worship in its fullest sense, means living in response to that presence. The notion of service, so essential to the devotional life in any tradition, is hard for us modern westerners to swallow. We are too afraid of the loss of both ego and freedom to see ourselves as servants. This is part of the struggle to be a religious person in our era. “Responsiveness” may help in that acceptance process. We stand in love and awe before the greatness of God (I will not argue if you call it “the magnificence of existence”), and feel ourselves called upon to respond by living a life of service. This is how we can mean ana ‘avda de-kudsha brikh hu, “I am the servant of the blessed holy ONE.” 14 15

“Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs” in AJS Review 26:1 (2002): 1-52. Bereshit Rabbah 68:10. 74

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In our daily consciousness, however, divinity is fragmented; we perceive shekhinah in an “exilic” or unwhole state. Sparks of divine light are scattered and hidden everywhere. This is our human, all-too-human, situation. We live most of our lives with ordinary, unexpanded consciousness, mohin de-katnut. We may have glimpses into the divine fullness in rare flashes of insight: beauties of nature, great love, great loss, and other transcendent moments in our lives briefly open the haloney raki’a, windows of heaven, and we see how much we are usually missing. But how do we build a life around these moments? Can we fashion a sustained and sustaining vision out of such brief and occasional glimpses? “Both the whole and the broken tablets were placed in the ark,”16 the Talmud tells us. I like to think that the broken tablets were placed there for our generation, a time when whole tablets have ceased to function. That applies to any set of whole tablets. Orthodox Freudianism or Marxism are just as alien to our age as is Orthodox Judaism; there is no grand system of truth that works for us, whether you are to look up the “right” answers in the Little Red Book or the Kitsur Shulhan ‘Arukh. We rather rejoice in discovering the fragments and fitting them together—each of us in a unique way—to fashion “our” truth. This does not have to lead to solipsism or chaos, as some fear. As in all ages, the sacred process requires trust in God. Awareness of exile as the human condition is one of the great contributions of Judaism to civilization. There is nothing more eerily prescient about our tradition than the fact that we bore a notion of exile from Eden as the essential human situation centuries long before historical exile was to become the dominant and formative experience of Jewish life. The Hasidic masters, building on earlier developments, understood this chiefly as an exile of the mind.17 We are too deeply alienated from God and our own souls to be regularly aware of the ever-presence of the One in and around us. Egyptian bondage was “awareness in exile;” redemption from mitsrayim was release from the metsar yam, the “narrow 16 17

B. Berakhot 8b. Of course Neil Gillman’s own book, Sacred Fragments, is named after this legend. Among many other sources, see the classic formulation in Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl’s Me’or ‘Eynayim, shemot. 75

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straits” in which we did not have the breadth-perception to get beyond our inner katnut or exilic mind. This notion of the mind-in-exile appears again in twentieth century literature, most often associated with figures like Kafka, Agnon, and Borges. We moderns also feel ourselves cut off from the deeper wellsprings of an inner reality that we somehow know to exist.18 Perhaps that is why the longing to reclaim ancient sources of inner wisdom has attracted so many of the best minds of the past century, stretching from the generation of Zeitlin and Buber (as well as Tolstoy and Hesse) down to seekers of our own day. Our task is to seek out and discover those sparks, even in the most unlikely places, in order to raise them up and re-join them to their Source. Surely this is a significant part of what has made Hasidism so attractive, both in its eighteenth-century form and in this Neo-Hasidic garb. There is a sense of spiritual adventure, in which one is ever seeking out the sparks, ever involved in that work of uplifting and transformation. In this sense I find Hasidism to be a remarkably modern, romantic religious movement, and that has much to do with my original attraction to it. Life is depicted as a lifelong quest, filled with struggles to find, uplift, and redeem fallen bits of the single divine Self. When you add the phrase even in the most unlikely places, the drama is pitched to a high point, the journey becomes fraught with danger. Indeed it is. I  know from my own failures. For us, living as we do in such a “secular” culture, the task is greater than ever. We have to raise up sparks not only from amid the conversation with the peasant in the marketplace, as the Ba’al Shem Tov taught, but from off the computer and television screens, filled with everything from blatant pornography to the less openly pornographic, but equally distressing, worldviews created by both Hollywood and Wall Street. 18

Erich Heller’s The Disinherited Mind was “on the reading list” during my undergraduate years at Brandeis, where all my key teachers were themselves exiles. Especially formative in my own thinking was Nahum Glatzer’s essay “Franz Kafka and the Tree of Knowledge,” in Between East and West, edited by A. Altman (London: East and West Library, 1958). 76

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3. This work of redemption brings joy to shekhinah and to us as we reaffirm the divine and cosmic unity … That joyous service of God is the purpose of human existence. God delights in each creature, in every single distinctive form taken by existence. This is probably my most audacious claim, one that I take directly from the early Hasidic sources. How do we dare make it? I can know what gives me pleasure, or what pleases those around me. But “the shekhinah takes pleasure?” “God delights?” What do I mean? Of course, such language exists in the realm of poesis rather than that of scientific discourse. This is the point where Gillman dismissed Heschel as poet rather than philosopher, or became annoyed by Heschel’s insistence that such poetic assertion indeed has truth-value, or is philosophy. Here I take up the cudgels for my teacher, agreeing that the traditions of philosophia have indeed been read too narrowly in recent generations, and that the “love of wisdom” needs to be restored and made whole again by the admission of categories of human experience that come from levels of mind other than that of logic and provability. Our western encounter with the philosophies of the east is all about this, and I believe that is the most important frontier to be crossed in the development of our self-understanding and humanity, one we indeed need most urgently to approach. The future of theology will have much to do both with this encounter and with growing awareness of the complexity of consciousness. This will be helped by progress in the realm of brain science, but should not be reduced to it. The western intellectual tradition fought a necessary but terrible battle to free itself from ecclesiastical domination. The scientific advance of the past several centuries would not have been possible without that liberation. The way it succeeded in that fight was through establishing a new high altar of objectivity, one that (in unacknowledged paradox) could only be approached by maintaining critical distance. This has led to a bifurcation between poetic insight and philosophic truth, separating the acquisition of knowledge and the quest for wisdom. This is part of why philosophies originating in the East, where that battle did not take place in the same way, have been so attractive. Having said that, the assertion of divine delight is a return to the Psalmist’s insight. A  glimpse of beatific vision is part of the religious 77

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mindset, including a sense that the fullness and radiance of such vision is not the mind’s alone. The vision may present itself as representing an Edenic past or a glorious, not yet disclosed, future. It may be what the Zohar identifies as ‘olam ha-ba’, a world that is always “coming,” but ever remains just a step beyond our current grasp. This window into divine joy is humbling; the greatest exultation I can feel is but its palest shadow. So the insight that comes from expanded mind (mohin de-gadlut) is at once intellectual and emotional, transformative in both of those realms, though its Source lies beyond them. The truth of which it speaks is that of a universal Self that radiates its light throughout the world. That light can penetrate every human mind that is able to free itself from its kelipot, its self-generated defensive blinders. The light that shines through those cracks in the wall speaks of delight and comes to enlighten. But we human beings occupy a unique role in the hierarchy of being, having the capacity for awareness of the larger picture and an inbuilt striving for meaning-making. We are called upon to develop that awareness to our fullest ability and to live our lives in response to that awareness and its call. The shining light, the calling voice—they are one and the same. The sense of religious call does not stand or fall with the personified Caller. The voice sings out to us from within the folds of the earth—mi-kenaf ha-arets zemirot sham’anu19—as much as it does from the highest heavens. It may indeed manifest itself in song or in verse or in the thundering cry of the Biblical prophets. The important thing is that it makes a claim on us and our lives. Awareness of the larger picture takes us back to Job’s hearing “Where were you when I laid the foundations of earth?” We become human when we begin to see beyond the moment, beyond the fulfillment of our immediate creaturely needs. Even though an old prayer tells us that “man is no better than the beasts” (the Sephardic version can’t stand it and rushes in to insert “except for the pure soul!”), we detect “humanity” among our primate ancestors when we see them 19

Isaiah 24:16. The reading belongs to R. Nahman of Bratslav, Likkutey MoHaRaN 2:63. See my Tormented Master (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1969), 139. 78

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sublimating eros enough to begin to create art, to decorate beads or to paint pictures on the walls of caves. The “uplifting” that is such a key part of Hasidic teaching is surely in part another way of saying “sublimation.” Being human means being able to uplift and transform. Among the great wonders of evolution is the fact that the first creature powerful enough to dominate and determine the fate of all species on earth, the first to have the power to destroy our earthly biosphere, is also the first creature to have enough of conscience and self-awareness to hold back from doing so. Is this a coincidence? The call has been uttered. It waits to be heard. This is the essential mitzvah: da’at elohim, knowing God. Acting on this mitzvah calls upon us to transform our lives, to work to redeem the world. Will we respond in time? 4. “God needs to be served in every way.” All of life is an opportunity for discovering and responding to the divine presence. The way we relate to every creature is a mirror of our devotion to our single Creator. Openheartedness, generosity, fairness, and humility are key virtues of the religious life. It is not only through the specific practices of our tradition that we serve God, but through the entire way we live in God’s world. Transform and uplift every act you do, including the fulfillment of your bodily needs, to make every deed an act of worship. This is the way of living taught by Hasidism, both the old and the new. The word hasid in this context is seen as derived from hesed, the realm of unbounded and unearned giving and love. As the world began with an act of hesed, so does all our world-redeeming work have to begin with hesed, compassion. To be a hasid is thus to be a giver, a bestower of love. Our love of God is best witnessed, of course, by our acts of love toward God’s creatures. Beware of anything that may distract you from this effort, especially excessive religious guilt or deprecation of your sacred potential for giving. These will only lead you astray from your task of serving God in joy. The Ba’al Shem Tov understood that oppressive religion can bury the spirit. Our memory of liberation from Egyptian bondage is essential to our identity as Israel. Sometimes that bondage can be brought about by religion itself; we need to be vigilant about that danger, especially among the young. “The handmaiden at the Sea saw more than Isaiah or 79

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Ezekiel.”20 Liberation from bondage is a sacred moment, one in which God is revealed, even if that liberation is from too much stifling piety. 5. The essence of our religious life lies in the deep inward glance. Look more deeply; that’s our message. We apply it to the three realms of person, world, and text. Look more deeply both into yourself and into those around you. Do not be satisfied either with the welldefended ego that first appears, or the needy, craving self that you may see next. Go deeply enough to seek out the soul, the vulnerable innermost self that is the seat of true love and wonder. Cultivate those close love relationships with which you are blessed as paradigms for the way you should learn to see all human beings, each a unique expression of the divine image. World. See the natural world around you in all its magnificence, contained within the small and seemingly “ordinary” as well as within the great. Develop an eye for wonder, both in yourself and especially in those you teach. Devote time and attention to cultivating that awareness; do not take it for granted. Be inspired to do more to save and to protect our world. Text. As above. Our view of Torah should be enriched rather than diminished by critical, especially literary, insights. The presence of a level on which we see the texts in historical perspective should not keep us from engaging with the many other levels of reading, including the playful. Insight comes in all sorts of packages. Ritual commandments are there to be fulfilled, but they are to be seen as means rather than as ends, as vessels to contain the divine light that floods the soul or as concrete embodiments of the heart’s inward quest. “Are there to be fulfilled” is intentionally ambiguous. Neo-Hasidism can embrace a wide range of relationships to halakhah, varying in accord mostly with the psychological and devotional needs of the individual. There is no absolute “right” or “wrong” in this realm, not even a “better” or “worse.” The values of Neo-Hasidism as outlined here are 20

Mekhilta be-shalah 3. 80

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lines that barely intersect with those that define American Jewish “denominations.” The Hasidic sources often quote an older play on the word mitzvah, deriving it from the Aramaic tsavta or “togetherness.” A mitzvah is an act in which God and the person are drawn together, an opportunity to find one another in the midst of our eternal game of hide-and-seek. I rather like this reading, but I hear the traditionalist immediately rise to object. “But where is obligation in all this?” he (probably a “he”) will ask. Go back to the credo. Read it again. There is plenty of obligation: to openheartedness, to compassion, to decency, to Torah, to the Jewish people, to healing the world, and lots more. Traditional observance is not the only way for Jews to have a culture of obligation. Classical Reform’s prophetic call and Zionism’s yishuv ha-aretz are also forms of deep Jewish commitment; they are religious, even though some may not call them that. I say these things as a Jew who happens to care, for my own personal reasons, that the Shabbat candles be lit before dark, who is careful to hear a hundred kolot of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, every word of the megillah on Purim, and lots more. But I know that I am selective about these things, and the governing principle is personal/ spiritual, certainly not legal, with no need to pretend otherwise. “Keep your eyes on the prize” is my essential message here, on the end of devekut or spiritual openness, rather than on the means. Do not get overly caught up in the game. 6. This process begins with the key devotional pair of love and fear, which together lead us to our sense of the holy. We need to purify these aspects of our lives, coming to realize that all true love bears within it the love of God and that the only worthy fear is our awe at standing in God’s presence. True love and fear, along with other emotions that flow from them, open channels through which God’s blessing can flow into us. Inner discipline and purification of heart and mind are our constant spiritual work. Care for the body, our own and others’, as God’s handiwork is also a vital part of our worldly task. The physical self is deserving of respect. The Hasidic sources go a long way toward understanding this, finding God’s service in ordinary 81

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physical activities as well as in study and prayer. But they are still afflicted by the deep western/Platonic bias against the body, talking about transcending the corporeal self, “stripping off” the physical, and so forth. Neo-Hasidism’s completion of this move is in harmony with the most ancient Jewish insights into tselem elohim, the notion that each human self, body and soul as one, is a unique embodiment of the divine image and thus needs to be protected and kept whole. A healthy Judaism needs to retain our essential values while shedding their medieval shell. 7. The deeper look at reality should put us at odds with the superficial values of the consumerist and overly individualist society amid which we live. A Hasidism to be lived within contemporary society, without reconstructing the ghetto walls, will have to deal in complex ways with the secularization of consciousness and its views of self, world or society, and text. On the one hand, we remain a defiant religious minority who need to stand up as a critical voice to modern capitalist society’s superficial and trivialized view of human existence, bringing with it a culture of coarse materialism and the many human degradations of our consumer society. But we must also recognize the blessings of that secularization, our liberation from a society of compelled religious belief and behavior, and be wary of those forces that seek to reverse them. Hasidism’s first battle was fought against socially compelled and routinized religious behavior, just as deadening to true spiritual awareness as is secular superficiality. We have no desire to recreate pre-modern Jewish life or the shtetl, and we should avoid excessive romanticizing of it. Historical Hasidism underwent two great struggles: first against the dominant rabbinic culture, then against haskalah. You might say that our situation more reflects the latter; the secularization of consciousness surely began with the enlightenment, and we continue to live in its midst. Yes, but we need to go about that ongoing struggle in a manner completely different from nineteenth century Hasidism. What they did then is parallel to the current fundamentalist (in all three western faiths) rear-guard rebellion against modernity, against Darwinism, against biblical criticism, etc. We need to understand that those battles are over, decisively lost. Our religious consciousness has to awaken from the daze of that loss and seek old/new paths for expression. 82

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Yes, there has been a cost as those battles were lost. A certain naïvete about willful divine control of things in such a way that our prayers might make them go our way no longer works for us. Yet we do not stop praying! The sense of the miraculous, ‘al nisekha shebe-khol yom ‘imanu, is not at all diminished by evolution. This wonder remains the object of our prayers. Nor is the transcendent beauty of insight into text, our special Jewish way of reading, lessened by our knowledge of the text’s human authorship. We need to allow ourselves the spiritual freedom to feel those things, liberating ourselves from the tyranny of our own skeptical selves (yes, tyranny exists on that side as well) that holds us back. And that freedom itself, we should recall with no small sense of irony, is a gift of modernity. Caring for others, our fellow-limbs on the single Adamic body or Tree of Life, is the first way we express our love of God. It is in this that we are tested, both as individuals and societies. Without seeking to impose our views on others, we envision a Jewish community that speaks out with a strong moral voice. The oneness of being does not mean any less of care for fellowhumans or celebration of the differences between us. On the contrary, it means that we are all joined together in a bond that needs only to be discovered, not forged artificially. In caring for the other, we reassert the One. 8. We live in an abiding and covenanted love relationship to Torah. As readers of Radical Judaism will know, I do not affirm a God who establishes a covenant with the people of Israel. There is too much of both anthropomorphism and religious exclusivism linked to the notion of a God-initiated covenant for me to accept it. Yet I still have a sense that we exist as a covenantal community, a covenant we have made with our memory of transformative events recorded in our people’s historic saga. Remembering both that we were slaves in Egypt and that we stood at the foot of Sinai is what makes us a people, one marked by a sacred legacy and called to a sacred task. Never mind that neither of these can be affirmed by historians; they are events that transcend history. We relive them constantly and they become the language, the echo chambers, through which we speak about many other things that 83

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happen in our individual and communal lives. Our sense of covenant with them is abiding and unbreakable. The people of Israel are indeed mushba’im ve-‘omdim me-har Sinai, under oath to remain faithful to them. The whole process is sacred to us. The early Hasidic masters had a bold approach to the ongoing process of reading and re-interpreting Torah. Each generation, they taught, has its own soul-root, and needs to discover the meaning of Torah for its own time. Teachers emerge to do that, adding to and enriching the store of tradition as it is passed on to future generations. Anyone who denies this, some of them add, denies the power of Torah itself as a living embodiment of truth.21 Amen. 9. We want this to happen in a creative and openhearted way, and we devote ourselves to that effort. This commitment to the survival of Judaism as a creative force sets us apart from the ongoing traditional Hasidic community, mostly dedicated to preservation of the old way. We believe firmly that Judaism’s most creative centuries may yet lie ahead of us. We encourage ongoing creativity in realms that were familiar to the old Hasidism—Torah interpretation, music, dance—but in many new media as well. This is a vital part of “serving God in all ways.” As Jewish seekers, we have a special connection to Abraham our Father, who followed the voice and set off on a journey that we still consider unfinished. The unfinished journey is at the same time a spiritual, familial, and political one. Abraham is the classical Jewish seeker, smashing idols and trying on forms of truth until his path became revealed to him. But he is also avinu, the progenitor of our tribe, which must continue to live in faith with his spirit. And since his journey was one that took him to 21

I have documented and discussed this in my essay “Hasidism and Its Changing History,” appearing in a special 2012  issue of the journal Jewish History, entitled “Toward a New History of Hasidism,” co-edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert, Moshe Rosman and Marcin Wodzinski. 84

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the Holy Land, the body politic that we Jews have created there in our beloved State of Israel must also be one that shares the open-tent values of the one who set us out on our way. The true Israel is not only about Herzl’s vision, but one much older and wiser. Remember that Abraham was ready to risk everything, even his relationship with God, for the sake of wicked “Palestinians” in Sodom. We are also Jews who live in the shadow of the greatest catastrophe of Jewish history, one of the darkest episodes in human history as well. This leaves us sharply aware of the depths of human evil as well as the responsibility borne by indifferent bystanders. We recognize that the Jewish people may have real enemies and promise not to be naïve about that reality; the price is one we cannot afford to pay again. At the same time, our post-Holocaust “Never again!” applies both to ourselves and to all of humanity and commits us to active involvement in standing against the forces of evil in our world, wherever they may be. 10. Our world suffers from a great imbalance of energy between the typically “male” and “female” energies. The over-valuing of the “male” (present, to be sure in biological women as well as men) is manifest in excessive aggression, war, and rampant capitalism. All these and more are in need of healing. The old Hasidism, born of a deeply misogynist Kabbalah,22 saw that imbalance, but was still part of it. Neo-Hasidism openly seeks to right that wrong, by welcoming both women and female energies into its ongoing creative re-reading of tradition. The sages of the Talmud23 may have already been aware of the dangers caused by this imbalance when they depicted God asking us to bring an atonement sacrifice for Him each Rosh Hodesh because He diminished the moon, giving it monthly cycles that make it less than the ever-shining sun. The ignoring of women’s potential contributions to our society has indeed weakened us, and not only because they represent half of humanity. It is our male-dominated society that has brought us to the brink of self-destruction. 22 23

See the recent very thorough presentation in Sharon Koren’s Forsaken: The Menstruant in Jewish Mysticism (Waltham: New England University Press, 2011). B. Hullin 60a. 85

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11. We too recognize that there are gifted spiritual teachers in our world and we thank God for their presence and our ability to learn from them. But we live in an age that is rightly suspicious of such figures, having seen charisma used in sometimes horrific ways. We therefore underscore the Hasidic teaching that each person has his/her own path to walk and truth to discover. We encourage spiritual independence and responsibility. The greatest error of Hasidism was its turn to dynastic succession. Spiritual charisma, as attractive and dangerous as it is, does not pass through the genes. Hasidism became committed to ultra-traditionalism, and hence became frozen as a creative force, partly because leaders whose only legitimacy was based on dynastic succession could offer nothing more than nostalgic preservation of the past. We do not need to repeat that error. The best examples here are those of early nineteenth century Polish Hasidism, where disciple succeeded master, each proclaiming openly the need to strike out on a new and unique path. A  variety of diverse paths and teachers seems appropriate to a NeoHasidism for our age. 12. Hasidism believes in community. The sense of hevrayyah or fellowship among followers of a particular path is one of the greatest tools it offers for spiritual growth. Judaism is a non-monastic tradition. Our religion is one designed for householders, people committed to raising families, who nevertheless seek an intense spiritual presence in their lives. In this sense Judaism is closest to Islam, as distinct from classical Christianity and Buddhism. The Hasidic community, like the Sufi brotherhood, is meant to create the sort of bond among householders that supports this vision. It is an essential part of the Neo-Hasidic enterprise, where communal energies to some degree supplant the authority of the onetime tsaddik and serve as a check against potential abuses. 13. We are committed to preserving our ancient way of life in full richness of expression, within the bounds of our contemporary ethical beliefs. Yes, there are ethical limits to our traditionalism. We are not ashamed to say that we have learned much that is positive from living in an open society that strives toward democracy and equality. These values should 86

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become part of our Judaism. Ultimately they are rooted in the most essential Jewish teaching that each person is a unique tselem elohim, divine image. Traditions that inhibit the growth and self-acceptance inherent in that teaching must be subject to careful examination and the possibility of being set aside. New ways of thinking that enhance our ability to discover the divine image in more ways, or in people we once rejected, need to be taken seriously as part of Torah. Mordecai Kaplan was certainly right in calling Judaism an “evolving religious civilization.” Our ethical norms grew as civilization progressed. We went from a literal “an eye for an eye” to the payment of damages. Setting aside the biblical text, we stopped stoning suspected adulteresses or rebellious children to death. But in the course of our long struggle for self-preservation, halakhic innovation lost its nerve. We need to reassert the early rabbis’ claim to a right to move boldly when faced with moral and ethical norms that we know to be behind the times.24 We happily join with all others who seek, each in our own way, to realize these sacred truths, while admitting in collective humility that none of our languages embodies truth in its fullness. We especially welcome shared efforts in the realm of action. We seek to join with other people of faith and goodwill to reshape our society into one less based on greed and competition and more on human goodness, and to engage in the most urgent task of our generation, that of protecting life on our beloved and much-threatened planet.25

24

25

The Conservative rabbis’ Committee on Law and Standards’ rejection of Rabbi Gordon Tucker’s teshuvah regarding homosexuality, even as one of several legitimate alternatives, is an example of this failure of moral courage in the adjudication of halakhah. To cite another example, our inability to insist on the stunning of animals before Jewish religious slaughter is a blight on our moral courage. I am grateful to my students Ebn Leader, Ariel Mayse, and Or Rose for important contributions to this essay. I shared the credo with participants in a conference on Jewish theology at Hebrew College in the fall of 2011. I am grateful for their input as well.

Is There an Essential Theology for a Halakhic Movement? Nina Redl

Upon entering a Jewish academic context, there seems to be hardly any term that has undergone as much misunderstanding, rephrasing, and reinterpretation as the term “theology.” Nevertheless, theology is extremely popular as the “soft side of academia,” i.e. “what one does if one is not a full-fledged scholar, but prefers to look for ultimate questions rather than for academic answers.” As such, one discovers, for example, rabbinic theology (probably the most academically accepted and presentable version of theology) as the frequently to be frowned upon empowerment of aggadah over halakhah, or, as the slightly smiled upon preference to look for deeper meaning and interpretation beyond the rabbinic shakla vetaria. All in all, there are probably as many definitions as well as positive and negative connotations of the term theology as there are people using the term. Theology is not a very welcomed discipline within the curriculum of academic Jewish Studies. And this is so for the one and only reason that theology is not only a discipline within the canon of Jewish Studies, it is both a discipline and a method. Just as any discipline it has its own schools, its own history and its own literature. However, it is also a method, an aspect that is often overlooked. As such, it is most closely comparable to philosophy: one can deal with something in a philosophical way, but there is also philosophy as a discipline within the Humanities. In the following I would like to present theology not just as a discipline but primarily as a method or an approach to religious studies that combines serious academic training and research with a personal connection to the learned. The current “either… or”—approach to theology, either serious academic studies or a search for personal meaning within a religious context, is probably one of the most puzzling maladies that our theological seminaries suffer from while the remedy lies so close. 88

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The recently popular connection of theology with the even less academically accepted term “spirituality” brings to mind “in our day of proliferating faiths, gullible and other-worldly types,”1 to use Eugene Borowitz’s words. Theologians often fight against the image of themselves as “touchy-feely, spiritual” leaders within the academic context who are seen either as not fully academically capable and inclined, or simply as the “weird creatures” within a serious context of “Wissenschaft des Judentums”. Theology might be good for a rabbinical school seminar, for congregational preaching and teaching of a higher standard than the normal rabbi can provide, but theology is clearly on the lower end of the academic scale. It is more a hobby than a profession. It is what one can do in one’s spare time after finishing a tractate of Gemara or a chapter of Maimonides, or when translating these for a non-academic, religious context. To understand why theology is also a method and not just a discipline, looking at the history of theology as well as at its current representation in the Christian context in European universities is invaluable. When looking at the history of theology and its application in the Christian context where it started as one of the most renowned disciplines within the early university canon, it quickly becomes clear what a misconception the term theology is suffering from in the academic Jewish context.

Christianity: Theology = Fides quaerens intellectum The term theology first appears in Plato’s The Republic (book II, chap 18/379A). It is a compound from the Greek theos (god) and logos (rational utterance) and thus is most broadly defined as reasoned discourse about God or the gods. Even within this first usage, there can be no doubt that a theological discourse is a serious enterprise of a highly trained mind. After all, nothing less is to be expected of a mind that engages in the highest of all endeavors: talking about God. At the same time it is also clear that this talk is never going to be fully free of subjectivity. With regard to the earliest origins of the term theology there 1

Eugene Borowitz, Renewing the Covenant, A Theology for the Postmodern Jew (Philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem: JPS, 1991), 82. 89

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remains to be noted that Aristotle divided theoretical philosophy into mathematike, physike and theologike2, with the latter corresponding to metaphysics, which for Aristotle included discussion of the nature of the divine. It makes one wonder whether American Judaism is not close to Aristotle by locating theology mostly within its philosophy departments but without recognizing the Aristotelian seriousness and rigor that is inherent in the theological enterprise. In other words, while the placement of theology as a sub-discipline of philosophy is Aristotelian, the seriousness with which it is looked upon in academia is not much higher than that of a congregational evening adult education class in philosophy or an undergraduate introduction to philosophy. With regard to the understanding and definition of Christian theology, the Latin historian Varro was probably most influential. He distinguished three forms of discourse within theology: mythical (concerning the myths of the Greek gods), rational (philosophical analysis of the gods and of cosmology) and civil (concerning the rites and duties of public religious observance).3 Tertullian and Augustine followed Varro’s usage of theology. Here theology is clearly not a single enclosed discipline, but a method that is used to approach the three main areas of religious studies. The connection between knowledge and faith that Augustine then draws for his definition of theology becomes crucial for any further theological discourse: In Augustine, reason and faith are essentially interrelated as expressed in his formula: “Intellige ut credas, crede ut intelligas” (“Understand that you may believe, believe that you may understand”).4 However, it was only Paul Abelard with his dialectical method of arguing both sides of religious questions who used the term theology first to describe a methodological/dialectical investigation of the whole Christian teaching.5 Over the centuries, theology within the Christian context came to denote the methodological elaboration of the truth(s) of divine revelation by reason and enlightened by faith. Theology in the Catholic context may be described as faith seeking understanding on the basis of 2 3 4 5

Aristotle, Metaphysics, book epsilon. As cited by Augustine, City of God, Book 6, ch.5. Augustine, Sermons 43:9. Sic et Non. 90

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serious studies that equally challenge the mind and the whole person. It has always been an intellectual endeavour anchored in a religious framework of belief that sought to gain deeper insights into the same belief by means of serious studies. Consequently, it never shied away from the challenges these studies presented. It is and has always been “fides quaerens intellectum”.6 It was only within this framework that the position of “credo quia absurdum est” is what is left, when at times no answer can be found, or when mysticism itself becomes the answer. After all, theology deals with the most challenging content of all: God. It is crucial to understand that theology as a method does not strive to gain a knowledge that is identical with faith, but a knowledge that empowers and enables the highest and most intelligent and informed kind of faith. In the ideal way faith is reached by the growing of knowledge as expressed by Vincent of Lerins: “Let there be growth … and all possible progress in understanding, knowledge and wisdom, whether in single individuals or in the whole body in each man as well as in the entire Church according to the stage of their development.”7 In other words, theology in the Christian world is an enterprise that has its starting point within faith but then seeks intellectual understanding and insight from any academic discipline that is connected to the religion of this faith. In the light of this, it is intelligible why, when looking at a classical institute for Christian theology at a European university, we find theology as the umbrella term for the departments of Old and New Testament, Church Law, moral theology, systematic theology, dogmatic theology, pastoral Theology, Homiletics, church history, liturgy etc. A minimum of faith is the basis, an informed faith and greater knowledge is the ideal outcome—an outcome in which both faith and knowledge are treated as of equal importance. An uninformed faith is as problematic as knowledge that is tied to religious topics but lacks a personal connection. 6

7

In the following I intentionally read “fides quaerens intellectum” not just as “faith seeking understanding” but as faith that in its search for understanding employs the highest intellectual capacities, i.e. academic encounter. Heinrich Denziger and Peter Huenermann, eds., Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen, 39th edition (Herder: Freiburg, 2001), 3020 91

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The following will exemplify how theology as a methodological approach combines academia and faith. Within biblical theology, the historical critical school serves as the best example: Rudolf Schnackenburg’s greatest work of biblical scholarship, Jesus in the Gospels: A Biblical Christology, uses historical critical exegesis to illuminate on the basis of a highly academic analysis what is actually knowable about the figure of Jesus. Besides displaying the factual results of scientific scholarship on the Bible, the most insightful results that he comes to is the realization that “the efforts of scientific exegesis to examine these traditions and trace them back to what is historically credible” invites us “into a continual discussion of tradition and redaction history that never comes to rest”.8 In other words: the dialogue with the text is an ongoing one; scientific exegesis can never come to rest. Although the dialogue with the text is ongoing, it is not a primarily personal interpretive dialogue but an academic encounter. Nevertheless, the reason for this dialogue is not purely academic; it serves to gain a deeper understanding of the crucial figure of Christian belief: Jesus. Consequently, in his discussion about Schnackenburg’s work, Pope Benedict XVI comes to an interesting statement of purpose for modern academic scholarship as applied within Christian theology: Modern exegesis has brought to light the process of constant rereading that forged the words transmitted in the Bible into Scripture: Older texts are reappropriated, reinterpreted and read with new eyes in new contexts. They become Scripture by being read anew, evolving in continuity with their original sense, tacitly corrected and given added depths and breadth of meaning. This is a process in which the word gradually unfolds its inner potentialities, already somehow present like seeds, but needing the challenge of new situations, new experiences and new sufferings in order to open up.9

Modern exegesis provides the individual with all the tools to “open the text,” to gain deeper understanding through academia and to connect to it in the most informed way. It is also clear that this approach 8 9

Rudolf Schnackenburg, Jesus in the Gospels: A Biblical Christology, trans. O.C. Dean Jr. (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 1995), 318. Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xviii f. 92

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to the text ultimately stays subjective when a personal connection is to be achieved. This subjectivity, however, is not a subjectivity of feeling or pure faith interpretation that is distant from the text, but an academically informed subjectivity that arises from the text and always stays connected with it. It is not a necessary evil, but only possible on the grounds of scholarship and is also the desired consequence within “fides quaerens intellectum.” The justification for the usage of high level academic scholarship as part of a theological approach then follows to be: “For it is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does not tell stories symbolizing suprahistorical truths, but is based on history, history that took place here on this earth. The factum historicum (historical fact) is not an interchangeable symbolic cipher for biblical faith, but the foundation on which it stands: Et incarnatus est—when we say these words, we acknowledge God’s actual entry into real history.” On this basis of God in history, in this world, it is essentially indispensable to engage in academic study of every kind with the most seriousness as academia displays the highest achievement of the human mind within this world. Thus it is exactly this academic endeavour that is the basis and condition for faith and the growth thereof. There is no such thing as deep faith without biblical theology, i.e. without reaching the highest level of knowledge and skills one could possibly reach when reading text. “If history, if facticity is an essential dimension of Christian faith, then faith must expose itself to the historical method, indeed faith itself demands this.”10 However, it is not just the historical critical method that is essential for faith, since any single method is limited, but any kind of serious academic scholarship that engages in any topic within the Christian religion. As such we find high-level scholarship in the department of Church Law as well as that of Education. High-level scholarship, the best of the human mind, is essential for the development of faith. Christian theology has the rank of “Wissenschaft,” and as such claims since the twelfth century to be “nicht Weisheit sondern Wissenschaft und zwar höchste Wissenschaft.”11 10 11

Ibid., xvi. Konrad Stock, “Theologie III,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE), ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 33.324. Translation: “. . . not wisdom but Wissenschaft, strictly speaking the highest form of Wissenschaft.” 93

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Theology within the Christian context is Wissenschaft, but a Wissenschaft that also fosters personal meaningfulness as the result of highest intellectual encounter with the material—highest academic study that results in a more informed way of coming to a personal meaningfulness. Furthermore, despite the essential connection between academic study and personal meaningfulness, the academic rigor is not diminished to a pure means for the establishment of personal meaning but is rather employed as a highly worthwhile, if not the only way to reach an informed and stabilized personal connection to the text within a religious framework. Beyond the question of meaning and identity theology is a quest for truth. Within the context of a search for truth, theology is the discourse about God from the point of view of what can be known about Him from the created world by the natural power of reason or form the point of view of revelation as received by man. God and revelation as the ultimate mysteries excel the human intellect, “nevertheless, if reason enlightened by faith studies the mysteries in a serious, dedicated and humble way, it does achieve … some understanding of them and a most profitable one.”12 It is this (at least partial) understanding of divine truth that theology strives to attain—a knowledge that is not pure faith but contains an understanding of faith, a knowledge that is acquired by effort of the human mind. The three points that make Christian theology a conglomerate of academic study and personal faith, one carried by the other, can be summarized as follows: God incarnated Himself into this world, into history. This incarnation created a connection with the people of God and was subsequently laid down in Scripture. This trinity of Christian theology is thus one of God, People and Scripture. Incarnation empowers the human being beyond measure, not regarding faith, but usage of human means of understanding this trinity in every possible way. This is what Christian scholarship, as the highest means and form of human understanding, rests upon. Christian theology consequently cannot ask for anything less than the best of the human mind to be the basis for faith. What is left to ask now is: what is the Jewish “incarnation” on which we could base a similar usage of theology for Judaism? 12

H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum, ed. A. Schönmetzer, 32nd edition (Freiburg, 1963), 3016 (Vaticanum I). 94

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Judaism: Theology = Intellectus quaerens fidem Here, I want to suggest building a bridge to a Jewish understanding of theology. I offer this as a first (and hopefully not last) approach, a draft as it were on how Judaism could relate to or profit from Christian theology. It is far from a fully developed concept, but tries to address the important points. Christian theology is fides quaerens intellectum: it starts from faith and engages in academic encounters to keep this faith on the most informed and highest intellectual level possible. For Christianity, which, following Moses Mendelssohn, is a revealed religion of faith rather than a divine legislation of deed (i.e. Judaism), a religion in which faith comes before action, this approach is essentially characteristic. The core and the beginning of Christianity lie in faith—to be more precise in a creed rather than in study or deed. Hence, speaking even more broadly, theology is a method that starts out from a basis of faith (specifically the Christian faith), indulges deeply in academic studies with utmost intellectual rigor, and aims at going one step beyond the pure ivory tower of the academic exercise. At the end of such a theological process there is not only academic enrichment but also a deeper personal connection to the meaning of what was studied. This deeper meaning can be both a personal individual meaning (what does material X mean to me after and in the light of my academic studies) or a more general meaning (what does X mean for one as a Christian). Christian theology that starts out as fides quaerens intellectum also contains its counterpart, intellectus quaerens fidem. It was the core of Christianity (faith), as well as the core expression of Christianity of a creed, that determined theology to be fides quaerens intellectum. Hence, in order to discover how theology within the Jewish tradition can work on the same level of academic seriousness and integrity, one has to start with the core characterisation of Judaism.13 Judaism is not a religion that finds its traditional basis in a pure creed, even if traditional reading of the Noachide or Abrahamitic covenant 13

I am fully aware that both my main characterisation of Christianity as well as the one of Judaism are very broad if not superficial, however for the sake of sketching out their differences in faith and action, those extreme characteristics serve the purpose of demonstrating in how far Judaism will approach a serious theology from a different starting point. 95

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might suggest a faith basis.14 What needs to be differentiated here is faith versus creed. A creed is an expression that summarizes and determines faith—through it, faith becomes specific. Christianity, especially Catholicism, arises from a creed-based faith (a faith that is anchored in and expressed through a creed) and then applies the intellect for the stabilisation and justification of this same faith. Judaism’s core is not a creed and neither is its core expression. The traditional core and dominant expression of Judaism is a faith that is expressed in action and study. Studying is based on understanding of the material but only secondarily connected with a certain reference for God as the inherent core of Scripture. Within the further development of Judaism through the rabbinic time until modernity, faith, or deep trust, is often deemed to be secondary within the world of pure study and commandment. This is where we find ourselves in our modern day dilemma. Once one knows the details of how to live a Jewish life, faith as the major expression of one’s Judaism has come to be an option, even if it is a highly praiseworthy enterprise. For the sake of clarity: where a Catholic is recognized by his belief in the creed, a traditional Jew is characterised through his knowledge of Scripture and halakhah and active halakhic observance. And the latter is often disconnected from personal faith or meaning, despite its being given through divine authority. Where a Catholic struggles with the Trinity, a Jew struggles 14

I am well aware of traditional notions of covenant, or the Abrahamitic faith, ‫— נעשה ונשמע‬the doing (and believing/trusting) before investigating etc. However, this is not the core that we experience today, and I might say, this is not the core of rabbinic Judaism which came to be broadly seen as our modern-day Judaism. A  Hasidic, emotion-based or Buberian Judaism is not the norm, it is an option. The notion of a divine human covenant (unfortunately) is more a topic of study than of inherent personal meaning of belief or deep conviction in rabbinic as well as in modern Judaism. To put it in different terms, covenant and Abrahamitic faith, as a core of Judaism is more an ideological framework that we like to speak about, but not one that we live. When it comes to halakhah, the notion of covenant, understood as a relationship between God and the human being (which anyhow is not the original meaning of covenant at all), is less of importance than the notion of obligation and observance, unless we understand covenant purely through these. What we want to see as a deep and trustful relationship in terms of a modern reinterpretation of covenant is not the norm. In a way, we are still within the original meaning of covenant as a non-emotional, non-faith based contract between two parties. 96

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with the halakhic implications of certain situations. There is no question that faith plays an essential role in halakhic Judaism too, but its role compared to that of a religion that is anchored in the major expression of a creed is on a different level. Jews, just like Christians, are driven by ultimate questions and feel the stirrings of faith and disbelief, transcendence and scepticism within them, and try to make sense of their primal feelings, but they do so through Torah study and halakhic observance (or non-observance, as a matter of fact). Even more: Judaism—maybe as a reaction to Christianity—often separates faith from study, rather than to let faith and study carry each other. A modern day observation in the more traditionally minded branches of Judaism shows the following: We talk about emunah but we do not live it, it remains mostly disconnected from our studies—it is not directly discouraged, but it is clearly secondary. And it is clearly something that is not talked about in academic settings since academic rigour does not require faith. But what if academic studies could foster it? What I would like to suggest for the Jewish academic world that is engaged in the training of its professional leaders, such as rabbis, cantors, and educators, as well as professors who are inclined not to constantly remain in the academic ivory tower, but who are willing to be challenged with the ultimate question of meaning, is the following: Jewish theology could be “intellectus quaerens fidem,” theology as a method that makes usage of high academic training but uses this knowledge to gain a deeper sense of what it means to be Jewish, not just from the side of doing but from the side of believing. The question “What does it mean to be Jewish?” has two sides to it: knowing Jewish practice, ritual, thought, etc., and having a connection of personal meaning to it, as an individual and as part of a group: the group of bnei Israel. The first side, the factual side, can be studied; the second side can only be reached through the first side and through a personal reflection on why this knowledge matters—what this acquired knowledge means for oneself as an individual and as part of the Jewish people. In terms of halakhah, a theological approach could mean the following: We often ask the question of “do you know what the halakhah says about X?”, but we seldom ask the question that should be inherently linked to it: “why and how does this halakhah deeply matter to you and contribute to your Jewish identity?” Living a Jewish life within 97

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a halakhic movement should be more than just folklore and religious behaviourism, and it should certainly be more than a rejection of acts and principles that seem to have become meaningless. Those are the two extremes/danger zones that we can find in the conservative movement. The middle ground, a halakhic observance that is deeply infused by individual personal meaning, Jewish identity and informed by knowledge that goes beyond the basics of the letter of the Shulkhan Arukh, is what we seem to long for but almost gave up on reaching. In order to understand what halakhah is, one must not only know the facts of the Shulkhan Arukh but gain a deeper understanding in both the tradition and the various texts that stand behind the codes. And this goes as far as Talmud and midrash, Torah, biblical scholarship, history, archaeology as well as anthropology, sociology and philosophy. What I am suggesting here is nothing else but to bring halakhah back to the stage it arose from: a stage of dialogue between text and tradition, between Scripture and people, a dialogue that cannot be lead and lived without detailed knowledge of text (and thus language), modes of thinking and biblical scholarship and exegesis, as well as a high self-awareness and a constant epistemological challenge. In other words, if historical critical scholarship of the written Torah has its clear advantages, what would keep us from applying it to the oral Torah as well? If I may allow myself the following question: How much theology does a halakhic movement need? A lot—if halakhah is to seriously survive and not fade away into nostalgic tradition. With a serious Jewish theology, there is no need for a separation between halakhah and Heschel’s “pan-halakhism.” In other words: I am asking for nothing less than a serious consideration of what Soloveitchik already expressed in Halakhic Man as: “Halakhic Man is worthy and fit to devote himself to a majestic religious experience in all its uniqueness, with all its delicate shades and hues. However, for him such a powerful exalted experience only follows upon cognition, only occurs after he has acquired knowledge of the a priori, ideal Halakhah and its reflected image in the real world. But since this experience occurs after rigorous criticism and profound penetrating reflection, it is that much more intensive.”15 15

Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: JPS, 1983), 83. 98

Is There an Essential Theology for a Halakhic Movement?

