National Scholar Updates

KOHELET’S FINAL WORD:

MORTALITY, WISDOM, AND REVERENCE

Kohelet Chapter 12

Kohelet’s final chapter brings the book to a powerful and poetic close. It is not a reversal of the skeptical tones that preceded it, but their culmination—a sober and poetic reckoning with finitude, faith, and the fragility of wisdom. Through evocative metaphor and theological reflection, chapter 12 distills the book’s major themes and delivers its final charge.

Remember Your Creator: The Poetry of Mortality (12:1–7)

The chapter opens with a directive: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth” (12:1). The verses that follow offer one of Tanakh’s most elaborate allegories—a haunting depiction of aging and dying. According to the Gemara (Shabbat 151b–152a), the breakdown of the body is illustrated through metaphor: the keepers of the house (hands) tremble, strong men (legs) bow, grinders (teeth) cease, and those who look through windows (eyes) darken.

While commentators differ on some of the specific imagery, the general message is clear: life is fleeting, and physical strength will inevitably decline. Having appeared 35 times throughout the book, the sun now darkens—its setting signals the end.^[i]

The sequence ends: “The dust returns to the earth… and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (12:7). This may hint at divine accountability beyond death—but not necessarily in the form of a developed afterlife doctrine. As Psalm 104:29–30 describes, the spirit returns to its source, emphasizing the divine origin and destination of life. Kohelet’s goal is not metaphysical speculation, but existential awakening: mortality humbles and clarifies.^[ii] As in 3:21—‘Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward?’—Kohelet gestures at the divine origin of the soul without resolving metaphysical questions.

Kohelet the Teacher: Wisdom as Spur and Anchor (12:8–12)

In verses 9–12, we learn of Kohelet not only as a seeker but also a teacher. He listened attentively (izzen), evaluated deeply (hikker), and weighed carefully. Rashbam and Ibn Ezra highlight that Kohelet neither blindly inherited nor hastily discarded tradition, but engaged it with discernment and depth. This dialectical approach is the hallmark of Kohelet’s entire discourse.

Wisdom, we are told, is like a goad—prodding the animal forward—and like well-driven nails, planted by the masters of assemblies (12:11). It guides and steadies, but can also wound. The lifestyle of Torah is not about emotional ease, but about walking in truth.

All wisdom, says Kohelet, comes from one Shepherd. This image, developed in Kohelet Rabbah and Hagigah 3b, calls for humility in the face of legitimate debate. The Arukh HaShulhan (introduction to Hoshen Mishpat) likens Torah to a symphony: the more varied the voices, the richer the music.

The End of the Matter (12:13–14)

The last verses bring the book to its conclusion: “The end of the matter, when all has been heard: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man” (12:13).

Some view this as a corrective to the book’s searching and challenging tone. However, it appears to express the message that has been unfolding all along. As Zer-Kavod observes, this is not a new idea but a summary: Kohelet has taught reverence, realism, and responsibility throughout. The same fear of God appeared in 3:14, 5:6, 7:18, 8:5, and 8:12–13. Kohelet’s conclusion doesn’t override his doubts; it distills them into a deeper commitment.

Kohelet does not promise justice on demand or clarity without struggle. But he insists that the fear of God remains both the starting point and the final aim. As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik teaches, the consciousness of mortality is not an obstacle to faith but its foundation. The fleetingness of life should not drive despair, but devotion:

The finite experience of being arouses man’s conscience, challenges him to accomplish as much as possible during his short life span. In a word, finiteness is the source of morality…For orgiastic man, time is reduced to one dimension; only the present moment counts. There is no future to be anticipated, no past to be remembered.^[iii]

Faith After the Verdict

If Rabbi Soloveitchik frames finitude as the source of moral urgency, Kohelet’s moral seriousness also resonates in more modern trials of faith—none more haunting than the one remembered by Elie Wiesel from Auschwitz: a group of Jews, in a symbolic courtroom, put God on trial—and found Him guilty. But then they turned and prayed to that very God. ^[iv]

To remember our Creator in our youth, to reflect on death without fear, to seek wisdom even when certainty eludes us—this is the life Kohelet commends. In that spirit, his final words echo not only the end of the book, but its entire sacred path: “God will bring every deed into judgment... whether good or evil” (12:14). That promise is not always visible to people—but it is the thread that holds all things together.

Epilogue to Kohelet

Kohelet’s voice remains singular in Tanakh—at once disillusioned and devout, weary and wise. Across twelve chapters, he dismantles easy theologies and inherited assumptions, only to rebuild something more honest and enduring in their place.

He begins with havel havalim—“utter futility”—not as a declaration of nihilism, but as a summons to humility. Life, he insists, is fleeting and difficult to grasp, like vapor. We seek yitron, lasting gain, but the world offers only helek—a portion, a gift. This shift—from control to gratitude—redefines what it means to live wisely.

Wealth and wisdom, Kohelet affirms, have value. But they offer no guarantees. The righteous may suffer. The wicked may prosper. Death comes to all. Rather than despair, Kohelet calls for clear-eyed, ethically grounded joy. “Eat your bread with joy,” he says, “for God has already approved your deeds” (9:7).

His realism is not resignation. It is discipline. Kohelet urges us to act, to love, to seek justice—without illusions. To fear God. To revere wisdom even when it wounds, and to live responsibly even when the world feels chaotic. In the end, his message is quiet but uncompromising: we are not asked to explain the world, only to walk wisely and righteously within it.

REVIEW ESSAY

KOHELET IN OUR TIME: 

A REVIEW OF FOUR NEW COMMENTARIES^[v]

Erica Brown, Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning (Maggid Books, 2023).

David Curwin, Kohelet: A Map to Eden (Aleph-Beta & Maggid Books, 2023).

Menachem Fisch, Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living, illuminations by Debra Band (Baylor University Press, 2023).

Yonatan Grossman and Asael Abelman, Kohelet: Sedek shel Or [Hebrew] (Maggid Books, 2023).

Introduction

            Kohelet stands apart in Tanakh—a book of searching rather than proclaiming, of questioning rather than resolving. In 2023, four new commentaries offered fresh lenses on its enigmatic voice. In an age often marked by either disconnection from religion or superficial forms of spirituality, it is imperative to pursue an authentic religious quest based on Godliness, wisdom, and intelligence. Kohelet is among the richest biblical sources for insights into this summum bonum (the highest good). As no two people are alike, readers may find the diverse approaches of these authors particularly stimulating and meaningful. 

            In approaching this review, I had initially planned on letting the four works stand in dialogue and debate over the major issues in Kohelet. Having read the books, however, I found their perspectives and methodologies so entirely different that it became more reasonable to focus on each approach separately and invite readers to dive into this illuminating world. In these volumes, we find four distinct means of exploring God’s word and the meaning of life. Each of these authors, from distinct disciplines—textual scholarship, pastoral theology, analytic philosophy, and literary midrash—contributes to the growing contemporary conversation about how Kohelet may speak religiously in a disoriented age.

Grossman and Abelman: A Model Peshat Commentary

In the spirit of his other excellent commentaries, Yonatan Grossman offers a comprehensive peshat-based approach to Kohelet, here co-authored with Asael Abelman. Their introduction covers the major critical issues, and then moves into a verse-by-verse commentary. Demonstrating command of the range of scholarship on Kohelet, they evaluate opinions carefully and judiciously.

            Although Kohelet draws from King Solomon’s life experiences, the book addresses every person’s religious experience (63). Kohelet focuses on the human condition more broadly, rather than on Israel’s unique covenantal mission. Kohelet is an inspired human voice standing before God, rather than God’s voice revealed through prophecy (21-23). 

            The expression tahat ha-shemesh (beneath the sun) appears twenty-nine times in Kohelet, and nowhere else in the rest of Tanakh. Tahat ha-shamayim (under heaven) appears three additional times. This emphasis demonstrates an entirely this-worldly perspective.

            Given this starkly anthropocentric focus, Kohelet should reflect different viewpoints than that of revealed prophecy. All people perceive the same reality that Kohelet does. On the basis of this observation, Rabbi Shimon ben Manasia maintained that Kohelet was not inspired altogether: “The Song of Songs defiles the hands because it was composed with divine inspiration. Kohelet does not defile the hands because it is only Solomon’s wisdom” (Tosefta Yadayim 2:14).^[vi]

            Though our tradition generally insists that Kohelet is divinely inspired, it is indeed written from the perspective of human wisdom.

            One of the most critical terms to define in Kohelet is hevel. It appears 38 times in the book, out of 73 occurrences in all the Tanakh. In Kohelet, hevel has a negative connotation, and is linked with ra’ah rabbah, a grave evil (2:21); inyan ra, an unhappy business (4:8); and holi ra, a grievous ill (6:2). Elsewhere it refers to vaporous ephemerality (Job 7:1–16). Hevel is linked to shav and sheker (e.g., Isaiah 30:7; 49:4; Job 9:29; 27:12; 35:16), suggesting worthlessness or senselessness. Many interpreters therefore translate hevel as “ephemeral” or “vanity.”

            However, Kohelet also describes certain permanent features of the human condition as hevel:

For sometimes a person whose fortune was made with wisdom, knowledge, and skill must hand it on to be the portion of somebody who did not toil for it. That too is futile, and a grave evil. For what does a man get for all the toiling and worrying he does under the sun? All his days his thoughts are grief and heartache, and even at night his mind has no respite. That too is futile! (2:21–23).

There is an evil I have observed under the sun, and a grave one it is for man: that God sometimes grants a man riches, property, and wealth, so that he does not want for anything his appetite may crave, but God does not permit him to enjoy it; instead, a stranger will enjoy it. That is futility and a grievous ill (6:1–2).

