Relationship Between Ideals and Commandments in Judaism

By Pinchas Polonsky (Ariel University, Israel), Galina Zolotusky, Gregory Yashgur, and Raphael BenLevi (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)

(Thanks to Lise Brody, Rivka Efremenko, and Lilian Mellech for translation and editing, and

to Prof. Michael Sherman for corrections and helpful discussions.)

Introduction

For many hundreds of years, Judaism has been defending its ideals against those of Christianity. In the Medieval Era everybody knew which religion they belonged to, and conversion from one religion to another was more of an exception than the rule. In the modern era, however, an overwhelmingly large proportion of Jews and Gentiles have become indecisive about which religion they belong to. This has caused the relationship between Judaism and Christianity to change drastically: Judaism is now in a constant state of competition with Christianity for the souls of these uncertain individuals.

So far, Judaism has been losing, and the reason is clear: While Christianity has always revolved around ideals, Judaism has evolved to be a religion of commandments. This is, of course, very disturbing because original and authentic Judaism is very clearly a religion of ideals. If Judaism were to return to its ideals, more and more Jews would find meaning in identifying with and practicing it. However, Judaism must win this contest for another, much broader reason: for the sake of the general advancement of the world through the acceptance of Jewish values. Even if this proves to be too vast a goal, then Judaism must win for the sake of these assimilated Jews.

These two goals are intertwined. The only way to develop the world and to bring the assimilated Jews back to their roots is to restore Judaism to what it used to be in the times of the Tanakh—namely a religion of ideals and morals; the commandments function as a tool to express its values. Once this transformation occurs, both Jews and Gentiles will understand the truth of Judaism, and that in itself will be a great achievement for all of humanity.

Part 1: A Problem in the Orthodox World Today: Jewish Religious Consciousness Lacks the Concept of “Ideals”

            Historically, Judaism has come to be seen as a religion of commandments and laws. If someone unfamiliar with Judaism approaches many contemporary rabbis with queries, they would likely briefly be told about faith in God and the Bible, but then would immediately be encountered by an enumeration of commandments and laws. Similarly, in the library of any Orthodox synagogue or yeshiva, we would find a huge number of books under the general category of halakha (Jewish law), with the laws of everyday life, the holidays, Shabbat, kashruth, and so forth. What we are unlikely to find in this collection is a book called The Ideals of Judaism. We may find bits and pieces in different places, but a systematic exploration of ideals in Judaism is lacking. For this reason, the Judaism that has evolved in the Diaspora, at least outwardly, creates an impression of being a religion that is devoid of ideals.

            This tendency to reduce Judaism to a system of law and observances is not a recent development, however. Beginning with early Christianity this charge was being made, most famously by Paul of Tarsus, who argued for the abolition of the Mosaic Law, at least in any obligatory sense, identifying the law itself as the cause of sin. The charge was that Rabbinical Judaism, and the very institution of the law, was associated with the neglect of higher divine ideals. This motif continued to be echoed almost two millennia later among German Idealist philosophers, particularly Kant and Hegel. In their understanding of Judaism, the Torah is, above all, law. Kant held that if the Torah was given by a deity external to reason, then the Mosaic Law could not represent morality based on autonomous reason. Hegel also believed that, for this reason, Judaism had been superseded by Christianity, and therefore become irrelevant to history’s march toward absolute universal religion, which, he said, was on the horizon in his day. Many contemporary thinkers continue to give voice to this view today.

            However, this view of Judaism is incorrect and represents merely a reduction of the authentic Hebraic system in which moral ideals are in a dynamic interaction with the law. It is correct, however, that, unfortunately, as a result of the long exile where the Jewish people could not manifest the original idea of a sovereign and independent society, there arose a tendency within Judaism to emphasize the laws and commandments over moral ideals. This tendency is still prevalent today and permeates much of the discourse in Jewish Orthodoxy.

            Judaism, in fact, has a two-fold approach to the issue: It recognizes that people generally dislike laws, mainly because laws evoke a sense of obligation. Even if a person agrees with the necessity of obligations, he would still prefer that ideals, goals, and meaning stand behind these obligations. It is no coincidence that Christianity focuses precisely on this issue and accuses Judaism of being a religion of duties, laws, and formalities, devoid of freedom and flight of the soul. On the other hand, the need for laws is also defended: After all, everything falls apart without the laws; the laws are the basis of life. Without self-restraint, spirituality would greatly suffer. Thus, laws have a clear dichotomy: Although they push some away from Judaism, others find Judaism meaningless without them. We claim that while laws are an important part of Judaism, an obsession with, or imbalanced over-emphasis on them, destroys the spiritual content of Judaism.