The justification for applying every possible “human” academic method to the material of the Christian faith tradition was the fact16 of incarnation. God is obviously not “incarnate” in the Jewish religion in the same way as He is in the Christian religion. However, that does not mean that God is any less real in the Jewish world, just because he did not take on human flesh. The issue and question underlying incarnation is the one of a tangible reality of the otherwise invisible reality of God. The belief in incarnation is one but not the only way of connecting to God’s realness. God’s immanence, even if struggled with, is not at all doubted in Judaism, He is no way less tangible in Judaism because of not having been incarnated in flesh. Taking Passover as a paradigmatic example, Judaism would not exist if it were not for God’s action in this world. Even more, if we look at Jewish philosophy we find a wide variety of the belief in God’s immanence, be it Spinozitic pantheism or panentheism, the Buberian Eternal Thou, Kaplan’s cosmic power that makes for salvation that is both beyond us and within us, Rosenzweig’s active lover-God who unceasingly utters the imperative of love towards His beloved, Heschel’s mystery that despite its transcendence can be seen and experienced with radical amazement in this world and that needs an ontological presupposition within us, and many more. Judaism from its very beginning emphasised the “this-worldliness” of God, the traces of God that are visible in this world, and despite all differences between different periods, denominations and philosophies, the notion of an immanent God connects the “Judaisms” throughout the ages—an immanence that did not become flesh but that might even be more present in many more ways since it is not limited to a human body. Nevertheless, in both Judaism and Christianity God is more than just incarnate or just immanent; both traditions reject radical pantheism and pure anthropomorphism. Thus is it crucial to see that God’s essential characterization as transcendent lends itself to a justification for theology as an empowerment of the human mind: Maimonides’ negative theology that displays one of the most sophisticated beliefs in radical transcendence (all that there is to know about God is that He is not non-existent) leads to the human responsibility of knowing 16

I refer to the incarnation as a fact and not as a belief statement, since within traditional Christianity it is more than just a belief or a founding myth, it is a fact, at least from the beginning of dogmatics onwards. 99

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and understanding all that is not God, i.e. creation, so that idolatry can be avoided and true worship of the one and only Transcendent is possible. Maimonides’ intellectual love of God and Spinoza’s third form of knowledge are both highly sophisticated theological endeavours that are based on radical transcendence. When looking at the Middle Ages, one can easily discover that what Jewish Studies describe as medieval Jewish philosophy is not just philosophy that worked towards the establishment of new philosophical positions, but philosophy within a theological framework. Thinkers like Saadya Gaon, Yehuda HaLevi and even Maimonides sought to offer their readers a highly developed and well reasoned version of traditional Judaism, while employing high academic philosophy of their time. Another fact that needs to be taken into consideration is the following: Theology is a search for the truth of the divine. It is within the context of this search that meaning arises for both the individual and a specific religious group. In the Christian tradition, this truth has been the one and only truth as perceived and imbedded in the Christian tradition, i.e. it was an exclusive truth. It was only with Nostra Aetate17 and onwards that the Catholic Church started recognizing that other faith traditions, particularly Judaism and Islam, are not ontologically excluded from this truth and that—philosophically speaking—even though there is one ultimate truth, there are multiple equally valid truth claims. Let me elaborate: there is no question that there is ultimate divine truth that is indeterminable for humans. It is recognizable through the analogia entis18 but removed from a full human understanding through the ontological difference between humans and the divine. It is this search for divine truth that generally unites Jews and Christians, even though their paths are different and they consequently hold similar but also different truth claims. These truth claims all express that there is something cosmically and essentially valid about the respective faith tradi 17

18

Nostra Aetate 2: The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.“ Analogia entis, i.e. the analogy of being is the philosophical teaching, made famous by Thomas of Aquinas, that the human being can have an understanding that God exists drawn from the analogy of his own human existence. 100

Is There an Essential Theology for a Halakhic Movement?

tion. Furthermore, in the modern world these truth claims can coexist non-competitively for the first time in history. Approaching the issue of theology more broadly, it is important to see that both Jews and Christians pursue scientific investigation and theological reflection for the same reason—because they are committed to living in the light of truth and want to grasp reality as fully and completely as possible. Truth unifies both the scientific and the theological quest. Truth orients both ratio et fides. In times when Jews and Christians still have problems of communication as seen in the discussions about Benedict XVI motu proprio (August 2008) and the new translation of the good Friday intercessions, that enrich and complicate the dialogue at the same time, intelligent theology that recognizes multiple truth claims on the basis of informed faith is more important than ever. What I described as the trinity of Christian theology is also present in Judaism: God, People and Scripture exist in Judaism as the cornerstones of what Judaism is. If, with the words of Pope Benedict XVI’s description, Christians can be seen as people of God in connection with Scripture, Jews, as the People of the Book, to use a common and I think essential description of Jews, embody this connection between Scripture, people, and God within this very definition. The broad similarities between Judaism and Christianity, both being monotheistic religions based on Scripture, connected to a God that is visible in this world and deeply committed to study of Scripture is the basis that allows for saying that there could be such a thing as a Jewish theology. The respective starting points, be it faith or study, are different, and so will be the respective outcome, since despite their similarities the content of both religions differs. Consequently, the material that is approached with theology is different. I would actually like to go even one step further and claim that those similarities of Judaism and Christianity, as well as the differences between them, would lend themselves to a great opportunity to engage in serious and respectful learning and dialogue, especially because Christianity and Judaism are connected through difference in similarities. Theology as a method can carry these differences in similarities. One of the primary examples of our times are two academic theologians that engage in this kind of dialogue: Jacob Neusner and Pope Benedict XVI. Not only are the two books that set the framework for their dialogue, A Rabbi Talks to Jesus and Jesus of Naza101

Nina Redl

reth, works of faith, but they are pieces of writing that are underlined by academic studies par excellence, made relevant for their own lives as individuals and representatives of their respective religions. The dialogue that we see between them is only possible through their engagement in theology. I would further like to challenge the reader with to consider Christian theology as a model for understanding the possibilities of theology within Judaism is: Christianity has taken a lot from Judaism, why should not Judaism also benefit from Christianity by allowing itself to be open to a more serious understanding of theology? Learning from each other will lead to a more serious understanding of each other and a more challenging dialogue. Concerning methodological self-awareness, the following needs to be stated clearly: Theology as a method that has both, academic rigour and ultimate questions, faces one major challenge in order to sustain itself on this high level. Not only may it not drop its academic standards, since without it theology would risk to fall back into the realm of “feel-good meaning,” it also needs to stay highly self aware and as such needs to be even more methodologically and epistemologically self aware than pure academic encounters. Let me elaborate: writing a piece of theology can start from two points: 1) if a piece of theological writing starts with a statement of faith that then aims to be underlined by academic study, the danger is that one might choose to look only at material that underlies this faith statement without looking at all the material that is relevant to the faith statement. Any interest of keeping the original faith statement the way it is must not hinder the academic study, since academic study itself must not be carried by pure subjective faith interests—only so can the resulting faith be fully stable. 2) Someone who engages in academic studies and tries to interpret meaning into academia in the hope that the increase of knowledge will lead to an increase of personal connection and identity as a Jew or Christian, which in the end might not happen. It is only when both elements, academia and personal faith, are seen as complimentary parts of a whole, and not each one as a mere means to achieve the other, that the theological method works. Academia is not the handmaid for faith but the only basis for an informed and lasting faith, and faith is not just the motivation for one specific academic encounter but needs to be opened and challenged in every possible way that modern scholarship can offer, even to the risk that some of it needs to be rethought. 102

Is There an Essential Theology for a Halakhic Movement?

What remains to be stated as a value of theology is the following: someone trained in theology, and thus having developed a faith that is infused by academic encounter, will presumably in times of a real faith crisis not fall as deeply as someone whose faith and knowledge has never been challenged by either personal search for meaning or academic work.

Conclusion Theology is more than a homiletic application of Jewish texts to the issues of everyday life in order to foster healthy attitudes and well-being. It is more than a spare time search for meaning. Such works that can be found in every bookstore, disguised as biblical theology, usually cite either rabbinic literature or, recently, Kabbalah to generate theological support for whatever interpretation they have decided to put forward. Have we really learned nothing from Spinoza’s Theological Political Treatise, if this is how we still view theology? Or might it actually be that we have forgotten to read chapter 7, and that God is also essentially substance? The only method underlying those popular theological works is the twisted usage of classical texts to modern needs, in other words to create a Jewish “feel-good-guide” for life that displays some connection to the Jewish tradition. Poor tradition! This is not what is needed with respect to theology. What needs to be said is the following: theology in the way I present it, as a method that engages in both, rigorous academic exercise as well as a search for meaning on the basis of the outcome of this academic endeavour is this an elite enterprise. Is it feasible? I leave this up to the reader to decide. However, I would like to suggest the following idea: the whole rabbinic world was an elite enterprise; it is THE elite enterprise that we live on. A more appropriate question would be whether it needs to stay an elite enterprise…. My own opinion is that with good teachers that are trained in theology as a method and that have a dedication to life-long learning, it does not have to be.

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah? Joel Roth

To my dear friend Neil Gillman: I pen these words to you forty-six years after bouncing into your office for a preliminary interview, seeking admission to the Rabbinical School, and fifty-two years after having first met you at Ramah Wisconsin. For many of those years, you and I could well be called ‫ברי פלוגתא‬, each of us expressing ideas to our classes, in print, and in public lectures motivated by what the other had said. I write this article in your honor. It is not like most articles in festschriften. It is not “scholarly” in the classical sense, in large measure because I am not a scholar of theology, and have never pretended to be! It is, however, a record of our disagreements. It is written not in the classical style of academic articles, but in the first and second person. Please accept it as a heartfelt gift to a very deserving human being, with whom, despite real differences of opinion, the bonds of friendship and fondness can never be outweighed by the issues of dispute and disagreement. I remember the years during which you and I would spend time in each other’s offices wondering whether the distance between us was very, very narrow, or very, very wide. You, after all, yet before the publication of Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew,1 were adamant that authentic Judaism and Jewish communities had to have halakhah (that was the way you phrased it then); and I, in The Halakhic Process: A Systemic Analysis,2 had spoken at length about the elements of subjectivity involved in halakhic decision-making. Was this subjectivity what you meant when you spoke about the community determining what the law is? We went back and forth on our question of whether we were close together or far apart. The answer wasn’t clear then to either of us, and we went back and forth on the subject. 1 2

Gillman, Sacred Fragments. Joel Roth, The Halakhic Process: A Systemic Analysis (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary, 1986). 104

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

Now we don’t. Now it is clear that we are quite far apart on this subject. In Sacred Fragments you wrote:3 “There is simply no religious authenticity in Judaism outside of a halakhic system—not necessarily the halakhic system that the traditionalists exalt, but a halakhic system that concretizes our sense of covenantedness as a community to God.” I will ignore for now the fact that it is not at all self-evident to me that religious authenticity is dependent on some halakhic system. I will grant that premise for the sake of discussion, and focus on the distinction between “a” and “the.” In a footnote to a recent article which I have written I wrote:4 “It is reasonable to differentiate between the two this way: The halakhic community seeks to create a community around God’s will, but privileges the halakhic understanding of God’s will above the will of the community. A halakhic community, on the other hand, seeks to create a community around God’s will, but does not privilege the halakhic understanding of that will above its own.” As I understand you, both communities are trying to live by God’s will. But, “a” halakhic community allows itself to determine what that will is, without being bound by any classical system of law, such as “the” halakhic system. So, “a” halakhic community which decided that Shabbat should begin every week at 7 PM, without any connection to sunset, would be within the bounds of “authenticity” to make that into God’s will. (I have heard you say this many times.) What would put them outside the bounds of authenticity would be a decision that affirms that Shabbat itself is not part of our sense of “covenantedness as a community to God.” I cannot understand why that should be so! After all, why can’t the community consider broken or dead the “myth” according to which Shabbat is a necessary component required of them in order “to discern patterns in their experience, and to shape these patterns into a meaningful whole that give order to their world”5? Why is it that a detail of how the covenanted community of the past understood the Sabbath to be authentically observed can become broken, but that the entire concept of Shabbat cannot become broken? 3 4

5

Gillman, Sacred Fragments, 59. Joel Roth, “Musings Toward a Personal Theology of Revelation,” in Edut BeYhosef: Rabbi Dr. Yosef Green Festschrift: Essays Presented to Rabbi Dr. Yosef Green on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, ed. Dov Green and Esther Green (Jerusalem: 2008), 122n11. This is the way Gillman defines “myth” in Sacred Fragments, 54. 105

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I do, however, understand very well why “the” halakhic community could not agree that starting Shabbat every week at 7 PM could be authentic. For that community the content of the covenant is not up to them. The content of the covenant is mandated by the legal system which is itself part of the covenant! I admit, of course, that if the authorities of the legal system could find some defensible justification from within the parameters of legitimacy of the system to sever the link between the beginning of Shabbat and sunset, the link could be severed. But, those authorities feel themselves duty bound to find that defensible justification within the legal system which determines the content of the covenant, and would consider themselves in violation of their trust if they were to impose any change entirely from outside the system. Put in other words: the proponents of “the” halakhic system insist that being consonant with and consistent with the system is a sine qua non of legitimacy while the proponents of “a” halakhic system probably find it “nice,” but not at all essential, for decisions to be consonant with and consistent with the classical halakhic system. So, for the proponents of “the” halakhic community, if the authorities of the system cannot find the defensible systemic justification to sever the onset of Shabbat from sunset, authenticity demands that the community be bound by the classical position, irrespective of the perceived desirability, maybe even perceived superiority, of the proposed severing of Shabbat from sunset. For that community, the inability to “defend from within” the right to sever means that there is no such right. The will of the members of the community, perhaps even shared by its leaders, must defer to the will of God, as understood by “the” halakhic system, since only it provides authenticity. Proponents of “a” halakhic system, on the other hand, “determine” that the will of God might now allow the severing of the onset of Shabbat from sunset because it is the community which determines what the will of God is, and not “the” halakhic system. Of course, I admit, if the proponents of “a” halakhic system ever defined with any precision whether there are actual rules that govern that system, those rules might well supersede the will of the community. In truth, though, I have never heard any proponents of such a system affirm that there are, in fact, rules which govern it! Were they ever to do so, it would then become critical for them to define why those rules are better than the rules which govern the classical halakhic system. 106

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

You will no doubt have noted that I have given as my example an issue not likely to raise the blood pressures of many people. Imagine, though, that the issue under debate were one about which many made arguments of ethics or morality! The principles I have enunciated above would be no different. One school would argue that if we are to permit something which the classical formulation of Jewish law has forbidden, we must defend that permission by some type of legal argument which defends the legitimacy of the permission from within the parameters of acceptability of the system itself, while the other school would have no such requirement. Thus, even if proponents of both systems sought the same change in the classical halakhic precedent, only one school would consider an argument from outside the system (like a claim of moral imperative) sufficient in and of itself to allow for the change. Proponents of the more classical view would simply not be able to bring about the change on that basis. In fact, absent some argument demonstrably from within the halakhic system, they couldn’t bring about the change at all. It is critical to note that I have not denied in any way that decisors, even within the classical school, may often approach a question on the communal agenda with a predisposition to wishing a specific answer, and may diligently seek to find a way to render such a decision. That, for example, is precisely what all poskim do when confronted with a potential agunah or mamzer. I have long denied that halakhic decision making is always a dispassionate undertaking, unaccompanied by predispositions on the part of the decisor.6 Often, too, those predispositions are 6

I can’t resist a quick story: I was once at a very small conference. One of the participants was a member of a very prestigious family of Orthodox poskim. He asked to see me privately at one point and asked me whether I had ever watched Reb Moshe Feinstein pasken. I said that I had not. He told me that that had been clear to him as he read my book, because, had I ever seen Reb Moshe pasken, I would have known that for the true gedolim there are no subjectivity and predisposition in decision making. I respectfully demurred, claiming that even for the greatest of gedolim one could say only that perhaps they were unaware of the subjectivity and predispositions that impinge upon them in decision making. But, it is impossible for them always to be absent, even in gedolim. That is not to say that every decision is subjectively influenced. Indeed, one of the marks, in my opinion, of a good poseik is his ability to know himself well enough to know whether he approaches a specific question with a predisposition and whether he is able, if he does so, to discern whether that predisposition has blinded him to the weaknesses of his argument. 107

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much influenced by the very arguments which motivate the devotees of the other school to seek a change in the classically precedented view. But, the difference between the proponents of “a” halakhah and the proponents of “the” halakhah is that the former are so convinced that their predisposition is the only way to go, that it doesn’t matter whether they can get there from within the parameters of legitimacy of the classical system, while to the latter nothing matters more than whether they can do so! I have never been able to understand how the proponents of “a” halakhic system, by whatever names those proponents might call it, can fail to see that they have made themselves into God! They determine that precedent Jewish legal mandate X is immoral or unethical, and since God cannot be either immoral or unethical, nor would God command what is immoral or unethical, X must be excised from Jewish tradition. Such proponents often claim that it is they who are really constrained, while the poskim of “the” halakhic system, whose power within the system is very great, are the unconstrained ones. That view seems to me to verge on absurdity! Those who work only from within “the” halakhic system are forced to reconsider the validity or the undeniability of their moral judgments about X if they cannot find a way within the system to bring about a modification or abrogation of it, while the proponents of “a” halakhic system have absolutely no such constraint. They decide that X is immoral and they become God by determining that “the” classical system must be mistaken in its understanding of the will of God, and since they are bound only by “a” system, not “the” system, there is no further justification required to bring about change.7 Even when you allow for the possibility that there might be such a thing as “the” halakhic system, you prefer (for obvious reasons) to move the focus of attention from the “‘a’ vs. ‘the’ question” to questions of theology. You created quite a stir at the Biennial Convention of the United Synagogue, in a talk subsequently published (with some modifications) in Conservative Judaism, under the title “A New Aggadah for the Conservative Movement.”8 In essence, you called into question whether 7 8

I deal with this issue at greater length in Roth, “Musings Toward a Personal Theology of Revelation,”120n4. Gillman, “A New Aggadah,” 29-45. 108

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the Conservative Movement is, in fact, a halakhic movement and got as close as anyone has to saying that we should just stop saying that we are. Whenever you succeeded in moving the discussion to this plane, you generally raised questions about me and my approach (usually after complimenting my book):9 But what Roth does not address is why Judaism invokes a halakhic process in the first place? Why halakhah? Why a halakhic process? Where does the process stem from? Why these rules and not others? Wherein lies its authority? What makes halakhah and its process so intrinsically a dimension of authentic Judaism? These questions take us into the realm of theology. They demand that we think about God, about how we can speak about God, about God’s role in history, and specifically, about revelation—all of the central theological issues.

I preface what I will soon write with two introductory comments: 1) You know very well that I have spoken about these issues many times, and the fact that The Halakhic Process is not a theological work in no way means that I minimize the importance of these questions. 2) Even when I do not address these questions directly, everything I write and say has implied claims about them, just as everything you write and say has implied claims about halakhah, even though you rarely actually deal with halakhah per se. Many have long shown that there have been and even currently are many Judaisms! For some protracted period, even Christianity was a Judaism! Jews for Jesus today believe that they are a Judaism. But, what is generally meant by “authentic Judaism” is “Judaism’s historical/normative pattern,” and that, of course, is rabbinic Judaism, which is halakhic Judaism. I  suppose that the course of history could have been different and that in some other scenario rabbinic Judaism might not have become the normative expression of authentic Judaism. But that is simply not the case. Those other scenarios did not prevail or, at a minimum, did not prevail as Judaism. I  also cannot affirm with 9

The following paragraphs are taken from the text of the talk at the Convention of the USCJ. They come out somewhat differently in the article in Gillman, “A New Aggadah,” 34. 109

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absolute certainty that rabbinic Judaism will forever be the authentic Judaism (though I believe that it will). After all, it could be that the future will bring some other “brand” to the level of normativeness, and rabbinic Judaism will pass from the scene (or effectively so, even if there are vestigial remnants of it around) in much the same way that some other Judaisms have. But, when most people use the term “authentic Judaism,” they mean “a Judaism which is the continuation of rabbinic Judaism.” They do not mean “a Judaism which replaces rabbinic Judaism,” and that is so precisely because it is the continuation of rabbinic Judaism which constitutes authenticity. I would have no quarrel with people who wish to jettison the halakhic process because they wish to take Judaism in a new direction, a direction in which being the continuation of the rabbinic tradition is not important or relevant. My objection is only to their desire to do so while they insist on calling that direction the continuation of the normative pattern of the past and the present. If they wish to stake their lives on the new direction becoming the normative pattern of the future, that is their right, but to pretend that some new Judaism is the continuation of “authentic Judaism,” as currently understood, is simply untenable. So, then, why is the halakhic process so central to authentic Judaism? I think that I first addressed that question in a public forum in 1993.10 It is central because Ulla got it right in Berakhot 8a: ‫מיום שחרב‬ ‫— בית המקדש אין לו לקדוש ברוך הוא בעולמו אלא ד’ אמות של הלכה בלבד‬ “Since the destruction of the Temple God’s world is restricted to the four cubits of halakhah.”11 Now, many have entirely misunderstood Ulla’s words, trying to make them into the words of a narrow-minded man, reflecting narrow interests, saying that only halakhah matters, while disciplines and subjects like midrash, ethics, morality, theology, even Bible, are irrelevant and beside the point. They could not be more wrong! Nobody says that these concerns are irrelevant. They are our narratives, to use Robert Cover’s word (more on this subject later). Ulla’s statement must be understood together with the Gemara in Bava Batra 12a: ‫מיום שחרב בית המקדש ניטלה נבואה מן הנביאים וניתנה לחכמים‬ — 10

11

The statement was presented as a Devar Torah (Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, Los Angeles, March 23, 1993) and subsequently published as “Halakhic Responsibility,” Conservative Judaism 47.3 (Spring 1995): 24-27. Berakhot 8b. 110

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

“Since the destruction of the Temple, prophecy has been taken away from the prophets and entrusted to the Sages.”12 And, to quote myself, from the article above: Prophecy as a direct source of what God wants, a source derived from direct revelation—requiring no further mediation, unrestricted in terms of idiom, unfettered by need for justification— i.e., prophecy in the manner of the prophets ceases. The results of prophecy, however, do not cease. What God wants is still expressed by humans, but now it is expressed through the agency of the sages, not of the prophets. And though the thoughts of humans about what God wants can take any idiom—midrash, theology, ethics, etc.—the ultimate test of the authenticity of those thoughts as truly reflecting what God wants lies in the ability to cogently and defensibly express them in the language and the idiom of the halakhah. That is the meaning of ‫אין לו לקדוש‬ ‫ברוך הוא בעולמו אלא ד’ אמות של הלכה בלבד‬. It means that God speaks ultimately and authoritatively only through the language of law.13

Never let it be said, nor even thought for an instant, that halakhists don’t think about matters of morality and ethics, matters of theology and belief. Of course they do. Sometimes those thoughts are directly and clearly expressed in their halakhic writing. And even when they are not expressed directly, the careful reader of their words can usually discern the underlying motivations that seem to have moved the poseik to choose a specific interpretation of a passage over others, or to adopt one position in a dispute over another, or to make an argument in favoring of overturning earlier precedent—to name but a few of the things that are usually visible, even when not to the naked eye. These underlying thoughts of the poseik reflect his narratives! Ultimately, however, the poseik knows that the view he would like to reflect the will of God must be expressed in the language and the idiom of halakhah, and must be arrived at through the process of halakhah, in order to have authentic Jewish validity. Nothing is more upsetting to people like me than the apparently widespread view among colleagues that we do nothing more than “add 12 13

Bava Batra 12a. Roth, “Halakhic Responsibility,” 24. 111

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up sums” to arrive at halakhic decisions! The view is simply false. Nobody who has ever read virtually any teshuvah that I have written or delivered orally or by email could reasonably hold such a view. Does that mean that I can always reach whatever decision my predisposition might incline me to, in those cases when I have a predisposition? No, it doesn’t mean that! It means that part of my narrative is that the legal system has its own internal integrity, and preserving and guarding that integrity is no less important to the authenticity of my halakhic views than the specific conclusion that I might want to reach. That, after all, is precisely what it means to say that ultimately God speaks authoritatively only through the language of the law. And I am not saying this now for the first time, nor am I the first to say that a responsible legalist cannot always get to where he may, all other things being equal, wish to be. My rebbe in this is none other than one of the favorites of the naturalists within our Movement (in whose number I am never included, except perhaps by myself), Ronald Dworkin, originator of the chain novel theory—the theory that later judges are writing a new chapter in an ongoing chain novel with a long history. Regrettably, the passage that I quote from him with some regularity is passed over in silence by some who might be expected to be greater disciples of his than I. Here, once again, is what Dworkin wrote in an article entitled “‘Natural’ Law Revisited,” which appeared in the University of Florida Law Review in 1982: A naturalist judge must show the facts of history in the best light he can, and this means that he must not show that history as unprincipled chaos. Of course, this responsibility, for judges as well as novelists, may best be fulfilled by a dramatic re-interpretation that both unifies what has gone before and gives it new meaning or point. This explains why a naturalist decision, though it in this way tied to the past, may yet seem radical. A  naturalist judge might find some principle that has not yet been recognized in judicial argument, a brilliantly unifying account of past decisions that shows them in a better light than ever before.14

14

Ronald Dworkin, “‘Natural’ Law Revisited,” University of Florida Law Review 34 (Winter 1982): 169. 112

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Thus far, none of the naturalists among us ignore what Dworkin has said. And, even some among us who are generally not defined by others among us as naturalists (no matter how much we may reject the definitions attached by them to us), agree with Dworkin and believe that we may even have done just what he is talking about, in far-reaching and “radical” decisions. But, Dworkin didn’t end there. He continued: Nevertheless, the constraint, that a judge must continue that past and not invent a better past, will often have the consequence that a naturalist judge cannot reach decisions that he would otherwise, given his own political theory, want to reach … It is in one way misleading to say, however, that he will then be forced to make decisions at variance with his political convictions. The principal that judges should decide consistently with principle, and that law should be coherent, is part of his convictions, and it is this principle that makes the decision he otherwise opposes necessary.15

This is the paragraph which is widely ignored! Dworkin argues, it seems to me, that even for the naturalist judge there may be a limit to what can legitimately be decided within the legal system in which he works. Indeed, that limit is reached “often.” Even when he might wish to reach some specific decision, it may be impossible to do so without so violating the integrity of the system as to disobey his overarching conviction that the law must be coherent. In other words, sometimes the authors of the newest chapter of the chain novel cannot write the chapter that they might wish to write because to do so would be writing a new book, not a new chapter in a continuing chain novel. If they do, nonetheless, write that chapter, what they will have written will not be the authentic continuation of the novel at all, but a new book. If one wants to write a new novel that, of course, is his right. But, one ought to refrain from beginning a new novel and pretending that it is the continuation of the old, ongoing, one. Note that implicit in Dworkin’s words is that the legal system within which the legalist must work is coherent. Of course its rules could have been different than they, in fact, are, but for whatever historical or philosophical reasons the rules which govern the system became its 15

Ibid. 113

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rules, they are its rules, and the legalist of that system must work within them, even when he is doing something radical and novel. So, too, does the halakhic system have its rules! They, too, in theory, might have been different. But, no matter what they might have been, they are what they are. It is not the job of the legalist to change the rules, but to work within them—if the goal of the legalist is to write the next chapter as opposed to writing the beginning of a new book! In the halakhic system, this commitment means, for example, that one simply cannot ignore the difference between de-oraita and de-rabbanan as if the distinction meant nothing. And, it doesn’t matter one iota whether some (or even all) scholars argue that the distinction itself is a rabbinic invention. A Jewish legalist can no more ignore the distinction than could an American legalist ignore the right of the Supreme Court to engage in judicial review, even though that right is itself the invention of the Supreme Court. A Jewish legalist who seems in what he writes or says to think that there is no difference between permitting the forbidden and forbidding the permissible, and refers to examples of the latter as evidence of the right to do the former, reflects only his own ignorance of the rules of the system of which he is supposed to be a guardian. A Jewish legalist who affirms that law X may be modified or abrogated because the history of halakhah demonstrates that laws have been modified or abrogated, is doing a gross disservice to Jewish law. No change or abrogation of a law has ever been justified on the basis of the claim that law has been modified or abrogated. Of course there have been such changes in the law, but those changes have not been justified on the basis of a claim that change is possible. They have been accomplished by “playing by the rules” of the system, by doing something novel and unique (as Dworkin would want), but within those rules. And one could give hundreds of examples of rules of the system which, when simply ignored or rejected, render the decision so reached as indefensible. None of this means that there are not disputes among legalists within the Jewish or all other legal systems. Of course there are disputes. But it is only when the views of all the disputants are derived from within the legal system that one ought to say of them in the halakhic system that ‫אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים‬. That claim was made about the disputes of the Schools of Hillel and Shammai. The “halakhic” claims of St. Paul are not included! And, at a later date, the “halakhic” claims of Karaites are not 114

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included. Nor are the “halakhic” claims of Reform Judaism included.16 But, neither Paul nor Anan ben David nor even Abraham Geiger and Samuel Holdheim saw themselves as the authentic continuation of rabbinic Judaism. They rejected the authority of that Judaism (in whatever stage it existed in their day), and knew that they were writing a new book. They may have staked their lives on the belief that the new book they were writing would supplant the old one, and become the “authentic” Judaism of the future, but they knew that they were doing so. Disputes do not prove that there are no rules! Any such claim is simply untenable. Disputes prove only that reasonable people, all working within the system itself, can disagree about what it is that God wants (assuming that we are talking about the halakhic system) or what it is that the Constitution means (assuming that we are talking about the American legal system). Such disagreements demonstrate that the meaning of the Torah or the Constitution is sometimes not absolutely clear (though sometimes it actually is!). Disagreements do not demonstrate that since the meaning is not absolutely clear, that the Torah or the Constitution can mean anything we want them to mean. Disagreements do not prove that there are no rules which govern legitimacy within a system. And that brings us to God, theology, and revelation—your favorite subjects. I know that you are generally very upset with what I have to say about these subjects, and especially about the issue of revelation. Nonetheless, I must say them because I mean them with ever fiber of my being. If authentic Judasim is halakhic, as I have argued, then the absolute centrality of halakhah to authentic Judaism is the “given” and not the “to be proved!” The absolute centrality of halakhah is the axiom of authentic Judaism, and axioms need not be proved precisely because they are presumed to be correct. That is what the status of halakhah is currently in authentic Judaism. Remember, it is possible to write a new book on the presumption/belief that it will ultimately become the 16

There may be positions staked out by the Reform Movement which could be defended entirely from within the halakhic system, and I would not reject their defensibility or even acceptability on the grounds that they were written by Reform rabbis. But that is very different from the views which have been adopted by the Reform Movement, consistent with its own ideology that classical Jewish law does not bind moderns, which could not be so defended and the latter, therefore, have no halakhic standing or status. 115

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authentic Judaism, but one has to admit that this is what one is doing, and that, at this moment, that book’s contents are not what we mean by authentic Judaism. In that book, the absolute centrality of halakhah may not be axiomatic, and if the future proves that Judaism authentic, halakhah might well become the “to be proved,” as opposed to the “given.” But as of now it is not so, for in what is now authentic Judaism, in the chain novel in which we are trying to write the next chapter, the language of halakhah is not merely a desirable option among many other options, it is the only option, for it alone is the language in which the will of God is ultimately expressed, and it alone is the language in which what we write will be legitimately perceived as the continuation of that chain novel. In this construct, theology is without a doubt the handmaiden of halakhah. And this is what that means: Since halakhah is the “given,” theology cannot undermine its “given-ness” and remain an authentic theology. Does this imply that there is such a thing as an authentic theology, intimating that there is also such a thing as an inauthentic theology? Yes, it absolutely does. The purpose of the authentic theology is to provide the “myth” which rationalizes and defends halakhah as the given of authentic Judaism. And since the acceptance of Torah as the “constitution” of the halakhic system is critical to understanding how the halakhic system works, it must follow that a primary job of an authentic theology is to supply the myth/myths which does/do that. But the “myths” are not themselves halakhah. They are, rather, aggadah. Now, the primary difference between halakhah and aggadah is that halakhah is binding and ultimately definitive, while aggadah is not. No decisor of law can engage in his study of an issue, debate the sources and the precedents, deliberate, and then decide that the law could be either X or Y. It is ultimately the job of the decisor to render a decision. He can surely say that one could make a defensible argument in favor of either X or Y, but he, ultimately, must decide either for X or for Y. And, those who turn to him as decisor are halakhically duty-bound to behave as he has determined. Not so with aggadah. Multiple aggadot can coexist, since aggadot do not themselves determine behavior. One could come up with myriad “theologies”/aggadot of why Abraham turned to monotheism. One might be the “breaking of the idols” myth, but the number of myths that one might come up with instead (or in addition) 116

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

is virtually without limit. And, they can all co-exist, because aggadah is not binding or definitive!17 Theology is aggadah, not halakhah. If the “given-ness” of the halakhah is a “given” of an authentic Judaism, and if theology’s purpose is to supply the “myths” which validate that premise, and if theology is aggadah and not binding, it follows that there could be multiple aggadot which could be “authentic,” insofar as they fulfill their function as suppliers of the “myths” which validate the core premise of authentic Judaism. This is why I have long argued that acceptance of the historicity of Exodus 19 is not particularly relevant to me. Let Exodus 19 be my ancestors’ myth which imbued the Torah with “constitutional” authority. But, Exodus 19 is aggadah, while Exodus 20 (through verse 14) and Exodus 21  through 23:19  are halakhah! That is, the latter are binding and definitive18 while the former is not. Note well, however: one could believe that Exodus 19  is historical and that would be fine. There is no theological reason to deny to one the right to find the “myth” of verbal revelation tenable and persuasive. BUT, if one doesn’t find that theology tenable because, say, one is persuaded by the evidence of multiple documents within the Torah as offered by Bible scholars, then one must devise a theology/myth which one finds sufficiently tenable and persuasive to become the basis on which one 17

18

I cannot resist another quick story. I was once invited to give a lecture in an education class at Bar Ilan. I told the class that if I were a teacher of young students I might well get them to see, under my guidance, that the Torah itself does not say what happened between the end of parashat Noah and the beginning of parashat Lekh Lekha. I would then assign them all to “make up a story” of what happened between the two that prompted God to choose Abraham. I would show them a few of the best “stories” written by members of the class, and then show them the “Abraham breaks his father’s idols” story. I would then make clear that their stories were not “wrong” just because the “idols” story appears in the midrash and theirs do not. The Sages, I would say, were doing exactly what you were doing—explaining what happened between the end of Noah and the beginning of Lekh Lekha, and their “story” is no more history than yours! The students at Bar Ilan loved my game plan, until I got to the last part! They had trouble with the very point I am making, namely, that aggadah is not binding or definitive, and that many can co-exist. That, of course, does not mean that every word of the halakhic section is absolutely clear and not subject to interpretation or explanation. It does mean that the interpretation or explanation given cannot say that it is false, untrue, or not the will of God. 117

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affirms the binding authority of the Torah as the “constitution” of the halakhic system, with halakhah as the exclusive final language by which the will of God is determined and transmitted. The number of such possible theologies may be very great, and it doesn’t matter whether those theologies are shared by many or few, or even by nobody other than the ones who came up with them!19 The purpose of the theology is to affirm the “given” of authentic Judaism, and if it does that, it is a valid theology. On the other hand, if it does NOT do that, but rather undermines the “given” of authentic Judaism, then it is an inauthentic theology for authentic Judaism, no matter how sophisticated and persuasive it is! Several points must be made as clearly as I possibly can. I  am not minimizing the importance of this undertaking in any way. Quite the contrary, I affirm with all possible vigor the critical importance of this theological undertaking. Jews of many, if not all, ages have been confronted with challenges to the premise of the halakhic system and to the centrality of halakhah as a “given.” Some of our greatest thinkers undertook to meet that challenge. Isn’t that what Maimonides was doing? Sa’adiah? Yehuda HaLevi? Is it conceivable that these (and so many others) would have considered their efforts a success if the result of those efforts had been the undermining of the centrality of the halakhah as a “given?” Surely the answer is a resounding “no.” To the extent that affirming its centrality required demonstrating why the arguments of those whose views seemed so persuasive and convincing were not so persuasive and convincing, then that is what they tried to do. And, to the extent that what was needed was to create new “myths” to meet the challenges which new modes of thought or new “sciences” presented to authentic Judaism, then that is what they tried to do. And that is what the thinkers of our Movement should have been trying to do, too. Our generation (going back at least to the Enlightenment), too, has been confronted with challenges to the core premises of authentic Judaism and our theologians, too, should have taken up the battle to defend 19