Therefore, the common translations are inadequate. Grossman and Abelman interpret hevel to mean that the world often seems illogical and chaotic. Knowledge of the purpose of life, or having a sense of order, is vaporous because the world lacks that order in      human perception (31–32). In this regard, their interpretation approaches that of Michael V. Fox, who translates hevel as absurd.^[vii]

Although Kohelet is steeped in biblical wisdom tradition, he also challenges many of its presumptions, including the necessary connection between a righteous life and worldly success (e.g., 7:15; 8:9–17). Similarly, Kohelet preaches diligence and condemns sloth, but concurrently is disillusioned that hard work does not always yield the expected results (e.g., 4:4–6; 9:11–12) (28, 83).

Kohelet is not a systematic work of philosophy, and therefore may have contradictions as it explores different aspects of the human condition.^[viii] Perhaps the book’s greatest contribution is its closing chapter (333–345). One of the most elusive aspects of Kohelet interpretation has been seeking an overall structure. Grossman and Abelman maintain that the repeated references to eating and drinking and enjoying life as gifts from God (2:24–25, 3:12–13; 3:22; 5:17–18; 6:12; 8:15; 9:7–10; chapters 11–12) are intended as refrains to conclude each section.

            The authors conclude by summarizing their understanding of Kohelet’s overall philosophy: 

Meaning for humankind is not rooted in the great and broad worlds of religious longing, which prods people to gather vast wisdom to become a prophet or to bring the Messiah. It occurs with the religious experience of observing the commandments, and sipping a cup of tea with mint or herbs. That is a gift from God (346).

This vision captures Kohelet’s grounded theology: joy not as distraction, but as sacred attention to the small, good things in life.

One should add that other principal lessons include fearing God, pursuing wisdom, working diligently, having religious humility, and not being obsessive over the attainment of either wisdom or wealth.^[ix] Overall, Grossman and Abelman’s commentary is an exceptional resource for learning peshat in Kohelet.

Erica Brown: Meaningful Inspiration Based upon a Peshat Foundation

Erica Brown builds her commentary on a solid peshat foundation. She relies primarily on the works of the classical midrashim and commentators for her text analysis, and also engages with contemporary scholars when they meaningfully contribute.

Brown focuses primarily on how the ideas of Kohelet are deepened through engagement with the wisdom of the world. Citing a dazzling array of quotations from works of Jewish tradition, philosophy, psychology, literature, poetry, art, contemporary sociological studies, and much more, she brings these ideas to bear on the meaning of life as reflected through Kohelet. Those inspirational ideas are the major contribution of this volume. 

            For example, Kohelet expresses chagrin over the person who has many children but is unable to enjoy his wealth: 

Even if a man should beget a hundred children and live many years—no matter how many the days of his years may come to, if his gullet is not sated through his wealth, I say: The stillbirth, though it was not even accorded a burial, is more fortunate than he (6:3). 

Kohelet declares that it is better to have been a stillborn than to experience this particular misery. Brown goes on an extended discussion of the profound sense of loss a stillborn brings its family (239–242).

            In chapter 5, Brown presents an essay filled with insights pertaining to greed, including an illuminating study profiled in The Atlantic in 2011 regarding the widespread wealth dissatisfaction of the super-rich—defined in that study by people with fortunes upward of 25 million dollars. These discussions provide a poignant illustration of Kohelet’s saying, “A lover of money never has his fill of money, nor a lover of wealth his fill of income. That too is futile” (5:9). 

            Brown’s citations from the panoply of human wisdom bring the eternal messages of Kohelet to life.

Menachem Fisch: A Philosopher’s Personal Worldview 

Menachem Fisch, emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University, writes not as a Bible commentator, but as an engaged philosopher who admires Kohelet. Fisch adopts the position of Karl Popper, who maintains that science and rationality at their best disprove ideas and propositions, and can never prove anything. Therefore, one should relentlessly pursue truth by constantly subjecting arguments to criticism (3). Kohelet’s unremitting challenges to the human condition and its wisdom assumptions promote religious and intellectual humility. Fisch thereby creates a thought-provoking lens through which to learn Kohelet.

            Fisch writes brief essays to introduce each chapter, but does not present a systematic commentary in verse-by-verse sequence. This feature makes his self-styled “philosophical commentary” readable, but also leaves a critical void in several of his central interpretations.

            For example, Fisch defines hevel as ephemeral like vapor, rather than vanity (7–8). Kohelet thus teaches how to pursue and live a meaningful life in our temporary existence. This message certainly is central to Kohelet; however, as discussed above in this chapter, hevel sometimes laments enduring situations, rather than fleeting existence. Fisch does not address the challenge to his definition that arises from these and other examples in Kohelet.

            Fisch opposes passive piety, and promotes social activism to improve the world. He deems social action a cornerstone of Kohelet’s message:

We should act to better the world to our satisfaction as best we can, while humbly acknowledging our shortsightedness as far as God’s response to our efforts is concerned (125).

To act is to introduce change into our world…. To act wisely therefore consists first of taking keen critical stock of our domains of responsibility, on the lookout for possible problems or potential trouble spots and to determine how best to confront them (132).

To support his worldview, Fisch cites a passage toward the end of chapter 3:

So I decided, as regards men, to dissociate them [from] the divine beings and to face the fact that they are beasts. For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate: as the one dies so dies the other, and both have the same lifebreath; man has no superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing (3:18–19).

He interprets these verses to mean that people who are passively pious are no better than beasts. However, Kohelet describes all human beings, who will die just like animals. Kohelet does not limit himself to passively pious people here, nor does he elevate those who take an active role in their society. 

More fundamentally, although the prophets endorse a life of God-fearing social action, this worldview is not expressed anywhere in Kohelet. When Kohelet sees oppression, he simply complains that it is appalling:

I further observed all the oppression that goes on under the sun: the tears of the oppressed, with none to comfort them; and the power of their oppressors—with none to comfort them. Then I accounted those who died long since more fortunate than those who are still living; and happier than either are those who have not yet come into being and have never witnessed the miseries that go on under the sun (4:1–3).

While Fisch’s reading reflects deep moral seriousness, the emphasis on social action may draw more from the prophetic corpus than from Kohelet itself.

            It is worth noting an added feature of this book. Fisch’s cousin, Debra Band, contributed original Kohelet-inspired artwork and extensive commentary on her pieces. Much of her oeuvre in one way or another reflects ephemerality, adding misty elements to a variety of scenes depicting the physical world. Several of her illustrations give expression to other specific ideas in Kohelet. For example, regarding her piece on the Song of the Seasons in chapter 3, she offers the following interpretation:

Qohelet meditates further on how every aspect and moment of life has its converse moment; the destined time for each is unknowable to any but God, the master of all existence. Gazing at his garden, he perceives life as a river, its origin unknowable, its endpoint obscure, each mirage-like moment subject to fluctuations and eddies that he cannot anticipate. The wall through which the stream emerges is capped by a mosaic bearing a fragment of the musical notation of Pete Seeger’s famous 1965 setting of the poem “Turn, Turn, Turn” (113).

David Curwin: A Modern Intertextual Midrash

David Curwin presents a creative network of intertextual associations. He reads Kohelet as a personal confession of King Solomon, and finds allusions to Solomon’s feelings of guilt over the mistakes he made throughout his reign. Curwin argues that Kohelet gives a voice to Solomon to repent for his sins. Curwin argues that the primary message of Kohelet is that one should not rationalize one’s sins, one should repent, and God will forgive (17). Through this process of repentance, we may return to the Garden of Eden. 

To develop his thesis, Curwin relies on an array of intertextual connections he has identified. Readers will have significantly different thresholds of what they consider convincing. When one breaks the book down into its various component sections, several arguments become more compelling than others. We will focus on two examples, one where the parallels appear to be unpersuasive (to this writer), and another which appears to be a model of how Curwin’s inventive technique can open new vistas in learning. 

Curwin connects Kohelet to the Solomon narratives in the Book of Kings. He summarizes his central thesis at the end of his volume:

However, even though we said earlier that unlike his father David, “there is no sign of Shlomo repenting,” Kohelet is evidence to the contrary…. [Shlomo] uses one long speech—the book of Kohelet—to address the mistakes of his past. He ceases rationalizing his sins and accepts God as Judge. Kohelet became his vidui (confession), which…is necessary for any authentic repentance (196–197).

To evaluate this claim, let us consider several representative examples: 

“A good name is better than fragrant oil, and the day of death than the day of birth” (Kohelet 7:1). The “fragrant oil” alludes to Solomon’s anointment as king. Kohelet wishes he never had been anointed king, but instead should have lived up to his divinely-given name of Jedidiah, God’s beloved (see II Samuel 12:24) (19–20). 

“O youth, enjoy yourself while you are young! Let your heart lead you to enjoyment in the days of your youth. Follow the desires of your heart and the glances of your eyes—but know well that God will call you to account for all such things” (Ecclesiastes 11:9). Solomon regrets the sinful indulgences of his youth, and warns readers not to emulate his behavior (20).

“Be not overeager to go to the House of God: more acceptable is obedience than the offering of fools, for they know nothing [but] to do wrong” (Ecclesiastes 4:17). Solomon bemoans the oppressive measures he imposed on his nation in order to build the Temple (23).^[x]

            There are several flaws with this line of interpretation. Solomon’s experience lies in the background of Kohelet, but Kohelet contains guidance to teach all people for all time, and not a personal confession: “A further word: Because Kohelet was a sage, he continued to instruct the people. He listened to and tested the soundness of many maxims” (12:9). Kohelet takes a painfully hard look at human experience and helps readers navigate life’s difficulties (cf. Grossman and Abelman, 63; Brown, 447). 

There also is no mention of repentance in Kohelet. Kohelet calls for a God-fearing, wise, righteous life. Although the prophets routinely promoted repentance, it is difficult to consider repentance to be the primary message of Kohelet when the concept never appears in the book. Curwin’s personal repentance model is imaginative and spiritually resonant, but ultimately ungrounded in the text’s explicit themes or language.