            Some think that what drives people away from observing commandments is the external secular influence of our day. The problem, however, is much deeper; the divine nature of humanity resists seeing the commandments, the laws, and the duties as the main focus of Judaism. Freedom is a divine quality. It is intrinsic to human nature to strive to emulate God, and everything that creates a distinction from God makes us feel uncomfortable. Therefore, seeing Judaism as merely a set of commandments creates a negative view of the human soul. The commandments are necessary, but only after a person moves freely in the direction of ideals. Self-restraint must stem from freedom, and not the other way around.

The Source of Morality

            There are two levels to this topic that should be differentiated. The first question is that of the source of morality: Is God the exclusive source of moral knowledge for humans, meaning that an act is good solely because God has declared it to be so—and if He were to declare otherwise any act would become moral or immoral accordingly? Or is moral knowledge, from the human perspective, something that can be engaged with independently of revelation by God—and that God, in fact, cannot or will not change it?

            We argue that the Jewish answer to this question is that it is actually a false dichotomy. The truth is that God is, on the one hand, the source of everything, including the moral conscience of humanity. On the other hand, because God endowed humans with the capability for moral thought, it is incumbent upon humanity to use it.

            The most classic source that illustrates this is Genesis (18:25), where Abraham is described as arguing with God. God informs Abraham of his intention to destroy Sodom, but Abraham resists, asserting that God must do justice. Beyond the obvious implication arising from the text that Abraham has the ability to engage in a debate over morality with God, none of the classic Jewish commentators criticize Abraham for asserting his opinion.

            Of course, the account of the Binding of Isaac (the Akeidah) is often raised as the ultimate example that proves that God’s will must be obeyed even in the face of morality. This is also, we argue, a simplistic and inaccurate reading of the story. A thorough treatment of this story is beyond the scope of this article but it can be explained as follows: The most important point to note, here, is that at the end, Abraham does not actually slaughter his son. And it is clear from passages throughout the Tanakh[1] that God is not interested in child sacrifice. In fact, God forbids it in the strongest terms.

            The message of the Akeidah can be understood thus: to clarify once and for all that, by definition, there cannot be a situation where God will command something that is immoral—not because God’s command defines morality, but because God wants to promote moral behavior. The Akeidah story is a dramatic way of driving this point home. Rabbi Avraham Yitchak Kook relates to the Akeidah in his commentary on the Siddur, Olat Hara’ayah (I, p. 92):

…the ultimate [moral] command, whether the imperative to not engage in the evil of murder, or from the natural avoidance of anything that undermines the feelings of love of a father for his child, stands stridently in its place. The clarity, that is natural and holy, which is engraved in the spiritual and material nature, does not lose its high stature at all, by the encounter with the higher vision of God’s word…. Do not think that there is any inherent contradiction between the pure love of a father for his son, and the higher love of God.

            R. Kook is saying that the natural moral conscience—that rejects hurting Isaac—is not in contradiction to the divine command. Any apparent contradiction between humanity’s moral conscience and God’s command will always be superficial. This is because both the feelings of love of a father for his son and the moral conscience that rejects murder are both integral parts of the system of God’s command. Accordingly, Kant’s mistake is that he saw autonomous morality and heteronomous morality as being contradictory to begin with. In Judaism they are not and cannot be so.

            R. Kook says this even more clearly in Orot haKodesh (Section 3:12):

The fear of heaven must never be allowed to thrust aside man’s natural morality, because then it would cease to be a pure fear of heaven. A sign of the pure fear of heaven is when the natural morality, rooted in man’s upright nature, is brought to higher and higher heights that he would not otherwise reach, because of it [the fear of heaven].

            But this is not only a position held by R. Kook. The classic sages seem to say the same thing. R. Nissim Goan (990–1062) states that all people, including non-Jews, are beholden to the moral imperative, even if they were not directly commanded by explicit divine revelation. The human conscience is also a source for approaching God’s will, even where God has not spoken. He states: “All the commandments that are dependent on common sense and the hearts’ understanding are obligatory from the day that God created man in this world” (Introduction to Sefer haMafteah).