Mine is referred to in footnote 4 above. But, I am not going to summarize it in this article, because the entire point that I am trying to make is that no one aggadah is more authoritative than others. What lends authority to an aggadah is the degree to which one (and perhaps others) finds it cogent and persuasive. But, if it is not persuasive, it means only that a new aggadah must be sought, not that the point it was trying to defend has been invalidated or disproved. 118

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

those core premises in a persuasive and compelling way. Regrettably, too many of our thinkers did not see this as their job, and, as a result, were prepared to write the books that Maimonides, Sa’adiah and Yehuda HaLevi would have considered failures. On April 2, 2003, you and I participated in a panel before the plenum of the Rabbinical Assembly, convened in Los Angeles. The panel was entitled “God Talk: The Implications of Theology for Rabbinic Practice.” Please forgive me for quoting myself once more: The hardest job falls to theologians, for it is they who must find a way either to incorporate modern ideas and methods into a cogent theological structure in which the authority of halakhah remains uncontested and unassailable or to find the persuasive arguments that will allow us to understand that not every modern idea or method must be accepted or adopted… The job of Jewish philosophers and theologians is not to be dispassionate thinkers who approach Judaism as a blank slate upon which they write whatever philosophy appeals to them, no matter what the consequences. There are givens that must be met in order for any theology to be entitled to call itself, and be called, authentically Jewish.20

The last thing in the world that I would like anyone to think is that I believe that theology is irrelevant or that theologians do not have an important, indeed critical, function to play in assuring the writing of the next chapter of the chain novel. Their function is every bit as critical as that of the halakhists, because it is the theologians who are going to persuade (or, God forbid, fail to persuade) modern Jews to keep reading the chain novel being written by the halakhists, and being bound by its dictates. But I beg of them to understand that, just as I argued at that convention, the title of the session was backwards, and it should have been called God Talk: The Implications of Rabbinic Practice for Theology. The title had the influence going in the wrong direction, because it reversed the “given” for the “to be proved.” It is from Gerson Cohen that I first heard a passionate defense of apologetics! The term has taken on very negative overtones that it doesn’t necessarily deserve. After all, apologia pro vita sua, a defense of 20

Joel Roth, “God Talk: The Implications of Theology for Rabbinic Practice” (panel, Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, Los Angeles, April 2, 2003). 119

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one’s life, is not an invalid undertaking, nor need it be shallow, unsophisticated or unpersuasive. Indeed, it is what rabbis do constantly in their sermons, teaching and writings. It is precisely what our Movement needs, and who would be better to provide it and lead the Movement to greater commitment to halakhah than you! Not a commitment to “a” halakhah, but a commitment to “the” halakhah! When it comes to the matter of our Movement and its halakhic nature, you have been very vocal, indeed. In fact, you have rejected the oft-affirmed claim that we are a halakhic Movement. In your talk to the United Synagogue Convention, and even more clearly in its printed version in Conservative Judaism, you suggested that we “abandon that selfdefinition.”21 Now, you think that there is good reason for our abandoning it—that it is nothing more than a “brilliant defense mechanism because it is unfalsifiable.”22 I believe that you are absolutely wrong. Our claim to being a halakhic Movement is both valid and falsifiable! You grossly oversimplify matters to your own advantage. I start with one paragraph of your article: Our critics would charge, how can you be a halakhic movement if you permit a kohen to marry a divorcee, or permit women to serve as witnesses in judicial proceedings, or permit the use of electricity and driving to synagogue on Shabbat, or make significant changes in the core halakhic portions of the liturgy, or if you are even contemplating ordaining gays and lesbians and sanctioning commitment rituals? … We then adduce how cultural changes demand that we make all of those changes. The status of a kohen and a divorcee is different today than it was in antiquity. The feminist revolution is now hard reality and we have to acknowledge it in our ritual life. Demographic changes demand that we permit driving to synagogue on Shabbat. And our new scientific understanding of sexual orientation suggests that it is genetic and therefore unchangeable. To crown this reply, we add that from the outset, halakhah has always been evolving. See how the rabbis got rid of the biblical institution of slavery and capital punishment….23

21 22 23

Gillman, “A New Aggadah,” 30. Ibid. Ibid., 31. 120

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

I am going to react to each and every one of your examples, and to what you say in both of the paragraphs quoted above. I preface my comments, however, by reminding you that I opposed every one of the innovations you refer to,24 and that my opposition to one of them was so strong that I resigned from the Law Committee as a result. That will make my defense of them all the stronger, because it will show that despite my strong opposition to each of them, those who advocated for them did so on what they thought were good internal halakhic grounds. I may have thought the teshuvot weak or poorly argued, but they were still within legitimate parameters of halakhic deliberation and did not prove in any way that we are not a halakhic Movement. If you look at the driving and the electricity teshuvot you will see that they are full of references to classical halakhic sources and to teshuvot, especially on the issue of electricity.25 Whether or not I believe that they did what they wanted to do successfully is not as relevant as the fact that the authors of that teshuvah argued in strict halakhic terms that the prohibition against driving was not de-oraita, but derabbanan. And, as a result, the prohibition against driving was a shevut, and it could be overridden because of the mitzvah of communal prayer. It may well be that the demographic changes are what motivated them to look for permission. But, the very fact that they felt it necessary to define the prohibitions as de-rabbanan implies that had they been deoraita the authors would have either not been able to decide as they did, or that they would have had to defend their decisions in some other way—which would have been infinitely harder to do. They never argued that the demographic changes themselves validated a revision of the halakhah. Those changes may have motivated the search for justification to modify the presumed precedents, but they themselves were not halakhic data validating the change. Now, one should ask, why didn’t 24

25

Sometimes my opposition had to come after the fact, as I was either not yet a member of the Law Committee when the decision was reached (riding and electricity); or deduced from comments I have made as recorded in the minutes of the CJLS or in other places, since I was not present at the time of the vote (kohen and divorcee). Morris Adler, Jacob Agus, and Theodore Friedman, “Responsum on the Sabbath,” in Tradition and Change, ed. Mordechai Waxman (New York: Burning Bush Press, 1958), 351-374; Arthur Neulander, “The Use of Electricity on the Sabbath,” in Tradition and Change, 401-407. 121

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they just say, “Times have changed, so we permit driving?” The answer is that such an argument would have been evidence to falsify the claim that we are a halakhic Movement, since it would not have been a valid halakhic argument! And, one more thing: What I have just explained makes clear why the teshuvah did not permit driving, except to the synagogue. It was not “driving” that was permissible, but “driving to the synagogue” that was permissible, because the latter was halakhically defensible and the former was not. There were no halakhic grounds to permit driving to a ballgame or a concert—just to shul, because attendance there was considered by the authors to be a mitzvah which overrode a shevut prohibition. But neither you nor anyone else should confuse the motivation to seek the permission with the grounds for the permission. I am not so certain that I know exactly which “significant changes in the core halakhic portions of the liturgy” you were talking about. My assumption is that you really meant the inclusion of the matriarchs in the amidah, though you could, perhaps, be talking about the rewording of several of the birkhot ha-shahar or the elimination of the phrase veishei yisrael from the retzei paragraph of the amidah, or the change in the tense of the verbs in Musaf of Shabbat and Yom Tov.26 I will comment about the matriarchs. The paper on the basis of which that change was permitted made significant use of the salient passages from the Codes, especially Maimonides, about acceptable and unacceptable modifications in the “normal” wording of the blessings of the amidah in which the author wished to suggest modifications. Again, it is not necessary for me to agree with his analysis in order to affirm that this element of his paper was not mere fluff for him. It was critical to his thinking because it demonstrated, to his satisfaction, that he was not in violation of the Codes. Did 26

If you meant any of the latter, please be reminded that the Law Committee was never asked to pass on those changes. They were instituted by the Liturgy Committee, without either seeking or receiving the approval of the Law Committee. Nonetheless, Robert Gordis’ introduction to the Silverman Sabbath Prayer Book lays out the justifications for all of them. And, at least his defense of the change in the wording of the birkhot ha-shahar refers to extant texts reflecting the changes introduced. Also, you would be very hard pressed to call the tenses of the verbs, or the words ve-ishei yisrael “core.” And remember, I use the future tense when I pray and I include ve-ishei yisrael in my amidah. 122

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

the author have a predisposition to wish to be able to justify a specific conclusion? Of course he did. BUT, there is nothing wrong with that, and nothing non-halakhic about that. He didn’t say: “We need to change this and we therefore declare the change permissible!” He said: “I believe that we need to change this. Now let us see if there is a way to do so from within the halakhic system.” And why did he need to do it as he did? He needed to because he knew very well that recourse to the second argument alone would have falsified his claim that he was writing a halakhic paper! Regarding the marriage of a kohen to a divorcee, we are on thinner ice, I admit. After all, the verse in the Torah is clear and unambiguous, making the law de-oraita. Nonetheless, do not ignore the fact that the Talmud already recognizes as valid after the fact (be-dei’avad) the marriage of a priest to a divorcee—something the teshuvah recognized before the fact.27 That was at least part of the author’s justification for taking the action that he suggested. While I didn’t like it then, and don’t like it now; and while I admit that it isn’t common in halakhah to do that, the teshuvah did not validate a marriage that classical Jewish law considers absolutely invalid, under all circumstances. It was a case when the Law Committee pushed the envelope about as far as it could, and still remain barely within the boundaries of the halakhic system. I cannot say with certainty what the author would have said or advocated were it not the case that the marriage of a kohen to a divorcee is already legally recognized as valid after the fact. I suspect, or, at least, hope, that he would not have written it, precisely because such a teshuvah would have falsified a claim to being halakhic at all. The matter of women as witnesses is, of course, another very difficult issue, and approaches advocated in the Law Committee have taken different tacks. Let me remind you, though, that I myself was an advocate in my paper on the ordination of women in this manner. I rejected most of the approaches that may have been adopted later by the Law Committee; not because they were non-halakhic, but because they were inadequate, in my opinion. I believed, and continue to believe, that only the ultimate halakhic act of uprooting a matter from the Torah will suffice 27

Proceedings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement 1927-1970, ed. David Golinkin, vol. 3, Responsa (Jerusalem: The Rabbinical Assembly, 1997), 1459-1462. 123

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in this matter.28 But, it is critical for you to understand that this prohibition de-oraita is not halakhically identical with the prohibition against the marriage of a kohen to a divorcee. There is no explicit verse about women as witnesses as there is about the other. That is not an insignificant difference. The prohibition against women serving as witnesses is based on a gezerah shavah. I have recently contributed an article to Tiferet le-Yisrael, the Jubilee volume in honor of our colleague Israel Francus, entitled “Gufei Torah: The Limit to Halakhic Pluralism,” in which I deal with halakhic steps that cannot ever be taken, in my opinion, and in that article I deal with the difference between cases like women’s testimony and gufei Torah.29 Bottom line: If you are prepared to grant me the status of one who is halakhic, then my willingness to advocate allowing women to serve as witnesses (despite my ongoing opposition to Law Committee decisions on the subject, and my personal unwillingness to allow women to serve as witnesses now) should be sufficient to prove that there is a halakhic way to do it, as radical as it may be. More important than what I have said above is the fact that the Movement has not considered one action which would reflect that “the feminist revolution is now a hard reality,” and has not considered it, I believe, because it cannot be accomplished halakhically. We have not considered allowing women to divorce their husbands in Jewish law, and in cases of great need we have recourse to the much harder and much more cumbersome method of hafka’at kiddushin to attempt to resolve problems of agunot. Why? Because there is halakhic precedent for the latter and none for 28

29

Please see Roth, The Halakhic Process, chap. 7 “On Rabbinic Authority vis-à-vis Matters De-oraita” for my discussion of this ultimate exercise of authority. You might ask why I oppose the decisions of the Law Committee. Here is a clear answer: since I believe that only the ultimate halakhic act would really be sufficient, and I believe that that ultimate act (not taken in at least 400 years) can only be taken by a self-validating body or person, and I believe that there is no such body or person at the moment in our Movement, I opposed the decisions of the Law Committee. I do believe that had Prof. Lieberman, for example, been willing to support my suggestion to the faculty in the original deliberation of the subject, his agreement would have provided a self-validating supporter and the act could have been done with halakhic confidence. Joel Roth, “Gufei Torah: The Limit to Halakhic Pluralism,” in Tiferet LeYisrael: Jubilee in Volume of Honor of Israel Francus, ed. Yaacov Francus, Joel Roth, and Menahem Schmelzer (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2010), 207-220. 124

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

the former! So, rather than adopt what would be very difficult to justify halakhically (if it could be justified at all—which it probably could not), we adopt what is halakhically justifiable, though much more complex. And why do we not simply solve the problem by permitting women to divorce their husbands? Because to do so would falsify our claim to being a halakhic Movement, at least until such time as one could prove from within the system that there is a way to permit it. At the time you spoke at the United Synagogue Convention, the ordination of gays and lesbians and the performance of commitment ceremonies were just being considered, and hadn’t yet been accepted by the Law Committee. Obviously, they now are accepted—at least according to one of the papers validated by the Law Committee.30 Remember, though, that that permissive paper was adamant in insisting that the one male sexual behavior which the authors believed to be forbidden deoraita remains forbidden! They were able to make the argument that they did in favor of admitting gays as candidates for ordination precisely because they believed that they had grounds to permit matters which were previously considered forbidden only de-rabbanan. Those grounds may well have been scientific in nature, but the authors did not argue that science overrides de-oraita. And why is that so? I suspect it is so because the authors would have considered such an argument to falsify their contention that they were writing a halakhic responsum. As you well know, I was not persuaded by the paper—actually, quite the contrary. But, bottom line, the authors made an argument that fell within the parameters of legitimate halakhic debate, if one assumes that their premise of what was de-oraita and what was de-rabbanan was correct. What’s more, if one concedes their analysis and takes cognizance of the prohibition that they leave standing, there is neither a logical nor a halakhic reason to refuse to sanctify relationships that meet their standard of behavior. When you say, “To crown this reply, we add that from the outset, halakhah has always been evolving,”31 I am not sure what you are saying. If you are saying that we react in advance to those who might think that Jewish law cannot evolve by claiming that it has always evolved, and 30

31

Elliot N. Dorff, Daniel Nevins, and Avram Reisner, “Homosexuality, Human Dignity, and Halakhah” (responsum, Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, The Rabbinical Assembly, New York, 2006). Gillman, “A New Aggadah,” 31. 125

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that those who make the contrary claim are mistaken—I see nothing wrong with that! We do affirm that Jewish law has always evolved from within its own system, and that denying its ability to continue to do so constitutes a terrible disservice to Jewish law.32 However, if you meant that we argue that the valid claim that halakhah has always been evolving is itself justification for any specific evolution of Jewish law, I think that you are just plain wrong—at least for the last thirty years of Law Committee deliberation. To the extent that this claim is made at all, it is made by the authors in the first sense that I have indicated above, and not in the second. And why not in the second? Because the authors know that such an argument would falsify their claim to be writing halakhically valid responsa. Then you say, “See how the rabbis got rid of the biblical institution of slavery and capital punishment.”33 I admit that I did not go over every teshuvah validated by the Law Committee in the last thirty years before sitting down to write this article. But, I don’t remember this argument being offered at all, or certainly not with any regularity, during that time. And the reason is simple: The members of the Law Committee are too smart to have offered it. Both of these are examples of abrogation of the law (even assuming that they are valid examples of the rabbis having gotten rid of something) that would be in the halakhic category of shev ve-al ta’aseh, i.e., instances of passive abrogation of precedent—“sitting and not doing it”—forbidding the permissible. The members of the Law Committee would not use cases of forbidding the permissible to validate a decision that permits the forbidden, which is a very different halakhic step. And why would they not? Because they know very well that to validate a proposal which permits the forbidden by referring to the right to forbid the permissible would falsify their claim to have acted halakhically. 32

33

I suppose that you think that the Orthodox would deny that Jewish law can evolve. I  actually think that you are wrong about that, but, for the purposes of this article, let’s even assume it correct. It does not mean that we and the Orthodox are working within different systems. It just means that we and they differ on where the limits are. Most matters are within the limits that both recognize. Therefore, in matters clearly within those limits, Orthodox decisors can be as correct as we can be. We needn’t ignore them because they are Orthodox. And, the degree to which they ignore us because we are Conservative is their problem, not ours. Gillman, “A New Aggadah,” 31. 126

Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?

In the final analysis, my dear friend, I think that you are wrong to say: “The claim that ‘we are a halakhic movement’ is a brilliant defense mechanism because it is unfalsifiable.”34 It is not unfalsifiable at all, and it is not the case that “the claim is compatible with all the data of experience, with all possible facts,” becoming “factually meaningless.”35 Thus far in our history, while there may have been some who were pushing us toward being a non-halakhic Movement, we can still claim, honestly and with conviction, that we are a halakhic Movement. I cannot promise that it will always be so, both because ‫מיום שחרב בית המקדש ניטלה נבואה‬ ‫מן הנביאים וניתנה לשוטים ולתינוקות‬,36 —“Since the destruction of the Temple, prophecy has been taken away from the prophets and entrusted to fools and infants”—and because some very influential and persuasive members of the Movement are pushing in that direction again (or still), but for now, the claim is neither invalid nor meaningless, in my opinion. When you and I appeared in the panel at the Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, you ended your presentation with five bullets. From numbers four and five I now quote: Why have we failed to create a committed, ritually-committed laity? No matter where I go … it’s casual. We have not communicated a sense of hovah and what makes me crazy, and as Joel Roth will undoubtedly quote back to you, what wakes me up in a state of panic is: is it at all conceivable that my theology can still create a sense of hovah? It does for me; it does for you. Why can’t we make that work for our balebatim? Or are we condemned to simply fritter away our identity? And finally, we are a movement that thrives on tension. David Halivni once, in a faculty meeting about 15 years ago, said: “We are an elitist movement; we will never be a mass movement because it is too complicated. It’s easy to be Orthodox; it’s easy to be Reform. But we demand too much and we will not have a sizable body of our lay people who will be willing and ready to give the kind of devotion and seriousness to the kind of decision-making we demand.37

34 35 36 37

Ibid., 30. Ibid. Bava Batra 12b. Neil Gillman, “God Talk: The Implications of Theology for Rabbinic Practice” (panel, Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, Los Angeles, April 2, 2003). 127

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I certainly agree with you that our Movement has failed to create a committed and observant laity. It is our greatest failure. I agree that the main reason for this failure is that we have not communicated a sense of obligation. Indeed, it is my perception that we use the word “obligation” very rarely, certainly so regarding anything that has to do with ritual observance. To be quite honest, I have serious doubts whether a theology such as yours can create a sense of hovah. You know better than I that Kaplan’s theology didn’t succeed in creating much of a sense of hovah, despite the fact that Kaplan felt one, as I understand him. But, when one makes the sense of hovah more autonomous than heteronomous, and when the community, untrained and uneducated in the methodology of the literature and the Codes of Jewish law, gets to decide what it is that God wants (and there is no limit to what they can decide), it seems to me very hard for a sense of hovah to be engendered—even a sense of hovah to “a” halakhic system, which would, in my opinion, be utterly insufficient. There may be very cogent historical reasons which explain why we were so reticent to speak of “obligation” to our community, but we can’t give up on the possibility of succeeding now where we failed in the past. If we do give up, we will “simply fritter away our identity.”38 The last clause implies clearly that you believe that we have an “identity” which distinguishes us from all others. It is that which we must emphasize and make clear. The problem, of course, is how to define just what that “identity” is! You and I do not agree on that subject, and we can’t both be correct. That, of course, is a big problem. This is the type of tension you see, and on which you think we thrive. I am not as certain as you are that we are thriving on it. I don’t recall whether I heard Professor Halivni say what you quote in his name at a faculty meeting or not, but I certainly heard him make the claim more than once. I am not sure, however, that we understand the claim in the same way. I think that you understand the tension to be over such questions as whether we are a halakhic Movement or not. I don’t believe that that was a question for Professor Halivni (at least at that point in his life). I think that he was talking about the complexity of being committed to critical scholarship of Bible and Talmud while at the same time being a halakhic Movement. I believe that he, indeed, 38

Ibid. 128

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thought it was very difficult to explain how we could be both. But, it never occurred to him, I think, that we were anything but both—and that is what our lay constituency would never take the time to master and understand. In many, many ways, as you well know, David Halivni is my rav muvhak, and it has always been very hard for me to disagree with him. But on this, I disagree. I believe that the core of our laity could well understand the complexity of our Movement, if we only had a clear message to convey to them. If we all agreed that we are trying to convey a theology which accounts for how we can study our sacred texts with a very critical eye, and yet feel bound to a heteronomous legal system which reflects the will of God and is based, to a large measure, on a very different reading of those texts than our scholarly reading of them—and if our halakhists and theologians could put their heads together to come up with that theology—our laity could understand it and buy into it. You and I, my dear friend, did not accomplish this. Maybe it is not too late, even for us to do so. And it is certainly not too late for our students to do so.

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth? Leonard Levin

In December 2005, at the United Synagogue convention, our teacher Rabbi Neil Gillman raised many eyebrows and provoked many rebuttals by his pronouncement that Conservative Judaism can no longer in good conscience call itself a halakhic movement. He argued from the “death of a thousand qualifications”: that by retreating successively from one recognized position after another, and failing to train an observant laity, Conservative Judaism has demonstrated that its purported commitment to “halakhah” does not really bind it to any positive, specifiable content. Rabbi Gillman had the option, of course, given his repertoire of theological concepts, to say instead that for Conservative Judaism, commitment to halakhah was a “broken myth,” i.e., a meaning-giving narrative that rises phoenix-like to give one a sense of meaning, no matter what the disqualifying evidence. Saying that would not have been nearly as controversial, and so (I am guessing) would not have been as successful in provoking discussion and debate on the identity and direction of Conservative Judaism, which was presumably his purpose and was better served by the remarks he actually delivered. A year after Rabbi Gillman’s remarks, further events fortified his claim. Indeed, Rabbi Gillman’s long-time intellectual sparring partner, Rabbi Joel Roth, seemed to second Rabbi Gillman’s motion, coming from the opposite end of the Conservative ideological spectrum, by resigning from the Rabbinical Assembly Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards (CJLS) after its approval of the Dorff-Nevins-Reisner paper on homosexuality. For Rabbi Roth, this action proved that Conservative Judaism could no longer lay claim to halakhic authenticity. Yet in Winter-Spring 2006, the journal Conservative Judaism had published a double issue, “The Aggadah of the Conservative Movement.”1 Apart from Rabbi Gillman’s contribution (an expanded and revised ver 1

Gillman, “A New Aggadah,” 29-45. 130

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

sion of his USCJ address), nearly every piece was devoted to affirming that halakhah had a central role to play in Conservative Judaism’s selfdefinition, thus supporting the “broken myth” hypothesis. My own position on this matter goes back many years. Growing up in a Conservative congregation and attending Camp Ramah, I developed a strong sense of what it means to be a Conservative Jew that has never left me. I derived some pride from the fact that my uncle, Rabbi Max Routtenberg, had been at one time the chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. In my teen years, I spent a good deal of time studying the 1950 Conservative responsa on Shabbat driving and use of electricity, which I found in Rabbi Mordecai Waxman’s book Tradition and Change. They impressed me at the time (though I had little basis for comparison) with their careful attention both to technical halakhic argumentation and to broad sociological analysis to supply the context for the decisions—features which have ever since impressed me as characteristic of the best Conservative efforts in this area. They left me with a vision of progressive halakhic method which remains to this day a central part of my conception of what Conservative Judaism ought to be—my own “myth,” if you will, that still sustains me. My current paper seeks to unpack the broader implications of that vision.

General Reflections In the aftermath of the 2006 CJLS decision to pass both the Roth and Dorff-Reisner-Nevins responsa on homosexuality by bare majority votes (13  votes each), a study (directed by Steven M. Cohen) was commissioned by the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism to poll Conservative Jewish “leaders and activists” as to their views on this and related issues and their personal Jewish practice. Those polled included clergy, professional leaders, lay leaders, and “others.” I focus here on the findings of the poll concerning personal practice, especially among the “lay leaders” and the “others,” which I suggest may be taken as one significant index of the practical success of Conservative Jewish halakhic innovations and educational efforts: • 65% of “lay leaders” and 73% of “other” respondents keep kosher at home. Of these groups, 45% and 65% respectively refrain from eating non-kosher meat out of the house, but 90% will eat fish prepared in non-kosher restaurants. 131

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• Over 80% of the “lay leaders” attend Shabbat services at least 3 times a month. While slightly under half (43% of lay leaders and 49% of “others”) refrain from shopping on Shabbat, the vast majority (89% and 69%) will drive to shul on Shabbat. By inference, it appears that the numbers of lay leaders and “other respondents” who drive but do not shop (thus in some sense reflecting the ideal liberal-Conservative Jewish practice) are 32% and 18% respectively. • 33% of the lay respondents say daily prayers “at least 3 times a week.” (What an oddly significant formulation of this crucial issue!)

While these figures are doubtless deplorable when judged from a standard of 100% compliance (bearing in mind, too, that the respondents are a select group, presumably much more committed than the “average” Conservative laity), they also are sharply different from the “null hypothesis” that would predict that Jewish law, and particularly Conservative Jewish legal decisions (such as the stands on driving-toshul and eating-fish-out) have no effect whatsoever on contemporary practice. Instead, they depict a muddle, which is pretty standard for assessments of Conservative Jewish ideology and practice generally. Before rushing to judgment and conclusions, let me raise a few analogies and general considerations: • How many taxpayers are 100% compliant with paying all the taxes that a strict reading of the tax code would require? • How many automobile drivers are 100% compliant with the speed laws and traffic controls (traffic lights and stop signs)? • How many players of board games (such as Scrabble and Monopoly) adhere strictly to all the rules of those games (incl. no abbrs., Proper Names or Yinglish)? • How many practitioners of amateur music (including everything from classical chamber music and jam-sessions to singing popular songs in the car and the shower) are 100% compliant with the “official” original scores of the music that they so often freely appropriate and adapt to their imperfect memories and creative impulses? • Is the notion of Sinaitic (or divine) revelation applicable to any of the analogies I have just listed? 132

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

• Is the broader notion of a divine will operative in the general order and structure of society entirely irrelevant to these cases (for instance, would the loss of a human life, due to speed-limit infraction, be any the less a diminution of the “divine image? Is the etymology of “music” [< “muse”] perhaps testimony to the divine spirit that animates it?) • Would the array of activities described here (public finances, public transportation, games, music) be significantly affected if their respective codes were—instead of being honored in the breach—abolished entirely? (You bet!) • Must we, because of the infractions in all the areas listed (and many others), entirely forfeit our conceit to being, by and large, a “law-abiding society”? (I should hope not!)

A few corrections of commonplace misconceptions may be gleaned from these considerations: • Law does not have to be mirrored perfectly in social reality to be an effective constitutive element of that reality. Though the “underground economy” of untaxed earnings is indeed enormous, the amount of earnings on which taxes are paid is many times greater—enough to support the activities of all the federal, state and local governments. • Even when “honored in the breach,” law can be an effective and essential constraint on behavior. A  55-MPH speed limit may not get many motorists to drive under 55  MPH, but it may deter a majority from exceeding 65 MPH, and even this imperfect deterrent (when backed up by spot enforcement) can save many lives.2 • Many social practices are simply inconceivable without law. Even if Scrabble rules may be frequently broken, without a general pattern of rule-observance from which these deviations occur there would be no Scrabble (and the same applies to Shabbat, family ties, economic life, and most forms of social existence).

2

The instance of driving 60 MPH in a 55 MPH zone provides a striking analogy to the halakhic category of patur aval asur—“exempt [from punishment] but still forbidden”! 133

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• Though the specifics of most laws are indisputably humandevised, all law operates within constraints that are beyond human ability to change, and that from a religious perspective may thus be viewed as God-given. Among these are: ◊◊ The dependence of human beings on the natural order; ◊◊ The interdependence of human beings on one another; ◊◊ The correlation of rights and obligations (for social services to be provided, someone must pay taxes); ◊◊ The inherent tradeoff of rules and freedom (for Scrabble or music or Shabbat to be possible at all, I must restrict my spontaneity and channel my behavior within predefined limits); ◊◊ The givenness of social institutions and their history as facts that are formative of my identity and the necessary starting-point of any socially-meaningful behavior (I mythically “went out of Egypt,” therefore I carry the lessons of that experience in my dealings with the oppressed, etc.); ◊◊ The embedding of the entire human project within the larger natural history of life and the universe (viewed religiously as God’s creation), with whatever implications of purposiveness and responsibility we derive from that perspective.

What Is Broken? It is not hard to see in the traditional Jewish account of the Sinaitic revelation of Torah a classic case of what Peter Berger (building on Emile Durkheim) described as a projection of the social order on the cosmos.3 According to this view, the legal-social institutions of ancient Israelite society and rabbinic-medieval Jewish society constitute a social fact to those respective societies, confronting the individual as an objective reality. The objectivity and necessity of that reality were mythically expressed in the story that God revealed the essential rules governing that society (in more or less detail depending on one’s in 3

See Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), Chapter 1. 134

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

terpretation) in the Sinaitic theophany. In that theophany (declares the Deuteronomist, in mythic terms that stretched literal credence even in ancient times), the unborn as well as the living were present. (Not just the unborn persons, but the as-yet-not-conceived rules and ordinances of future legislation—mountains hanging by a hair—as many a rabbinic aggadah expresses!) An apt parallel would be to declare that in 1620, the 300,000,000 presently-living Americans crossed the Atlantic within the confines of the good ship Mayflower and landed all together on Plymouth Rock, a fact which they now recollect and celebrate every November on Thanksgiving Day. (In every generation, each American must see him/ herself as if s/he personally crossed on the Mayflower! And we have not made allowance for the percentage of non-compliance with this ritual.) Yet it is precisely such a counterfactual narrative that expresses poetically a part of the essence of being Jewish or being American that can hardly be expressed otherwise at all, and certainly not so powerfully and concisely. But as Rabbi Gillman has taught us (in the name of Paul Tillich, but in his own inimitable way), such a myth, when brought out into the light of day, tends to be rationalized and concretized from a mythic to a literal formulation, and exposed at the same time to falsification. In that literal formulation, “God revealed these laws” becomes a separate action and transcendent ground of the imperative status of the laws. On further reflection, the laws themselves are classified into mishpatim—those laws identical with the timeless wisdom of the sages (the ancient international wisdom literature of which Proverbs is the biblical representative, and whose highest ancient expression, the Stoic philosophy of natural law, had repercussions in rabbinical literature), and hukkim, laws which cannot be accounted for rationally, and whose only basis is as “decrees of the King.” As the legal system of Judaism became elaborated over time and codified in the Mishnah and the Talmud, the foundational myth was elaborated as well, to include ultimately the stipulation that the essentials (or even the details) of the Oral Law were also revealed to Moses at Sinai and passed as oral tradition for over a thousand years until they were written down in the generation of Judah the Nasi. Whereas the immanent necessity of the law as foundation of social order was originally the basis for ascribing it to God, now the transcendent commanding authority of God became the formal basis (the Grundnorm) for legitimating the law. 135

Leonard Levin

Even in the Middle Ages this mythic account was subjected to questioning. As Leo Strauss pointed out, Maimonides was strongly influenced by Platonic political theory as formulated by the Moslem philosopher Alfarabi. In this view, the prophet (Mohammed or Moses) plays the role of the philosopher-king, legislating the ideal law for the Republic, inspired by divine wisdom. The intrinsic grounding of the law is its just character; the ascription of its authorship to God is a formality, for the human prophet is its immediate author.4 Intrinsic to Maimonides’ project was his demonstration that even the hukkim were susceptible of rational understanding, so that even if the simple person must accept them on trust (and should therefore regard them as commanded by God), to the philosopher their rational justification was apparent. Thus, a dual justification for the law was operative for different strata of the Jewish people: for the philosophical elite, an immanent justification based on the rationality of the law (supplemented by recognition of the need for social consensus); for the ordinary people, a transcendent justification based on the traditional myth of divine legislation. Maimonidean rationalism faded in the late Middle Ages (despite a flickering reawakening in the Italian and Polish Renaissances) and gave way to popular kabbalah and straight traditionalism. Meanwhile, Maimonides’ code Mishneh Torah gave additional impetus to the native mode of rabbinic discourse based on Talmudic exegesis. Rabbinic discourse had its own crisis of “broken myth” in the Middle Ages, as Jay Harris has recounted in his study: How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism. Briefly, the midrashic discourse of the rabbis was very unself-conscious about deriving halakhic meanings from the written Torah with casual disregard for principles of context, semantics and syntax. The peshat commentators of the Middle Ages (such as Ibn Ezra and Rashbam) drew critical distinctions between the 4

In Guide I, 35  Maimonides warns us that the true view of prophecy—which he gives later in Guide II, 32-40—is one of those doctrines presented only in schematic form, lest they be misunderstood by the masses. For the prevalence of the “esoteric” view presented here among medieval and modern interpreters of Maimonides, see Aviezer Ravitzky, “The Secrets of the Guide to the Perplexed: Between the 13th and the 20th Centuries,” in Studies in Maimonides, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 159-207; and Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 257-262. 136

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

halakhic content of such exegeses—which they honored as de-rabbanan—and the exegetical methods of derivation, which they demoted to asmakhta. Though this had little effect on the halakhic “bottom line” of laws that had previously been derived by the older method, it made it harder to derive new Torahitic meanings in the old way, and thus may have contributed in the long run to the freezing of halakhic as well as midrashic precedent. Nevertheless, despite the rationalistic challenge to the midrashic myth, the rhetoric of the Talmud was present on every page to reinforce the presumption that the authority of every law rested not on the ingenuity of the rabbi to turn the words of Torah to suit his purpose, but on the charisma of those words themselves. Thus, despite Maimonides’ toosubtle allusions to Moses’ legislative discretion as philosopher-prophet, despite the peshat-school’s insistence that the rabbinic deduction ran counter to the plain sense of the text, the myth persisted that every bit of Talmudic law rested on the charisma of the words of Torah, whose true meaning had miraculously been conveyed for over a thousand years from Moses to Rabbi Akiva, then recorded faithfully by Rabbi Judah the Patriarch in the Mishnah. Rightly or wrongly, the incantational force of the word “halakhic” (as in “Is Orthodoxy or Conservatism a truly halakhic movement?”) rests on the belief that the direct legislative intent of God, communicated in the revelation of the Written and Oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, inheres in the specific interpretations advanced by this or that rabbi of the second century (or the fifth century, or the twelfth, the twentieth, the twenty-first…). It is this specific maximalist sense of “halakhic,” as conveying the authentic, specific sense of God’s will—authentic by virtue of being articulated in written and oral Torah and correctly interpreted by the rabbis—that is seriously challenged by every significant advance in Conservative Jewish scholarship, as we shall now see.

The First Challenge: Rewriting Rabbinic History From its inception, Conservative Jewish scholarship wrote the history of rabbinic Judaism in a new modern vein. The rabbis were not mere recipients of the Oral Law, but its creators! Even where the rabbis reported law as de-oraita (i.e., “Torahitic,” as for instance in their specification of the 39 categories of work of the Sabbath), it was they, in point of 137

Leonard Levin

historical fact, who created these laws as well as assigning their de-oraita status. What is more, all the interpretations and proof-texts that they invoked, to ground their legal interpretations in the Torah, were their own invention, and certainly did not represent original authorized interpretations of Mosaic antiquity. The institutional history of Judaism took on a radically new cast, in this reading. Nearly everything that properly characterized Judaism as we know it—as, for instance, the concrete patterns of observance of the Sabbath, the festivals, kashrut, prayer, the institution of the synagogue, marriage and divorce—were overwhelmingly rabbinic in their formulation, or even their origin. What, then, made them God’s will, if the criterion of “God’s will” according to the accepted myth was Mosaic-Sinaitic origin? This new historical perspective necessitated reading the Talmudic text in a radically non-traditional way. Rather than revealing the inner meanings of the written Torah as intended by God, the Talmudic page was revealing the meanings that the rabbis were reading into the Torah’s text! But then, what becomes of “halakhic” reasoning in its traditional sense? If the output of the halakhic reasoning process is supposed to be God’s will, by virtue of the rabbis’ divination of the true meaning of the Torah text, but we are now skeptical of the traditional hermeneutic assumptions (including the traditional account of the chain of transmission of knowledge of Torah from Sinai), then we need a new assumption to ground the authenticity of the result, or the exercise becomes an empty mimicry of the original process. Indeed, that new assumption was forthcoming: the nineteenth-century Conservative historical scholars believed that history itself was a medium of revelation of God’s will. This led directly to the “theological bimetallism” that Solomon Schechter described in his Introduction to Studies in Judaism. History and the old revealed Torah competed for allegiance in the very constitution of religious authority. But whereas “revealed Torah” purported to be a clear criterion of authority, “history” is vague and question-begging. If an idea succeeds in winning over the Jewish people in the long run, it is the verdict of history and thus revealed and authoritative; if it fails, it is neither revealed nor authoritative. But how can this serve as a guide in advance? As Hegel said of historical understanding generally, “Minerva’s owl takes flight at twilight”—historical enlightenment is only retrospective, and serves as no clear guide in the present. 138

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

The change of outlook signaled by the new rabbinic scholarship was a lot clearer in the history classroom than in the halakhic responsum. In the former, it was clear that the rabbinic age marked not just the writing down of what had been orally transmitted since Moses, but a whole revolution of thought and practice, and the creation of the characteristic Jewish religious institutions. However, this revolutionary change of outlook was hardly reflected in halakhic reasoning. If rabbinic “interpretation” creates law and does not simply derive it from the Godgiven text, then what is the true source of that authority? Is it God’s will we are discovering, or just historical customary Jewish practice? Can halakhic reasoning proceed on the basis of “business as usual” after such a revolution in historical outlook?