            It also is noteworthy that Curwin paints Solomon as regretting the sinful behavior of his youth. The Book of Kings dates Solomon’s religious decline to his old age: “In his old age, his wives turned away Solomon’s heart after other gods, and he was not as wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God as his father David had been” (I Kings 11:4). It is likewise dubious to ascribe to Solomon feelings of guilt over building the Temple, his crowning achievement. 

Even if one finds some of the literary parallels intriguing, the overall analysis belongs to the realm of Curwin’s derash. If readers are inspired by the religious message that the doors of repentance are never closed, that is all for the good.

There are more convincing analyses in the book, particularly his explorations of texts pertaining to priestly clothing, the Temple, the Garden of Eden, and Yom Kippur (137–165). Curwin begins this leg of his journey with a survey of some well-known parallels between the Garden of Eden and the Tabernacle. Given that Adam was expelled from Eden, what would it take to return to paradise? Adam and Eve began their lives free of shame and naked, and felt shame only after they sinned. Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (on Genesis 3:7) suggests that shame is a God-given instinct to remind us that we are not animals. When our bodies completely fulfill God’s commands, there is no shame. Here, Curwin draws attention to a puzzling detail of the Yom Kippur ritual: 

And Aaron shall go into the Tent of Meeting, take off the linen vestments that he put on when he entered the Shrine, and leave them there. He shall bathe his body in water in the holy precinct and put on his vestments; then he shall come out and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people, making expiation for himself and for the people. The fat of the sin offering he shall turn into smoke on the altar (Leviticus 16:23–25).

According to the plain sense of the text, the High Priest disrobes, leaves his garments in the Holy of Holies, and then emerges for the final time on Yom Kippur. Ramban is astonished: “It is completely impossible that [the Torah] would command Aaron to go to the Tent of Meeting for no reason, only to remove his clothing, be naked in God’s Sanctuary, and leave [the garments] there to rot!” (on Leviticus 16:23).  The Torah expressly outlaws such conduct, and threatens death for violating the requirement of being properly covered:

You shall also make for them linen breeches to cover their nakedness; they shall extend from the hips to the thighs. They shall be worn by Aaron and his sons when they enter the Tent of Meeting or when they approach the altar to officiate in the sanctuary, so that they do not incur punishment and die. It shall be a law for all time for him and for his offspring to come (Exodus 28:42–43; cf. Exodus 20:23).

Halakhah resolves this difficulty by reading the actions of Leviticus 16:23 as occurring after 16:25. The High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies after bathing. He therefore was dressed while in the Holy of Holies. He removed his garments prior to bathing, and left nothing behind in the Holy of Holies (Yoma 32a, Rashi).

            Nevertheless, the plain sense of the text suggests that the High Priest actually disrobed in the Holy of Holies. Is there a religious message underlying the peshat, even though this was not the applied law? Curwin maintains that the peshat suggests a return to the Eden-like state of pre-sin unashamed, naked existence.

            Unlike Adam and Eve, who failed to take responsibility for their sins and were expelled from Eden, Yom Kippur is characterized by confession of sin and atonement. Whereas the Cherubs in Eden prevented Adam and Eve from re-entering, the Temple’s Cherubs welcome the High Priest to the restored state of Eden. Curwin’s creative analysis thereby provides a stimulating interpretation to an age-old crux.

Conclusion

It is edifying to consider four diverse approaches to Kohelet at once. Grossman and Abelman are exemplars of the pursuit of peshat: painstaking analysis of the text, thorough surveying and analyzing ancient and contemporary commentaries, and a comprehensive methodology to navigate the debates and text. Brown engages readers with a plethora of insights into the human condition. Fisch’s philosophy of uncertainty and humility dovetails meaningfully with Kohelet. His emphasis on social action, while an important biblical value, is not manifest in Kohelet. Curwin offers an array of potential intertextual links between Kohelet and other biblical books, and readers are invited to determine what they find compelling within his nexus of connections.

             Kohelet challenges us to locate the sacred not only in divine revelation, but in the raw fabric of human life—marked by mortality, contradiction, and limited understanding. Each of the works reviewed here offers a distinct path toward making sense of this sacred dissonance, whether through close textual analysis, philosophical engagement, or existential reflection. Their diversity mirrors Kohelet’s own multivocal complexity and invites the reader into a dialogue rather than a conclusion. 

As the essays in this volume have sought to show, Kohelet does not resolve theological tension—it dignifies it. His voice asks not for certainty, but for reverence; not for mastery, but for humility. He sanctifies the human perspective not by answering every question, but by refusing to look away from life’s hardest truths. In reading him alongside these modern interpreters, we continue the sacred task of seeking wisdom under the sun.

APPENDIX

An online commemorative lecture by Anastatios Karababas. Program includes a traditional ‘Hashkavanah’ Memorial prayer for the Sephardic Community of Rhodes, Cos, and throughout Greece and the Balkans during the Holocaust

Mattot:

A Misunderstanding or a Leadership Triumph?

In his work, Iyyunim BeParashot HaShavua (series 1, 2002), Rabbi Elhanan Samet presents a meaningful analysis of a debate between Rabbi Yitzhak Arama (Spain, 1420-1494) and Rabbi Yitzhak Abarbanel (Spain, Italy 1437-1508). The following essay is based on Rabbi Samet’s study.

The request of the tribes of Reuben and Gad in Numbers chapter 32 appears straightforward. Having seen the fertile grazing lands east of the Jordan, they ask Moses for permission to settle there rather than receive territory west of the river. Moses responds with surprising severity. He accuses them of abandoning their brethren and compares them to the spies whose discouraging report had doomed an entire generation to die in the wilderness.

Why does Moses react so strongly? Were the tribes guilty of selfishness, or did Moses misread a generation that was fundamentally different from the one that had left Egypt? The medieval commentators offer two sharply different perspectives, and each illuminates an important dimension of leadership and communal responsibility.

The first perspective, advanced by Abarbanel and associated with Ramban, sees Moses’s rebuke as based upon a misunderstanding. The tribes never intended to avoid military service. Their request focused on where their families and livestock would reside, not on whether they would participate in the conquest of Canaan. The key phrase appears at the end of their initial request: “Do not bring us across the Jordan.” According to this reading, they refer to their inheritance and permanent residence, not to their personal participation in the campaign.

From this perspective, the episode reveals a growing gap between Moses and the generation preparing to enter the Land of Israel. Unlike the generation of the spies, these Israelites have already demonstrated courage in battle against Sihon and Og. They are not fearful of conquest. They are eager and prepared to fight. Just as Abarbanel sees tensions between Moses and the younger generation in the episodes of Mei Merivah (Numbers 20) and Baal Peor (Numbers 25), so too here he detects a leader whose assumptions are shaped by the failures of an earlier generation.

The second perspective, developed by Rabbi Yitzhak Arama in his Akedat Yitzhak, views Moses’s response very differently. Moses correctly perceived a grave danger lurking beneath the tribes’ request. Even if Reuben and Gad did not intend to evade military service, their proposal threatened to create the same practical result as the sin of the spies. Once a large and fertile territory had already been conquered, why continue crossing the Jordan? 

Moses therefore confronts not a crisis of faith but a crisis of national destiny. Unlike the spies, Reuben and Gad do not doubt God’s promises or fear the Canaanites. Nevertheless, their request could weaken the nation’s resolve to complete its mission. The danger lies not in their motives but in the consequences their proposal might produce.

Several details in the text support Rabbi Arama’s reading. After Moses’s rebuke, the Torah records a break in the narrative and then states, “They approached him and said…” Why did they need to approach him again? The Akedah suggests that the closed parashah break indicates a pause during which the tribal leaders consulted among themselves and reformulated their proposal. They did not merely clarify a misunderstanding; they strengthened their commitment.

Indeed, their revised proposal goes well beyond what would have been necessary to correct Moses’s impression. They promise not only to fight alongside their brethren but to march “before” them. They pledge to remain engaged until all the tribes are securely settled in their inheritances. This expanded commitment later finds fulfillment when the eastern tribes participate in the conquest under Joshua before returning home.

Yet even if Rabbi Arama is correct, the story ultimately highlights the greatness of the new generation. Moses identifies a potentially dangerous challenge, but the tribes respond not with resentment or defiance. Instead, they rise to the occasion. They place themselves at the forefront of the national effort and transform a questionable request into an extraordinary demonstration of solidarity.

The debate between Abarbanel and the Akedah therefore centers on a larger question: Is the Torah criticizing Moses or praising him? Abarbanel emphasizes Moses’s inability fully to appreciate the character of the generation about to inherit the land. Rabbi Arama emphasizes Moses’s courage in confronting a threat before it matured into disaster. For Abarbanel, the episode exposes the limitations of an aging leader; for the Akedah, it demonstrates the enduring necessity of vigilant leadership.

Perhaps the enduring lesson is that both insights contain truth. The generation entering the land was indeed different from the generation that left Egypt. It possessed confidence, initiative, and a willingness to fight for the nation’s future. At the same time, Moses’s leadership ensured that this strength would be directed toward collective responsibility rather than tribal self-interest. History did not have to repeat itself. Through courageous leadership and a willing response from the people, a moment that could have echoed the tragedy of the spies instead became a model of national unity and shared destiny.

Angel for Shabbat—Matot/Masei

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel

In John Steinbeck’s story, “The Leader of the People,” an old man is fixated on his past role leading a wagon train across America in the 19^th century. He endlessly repeats stories of his adventures, much to the annoyance of his son-in-law. His daughter is more sympathetic; she understands that the meaning of her father’s life was bound to his journey across the country. His heart must have sunk when he first caught sight of the Pacific Ocean; the goal had been reached. There was nowhere further to go. The highlight of his life was in the past.

A lesson:  the journey itself is ultimately more valuable—in certain ways—than achieving the goal. As long as the journey continues, there is excitement, anticipation, hope.