            Likewise, R. Abraham ibn Ezra in his commentary on the Torah (Exodus 20:1), states:

God forbid that even one of the commandments should contradict common sense, but we must in any case observe everything that God commanded, whether its secret is revealed or not. And if one of them seems to contradict common sense, we must not understand it at face value, and must search our sources for its meaning, possibly as a parable.

            Maimonides, in his Guide to the Perplexed (II:45), argues that humanity’s internal moral compass is itself a form of prophecy:

The first degree of prophecy consists in the divine assistance which is given to a person, and induces and encourages him to do something good and grand, e.g., to deliver a congregation of good men from the hands of evildoers; to save one noble person, or to bring happiness to a large number of people; he finds in himself the cause that moves and urges him to this deed. This degree of divine influence is called “the spirit of the Lord.”

            The nineteenth-century Italian rabbi, Elijah Benamozegh, puts it slightly differently, in what he called the “unity of the law”—the unity of the universal or divine law, and the law of humanity. He explains that the law of the universe and of humanity are one and the same. “God keeps the laws,” as it were, and this is the meaning of the midrashic statements where God is described as observing the commandments such as tefillin and sukkah. R. Benamozegh says that God and humanity are bound to the same moral imperative, in essence. Humans are expected to emulate God because they must both meet the demands of morality. In fact, God observed the mitzvoth [the commandments] before there were humans; and it is because God did so that God commanded humans to do so as well. As he states in his work, Israel and Humanity:[2]

The many biblical passages which declare that the true knowledge of God is moral knowledge, the fear of the Lord, thus become clear… Practical morality or ethics is thus raised to the level of divine knowledge. The law of man and the law of God are but a single identical law…. (p. 226)

…The Torah affirms that the moral life is indispensable to the dignity of all men without distinction… Moses says: “for all the abhorrent things were done by the people who were in the land before you, and the land became defiled” (Lev. 18:27), suggesting that ethical laws are universal, applying to Gentiles as well as Jews…. This text is but a single example… in which we see God approving or condemning, rewarding or punishing the Gentiles—appraising their conduct, whether as Lawgiver or Judge, and doing this with reference to a higher law to which they are held as responsible as the Israelites, which is in fact the same for all men. This universal moral standard is invoked not only in the pagan’s relation to God but also in his relation to Israel, and in a general way in the relations of all men with one another…. Moral values are perhaps assumed to be generally known, whether by a natural instinct of mankind or through a tradition common to all peoples. (p. 279)

The Reasons for the Commandments (Ta’amei haMitzvoth)

            This first level of the fundamental source of morality leads directly to the second level, which is how exactly this morality is related to Judaism’s system of commandments. Should we be occupying ourselves with the details of this relationship at all? And how are we to incorporate general moral considerations when deciding issues of halakha over time and in different contexts?

            Here, there seems to be a certain tension that is built into Judaism even among the classic commentators. All seem to recognize that, in principle, there are deep reasons for all the commandments; but many express great caution over involving ourselves with these reasons out of concern that it will result in a loss of the fear of heaven and lead to neglecting observance. So the obligation to observe the commandments even without directly engaging with their particular moral ideals is a fundamental part of the rabbinic tradition. It is only the over-emphasis, the extreme imbalance that we seek to correct. Let us take note of some of these sources.

            The most famous source that demonstrates a deep skepticism of the attempt to engage with the higher ideals of the mitzvoth is in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 21a:

Why were the reasons in the Torah not revealed? Because the reasons for two commandments were revealed and the great one failed through them. It says: “[The king] must not have many wives, so that they not make his heart go astray” (Deuteronomy 17:17). Solomon said: “I will have many, but I will not go astray.” And it says: “And it was, when Solomon become old, his wives led him astray after foreign gods” (I Kings 11:4). It says: “[The king,] however, must not accumulate many horses, so as not to bring the people back to Egypt to get more horses” (Deuteronomy 17:16). Solomon said: “I will have many, but I will not bring them back.” And it says: “And the horses went up out of Egypt” (I Kings 10:29).

Here, the sages demonstrate that the concern regarding revealing the reasons behind the commandments is justified. If a reason is given, people may come to see the validity of the commandments not as resting in God, but as resting in the supposed reason. In such circumstances, it will be human nature to relate to it in a lax fashion and propose changing it if it seems out of date or inconvenient, as King Solomon demonstrated.

            Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, known as the Ba’al haTurim, writes in his major work of halakha the following: “We need not seek out the reason behind the commandments, because the King’s command is upon us, even if we don’t know the reason” (Tur, Yorah Deah, 171). He expresses the concern that knowing the reason will undermine our recognition of the kingship of God, and we will only observe the commandments with which we identify with and feel attachment. Other sages over the generations have voiced similar opinions. It should be noted, however, that none of them seem to believe that there is no deeper reason behind the Mosaic Law, but only that we, as humans, cannot fully grasp it, and, that pursuing this realm of knowledge will do more harm than good.

            The above quotations notwithstanding, many classic and modern commentators very much believed that we should be engaging ourselves in the pursuit of the meanings, ideals, and reasons behind the Mosaic Laws. In Guide to the Perplexed (III:31), Maimonides writes clearly that the commandments include intelligible logic and that a person can and should understand them:

There are persons who find it difficult to give a reason for any of the commandments, and consider it right to assume that the commandments and prohibitions have no rational basis whatsoever. They are led to adopt this theory by a certain disease in their soul, the existence of which they perceive, but which they are unable to discuss or to describe…. But if no reason could be found for these statutes, if they produced no advantage and removed no evil, why then should he who believes in them and follows them be wise, reasonable, and so excellent as to raise the admiration of all nations? But the truth is undoubtedly as we have said, that every one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts serves to inculcate some truth, to remove some erroneous opinion, to establish proper relations in society, to diminish evil, to train in good manners, or to warn against bad habits.

            Nachmanides presents a similar view in his commentary on the Torah (Deut. 22:6):

…this is one of two possible positions: There is the position that there are no reasons for the commandments beyond God’s desire, but we are of the second position that every commandment has a reason…. The only explanation for cases where we do not know the reason is our own intellectual blindness.

            Often, the commandments are classified into two categories, mishpatim and hukim, meaning commandments that are rationally understandable and ones that are not (Yoma 67b; Maimonides, Guide III:26). However, many sages did not seem to feel that this distinction is so absolute as to preclude finding ideals and meaning even in the commandments that are not readily understandable.

            R. Samson Raphael Hirsch described the commandments as symbols that come to express ideas. In his book The Mitzvot as Symbols, he states that God commanded the observance of practices so that we will be constantly aware of certain concepts and truths and that they will be engraved in our hearts. For him, it is precisely the commandments that are not clearly rational that have symbolic meaning that represent ideas to those who perform them. In justifying his approach, he explains that the reformers of his time claimed that because they identified the higher ideal behind the commandments, actual observance of them was no longer needed. As a reaction to this, he explains, the traditional circles that came to be called “Orthodoxy” insisted that there is no symbolic or expressive meaning at all. Both, however, are wrong in R. Hirsch’s eyes, because there is symbolic meaning in all the mitzvoth.

            R. Kook agrees that all the mitzvoth have meaning beyond the simple fulfillment of God’s will. However, he disagrees with R. Hirsch’s position that the mitzvoth only represent philosophical ideas, that they are symbols of the idea. Instead, R. Kook says that the mitzvoth are not just philosophical symbols but are organically related to the world. They act on the world independently of our understanding of the ideas behind them. He states,

When one penetrates to the depths of knowledge it is clear that the commandments are not symbols, that come merely to remind us and to emulate a depth on the imagination. Rather, they are the substance that make up the human and cosmic reality. (Igrot Hara’ayah II, letter 378)

            R. Kook proposed a synthesis whereby he rejected the clear distinction between hukim and mishpatim altogether. We can’t say any of the commandments are merely rational, but they’re certainly not irrational either. He proposed that within each category of commandment, both hukim and mishpatim, there is both a rational quality and irrational quality. We understand somewhat, but we can never understand them in the totality of their depth. Both aspects must be felt when observing the commandments and, in doing so, we can connect to their higher meaning without coming to devalue the divine authority vested in them.[3]

            The above sources are but a sample of the numerous classic and modern Torah scholars who state clearly that the commandments do hold within them moral ideas and ideals. Despite this, much of Jewish practice has become imbalanced, where the emphasis was put heavily on the side of the irrational and blind commitment at the expense of the substantive ideals. Furthermore, the focus of the engagement with ideals that has existed was on the personal, individual realm, mainly in character development and not the national societal level.