The Second Challenge: Rewriting Biblical History In 1670, Baruch Spinoza proposed in his Theological Political Treatise that Ezra, not Moses, wrote the Torah. As late as the 1980s, Conservative Jewish synagogues still read the Torah from the Hertz Chumash, which resisted coming to terms with the wave of modern biblical scholarship that saw the Bible as the product of historical human-cultural development. The rhetoric of Conservative halakhic reasoning still betrays ambivalence and confusion about how to come to terms—if at all—with the new knowledge. The bifurcation that Rabbi Joel Roth prescribes between “scholarly” knowledge and knowledge recognized by the halakhic tradition leads to a compartmentalization that creates a credibility gap for those who wish their “ought” to reflect reality. Spinoza exhorted us to read the Bible in terms of what the Bible itself said, not the extraneous meanings imposed on it by pious interpreters. To take one modest example: the Torah consists of a large number of utterances introduced by the locution, “the Lord said,” connected by passages in which speaks the voice of an anonymous narrator. Nowhere does the Torah itself ascribe the anonymous connecting passages to God or to anyone else. Yet it became a standard assumption of rabbinic exegesis that these narrative passages were divinely authored, and that the content of the Sinaitic revelation included the entire Torah, inclusive of these anonymous passages. Not just “higher criticism” but simply common sense and close reading may lead us to question this pervasive rabbinic assumption. 139

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To take another trivial example: the entire book of Deuteronomy is introduced by a preamble saying that these were the words spoken by Moses before his death. Yet rabbinic exegesis treats them as having the authority as if authored by God—a big difference! Even leaving aside the modern historical reconstruction that Deuteronomy was authored around the time of King Josiah, at least six centuries after Moses, on what is the divine authorship of Deuteronomy based? Clearly not on the plain sense of the text itself! Yet many mitzvot, including the recitation of the Shema, daily prayer, kosher slaughter, and divorce—not to mention the grounding of rabbinic authority itself—are based on minute, hyperliteral exegesis of Deuteronomy as a divinely-authored document. As for the content of the commands within the locution, “the Lord said,” these required a fresh look not just from our historical sense but from our moral sense as well. Apparently, a large part of the content of “God’s will” according to the Torah itself had to do with the minute specification of the details of sacrificial worship, details in which even Maimonides could not find any redeeming rationale, while he suggested in the Guide that the whole sacrificial ritual had only historically relative value, a concession to the ritual practices prevalent in the world in ancient times.5 Yet God in the Torah had little or nothing to say in the way of advocating verbal prayer or study, essential components of later Jewish piety! As for methods of enforcement, a large part of the Torah’s explicit penal code prescribes capital punishment for such offenses as Sabbath violation and idolatry, provisions repugnant not only to our own moral sense, but to the rabbis, who had to go to great lengths to “interpret” these provisions in a way that (according to their own word) would lead only rarely or not at all to actual execution of offenders. The ordeal of the suspected adulteress was abolished on the grounds of a pair of midrashic exegeses of the kind that would, if submitted anonymously to the CJLS, have been met with ridicule and instant rejection.6 The laws of the rebellious son and the idolatrous city were similarly 5

6

See Guide III, 32, and Heinemann’s discussion in The Reasons for the Commandments in Jewish Thought from the Bible to the Renaissance (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008), 113–16. Talmud Sotah 47b. 140

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

branded—after lengthy death-by-a-thousand-qualifications-type exegesis—with the dismissive “Study it and receive a reward” [but never put it into practice]—a polite euphemism for “repealed.”7 We are spared having to struggle with the moral content of these passages because the rabbis of the Mishnaic period fought these battles long before us, and their conquests were safely grandfathered into “received halakhah.” They do not even receive the mention that is their due in the standard accounts of the instances in which it is “better to uproot one letter of the Torah in order that the Torah itself may be preserved.”8 Yet surely the issues over which Conservative halakhists have spent so much agony for decades—such as giving women and homosexuals full equality and legitimacy—pale in comparison with these! The fact that these historical events are regarded as “extra-systemic” only creates additional credibility gaps for the system.

A Priori Objections to the Whole Enterprise The considerations that I have offered so far might have deterred (and in the view of ultra-Orthodox critics of Conservative halakhic reasoning, ought to have deterred) Conservative rabbinic scholars from engaging in halakhic reasoning at the outset. If one cannot enter into the naïve, pre-Rashbam mindset of classic midrash, of seeing the derash as an organic outgrowth of the Torah’s true meaning; if one cannot view the Oral Law as divinely given to Moses and the Written Law as sacrosanct in every particular; if one cannot view the Morning Prayer as instituted by Abraham and correct slaughtering technique as taught by example by Moses to Aaron and Eleazar and so on down the line; if one cannot view the 39 categories of Sabbath-prohibited work as recited by Moses to the elders and passed down meticulously, unerringly, generation by generation, until Judah the Nasi received them 1400 years later—then maybe one ought not to be in this business at all, but should make a simple choice between being ultra-Orthodox or pagan, and leave all the 7 8

Talmud Sanhedrin 71a. For instance, Rabbi Joel Roth does not mention these cases in his discussion of the principles in question in The Halakhic Process: A Systemic Analysis (New York: JTS Press, 1986), 176ff. 141

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intermediate grades to the muddle-headed obfuscators who confuse the people with 39 different flavors of Judaism. The early Conservative halakhists had the education and sophistication to see through all these myths, yet persisted in the contemporary halakhic enterprise anyway. A  classic Conservative responsum (and even many a pre-modern responsum, showing traces of the Geonic or Maimonidean enlightenment) proceeds on different levels of argumentation—using traditional-midrashic case-precedents, but also historical and sociological reasons. The argument is typically presented on intrinsic and formal levels simultaneously: the intrinsic argument is presented in social and ethical terms, while the formal argument addresses the legal criteria of the Written and Oral Torah. Indeed, the “intrinsic” mode of analysis can percolate from one level to another of the argument. At first, it is we who have these “intrinsic” reasons of a social and ethical character. But in studying the rabbis in social-historical perspective, it turns out that they acted from this kind of reason as well, and occasionally articulated it in their reasoning (but perhaps more often concealed it, to preserve the charisma of the law). When we analyze the laws of the Torah itself, either through the medieval lens of probing the “reasons for the mitzvot” or the modern lens of historical Biblical scholarship, lo and behold— these reasons were operative there, too! Maybe even God acts from these reasons! But if there is any validity to the mode of argumentation I present here, its moral should be clear. Only in the first stages of “myth-breaking” does it appear that our loss of mythic illusion disqualifies us from participating in the authentic halakhic process. Once we fully know where we stand and what “reality spectacles” enable us to orient ourselves in the various worlds of past and present, religious and secular, it becomes clearer that to do halakhah “right”—to make the best realitybased decisions of what God wants from us—this is precisely the course we ought to pursue: to view past and present reality by the light of the best insights available to us, and to understand past action and guide present action by the totality of all the valid reasons that have bearing on them. There is even sound halakhic language for such a procedure: ein la-dayyan el amah she-einav ro’ot—the judge has only that which his eyes see [to guide him]. 142

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

A Posteriori Objections to the Course of Conservative Decision-Making Going back to the situation that provoked Rabbi Gillman’s 2005 remarks about the death of Conservative claims to halakhic authenticity: he cited two kinds of evidence. One is the observation that halakhic observance is not taken seriously in the lives of the Conservative Jewish laity. This is indeed an open sore, and needs to be dealt with programmatically by the Conservative Jewish leadership. The new JTS chancellor’s initiative of stressing “mitzvah” as his primary theme and goal for the movement is hopefully the first of many steps that need to be taken in this area. There may be grounds for cautious optimism in the kinds of statistics gleaned from observance in the “inner core” of Conservative laity (there are pluses as well as minuses in the statistics of the Steven Cohen study cited above), but clearly much more needs to be done. It is, however, the second kind of evidence that I wish to address here. Over the past half-century, Conservative Judaism has taken several significant steps revising the status quo of practice: several incremental steps toward the equalization of women’s status, and most recently the decision to admit homosexuals to ordination. Rabbi Gillman is not the only one to comment that these steps effectively break with traditional halakhah. After the decision to ordain women, Rabbi Eugene Borowitz reportedly called up Rabbi Gillman and said, “Welcome to Reform Judaism!” And (as I noted earlier) after the CJLS decision on homosexuality, Rabbi Roth (and three others) resigned from the CJLS, in explicit indication that a red line had been crossed in departure from acceptable halakhic method.9 I imagine a lament of a Southern American slaveholder in 1866: “What has happened to the rule of law? The purpose of law is to protect one in the possession of one’s property. Yet I have been dispossessed of the majority of my property—my human property, that I worked hard to acquire and sustain over many years! Do you call this law? It is nothing but anarchy and theft under the fiction of legal proceedings.” I can sympathize with this Southerner’s feelings. Yet, in historical retrospect, he is wrong in his essential claim. The change of law may seem superficially 9

See Joel Roth’s responsum, “Homosexuality Revisited” (given before the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards in 2006), 48–53. 143

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to be the death of law to some people at some times, but it is not. Law changes. The fact of change is not in itself an objection to the viability of law, provided that change occur in an orderly and rule-governed manner. (To which the Southerner would respond: “The Civil War? You call that an orderly, rule-governed transition?” The objection would appear plausible in that context. Yet, even so, in historical perspective the claim of the continuity of law is vindicated, despite a massive temporary disruption.) From a substantive standpoint, the changes in law instituted by the CJLS are extremely modest compared with those that societies have withstood in the course of history—and even compared to those undergone in the course of Jewish history, as we have seen in our historical retrospective of the transition from biblical to rabbinic times. But (you may respond) the issue is not the degree of change, but the legitimacy of such change in principle. For the Southerner, the principle was states’ rights—the impermissibility of the Federal government to change the law in the matter of slavery without the consent of the states. For the halakhic traditionalist position (as represented by Rabbi Roth in his 2006 responsum): “the foundational premise of the entire halakhic system [is] that the Torah is Divine and legally infallible.”10 Rabbi Gillman has been consistent since 1983  in pointing out that a wide consensus among modern Jewish theologians has questioned the adequacy of a theory of verbal revelation, and that it is more accurate to speak of halakhah generically and pluralistically than to make categorical claims about “the halakhah.”11 Yet it seems that, in his 2005 address, Rabbi Gillman capitulated to Rabbi Roth on the univocal definition of “the halakhah” based on “literally infallible divine Torah,” for only on that basis does the negative judgment on claims to Conservative halakhic authenticity make sense. I can sympathize with Rabbi Gillman’s exasperation, that after all his efforts to define the issue of Conservative halakhah pluralistically, his plea fell on deaf ears in certain quarters, and the crucial debate of the hour was being framed in terms of “all or nothing” traditionalism. 10 11

Roth, “Homosexuality Revisted,” 51. Neil Gillman, “Toward a Theology for Conservative Judaism,” Conservative Judaism 37 (1983): 4-22. See pp. 9-10 on Heschel, Kaplan, Buber, and Rosenzweig questioning verbal revelation, and pp. 13-14 on the difference between “a halakhah” and “the halakhah.” 144

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

Still, pluralism won out in the end, and after the CJLS decision on homosexuality, the prospects for a humanistic understanding of halakhah are better than ever. But this humanism—in which Rabbi Gillman is advancing and developing a position originally put forward by the disciples of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan—is not the only significant factor. There are also significant voices among Conservative centrists that wish to affirm an element of divine revelation in the specific provisions of Torahitic legislation, but with a liberal inflection, and I believe that their influence was crucially manifested in the fact that it was the Dorff-Reisner-Nevins version of the liberal homosexual argument that was approved by a majority of the CJLS rather than the more sweeping positions of Rabbis Tucker, Geller and Fine. In the practical outcome, it was the participation of these centrists (for example, Rabbi Susan Grossman) who affirm some literal sense to “revealed Torah” yet understand it flexibly enough to allow for the degree of change embodied in the Dorff position—that provided empirical confirmation of the vitality of Conservative halakhic process, enough to keep the myth alive for many Conservative Jews. I think it is safe to predict that the continued presence and influence of the proponents of this centrist position will remain key in keeping Conservative Jewish decision-making halakhically serious and interesting for a long time to come.

Why Halakhah? Still, there is a worry expressed by Rabbi Gillman’s 2005  pronouncement, which we still must address. Rabbi Gillman is clearly not happy with Rabbi Roth’s identification of halakhic authenticity with the affirmation of the divine infallibility of the Torah. In responding to this equation, Rabbi Gillman would prefer to dispense with halakhah (or at least “halakhic authenticity”) altogether, leaving Judaism in the form of a freeform spiritual practice. The Torah is humanly authored, and the Jewish people are free to determine the shape of their religious practice. There is a middle position—affirming the Torah as, to use Heschel’s phrase: “the word of God and the word of man”—that is slighted by this formulation. It is a position that Heschel favored, and that was typified in Heavenly Torah by the Ishmaelian assertion that “Moses innovated three things on his own” (a euphemistic theological understatement if 145

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there ever was one!). There is an understandable reason for overlooking this position, because in practice it sometimes tends to reduce to the humanistic-Kaplanian position for reasons I shall presently point out. Yet it is a key position that is the theological counterpart of the “centrist” legal position of which I just spoke, and it needs to be counted and treated separately. The difficulty in this position may be expressed in the following paradox. Suppose you are presented with a Torah that carries the label: “Ingredients: 50% divinely-authored, 50% humanly-authored,” or any similar proportion (90-10 either way works almost identically in practice). You, however, are in the position of having to determine which is the divine portion and which is the human portion. This makes you, the human arbiter, the effective authority of what counts as correct Jewish observance. This difficulty notwithstanding, the centrist position has several notable advantages. Probably the greatest advantage is that it inculcates reverence for every part of the tradition, a reverence that cannot be overruled except by absolutely convincing disqualifying evidence in the case of a provision deemed harmful. Even then, it argues decisively for the minimum corrective action necessary to fix the problem (for which the Dorff-Reisner-Nevins responsum is a good model). The halakhic principle safek de-oraita le-humra (“a doubt in Torahitic matters is resolved on the side of stringency”) would find new theological application here. Another advantage of this position is that it may revive our interest in the theoretical investigation of the “reasons for the commandments,”12 an enterprise in which Heschelians and Kaplanians can find common cause. For Kaplanians,13 the assertion “X is part of God’s will (metaphorically understood)” is logically equivalent to X having social-ethical, symbolic, pedagogical or other redeeming value. For Heschelians, “X is part of God’s will (literally understood)” is a faith-assertion for which 12

13

See my translation of Isaac Heinemann, The Reasons for the Commandments in Jewish Thought from the Bible to the Renaissance (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008). I include in the “Kaplanian” camp here those who would agree with Milton Steinberg on the inadequacy of Kaplan’s non-personal theology, but who would agree with Kaplan and Steinberg (and a famous passage in Rosenzweig) that the content of the revelatory experience is entirely humanly-authored. 146

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

X having social-ethical, symbolic, pedagogical or other redeeming value can provide positive evidence. Either way, the reasons that Heschelians and Kaplanians can adduce could provide a common language with equivalent halakhic implications.14 For Kaplanians and Heschelians alike, affirming the halakhic seriousness of Conservative Judaism is (I here disagree with my teacher Rabbi Gillman) not just the equivalent of “Hooray for Conservative Judaism!” but is an affirmation with serious content. It affirms the following: 1. Law is an important resource in giving shape to our otherwise chaotic existence. An unenforced and imperfectly-kept law may doubtfully deserve the name of “law” at all, but we are better off continuing to affirm it as such and to strive for its implementation, than if we abandoned the attempt. It is the way we know best to articulate our aspirations in concrete, achievable form. 2. Law may not be specified verbally by God, but it is at least a human expression of the divine will, and maybe more. 3. Tradition may not be infallible, but it represents the accumulated experience of prior generations in their collective attempts to understand the divine will, and should be listened to with all seriousness. 4. Consensus is never absolutely achievable, but insofar as we can achieve it, it is an indispensable prerequisite to our continued group existence as Jews. Law and tradition are essential aids to this consensus. 5. The Written Torah and Talmudic tradition may not be infallible, but they are the bedrock of our collective existence and the basis of whatever consensus we may hope to achieve as Jews, and so should be overruled only where absolutely necessary. 6. Precedent is the basis of our continuity, but not to be slavishly followed. Our intelligent, articulated disagreement with precedent is also a form of continuity (on Ronald Dworkin’s model of “the next chapter to be written in the book”). 14

See Addendum: “On the Sense of Personal Commandedness as an Expression of Divine Love” at the end of this article. 147

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7. Law and its underlying reasons are two sides of the same coin.15 In analyzing law for its reasons, we discover the values inherent in it; in translating our own values into new law, we give them a form in which they can be the next chapter in the tradition.

The continuity of a strict precedent-driven halakhah with past tradition is easier to demonstrate than what I propose here. We should perhaps be grateful to both Rabbi Gillman and Rabbi Roth for dispelling the illusion that Conservative Judaism is strictly continuous with halakhic Judaism as practiced for the past 1500 years. But Rabbi Gillman has also taught us how myths disconfirmed by experience can still provide the guiding narratives for constructing meaning in our lives. If the myth of “halakhic authenticity” can inspire Conservative Jews to creative deployment of the resources of the Jewish tradition for shaping new vessels for Jewish spirituality, then it will prove a “broken myth” in the best sense.

Addendum: On the Sense of Personal Commandedness as an Expression of Divine Love Even more vital, perhaps, to the quality of the experienced religious life than the commandments being an expression of the divine will is their being conceived as an expression of the divine love.16 The relation of the commandments to the divine love has at least four different possible permutations: 1. In the minimal (Kaplanian-Shulweissian) mode, “God loves” is expressed in predicate form: “love is divine.” But in the Jewish conception, love is not anarchic but is expressed in certain specific behaviors that can be described by legal rubrics. Thus, observing a life of commandments is an expression of my receiving the love implicit in being itself and reciprocating it. 15

16

On the dialectical symbiosis of halakhah and aggadah, see “Halakha and Aggada,” in Hayim Nachman Bialik, Revealment and Concealment: Five Essays (Jerusalem: Ibis, 2000); and Chapter 33, “The Problem of Polarity” in A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955); also Chapter 1 of A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah (New York: Continuum, 2005). See especially the chapter on Crescas in Heinemann, The Reasons for the Commandments. 148

Is the “Halakhic Authenticity” of Conservative Judaism a Broken Myth?

2. In the next (Rosenzweigian) mode, I experience the love and command of God personally, but the divine revelation, taken in itself, lacks specificity. I partly provide the specificity myself in my own interpretation of the divine command; and it is partly offered in the legacy of mitzvot which are the historical human interpretation of the divine command, and which become commands for me also when I hear the past revelation as occurring bayom ha-zeh. Performance of the mitzvot is then my (or our) response to the general divine command through specific forms that have been sanctified by their cumulative sacred human intentions over the course of our multi-millenial history. (And even if it is we who have authored the “commands” in the context of the divine-human relationship, are they not then henceforth binding on us as an expression of fidelity to that relationship and its unfolding narrative?) 3. In the next (Heschelian) mode, I hear the love and the will of God resonating through the commands of the Torah, though without regarding the Torah itself as infallible. By affirming the presence of the divine word in the commands themselves, I open the possibility of experiencing them as a two-way channel—a particular expression of the divine love commanding me, through which I can then express my personal love of God by observing what God commands. At the same time, I am bidden to engage in critical evaluation and interpretation of the received commandments to insure that they will be understood and interpreted consistently with what I rationally understand to be the requirements of the “divine love” and the “divine will” objectively considered. 4. In the final (Orthodox) mode, I understand the commands of the Torah to be infallibly representative of the divine love and commandment. I  must then subordinate my rational understanding of what the “divine love” might mean when it comes in conflict with what the Torah unmistakably declares to be the “divine will.” That subordination is itself a further expression of my love for God, and my faith that the divine love is expressed in the divine commandment, however non-obvious that may be to me at the present moment.

Which of these positions I take is itself a function of what I conceive to be the ideal religious life, and the tradeoff within that ideal between assurance of the divine presence and rational autonomy. Belief in the specific commandedness of the mitzvot—above and beyond their 149

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expression of the divine will in a more general sense—requires an act of faith in the absence of empirical confirmation of the specific divine revelation of the Torah. That faith may well be worth it, though, if it brings with it a sense of the immediate presence and love of God in performance of the mitzvot. There is an analogy between this faith in the specific commandedness of the mitzvot and the faith in particular divine providence. Though rationally I may have good grounds to be skeptical whether the events of my life have been arranged by divine providence, there is a payoff to that belief if it leads me to regard my life positively as destined for fulfillment of a divinely-authored purpose, and the same applies to the question of the mitzvot. The positive-liberal alternative in either case is to regard what we do—in religious observance or in our lives generally—as ultimately of the highest importance and of interest to God, even if God grants us the freedom to be the author of our own actions (including the specific forms of our service to God) and of our own destinies.

Toward a Curriculum for Increasing the Active Participation of Congregants at Prayer Services Saul P. Wachs1

Tribute Neil Gillman has enriched the Conservative movement through scholarship, teaching and expressions of deep concern for its welfare. He has written courageously in areas that were often neglected by other critical scholars in the Movement. Prayer and spirituality, theology and eschatology have been among the areas that have engaged his thoughtful reflection. It is a pleasure to acknowledge a debt to him and to express the hope that he will continue to raise the difficult questions and probe the important issues that stimulate thought and enhance the clarity with which Conservative Judaism presents its message to the Jewish community. The literature of education offers many definitions of the word “curriculum,” Most agree that it involves some kind of plan for learning. It might be phrased as an intentional plan for bringing about improvement in learning. It is usually connected to thoughtful consideration of goals and objectives and intends to lead to some improvement in the learning of the clients. As a participant observer of services in hundreds of congregations, I have long wondered about how a curriculum might be designed for increasing congregant participation in prayer services what it would look like and how it might be implemented. There is very little attention to this topic, although recently Elie Kaunfer has offered a valuable set of relevant suggestions.2 I have concluded that, if such a curriculum is 1

2

I acknowledge my debt of appreciation to Diane Ruth Cover and Rabbis Robert Abramson, Donald Cashman, Neil Cooper, Arnold Goodman, William Hamilton, David Schuck, and Gerald Zelizer, Dr. Marsha Bryan Edelman, and Daniel Klein, who offered valuable suggestions in the creation of this article. Elie Kaunfer, “The Empowered Synagogue,” Conservative Judaism (Spring 2006): 12-106 151

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developed to enhance them, the daily and weekly services can become a forum for significant adult learning that will increase skill participation as well as greater capacity to pray with Kavannah. I will begin to make my case with a story. A number of years ago, I attended a service in a mid-size congregation. It was a late Friday evening service, one of many that I have attended over the years. What made this service different was the degree to which the Congregation was able to chant sections of the service with the Hazzan. Three of the Psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat, Lekhah Dodi, Birkhot ha-Ma-ariv Aravim and Emet veEmunah, all three sections of Keriat Shema and the entire text of Aleinu were chanted by the congregation. Twice, during the service, the rabbi gave brief explanatory comments about a section of the liturgy. At the end of the service, I approached the Hazzan and told him that I was tremendously impressed by the ability of the congregants to read and chant the Hebrew sections of the service. He replied,” Thank you but the credits really belongs to the rabbi.” I asked him to explain. “In June, about ten years ago, the rabbi sat down with me to assess the health of the congregation. There was much to celebrate but one area evoked a lot of concern. He said to me, ‘I find your davening to be inspirational but I frequently think that we have an audience rather than a congregation out there. I want our people to daven, not just to be passive. Starting in the fall, I want you to chant the Kiddush every Erev Shabbat in exactly the same way. Please don’t elaborate the chant; just chant it in a way that you feel the people can imitate. Let’s see what happens.’ I complied and by the following June, the Congregation sang along with me. Even better, I have been told that many of the people can and do sing Kiddush at home now on Erev Shabbat. The Rabbi then said,’ Please chant Hashkivenu in a way that others can join with you.’ I did so and by the end of the year, the regular attendees were now joining in the chanting of both prayers in a confident manner. Each year, we have added new texts. The congregation is familiar with the entire service. Now I can vary each service so that there are many places for the congregants to sing and chant and I also have the opportunity to interpret some of the prayers in a way that, I hope, is an aid to Kavannah.” The Rabbi and the Hazzan also developed a curriculum. Each contributed from his expertise and together they were able to increase the literacy of the “regulars” to a level far beyond that which is seen in many 152

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congregations. In analyzing this experience, several things are clear. The rabbi had reflected seriously on the state of worship. He did not allow himself to be inhibited by limiting assumptions, or presume that things had to remain more or less the way they had been. He was seriously invested in prayer. In approaching the Hazzan, he saw a colleague who shared his concerns and was willing to implement a new vision of congregational participation. Together, in this model of rabbi-Hazzan collaboration, they built a common vision for tefillah be-tzibbur in the congregation. The rabbi taught theological ideas or a midrash or Hasidic stories, or bits of halakhah each Shabbat. The Hazzan chose or created versions of the Nosah as well as other melodies that would help the congregants to master the texts. He also chanted and sang in ways that empowered the congregation to join in the singing. Each used his own expertise to enrich the service and to make decisions that would turn a vision into a new reality. In this paper, I will set out scenarios, connected to different populations and will offer a theory of practice designed to improve the literacy and the skills of those who attend prayer services with regularity.3

“The Commonplaces of Curriculum” The commonplaces are those populations and the subject matter that affect the possibilities of learning. With regard to the synagogue service, these might include the clergy (particularly the rabbi (see below), the congregants, the lay leadership of the congregation, the movement with which the congregation is affiliated (if such affiliation exists), the ambience of the place in which public worship is conducted, the time at which it is conducted, the role of music, Hebrew, the vernacular, the particular prayer book being used etc. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss all of the commonplaces that are relevant to public worship, but several of them will be addressed as they relate to the topic of the paper. Let me begin with the worshippers. There are at least two basic populations of worshippers that make up Conservative congregations at Sabbath worship. The first is the “regulars,” that group that comes 3

In this paper, the term “theory of practice” refers to a theory that underlies reflective practice. It is assumed to have some validity in settings that share common characteristics. 153

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to daven and to hear a devar Torah, irrespective of any special life-cycle celebration taking place at the synagogue. A second group consists of people who do not attend services regularly but are present in the synagogue because of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Aufruf, or some other celebration or special event. The group includes members of the congregation, people who are not affiliated, Jews and non-Jews. In this paper, this group will be referred to as “guests.” The roles of the rabbi and hazzan in tefillah be-tzibbur have evolved over the years. In the Conservative synagogue of my youth, the service was conducted by the sheliah tzibbur-often a professional hazzan. The rabbi davened in his seat along with the rest of the congregation. It was assumed that people could and would find their place in the service, so page announcements were limited. Today, in many (probably most) nonOrthodox congregations, the rabbi typically functions as a master of ceremonies. Page announcements and comments are made frequently. The rabbi often stands at a lectern during the prayer service and tends to dominate the proceedings.4 While each congregation is different, my experience shows that, in the largest number of cases, it is the rabbi of the congregation who decides on the pace of davening, and much of its actual content, as well as the treatment of the liturgy (whether read in Hebrew or the vernacular, sung or omitted) One rabbi told me that he regards himself as the “producer” of the service; another called himself the “director” of the service. The role of the hazzan varies from congregation to congregation. Where a strong partnership exists between rabbi and hazzan, a collaborative approach to worship develops. For example, at Congregation Neve Sholom, in Metuchen, New Jersey, Rabbi Gerald Zelizer and Hazzan Sheldon Levin share a collaborative relationship, rooted in their common belief that a primary goal of the service is to empower the laity to serve as ba-alei tefillah, ba-alei keriah, and on occasion to give learned divrei Torah.5 Sharing a common and primary goal is the foundation for the collaborative relationship that these two kelei Kodesh have established. If the rabbi and hazzan share a commitment to making prayer a 4 There are of course, exceptions. I  was impressed by the role of Rabbi Morris Allen of Congregation Beth Jacob in the suburbs of Saint Paul, Minnesota, who at services models davening from his seat. 5 Rabbi Gerald Zelizer, written communication, August 7, 2007 154

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really central element of worship, their collaboration, together with the input of volunteers, can yield significant results. I  believe that such a collaborative relationship is essential to the realization of the goals set forth in this paper. It is important to be aware of the goals and needs of participant congregants for worship. Here, I believe that the differentiation between “regulars” and “guests” is critical. Guests often come to the synagogue with a degree of ambivalence. Some people (e.g. Gentiles) come with a degree of curiosity. For some, the service evokes memories. For some, the lack of ability to participate in large parts of the service makes the experience uncomfortable, if not embarrassing. I believe that the first step in constructing a curriculum for services is to decide on who is to be the target audience. If the main target audience is the “guests” one set of behaviors makes sense. If it is to be the “regulars,” then another strategy seems appropriate. If the focus is on the “guests,” the service can be treated as a “learners minyan.” No assumptions need be made as to the literacy of the congregants and the focus can be on making them feel comfortable while some instruction is given. If this strategy is adopted, the risk is that the regulars will be alienated by what they experience as the infantilizing of the congregation. There are Conservative Jews who choose to daven in Orthodox synagogues because, as one of them put it, “the Conservative rabbi treated us as if we were in Junior congregation.” If the service is primarily geared to “guests,” i.e. those with little or no liturgical literacy, then I believe that that the best solution is to allow for an alternative minyan should it be desired. Of course, that can drain off some or most of the best daveners in the congregation, but at least, it allows them to daven the way they would like to daven, and frees the rabbi to focus on a more homogeneous population.

Nurturing the Religious Experience of Those Who Are Committed to Tefillah be-Tzibbur What follows envisages a different strategy. In this strategy, the clergy feel that their primary responsibility is to nurture the prayer experiences of those who pray regularly. The strategy is based on the assumption that the target population consists primarily of “regulars,” that group which willingly and faithfully attends services week after week. 155

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It is assumed that while what will be advocated here might not be of much help to a person who is lacking in motivation to gain prayer skills or to expose him/her self to ongoing public worship, it will strengthen the prayer experience of the regular davener. If we can develop and enhance the prayer experience of those who seek ongoing opportunities to worship and study with other Jews, we will be more likely to maintain the loyalty of those who are most committed to Tefillah be-Tzibbur as an important value in their lives. In Orthodox congregations, where there is an assumption of liturgical literacy on the part of congregants, a learner’s minyan is sometimes available to help newcomers master the requisite skills that allow for intelligent participation in worship. While this does not address the needs of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah guest, it does allow those who wish to come regularly and need help to receive it in a comfortable setting. How can the service be enriched for those who do come regularly? A common scenario calls for the standardization of the service so that it is repeated more or less exactly week after week, month after month, year after year. I find that in many congregations, there are specific sections of the service in which congregants can read, sing or chant in Hebrew with ease. Some examples are the responses to Barekhu, Kaddish, Kedushah, Ashrei, Psalm 145, El Adon, Lekhah Dodi, the hymns at the end of the service, the first half of Aleinu le-Shabeah, and, increasingly, the prayer for the State of Israel. When we do find congregants participating actively in Hebrew, it is because they have been exposed to “distributed practice.”6 In other words, once a decision has been made to encourage the congregation to learn a text, the method employed is to make that text a constant part of the service. The problem is that much, if not most, of the service is not chanted aloud. That is to say, a select few prayers are recited aloud each week and the rest are always recited by the congregation silently, if at all. As a result of this, regular synagogue attendees are usually only skilled to daven the few prayers recited aloud. This strategy of a matbeya shel tefillah that is essentially unchanging ignores certain realities. First, the preferred modality of learning for some people is aural. They learn best 6

In “distributed practice,” a person is given frequent exposure to a text or an experience. This is the most effective way to master a skill (e.g. learning to play a musical instrument). 156

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through the ear and therefore, if they do not hear something, it is very difficult for them to learn it. The actual percentage of any population that learns primarily through auditory experience varies from group to group, but it can be assumed that there will always be people who fall into that category of learners. If we watch the behavior of people in the synagogue, we can see that what is intended to be read silently is sometimes not read at all. Some people simply shut down when the rabbi calls for silent reading, such as for some of the paragraphs of Keriat Shema.7 Any observation of what actually happens in many congregations during the Amidah after the Kedushah, or during the second and third paragraphs of Keriat Shema, when these are assigned for silent reading will show that many congregants, in fact, do not read at all. It is noteworthy that Sefardic congregations do not have this problem, since all of the liturgy is chanted aloud. As a participant observer, over the years, I have had the opportunity to visit many congregations. If I visit a congregation after a gap of a year, I frequently find that nothing has changed. Every week or (in the weekday minyan) every day, what is sung is sung, what is skipped is skipped, and silent reading is called for in the same places. In other words, the rabbi has developed a kitzur, an abbreviated liturgy, that is unwavering. As a result, regular participants gain little in liturgical fluency or literacy. A person who attends service after service will rarely, if ever, learn how to read or chant a different part of the service. In addition, such a set way of davening eradicates the opportunities to allow the liturgy to enhance special circumstances.8 When a service contains a balance of the familiar and the novel, the prayer experienced is enhanced. When someone is comfortable with significant portions of the service that person can more easily leave one’s comfort zone, learning something new. That which is novel and unexpected can add excitement to an experience that might otherwise be monotonous. 7

8

Rabbi Zelizer encourage his congregants to chant the first part and last part of each paragraph aloud and believes that over time, the congregant will be able to chant more and more of the paragraph aloud. He informed me that this method was taught to him by his father, Rabbi Nathan Zelizer of Blessed Memory. To illustrate this point, I have found that congregants at a Beit Evel have responded appreciatively to the loud reading of part of Birkat ha-Pesukim during Arvit or the last verses of Adon Olam, both of which are concerned with life and death and the assurance of God’s ongoing concern for us. 157

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Developing a Curriculum to Enhance Congregational Participation It is common to begin any curricular thinking by setting out some overarching goals. I  posit the following goals for a curriculum for services. a) Serious daveners will find the service to be an engaging, spiritually uplifting and deep experience. b) The Congregant will be able to find his or her way through the service with a minimum of announcements. Serious daveners find that the flow of a service is disturbed when there is a constant break for announcements-hefsek. Achieving this goal will enable congregants to participate in services where there is no announcement of pages. c) The Congregant will be able to read or chant large sections of the service in Hebrew. The congregant will derive pleasure from the experience of singing or chanting. Competence engenders comfort and comfort. Utilization of Hebrew in worship strengthens a sense of authentic connection to past generations as Jews from other parts of the world, particularly those who live in Eretz Yisrael. A sense of lineage and a sense of peerage—both critical types of roots—are strengthened through the ability to pray in Hebrew. d) The congregant will gradually acquire a working vocabulary of the Hebrew of the Siddur, particularly the words and roots that appear with the greatest frequency.9 Recognition of the most frequently occurring words and the most common grammatical forms can add to a sense of comprehension and ownership of the experience of prayer. 9

Researchers have determined the frequency of words that appear in the liturgy. There is a core vocabulary of words and concepts that appear with great frequency in the liturgical texts. See, for example, Aharon Ben Natan “Basic Vocabulary and Language Forms of the Siddur,” in Readings in the Teaching of Prayer and Siddur, ed. Azriel Eisenberg (New York: Jewish Education Press, 1964) or Shlomo Haramati, Havanat ha-Nikra ba- Siddur uva-Mikra (Jerusalem: ha-Histadrut ha-Tziyonit ha-Olamit, 1983). 158

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e) The congregant will become familiar with basic Hilkhot Tefillah such as where to bow, when to say Barukh Hu u-Varukh Shemo. Exercising care in precision when adopting the body language of Jewish prayer both reflects and strengthens a sense of the importance of halakhah as well as respect for Minhag ha-Makom. f) The congregant will understand the structure of the service and how the various sections relate to each other. He or she will appreciate the role of the first sections of the service as “warmups” for the major sections such as Keriat Shema, Amidah, and Keriat ha-Torah g) The congregant will recognize differences in nosah and appreciate the role of music in conveying nuances of mood, content and structure in prayer. h) The congregant will learn how to engage in iyyun tefillah, to analyze the texts of the service in terms of their literary and rhetorical structures. By thinking about what a prayer means and how a prayer means, the congregant will gain deeper appreciation of the book of values of the Jewish People. i) The congregant will be offered many opportunities to engage in theological study and discussion. This will include exposure to multiple rationales for prayer developed by thinkers of the past and the present day. Prayer will not be seen as magical behavior nor as meaningless behavior. Names of God will be understood as metaphors, human efforts to describe that which is ineffable. The congregant will understand the particular contribution made to the prayer experience by different genres of prayer, i.e. Shevah, Bakkashah, Hodayah. j) The congregant will feel a sense of ongoing growth in skill in, and knowledge, and appreciation of tefillah as a spiritual resource and a community-building instrument. k) The congregant will recognize the need for a “warm-up” or preparatory period to aid in achieving kavvanah in prayer. 159

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l) The congregant will sense that tefillah is taken very seriously in the congregation and will develop a sense of loyalty to the Conservative movement as a spiritual entity. To summarize, I believe that what is needed is a “curriculum” or plan that begins by assessing the liturgical literacy of congregants and then charting out a sequence of learnings that move regular attendees at services towards greater fluency and depth of participation.

The Role of the Rabbi Like any performance, a service requires a sense of flow. When this is missing, it is difficult to achieve a sense of Kavannah because the mood is constantly being interrupted. This sometimes happens when the flow of prayer is constantly punctuated by announcements.10 One solution is to use two different fonts to indicate which readings are for the leader and which for the congregation. Another, is to have a roller chart which indicates the relevant page in the Siddur. A third solution is to rely on the directions found in the text of the Siddur. I believe that some announcements are necessary but that they can be minimized in order to promote a sense of flow in the service. Rabbi Zelizer has experimented with having a knowledgeable member of the congregation sitting with someone with less knowledge in order to show him the way.

Divrei Tefillah The rabbi can help congregants to develop greater literacy by giving divrei tefillah. A brief period of instruction in the laws of prayer or a concept to be found in the liturgy presented at each service can, over the course of time, open the eyes and hearts of regular worshippers to the order, structure and beauty of the liturgy. I have the pleasure of co-officiating with Rabbi William Hamilton of Kehillath Israel Congregation in Brook 10

Rabbi Robert Abramson analogized this to a television program that is constantly interrupted by commercial announcements. 160

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line, Massachusetts, and he enriches the service by sharing his own fascination with phrases, themes and word-choices. When this is reinforced in the congregational bulletin or through the internet, the learning can be strengthened. For example, Rabbi Hamilton frequently contributes “Tefillah Gems” to the Bulletin of Kehillath Israel Congregation. He is, however, careful to do this teaching at set points in the service so that the basic flow is unimpeded. In the end, the most important role of the rabbi is to be a model davener. Nothing is more distracting to a congregant or a Hazzan than to see the rabbi talking to someone else during the service.

The Role of the Hazzan Every hazzan with whom I have held discussion has told me that he or she wants the congregation to actively participate in the davening. Yet, there are noticeable differences in the degree to which congregants sing along from one congregation to another. Some hazzanim do not radiate the sense of intensity and enthusiasm that can ignite similar feelings among the congregants. Some choose keys in which to sing or project an uncertainty in the meter or beat of metricised texts. The hazzan signals to the congregation by his or her behavior if congregational participation is truly valued. There are at least two practices that hazzanim follow if they are serious about encouraging congregational participation. First, they sing in a musical key that is not beyond the capacity of most congregants. Second, they maintain a consistent meter or beat in texts that are intended to be sung by the congregation so that the congregation can feel secure while singing. When these practices are not followed, the congregation is unable to sing with the hazzan. When they are, the congregation feels empowered to sing actively. This does not exhaust the responsibility of the hazzan. An indifferent or incapable sheliah tzibbur can destroy the mood of prayer. A  capable hazzan can take the congregation, during moments of passion, to a place that would be difficult for them to go to unaided. A reflective hazzan will balance such moments with other points in the service where he/she empowers the congregants to give vent to genuine emotion without calling undue attention to vocal acrobatics. 161

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As with the rabbi, the major responsibility of the hazzan in prayer is to be a model davener, but he or she also carries a major responsibility to seek to generate a sense of warmth, even passion in prayer that will envelop the congregation and draw it into the experience. Jewish liturgical music is logogenic, a great Sheliah Tzibbur is one who can help the congregant to sense a nuance in a word or phrase through sensitive interpretation.11 When the rabbi and hazzan collaborate, the teaching of the rabbi and the davening of the hazzan can reinforce each other’s focus on the centrality of the word in Jewish liturgy. Finally, the hazzan can perform a critically important function in teaching Ba-alei Batim to daven in correct nosah, the traditional set of musical modes and motifs of Jewish prayer together, with proper attention to the words and correct body-language in prayer. The proper nosah is necessary because it conveys meaning and feeling, not only pleasant melodies. Changes in nosah accompany movement from one part of a service to another, and connote differences between the weekday, Shabbat and Yom Tov services. The hazzan is the guardian and transmitter of nosah and this is central to his/her mission.