This week’s Torah reading concludes the first four books of the Bible. Fittingly, the last parasha is entitled Masei—journeys. In a sense, the entire first four books of the Torah describe a journey, beginning with the history of humanity, the emergence of the People of Israel and its unique relationship with God, and the experiences from slavery to redemption to forty years wandering in the wilderness. With parashat Masei, they are reaching the conclusion of their journey as they ready themselves to enter the Promised Land. The last book of the Torah, Devarim, is essentially Moses’s recap of the history and laws as recorded in the first four books.

It is noteworthy that the Torah is centered on the role of the journey; it does not include new chapters about the Israelites actually entering the Promised Land. In our religious tradition, we celebrate the redemption from Egypt on Pessah, the Revelation at Sinai on Shavuoth, and God’s providence over Israel in the wilderness on Succoth.  We don’t have a festival celebrating the day Israel entered the Promised Land.

Tractate Berakhot ends with a passage declaring that Torah scholars have no peace, not in this world and not in the next world. They are constantly involved in facing new challenges; they go “mehayil el hayil,” from one battle to the next, from strength to strength. They thrive because they stay in process, moving from one goal to the next. The message is true for all who wish to live productive forward-looking lives: keep moving, keep engaged. When you reach one goal, immediately set out on your way to a new goal.

The old man in Steinbeck’s story hit a psychological block and couldn’t get beyond it. He had achieved something great in the past but he didn’t go “from strength to strength.” The journey of his life was in the past, and now he was simply marking time remembering and retelling stories of the old times.

The Torah teaches us not to fall into that situation. We are to see life as a journey with an unfolding road ahead. When we reach one goal, we should then look ahead to our next goal. Once we stop this process, our lives stagnate and regress into the past.

Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism, Adam S. Ferziger. New York: NYU Press, 2025. 455 pp.

Ordinarily, a title claiming that a phenomenon is transformative sounds hyperbolic. In the case of this fascinating study by Bar-Ilan University professor Adam Ferziger, however, the claim is entirely justified.

This impeccably researched study, co-winner of the Shapiro Award for Best Book in Israel Studies, traces the immigration to Israel of a number of Modern Orthodox rabbis and their families. Most were trained at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) of Yeshiva University under the tutelage of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. Beginning in the early 1970s, the talent, vision, and learning these rabbis and their families brought to Israel helped reshape the country's religious landscape in significant ways. What Ferziger calls Israeli Moderate Orthodoxy dramatically altered the religious scene in Israel. How?

This highly readable history answers that question by telling a series of fascinating stories. Consider Aharon Lichtenstein. Rav Soloveitchik's son-in-law (married to Tovah, an accomplished educator in her own right), Lichtenstein arrived in Israel with impeccable Jewish intellectual credentials. A brilliant Talmudist, he also earned a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard University, writing a dissertation entitled Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Platonist, later published by Harvard University Press.

That achievement points to a defining feature of Lichtenstein's intellectual identity. He was not only a great Torah scholar but also someone who believed that wisdom could be found beyond the walls of the yeshiva. His willingness to engage deeply with Western thought reflected an intellectual openness that distinguished him from many of his Israeli contemporaries.

This openness was hardly unique to Lichtenstein. Of the principal male figures Ferziger profiles, all but one earned doctorates, several from major North American universities. As noted, Lichtenstein studied English literature at Harvard; Nachum Rabinovitch studied the history and philosophy of science at the University of Toronto; David Hartman studied philosophy at McGill; Daniel Tropper earned a doctorate in education at Yeshiva University; and Chaim Brovender studied Semitic languages at the Hebrew University. Of the figures Ferziger studies, only Shlomo Riskin did not pursue an earned doctorate. The point is not simply that these men were highly educated. Rather, they embodied a form of Orthodoxy in which advanced secular scholarship and uncompromising Torah learning were seen as mutually enriching rather than mutually exclusive. That intellectual synthesis became one of the defining characteristics of the movement they helped transplant to Israel.

The influence of this cohort extended far beyond the classroom and synagogue.

David Hartman is a good example. He founded what has become one of Israel's most important centers of Jewish intellectual life, the Shalom Hartman Institute. Today it encompasses a major research think tank, the Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought; the David Hartman Center for Intellectual Excellence, which cultivates emerging scholars; the Center for Israeli and Jewish Identity, devoted to educational reform; the Center for Shared Society, promoting Jewish-Arab civic partnership; the Center for Judaism and State Policy, addressing the relationship between religion and the state; Rabbanut Yisraelit, a pluralistic Israeli rabbinical ordination program; two Jerusalem high schools; and a wide array of educational initiatives for Israeli educators, rabbis, students, and public leaders.

Ferziger's larger point becomes unmistakable: these American-trained rabbis did not merely bring new ideas to Israel. They built enduring institutions through which those ideas could shape Israeli society for generations.

Hartman's influence did not stop at Israel's borders. The Shalom Hartman Institute became a major force in North American Jewish life, offering intensive educational programs for rabbis, educators, lay leaders, college students, and Jewish professionals. Under the leadership of Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, who serves as president alongside Donniel Hartman, the Institute has become one of the most influential centers of Jewish thought in North America, shaping contemporary conversations about Israel, Zionism, pluralism, Jewish identity, and the moral challenges facing the Jewish people.

One of Ferziger's important through lines, then, is that the movement he describes did not travel in one direction only. American Modern Orthodox ideas were brought to Israel, transformed there, and then returned to North America in new forms. This transnational circulation of ideas, institutions, and religious leadership is one of the book's most illuminating themes. The Hartman Institute is only one of many examples Ferziger points to in showing how developments within Israeli Moderate Orthodoxy came back to influence American Jewish life.

Ferziger further shows the influence of this immigration on women's education. Rabbanit Malka Bina's work, for example, led to the development of the Women's Institute for Torah Studies. Housed in a multi-story building in Jerusalem, the Institute offers a wide array of sophisticated learning opportunities, including a five-year course of study equivalent to rabbinical studies, whose graduates receive the title meshivat halachah ("one who responds to questions of Jewish law").

A related development is the work of Rabbanit Oshra Koren, who teaches at the Sharon Center of MaTaN in Ra'anana. Her programs include the "Mother-Daughter Bat Mitzvah Program," now taught in eighty locations throughout Israel.

The same pattern is evident in Hadran. Founded by Michelle Cohen Farber and Shoshana Baker, Hadran seeks "to make Talmud study accessible to Jewish women at all levels...in a unique way: by providing a wide range of resources...in the voice of women teachers" (p. 268). Hadran's online platform, which includes a women's version of Daf Yomi, extends women's Talmud study to an international audience, further illustrating Ferziger's argument that these Israeli innovations have reshaped Jewish life far beyond Israel's borders.

The book's appendix, "Representative Israel-Based Students and Protégés of the American Immigrant Pioneers for IsMO [Israeli Moderate Orthodoxy]," offers an impressively large roster of figures who have extended the work of their teachers. It reinforces Ferziger's concluding argument that a distinctly Israeli form of Moderate Orthodoxy has emerged. This evolving religious culture is rooted in tradition yet marked by an unusual degree of autonomy, as Israelis selectively embrace Orthodox practices that enrich what Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs describe as Yahadut Yisraelit (Jewish-Israeli identity). Ferziger makes a persuasive case that this development owes much to the generation of American Modern Orthodox rabbis and educators whose immigration transformed Israel's religious landscape.

There are several upcoming learning opportunities with Rabbi Hayyim Angel.

On Mondays July 6 and 13, from 10:00-11:00 am ET, Rabbi Angel will teach Zoom classes on the theme of the destruction of the First Temple. Yirmiyahu and the Hurban, and Iyyov: Addressing the Hole Created by the Torah. These classes are sponsored by Lamdeinu, and registration is required. Here is the link to registration:

https://www.lamdeinu.org/donations/monday-yirmiyahu-and-the-hurban/

On Sunday, July 19, Rabbi Angel will teach a Zoom class on the Book of Lamentations. The class is sponsored by Sephardic Bikur Holim in Seattle, Washington. Time to be determined.

On Shabbat, July 24-25, Rabbi Angel will serve as scholar-in-residence at Congregation Ahavas Achim in Highland Park, New Jersey.

The ­Haredi Draft Crisis and the October 7^th

Gazan Israeli War  

The war between Israel and Hamas that began October 7, 2023 had evolved into a war of attrition with Israel being attacked by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, Houthis from Yemen, Hezbollah from Lebanon, militias from Syria and Iraq, and theocratic, Islamic Iran, the instigating patron of  Middle Eastern terror aimed at conquering, destroying, and ultimately ending Western civilization. 