            The reasons often discussed are of two types: hidur mitzvah (the enhanced performance of a commandment) and tikkun haMiddot (a person’s continual struggle to improve his personality traits). Some of the few classical ideals discussed in books like Mesilat Yesharim are zerizut, haste in the performance of the commandments; zehirut, prudence, carefulness not to sin; tseniut, modesty; teshuva, repentance; and so forth. Hovot haLevavot speaks mainly about one’s obligation to believe in God’s existence, unity, and eternity, in His wondrous wisdom and His providence.

            The problem with placing middot (character traits) at the center of Judaism is that they are not ideals toward which society as a whole can strive; they do not provide a direction for national development. Ideals, on the other hand, are not limited to personal goals but rather they transcend the boundaries of neighborhoods, communities, and countries. A system of middot played an essential role in the closed Jewish communal life in exile. Being part of the “national life” was not an option for individual Jews due to external factors and internal self-censorship. Today, with the creation of the State of Israel and the exposure of the Jews to the larger world, Jews can no longer progress without adapting the broader view of Jewish ideals. Middot, therefore, are only a part of a system of ideals and must be viewed as such. Perfecting one’s middot is a worthy cause for an individual, but a system built only on middot is insufficient for the end purposes of a community or society or, all the more so, a government.

            As such, much of the discussion of the reasons behind the commandments focused on providing interpretations for the various commandments, and not necessarily presenting a coherent, overarching system of ideals and how they interact with each other. It seems, that during the exile period, it was natural that legalistic concerns and the individual realm became the focus of scholars’ attention. However, with the return to a national existence we must refocus our attention precisely on clarifying the system of ideals. This is not just because we live in modern times but also because of the universal meaning expressed by the Jews’ national existence as a holy nation.

            We believe that the very essence of Judaism is the integration of laws and ideals, where ideals are placed before the commandments. To become a leading force in promoting Judaism, the ideals should not be derived from commandments, but on the contrary, commandments should be derived from Torah ideals, and serve to protect and preserve these ideals.

            Developing the ideals into a well-formulated logical system will promote Judaism as a world religion, and consequently provide the motivation for increased observance of the commandments by Jews, as people are willing to do what is meaningful to them. Indeed, the non-observant Jews do not keep the mitzvoth not because they are difficult to observe, but because these Jews do not see the rationale behind the commandments.

            It is vital that the true rapport that exists between the ideals and the commandments enters into the public conscience. To achieve this, it would be necessary to write an entire book that will organize and promote the ideals of Judaism as an essential part of our spiritual horizon. To make things clear: We certainly have no intention of creating a new religious system. On the contrary, we seek only to return to Judaism in its original form. This article is only a preliminary sketch that outlines the general direction of our work. To give a wider picture of the ideals in Judaism, it would be necessary to give a detailed analysis of each of the ideals rooted in the Talmud and the Rabbinic and contemporary Jewish philosophy literature. Our immediate goal in this article is only to define a specific problem in the Jewish Orthodox worldview and to outline a way of solving it.

Particularism versus Universalism in Judaism

            Rabbi Marc. D. Angel, founder and director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals,[4] claims that Judaism’s main goal is to maintain equilibrium between being both particularistic and universalistic, i.e., be careful about preserving our traditions and rituals, but at the same time maintain the universalistic vision of being “a light unto the nations.” He claims that the current tendency in the Modern Orthodox world has been to lean toward particularism, as manifested by the extreme growth of the Haredi community and its domineering influence throughout all aspects of Jewish thought. The turn inward, which can be explained by centuries of persecution and the negative attitude toward Gentiles that are expressed in rabbinic literature, is the result of a tradition of hateful attitudes toward the Jews. Even today, modern leadership is cautious regarding our acceptance and responsibility toward Gentiles. For example, R. Aharon Soloveitchik argues that our responsibility toward the non-Jews is conditional: If they are decent to us, we are obligated to act decently to them; if they persecute us, however, we have no hiyyuv (obligation) to work for their wellbeing.

            In another article, Rabbi Angel[5] quotes Rabbi Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio, a nineteenth-century Italian Torah commentator, on the verse “love your neighbor as yourself” to mean as follows:

Torah Judaism demands not only a keen commitment to truth, but also a keen sense of responsibility to human beings. Rabbi Reggio’s universalistic understanding of the “golden rule” teaches that all human beings—whatever their race, religion, or nationality—are entitled to be treated “like ourselves.” They too, were created by God. They, too, have the human qualities with which we are endowed. If we can see “them” as being just like “us,” we are more likely to develop a sense of kinship and responsibility to all of humanity.