The Ritual Committee It is an accepted idea within curriculum construction that involving the consumers of the curriculum in deliberations about the curriculum can increase a sense of ownership and increase motivation to learn. I believe that the ritual committee can be an important vehicle for involving people who are serious about prayer in deliberations about prayer. In some congregations, the ritual committee actively assesses the state of worship and serves as a sounding board for the clergy and an initiator of ideas for the maintenance and renewal of worship. Where their deliberations are informed by study, a high level of quality can emerge and there can be ongoing reevaluation of achievements and challenges in the realm of worship. 11

On the role of the text as a source of numinous experience, see Saul P. Wachs, “Some Reflections on Two Genres of Berakhah,” Journal of Synagogue Music, Vol. XXII, Number 1-2 (July/December 2002): 24-39, particularly 26-27 and note 10. 162

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I am not suggesting that the rabbi abandon his/her role as mara de-atra or that the hazzan abandon his/her role as a spiritual leader, but that the committee be given the opportunity, through study and deliberation, to think deeply about the state of worship in the congregation and to respond to and initiate ideas for enhancing the quality of worship. This has one other advantage. Those who participate in a serious ritual committee are usually people who have some serious interest in worship. They tend to be part of what I have termed the “regulars,” above. But this group often is composed of two sub-groups. One group includes those who enjoy davening and frown on innovation. Another group is more open to variation in the service. Now where the congregation is able to support more than one minyan, people can select the worship style that appeals to them. If the number of people who attend Shabbat services is too small to support more than one minyan, then innovation is likely to be met with disdain or active opposition by those who are accustomed to or resigned to the status quo. If however, an active and thoughtful religious committee works with the clergy to devise strategies for energizing those who are passive and attracting new worshippers, then any innovations that emerge will have the mark of approval of active volunteers as well as that of the professionals and that will help smooth its acceptance by the rest of the congregation. Of course, communication with the congregation via written and oral messages will also help educate people to the value of a curricular approach to the service. Moreover, a course focusing on introducing new melodies to participants can be a vehicle to encouraging knowledgeable participation. Rabbi David Schuck utilized this methodology by inviting members of the congregation to learn the musical settings of Kabbalat Shabbat as set by Shlomo Carlebach and by doing so, revitalized the Friday evening service at his congregation.

The Special Case of Musaf Increasingly, along with the Triennial reading of the Torah, I am finding that congregations have a “High” (Hoiche) Kedushah. In this model, the Congregation hears or sings the first three Berakhot of the Amidah, including the Kedushah, and then the rest is done silently. In some congregations, this happens both for Shaharit and for Musaf; in other 163

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congregations, only at Musaf. Educationally, I would question this practice on three grounds: 1. In this model, many people will not learn the texts of the Amidah after the Kedushah. Texts like Modim de-Rabbanan and Birkat Kohanim will be unknown to the congregants.12 2. People who arrive late to the service are deprived of many opportunities to sing. 3. People do not get to think about the theological ideas of Musaf. Some might do so but many will simply “shut down” during the silent Amidah.

With regard to the first point, I reiterate what was written above. People who need to hear something in order to master it will not learn much of the Amidah if they never have the opportunity to hear it. With regard to the second point, many people enjoy singing at the service. By not repeating the Amidah, we deprive them of this aspect of Oneg Shabbat. For those who tend to arrive during or just before Keriat ha-Torah, they will have very little opportunity to sing. With regard to the third point, it should be noted that Musaf is the “Zionist” service.13 It calls for us to examine our relationship with Israel. It reminds us that Aliyah is an option and service to Israel is a Mitzvah. It can also remind us of the condition of the Masorti movement in Israel and its treatment by the Government and the Ministries of Religion and the Interior and our responsibility to support our fellow Conservative Jews in Eretz Yisrael. 12

13

In congregations that consistently have a hoiche Kedushah, congregants seem to be confused about what to do about Birkat Kedushat Ha-Shem, the third Berakhah of the Amidah. In Shaharit, because of the principle of tekhef li-geulah tefillah, they should recite the third Berakhah with the sheliah tzibbur, whereas in Musaf, the preferred procedure is to listen and respond to the sheliah tzibbur and then return to the beginning of the Amidah after the Kedushah. Without instruction, congregants often are at a loss as to how to proceed. While clearly this was not its original function, because, more than any other service, it is centered on the reality of living in the Diaspora and the central role of Israel as the spiritual home of the Jewish people, it is an opportunity for reflection on our relationship to Israel, real and ideal. For the origin of Musaf, see Jeffrey Hoffman, “The Surprising History of the Musaf Amidah.” Conservative Judaism, 42.1 (Fall, 1989), 41-45. 164

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Musaf as a Symbol of Hope But the message of Musaf strikes even deeper in the receptive heart. Judaism gave the world its first organized concept of hope. It insisted, against the worldview of the Greeks, that life is not ultimately tragic, that there is meaning built into the Universe and that ultimately the forces of order will outlast and overcome the forces of chaos. This vision, daring in its view of reality, nurtured Jewish pride and fostered joy and celebration even in those generations that endured persecution and genocide. In singing the texts of Musaf, we celebrate the gift of Shabbat—itself a foretaste of paradise—and renew our faith in the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Whether we interpret the texts of the Musaf Amidah literally or metaphorically, we are reminded of the role of sacrifice in building society and we proclaim our joy in seeing the rebirth of Jewish life in the Eretz Yisrael. Now, with the exception of the most spiritually developed among us, such thoughts and insights will not surface automatically. It is the task of the rabbi to make these connections and of the hazzan to interpret the texts in such a way as to help the congregants connect to the deep structure of the texts of Musaf. When the leaders of the Reform Movement renounced Zionism (which they saw as the concretization of the restorative element of messianism) it was logical to eliminate the Musaf service.14 The leaders of that movement were no longer prepared to ask God to restore us to 14

For a comprehensive review of deliberations about Musaf at Reform rabbinical synods in the 1840s, see Jakob J. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Reform in Europe (New York: The World Union for Progressive Judaism, Ltd., 1968), 240-264. A number of the rabbis favored a version that changed future tense verbs to past tense verbs, precisely the model that has been used in Conservative prayer books. One practical reason advanced for the retention of Musaf was that many of the congregants arrived at the synagogue right before or during the Keriat ha-Torah. At that time, “… the Chief Cantor and the choir made their appearance. That was the beginning of the ‘main service.’” (ibid., 241). The attitude taken towards Zion and Jerusalem is also covered in detail by Petuchowski on pp. 277-297 of the same volume. Interestingly, the newest version of “Reform” Jewish liturgy unveiled at a “Limmud” conference at the University of Nottingham in December 2005, and intended for Reform congregations in the United Kingdom, includes a Musaf service with substantial use of traditional texts from Birkat Kedushat ha-Yom. 165

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Eretz Yisrael. In contrast, Conservative Judaism, from its very inception, made support for the restoration of the National homeland a pillar of its ideology.15 It is ironic that as each successive edition of official Reform liturgy reclaims more and more of the traditional liturgy, Conservative congregations delete more and more of the liturgy. The inclusion or exclusion of Musaf remains one of the striking differences between the official Siddurim and Mahzorim of the two movements.

The Tyranny of the Clock The abridgment of the service is often justified on the basis of the need to keep the service within a reasonable amount of time. I understand the argument but cannot resist pointing out that I have been present at many services that have lasted two and a half hours or more on a Shabbat morning, during which neither Amidah was repeated and only one third of the Parashah was read. Most of the time was devoted to teaching and preaching. The chanting of the liturgy was reduced to a minor role in the service. The unintended message was that prayer is of secondary importance in the synagogue.

Raising Consciousness Through Varied Treatment of Familiar Texts In order to keep the service from going on too long, it is possible to accentuate different parts of the service at different times. For example, if the congregation is familiar with ve-Ahavta, that section of Keriat Shema can be read be-Lahash and one or both of the remaining paragraphs cantillated or read aloud. If one wishes to introduce the responsive chanting 15

A reading of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United Synagogue of America, reveals clearly that, in large measure, it is a response to and a repudiation of the Pittsburgh Platform of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism). The Preamble to the Constitution of the United Synagogue of America (now the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) includes among its “objectives,” to preserve in the Service the reference to Israel’s past and the hopes for Israel’s restoration.” See on this Herbert Rosenblum, Conservative Judaism: A Contemporary History (New York: United Synagogue of America, 1983), 97-99. 166

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of one of the Psalms (e.g. Psalm 148), then Ashrei-Psalm 145 can be read be-Lahash. In other words, new material can be introduced by altering the way that more familiar prayers are read. As a general rule, altering the way in which a text is treated raises consciousness. The principle of le-Shem Hinukh is a compelling reason to alter aspects of the standard service. I understand that, for reasons of education, one may make changes in usual practice. Abbreviating some parts of the service (on a rotating basis) in order to make time to chant other parts is justifiable. Over time, congregants will thus become familiar with all of the service. Rabbi Aaron Landes, a Rabbi-Educator, adopted the principle of le-Shem Hinukh, in order to introduce the practice of having the congregation chant the Berakhah Ahat Me-ein Sheva after the Amidah on Erev Shabbat, so that the congregants would become familiar with those texts. Under his leadership, with the total support of Hazzan David Tilman, a gifted hazzan-educator, he was thus able to increase the literacy of his congregants.

Three Success Stories Congregations vary in the effectiveness of their religious services. Three congregations, often cited as exemplars of effective prayer experiences are B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, Shirah Hadashah and Kol HaNeshamah in Jerusalem. I have davened in all three congregations and have tried to understand why all three evoke so much enthusiasm among those who worship there. First, the liturgy is central to the service. Second, all three congregations encourage a great deal of singing. Melodies by Shlomo Carlebach and/or Debbie Friedman alternate with older settings by Salomon Sulzer, Louis Lewandowski and other classical composers of music for the synagogue. A melody is often repeated over and over again, building in intensity over time. The Rabbis pray fervently; the Shelihei Tzibbur are excellent. The time frame is fairly consistent, and if some parts of the service are given more generous amounts of time, other parts are davened more quickly. There are undoubtedly other congregations that have achieved great success in generating experiences of intense prayer. Where that happens, it is because the leadership has made a commitment to make prayer of primary importance in the life of the congregation. 167

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Replicating this requires providing opportunities for congregants to learn. In the case of Shirah Hadashah, congregants are invited periodically to workshops where new melodies are introduced and practiced. In my own congregation, Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El of Wynnewood, Pa., Hazzan Eugene Rosner, encouraged by Rabbi Neil Cooper, has recorded melodies used in the service and these are sent to all congregants. Some congregations have introduced transliterations that allow congregants who cannot decode the Hebrew alphabet to sing with those who can.16

Post-Script-Theology While I have placed the major emphasis on the acquisition of the skills of davening, it is important to emphasize that skills do not constitute all of a curriculum. People who lack prayer skills are much less likely to participate in tefillah be-tzibbur, but we all know people who have the skills of prayer and do not find meaning in formal worship. Those congregations will act wisely if they make attention to prayer, (keva and kavannah) and theology, a major focus of education for children, teens and adults. One strategy is for the congregation to make different commentaries available in the Synagogue, so that those who are so inclined can engage in Talmud Torah, deepening their understanding of the liturgy. Another strategy is to provide opportunities for congregants to add kavannah to their prayers through moments of silence. As recorded in Mishnah, the great masters of prayer would pause before reciting the Amidah17 According to one source, it would take about that much time to recite Birkhot ha-Shahar, Pesukei de-Zimrah, and Keriat Shema uVirkhoteha.18 Since many people are not present in the synagogue at the start of the service, it would seem prudent to build in periods of silence and opportunities for meditation (possibly guided), throughout the service. I would suggest that the period immediately preceding the recitation of Keriat Shema and the period following the recitation of the Amidah are 16

17 18

This is a major feature of Mishkan T’filah, the most recent Siddur published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. For other examples of innovative practice, see Joseph A. Levine, “Teaching the Infinite through Liturgy,” Judaism, 65.1-2 (Summer/Fall, 2006): 76-88. Mishnah Berakhot 5:1; Talmud Bavli Berakhot 30b. Peri Megadim, Eishel Avraham 93:1. 168

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appropriate times for such pauses. No runner runs without warming up. No athlete begins strenuous exercise without warming up. If one goal of prayer is to nurture spiritual athletes, it seems logical to encourage such preparation as part of the experience of prayer.

Conservative Judaism as an Authentic Framework for Tefillah If the Conservative movement is to nurture a feeling among its members that Conservative Judaism is an authentic form of Judaism, it must prepare congregants to participate in prayer experiences with mind and heart. If the service is a type of “junior congregation for adults,” we risk accelerating the exodus of some of our most knowledgeable and observant Jews out of from Conservative congregations to Orthodox congregations or to Havurot that meet outside the Conservative synagogue. Services must not be perceived as a “show” put on for the benefit of Benei Mitzvah guests. It has to be a living, breathing spiritual experience. I believe that the service offers us an arena for learning skills and ideas that will enhance the quality of the prayer experience for the congregants. This will not happen by accident. It requires a plan. It requires a curriculum. This challenge is worthy of attention in our congregations, in our schools, and in the classrooms of the institutions that are charged with preparing the spiritual leaders of Conservative Judaism.

Mordecai Kaplan: “The Master of Midrash” Mel Scult

A year after establishing the Teachers’ Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1909, Mordecai Kaplan was appointed professor of homiletics in the Seminary rabbinical school. In this position, he supervised the student sermons given at the Seminary synagogue. Soon after Kaplan began teaching rabbinical students, he added midrash to his course in homiletics. For the next thirty-five years, these two subjects (homiletics and midrash) became the staples of his offering to future rabbis. In the mid-1940s with a revision of the rabbinical school curriculum, Kaplan ceased teaching homiletics and inaugurated a course entitled “The Philosophies of Religion.” From the very beginning he had taught his homiletics class more than just how to write and deliver a sermon. He emphasized the primary religious issues even though officially he was only teaching sermon-giving. Rabbis had to have something to say in their sermons and Kaplan was going to help them find their message. For all their extensive knowledge, the other Seminary professors never confronted religious problems directly. They were committed to teaching the classical Jewish texts, and assumed that somehow or other the students would find the answers to their religious problems on their own. Kaplan’s most rewarding course throughout the years was midrash. Since the midrash is really a collection of homilies, many of which may have originally been delivered in the synagogue, it was a natural resource for future sermons. Kaplan loved the midrash because it stood at the center of the traditional attempt to make the text of the Hebrew Scriptures relevant. For Kaplan the midrash was a vast storehouse of useful interpretations of the holy text. It was the most important text that a rabbi could study. Indeed, when the University of Judaism opened in 1948, Kaplan was among its faculty, and gave a course in 170

Mordecai Kaplan: “The Master of Midrash”

midrash.19 Though he had been teaching midrash for many decades, he continued to find it stimulating and rewarding. Commenting on his West Coast teaching, he notes, “I am enjoying giving the courses in Midrash and Philosophies of Religion because I get a new insight into the subject matter each time I teach it.”20 Here is Kaplan talking about his delight in teaching midrash: My most enjoyable teaching hours are those in midrash. My mind effervesces with ideas every time I come upon a passage in the midrash. The most unpromising passages sometimes yield the most exciting meanings. For the first time after having taught the midrash of Shir-Ha-Shirim [Song of Songs] so many years it occurred to me how much more convincing proof it offers of the fact that in Jewish religion God figures as a God of love . . . Take for example all the feeling which the sages derive from the text [“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” Song of Songs 1:2] which they interpret as Israel’s yearning for the divine kiss like the one they received from God at the Red Sea, or at Sinai, or in the Sanctuary...21

Kaplan’s greatest talents were in midrashic interpretation. Robert Gordis, one of his most famous students, characterized him as “Master of Midrash.”22 Gordis reports that he pleaded with Kaplan to write an introduction to the methodology of midrash, but he never did. Indeed, in all of Kaplan’s writings there is very little material which deals directly with the text of the midrash. Kaplan may cite midrashic sources which support a particular idea he is discussing, but his focus is almost never the rabbinic text per se. He was absorbed in the exposition of his own ideology and never found the time or had the interest in writing on the midrash directly.23 19

20 21 22 23

Kaplan Diaries, vol 14, January 13, 1948. The original of the Kaplan Diaries is found at the Jewish Theological Seminary and can also be accessed on line at www.jtsa.edu\library\digital. This author edited a selection from the Kaplan Diaries entitled Communings of the Spirit-The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan Volume 1 1913-1934 (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2001). Kaplan Diaries, vol. 14, May 20, 1948. Kaplan Diaries, vol. 16, December 1, 1952. Interview with Robert Gordis, April 1984. Interview with Louis Finkelstein, March 1974. 171

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We are fortunate in having some fragmentary material which sheds light on Kaplan’s teaching of midrash demonstrating the way he approached midrashic texts.24 It is obvious that he has great sensitivity to the text and a real talent for seeing the point the rabbis were trying to make and explaining it in contemporary terms. Some of our examples are from Genesis and some from the midrash on the Song of Songs. The midrash was his most essential metier, where his genius lies, more than in philosophy or theology. More than anything else, Kaplan was the consummate preacher deriving an exalted message from the sacred text. His notes constitute a kind of running commentary on the midrashic text. Most frequently he is simply explaining the midrash without any attempt to read in, to change it or to update it. On Genesis 2:8 for example, the midrash voices its opinion that Adam was put in the Garden not because of his own merit but because of Abraham’s merit. Adam, having been driven out, cannot serve as a model. Kaplan then goes on to explain: In our way of thinking the idea involved here is the following: as we contemplate man with all his imperfections, we begin to doubt the meaning and purpose in life. The solution is not to take man with his weaknesses as a standard of life but rather what can come through the full use of one’s potentialities (author: i.e., Abraham ought to be the model not Adam.)25

Sometimes, in explaining, he deepens and expands the message of the text in a way that is not obvious from the text itself. Genesis 2:12 mentions the existence of gold and the midrash comments that gold was only created so it could be used in the Temple. Kaplan first tells us that the rabbis frequently used the Temple as a way of referring to the public good. In connecting gold to the Temple they are thus commenting on the matter of wealth and the way it ought to be used for the commonweal. “Man as an individual does not deserve to use such costly materials (as gold). They are not essential to his life. Their existence is due to their usefulness in glorifying God. Surplus possessions whether of the 24 25

The midrash material consists of typed class notes which are found among Kaplan’s papers at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. “Notes on Bereshit Rabbah,” 8. The text of the midrash is Midrash Rabbah XV:4. 172

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universe or the individual have a place in the world only as far as they serve God . . .” 26 The rabbis often speak in metaphors and the meaning of the metaphor needs to be nailed down. In talking of the Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9), the rabbis say that it was so large it took five hundred years to traverse it from one end to the other. Kaplan’s explanation is that to the rabbis the universe was 500 years long. “The tree of life or salvation was offered to the entire world, not for Israel alone. It coincides with rabbinic universalism that all mankind is eligible for salvation or eternal life.” 27 Sometimes we find Kaplan’s thoughts on a particular midrash in the Kaplan diary. On one occasion he was thinking how fortunate he was in having support for his ideas. He then records the following: The foregoing circumstance reminds me of the interpretation I gave yesterday in class of the passage in Bereshith Rabba V which speaks of the various objects which God gave to the world as gifts. I explained the notion of God’s granting gifts as analogous to the fully developed doctrine of grace in Christian theology, and pointed out that it furnishes an excellent criterion for distinguishing theistic from humanistic religion. Theistic religion is in truer accord with experience in that it recognizes how little some of the most important values in human life can be regarded as the purposed achievements of man. Their existence must be recognized as emanating from a Power other than man—God. Accordingly, the deepest emotional reaction in theistic religion is bound to be thanksgiving as expressed in the benediction modim (Heb. We are thankful).28

One key issue in Kaplan’s teaching of midrash is the matter of his reading his thought into the text of the midrash. As he got older, his students felt that he did this consistently. In considering the issue, we ought to think about the fact that the midrash itself constantly reads meanings into the text which are not obviously there, and that it is only by such a reading-in that the text can be kept alive. The Jewish tradition or any tradition only lives if we make it our own—that is if we relate it to our 26 27 28

“Notes on Bereshit Rabbah,” 6 on Midrash Rabbah XVI:2. “Notes,” 3 on Midrash Rabbah. XV:6. Kaplan Diaries, vol. 9, March 13, 1940. 173

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world and our experience. This is precisely what Kaplan was doing when he commented on the midrash. In Genesis 2:8, for example, we find the word m’kedem, which means “east.” M’Kedem however could also be read as “m’kodem” meaning “early.” The rabbis assert that Eden was actually created early [m’kodem] on the third day, while Adam was created on the sixth day. We are thus shown that man’s reward was there before he did anything to deserve it. The midrash is explicit when Adam says “the Holy one Blessed be He, prepared a reward for me before I even started to act.” Kaplan then comments on the notion of reward as it may be understood here: Reward for righteous living is a difficult notion to apply today. We must phrase the concept in its modern equivalent—self realization. We see that self-fulfillment was inherent in the moral order outlined by the rabbis . . . the interpretation of m’kedem shows us that the world is so conditioned that self fulfillment is inherent in the Universe for one who lives the moral life.29

The rabbis are saying that reward is built in—that the world is a rewarding place. The interpretation is pure Kaplan and yet it does fit the midrash. It is quite clear that Kaplan was aware of the matter of reading in meanings and wanted to be as careful as possible. One indication of his caution is the fact that when he felt he was reading into the text he explicitly said so. The midrash comments that Adam was supposed to be immortal, and that he died because he was disobedient. Kaplan refers to the doctrine of original sin, but says it is “worn out,” there really is nothing much we can do with it. So he says we may read into the passage: “The Human race was intended to be eternal but it is destroying itself. War and other forms of racial suicide may cause the extinction of the human race . . . the rabbis did not actually mean this idea but it is not contrary to their thought.”30 In another example, we see Kaplan’s ability to take the midrash and apply it as a rabbi and as a preacher. Commenting on the tree of knowledge, the midrash gives us several rabbis speculating about what kind 29 30

Midrash notes, Bereshit Rabbah. Page 7. “Notes,” 5 on Midrash Rabbah XVI:1. 174

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of tree it was. The text finally says, “The Holy one Blessed Be He did not reveal (the name) of that tree.” We are not told what kind it was, so that there would be no constant reminder of man’s weakness every time he looked at that particular tree. It is a matter of man’s honor and self respect, his kavod, as the midrash puts it. Kaplan then deals with self respect and the dignity of the individual: The honor of the human being must not be impugned. Adam or humanity in general must not be degraded. The belief in God comes through the belief in man. We can not remove the idea of man’s dignity and still have religion (because man is created in the image of God). All those who speak of the humanist movement in religion as irreligious do not appreciate the problem.31

Kaplan is perfectly traditional here in talking about the dignity of the individual, but then he makes a significant leap, which radicalizes the whole statement and helps us to understand the essential way in which humanism and religion fit together. Beside Genesis Rabbah, the midrash which engaged Kaplan’s attention was the one on the Song of Songs. He became interested in this midrash when he was still in his twenties and thought of writing his doctoral dissertation about it. When he went to Europe on his honeymoon in 1908, he spent time copying a manuscript of this midrash which was in Frankfurt. The midrash itself begins with a number of questions about Solomon, the assumed author of the Song of Songs. His status was not unambiguous because of the rather tarnished record of his reign. The rabbis are concerned with raising his status in order to justify his inclusion in the canon. Kaplan was quite struck by the contrast between the image of Solomon that emerges from the biblical text and the portrait of Solomon according to the rabbis. “The rabbis reconstructed history to suit their needs,” Kaplan said, and “because Solomon becomes the spokesman of Jewish history, he’s transformed and idealized.”32 Solomon was not the only person whose image the rabbis amended. In commenting on Abraham, for example, Kaplan tells us that according to the Torah he is the father of the nation, whereas according to the rabbis he is the originator of monotheism and the founder of a new religion. 31 32

Ibid. Kaplan Manuscript on Shir-Ha-Shirim Rabbah, 10. 175

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The midrash on the Song of Songs is, of course, very much concerned with the concept of wisdom (hochma). In his comments on this concept we see a clear Kaplanian approach, yet he is really not far from the texts which he is reading. The midrash says that when Solomon got wisdom he immediately understood the language of the animals and birds. Kaplan demythologizes and generalizes this midrashic point when he says that “the rabbis conceived this request [for wisdom] as a means of enabling a person to live well in this world.” In other words, “Wisdom is whatever enables us to live well in the world.”33 He carries this point further when he brings in the famous personification of wisdom found in Proverbs, chapter 8. Here, wisdom is God’s confidant and exists before creation. God seems to use or consult wisdom in creating the world. The rabbis understood this to mean that God consulted the Torah in creating the world. For Kaplan, this meant that what is best for us, i.e., Torah, is reflected in the universe. The universe is thus constructed so as to be conducive to man’s salvation. In Kaplan’s words, “Torah is hochma (wisdom). God created the world by hochma (wisdom) and man lives according to the Torah. In order to understand Torah and hochma we must understand that it means equating the world order (of nature) and the order of life at its best, i.e., Torah. Thus the Stoics said that a person should act rationally. The Stoics equate reason with nature (of the world) the laws by which individual life is to be governed parallels the laws of nature.”34 What Kaplan is doing in this last example is to demythologize the rabbinic belief that God consulted the Torah when he created the world. For Kaplan the metaphor means that there is a congruity between the way nature functions and the values which ought to govern our behavior. The world was created so that it would be conducive to living according to the Torah (or life abundant as he said later). These many examples help us to understand Kaplan’s methods of teaching midrash. Year after year, the rabbinical students passed through his midrash class and came to deeply appreciate his talent in 33 34

Ibid. Kaplan on wisdom in Kaplan Manuscript on Shir-Ha-Shirim Rabbah,17. The midrash about Solomon understanding the animals is in Shir-Ha-Shirim Rabbah I:1.9. Kaplan’s comments on Proverbs 8 are tied to Shir-Ha-Shirim Rabbah I:2.5 where hochma is compared to food. Kaplan’s MSS, 33. 176

Mordecai Kaplan: “The Master of Midrash”

explaining the midrash and in helping them to appropriate it in a way that would be useful for their own preaching. As one former student put it, “Kaplan provoked and inspired students to think about things that they had taken for granted before. He was brilliant in the way he handled the text.”35 In considering Kaplan’s impact on his students, however, we need to distinguish between his value as a teacher of midrash and the value of his philosophy; many rejected his philosophy but all valued his teaching. Below is an excerpt from Kaplan’s journal, wherein he describes a session with his midrash and Homiletics class:36 Tuesday, March 6, 1934. When I manage to develop interesting and fruitful ideas in the course of a lesson I give to one of my classes all my inner conflicts are resolved. This was the case this morning; during each of the three sessions at the Seminary I succeeded in bringing out one or more significant points. In the midrash hour I made the following comments on Gen. R XXIV, 2: The Rabbinic interpretation of Ps. 13937 constitutes an attempt to find in it the metaphysical conception of man. That conception is associated with the creation of Adam. As developed in the midrashic passage it is strikingly similar to the idea of man as developed by the Platonists. Not only is the heavenly Adam (Logos) represented as filling all space but we even find an allusion to hulay [Greek: wood, matter or substance] in the term golam [Heb. unformed substance, i.e. in Psalm 139:17]. The significance of the Platonic doctrine of ideas is that Reality is meaningful and not chaos. It is intended to convey the religious affirmation of life’s worth. The statement that the Heavenly Adam had the book of subsequent generations of leaders unrolled to him implies that the leaders give significance to the cosmos of human society. 35 36

37

From an interview with Rabbi Nathan Kollin, a student of Kaplan’s from the late 1920s. This entry appears in Mel Scult, ed., Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan Volume 1 1913-1934 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 518. The midrash in question comments on Genesis 5:1: “This is the book of the generations of Adam . . .” and cites a verse from Psalm 139:17 which reads “Thy eyes did see my unshaped flesh, for in my book all things are written. . . .” This verse is taken to mean that God saw the future even before Adam was fully formed. This midrash also describes Adam as being as large as the world. 177

Mel Scult

The notion of shelma’ala [Heb. above].38 Bet mikdash [Heb. The Sanctuary i.e. Temple ], Yerushalayim [Heb. Jerusalem ], Yeshiva [Heb. academy ], sefer toldot shelma’alah [Heb. “The book of the generations which is above. . .”] is again a transfer from the Platonic system of ideas. During the Homiletic hour I stressed the point that a world-outlook is incompatible with collective or folk religion. I advanced first the argument based on the analysis of the meaning of world-outlook. A  world-outlook has to be individually achieved and freely maintained, otherwise the truths or ideas which seem to express such an outlook are merely symbols or sancta. . . With Maimonides holding a highly rational concept of Reality and Nahmanides a highly mystical, the Jewish religion which they both professed can hardly be said to have had a common world-outlook. During the sermon hour I interpreted the statement of R. Johanan about the red heifer 39 to the effect that the laws pertaining to it should be accepted as divinely decreed to mean the following for us: To pass upon religious rites and observances whether they are to be continued or modified, and to find their inner meaning, we have to come to them with a spirit of piety and national loyalty. Otherwise they will seem superfluous and irrelevant ki lo davar rayke hu [Heb. Deuteronomy 32:47 “This is not a trifling thing for you (it is your very life)”]. . . . considering that I had come to class this morning entirely unprepared and that all these ideas came to me in the process of teaching, this was quite a fruitful day.

It also happened from time to time that Kaplan became exasperated with his students, as any teacher might. Rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in those years had a great many subjects to prepare, and there were occasions when they came to class unprepared: 38

39

Kaplan is referring here to the upper heavenly realm which is supposed to reproduce the earthly realm. He proceeds to enumerate the heavenly Temple, heavenly Jerusalem, heavenly academy, etc. Red Heifer [Parah Adumah] a sacrifice whose ashes when mixed with water removed impurity. Later generations found the ceremony incomprehensible, but thought following it was the model for the non-rational law. See Numbers 19:210 and Rashi loc. cit. The reference to R. Yochanan Ben Zaccai is in Numbers Rabbah 19:4, where he put off a non-Jew with some lame explanation about the Red Heifer; later told his students that they must observe it simply because God commanded it. 178

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January 17, 1940. But among the contributing factors to that difficulty are my depressed state of mind and the lack of any encouraging or stimulating sign that Judaism can live in America. On the contrary the more I see what those in a position of leadership in Jewish life are doing, and how unqualified those whom the Seminary is training for leadership are to understand the magnitude of their task and responsibility, the more despondent I grow. When I asked the class in the Seminary yesterday to read the midrash there wasn’t even one out of about 40 men who was prepared. On the other hand it is true as the students here contend that they had a great many preparations every week. I was beside myself with exasperation at the complete apathy of the entire student body. And when I upbraided them, all that they could say was that they had 15 different subjects and could not find the time to prepare.40

Kaplan’s diary is so fascinating because he always tells us more about himself than he might have realized. Once in the late forties he records what started out as a very ordinary day. It so happened that day that one of the students upset him. Kaplan is so human in reporting the incident; his honesty is impressive. The student that annoyed him was Harold Schulweis, who was destined to become one of the outstanding rabbis of the late twentieth century. Schulweis was reading something during class rather than listening to Kaplan’s lecture on midrash. Ironically, Schulweis was reading a commentary on the midrash But no matter, Kaplan’s ego was bruised at being ignored. In the diary he recorded the incident along with his feelings of guilt after the class was over: Suddenly my eye caught Schulweis reading something instead of paying attention. I asked him to put away what he was reading. As he did so I noticed that he had been reading a Commentary. That infuriated me so that I couldn’t proceed with the lecture. I gave the class a good tongue-lashing and assailed Schulweis bitterly. Telling the men that I canceled the acceptance of their invitation to have dinner with them the coming Friday night, I left the room in a huff. As I weighed in my mind the way I acted in class, I am torn by doubts as to whether what I did was either suitable or ethi 40

Kaplan Diaries, vol. 9, January 17, 1940. 179

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cal. On the one hand, it would have been wrong of me to make believe that I didn’t see that [Schulweis] was reading something while I was trying to teach the class would have been cowardly. On the other, to shame him unmercifully as I did is a violation of the principle about being a malbin havero [Heb. Embarrasses his neighbor (in public)]. To have waited till the class was over and to have had a talk with him in my office would have been ineffectual. Thurber’s cartoon on the inside of the left hand cover—“The best in me and other animals,” is enough of a rebuke to me for the way I acted last Tuesday.41

There is a very exciting “might have been” in connection with Kaplan’s interest in midrash. During the mid-1930s, Kaplan was in Jerusalem for two years teaching at the Hebrew University. Martin Buber had arrived from Germany in the midst of Kaplan’s stay and it was inevitable that the two would meet and become acquainted. In the following excerpts from Kaplan’s diary, we follow a series of events in which Kaplan proposed that the two work together on a biblical and midrashic project. Kaplan was quite excited, but alas the idea never came to fruition. Kaplan’s record of the meetings follows: “What can be done,” I asked [Buber], “to develop in the schools here the type of approach to the Bible that is represented by such interpretative studies of both the history and the inner meaning of the text?” This question seemed to rouse him. He thought at first that it was necessary to interest a group of people here in an effort to introduce a new spirit into the teaching of the Bible. “To my way of thinking,” I said, “it might be more advisable to attack first the problem of working out the necessary content. Once we possessed such content, it should not be difficult to interest some group in the practical effort of introducing that content into the schools.” I furthermore pointed out to him that since I was going back to America, where the same problem exists, it would be highly important for the two of us to get to work on the problem of content, because in that way we might establish a cross current of influence between Jewry here and Jewry in America. The idea 41

Kaplan Diaries, vol. 14, January 5, 1949. The actual rabbinic expression Kaplan refers to here is malbin et penai havero berabim [Heb. He who embarrasses (whitens the face) his neighbor in public … ] See for example Rashi on Genesis 39:25. Thanks to my son Rabbi Joshua Scult for this reference. 180

Mordecai Kaplan: “The Master of Midrash”

appealed to him very much, so that before I left him we decided to formulate a plan for such a cooperative undertaking, and to meet again in about two weeks from today to discuss it.42

A few weeks later, Kaplan visited Buber again, but was disappointed that Buber had lost all interest in the project: The Buber-Kaplan combination is off. It was silly of me to entertain the thought even for a moment that two of us could work together. We are worlds apart in our temperaments and ways of thinking. But I am so starved for cooperation that I followed even what I knew in my heart was a will o’ the wisp. The last time I saw him, we arranged to meet last Saturday, but I didn’t want to be kept in suspense unnecessarily; so I took along the first part of my commentary on Genesis, and the collection of my comments on Midrash Rabba, to illustrate to him what type of work we might collaborate on. I no sooner began to talk to him than I saw that he was trying to get out of any joint undertaking as gracefully as possible. So that’s that.43

Thus, we see that midrash and its interpretation was a major part of Kaplan’s teaching at the Seminary and of his project of reconstructing the tradition. Most think of Kaplan as primarily involved with John Dewey, William James, and Emile Durkheim, but in training rabbis, from week to week and year to year, it was the midrash which drew his attention, and at which he excelled.

42 43

Kaplan Diaries, vol. 10, November 19, 1939. Kaplan Diaries, vol. 8, November 29, 1938. Regarding Kaplan’s “Bible Commentary,” there are scattered discussions among his papers to Pentateuchal portions of the week, particularly in Genesis, but no sustained commentary exists. Apparently Gunther Plaut used some of Kaplan’s comments in his commentary, though he does not cite Kaplan. Rabbi Larry Pinsker, formerly of Toronto, who knew Plaut, shared this information with me some years ago. Kaplan’s midrash notes have been used in this article.