The Israel Defense Force’s [= IDF] urban warfare response to the October  7^th pogrom extended hostilities and suffering.  IDF’s reoccupying Gaza  required activating additional reserves, some of whom had served more than 400 days away from their civilian responsibilities.[i] The war bloated Israel’s military budget by 65%,[ii] necessitating a 3.3% cut in  public sector salaries, recovering 5 NIS billion[iii] while leaving Israeli society frustrated, weary, depressed, and very angry.[iv]

In order to relieve its immediate manpower shortage, the IDF asked to recruit more inductees to address the increased manpower demand, and sought to  draft Haredi [= “ultra” Orthodox]  military age men,[v] with Israel’s  Supreme Court’s concurrence.[vi] In the wake of February 28, 2026’s IDF Operation Lion’s Roar,  when the IDF, in cooperation with the American military’s Operation Epic Fury, joined together to end the Iranian nuclear threat, the IDF mobilized 60,000 reservists of its citizen army, straining Israeli strength, endurance, and patience even further.[vii] The elite Haredi Great Rabbis protested vehemently,[viii] claiming that Haredi men’s yeshiva learning protects the Jewish state and its residents from danger.[ix]  R.  Avrohom Karelitz, better  known as the Hazon Ish, opposed drafting both Haredi men[x] and women.[xi] But instead of referencing a supporting legal norm, Hazon Ish spoke of and wrote about the greatness of young Haredi men’s yeshiva study, which to his view may not be interrupted.  And disagreeing with the Great Rabbis’ rulings is not only an insult to those rabbis, but is  also seen as an implicit rebuff of the Divine Lawgiver Who is believed to have inspired those Great Rabbis,[xii] a topic to be addressed below. By claiming divine inspiration for themselves alone,[xiii] these  Great Sages grant themselves a virtual if not actual infallibility as well as immunity from critical review.[xiv]  Consequently, questioning these Great Rabbis’ power to intuit divine prescriptions is taken to be disrespectful both to Torah and to God.[xv]         

The canonical Oral Torah’s military conscription mandate is unambiguously clear:

“In the case of a Mitsvah War [a war of conquest or defense of the Holy Land, including the annihilation of Amaleq or a war in defense of Israel’s borders and population],[xvi] everyone goes out [to battle, i.e. is subject to conscription], even the groom from his room and his bride from her wedding canopy.”[xvii]

According to this Oral Torah norm, when Israel is at war with an invading enemy attacking its population, all Israel  is subject to the draft, Hazon Ish’s vigorous opposition notwithstanding. Since Hamas called for and acted upon its expressed intention to destroy the Jewish state,[xviii] this declared and waged war fits the canonical definition of a Mitsvah War, for which there are no exemptions.[xix] Hazon Ish glosses  the bSotah 44b passage cited above with the unsupported claim that the bride and her Torah-learning groom may be drafted only if the war cannot be won without their participation.[xx]   By attaching this particular  condition to an unattested but presumed Oral Torah norm, Hazon Ish boldly declares that the exemptions  halakhically approved for political or discretionary wars[xxi] also apply to Mitsvah Wars, implicitly justifying the relieving of Haredi men of their military obligation.[xxii]  When objecting to a  Haredi female draft, Hazon Ish appeals to “purity,” “holiness,” and the “religious conscience,” again without referencing any Halakhic norm or explaining why bSotah 44b’s compulsory draft norm should not be enforced.[xxiii] In his very next letter,[xxiv] Hazon Ish explains that morally pure Haredi  women may not participate in non-Haredi culture, which will not insist upon the gender segregation required by Haredi convention but not by any formal Oral Torah norm.[xxv]  For optional or political wars, there are designated exemptions from military service that are public record,[xxvi] including newlyweds [=who are first establishing families], vineyard planters [= people starting a new business venture, or engaging in other  productive, livelihood generating work], and arguably, even a confession of cowardice may qualify a petitioner for an exemption.[xxvii] Yeshivah students may claim their exemption from military service for an optional war. The Urim and Tummim oracles must approve initiating pre-emptive discretionary hostilities.[xxviii]  Their current and apparently permanent inaccessibility may indicate a Halakhic disapproval of all offensive or political wars.[xxix]

The Haredi elite selectively references Maimonides,[xxx] who maintains that in addition to the ancient Levites, every adult Jewish male is entitled to engage in full-time Torah learning. But this apologia ignores Maimonides’ vehement disapproval of learning Torah for financial consideration, who declares that

“anyone who takes upon oneself to be [exclusively] occupied with Torah, and not engage in [income generating] work, and [expecting to] be supported by charity, that person profanes God’s name, despises the Torah, extinguishes the light of the Law, brings ruin upon oneself, and removes oneself from the Eternity to come.”[xxxi]

While an individual has a right to be a full-time learner, there is no Halakhic  entitlement to financial compensation for that learning. These two Haredi positions, [a] avoiding military service when the Jewish homeland and/or its population are under attack, and [b] demanding   public funding for full-time Torah learners, conflict with the canonical Oral Torah norms cited above.  The claim that all Jewry ought to be full-time, salaried Torah students is plainly incompatible with the norm that outlaws receiving financial compensation for “professional” Torah study,[xxxii] because Torah learning is a sacred enterprise that precludes secularizing  instrumentalization. 

Second, as noted above, military service exemptions only apply for political or discretionary wars. Since the Hamas Charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish State, the October 7^th conflict is a Mitsvah War, from which neither men nor women are exempt from service. Ironically, the seemingly most fervent, or “ultra” Orthodox, deny the legal validity of the explicit, legislated Oral Torah norm requiring universal conscription.[xxxiii]  We now turn to Jurisprudence, i.e. the “science” of law, to explain how and why fervently religious, Halakhically committed Jews ignore these explicit halakhic norms.

Jurisprudence is now dominated by Legal Realists who maintain that judges create law by filtering the legal order’s norms with their own enlightened, intellectually privileged intuitions, ideologies, and preferences to the cases brought before them. In contrast, Legal Positivists, also known as Legal Formalists, interpret and apply those norms as they are preserved in the legal order’s canonical library, based on the most compelling or reasonable reading of the norm’s syntax and semantics. Legal Formalists and Realists are found on both the political Right and Left. In American legal history, the Legal Positivist is the strict constructionist, Constitutional originalist “conservative” who is bound by the statute as it was initially formulated because the Constitution that validates the statute articulates the social contract by which the polity’s convening members had consented to be governed. Alternatively, the American Progressive Legal Realist applies his or her intuition informed conscience to advance a social justice agenda which, according to its advocates, is the Law as it ought to be. In the Orthodox Jewish orbit, leading rabbis have adopted a Legal Realism that invokes an  amorphous  “Tradition,”[xxxiv] or Mesorah, which for them is the Halakhically mandated, inherited religious ethos that the living community transmits from generation to generation, from parent to child, and from teacher to student.[xxxv] This “Tradition” celebrates the policy-driven, sectarian “otherness” that the living community deems to be sacred. R. Moshe Feinstein candidly concedes that he does not necessarily issue rulings based upon the pure, i.e. positive law, but he adjusts his rulings in order to be situationally appropriate.[xxxvi] Hans Kelsen’s Legal Positivist Pure Theory of Law[xxxvii]is anticipated by Maimonides’ Introduction to the Yad Compendium, which views Torah Law as an ordered, logical hierarchy of legal norms.[xxxviii]

Both Maimonides and Kelsen maintain that a legal order postulates its Basic Norm, the rule that actuates the legal order’s validity.[xxxix] The “orthodox” reading of the Oral Torah canon determines what the Torah’s norms and precedents oblige, forbid, and when silent, in fact permits. God is posited to be the Author of the Torah law, the Basic Norm[xl] of which is “obey the Commander of the [Oral and Written] Torah[s].” Rabbinic jurists apply  what H.L.A. Hart identifies as Rules of Obligation[xli] and Rules of Recognition[xlii] to the Torah’s legal order.  Rules of Obligation are the norms, or rules of the legal order. In  the case of Judaism, these are the mitsvot which require or forbid specific acts.[xliii]  The Oral Torah’s Basic Norm is called “the yoke of Heaven’s [=God’s] kingdom,” which in turn authorizes the canonical hierarchy of norms called the “Halakhah,”[xliv] the “walk/way of Jewish life.”

 

In addition to the Oral Torah norm hierarchy, the Haredi rabbinic elite erects additional isolating culture barriers in order to preserve the countercultural otherness that it maintains the Oral Torah promotes.[xlv] In contrast to Haredi innovations that conflict with Oral Torah legislation, such as insisting upon  the yeshiva student exemption from military service  because it  fears  that its communal social cohesion will be compromised, other Orthodox rabbis  require military service,[xlvi]  even though this service requires a change in contemporary Jewish culture,[xlvii] like establishing and mandating IDF service that results in Shabbat violation. The fact that an act was not practiced in the past preserved in Israel’s collective memory does not imply that the act must be  forbidden in the present.[xlviii]  A Modern Orthodox Legal Positivist would likely postulates that Torah Law is initiated by God butis exegeted and applied by the human  members of the Bet Din ha-Gadol, or Halakhic Supreme Court, the norm creating body  authorized by the Torah to legislate the norms that carry the legal valence of God’s word.[xlix]  An Orthodox positivist observes the formal rules and norms of the Halakhic order, thereby acquiring holiness, or sanctification.[l]Holiness is notgenerated by performing rites in the present just because they were observed in the past by the community.  Canonical Oral Torah Law does not authorize a commandment blessing recitation unless an actual positive, or “to do” Toraitic or Rabbinic command is about to be performed. This principle is inferred from the Hoshanah Rabbah “beating the willow” rite, which only carries the valence of custom, is not prefaced by a commandment blessing, its antiquity notwithstanding.[li] Unlike mitsvot, which are commanded norms that generate sanctity, customs are human conventions that do not generate sanctity, rendering the commandment blessing contextually inappropriate.  However, the great  medieval Legal Realist, R. Jacob b. Meir Tam, permits the commandment blessing to be recited on some occasions when an actual commandment is not being performed. He extends the commandment benediction’s application to acts not required of the person by formal enactment [= taqannah].[lii] R. Jacob Tam also extends the minor fast day obligation until dark, as opposed to sunset.[liii] According to the Oral Torah rule of recognition for resolving conflicts between opposing  views of equal standing, Torah doubts are resolved stringently, while rabbinic disputes are decided leniently.[liv] Since the minor fast day observance is a rabbinic obligation, and this day’s dusk is a time that is doubtful day and doubtful night, the rabbinic fasting obligation would logically lapse at sunset.[lv]   Extending the fast until dark is  irregular because rabbinic doubts are usually resolved leniently. R. Jacob Tam justifies  extending the fast until nightfall,[lvi]not by appealing to a canonical legal principle or precedent that might serve as a legitimating rule of recognition, but by invoking his own self-validating rule of recognition, “our [=his] ancestors' customs are Torah,”[lvii] an idiom that recurs in his Responsa,[lviii]and which should be taken literally, seriously, and not be dismissed as mere hyperbolic flourish. This bold claim, that what Israel happens to practice is what Israel ought to practice, because this behavior carries the valence of “Torah,” which as noted above, is also “the word of the Lord.”[lix] R. Jacob Tam’s approach is perplexing because it assumes that sacred people, i.e. his own rabbinic elite, do not err.  However, Hebrew Scripture teaches that “there is no human so righteous who does [only] good and [who] does not sin,”[lx] “the entire community may be in error,”[lxi] and there is a specific sacrificial offering made when all Israel violates  certain Torah prohibitions.[lxii] The Oral Torah also entertains the possibility that all Israel  may indeed be at fault.[lxiii]

R. Jacob Tam’s doctrine,  that what Jewry actually practices, if accepted by “our” ancestors, is reified into Torah, i.e. the “word of the Lord,” is incompatible with Maimonides’ view, that a custom assumes the valence of a Rabbinic norm only when it is adopted by all Israel because, like the Babylonian Talmud’s rulings,[lxiv] it was accepted as binding by all Israel.[lxv]  And such a universally practiced custom will still not trigger a commandment blessing obligation,[lxvi] at least 

according to Maimonides.[lxvii]  After Ravina I and R. Ashi, the rabbinic authority to issue apodictic legislation had lapsed,[lxviii] with the validating benchmark being the cogency of the claim [da’at notah] regarding the actual meaning of the canonical norm, but not in the charismatic, intuitive insight of any  rabbi, however “great” that person may be.[lxix] If unvetted oral traditions, popular usage, and an individual’s rabbinic charisma are sufficient to render and reify social conventions into Torah, we have identified  two Orthodox iterations, the Maimonidean normative order described above, and the alternate Tosafist Orthodoxy that has been  studied by Urbach,[lxx] Ta Shma,[lxxi] Reiner,[lxxii] and Faur, who focused on the  Tosafist scholastic use of word play[lxxiii] that justifies a Legal  Realism by redefining the words in which the legal norm is cast.[lxxiv]

Maimonides’  Orthodoxy is popularly accepted by the living community in principle, is logical, accessibly readable, and understandable when  read according to its plain sense semantic meaning. This Orthodoxy maintains that Israel committed itself at Mt. Sinai to uphold the Torah, which is its constitution, and which nullifies any subsequent legislation that contradicts this constitution’s provisions.[lxxv]  The other Orthodoxy, championed by the Tosafists and seconded by Nahmanides, is binding in practice, it does not subject its leaders to assessment, and its canonized texts are understandable and applicable  only by its own rabbinic elite.[lxxvi] This alternative Orthodox elite is so charismatically endowed that it assumes a canonicity sufficient to override, and the case of the Haredi draft, ignore problematic Oral Torah norms. In order to empower the communal will to override canonized norms, the charismatic great rabbi becomes a canonized person.[lxxvii] But when a human elite assumes canonicity, it becomes hierarchically superior to its constituent and now subject population.[lxxviii] Hierarchical communities do not tolerate a reading public because reading empowers readers to think independently of the society’s hierarchical leadership.   According to Maimonidean Judaism, Jewish political sovereignty is limited, unlike pagan political thought and hierarchical Judaism for which “[t]he Rex’s authority is absolute.”[lxxix] 

R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s academic historian son, Prof. Haym Soloveitchik, astutely observed that

“[t]he classic Ashkenazic position for centuries, one which saw the practice of the people as an expression of halakhic truth. It is no exaggeration to say that the Ashkenazic community saw the law as manifesting itself in two forms: in the canonized written corpus (the Talmud and codes), and in the regnant practices of the people. Custom as a correlative datum of the halakhic system. And, on frequent occasions, the written word was reread in light of tradition. This dual tradition of the intellectual and the mimetic, the law as taught  and the law as practiced, which stretched back for centuries, begins to break down in the … closing decades of the nineteenth century.”[lxxx]

As a disciplined, emotionally detached academic observer, H. Soloveitchik concedes that the Ashkenazi Orthodox world into which he was born maintained that Torah law appears both [a] in the logical reading and parsing of the written tradition as well as [b] the socially appropriate and communally acceptable prescriptions of the mimetic culture tradition. He also concedes that these two normative orders occasionally conflict. 

While Prof. H. Soloveitchik  concedes that these two traditions occasionally conflict, his father, modern Orthodoxy’s elite Great Rabbi, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik,  also adopts a “dual Orthodoxy” doctrine,[lxxxi]  presenting the issue much more lucidly than his Haredi counterparts, but does not address the conflict directly.  Like the Haredi leaders who claim but do not demonstrate that or how their Great Rabbis possess ru’ah ha-Qodesh, usually rendered “holy spirit,"[lxxxii]  R. Soloveitchik exegetes the passage “Moses commanded us [=the people who constitute “Israel”] a Torah [= Law], an inheritance [=possession, Hebrew “morashah”] of the congregation of Jacob,”[lxxxiii]  by citing an aggadic midrash that playfully emends “morashah” to me’orasah,”[lxxxiv]the Halakhic engagement period during which a couple is legally married, but physical  intimacy remains forbidden until after nesu’in, which is the concluding marital rite.[lxxxv]  R. Soloveitchik then suggests that while most rabbis are only “engaged” to Torah, the very greatest of rabbis, like R. Yitzhak Ze’ev[lxxxvi] and R. Hayyim Soloveitchik[lxxxvii] of Brisk, possessed intimate and therefore precisely accurate understandings of Torah. Their intimacy with Torah both affirms and informs their Torah mastery, protecting them from error and immunizing them from assessment by lower grade sages who are not endowed with the charismatic greatness that nourishes the requisite intimacy that insures inerrancy.[lxxxviii]  R. Soloveitchik’s  bold rendering of  “[r]emember the days of yore, consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will inform you, your elders, and they will tell you,”[lxxxix] refers to  his second type of Tradition that does not appear among the Oral Torah’s validating rules of recognition.[xc]  This passage’s plain sense asserts that a Jewish child imbibes Israel’s foundation narrative from one’s father and grandfather.[xci] R. Soloveitchik maintains that  the “elders” in this context not only refers to the canonical library’s Sages,[xcii] but includes post-R. Ashi latter-day Great Rabbis as well. For R. Soloveitchik, the first type of Tradition, which we will call “Tradition I,”[xciii] was the single sense of Tradition initially and duly defined by Maimonides.[xciv]  But according to Maimonides, those [Oral] Torah laws not memorialized in the Pentateuch which were given to Moses at Sinai are the only Torah norms that are not subject to exegetic dispute.[xcv]  R. Soloveitchik boldly and creatively[xcvi]  equates the inherited Orthodox mimetic culture with the Torah laws said to be transmitted to Moses at Sinai that do not appear in the Pentateuch, contending that neither  set of laws are subject to dispute. We name this mimetic culture “Tradition II.” The urbane Orthodox lawyer, R. Avrohom Gordimer, regards this second type of “tradition” to be the essential “uncodified part of Torah”[xcvii]  that while cognitively accessible only to the rabbinic elite, it obliges all who profess an Orthodox identity.  Since [a] the Orthodox rabbinic elite are virtually if not actually infallible, and [b]  its patrician rabbis may not be subject to plebian, rabbinic review, it is gauche at best and  impudently heretical at worse to expose this inconsistently, because the exposure of these facts will expose these rabbis to criticism. The  Orthodox Legal Positivist focuses on the Torah’s memorialized legal norms, while Orthodox Legal Realists in general and Haredi Great Rabbis in particular will ignore positive Oral Torah norms if their implementation might undermine communal coherence, or stability. 

As noted above, according to both Written[xcviii] and Oral Torah[xcix] accounts, human sanctity is generated solely and only by complying with the Torah’s norms.  However, Nahmanides claims that one may also become holy by doing more than the Law requires, by avoiding impurity, and by “not being a law-abiding scoundrel.”[c] How Nahmanides “knows” or intuits that God expects this particular set of unlegislated behavior of Jewry is unaddressed. And R. Joseph Soloveitchik’s loyal and learned disciple, R. Menachem Genack, reports that R. Soloveitchik placed himself in the Nahmanidean “tradition”[ci]  according to which a Great Rabbi’s charismatic intuition is indeed a validating normative source. But the Oral Torah canon does not recognize unvetted intuitions or unaccountable  charisma to be sources of normative law.[cii] Furthermore, Nahmanides makes the remarkable claim, also unattested in the Written and Oral Torah libraries, that the remains of righteous Jews do not defile[ciii] because these persons died by the kiss of God,[civ] and not as punishment for an original sin or for succumbing to the evil impulse.[cv]  This doctrine, that the remains of righteous Jews do not defile, did find its way into the Zohar.[cvi] Ever exquisitely consistent, R. Soloveitchik does not consider Maimonides to be an Halakhic Man[cvii] because Maimonides opposed including unvetted, intrusive poetry [piyyut] into the canonical liturgy.[cviii] Since Maimonides regards Halakhah to be a  systematically pure, positive law, he would not likely recognize R. Soloveitchik’s second, mimetic folk Tradition II Orthodoxy as carrying significant normative valence in his jurisprudence.[cix]

We are now in a position to explain both how and why Haredi Orthodoxy opposes its adherents’ military service, while ignoring the Oral Torah norm requiring that service. Hazon Ish’s not only disapproves of pressuring full-time yeshiva students into mandatory military service, he also demands an unquestioning deference to the Haredi rabbinic elite’s virtual infallibility regarding practice, belief, and social policy.[cx] This Orthodoxy also requires that its contemporary elite rabbis be regarded as angelic by the faithful, further immunizing themselves from peer review by those Orthodox rabbis who are not charismatically endowed.[cxi]   Because those rabbis lack the requisite religious charisma, they are not really peers who are capable of assessment.  While R. Soloveitchik maintains that one may argue with the canonical texts of Tradition I, he insists, by affirmation but not by demonstration, that Tradition II does not tolerate dissent, disagreement, or dispute. Jewry is obliged to defer to the leading Sages of the age in social policy matters as well as ritual Halakhah.[cxii]  Like R. Jacob Tam and Hazon Ish, R. Soloveitchik is also a Legal Realist for whom the Law is not limited to the canonical norm’s dry letter; it is the charismatically endowed, exceptional rabbinic person who, with God’s guidance, is empowered to intuit a suitable synthesis of official religion Oral Torah norms  and socially accepted, folk religion expectations. 