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Felix Adler, Josephine Lazarus, and Mordecai Kaplan Shaul Magid

In his introduction to Sacred Fragments, Neil Gillman mentions three ways his mentor Mordecai Kaplan taught about group identity: by behaving, by believing, and by belonging.1 Although Neil devoted his career to “believing,” that is, exploring the contours of Jewish belief through theology, he participated in all three aspects with verve and passion. His primary concern, whether he was teaching Midrash, Maimonides, Mendelssohn, or Mordecai (Kaplan) was always about the contemporary state of the Jews and Judaism. In an institution devoted to historical research (The Jewish Theological Seminary of America) Neil’s voice consistently asked about the present and the future; how could Jews today absorb the vicissitudes of texts and history to form a Jewish identity in a changing world? Below, I take up Neil’s call and explore the question of identity and ethnicity through the lenses of three Jewish intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This essay addresses the question of ethnicity as a boundary of Jewish identity in America in a period from about 1850 until 1934. It begins from the time Reform Judaism became the dominant Jewish religious community and ends with the publication of Mordecai Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization.2 The significance of the publication of Kaplan’s book for the purposes of this paper is that it created the groundwork for the first indigenous Jewish denomination in America, presenting a new way for American Jews to talk about “Jewishness” and Jewish community. 1 2

Gillman, Sacred Fragments, xvii. See Naomi Cohen, Encounter with Emancipation: The German Jews in the United States 1830-1914 (Philadelphia: JPS, 1984). I will deal with Kaplan’s later work from the 1970s, but much of what is written later in Kaplan’s life reflects his 1934 magnum opus. 182

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

Michael Meyer notes that “Jewish responses to modernity all appear as reactions to the problem of Jewish particularism: inwardly and outwardly directed attempts to justify the continued existence of the Jews as a separate entity.”3 While this comment arguably reaches back to Napoleon’s conditions for the emancipation of the Jews in 1806, it is just as true for American Judaism in the period in question.4 The European theater was different, and still is. America, at least in the latter decades of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, was different. It was a place where, at least in certain intellectual circles, the spirit of European cosmopolitanism joined an American spirit of pluralism, individualism, and a search for an innovative indigenous “American religion.” While anti-Semitism existed, manifest in restrictions in employment, education, and housing (at least until the 1940s), it was not strong enough, or collective enough, to define the Jew as it did in on the European continent.5 America in this period had a different religious vision to explore; in many ways a critique of the institutional Christianity their forbearers escaped, or ran away from, in Europe. The pietism of Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening yielded to the mysticism of Walt Whitman, the anti-ecclesiasticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nature religion of Henry David Thoreau, the rise of Unitarianism, The Theosophy Society, New Thought theology and the introduction of Hinduism and Buddhism to American shores with the Vedanta Society. In 3

4

5

Michael Meyer, “Beyond Particularism,” Commentary Magazine (March 1971): 71. Cf. idem. Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); and David Hollinger, “Jewish Identity, Assimilations and Multiculturalism,” in Creating American Jews: Historical Conversations about Identity, ed. Karen S. Mittleman (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1998), 54. See Count Mole, “Napoleon’s Instructions to the Assembly of Jewish Notables (July 29, 1806),” in The Jew in the Modern World, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Yehuda Reinhartz (New York and London: Oxford University Press), 125-126. This is not to diminish the anti-Semitism that did exist, especially in the late teens and twenties of the twentieth century. Some of this came from the importation of British Israelism from Great Britain in the early decades of the century with the evangelist Gerald L.K. Smith and William Cameron, who was the publicist for Henry Ford. Cameron was the author of the popular book The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem (Florissant Mo, Liberty Bell Publications, 2004) erroneously attributed to Ford. Cf. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 33-34. 183

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their own way, they all (excluding, perhaps, Edwards) held the hope for a new American religion to emerge that reflected America’s individualistic, syncretistic or, according to Catherine Albanese, a “combinative” spirit.6 Many Jews felt very much a part of this experiment, or wanted to be, and thus the question of ethnicity—that is, what makes one a “Jew” “Hebrew” or “Israelite” was paramount.7 Progressive Jewish leaders in this period thought creatively about the availability of a denationalized Judaism as part, perhaps even the center, of an American religion.8 Could, or should, Judaism in America become more than simply a religion of and for the Jews?9 That is, could Judaism ever be severed from 6

7

8

9

See Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 21. Cf. The Dawn of Religious Pluralism: Voices from the World’s Parliament of Religions 1893, ed. R. H. Seager (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1993) and Leigh Eric Schmidt, Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (New York: Harper San Francisco, 2005), esp. 143-180. Cf. Judaism at the World Parliament of Religions (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co, 1894). This question is one that occupied the Jews of late antiquity as well. See, for example, Shaye Cohen, “From Ethnos to Ethno-Religion,” in his The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 109-139. In fact, as scholars have noted, the question of ethnicity in that early period has some interesting commonalities with the contemporary American situation. The use of the term Israelite as a substitution for the more ethnic “Jew” was in play in France as well. See, Esther Benbassa and Jean-Christophe Attias, The Jews and their Future (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004), 23, 24; and Sander Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews (New York: Routledge, 2006), 45-64 and 181-183. Summarizing the multicultural challenge to Jews, Gilman writes, “Indeed, the simple fact that being Jewish has no single common denominator (culturally, religiously, politically) makes the very consensus of what is ‘Jewish’ within the model of multiculturalism impossible to specify.” This issue is also taken up in Eric Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Promulgated by theologians such as Isaac Meyer Wise, this notion of a denationalized “Jew” in America is ironically similar (albeit also very different) to an idea developed by the Israeli novelist A. B. Yehoshua in his novel Mr. Mani (1990). Yehoshua describes the entire world of the Middle East as “Jewish.” In part this plays on the notion promulgated by Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi that the indigenous Palestinian populations were Jews who remained in Erez Israel and over time converted to Islam. This sentiment can be illustrated by Isaac Meyer Wise’s belief (at least until the 1880s) that Reform Judaism would become the default religion of America, making American Christians “de-nationalized Jews.” 184

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the notion of Jewish peoplehood? While this may seem like a dead letter in our (post) multiculturalist world, it was very much an issue as American Jews became more rooted in American soil.10 This was happening at a time when many Jews in America had abandoned their religion and substituted a secularized version of ethnicity, loosely defined, as the center of their “religious” identity.11 Most, but not all, rabbinic leaders fiercely fought this process of assimilation. Committed to religion in the formal sense and denying the viability of a de-theologized notion of peoplehood as the central tenet of the Jewish people, most Reform leaders (who dominated the intellectual conversation) sought to revive Judaism as a religion in a world where Jews no longer needed it—or wanted it—in order to be “Jewish.”12 The Jew who abandoned Judaism 10

11

12

In fact, this question has been raised anew in various versions of cosmopolitanism as well as in American popular culture. The Kabbalah Center is not an organization dedicated to maintaining the connection between its kabbalistic Judaism and Jews (i.e. Madonna, Demi Moore, et al.), the Klezmer phenomenon, Matisyahu, and various other forms of Jewish culture have become in vogue with Jews and non-Jews alike. Even the rise of Jewish Studies in secular universities (since the 1960s) has created the potential for Judaism to spread beyond the borders of the Jewish people. See Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York, 1988). Adler later interprets Zionism to be one form of what Benny Kraut refers to as “race consciousness without religion.” Adler believed that Zionism was kept alive because of anti-Semitism, and when anti-Semitism disappeared, as he thought it would when Jews abandoned their ethnic ties, Zionism would disappear. See Kraut, From Reform Judaism to Ethical Culture: The Religious Evolution of Felix Adler (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1979), 207. Regarding the diminution of religion among American Jews, Mordecai Kaplan writes, “… The Jews have become traditionless. They have lost all sense of a common past and do not look forward to a common future. They are without any feeling of reverence for Jewish customs, events, persons, writings, festivals and holy days which are hallowed by sacred memories and associations.” The Religion of Ethical Nationhood (New York: The MacMillan Co, 1970), 137. See Naomi Cohen, What the Rabbis Said: The Pubic Discourse of NineteenthCentury American Rabbis (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 17. “The riddle of Jewish identity first assumed major proportions in the Age of Emancipation. What was a Jew? Did Judaism preach Jewish distinctiveness or survival as Jews, or did it preach universalism? Nineteenth-century American Jews searched for a workable compromise that accommodated their identities both as Americans and as Jews.” 185

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in late nineteenth-century America need not become a Christian. He or she could simply remain, as many did, “ethnic” Jews. More interestingly, some Reform rabbis in this period attempted to take their Judaism beyond the confines of the Jews. Reform leader Isaac Meyer Wise, for example, argued that Reform Judaism should be, and would become, the de facto religion of America by the end of the nineteenth century. He preached from the 1860s until the 1880s that American Christians would see that all that is humanistic and ethical in Christianity is Jewish, and thus become, as he called it, “denationalized” Jews.13 While this rhetoric may have dominated the pages of the journal he edited, the Reform American Israelite, and engaged rabbinical councils, the challenge of the Jew in the street was more banal but no less important. When the traditional anti-Semite no longer defined the Jew, the Jew had to decide at least two things: First, whether, in fact, there was a necessary connection between Jews and Judaism and, if so, what were the parameters of that connection. Second, if they wanted to become full participants in the project of American religion and still cared about Judaism, what correctives needed to be made to Judaism in order for that to happen? I will look at the question of ethnicity and the future of the Jews through the work of three American Jewish thinkers, all of whom proposed different solutions to this challenge. The first is Josephine Lazarus, sister of the more well-known poet Emma Lazarus. Born in 1846 of Sephardic descent, Lazarus became a popular essayist on Jewish topics in the intellectual circles in New York City. In 1895, six of those essays were collected and published in a book entitled The Spirit of Judaism.14 This book was largely maligned by the 13

14

Benny Kraut, “Judaism Triumphant: Isaac Mayer Wise on Unitarianism and Liberal Christianity,” AJS Review 7 (1982): 179-230. The notion of taking Judaism to the gentile world did not stop with Wise. Alexander Schindler, a leader of Reform Judaism until his death in 2000 spoke often about expanding the parameters of Jewish Outreach to include interested Gentiles. See, for example, his Address to the ULPS of Great Britain, February 13, 1995  printed in The Jewish Conditions: Essays on Contemporary Judaism Honoring Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler (New York: URJ Press, 1995), 248-249. One could even posit that the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s vigorous program to teach the Noahide Laws to gentiles is yet another, albeit quite different, version of the same trajectory. Josephine Lazarus, The Spirit of Judaism (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1895; reprinted Kessinger Publishing, 2007) 186

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Jewish establishment and praised by progressive Christians. It was the subject of a vicious critique by Kaufmann Kohler, then the rector of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and figurehead of the Reform movement, as well as the radical reformist Emil Hirsch.15 Curiously, Lazarus was also one of the Jews (and one of two female Jews, with Henrietta Szold), along with Kaufmann Kohler, Alexander Kohut, Emil Hirsch, Felix Adler, and others to represent Judaism in the 1893 “Parliament of World Religions,” organized to coincide with the Chicago World’s Fair.16 This parliament was devoted, for some, to begin a process of forging a syncretistic non- or perhaps post-Christian American religion.17 While her well-known sister Emma appears in almost every history of American Judaism, Josephine has all but been erased from American Jewish history. Yet I will argue she is an important voice on the question of Judaism and ethnicity in this period.18 The second figure is Felix Adler, son of prominent Reform rabbi Samuel Adler. Adler was himself an ordained Reform rabbi and, as was the custom in that period, was sent by his father to study in Germany, where he studied with both Abraham Geiger and Hyman Stendhal. In 15

16 17

18

Kaufmann Kohler in the Reform Advocate 10 (December 21, 1895): 744-746 and Menorah 39 (December, 1895): 321-333. For Hirsch’s critique, see Reform Advocate 10 (January 4, 1896). For the proceedings of the Jewish participants in the Parliament see, Judaism at the World Parliament of Religions (Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College, 1894). This was surely not the intention of all organizers and participants. Some viewed this as an event set out to prove the superiority of Christianity. For the universal sentiment of the Parliament, see The Worlds Parliament of Religions, ed. John H. Barrows (Chicago, 1893), 74; and more generally Egal Feldman, “American Ecumenicism: Chicago’s World Parliament of Religions of 1893,” Journal of Church and State 9 (Spring, 1967): 180-199. Cf. Naomi W. Cohen, What the Rabbis Said: The Public Discourses of Nineteenth-Century American Rabbis (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 177-197. She cites one delegate who said, “the other theistic beliefs have no elements of true theistic conception to give Christianity … but Christianity has much to give others.” Cohen, 181. Be that as it may, the Parliament did introduce Americans to South Asian spirituality, the effects of which we are still feeling today. She does not appear, for example, in Jonathan Sarna’s very thorough history entitled American Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). One of the few discussions I have found of her work appears in George L. Berlin, Defending the Faith: Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Writings on Christianity and Jesus (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989), 69-73. 187

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the spring of 1876, at the age of 25 and having recently assumed the rabbinical post of a large Reform congregation in New York City, he publicly declared his departure from Judaism and his rejection of all positive religions in an address establishing his new Society for Ethical Culture.19 The third figure is Mordecai Kaplan, arguably the most influential Jewish thinker in America in this period. Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization, published in 1934, still demands the attention of any contemporary Jewish theologian and, as mentioned, above, had a profound impact on Neil Gillman.20 In what follows, I will draw largely from his book The Religion of Ethical Nationhood, published in 1970 when he was over 90 years old. I argue that in this work Kaplan restates his argument from Judaism as a Civilization, with some interesting revisions regarding his belief in the notion of peoplehood as the primary theological and social category of Judaism in the modern world. Let me state at the outset that my interests here are not solely, or even primarily, historical. Neil’s career has been devoted to a serious exploration of what it means to be “Jewish” (not merely a “Jew”) in our contemporary world. While Neil’s world (and ours) is one where difference and diversity are largely celebrated, and thus the notion of peoplehood need not be defended, this was not always the case. And, I might add, we may be celebrating Neil’s career at a transitional time—call it a new cosmopolitanism, post-ethnicity, or globalization—where the question of ethnos once again requires our attention. In what follows, I explore the ways in which ethnicity in general and Kaplan’s civilization model of Judaism in particular may be obsolete as models of Jewish identity as America enters a post-ethnic age. I will ask whether, given the dissolution of the ethnic-myth as the dominant anchor of identity in America (the transition from decent to consent),21 we can salvage something from Lazarus and Adler, who wrote in an era before Weber 19 20

21

The best study of Adler remains Benny Kraut, From Reform Judaism to Ethical Culture. See Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism, 247 and Arnold Eisen, “Mordecai Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization at 70: Setting the Stage for Re-Appraisal,” Jewish Social Studies 21.2 (Winter, 2006): 1-16. On this, see Werner Sollars, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 208-236. 188

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and Durkheim, albeit after Johan Gottfried Herder’s romantic notion of Volk, a time when many progressive Americans believed, perhaps naively, in the creation of an American civilization not founded on diversity but on a common humanistic purpose. In some sense, in this essay Lazarus and Adler serve as foils for Kaplan, yet I also hope to reintroduce them into the contemporary conversation that has occupied the main part of Neil’s academic and intellectual career. It is perhaps appropriate to begin by defining, for the purposes of this essay, what I mean by post-ethnicity. The first order of business is to schematically distinguish pluralism, of which multiculturalism is one form, from contemporary cosmopolitanism or post-ethnicity.22 In general, pluralism respects inherited boundaries, acknowledges different ethno-racial identities, and seeks to preserve those identities through tolerance and recognition of the subaltern as a productive member of society whose voice needs to be heard independent of the dominant culture’s influence.23 Contemporary cosmopolitanism and post-ethnicity acknowledge ethnicity as having a role to play in individual and communal identity, but identity and community are generally founded on voluntary and socially constructed affiliations. Post-ethnicity is wary of ethno-racial enclosures, knowing that the power they generate, largely through collective memory and nostalgia, can overshadow other dimensions of cultural identity. Postethnicity acknowledges and promotes multiple, not merely hyphenated, identities and the liminal character of group affiliation.24 Anthony Appiah suggests that ethnicity may remain a part of the general script of one’s identity but that script is re-written by individuals and communities—often multiple times—according to values and principles not determined by ethnos.25 Amartya Sen is more wary of ethnicity even playing a marginal role in his vision of cosmo 22 23

24

25

David Hollinger, Post-Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1995; revised edition, 2000), 79-104. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism, ed. Charles Taylor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25-74. More generally, see Sander Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews, esp. 45-84. Hollinger, Post-Ethnic America, 3. On hyphenated identities, see Berel Lang, “Hyphenated Jews and the Anxiety of Identity,” Jewish Social Studies 12.1 (2005): 1-15 See Anthony Appiah, “Identity, Authenticity, Survival,” in Taylor, Multiculturalism, 160. 189

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politan society. His point is well-taken when he argues that the problem with multiculturalism, which promotes ethnicity as the source of diversity, is that it is often no more than a form of plural mono-culturalism, where distinct groups live side-by-side but do not interact in any constructive way.26 Mitchell Cohen seems to concur. He concludes his essay on “Rooted Cosmopolitanism” in Dissent Magazine by writing, “I fear that too many votaries of multiculturalism have become unreflective celebrants of particularism.”27 It is worth asking whether plural mono-culturalism is the best way to describe American society. Theorists and critics such as David Hollinger, Mitchell Cohen, and most recently Anthony Appiah advocate what Cohen calls “rooted cosmopolitanism,” a cosmopolitanism that is more respectful of ethnicity in principle, but stresses voluntarism and not birth as the root of individual and collective identity (including ethnicity). While present-day cosmopolitanism is universalist in nature, it differs from traditional models of universalism or enlightenment cosmopolitanism that informed Felix Adler’s early writing in that it respects the inevitability of diversity as part of its universalist vision rather than as a problem to be overcome.28 The failure of enlightenment cosmopolitanism and Marxism to eradicate ethnicity and nationalism as determining factors in human society is a given in most postethnic models discussed today.29 26 27

28 29

Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: W. W. Norton Books, 2007), 156 f. Cohen, “Rooted Cosmopolitanism,” in Legacy of Dissent, Nicolaus Mills ed. (New York: Touchstone Books, 1994), 140. See, Tod Gitlin, “The Rise of ‘Identity Politics’,” in idem. 141-149. Much earlier (in 1916), Randolph Bourne, who developed the notion of America as a “transnational” civilization that in some ways is the precursor to multiculturalism, seems to share Cohen’s basic fear when he writes that a transnational America, “runs a real danger of becoming not the modern cosmopolitan grouping that we desire, but a queer conglomeration of the prejudices of past generations, miraculously preserved here, after having been mercifully perished at home.” Bourne, “The Jew and Trans-National America,” The Menorah Journal (December, 1916), 283. This danger is also addressed by Jonathan Sacks in his The Home we Build Together: Recreating Society (New York: Continuum, 2008). Hollinger, Post-Ethnic America, 84. For a reassessment of Marxism on these and other matters, see Terry Eagleton, Why Marx was Right (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 190

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I argue here that a postethnic world (if, indeed, that is where we are) challenges the very foundation of Jewish peoplehood, ethnically defined, or even Kaplan’s more loosely defined Jewish civilization, at least as he defined it early in his career.30 In its advocacy of voluntary affiliation and multiple identities in sub-cultures that have permeable boundaries, the very notion of Judaism as a religion (or even culture) specific to one community, founded on an ethnic myth of an ancient people embodied in a thick network of religious and cultural values, seems anachronistic. In what follows I offer readings of Lazarus, Adler, and then Kaplan on the question of ethnicity and then return to make certain suggestions about the applicability of past models of Jewish identity to the current scene in America. I begin with Lazarus because her position is the most radical. She represents a common belief in Americanization that pervaded progressive Jewish society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, perhaps more commonly known through Mary Antin’s Promised Land, originally published in 1911.31 Lazarus differs from most of the others in that she views this Americanization project as a theological fulfillment of Judaism. She views America as a truly sui generis civilization that makes the most demands of Jews to relinquish their stronghold on Judaism by giving it to the world. In her mind, this is appropriate and served as the telos of Judaism from its inception. Lazarus is by far the least Jewishly educated of the three and certainly the least well-known.32 When one reads Lazarus’s The Spirit of Judaism, one understands why she has been written out of American Jewish history. Her eloquent and passionately argued essays make a case for the return of Judaism as 30

31

32

For example, see David Biale, “The Melting Pot and Beyond.” In Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, ed. D. Biale, M. Galschinsky, and S. Heschel (London: University of California Press, 1998), 29-32. Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were also big advocates of this position. This melting pot idea can be traced back to the 1780s in Hector St. John Crevecoeur’s Letters of an American Farmer (New York: Fox, Duffield and Co., 1904), 54, 55. “What then is the American, this new man? . . . Here individuals of all nations are melted into a race of men.” Cited in Leslie J. Vaughan, “Cosmopolitanism, Ethnicity, and American Identity: Randolph Bourne’s ‘TransNational America’,” Journal of American Studies 25 (1991): 410. A search on RAMBI, a database of articles in Jewish Studies reaching back to the 1970s, did not show one entry on Lazarus. 191

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religion, in fact the fulfillment of Judaism’s central prophetic message, precisely by ending Judaism as a religion for Jews. Or, put differently, that America provides unique conditions for Judaism’s fulfillment by manifesting its core universal message requiring the dissolution of Judaism. She posits this as a first step toward dissolving all forms of positive religion. “It is in America,” Lazarus argues, “that the last great battle of Judaism will be fought out; amid the temples of the New World, it will make its last struggle to survive.”33 Her prose celebrates the ethical core of prophetic Judaism, an approach typical of Reform Judaism of her time (which she detests) yet points to two caveats, one historical and one contemporary, that she argues prevented the fulfillment of Judaism’s universal message. The historical caveat is her utter disdain for Pharisaic Judaism, i.e. Orthodoxy, that she claims undermined the prophetic message by creating legalistic and ethnic enclosures that smother Judaism’s prophetic message.34 She writes, “The Prophets were the ‘high lights’ of Judaism; but the light failed, the voices ceased, and prophetism died out. In spite of its broad ethical and social basis, its seeming universality, it never became the religion of the masses, because in reality it is the religion of the few, the elect and chosen of God, who know and feel the beauty of His holiness.”35 The contemporary caveat is that Jews constitute three classes in America: Orthodox, which she writes off as medieval and irrelevant, atheistic Jews, who she claims have nothing spiritual to offer humanity, and Reform Jews who have abandoned the particularistic customs of religion, but have not replaced them with anything other than a racial tie and “the Messianic hope, and belief in the destiny of Israel again to give a religion to the world, but this time a religion without inconvenient customs or unreasonable dogma, without miracles and without any mysteries.”36 Lazarus argues this will not suffice; as it still ties religion to ethnos, it is still exclusively for the Jews and the Jews alone until the fulfillment of a future utopian vision. On this reading, Reform’s osten 33 34 35

36

The Spirit, 129. Ibid., 50-51 Ibid., 47. Here we read a fairly standard Pauline critique echoed by centuries of Christianity. Yet in opposition to that Christian critique, Lazarus does not malign Judaism per se but only that form (Orthodoxy) that carries on the Pharisaism ridiculed in the Gospels. Ibid., 19, 20 192

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

sible universalism fails in the comforting embrace of its whitewashed parochialism. But America, argues Lazarus, no longer requires those artificial barriers against the fulfillment of Judaism’s central message of ethical duty combined with Christianity’s central message of “love” to bring about the true religion of human fellowship. “Humanity needs both these words [duty and love, ed.] in order to become the perfect creation it was meant to be.”37 On this she continues, And this then is the crucial test, the kernel of difference. We may do away with rabbinism, we may strip away husk after husk of outward distinction, all artificial barriers and enactments of separation, every badge and label that divides the Jew from the rest of the world; but here, and here alone, hidden in the depths of the spiritual life, is the truth that shall set us free and make us one with our fellows, because it makes all men truly brothers, children of one loving Father, and alike sharers of the divine life.38

If, she continues, “Judaism, in its ultimate destiny, in its essence and its spirit, is a universal religion—the religion of humanity when humanity shall have grown to its full stature,”39 how can we retain the particularistic guise of Pharisaism when we are faced with a New World, i.e. America, that is for once prepared to hear the truth? For Lazarus, America is what Jews have been waiting for, not to be free to continue their insular devotion, but to dissolve it and thereby make its essence available to all.40 Lazarus’s argument about saving Judaism by losing it, that is, by offering it to the world, was not as dissonant in the latter decades of the 37 38 39 40

Ibid., 26. Ibid., 123. Ibid., 110, 111. Josephine Lazarus, unlike her sister Emma, was an ardent anti-Zionist, yet her description comes quite close to what some radical Zionists were saying about relinquishing “Judaism,” viewed as a diasporic religion, in a Hebrew or Jewish sovereign polity. While opposite in almost every respect, Lazarus’ universalism and Zionism’s particularism share a notion of severing Judaism from the Jews. In the former, it is to give true Judaism (Hebrew Prophetism) to the world. In the latter, it is to make way for a new Hebrew/Israeli culture freed from the confines of superstitious practice and belief. 193

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nineteenth century as it is today.41 This was a time when some notable progressive Reform rabbis were quite active in the Free Religious Association in Boston, an organization connected with the Unitarianism church, even serving as directors.42 Adler even suggested merging Reform Judaism and Unitarianism! Yet Lazarus goes even further than many of her rabbinic colleagues connected with the Free Religious Association in arguing for Judaism’s ultimate fulfillment in its disappearance. Let us not be deceived. We cannot save our Judaism in any narrow, in any broad sense even, unless we lose it, by merging and adding to it that which will make it no longer Judaism, because it’s something that the whole world claims, and therefore cannot be the exclusive prorogation of Judaism—in other words, by entering into the large, spiritual life which makes no conditions, no restrictions necessary.43 41

42

43

Some of what Lazarus writes can be compared to the work of Rahel Varnhagen, the subject of Hannah Arendt’s biography Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman (New York: Harvest Books, 1974, revised edition). Varnhagen makes comments similar to Lazarus although the cultural context of such remarks is quite different. It is somewhat curious that to my knowledge Arendt never wrote about Lazarus. For a discussion of Arendt and Varnhagen on the Jewish question, see Pierre Birnbaum, Geography of Hope: Exile, the Enlightenment, Disassimilation, translated by Charlotte Mandell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 222-241. Another example of this might be Joseph Salvador (1796-1873), son of a Jewish father of Spanish descent and Catholic mother who is one of the first modern thinkers to write about Jesus as a Jew. Salvador advocated a universal religion that would be an amalgamation of Judaism and Christianity. See Donald Hager, The Jewish Reclamation of Jesus (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1997), 61. Finally the Jewish sociologist Franz Boas also advocated the “disappearance” of the Jews through assimilation. See Amos Morris-Reich, The Quest for Jewish Assimilation in Modern Social Science (New York and London: Routledge Press, 2008), 4-33. Nathan Glazer, the celebrated Jewish sociologist noted, “Around the turn of the century, it would not have been far-fetched for an historian of ideas to predict a merger between Reform Judaism and liberal Christianity.” See Glazer, American Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 53. Cf. the discussion in Cohen, What the Rabbis Said, 29. Cf. Benny Kraut, “The Ambivalent Relations of American Reform Judaism with Unitarianism in the Last Third of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 23.1 (Winter, 1986): 58-68. Lazarus, The Spirit of Judaism, 95. 194

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If our goal is universal, she continues criticizing both Orthodoxy and Reform, “why must we remain aloof from the world except for purposes that have no bearing upon this universal truth…we must preach unity, and [yet] we must practice the most rigid exclusion, the most uncompromising separation the world has ever known.” And finally, echoing a common platitude against Jewish particularism going back to Paul, “If, as we claim, we have the world’s truth in our keeping, shall we therefore keep it for ourselves?”44 She anticipates her Jewish reader’s response “why us, why now?” with the following pre-emption, ‘Not ours the fault!’ you exclaim. The Jew is ready. The Jew hopes and prays for the time when his religion as distinguished from all others shall no longer be. The Jew is ready, and has been for some time, to plunge into the ocean of humanity. But the world is not ready; the time is not ripe… The poisoned arrows of hate are still abound, still seeking the Jew as a target. The fault is not ours. The Jew cannot say when the time shall be for him to disappear… And this is exactly where you are wrong. It is for the Jew to sound the note of his own freedom, when he is ready for it, to claim it, rather than wait for the world to fix the hour.45

Lazarus’ claim is that the way for the Jew to express her freedom, to finally undermine once and for all the will of the anti-Semite, is to relinquish Judaism—not to become Christian, but to subvert the very notion of any positive religion in order to maximize Judaism’s central message. The anti-Semite wants Jews and Judaism to disappear. Lazarus advocates the disappearance of the Jew as the sole carrier of Judaism so that the core message of Judaism can dominate society. And, when this is successful, the Jew needn’t disappear! It is the Jew, she posits, who has the most to lose and also the most to gain. She has the most to lose because her identity is so (mistakenly) tied to ethnicity. She has the most to gain because, if successful, she will have fulfilled the very core of Judaism. Why should the Jew be the first one to relinquish her religion? Because, she argues, in this act of liberation she gives to the world the 44 45

Ibid., 110-111. Ibid., 162 195

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universal message of truth—the message that Jews have hidden way in their cloak of law and custom, in their notion of peoplehood, for almost two millennia. Only this truth, Lazarus argues, will provide the world what it needs to move beyond the pettiness and insularity of a bankrupt particularism and dependence on positive religion. For Lazarus, the Jew holds the key to liberate her from the call to destroy her. The Judaism that Jews held onto so strongly as they were martyred in the Middle Ages is the very thing that can free them from being martyred again. One hears resonances of Marx in his On the Jewish Question and, according to some, the beliefs of Emile Durkheim. Marx wanted to strip the Jews of their historicity, that is, to erase the notion of Jewish peoplehood as a prelude to the erasure of peoplehood more generally. Durkheim’s position is more ambiguous. In any case, it is worth noting that Durkheim, the son of a rabbi, ostensibly retained his Jewish identity and Marx had on-going communication, and even friendship, with Moses Hess and Heinrich Graetz.46 Both retained some kind of connection to their fallen Jewishness, however weak. The extent to which this had an impact on their work remains debatable. America in general and American Jewry in particular moved in directions different than Lazarus had anticipated, which is one reason why, I suppose, she has been relegated to the dustbin of history. Who knows if Lazarus would have been forgotten had circumstances leading to the Great Depression that stirred anti-Semitism in America not occurred. And yet, even given that history was her eraser, can we now ask, living in a world very different than 1929 (or 1945), whether her call to liberate Judaism as a religion solely for the Jews is still a dead letter in an American civilization of multiple affiliations, constructed ethnicities, and a renewed sense of cultural globalization? Could it be that in a rooted cosmopolitanism, Judaism may continue to be a religion of the Jews without being solely for the Jews? In some sense, this is already happening on many fronts. Sander Gilman notes that, “From Saul Bellow to Stephen Speilberg, the introduction of Jewish subject matter by self-consciously Jewish cultural figures has made the representation of the Jew part of mainstream of both American high 46

On Marx and Durkheim and their attitudes toward the Jews and their own complex Jewish identity, see Pierre Birnbaum, Geography of Hope, 36-45, 88-91. 196

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and mass culture.”47 Other cultural phenomena such as The Kabbalah Centre, John Zorn and Zaddik Records, and the Hasidic hip-hop artist Matisyahu illustrate this transition as well. Judaism in America is, on its own, slowly seeping out of its exclusively Jewish skin.48 Felix Adler is one of those American Jewish radicals—Kaplan may be another—who simultaneously garnered great respect and intense animus, often by the same people. His rejection of Judaism and his formation of the Society for Ethical Culture is arguably one of the more intriguing thought experiments in late ninetieth and early twentiethcentury American Judaism.49 In many ways this society is an outgrowth of his critique of Reform Judaism arguing that Reform’s ostensible progressive and humanistic agenda in America stands in blatant contradiction to two precepts it refuses to relinquish: supernaturalist monotheism and divine election. Adler openly rejects theism, including Reform ethical monotheism, as well as any notion of divine election, and posits that positive religion should no longer serve as the basis for any collective to achieve the highest goal of human society, the establishment of a human fellowship based on the Ethical Ideal. His thinking resonates with a Kantian commitment to the Ethical Ideal as the primary “duty” of humankind. And, more relevant to us, he seeks to construct a community of individuals who will use the force of communal fellowship to achieve this goal. For Adler, as for Lazarus, America is uniquely prepared for this experiment. On American he writes, The country in which we live is most favorable for such experiments as ours. There are lands of older culture, and men there of wider vision and maturer wisdom, but nowhere, as in America, is a truth once seen, so readily applied, nowhere do even the com 47

48

49

Sander Gilman, Multiculturalism and the Jews, 148. Cf. ibid., 181: “‘Biological’ difference, the difference explicit in the older, and some of the present views of ‘race,’ can be displaced onto a symbolic cultural level even while the word ‘race’ is used. At the same moment, this ‘authentic’ cultural heritage is commodified and thus made available for all consumers.” The growing phenomenon of the faux (bar/bat) mitzvah is another example of this. Some gentile families are adopting a “bar mitzvah” for their thirteen year old sons and daughters. See http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/041112/faux. shtml and http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2005/09/02/faux-mitzvahs/. See Benny Kraut, From Reform Judaism to Ethical Culture, 108-134. 197

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mon order of men so feel the responsibility for what transpires, and the impulse to see the best accomplished…O, if it were thine America, America that hast given political liberty to the world, to give that spiritual liberty for which we pant, to break also those spiritual fetters that load thy sons and daughters.50

Sharing this optimism about American as the condition for the fulfillment of humanism with Lazarus, Adler believed that ethnic and religious affiliations can be overcome and replaced by what he calls a “morality of groups.” These groups consist of “unlike individuals exercising unlike functions.”51 For group morality to work, groups cannot be homogeneous, ethnic or otherwise. Rather, it is there “unlikeness” in origin, vocation, and temperament that creates the organicity necessary to fulfill the function of embodying the Ideal of human fellowship. “In the international group the dissimilarity is that of the various types of civilization represented by the different peoples. As will be seen, the desirable relations within the groups, and of the groups with one another, is what is commonly called organic.”52 For Adler, religion and ethnicity had once served as the frame of group identity, but now society has moved beyond the need for such limiting and limited constraints. The formation of societies along religious and ethnic lines never produced the organicity he sought. The dogmatic assertion of religious teachings we hold to be a serious evil, and dogma as such we cannot accept. Its influence in the past has been pernicious, and is so at the present day no less. It has inflamed hatred of man against his brother man, it has led to the fatal error of duties toward a personal Creator, distinct from our duties toward our fellows…it does not afford a common basis whereupon we could unite for it is by nature uncertain and calculated to provoke dissensions.53

This is not to say Adler has no use for religion. “We cheerfully accord the religious conception of the past a poetic value; they are poetry, often of 50 51 52 53

Adler, Creed and Deed (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894; reprinted Elibron Classics, 2005), 178. Adler, “The Spiritual Ideal,” The Hibbert Lectures: 1923 (New York: AMS, 1924), 47 Ibid., 48. Adler, Creed and Deed, 61. 198

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

the sublimest kind; but we cannot deceive ourselves as to the noble weakness of the heart to which they owe their origin.”54 He wrote often about religion and religions, delineating ways in which religion has benefited society in the past, yet he was committed to a post-religion age. In 1931 (and the year here is important because this is written in the heyday of Horace Kallen’s “cultural pluralism”) Adler wrote “Let religion unfurl her white flag over the battlegrounds of the past, and turn the fields she had desolated so long into sunny gardens and embowered retreats.”55 His Society for Ethical Culture was not intended to be a substitute for religion—in fact, he instituted his weekly lecture series on Sunday so as to not interfere with those Jews in his community, and there were many, who chose to attend synagogue on the Sabbath. In his inaugural address in 1876 he announced, “We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear.”56 If people chose to affiliate with obsolete models of community for sentimental or even spiritual reasons that was fine, as long as they understood that the real work of humankind was elsewhere. Adler had no interest in creating a syncretistic religion or transforming religious creed into some secular Jewish culture because he felt that religion had served its purpose to humanity, and that ethnicity was not a constructive way to found group morality because, among other things, ethnic communities are founded on sameness (“we are one people”) not conducive to achieve the Ethical Ideal. He was committed to the notion that religion and ethnicity could not foster universal fellowship. Yet he denied that Ethical Culture was an iconoclastic movement. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Ethical Culture movement in 1931 Adler wrote, “Even icons….have a certain beauty; even idols, statues of gods like the Olympian Zeus and the Hermes, have a certain greatness—only they must not be worshipped, as if they were more than similitudes.”57 54 55

56 57

Ibid., 64. Adler, “Founding Address,” 7. Kallen formulates his “cultural pluralism,” in opposition to Israel Zangwill’s “melting pot,” in 1915 but its impact isn’t felt until a few decades later. Op. cit. Adler, “Address on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Movement,” web version, 3. 199

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What we have in Adler, I think, is a position that can tolerate ethnos, and even its religious/cultural expression, as long as it does not serve as the center of group identity. Yet, he saw no absolute reason why Jews should retain any ethnic separation from Gentiles.58 Religion is rejected because of its commitment to “creed” as the engine that generates “deed.” This is flawed because creed, for Adler, implies an absolute category that can never fully embody the only absolute value humankind needs to know; the Ethical Ideal. While he fully acknowledged that the Hebrews were the first to posit a moral God—and thus the notion of morality as a religious act—the Hebrews cum Jews failed because their religion was too particularized to enable that moral ideal to become truly universal. In this sense Christianity added a necessary element to the Hebrew model for Adler by individualizing the national ideal. In Christianity, “it was no longer the holy people but the holy individual that constituted the chief object of concern.”59 Christianity failed by internalizing holiness in the self, giving birth to a concept of purity that was no longer about separating one group from another (as it was in Judaism) but the separation of the impure self from the purified self. Its endemic asceticism, practiced or not, was a flawed depiction of the human condition. For Adler, the “morality of groups” distinct from the metaphysical baggage of both Judaism and Christianity, each containing components that prevent the Ethical Ideal from becoming universalized, comes as the first communal structure in a post-religious age. From our perch in history, it appears Lazarus and Adler share a great deal, yet the differences between them are as interesting as their similarities. On the one hand, Adler is less convinced of the ethical truth of Judaism than Lazarus, albeit he acknowledges Judaism’s discovery of a moral divinity. On the other hand, Adler understood more deeply than Lazarus the ways in which age-old traditions may still be needed by religious and ethnic groups, and he tolerated that separation as long as it did not serve as the dominant source of group identity. As a rabbi and Torah scholar, Adler instinctively knew that Lazarus’s claim that Jews were ready to jump into the sea of humanity was pre-mature although he did believe they needed to abandon their religious and ethnic identities if they wanted to fully participate in the American ethical project. Posi 58 59

See Kraut, From Reform Judaism to Ethical Culture, 207. Adler, “The Spiritual Ideal,” 40. 200

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

tive religion, marginalized by Adler as “poetic,” could remain, although it could never achieve the one goal that has thus far eluded humanity, the Ethical Ideal. Mordecai Kaplan is known as the Jewish thinker who reframed the relationship between the religion and community in American Judaism. Critical of Reform’s substitution of law and custom in favor of ethical monotheism,60 Kaplan re-framed law and ritual in light of Emile Durkheim’s “folkways” and posited Jewish peoplehood in the nontheological category of “civilization.” He was the architect of what his disciples have termed “post-halakhic Judaism.”61 Kaplan was very much a thinker of his time strongly influenced by Weber, Durkheim, John Dewey and other American pragmatists. Less known is how much he was influenced by Felix Adler.62 Given Adler’s rejection of Judaism and his rejection of any notion of Jewish peoplehood or ethnicity in general, one might reasonably surmise that Kaplan would be quite critical of his work. Yet when one reads through Kaplan’s corpus, one finds that when Adler is mentioned, and he is mentioned periodically, it is always with admiration and deep respect.63 60

61

62 63

See, for example, Kaplan, Judaism as a Civilization (New York and Philadelphia: JPS/Reconstructionist Press, 1981), 91-107; and idem. The Greater Judaism in the Making (New York: The Reconstructionist Press, 1960), 273-315. Kaplan believed that ethical monotheism was an ancient Israelite idea that formed the religion but could not sustain it. Rather, ethical monotheism had to be transformed into “ethical nationhood” is a society that could no longer accept the theistic premise of ethical monotheism. See Kaplan, A Religion of Ethical Nationhood, 128. See Jack Cohen, “Toward an Ideology for Post-Halakhic Jews,” in Jewish Civilization: Essays and Studies, Honoring the One Hundredth Birthday of Mordecai Kaplan, ed. Ronald A. Brauner (Philadelphia, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 1981), 127-144; and Richard Hirsch, “Mordecai Kaplan’s Approach to Jewish Law,” 155-170; Jack Cohen, Post-Halachic Judaism (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010); and idem., The Democratization of Judaism (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011). Mel Scult devotes a few pages to Adler’s influence on Kaplan in Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 77-84. See for example Kaplan, The American Hebrew, May 20, 1919, cited in Scult, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, 79. Kaplan’s admiration for Adler was also mixed with condemnation. In numerous places in his journal, he expresses his negative feelings about Adler’s decision to abandon Judaism. See a few references in Scult, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, 384n3. 201

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The relationship between them was quite personal. Adler was Kaplan’s MA thesis advisor at Columbia University and we know that he took no less than five courses with him during his student days at Columbia.64 With this in mind, we can see how some of Kaplan’s most well-known positions are adaptations of Adler’s thinking. Kaplan’s rejection of supernaturalism, his rejection of divine election, his belief that religion needed to serve as the aspiration of the Ethical Ideal and Adler’s notion of “group morality” as the root of any society may be the core of Kaplan’s idea of Jewish civilization. Anecdotally, when Kaplan was formulating his society that would become the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the first name he considered was The Society for Ethical Jewish Culture. 65 One major difference between them, of course, is that Kaplan chose to remain within the confines of Judaism. Thus, when his rejection of supernaturalism led to accusations of atheism or Spinozism (which in those days meant naturalism), Kaplan countered with his notion of a transnatural God.66 When he was criticized for his rejection of divine election producing a flattened notion of peoplehood, he borrowed an idea from Randolph Bourne’s two essays in 1916, “Transnational America” and “The Jew and Trans-National America,” and posited the Jews as a “transnational” people.67 Below I will focus on 64

65 66

67

Personal communication with Mel Scult, November 2007. Professor Scult was able to obtain Kaplan’s student record and also able to examine Adler’s written lecture notes for the courses that Kaplan took with him. Cf. Simon Noveck, “Kaplan and Milton Steinberg: A Disciple’s Agreements and Disagreements,” in The American Judaism of Mordecai Kaplan, ed. E. S. Goldsmith, M. Scult, and R. Seltzer (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 147. Personal communication with Mel Scult, November, 2007. See Kaplan in If Not Now, When? (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 86, “I personally do not subscribe to Spinoza’s identification of God with nature because God is for me always transnatural.” Cf. Sheila Greeve Davaney, “Beyond Supernaturalism: Mordecai Kaplan’s Turn to Religious Naturalism,” Jewish Social Studies 12.2 (Winter 2006): 73-87 and my “The Spinozistic Spirit in Mordecai Kaplan’s Re-Valuation of Judaism,” Modern Judaism 20 (May 2000): 159-180. See Randolph Bourne, “Transnational America,” Atlantic Monthly 118 (July 1916): 86-97. The story appears a bit more complex. In a subsequent essay “The Jew and Transnational America,” published in December 1916, Bourne notes, “… the very phrase ‘transnationalism,’ I stole from a Jewish college mate of mine who, I suspect, is now a member of your Menorah Society here.” Kaplan was one of the most active essayists for The Menorah Journal in that period and 202

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

the notion of transnationalism and the relationship between Kaplan’s reconstituted particularism and his belief in the universal and humanitarian obligation of any civilization. Kaplan’s The Religion of Ethical Nationhood is a restatement of his belief in the need to reconstitute Jewish peoplehood and, in doing so, revive the moribund state of the Jewish religion. His commitment to Durkheim’s notion of religion as an expression of collective identity is coupled with his acceptance of Adler’s notion of “group morality.” In this later work, Kaplan makes it clear that communities have the right to exist, and should continue to exist, only the extent to which they contribute to the larger global cause of humanism. A nation or people’s existence should not be solely to survive, or even to foster its own inward ethical culture.68 In a conversation with Arthur Cohen on September 17, 1971, Kaplan states, “I therefore think that the logical procedure for us now would be to try to spell out the concrete procedure which has to be followed in order to effect the reconstitution of the Jewish people in a spirit which would impel it to act in accordance with a three-fold purpose we’ve agreed upon, namely universal peace, ethical nationhood, and individual happiness.”69 The notions of universal peace and ethical nationhood suggest that Kaplan views Jewish civilization as having a universal goal that is not relegated to a future messianic hope, a hope he flatly rejected. This enterprise is not merely a subsidiary of Jewish peoplehood but, for Kaplan, its very reason to exist. It is here, I think, that Kaplan’s “transnational people” comes into play.

68

69

thus we can assume he read Bourne’s essay, although to my knowledge he never mentioned him. See Noam Painko, “Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructing America: The Sources and Functions of Mordecai Kaplan’s ‘Civilization’,” Jewish Social Studies 21.2 (Winter 2006): 39-55. On Bourne see, Andrew Walzer, “The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne: A Useable Past for Multicultural America?” in Canadian Review of American Studies 27 (1997): 1-22. Kaplan’s position here is echoed by his colleague Abraham Joshua Heschel in a 1965 address to the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in Montreal. “There are two words I would like to strike from our vocabulary; ‘surveys’ and ‘survival.’…The significance of Judaism does not lie in its being conducive to the mere survival of a particular people but rather in being a source of spiritual wealth, a source of meaning relevant to all peoples.” Cited in Barry Schrage, “Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Creation of the Jewish Renaissance,” Modern Judaism 29-1 (Winter, 2009): 59-60. See Mordecai Kaplan and Arthur Cohen, If Not Now, When?, 53. 203

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As I mentioned above Kaplan was influenced by Rudolph Bourne as a young man. Describing American society in 1916  Randolph Bourne wrote, “America is coming to be, not a nationality, but a transnationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and colors. Any movement which attempts to thwart this weaving, or to dye the fabric any one color, or disentangle the threads and strands, is false to this cosmopolitan vision.”70 While a frontal attack of the moribund “melting pot,” it is also an attack on ethical nationalism.71 It is the multiethnic character of America, Bourne calls it America’s “cosmopolitanism,” that is it greatest strength. Kaplan defines the Jews as a transnational people in opposition to what he determines, as a Zionist, is the inability of Zionism to provide the full solution to Jewish peoplehood. Zionism has demonstrated that human initiative [of self-assertion and a rejection that only a supernatural God will redeem Israel ed.]...but Zionism was in no position to formulate a comprehensive program for restructuring the Jewish people. Time is running out. The Jewish people must be re-constituted. A practical program for its creative survival as a transnational people [italics added] with the Jewish community in the State of Israel as a catalytic agent for the rest of Jewry—must be implemented.72

In one sense, this sounds very much like Ahad ha-Am’s spiritual Zionism, of which Kaplan was a devotee in his earlier work A New Zionism.73 However, if we take his notion of transnationalism and couple it with “ethical nationhood,” what Kaplan may be saying is that Jewish civilization must cultivate a cultural dual-allegiance precisely because dual-allegiance in principle subverts the tendency of all peoples toward 70 71

72 73

Bourne, “Trans-National America,” web version, 9. This point and Bourne’s influence on Kaplan more generally is discussed at length in Noam Pianko, “Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructing America: The Sources and Functions of Kaplan’s ‘Civilization’,” Jewish Social Studies 12.2 (2006): 39-55. Cf. David Biale, “The Melting Pot and Beyond: Jews and the Politics of American Identity,” in Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 17-33. Kaplan, A Religion, 3. See Steven Zipperstein, “On Reading Ahad ha-Am as Mordecai Kaplan Read Him,” Jewish Social Studies 12.2 (Winter 2006): 30-38. 204

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

ultra-nationalism and insularity.74 For Kaplan, Israel is not the solution to the “Jewish problem” (the political impetus of Zionism) nor is it solely a project of creating a Jewish secular culture (the project of cultural or spiritual Zionism). Rather, it provides one part of the two-part transnational equation, allowing Jews to then re-think their role as a part of another nation to which they also call home.75 “The old image of the Jew derives from a nation in exile; the new image must project the Jews as a transnational people in dispersion. The unifying factor of a nation is political, the unifying factor of a people is religio-cultural.”76 Similarly, “The new Judaism moves the center from Israel to Humanity. The Shekhina is in Humanity.”77 Kaplan appears to reject the term “nationality” as a category of Jewish civilization to enable Jews to claim allegiance to more than one nation. And in the religio-cultural category of “peoplehood,” Kaplan argues for an “ethical nationhood” (“nation” here appears to be used in an informal sense)78 that sets it sights on contributing to the universal project of human fellowship. I suggest that Kaplan’s peoplehood is likely adapted from Adler’s category of “group morality” discussed above. In opposition to Adler, however, Kaplan believes that groups must be constituted on commonality and not difference. This commonality is not ethnically construed in any biological sense, but rather is founded on a common cultural fabric. 74

75

76

77 78

This, in fact, seems to be Bourne’s point in “The Jew and Transnational America” where Kaplan likely first heard this idea. Kaplan links Ahad ha-Am and Adler, saying that Adler’s Society for Ethical Culture was viewed as a model for Ahad ha-Am. See Kaplan, The Greater Judaism in the Making, 430-431. This seems a bit far-fetched, as Adler had openly stated that his society was not about Judaism or any other religion. It is more likely this became conflated in Kaplan’s imagination in his desire to merge these two disparate thinkers in his own Jewish ethical project. This is the basis of Kaplan’s New Zionism (New York: Theodore Herzl Foundation, 1955). Interestingly, Randolph Bourne’s “The Jew and Transnational America,” a lecture delivered to the Harvard University Menorah Society on November 8, 1916 and published in The Menorah Journal in December 1916 makes most of the basic points of Kaplan’s New Zionism from an outsider’s point-of-view. Kaplan, A Religion, 11. Cf. 124. “Hence Jewish peoplehood should be identified as a religious category, and the Jewish people should be known as a religious community.” Kaplan journal, May 8, 1906, cited in Scult, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, 82. A Religion, 154 where he uses the more accurate term “ethical peoplehood.” 205

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“Hence, man’s spiritual needs can be met only among those who pursue a common way of life, speak the same language, and communicate in the same universe of thought and discourse.”79 Kaplan’s notion of collective identity seems like an amalgam of Durkheim’s notion of community with Bourne’s eulogy of the “melting pot.” And yet one gets the sense from Kaplan’s work that universalism is a returning demon that he is never able to eradicate.80 Just as his ostensible naturalism becomes “transnaturalism” and his peoplehood becomes “transnational” Kaplan attempts to view the collective as existing not for its own sake but for the sake of humanity or, to use Adler’s phrase, the “Ethical Ideal.” He begins by predictably basing his universalism on the Hebrew prophets. What are those traits that make for international involvement and commitment? They stem from a sense of human responsibility toward the human community, beginning with the family and terminating, at present, with the nation. The Israelite nation alone through its spokesmen, the prophets, conceived of mutual responsibility as extending beyond the nation to which one belonged.81

Yet he sounds strikingly like Adler and Lazarus when he writes, “But religion’s passivity with regard to the other social responsibilities has impeded its moral role even on the interpersonal level…. The failure of group religion to cultivate ethical values and its concentration of piety and polity have rendered both church and synagogue irrelevant to the moralization of human character and to the betterment of human relations.”82 Now his notion of “reconstitution” becomes clearer. “If contemporary Jewish civilization is to function as an instrument of Jewish solidarity, Jews must transpose their tradition into a key of religious humanism and reconstitute themselves structurally as a people.”83 If they do not, Kaplan suggests, their function as a people evaporates and they will, or perhaps should, cease to exist as a people. This is illustrated in a stunning passage about the State of Israel written in 1970. 79 80 81 82 83

Ibid., 25. This borrows from Scult’s language in Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, 79. A Religion, 34. Ibid., 69, 102. Ibid., 128, 129. 206

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

The land which is a people’s home should foster a humanizing way of life. The people that fails to pursue a civilized and enlightened way of life must ultimately be exiled from its homeland. The narrative parts of the Pentateuch and ancient prophecy articulate these ideas concerning the role of Erez Yisrael in the life of the Jewish people.84

What I suggest here is that Kaplan’s entire structure of Jewish civilization is a response to Adler. While he accepts Adler’s basic premise about the goal of “morality groups” he rejects Adler’s erasure of ethnicity as the glue that holds those groups together. In light of the changing nature of American society in the second half of the twentieth century when multiculturalism was thriving, yet committed to Adler’s basic project of universalism, Kaplan attempts to give us a theory of Judaism based on Adler’s rejection of it. He believed, unlike Adler, that ethnos, widely defined, could still provide a basis for pursuing the Ethical Ideal. But if it could not, would Kaplan choose Adler’s approach or a model of civilization or nationhood founded purely on the principle of self-preservation, that is, a peoplehood that would not embody “ethical nationhood”? We do not know. Kaplan continued to believe in the possibility of reviving Judaism and Jewish civilization, but not without ambivalence. In an early journal entry he noted, “Time and again it occurred to me that I ought to join the Ethical Culture Movement.”85 This kind of ambivalence seemed to remain with him throughout his long life. His conversation with Arthur Cohen in If Not Now, When? published in 1973  when he, at over 90  years old, attests to this. It also surfaces in the striking comment cited above, written in the late 1960s, about humanism as a condition for the existence of a Jewish State.

Conclusion Lazarus, Adler, and Kaplan have at least two things in common. First, they all viewed Reform Judaism (the default “American” Judaism) as inadequate to the task of reviving Judaism in America. Second, all three in different ways held American society more generally to be their 84 85

Ibid., 130. Cited in Scult, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, 79. 207

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primary concern (with Kaplan, of course, this is more complicated but arguably still true, at least in part).86 In this way, all shared Reform rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise’s belief, construed quite differently, that it was Judaism, “denationalized,” that would save America from the fate of Europe. Hence, for all three, although Reform was not up to the task, the task was quite similar. Lazarus and Adler, both of whom did much of their work before the demise of the “melting pot,” saw Judaism as playing a crucial role in American society only if we draw a sharp distinction between Judaism and the Jews. Kaplan, thinking with Horace Kallen, Randolph Bourne and others in opposition to the “melting pot” opted for a “transnational” nationalism, called by others “civilization nationalism.”87 We can, of course, historicize all three and see the logic of each within its context. My concern, however, is how all this plays out in postethnic America. Of the three only Kaplan’s approach has survived, not because his position has more merit but largely because he constructed a model that conformed to the contours of American society that extended deep into the second half on the twentieth century, culminating with the rise of identity politics in the 1960s. One of the more impressive things about Kaplan is the way he was able to see societal change decades before it happened. If we follow the post-ethnicity argument that identity has become more fungible, can we return to the pre-multicultural question as to whether we can, or should, or must, separate Judaism from the Jews? That is, should Jews offer Judaism to the world such that Judaism becomes more than a way for ethnic Jews to remain Jews? In addition, in our world is this prescriptive or descriptive? It seems that in some ways this is already happening. Perhaps this is precisely the challenge of contemporary American Jews, or those who have any interest in Judaism, in postethnic America. If ethnicity is no longer tied to ethnic-myths of belonging to a “blood nation” or ancient people, but is constructed out of a variety of different, often conflicting, personal and collective narratives, by “liberating” 86

87

Kaplan’s “Americanism” is an under-studied dimension of his thought. It is taken up quite creatively and convincingly in Noam Pianko’s essay, “Reconstructing Judaism,” esp. 143-145. Op. cit., 47. 208

The “Ethnic Jew” and Judaism in America according to Adler, Lazarus, Kaplan

Judaism (to borrow a term from Lazarus) as the sole property of the Jews, can both sides (that is, the Jews and Judaism) produce fruitful new categories of identity for Jews and others.88 Today, the Jews needn’t disappear in order for Judaism to be fulfilled, as Lazarus suggested, because contemporary cosmopolitanism would, to paraphrase Kaplan, allow ethnicity “a vote but not a veto.” If the Jews want to remain attached to Judaism, that is fine, but if that is all Judaism is, one can, or should, ask whether it will produce anything fruitful in the world where ethnic borders have been opened and are being reconstructed. At first blush, Kaplanians would argue that this is precisely what Kaplan fought against. I am not so sure. First of all, he was the one who gave us Jewish “transnationalism” in an attempt to enable Jews, to encourage Jews, to have dual allegiances and multiple identities. For Kaplan, this was not a concession but a necessary condition of Judaism’s survival as an “ethical nationhood,” the only survival he deemed worth fighting for. Did he believe that the Jewish side of the Jewish-American hyphen would always have priority? Should it? We do not know but I can imagine he would have been quite disappointed at the way many American Jews today have come to understand their commitment to Zionism, for example, as a badge of Jewish national pride regardless of what kind of society exists there. And, the diasporic bumper-sticker “I Love NY but Jerusalem is my Home” is not something I imagine Kaplan would have appreciated. My point, of course, is that the breakdown of the dual to the many, of the ethnic to the multiethnic and then postethnic, leads me back to Lazarus and Adler for insight about the possibilities of what Judaism would look like without it being solely for the Jews, and what the Jews would look like if they thought creatively about their identities and responsibilities to the world with Judaism as only one component of a much larger, more complex narrative.

88

See Biale, “The Melting Pot and Beyond,” 31, 32; and more recently Edgar Bronfman and Beth Zasloff, Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008).

Making Peace with Philosophy: Emil L. Fackenheim’s Hegelianism Sharon Portnoff

I had the pleasure of working with Neil Gillman when I was writing my dissertation on the work of Emil L. Fackenheim and Leo Strauss from 2000 to 2005. The key to understanding Fackenheim—and his ambivalent rejection of Strauss’ thought, “returning” to Hegel rather than, as Strauss had, to the ancients—is the recognition that his work grows out of his existentialist stance. Neil—himself, I would venture, an existentialist—understood something that I at that point did not grasp: the existentialist stance cannot be communicated through words or study alone. Understanding existentialism requires an experiential basis. And so, in the midst of my work, Neil sent me off to Jerusalem to meet Emil Fackenheim. I will be forever grateful for that existentialist push, which opened up Fackenheim’s thought to me. I had the honor and the good fortune of spending time with Fackenheim over a few weeks in December 2002, and again in August 2003. I had admired his work for quite a few years, and so I was somewhat anxious about my visit. I  spent much of the flight to Tel Aviv trying to come up with questions that would be suitably intelligent for the occasion. I  arrived speechless. When Fackenheim opened the door, he recognized my predicament and immediately whisked me into the apartment, offered me tea and cookies, and, without being asked, began to speak to me about philosophy and about Judaism. He made my silence intelligent. This was just the first of many kindnesses I came to know in him, the beginning of my coming to know his existentialism. And this to me was his most important teaching: the ground of knowing is not reason, but rather a stance toward knowing rooted in openness and awareness. Fackenheim knew Hegel well—probably better than he knew any other philosopher—and had studied all his works. In 1967, he published his major philosophical work, The Religious Dimension of Hegel’s 210

Making Peace with Philosophy: Emil L. Fackenheim’s Hegelianism

Thought, which he wrote over a period of ten years. It had grown out of a project he had first proposed around 1950  to trace the transformation of God from a transcendent Other to an internalized God in the thought of Kant to Kierkegaard. But when the space allotted to Hegel outgrew its bounds, those chapters became a full-length book, whose original title was Making Peace with Religion, while his proposed book From Kant to Kierkegaard became The God Within, providing background for the Hegel book. Not long after finishing Religious Dimension, in 1970, he wrote “Hegel on the Actuality of the Rational and the Rationality of the Actual,” and, in 1971, “Demythologizing and Remythologizing in Jewish Experience: Reflections Inspired by Hegel’s Philosophy.” These essays abbreviate and summarize certain points in Fackenheim’s book. The latter essay explores the means by which Hegel acknowledged both the necessity of informing philosophical thought with the contingent, and also, though beyond the scope of this paper, the claims of religion on philosophical thought. I present this very brief historical sketch with some trepidation. It is not quite clear to me that historical context adds significant meaning to Fackenheim’s work on Hegel—I even wonder if approaching his thought on Hegel through historical context does not in some way distort our deep understanding of what in Hegel spoke so strongly to him; of why, as he put it, he “returned” to Hegel. This paper will be an attempt to think about what he conceived to be his return to Hegel, why he chose Hegel to return to, and what exactly this return entailed. At the outset, however, I note that the very concept of return is, at the least, a questioning of the level of relevance of historical context; or, to put it another way, Fackenheim’s conviction that a return may be possible is already an affirmation of the existence of the eternal. Whether he subsequently abandons the question of the relevance of historical context, or more precisely, the question of historicism, is beyond the scope of this paper. I  think, however, that the fact that his return affirms the possibility of the eternal renders the boundaries of this paper both valid and of continued relevance. Fackenheim was attracted to Hegel because, like Judaism, Hegelian thought is comprehensive: it attempts the synthesis of the contingent and the absolute, of the concerns for contemporary history and the eternal. More specifically, Hegel attempts to synthesize modern secu211

Sharon Portnoff

lar self-confidence with religious confidence in a hoped-for redeemed world. Like Judaism, Hegel understands the primacy of the dialectic of the human and the divine in all human endeavors. The comprehensiveness of Hegelian thought—its attention to both the contingent and the absolute—and its concern with God’s action in history, make it, according to Fackenheim, a temptation to the modern Jew—and certainly tempts Fackenheim. Yet Hegel’s transfiguration of religion into an ultimately single activity of self-conscious, absolute spirit deprives religion of its revelatory character and consequently misrepresents it. Hegel’s thought, then, is at one and the same time a temptation to the modern Jew and a rival faith of Judaism. Yet, as Fackenheim sees it, because Hegelian thought implicates modern secular experience, modern Jewish commitment extends to both faiths: by virtue of living in the modern world, the Jew is committed to modern philosophy; by virtue of his religious commitments, the Jew must allow modern philosophy to inform his theology. (I do not address the validity of this position in this paper, because I wish to approach Fackenheim’s thought on Hegel with the same openness, the same intuitive reason, that he so carefully demonstrated in his approach to Hegel. I seek, in other words, to understand him as far as possible as he understood himself.) Paradoxically, according to Fackenheim, after Hegelian models of thought have “entered history,” or informed modern secular experience, in order to retain the comprehensiveness of Jewish commitment—in order for Jews to retain their concern for the contingent dimension of Jewish faith—he argues that we abandon the comprehensiveness of both modern philosophy and Jewish theology. New categories of secularism and religiosity must be sought if Judaism is to persist. It is the search for these new categories that underlies his return to Hegel. But can he avoid a Jewish Hegelianism that would, by virtue of its derivation from Hegel, mark the beginning of the self-dissolution of Judaism? Is Fackenheim simply a modern-day Hegelian? On the surface of it, it is invalid to label Fackenheim an Hegelian. After all, in a famous statement, he declared that Hegel himself would not today be an Hegelian. Why would he return to a thinker whom he recognizes at the outset to have been proved wrong? Is he merely contradicting himself when he claims that he, like his imaginary postHegelian Hegel, is not an Hegelian? Fackenheim’s claim is nothing short 212

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of the assertion that Hegel’s thought is perennially valid, even while it is subject to historical revision. To untangle this seeming contradiction, we must begin with a more fundamental question. In broad strokes, we may ask the question this way: Are we to understand philosophy as a quest for understanding of things as they appear to us; as requiring that philosophers return continually to those appearances in order to arrive at a common interpretation? Or, does philosophy “progress” as each new thinker builds upon the thought of his predecessors (or, indeed, as an individual thinker builds upon his own thought)? One may view the latter option as the necessary consequence of historical consciousness in philosophy—that philosophy must now proceed through more subtle interpretations of the history of thought; but I will argue, rather, that to view Fackenheim’s work on Hegel solely as the honing or correcting of Hegelian thought is misguided. If one views it this way, his thought on Hegel would indeed be classified as, at the least, derivative. But, if his work on Hegel is guided also by an understanding of philosophy as the quest for a common sense interpretation of experience—if, that is, in some profound way human thinking about human experience does not change—then Fackenheim, in returning to experience itself, cannot be described as derivative of Hegel. The commonalities between Hegel and Fackenheim would reflect simply what it is to be a historically conscious human being. The great contribution to contemporary thought of Fackenheim’s return to Hegel is not that he answers the question of to what extent philosophy is in the above sense “progressive” and to what extent it is perennial, but rather that he asks it, and forces us to ask it. This question, more broadly formulated as “what is the relationship between history and thought?” was, according to Fackenheim, Hegel’s question as well. Accordingly, in Religious Dimension, he framed Hegel’s work as a battle waged between history and philosophy. On the one hand, Fackenheim’s Hegel recognizes in his thought the perennial necessity of a return to experience, even as that experience changes with time. Hegel suggests a reenactment through both a realistic and an idealistic mediation that finds the absolute, or the eternal, in the structure of experience. While Hegel’s thought, then, needs the contingent as the means of access to the absolute, the absolute remains an idea. The thought of Fackenheim’s Hegel, therefore, while informed by history, nevertheless sustains itself as philosophy. This is the battle as Facken213

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heim’s Hegel conceives it. On the other hand, Hegel’s introduction of philosophical categories into history firmly established and, according to Fackenheim, necessitated the role of historical consciousness in all subsequent thought. Even as Hegel’s philosophy makes intelligible what is real in the human realm, its conclusions are not eternally true: Hegel’s philosophy remains bound to the contingent and can determine only what is known to have existed already. Philosophy after Hegel can no longer stand separate from history; thought must base itself to some extent on previous thought. Fackenheim’s conclusion is paradoxical: he is suggesting both, as Hegel suggested, that philosophy can never be wholly superseded by history, and also—beyond, though not essentially at odds with, Hegel’s suggestion—that history emerged victorious from its battle with philosophy. He derives from Hegel the position that the absolute needs the contingent—though, as we shall see, he broadens what is included in the contingent—and yet he recognizes the essential changes in both the contingent and Hegel’s understanding of the absolute, changes which were effectuated by Hegel: Hegel would not today be an Hegelian because historical events have disputed his conception of the rationality of history. But it is neither the priority of Hegel’s philosophy nor the success of Hegel’s historical consciousness that motivates Fackenheim’s return to him. Rather, it is the perpetuation of the battle between philosophy and history—in the sense both that the battle cannot be resolved and also that the battle is an integral part of all subsequent thought. This perpetuation marks what is perennial in historically conscious thought. Even as the contingent terms have changed the absolute structure, Fackenheim recognizes in Hegel’s battle his own: the preservation of the absolute of philosophy within historical selfconsciousness. By sustaining the battle between philosophy and history, Fackenheim’s Hegel avoids a full blown historicism. Historicism asserts that the historically situated act of thinking inevitably changes the objects of thought; there is no meta-historical thought. The danger of radical historicism is its threat not only to philosophy, or the belief in the eternal, but also to the recognition of history as experience, or of the surface of things. Indeed, how can we recognize how things appear to us if how they appear is rendered synonymous to our ever-changing idea of how they appear? Subsequent interpretations of Hegel, or more to 214

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our point, the building of a history of thought on Hegelian thought and not on experience, not only have misunderstood Hegel, but also have inevitably promoted either a full-blown historicism or a thoroughgoing escapism. The “left wing” interpretation, as Fackenheim puts it, is defined by loss of faith in the eternal; the “right wing” interpretation, by loss of confidence in the per se existence of the contingent. Fackenheim’s Hegel himself, however, remained aware, at least as an idea, of historical experience as the means of informing thought. First, according to Fackenheim’s reading of Hegel, the secular world has provided the tools by which to separate what is “actual” from the “merely existent”; what is to be recognized from within the contingent as informative to thought, from what is not. As Fackenheim notes, by discounting the non-informative elements of contingency, Hegel eliminates the possibility of responding to radical evil; to use Hegel’s term, history becomes simply a “slaughter bench.” Second, the actual must be separated from the rational in order to separate God from historical experience. The contingent, or at any rate, part of it, therefore persists in Hegel’s thought, even as it itself becomes absolute transhistorical truth; the eternal remains as a limiting factor to human thought. Self-making is limited by the moment within the progression of God’s revelation in which one lives. Yet Hegel, even though his contingency begins with an idea of contingency, avoids radical historicism because rationality, according to him, depends upon the input of actual contingency. Because Fackenheim recognizes Hegel as avoiding radical historicism, he has every reason to believe that a return to Hegel can likewise avoid radical historicism. Fackenheim, then, returns to Hegel, and to the battle between philosophy and history. This is a return to the roots of the doctrine of historicism, at which moment the claims of both the eternal and also the surface of things were present. Yet, as I have suggested, Fackenheim cannot now simply reproduce Hegel’s battle: even while he reaffirms Hegel’s claim that philosophy cannot be wholly superseded by history, implicit in his returning is his affirmation that history has won the battle with philosophy. So, for instance, his return to Hegel is self-conscious: he uses the word “reflections” both in the subtitle of his 1971  essay, “Demythologizing and Remythologizing in Jewish Experience: Reflections Inspired by Hegel’s Philosophy,” and, indeed, in the subtitle of the book in which it appears (The Jewish Return into History: Reflections in 215

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the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem, emphasis added). Because it is a return—because it is self-consciously post-Hegelian—Fackenheim’s thought on Hegel is not derivative of him. Furthermore, his post-Hegelian thought is not an interpretation of him. It is based in things as they appear to us, in the here and now. It is based in the contingencies of our existence. In his return to Hegel, and in his affirmation of the necessity of the perpetuation of the battle between history and philosophy, Fackenheim seeks to return to a way of thinking that affirms the priority of things as they appear to us, even as our confidence in those appearances is authorized by our faith in the eternal. It is from this moment, the moment of the coexistence of our grounding in the contingent and our openness to the absolute, that Fackenheim seeks to derive new categories of secularity and religiosity. The derivation of Fackenheim’s thought is, then, his post-Hegelian experience of post-Hegelian history. That experience deviates radically from Hegel’s for two reasons. The first reason, as I have argued, derives from the fact that, on the one hand, history has emerged victorious from the battle between philosophy and history. Hegel, by introducing philosophical models into history, has, according to Fackenheim, essentially changed what history is. The second reason, which I would like to spend the remainder of this paper (all too briefly) discussing, derives from that irresoluble battle itself. Fackenheim, in returning to his experience as the means of informing thought, cannot accept Hegel’s idea of history. While Hegel’s experience of the contingent derives from things as they appear to man-in-general, Fackenheim’s derives from things as they appear to Jews in particular. By positing the idea of man as the starting point for future thought, the Jew must, as Michael Oppenheim writes, “first abstract himself out of the ongoing covenant between God and the Jewish people.”1 For Fackenheim, it is a deception to deny Jewish faith only to arrive at it. To put this in more Hegelian terms, Fackenheim traces Hegel’s mistake to his synthesis of the absolute and the contingent within the absolute. By recognizing that the battle between philosophy and history must take place within the contingent, Fackenheim recognizes also that philosophy and history cannot be synthesized. He attempts at once to follow 1

Michael Oppenheim, What Does Revelation Mean for the Modern Jew: Rosenzweig, Buber, Fackenheim (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985), 92. 216

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Hegel, insofar as both philosophy and history are sustained, and also to engage in debate with Hegel, whose God and whose philosophically defined history preclude Jews and Jewish experience.2 Hegel never resolved the contradiction of the persistence of Jews and Judaism: while Hegel’s philosophy precludes the continued existence and vitality of Jews and Judaism, both persisted. And this contradiction, according to Fackenheim, is at the heart of his thought. Yet Fackenheim’s Hegel is worth returning to: aware of the contradiction, Hegel recognizes the necessity of continual return to contingent history as the grounding of thought. Indeed, Fackenheim’s Hegel, in returning to his experience, found the idea of man-in-general problematic and remained uncomfortable with the anomalous fact of continued Jewish existence. Because Hegel preserves contingency, albeit in a form already too much an idea, Fackenheim recognizes in the former’s thought a continual openness to all the varieties of human existence. Hegel’s error, then, as Fackenheim argues, is an error of the philosopher, but not of the historian. For Fackenheim, the paradox of Jewish existence by which Hegel’s philosophy is undermined is not essential to the core validity of his enterprise. Hegel’s problem, what is the relationship between philosophy and history, though his solution may be faulty, is, according to Fackenheim, now a perennial human problem. And, I would argue, Fackenheim’s return to Hegel recognizes that, at our moment in history, during what Michael Morgan has called the period of “interim Judaism,”3 philosophy’s task is to identify, rather than resolve, not the eternal, but the perennial, human—and Jewish—problems. Since Hegel’s problem of rendering philosophy, and for that matter the absolute, relevant in the 2

3

So, for instance, Hegel began with the idea that Jewish history had ended with Cyrus. On the one hand, Hegel attempts to understand Judaism in its own terms and accordingly recognizes that Jewish law serves as a bridge between Jews and God. He does not, then, fall prey to the understanding of Judaism as legalism first propagated by Spinoza, and for this reason comes, according to Fackenheim, closest of all German idealist philosophers to understanding Judaism. Yet, at the same time, Hegel suggests that Judaism cannot be transfigured into philosophy until Jews free themselves from their “unfree”—what Kant might call their heteronomous—past. Michael L. Morgan, Interim Judaism: Jewish Thought in a Century of Crisis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). 217

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particular time in which he lived, and of rendering the time in which he lived relevant to philosophy, is still relevant in our time, as far as we can know, Hegel’s problem is permanent. Thus, on the one hand, it is Fackenheim’s problem, insofar as it is relevant to both his confronting and responding to evil in historical contingency (the Holocaust), and also to his construction of a post-Hegelian thinking. On the other hand, Hegel’s problem is not Fackenheim’s problem, insofar as the latter must conduct a self-conscious return to Hegel, or must, so to speak, temporally “skip over” the period of what Leo Strauss has called the “decayed Hegelianism” of the nineteenth century;4 or, as Fackenheim might formulate it, his return to Hegel must dwell in, and yet respond to, the “ruptures” of the Holocaust and of philosophy in order to find that relevance. Fackenheim’s immediate adoption of Hegel’s limited historicism, despite the latter’s post-Christianity, his inability to see historical movement as anything but progressive, reflects his sense of the urgency of the problem of modern blindness to the surface of things. Hegel provides for us the sort of historicism of which we moderns are most needful: an attention to the loss of recognizing things within the context of either the standard of the eternal or the faith in the temporal, or, more accurately, both. Fackenheim’s return to Hegel requires his taking with the utmost seriousness the possibilities of philosophy’s uncovering the eternal human problems as well as revelatory experience, because the only place from which knowledge of the absolute, or revelatory experience, can arise, if it will, is from our immediate engagement with contingent things. To suggest that Fackenheim is not an Hegelian denies the possibilities of a philosophy which lays claim to the absolute and of a specifically Jewish philosophy. To suggest that Fackenheim is an Hegelian does not remain with the surface of things; rather, it notes the commonalities between their thought and does not question the root of those commonalities. Ironically, it is precisely this that Fackenheim, in his work on Hegel, fights: the acquiescence to historicism insofar as it builds from an experience of the history of thought rather than from the experience of history itself. To combat the historicist destruction of all thought, and of all possibility of revelatory experience, Fackenheim insists on remaining 4

Leo Strauss, “Relativism,” in Relativism and the Study of Man, edited by Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins (New York: Van Nostrand, 1961), 151. 218

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with the surface of things, even as that surface contains within itself the possibility of thought’s ascension. If I am correct in my formulation of Fackenheim’s non-Hegelian Hegelianism, or his argument that philosophy must at once be “progressive” and concern itself with the permanent human problems, one side effect is that his thought cannot build into a coherent system. This situation is mirrored on a larger scale in Fackenheim the person, as he worked as both a philosopher and a Jew. He had written his great work To Mend the World (1982) with the intention of integrating these two parts of himself. When he argues for the contemporary necessity of total Jewish self-exposure, he is arguing that, as a philosopher, one must remain open to the paradox of the mutuality of the change and permanence of human thought and experience; and, as a Jew, one must be open to the possibility that one’s commitment to the ancestral religion may or may not find divine response. Whether Fackenheim’s methodology in this matter can be hermeneutically validated seems to me to be beside the point. Fackenheim presents us with a challenge: not to explore his thought with a mind to understand how it fits into the philosophical tradition or the history of thought, but to discover whether he was right, whether what he wrote was true to human thought and experience. His most persuasive argument for both the primacy of history over philosophy and also the mutuality of philosophy and history is the way he lived and thought about his life. Fackenheim’s kindness and persistent openness—not only to me, but, so I have read and have been told, to numerous others—was evident whatever the time and place. This openness was his knowledge, deeply grounding, and grounded in, his action.

Living the Death of God in the Hope of Words: On Gillman, Jabès, Marcel, and Badiou Aubrey L. Glazer

* Aurora, immense desire of the book. O fatality, desert of ashes, had we known that the glaring morning of writing was nothing but the mirage of the beyond, where the fire is in its zenith. “The book of sharing,” he said, “is perhaps nothing but a shared hope of words of whence the dawn and the dusk—or the clarity of every key—were the arousal of the end.”1

* The original sin is not at Auschwitz. It is not in the heart of the victims, but, perhaps, in the heart of God. This is why the flames of inferno from Saint Paul are not those that elevated themselves in smoke in the crematorium furnaces. The flames of Auschwitz did nothing to purify those deported souls. [The flames] returned those [souls] with more light into nothingness.2

* From the ardor of the first fire to the mutilation of an agonizing fire, with shining words, we have bound the abyss.3

* An earlier version of this essay appeared in my Living the Death of God (Lambert Academic Press: 2009). 1 Edmond Jabès, Le Livre des Limites IV: Le Livre du Partage (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 142-143. 2 Edmond Jabès, “L’enfer de Dante,” Le Livre des Marges III: Bâtir au quotidian (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1997), 25. 3 Jabès, Le Livre du Partage, 142-143. 220

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* Living the death of God remains the inescapable task and the limitless question of every poet in the wake of the Shoah. The limitless question surrounding limits of God, the world, and the book remain. Could it be otherwise after Auschwitz? Even as the last of the living survivors is becoming a chapter in the book of history! More than a decade has come and gone, since I first traversed and analyzed the symbols of negated stone and sea to enter into the limitless tetralogy of Edmond Jabès4 called The Book of Limits, under the guidance of Neil Gillman. This belated tetralogy—so emblematic of Edmond Jabès’s œuvre—continues to affirm those initial guiding intuitions we shared through hours of conversation together. After all, who was better suited to supervise such an exploration into French literature with an ex-patriot from Toronto than an ex-patriot from Montreal! Time and time again, Neil had this way of disarming students and colleagues with his hospitality and passion for dialogue. While I would read of Jabès’ book of sharing as “a shared hope of words,”5 I experienced that shared hope in dialogue with Neil. While I would read of Jabès’ book of hospitality opening through “a total availability,”6 I could experience that total availability in dialogue with Neil. At the final moment of The Book of Limits does this preface begin again, interspersed with the posthumous remarks of Jabès on writing after Auschwitz and Gillman’s challenge to any underlying epistemology therein. Face to face with the ultimate-limit case of genocide justified and justifying the Nietzschean “death of God”—what should have been the end of the Jew and the end of humanity’s book—Jabès concludes his “Burnt Pages” at the end of The Book of Sharing with “shared hope of words.” As a poet and as a Jew, in the ashes of Auschwitz, Jabès continues his confrontation with nothingness by delimiting the abyss through the traces of that hope in words. That delimitation of the limitless abyss in the absence of God is confronted in the divine imprint of every creature’s face-to-face encounter thereafter. By daring to continue living after the death of God, the poet remains vigilant in embracing life and sharing the hope of words. 4 5 6

Jabès was born in Cairo in 1912 and died in Paris in 1991. Jabès, Le Livre du Partage, 142-143. Edmond Jabès, Le Livre de l’Hospitalité (Gallimard: Paris, 1991), 67. 221

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That sharing comes as Jabès addresses the French translation of his psychopomp, Dante Alighieri, at the University of Rome. More than Risset’s recent translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia into French, Jabès struggles with how the guiding theosophical poet par excellence, Dante, continues guiding Western literary civilization seamlessly from the medieval period to “his inhabitation today like yesterday, as one of the greatest poets of our modernity.”7 What Jabès dares addressing is the reality that the act of writing the book in “modernity is beyond time,” just as one of his psychopomps remains “untethered to time.”8 For Jabès, the Inferno of the Divina Commedia is “not the place of grief. It is the place where one creates suffering. It is not Evil. Evil resides within us. We cannot be used as the place of Inferno.”9 Jabès is attempting to distinguish between Evil that is intrinsically human, and the creative act of writing that makes space for the resultant suffering. In his own writing and teaching, Gillman encouraged others to see that very creative act as a ritual to explore and heal that suffering. Furthermore, contrary to any post-Pauline theology, Jabès claims that the victims of the Shoah remain blameless and should categorically never be seen as martyrs. The Evil that nearly completely annihilated six million—men, women and children, Jews, communists, and homosexuals—that Evil resides still in the hearts of human beings. Even if the category of “absolute evil” remains philosophical quandary,10 Jabès’ 1997 reflections in the ashes of Auschwitz serve as a sobering response to insightful albeit naïve universalist post-Pauline philosophy of Alain Badiou.11 Jabès is willing to lay his cards on the table—namely, no philosophy could provide sufficient explanation or salvation for those 7 8

9 10 11

Jabès, “L’enfer de Dante,” 20. Ibid. More recently, I am indebted to Martin Cohen for his application of the psychopomp to Jewish literature, specifically its role in reading what he calls Mishnah for moderns, see Martin S. Cohen, The Boy on the Door on the Ox: An Unusual Spiritual Journey Through the Strangest Jewish Texts (Aviv Press: New York, 2008). Jabès, “L’enfer de Dante,” 21. Alain Badiou, L’ethique Essai sur la conscience du Mal (Paris: Editions Hatier, 1998); Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (New York: Verso, 2001). Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: La fondation de l’universalisme (Paris: PUF, 1997); Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). 222

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millions of decimated souls. While Jabès suggests that those souls murdered in the Shoah return to the nothingness from which they emerged, in the process there is no purging of humanity’s intrinsic dual nature. To see inside that smoke of the crematory furnaces, some kind of purging crucifixion implicates a sort of complicitity in naming that atrocity a “Holocaust” (i.e., a total sacrifice of a religious nature)12 rather than what it truly was—a Shoah (i.e., an utter destruction). In her translation of Inferno, Risset’s preface evokes Auschwitz as that very time-space, while Jabès contrasts the word “Inferno” (closed unto itself in Evil) with “God” (open to the infinite without limit).13 Whereas Jabès dares to read the nothingness after Auschwitz as a site for rebirthing God, Badiou insists that the “eternity of truths must be compatible with the singularity of their appearance” and that such a truth of the appearance of eternity in time was “created without any God.”14 However, Auschwitz must guide any future reading of Inferno by the reality that: “Yes, Auschwitz, perhaps, has taught death some remorse. Killing, finally, for salvation.”15 Locating Evil in the heart of every human renews the urgency of what Lévinas called for as an Ethics as First Philosophy,16 but for Jabès becomes an Ethics as the Foundation 12