  In their zeal to preserve the unchanging “traditions” of mimetic culture's collective memory, Orthodox Legal Realists can be boldly innovative.  R. Soloveitchik’s most outstanding living disciple,   R. Herschel Schachter denounces women prayer groups for violating the putative principle that he calls  “ziyyuf ha-Torah,” the counterfeiting, forging, or distorting of Torah.[cxiii] While this idiom is unattested in the Oral Torah canon, it does appear in R. Moses Isserles’ writing as “mezayyefei ha-Torot yatsriah [sic],[cxiv] which may be rendered “the [Written and] Oral Torahs’ falsifiers will scream [in protest].” R. Isserles does not identify the persons  to whom he refers or to what falsification he is addressing.  This idiom recurs in R. Ahron Kotler’s lectures collected by his students, where the idiom serves a polemical function, to identify and condemn those Orthodox rabbinic “accommodators” or  persons who cooperate with non-Orthodox rabbis, whom R. Kotler calls “zayyafanim,”[cxv] or habitual falsifiers of Torah, and whose Orthodox bona fides he forcefully rejects.  The Orthodox rabbis who interact professionally with non-Orthodox rabbis argue that their conduct is a matter of policy, which allows for discretion and disagreement. R. Kotler contends that only a Great Sage, like himself, is authorized to interpret Torah normativity precisely, accurately, and with presumed or assumed infallibility.  Justifying opinions solely on the basis of a logical reading of the canonical text, i.e. any act that is not formally forbidden is in fact implicitly permitted,[cxvi] is to his view a misrepresentation of Torah. The classical idiom, "megalleh panim ba-Torah shel-lo ke-Halakhah," or one “who interprets the Torah contrary to its true intent,”[cxvii] is appropriately not referenced.  The issue is not the meaning of the positive Oral Torah norm, but the divinely guided charismatic sage’s ability and authority to intuit what God, through the medium of the Oral Torah, really intends and truly requires.  Accordingly, Jewish propriety may not be determined by the legal norms memorialized in accessible compendia alone.  For both Rabbis Kotler and Soloveitchik, this propriety is revealed in and by the communally accepted and rabbinically approved mores, habits, and expectations. When expressed by Rabbis Isserles and Kotler, the word “mezayyef” refers to persons who falsify Torah. R. Schachter appropriates the idiom to formulate an abstract noun, “ziyyuf,” to refer to a principle that expresses his own unwavering disapproval of the women’s prayer group institution, which violates the socially conditioned expectations of Tradition II even though it may not violate any identifiable norm of Tradition I.

R. Schachter presents a brilliant rhetorical strategy that reifies social policy into what he is convinced ought to be accepted as a legal norm.  In order to realize this end, he invents a novel rule of recognition that empowers its implementor to veto dissenting voices by invoking his own charismatic authority. However, according to Tradition I Orthodoxy, as noted above, no body and nobody has the legal authority to promulgate apodictic Oral Torah norms after Ravina I and Rav Ashi’s Bet Din ha-Gadol.  Simply put, Tradition I  Orthodoxy is unaware of this suggested norm.

Since IDF military service inevitably removes the young Haredi man or woman from Haredi authority, supervision, and most critically, social control, the Haredi elite must formulate a legitimating apologia to keep its young adults in its community. The innocent Haredi adherent may not be permitted to find a place outside of Haredi social control. The IDF is a military organization, not a religious institution.  It is led by generals whose mission it is to defend the polity and people of Israel, but not to test God’s patience by relying on miracles.[cxviii] The military’s mission is to provide protective, deterrent lethality, not reverential piety or religious revival.[cxix]  The Haredi young man and woman will find military life challenging, if not hostile, to the social reality in which she or he are raised.

Haredi Orthodoxy presents itself as a religion of law, and attaches the force of Halakhic norm to its policies. Its legitimating authority is located in the personal charisma of the ruling’s author.[cxx] R. Jacob Tam’s claim that “the customs of our [=his] ancestors are [also] To[AY1] rah,”[cxxi] invests those customs with the status of the “word of the Lord.”[cxxii] While this doctrine is unattested in the canonical library, it appears in what is claimed to be the divinely inspired intuition possessed by post-Talmudic charismatic Great Rabbis, initially and most prominently by R.  Jacob Tam. Even though the compulsory conscription norm is memorialized at mSotah 44b, it must be disregarded, superseded, and essentially repealed because the divinely inspired Great Rabbis have, with the authority generated by their charisma, so declared.[cxxiii]

For the Haredi world and those modern Orthodox who view the Haredi approach to be the Jewish religious ideal,[cxxiv] authentic authority is vested in the gavra, the charismatic person who is presumedly inspired and guided by God, providentially protected from error, and thus immune to review. However, other Orthodox voices find normative Jewish teaching in the canon’s peshat, the plain sense heftsa, or object, of the canonized Written and Oral Torah readable libraries. This Orthodoxy allows its adherents to read, think, and apply Torah if they are able to do so.[AY2] 

This classical understanding of Torah, maintains that the Law is no longer in heaven, and dismisses ad hoc oracular legislation as invalid.[cxxv] What God had to say [or command] has been memorialized in the canonical library, and concurring with R. Soloveitchik’s Tradition I’s rule of recognition, that there are no valid secret or oracular laws in the Halakhah and all claims to the contrary are invalid. Authentic Jewish normativity is discovered by reading, explicating, and applying canonical Torah norms to everyday life.

According to R. Jacob Tam’s Orthodoxy, the Great Sage possesses the charisma that empowers him to read, discover, and decode God’s will,  without being subject to account for the accuracy or consequences of his rulings. By disregarding the troublesome norm requiring universal military conscription for a defensive war, this Orthodoxy applies Legal Realism to reify the charismatics’ normative intuition into Torah law.  Alternatively, Maimonides’ Orthodoxy, grounded in Legal Positivism, locates legal “truth” in the Covenantal canon’s readable, public, human language words.  Therefore, if one adopts the Tradition I Orthodoxy encoded in the sacred library, one commits to the legal norm memorialized in the canon that requires universal` conscription.  But according to R. Jacob Tam’s Legal Realism, Torah truth is located in the living, sacred community, vetted and approved by the Great Sages, who is guided by God to issue legally and theologically correct rulings, even if those rulings conflict with the textually memorialized  canonical norm.

By placing the locus of Jewish normative value in the object of the readable,  sacred text, Tradition I Orthodoxy posits an understandable Torah, a capable laity, and a leadership that empowers its population to read and to discover Torah  peshat, or plain sense meaning.[cxxvi]  Institutional Orthodoxy affirms Tradition I Maimonidean legal theory in principle but applies Legal Realism in practice in order to respond immediately and effectively to disruptive social challenges. R. Jacob Tam would likely regard Maimonides’ approach to be incomplete, because it denies the post-Talmudic Legal Realist the authority to create necessary law.[cxxvii]  R. Jacob Tam, R. Joseph Soloveitchik, and Hazon Ish all agree that mimetic Orthodoxy, with its laws, values, and attitudes, makes valid, mandatory demands of Jewry.[cxxviii] Maimonides, the formulator of  Tradition I and R. Soloveitchik’s first  type of Tradition, focuses on legal norms, not attitudes, principles, or values.  And R. Soloveichik very correctly did not associate  Tradition II mimetic Orthodoxy, his second type of Tradition, with Maimonides, who would view R. Jacob Tam’s Orthodoxy to be in error.[cxxix] 

In sum,

1. Because the State of Israel has been at war since October 7, 2023, and its armed forces consists of a citizen’s army that constantly musters its reserves to meet the needs of the moment, there is an outcry that the Haredi world share the military service burden.

2. At bSotah 44b, the canonical Tradition obliges both women and men to perform military service when Israel is under attack. Haredi Judaism ignores this Oral Torah mandate, appealing instead to its subculture’s ideology to justify its position.

3. In Judaism, “Tradition” appears in two forms, Tradition I, the transfer of the Written and Oral Torah library object [heftsa] from one generation’s Bet Din ha-Gadol to the next, and Tradition II, the inherited mimetic culture Tradition that is lived and transmitted by the community of the committed from one generation to the next, guided by a charismatic rabbinic elite that proclaims the ability  to “read between the Torah’s lines.”

4. Maimonides regards Tradition I to be the necessary and sufficient boundary marker of normative Jewish propriety, viewing Tradition II as a fact to be described, but not as an “ought” that commands compliance.

5. The medieval R. Jacob Tam and Nahmanides and the 20^th Century’s R. Ahron Kotler  and R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik all assign a normative valence to Tradition II, that valence being determined by the Great Sage’s intuition. By assigning a normative valence to Tradition II conventions and regulations, Haredi religion and its more urbane admirers believe that it is better equipped to respond to immediate challenges because its rabbinic elite is empowered to intuitively read the mind of God.
6. The institutional Orthodox community professes and confesses commitment to the normative order of Tradition I but lives its life according the popular religion sensibilities of Tradition II.  Tradition I locates authority in the saved Book; Tradition II finds this authority inf the charisma of the sacred person.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on Difference and Human Dignity

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was undoubtedly one of the greatest Jewish leaders and thinkers of the last generation. Born in London in 1948, Rabbi Sacks studied philosophy at Cambridge and Oxford and was awarded a PhD in philosophy from King’s College London in 1981. In 1976, Rabbi Sacks received rabbinic ordination from Jews’ College and Yeshiva Etz Chaim, London. Rabbi Sacks went on to serve as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth from 1991 until 2013. Throughout his illustrious career, Sacks wrote elegantly and compellingly on all manner of Jewish topics, including the relationship between science and religion, religious violence, morality, and much more. 

I want to discuss Rabbi Sacks’ emphasis on what he called “the dignity of difference.” In response to increasing tribalism and parochialism, Rabbi Sacks warned against the other extreme: universalism. Articulated brilliantly in his book The Dignity of Difference, which was written in the wake of 9/11, Rabbi Sacks makes the case for a model of engagement with others that both recognizes and prioritizes the shared humanity across difference, without simultaneously insisting on a hegemonic sameness that, just like tribalism, easily shifts into violence and conflict. It is worth noting in passing the extent to which this view of Sacks’ parallels that of Bernard Williams, one of his teachers at Cambridge.

One of the preeminent moral philosophers of the twentieth century, Williams harbored a deep skepticism toward moral theories that claimed to provide a comprehensive and universal account of how all people ought to live. In a famous 1979 essay, “Internal and External Reasons,” Williams challenged the assumption that there are reasons for action that apply to all rational people regardless of their particular desires, commitments, and projects. Philosophers often speak as though moral obligations are simply there to be recognized, and that anyone who fails to recognize them is not merely mistaken, but irrational. Williams argued that this picture obscures an important truth: human beings act on the basis of particular histories, motivations, and ways of seeing the world. Appeals to supposedly universal reasons can therefore become a kind of moral bluff, allowing us to express disapproval of other’s actions while presenting that disapproval as if it were simply the necessary conclusion of “rational thinking.” The idea is that there is something wrong with you if you do not see the world as I do. 

Rabbi Sacks, like Williams, recognized that appeals to universality can easily become dehumanizing, particularly toward those whose identity and way of life differ from that of the dominant culture. If failure to respond to the “truth” of some claim indicates a fundamental deficiency—or worse, wickedness—then it is perhaps unsurprising that Jews, among others, have so often been persecuted for refusing to conform to a supposedly universal truth. 

Rabbi Sacks argues that is precisely the genius of our tradition. The Torah, he points out, moves in a counterintuitive direction. In considering the evolution of a society we tend to move from part to whole: we consider isolated man and his needs, on the basis of which he forms a family, which, in order to coordinate its thriving, joins with other families to form a town, and so on. We assume that the direction of development is ever extending outwards. But Genesis does the opposite. It proceeds from God’s creation of the cosmos to the creation of man, the world-wide catastrophe of the flood and then to the dispersing at Babel, all of which builds up to God’s covenantal relationship with one particular person, Abraham, and his family. While we must not forget the unity of God, and therefore the commonality of our origins, we learn how to live not through the contemplation of humanity in the abstract, but through the narrative of a particular family. It is precisely the transcendent unity of God, argues Rabbi Sacks, that sets God beyond any way of describing or being in the world. The difference manifest in the world reflects, perhaps paradoxically, the unity of the divine. 

The perspective of unified truth is limited to God, and any appeal to it from within God’s world fails to recognize the manifest particularity of God’s creations. As Rabbi Sacks puts it, “There is no universal language. There is no way we can speak, communicate, or even think without placing ourselves within the constraints of a particular language whose contours were shaped by hundreds of generations of speakers, storytellers, artists and visionaries who came before us, whose legacy we inherit and of whose story we become a part” (The Dignity of Difference, 54). We do not transcend our particularity in order to understand others; rather, it is through inhabiting a particular tradition that we become capable of appreciating those of our neighbors.

For Rabbi Sacks, then, the alternative to tribalism is not universalism but covenantal particularity. The universality of moral concern emerges not from abstracting our concrete commitments but from them. As Rabbi Sacks explains, “The universality of moral concerns is not something we learn by being universal but by being particular. Because we know what it is to be a parent, loving our children, not children in general, we understand what it is for someone else, somewhere else, to be a parent, loving his or her children, not ours” (The Dignity of Difference, 55). We come to recognize the humanity of others not by denying the significance of family, community, and tradition, but by understanding that others are attached to their own families, communities, and traditions in much the same way that we are attached to ours.

In light of this argument, it is notable that Rabbi Sacks, in his reflections on “the other” and how Jews ought to relate to non-Jews, turns first inward, back to the texts that comprise our language. In Not in God's Name, Sacks argues that the book of Genesis repeatedly returns to the theme of sibling rivalry: Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. These narratives, he contends, are not merely family dramas, but meditations on the rivalry that naturally arises between siblings when paternal love (from their fathers or from God) is perceived to be scarce.

The story of Isaac and Ishmael occupies a central place in this argument. The Torah is unequivocal about Isaac’s status as heir to the Abrahamic covenant. Yet, Sacks observes, this does not mean that Ishmael is rejected. God hears Ishmael's cries in the wilderness, promises that he too will become a great nation, and remains present in his life. Sacks notes that Ishmael is portrayed with remarkable sympathy. His near-death scene in the wilderness is narrated with considerably more pathos than Isaac's binding, inviting readers to identify with his suffering.  While it is often overlooked, the biblical text actually hints at a relationship between Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac, we know from the biblical text, lives at beer lahai roi after the Akedah (Gen. 24:62, 25:11), which is precisely the location at which God intervened to save Ishmael and Hagar earlier in the narrative (Gen. 16:13-14). To Sacks, this hints at a reconciliation between Isaac and Hagar and Ishmael. In fact, there is a midrash, quoted by Sacks, which not only identifies Hagar with Keturah, Abraham’s second wife, but has Isaac act as their go-between. Finally, Isaac and Ishmael bury their father together.

These narrative clues (among others, not recounted here) indicate that, despite its central importance to the Torah, election is not the same thing as exclusion. To choose one path is not to condemn all others. The God who enters into covenant with Isaac is also the God who saves and blesses Ishmael. God's love exceeds the zero-sum calculations that characterize human rivalry. The covenant with one family does not imply the abandonment of all others.

This reading exemplifies the larger argument of The Dignity of Difference. Judaism does not ask us to abandon our particular commitments in the name of a universal humanity. Rather, it teaches us to see that the God who calls us into covenant is also the creator of those who stand outside that covenant. In recognizing the limits of universality, we return to our own language and our own texts. There we discover not a mandate to erase difference, but a model for honoring it—a way of engaging others that preserves the dignity of other ways of life without compromising our own covenantal commitments. 

Maimonides, Spinoza and Us: Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism, by Marc D. Angel, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, 2009

Reviewed by Francis Idris

Rabbi Dr Marc D Angel’s Maimonides, Spinoza and Us sits in a very specific intellectual tension that most books avoid on purpose. Published in 2009 by Jewish Lights Publishing, it does something slightly risky in plain sight. It puts Maimonides and Spinoza in the same room and refuses to let either behave like a museum piece. One is the rationalist inside tradition. The other is the excommunicated heretic who still somehow keeps influencing modern religious thought. That pairing alone already feels like a conversation that should not be polite.

And yet the tone is not academic distance. It reads more like a living argument that refuses to end. Reason and revelation are not treated as opposing camps to be safely labeled. They are treated like two people who keep interrupting each other mid-sentence. There is a quiet insistence underneath it all, that a thinking Jew should not have to amputate intellect to remain faithful. That line alone. It lands hard. Especially in rooms where questioning is already frowned upon.

What stands out, almost uncomfortably, is how direct the book is about superstition and authority. It does not whisper around the edges of religious discomfort. It names the problem of blind veneration and irrational belief without flinching. And coming from Rabbi Marc D Angel, Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, founder of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, that critique carries weight that is not theoretical. It comes from inside the system it is questioning. That is not a safe position. It never was.

There is something almost ironic here. A Sephardic rabbinic leader born in Seattle, with nearly forty books behind him, writes one of the clearest defenses of intellectual honesty in modern Judaism, and yet the book itself ends up living in a very narrow corridor. Too philosophical for casual religious readers. Too religious for pure academic philosophy shelves. It ends up in that strange middle space where thinking people quietly find it, and quietly pass it to someone else. No noise. Just transfer.

And that detail matters. Because the book is not abstract theory. It is aimed directly at the kind of reader who feels spiritually homeless while still wanting to remain inside tradition. That specific tension, loving Torah but refusing to turn off the mind, is not a broad audience. It is a very particular kind of discomfort. The kind that does not advertise itself. It just sits there. Quiet. Persistent.

There is a line in the work that essentially exposes the entire paradox. The idea that the Torah path is narrow, with fire on one side and ice on the other. That image is almost too precise for modern religious discourse. Not poetic decoration. A warning about balance that assumes constant intellectual pressure. Most readers do not realize how rare it is to see Spinoza and Maimonides used together without one being treated as an enemy of the other. Here they are collaborators in argument. Strange alliance. It works.

But here is the part that feels almost absurd. A book that explicitly validates the thinking religious reader, the one who refuses both extremism and silence, is still largely discovered by accident. Even though it is already praised by scholars like Menachem Kellner and Neil Gillman, it does not consistently reach the very people it describes. The ones sitting inside congregations thinking privately, am I allowed to think like this. Yes. But they never see the answer sitting nearby.

That gap is where my attention goes. Not changing the argument. Not reshaping the theology. Just making sure the book is not waiting in the wrong shelf space while the exact readers it was written for keep assuming they are alone in the question. Because right now, intellectual honesty in Judaism is being searched for in fragments, while this text already holds it in a structured form that feels almost unreasonably calm about difficult questions.

And there is something unfinished about that. A book about ideas that transcend time and space, still sitting slightly outside the line of sight of the very minds it was written to steady… almost like it is waiting for someone to notice it is already speaking their language before they even finish forming the question.

(The book can be ordered from Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/maimonides-spinoza-and-us-turner-publishing-company/1126846314?ean=9781683361848)