13 14 15 16

By the sixteenth century, l’holocauste in French comes to denote a sacrifical offering completely consumed. It is derived in the eleventh century, from the Christian Latin translation of holocaustum, namely a sacrifice which the victim offers to God which is entirely consumed by fire. The Ecclesiastical Greek translation, holokauston, is derived from holos, meaning entirely, combined with kauston, meaning burnt. It is only by the nineteenth century that this denotative meaning comes to connote genocide and is then used by François Mauriac (ca. 1958) to replace the Hebrew word Shoah; Le Robert: Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française, ed. Alain Rey (Paris: 1992), s.vv. “holocaust,” “shoah.” Jabès, “L’enfer de Dante,” 24. Alain Badiou, Second Manifesto for Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 27, 113. Jabès, “L’enfer de Dante,” 25. For some of the recent reflections on this lasting influence of Lévinas, see Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Lévinas for Philosophy, Literature and Religion, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak (New York: Routledge, 1995), esp. 39106. Compare with Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller, “L’œil de Dieu: Lévinas lisant Jabès,” Edmond Jabès: l’éclosion des énigmes, ed. Daniel Lançon and Catherine Mayaux (Saint-Denis, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2007), 116-132, esp. 129-130. 223

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Stone of Poetics. If “original sin” does not categorically exist within those blameless victims (shudder to think!) but “perhaps in the heart of God,”17 then we are still living after the death of that heartless God. The Jabèsian project remains one of rehabilitating Ethics as the Foundation Stone of Poetics and in the process catalyzing the death and rebirth of the Name of God. To return for a moment to the original intention of this research that culminated circa 1999, I was seeking to complete an M.A. in Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America under the supervision of Professor Neil Gillman, who had an affinity for ritual studies as well as contemporary French religious existentialists such as Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973, Paris).18 The challenge Gillman posed at that time was to articulate a compelling way of thinking after Auschwitz that would challenge the reigning “death of God” theology espoused back in 1966 by Richard Rubenstein. At the same time, I was immersing myself in the formal academic study of Kabbalah under the mentorship of Dr. Elliot R. Wolfson at New York University. The research before you remains true to that moment of discovering a new correlation in my thinking, namely, how Continental Philosophy and Poetry read Jewish Thinking. In returning to Gillman’s initial challenge that I write an epistemology of Jabès’s theosophical poetry, only now do I truly appreciate the gravity of that challenge. At the time, in attempting to limit the scope of my research, I decided to bracket any comparisons or correlations to Jabès’s œuvre, including Gillman’s explorations of the epistemological underpinnings in the French writings of Gabriel Marcel. As an existentialist philosopher, despite his conversion to Christianity in 1929, Marcel remained highly iconoclastic in his preferred writing forms, including the diary and the play: In Marcel’s own philosophical writings, substance has been wedded to form. He is most comfortable with two forms of expression: the diary and the drama. The former—published in three volumes of extracts—is literally a work-book, a collection of tentative, disconnected excursions into various philosophical issues, 17 18

Jabès, “L’enfer de Dante,” 25. Neil Gillman, Gabriel Marcel on Religious Knowledge (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980). 224

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which, with its false starts, its internal dialogue and persistent self-criticism, its detours as well as its slowly but progressively cumulative character, is a perfect illustration of what Marcel means by the phrase “philosophical exploration.”19

In this sense, Jabès follows his own philosophical exploration where substance is also wedded to form in his own work-books. Although one could describe Jabès’s subway work-books as parallel to Marcel’s war work-books20 in terms of its internal dialogue and its cumulative character, Jabès’s exploration takes its formal cue from the rabbinic dialogue of the canonical Talmuds and the Zohar. Whereas, in France, Marcel’s idiosyncratic form may have perplexed the Christian reader, Jabès’s idiosyncratic form served almost as a familiar guide for the perplexed Jewish reader. Both philosophical explorations, however, remain subversive in their unstinting commitment to searching for the divine amidst an avowedly secular French culture whose Christianity lives on in the shadow of Nietzsche’s death of God theology. More a philosophy than a metaphysics or theology, Jabès and Marcel share that impetus for writing about God as a metaphysical uneasiness that translates into yearning.21 The issue of epistemology, that is, establishing how we know what we know, remains a low-level concern of Jabès. Like Marcel, Jabès remains committed to the ritual of writing informed by the faith that writing can be a transformational act that is never is need of verification: Not only is there no need for verification, then, the very presence of a possible verificational experience must be mistrusted; what can be verified is not God.22

To a degree, Jabès is also suspicious of any possible verificational experience of the existence of God, seeing that any such cognitive verification would reify God as a concept and obstruct the process his writing traces—that process being the death and rebirth of the Name of God. What 19 20 21 22

Gillman, Gabriel Marcel On Religious Knowledge, 17. Marcel served in the French Red Cross during World War I, ca. 1914, and was already keeping work-books during his service time. Gillman, Gabriel Marcel On Religious Knowledge, n.1, 7. Ibid., 246. 225

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continues to link the projects of Marcel and Jabès is a commitment to la pensée pensante rather than la pensée pensée,23 that is, a commitment to “thinking thought,” rather than “reified thought.” Gillman’s reading of Marcel’s project, in this regard, speaks equally to the trajectory of the Jabèsian project: In Marcel’s view, the philosopher must emphasize the process of discovery over its results because the mind cannot “… objectively define the structure of reality and then regards itself as qualified to legislate for it”; instead, the exploration of reality has to be “… pursued within reality itself to which the philosopher can never stand in the relationship of an onlooker to a picture.” The philosopher is unfaithful to reality whenever he attempts to proceed from “…conclusion to conclusion towards a Summa which … needs only to be expounded and memorized paragraph by paragraph.” The work of philosophy remains a “… perpetual beginning again” for “… in the real world … the stage always remains to be set; in a sense everything always starts from zero.”24

Starting again at zero, the writer’s perpetual creatio ex nihilo, is more than a reflection on the craft of writing. Rather, this is a nod to the lasting, normative influence of mysticism upon the process of thinking and writing what we call philosophy. Clearly, then, for both Marcel and Jabès, the attempt to impose an epistemology on either œuvre will forever be resisted. Both are too strongly committed to the itinerant stance between hope and despair25 of living the death of God, too ensconced in emphasizing the process of discovery over results, and too honest to explore their faith outside the ashes of catastrophe, thus remaining wholly committed to thinking and writing from a place of phenomenology, not epistemology. Since that time, some notable articles have emerged which give pause for further reflection upon the more concerted movement toward the question of thematics, genre, and discourse that began a decade ago. The core problem informing this research is the reality that the transcendent God of omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipresence died in Auschwitz. With the death of such a transcendent God that 23 24 25

Ibid., 18. Ibid. Ibid., 275. 226

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failed to intercede in history, there necessarily emerges from the ashes of Auschwitz the need for another God, perhaps through immanence. Whether this process of death and rebirth of the Name of God spells the end of monotheistic theology and the beginning of post-monotheistic theology remains a guiding question.26 What follows, however, is a brief summary and concomitant response to those important contributions that have arisen since my initial research, as well as further reflections as to why the Jabèsian project remains as important as ever in pointing to the next pathways of Jewish thinking in our times.

Thematics Considering that much of the impetus in turning to the poetry of a Jewish poet like Edmond Jabès was to ignite a correlation between French literature and Jewish thinking, the sustained analysis of thematics by Debrauwere-Miller27 has emerged most distinctly over the past decade. By continually interrogating the limits of Judaism and French literature after Auschwitz, we see a greater profundity of thought and analysis emerge across once-ensconced disciplines. Although her choice of examples does not match my focus on The Book of Limits, her reflections transcend the particular thematics in the given series of books. More recently, Debrauwere-Miller’s most sustained study to date is a remarkable work, somewhere between constructive theology and poetic theosophy, all emerging from a literary perspective, Envisager Dieu avec Edmond Jabès.28 By dint of Debrauwere-Miller’s willingness to enter into 26 27

28

Shaul Magid, “Jewish Renewal, American Spirituality, and Post-Monotheistic Theology,” Tikkun (May/June 2006): 62-66. See the following works by Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller: “L’infidèle chez Edmond Jabès,” Plurielles 12 (December 2005), 135-150; Envisager Dieu avec Edmond Jabés (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2007); “L’Oeil de Dieu: Levinas lisant Jabès,” L’Eclosion des énigmes. Edmond Jabès hors genre, (Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2008); “The Tree of Consciousness: The Shekhinah in Edmond Jabès’s Yaël,” Literature & Theology, 17.4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 388-406. See also, Jean-Marie Sauvage, “La “judéïté” de Jabès,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 92, 3 (2004), 461-477. Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller, Envisager Dieu avec Edmond Jabès, (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 2007). 227

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the imaginal project of reimagining God along with and through the poetry of Jabès, the line between reader and writer, mystic and poet, begins to dissolve, and in the process she produces an important guide for theosophic thinking into the twenty-first century. However, despite Del Nevo’s warnings, Debrauwere-Miller falls into the interpretive trap of reading Jabès as Kabbalah, rather than as writing in search of God after Kabbalism. Del Nevo’s explication in “Edmond Jabès and Kabbalism after God”29 should have reiterated the importance of seeing Jabèsian mysticism as a “deflection” rather than a derivation of Kabbalah.30 Notwithstanding this weakness of a method that backward maps this contemporary writing onto a medieval theosophy, there is an important section of Debrauwere-Miller’s Envisager Dieu avec Edmond Jabès that deserves further reflection. Her work divides the figuration of God from its defiguration; thus part two is where Debrauwere-Miller attempts to articulate the death of God theology relative to the Shoah.31 Transitioning from descriptions of an eclipsed and effaced God to the divine in exile, Debrauwere-Miller opens the possibility after Lévinas of fidelity without faith.32 In conclusion, she reiterates the Jabèsian trope of a Judaism after God, which does not necessitate atheism.33 By identifying the three stations of doubt, solitude, and revolt as central to any relationship with God,34 Debrauwere-Miller misses the aforementioned itinerant nature of the Jabèsian project that necessarily oscillates between hope and despair. 29 30

31 32 33 34

Matthew Del Nevo, “Edmond Jabès and Kabbalism after God,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 65.2 (1997), 403-442. For instance, see Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller, “The Tree of Consciousness: The Shekhinah in Edmond Jabès’s Yaël,” 338-406, wherein Debrauwere-Miller offers a preliminary analysis of the kabbalistic thematics and the reconstitution of the Shekhinah as Yaël-Shekhinah throughout the Book of Questions. While her engagement with kabbalistic thematics is passionate (despite its dilettantism), the method itself is problematic. There are some foundational assumptions about gender and representation with rabbinic textuality (i.e., Talmud and midrash) that resound as monolithic in her recounting thereof, despite the nuance of this genre of Jewish literature, ibid., “The Tree of Consciousness: The Shekhinah in Edmond Jabès’s Yaël,” 404n12. Debrauwere-Miller, Envisager Dieu avec Edmond Jabès, 155-254. Ibid., 197-198. Ibid., 262. Ibid., 274. 228

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Regardless, Debrauwere-Miller sees these stations as essential steps in the transfiguration of God, from a god with divinity to a god with humanity.35 There is the possibility of God rebirthing after the death of God.36 But it is not as anthropocentric as Debrauwere-Miller suggests vis-à-vis her understanding of Lurianic Kabbalah. While there is divine pathos and human quietism that develops in later Hasidic works, Lurianic Kabbalah itself poses the aspirant as the channel through which ritual efficacy reveals gnosis of the divine. The world’s need for rectification or tiqqun happens through human-divine agency known as theurgy that Lurianic Kabbalah carries forward and transforms from its medieval paradigm.37 In this sense, the Jabèsian project of writing poetry through the ritual effacement and revelation of the Name of God is also itinerant, always shifting somewhere between theurgy and theosophy, between revealing and concealing, between hope and despair.

Genre The question of genre remains important. Specifically, what kind of writing is Jabès actually creating here? Is it French symbolist poetry? Is it philosophic aphorism? Or is it some kind of kabbalistic theosophy? With the establishment of an Edmond Jabès archive at the Bibliothèque Nationale as well as their recent issuing of Portrait(s) d’Edmond Jabès,38 there has been great effort to bring this poet more squarely into the canon of French belle lettres. In representing the stranger par excellence who takes on French citizenship and identity, Jabès’ œuvre stands as a critical bridge into the second half of the twentieth century. The proximity of Jabèsian discourse to Max Jacob, Maurice Blanchot, René Char, and Michel Leiris, as well as Jacques Derrida, indicates the poet’s degree of 35 36 37

38

Ibid., 277. Ibid., 275-277. While beyond the scope of this investigation, one really must consider how Scriptural narratives of origin are radically transformed in a cosmogonic rereading of history. For example, in Lurianic Kabbalah, just one nuance that Debrauwere-Miller completely misses in her reductionist readings, see Shaul Magid, From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbalah (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008). Steven Jaron ed., Portrait(s) d’Edmond Jabès (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1999). 229

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influence over the question of writing and of being-in-the-book. Jabès’s once marginal status as exile comes full circle into the center of French belle lettres with Académie française president Jean-Pierre Angremy’s prefatory endorsement of Portrait(s). The question of genre, however, remains, and it is duly addressed by returning to the form of the aphorism. By confronting the death of God theology in Edmond Jabès as a post-Nietzschean midrash,39 Hawkins suggests a critical mode of situating the unique forms that arise from the Jabèsian project. By juxtaposing the aphoristic style of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche with the rabbinic hermeneutics of midrash or exegesis, what comes to the fore is a newfound appreciation of the forms so redolent in Jabès’s œuvre. What for so long enchanted and dumbfounded the literary critics is now seen for what it is—a critical interstitial genre that correlates philosophic aphorism and theosophy. How? By way of doing midrash in the French language. I would only add here that Jabès midrash is so profound that he shares an imaginal landscape with poets like Paul Célan, who also writes in an exilic language. Whether writing in French (Jabès) or German (Célan), what these correlations in philosophic aphorism and theosophy share is their willingness to draw upon the dialectical Hebrew imaginal40 and translate that imaginality back into their given language of exile.

Discourse Of all the articles that have come to light since completion of my research, I shall now briefly address the most important. Much of this research deals with the difficulty of the nature of discourse itself, namely that interstice between poetry and theosophy after the Shoah. A further articulation of the problèmatique fueling my research circa 1999  were the proceedings of ongoing cultural colloquia at Centre culturel inter 39 40

Beth Hawkins, “Perpetuating the Death of God: Edmond Jabès’s Post-Nietzschean Midrash,” Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy, 10.2 (2001), 341-372. Ariane Kalfa, “Edmond Jabès et la lettre hébraïque,” Edmond Jabès: l’éclosion des énigmes, ed. Daniel Lançon and Catherine Mayaux (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2007), 101-115. Kalfa locates this dialectic as holding between the particular and universal, between proximity and distance: see also p. 113. 230

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national de Cerisy41 in France dedicated to the poetry and thought of Edmond Jabès, but these never appeared on the radar of libraries and academic indices in North America or Israel. Thanks, however, to French colleagues Florian and Florence deLoup, who were researching in New York between 2000 and 2002, I was introduced to this important source (albeit after the fact). Within the proceedings of the Cerisy colloques from 1989 as well as 2007, there remain a number of important articles addressing similar themes to the research at hand. The spirituality of silence after the Shoah42 is one way of delimiting the limitations of representation after Auschwitz. It is a limitation facing anyone attempting to read or write about Jabès. Granted that Adorno recanted his prohibition on writing poetry after Auschwitz once he had discovered Célan’s poetry, Walter addresses another facet of this problématique. Namely, after the profound horror of the Shoah, creativity, if it is still possible, must begin from the place of a spirituality of silence. From the silence of those ashes a new language can be reborn. Just how this new language works is complex. Much of the complexity revolves around just how Jabès engages in Kabbalah, neo-Kabbalah, or some form of “Kabbalese.” While implicit in my own work at the time of composition, my intuitions were confirmed by reading Matthew Del Nevo. In his thoughtful article “Edmond Jabès and Kabbalism after God,”43 the importance of seeing Jabèsian mysticism as a “deflection” 41

42

43

Founded in 1952 by Anne Heurgon-Desjardins, Le Centre culturel international de Cerisy continued the initiative of Paul Desjardins from 1910  to 1939  for communal discourse on themes at once artistic, literary, philosophic, political, and social, as well as focused on outstanding personnae of the generation. By 1972 this cultural institute became a public organization known as the Association of Friends of Pontigny-Cerisy, increasing its cross-cultural exchange. Currently the cultural institute is directed by Edith Heurgon and Catherine Peyrou, hosting dozens of symposia at the château de Cerisy-la-Salle. To date there have been over two hundred colloquia and numerous publications. Given the unique background of this cultural institute, it is curious that the proceedings of its colloquia have not been registered on North American academic indices, but there appears to remain a divide between cultural and academic institutes. Guy Walter, “La spiritualité du silence aprés la Choah dans Le Livre des questions,” Écrire le livre Autor d’Edmond Jabés: Colloque de Cerisy, ed. R. Stamelman and M. A. Caws, (Champ Vallon, 1989), 71-86. Matthew Del Nevo, “Edmond Jabès and Kabbalism after God,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 65.2 (1997): 403-442. 231

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rather than a derivation of Kabbalah remains an important distinction. The project of backward-mapping this contemporary writing back onto a medieval theosophy—in light of Del Novo’s observations44 as well as Jabès’s comments on his own writing process in interviews—does little justice to Jabès’s genius, which is thoroughly contemporary. Anachronistic mapping is a trap I attempted to avoid, despite indications in my thinking a decade ago that teetered in that direction. In terms of my own written reflections since the formal closure of research in 1999, I have only published a minor digression in an otherwise extended PhD study on contemporary Israeli mystical poetry.45 That represented a reflection upon the lasting influence of Jabès on the poetic mindset, even for Israeli poets writing in Hebrew.46 There also remains an element of my research concerned with anonymous authorship of mystical apperception, and it was in Jabès’s renowned trope of the Imaginary Rabbis47 that I was able to find a new way of framing the problem. These minor reflections, however, are in no way reflective of the lasting influence the Jabèsian project continues to exert upon contemporary, post-Shoah reflections on religion and spirituality. Given the “re-enchantment” of religion that is sweeping over the past generation’s “disenchantment”48 in both North America and Europe, it is 44 45

46 47

48

Del Nevo, “Edmond Jabès and Kabbalism after God,” 403-442. Aubrey L. Glazer, “Aië, E—i—o: Poetry of Fragmentation after Auschwitz in Jabès and Célan,” Chapter 2.2, in Contemporary Hebrew Mystical Poetry: How It Redeems Jewish Thinking (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009), 47-58. Only recently was Livre des Questions translated into Hebrew. Aubrey L. Glazer, “Reading the Writing of Zohar: Jabès Imaginary Rabbis,” Chap. 3.29 in Fractured Fragments Sitting in Travail: Afterwords on (Re)Birthing Redemption in Hebrew Hermeneutics, Ph.D. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2005). The notion of disenchantment (after Durkheim, Marx, and Weber) in America via Protestantism, with roots in the Hebrew Bible, was articulated by Berger in the 1960s: see Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociologial Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor, 1990), 111, 113, 118, 120, etc. However, Berger has had to adapt his view of disenchantment to the reality of a rising re-enchantment, see Peter Berger, ed. The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999). Compare with William H. Swatos Jr., “Enchantment and Disenchantment in Modernity: The Significance of ‘Religion’ as a Sociological Category,” Sociological Analysis, 44.4 (1983), 321-338. More recently, however, the shift of examination has moved from the sociological to the history and philosophy of ideas, for example see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007). 232

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fitting that space is being devoted to considering how the Jabèsian project might serve as an elixir to growing (mis)perceptions of anti-Western fundamentalism49 and secular humanism.50 What the Jabèsian project elicits is the possibility of renewing the category of “religion” in the face of rising atheisms,51 and expanding the scope of Judaism in the face of a pattern of interiorization toward the sovereign self.52 Judaism as a form of religious praxis and activism is again possible.53 And from the ongoing discourse between Jabès and Levinas, an ethics of re-envisioning God is possible.54 How do these insights then affect language in religion? After Scholem’s reflection on linguistic theory and the Name of God, that elusive Name continues to inspire exploration.55 That aforementioned issue of floating signs culminates in an ultimate signification that reveals all and thus nothing, reiterating Scholem’s conclusion of the “meaninglessness of the Name of God.”56 By revealing this doubly concealed meaning of the Name as undergirding the paradoxical centrality of a revelation, the only hope for recovering meaning in an age of infinite deferral then lies with the poet. That is as far as Scholem can 49

50 51

52 53

54 55 56

Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West (New York: Doubleday, 2009); Aziz Al-Azmeh and Effie Fokas, eds., Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Compare with Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld, In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions without Becoming a Fundamentalist (New York: HarperOne, 2009). Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007). I have in mind the rise of the “village atheists”; for example see: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Mariner Books, 2008); Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, New York, W. W. Norton, New York 2005; Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2009). Arnie Eisen and Steven M. Cohen, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000). Edward K. Kaplan, “Edmond Jabès et le renouveau du religieux,” in Edmond Jabès: l’éclosion des énigmes, 133-143; Jean-Marie Sauvage, “La Judéïté de Jabès,” in Recherches de science religieuses, 92.3 (Paris: 2004), 461-477. Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller, “L’œil de Dieu: Lévinas lisant Jabès,” in Edmond Jabès: l’éclosion des énigmes, 116-132. William D. Franke, “Le Nom de Dieu comme vanité du language au fond de tout mot selon Edmond Jabès,” in Edmond Jabès: l’éclosion des énigmes, 249-260. Gershom Scholem, “The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbalah,” Diogenes 79-80 (Ascona: Eranos), 194. 233

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take us, but the linguistic nature of the Hebrew imaginary continues to concatenate.57 Here again we encounter the need for reclaiming the task of the theosophical poet who confronts the truth of the void to encounter God anew.58 Finally, to return to the recurring motif of time and space. A major focus of our original research, time-beyond-time and the place-of-nonspace, finds further exploration in a minor, posthumous work of Jabès (ca. 1993).59 In this minor treatise, Çela a eu lieu, according to Mole, there is an attempt at mise-en-scène by Jabès of the very atemporality and the utopia that never arrives nor has a place within the book.60 The utopian book for Jabès can never fully arrive, remaining anti-Heideggerean to its core. Not content with the state of “thrownness”61 into the world to simply exist in the sovereign self’s focus on being there for oneself alone, the Jabèsian book remains estranged, in exile.62 By continually moving through this discontinuity outside of time and in the non-place of writing that precedes the book, like the speculations of quantum physicians today, Jabès as theosophical poet continues searching the void for traces of infinity.63 Ironically, in crossing boundaries and 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Ariane Kalfa, “Edmond Jabès et la lettre hébraïque,” in Edmond Jabès: l’éclosion des énigmes, 101-115. Ibid.,101. Gary D. Mole, “Le temps du hors-temps, le lieu du non-lieu dans Çela a eu lieu,” in Edmond Jabès: l’éclosion des énigmes, 285-296. Mole, “Le temps du hors-temps, le lieu du non-lieu dans Çela a eu lieu,” 286. Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh, nos. 135-137 (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), 127-129. Mole, “Le temps du hors-temps, le lieu du non-lieu dans Çela a eu lieu,” 294. The origin of “infinity” in the Greek philosophers and mathematicians can be traced from Pythagoras to Zeno to Eudoxus and Archimedes, through the Golden Age, while its origin in Jewish thought appears in (at least in written form) in medieval kabbalah. See Amir D. Aczel, The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah and the Search for Infinity (New York: Washington Square Press, 2000), 11-45; see also Daniel C. Matt, God & the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony Between Science & Spirituality (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publication, 1998). I am grateful to Bob Schack for sharing an ongoing dialogue with me since 2005 as to the important correlations of Cantor’s infinity with that of the theosophical poet. What follows is a brief summation and response to the challenges intrinsic to our ongoing discourse together. Regarding the concept of “infinity,” the speculations of poetry and quantum physics intersect often in a shared desire to record and express the unknowable within language systems. 234

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disciplines in the search for truth, this again points to the theatrical element of the Jabèsian project,64 and the need for its translation into performance through what Legendre calls inècriture.65 The need to enact ritual transformance in embodied dialogue with the other continues to bring the urgency of the Jabèsian project forward. This study remains a preliminary step in that search for rebirthing an embodied language of the self-effacing Name.

64

65

The hidden hand conjoining poetry and science requires further consideration through the category of «la transpoétique»; for a preliminary investigation in this direction, see Michel Camus, Transpoétique: La main cachée entre poésie et science (Québec: Éditions Trait d’Union, 2002), 47-79. Infinity is a very useful mathematical tool, easily defined and expressed, but modern thought has revised, somewhat, the carry-over of the concept of infinity to the natural, physical world. Consider the founder of set theory, Georg Cantor, and his definition of infinity, as he once remarked: “…if I know that a concept signifying an existing entity [ein Sein] is internally consistent, then the idea of Almighty God forces [zwingt] me to think about the entity signified by this concept to be is some way realizable in actuality,” meaning the entity is possible, even if the nature of its existence is at present unclear. Infinity cannot be recognized unless it is inborn, since infinity “even inhabits our mind [Geiste].” See Georg Cantor, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Georg Olm, Hildesheim 1962, 375. In this regard, Cantor’s insights have profound implications, not only for mathematics, but also for philosophy and theology, see Adam Drozdek, “Beyond Infinity: Augustine and Cantor,” Laval théologique et philosophique, 51.1 (Février 1995): 127-140. Further reflection upon Cantor’s Aleph based analysis of infinities is necessary, which works well in mathematics but other than in the application of set theory to language has no real physical applications at all. This suggests then that there is probably no physical correlative for the term “infinity”— there is no thing that “goes forever.” See Joseph W. Dauben, “Georg Cantor and Pope Leo XIII: Mathematics, Theology, and the Infinite,” Journal of the History of Ideas 38.1 (1977); idem, Georg Cantor: his mathematics and philosophy of the infinite (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). Therefore, using infinity to describe characteristics of God is physically meaningless, and should be done, if at all, only in a poetic or metaphorical sense. How fitting then that the theosophical poet and the quantum physicist in this case are both Jews. In 1989, Pierre-Antoine Villemaine and Gisèle Renard adapted Livre des Questions into a performance piece for theater. See Mole, “Le temps du hors-temps, le lieu du non-lieu dans Çela a eu lieu,” 287n8. I would also acknowledge that the Jabèsian project, especially Livre du Dialogue (i.e., from 1984 onwards), is deeply intertwined with the dialogical theater of Mikhaïl Bakhtin that needs the participation of the other, see Mole, “Le temps du hors-temps, le lieu du non-lieu dans Çela a eu lieu,” 287. 235

Index Abelard, Paul, 90 Abraham, 54, 69, 85, 116, 117n17, 141, 172, 175 Adam, 28, 36, 52, 172, 174, 177 Adler, Felix, 185n11, 187-191, 197-203, 205, 207-209 Adler, Samuel, 187 Adorno, Theodor, 231 aggadah, 88, 116-118, 135 Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, 76 Akiva, Rabbi, 137 Albanese, Catherine, 184 Alfarabi, 136 Alighieri, Dante, 222 Divina Commedia, 222, 223 Altmann, Alexander, 65 Angremy, Jean-Pierre, 230 Antin, Mary, 191 Promised Land, 191 Appiah, Anthony, 189, 190 Aristotle, 90 Augustine, 90 Ba’al Shem Tov, 76, 79 Badiou, Alain, 222, 223 Bellow, Saul, 196 Ben David, Anan, 115 Benedict XVI (Pope), 92, 101 Jesus of Nazareth, 101 Berger, Peter, 134 Blanchot, Maurice, 229 Borges, Jorge Luis, 76 Borowitz, Eugene, 13, 89, 143 Bourne, Randolph, 190n27, 202, 204, 205nn74-75, 206, 208 Buber, Martin, 16, 46-47, 63, 66, 74, 76, 99, 180-181 Cambodia, 58 236

Index

Cantor, Georg, 235n63 Carlebach, Shlomo, 163, 167 Célan, Paul, 230 Char, Rene, 229 Christianity, 36, 40, 86, 89-94, 95-97, 99-102, 109, 173, 183, 186, 193, 195, 200, 225 Cohen, Arthur, 203, 207 If Not Now, When? 207 Cohen, Gerson, 119 Cohen, Mitchell, 190 Cohen, Steven M., 131, 143 commandment, 22, 25-26, 37, 68, 80, 96, 146, 148-149; see also: mitzvot Conference for Alternative in Jewish Education (CAJE), 15 Conservative Judaism, 12, 14, 130-131, 143, 147, 148, 151, 166, 169 Conservative Judaism (publication), 12, 108, 120, 130 Cooper, Neil, 168 Cover, Robert, 110 Darfur, 58 Darwin, Charles, 66, 82 Debrauwere-Miller, Nathalie, 227-229 Envisager Dieu avec Edmond Jabès, 227, 228 Del Nevo, Matthew, 228 DeLoup, Florence, 231 DeLoup, Florian, 231 “Demythologizing and Remythologizing in Jewish Experience,” 211, 215 Derrida, Jacques, 229 Dewey, John, 35, 181, 201 Dissent Magazine, 190 Dorff, Elliot N., 12, 13 Knowing God, 19, 25, 30, 38 To Do the Right and the Good, 25 Dorff-Reisner-Nevins, 130-131, 145, 146 Durkheim, Emile, 134, 181, 189, 196, 201, 206 Dworkin, Ronald, 112-113, 114, 147 Edwards, Jonathan, 183 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 183 237

Index

Emmett, Dorothy, 34 Eve, 28, 36, 52 Existentialism, 11, 13, 15-16, 210, 224 Einstein, Albert, 36 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 183 Fackenheim, Emil, 16, 210-219 God Within, The, 211 Jewish Return into History, The, 216 Religious Dimension of Hegel’s Thought, The, 211, 213 To Mend the World, 219 Flew, Anthony, 20 Frankus, Israel, 124 Friedman, Debbie, 167 Gaon, Saadya, 100, 118, 119 Geiger, Abraham, 115, 187 Gideon, 53 Gillman, Neil, 8-9, 10-17, 18-19, 42-49, 50, 65, 104, 130, 135, 143, 144, 147, 148, 151, 182, 188-189, 210, 221, 222, 224, 226 Death of Death, The, 16, 19 Sacred Fragments, 10, 11, 19, 43, 44, 47, 48, 104, 105, 182 Way into God, The, 19 Gilman, Sander, 196 Glazer, Aubrey, 16 Glazer, Nathan, 194n42 God, 10-13, 15, 18, 52-56, 70-73, 75, 83-86, 91, 96, 99-101, 103, 108, 134136, 145, 159, 176, 192, 200, 212, 215-217 death of, 16, 40, 61, 221, 224-226, 228-230 depiction of, 16, 25-29, 31-36, 40-41, 68, 85 love, 37, 69, 79, 81, 83, 100, 149, 150, 171 nature of, 26, 29, 31, 35-37, 45, 59-60, 63-64, 109-112, 202, 204 perception/knowledge of, 13, 19-23, 26, 29-30, 36-37, 46, 50-51, 57, 61-62, 79, 93-94, 175, 211 service of, 68-69, 70, 74, 77, 79-80, 84, 172-173 will of, 26, 45, 105-106, 111, 115-118, 128-129, 133, 137-140, 142, 146-150 “God Talk” (Rabbinical Assembly panel), 119 238

Index

Gordis, Robert, 122n26, 171 Graetz, Heinrich, 196 Green, Arthur, 13 Radical Judaism, 66 Grossman, Susan, 145 Ha-Am, Ahad, 204 halakhah, 14, 80, 87n24, 88, 96, 97-98, 104, 108-111, 114-121, 123, 126, 130-131, 141-145, 148, 153, 159; see also: Jewish law HaLevi, Yehuda, 100, 118, 119 Halivni, David Weiss, 128-129 Hamilton, William, 160-161 Harris, Jay, 136 How Do We Know This?, 136 Harvey, Van, 22 Hasidism, 65-67, 69-77, 79, 81-82, 84-86, 96n14, 153, 197, 229 neo-Hasidism, 13, 65-67, 76, 80, 82, 85, 86 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 16, 138, 210, 211-219 Herder, Johan Gottfried, 189 Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 44, 46-47, 66, 72, 98-99, 145-147, 149, 203n68 Hess, Moses, 196 Hesse, Hermann, 76 Hirsch, Emil, 187 Hobbes, Thomas, 35 Holbrook, Clyde, 40 Holdheim, Samuel, 115 Hollinger, David, 190 Hollywood, 76 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 136 idolatry, 12, 25-27, 29-32, 37, 41, 53, 100, 116, 140, 199 Isaiah, 48, 80 Islam, 32, 36, 86, 100, 184n8 Israel, 49, 53, 97, 173, 192, 204-206, 231 land of, 158, 164-166, 171, 207 people, 79, 83, 84, 184 State of, 55, 85, 156, 204, 206 239

Index

Jabès, Edmond, 221-235 Book of Limits, The, 221, 227 Book of Sharing, The, 221 Jacob, Max 229 James, William, 181 Jesus, 92 “Jew and Trans-National America, The,” 202, 205nn74-75 Jewish law, 54, 55, 107, 114, 115n16, 123-126, 128, 130-132, 217n2; see also: halakhah Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 42, 43, 131, 143, 170, 178, 182 Jewish theology, 12, 13, 15, 50, 97, 98, 101, 212 Job, 56-57, 64, 71, 78 Judah the Nasi (Patriarch), 135, 137, 141 Judaism, 13, 15, 19, 32, 39, 44-45, 50, 52, 55-56, 60-70, 75, 82-87, 90, 95105, 109-110, 115-120, 130, 135, 137-138, 142, 145, 165, 179, 182-197, 200-209, 210-212, 217, 227-228, 233 Kabbalah Centre, The, 197 Kafka, Franz, 76 Kallen, Horace, 199, 208 Kant, Immanuel, 72, 197, 211 Prolegomenon, 72 Kaplan, Mordecai, 15, 44, 46, 62, 87, 99, 128, 145-147, 148, 170-181, 182, 185n11, 188-191, 201-209 If Not Now, When?, 207 Judaism as a Civilization, 182, 188 New Zionism, A, 204 Religion of Ethical Nationhood, The, 188, 203 Kaunfer, Elie, 151 Kierkegaard, Soren, 211 Kitsur Shulhan ‘Arukh, 75 Kohler, Kaufmann, 187 Kohut, Alexander, 187 Kushner, Harold, 62 Landes, Aaron, 167 Lazarus, Emma, 186 240

Index

Lazarus, Josephine, 186-187, 189, 191-196, 200, 207-209 Spirit of Judaism, The, 186, 191 Leiris, Michel, 229 Levin, Leonard, 14 Levin, Sheldon, 154 Levinas, Emmanuel, 43, 46, 223, 228, 233 Lewandowski, Louis, 167 Little Red Book, 75 Maggid of Mezritch, 72, 74 Magid, Shaul, 15 Maimonides, 26, 28, 31, 55, 89, 99-100, 118, 119, 122, 136, 137, 140, 178, 182 Mishneh Torah, 136 Guide to the Perplexed Marcel, Gabriel, 16, 224, 225, 226 Marx, Karl, 196 On the Jewish Question, 196 Matisyahu, 197 Matlins, Stuart, 42 Mayflower, 135 Mendelssohn, Moses, 95, 182 Meyer, Michael, 183 midrash, 15, 36, 39, 51, 55, 98, 110-111, 117n17, 136-137, 140-142, 153, 170-181, 228n30, 230 mitzvot, 16, 22, 60, 79, 81, 121-122, 140, 142, 149-150, 164; see also: commandment Mohammed, 136 Mole, Gary, 234 Morgan, Michael, 217 Moses, 48, 135-137, 139-141, 145 Myth, 12, 19, 42-43, 45-49, 72-73, 90, 99n16, 105, 116-118, 130-138, 142, 145, 148, 188, 191, 208 Nahmanides, 178 Napoleon (Bonaparte), 183 Neibuhr, H. Richard, 15 Neusner, Jacob Rabbi Talks to Jesus, A, 101 241

Index

“New Aggadah for the Conservative Movement, A,” 108 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 61, 221, 225, 230 Nozick, Robert, 23 Oppenheim, Michael, 216 Pinhas of Korzec, 66 philosophy, 11-15, 16, 18, 19, 24, 38, 43, 48, 77, 88, 90, 98-100, 119, 135, 172, 210-219, 222-226 Jewish, 8, 10, 12, 28, 57, 99-100, 218, 224 Plato, 89, 177 Republic, The, 89 Plymouth Rock, 135 Poland, 67 Portnoff, Sharon, 16 prayer, 14-15, 21, 22, 25, 28, 37n30, 71, 82-83, 121, 132, 138, 140, 141, 151162, 166-169, 199; see also: tefillah Putnam, Hilary, 23 Rashbam, 136 Redl, Nina, 13 revelation, 21-22, 25, 42, 44-46, 49, 69, 90, 94, 109, 111, 115, 117, 132, 134, 137-139, 144-145, 149-150, 215, 229 Rosenzweig, Franz, 46, 47, 55, 149 Star of Redemption, 46 Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 46 Rosner, Eugene, 168 Roth, Joel, 14, 109, 127, 130-131, 139, 143-144, 148 “Gufei Torah: The Limit to Halakhic Pluralism,” 124 Halakhic Process, The, 104, 109, 124n28 Tiferet le-Yisrael (editor), 124 Routenberg, Max, 131 Rubinstein, Richard, 16, 40n34, 224 Rumi, 73 Rwanda, 58 Salvador, Joseph, 194n41 Samson, 53 Schachter, Zalman, 65-67 242

Index

Schechter, Solomon, 138 Studies in Judaism, 138 Schindler, Alexander, 186 Schnackenburg, Rudolf, 92 Jesus in the Gospels, 92 Scholem, Gershom, 74, 233 Schuck, David, 163 Schulweis, Harold, 179 Scult, Mel, 15 Sen, Amartya, 189 Sinai, 84, 135, 137, 138, 171 Slonimsky, 62 Solomon, 175, 176 Soloveitchik, Joseph, 98 Spielberg, Stephen, 196 Spinoza, Baruch, 99, 100, 103, 139, 202, 217n2 Theological Political Treatise, 139 Stendhal, Hyman, 187 Stone, Ira, 13 Strauss, Leo, 136, 210, 218 Sulzer, Salomon, 167 Szold, Henrietta, 187 Tagore, Rabindranath, 73 Talmud, 51-52, 55, 57, 75, 85, 98, 123, 128, 135-138, 147, 225, 228n30 tefillah, 153-156, 159, 160, 161, 164n12, 168, 169; see also: prayer Tertullian, 90 Thoreau, Henry David, 183 Tillich, Paul, 17, 31, 135 Tilman, David, 167 Tolstoy, Leo, 76 Torah, 14, 28, 37, 39, 42, 49, 59-60, 69, 70, 80-81, 83-84, 87, 97-98, 115-118, 123-124, 134, 136-142, 144-150, 154, 159, 163, 175-176 “Transnational America,” 202 Tucker, Gordon, 23, 87n24, 145 Urban, Wilbur, 31 Varnhagen, Rahel, 194n41 243

Index

Varro, Marcus Terentius, 90 Vincent of Lerins, 91 Wachs, Saul, 15 Wall Street, 76 Walter, 231 Waxman, Mordecai, 131 Tradition and Change, 131 Whitman, Walt, 73, 183 Wisdom, John, 20 Wise, Isaac Meyer, 184nn8-9, 186, 208 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 89, 93 Wolfson, Elliot R., 224 Yannai, Rabbi, 51, 64 Yehoshua, A. B., 184n8 Zaddik Records, 197 Zeitlin, Hillel, 65-67, 72, 76 Yesodot ha-Hasidut, 65 Zelizer, Gerald, 154, 157n7, 160 Zionism, 81, 164-165, 185n11, 193n40, 204-205, 209 Zohar, 78, 225 Zorn, John, 197