            R. Angel is echoing here the view expounded greatly by R. Elijah Benamozegh. R. Benamozegh believed that Judaism has an inherently universal dimension and that this is reflected in both the Mosaic and Noahide laws. The Mosaic Law, is incumbent only on the Jewish people, whereas the Noahide law is meant for all humankind. Regarding the relationship between the two codes of law, he writes (Israel and Humanity p. 317),

The eternal truths, practical as well as theoretical, are—like the universal Noachide Law—older than the revelation to Moses. This does not, however, mean that they are not part of it. Indeed, the entire Noachide code is contained in the Mosaic revelation, at the same time that (from a different perspective) the one is independent of the other… From the philosophical point of view, all this may be summed up in the concept of a double law: the rational and the supranational, the knowable and the unknowable, the intelligible and the super intelligible. It is the first of these two dimensions which we find in the Noachide Law; it is the second which corresponds to the Torah.

            As a prime example of the way Judaism’s particularism is itself directed toward a universalist aspiration, R. Benamozegh cites the sages’ comment on the passage in Deuteronomy (11:12): “It is therefore a land constantly under God your Lord’s scrutiny; the eyes of God your Lord are on it at all times, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.” On this passage, The Midrash Sifrei asks if we are to understand that God is only interested in this corner of the Earth, and answers: No—but through the care that He lavishes on the land of Israel, God extends His providence toward all the other countries. On this R. Benamozegh writes (Israel and Humanity p. 318),

It seems to us that the strikingly universalist idea which the sages derive from this text, which is apparently so exclusive in its implication, beautifully characterizes the authentic spirit of Judaism. A country which finds itself chosen to be a means of grace and blessing for the entire world, but is in no way licensed to hold others in contempt: This is dominating the concept of the entire law, written and oral, beginning with Abraham, in whom all races should be blessed….

Deriving Ideals from the Torah

            We said before that introducing the concept of “ideals” into the social consciousness is essential for a proper structural organization of Judaism. We also discussed at length the correct interrelation between mitzvoth and ideals, but what are these ideals that we are discussing here? Consider two specific examples of ideals: freedom and love of humanity.

            We all know that freedom plays a crucial role in Judaism. It is clear that without freedom of will there can be no true fulfillment of the Torah. Into what category should freedom be included? Obviously freedom is not a commandment enumerated among the 613 mitzvoth, but we do have a mitzvah to remember that we were slaves and then became free. If we were to have a category of ideals, then liberty and freedom would become the most essential parts of Judaism. Jews became a nation when they received the Torah on Mt. Sinai, but first they had to leave Egypt to become a free people. Thus, while the commandment of “zekhirat yetziat mitzrayim” (remembering the Exodus from Egypt) is written explicitly in the Torah, the ideal of freedom is derived from this commandment.

            The second example also has this double aspect of commandment and ideal. In the non-Jewish world, the verse “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is understood as love for all of humanity. In Judaism, however, the commandment of “love your neighbor” obligates us to love only the Jews but not non-Jews. It often happens that when non-Jews hear about this, they are dismayed. How can this be? Does Judaism not have that same love of humanity that they believe to be the most important achievement of the Jewish Bible? The answer is that, of course, Judaism has the concept of love for all of humanity. But again, the commandment of “love your neighbor” is written explicitly, while the ideal of loving humankind is culled from the text.

            This dichotomy is also felt in the halakha that rules that there is a fundamental difference between the love for Jews and the love for Gentiles: Loving other Jews is an obligation, whereas loving all of humanity is an ideal. Again, only after we introduce the category of ideals, is it possible to assign the “love of humankind” to its rightful place in Jewish hashkafa (worldview). Additionally, love of humanity is ranked; the love for those who are closer to you precedes the love for those who are more distant. As the Rambam states (Matanot Aniyim 7:13):

A man’s poor relative has priority over any person; the poor in his own household have priority over the poor in his town; the poor in his town have priority over the poor of another town as it is written: “Open your hand to your brother, to your needy, to your poor in your land” (Deut. 15:11).

(A similar idea is expressed in the English expression, “charity begins at home.”) In this way, Judaism defines “love your neighbor” in a much more complete manner by coupling a commandment with an ideal, as opposed to Christianity, which sees this principle only as an ideal.  

            A third example is found in the traditional commentary on the Shema, which says: “Why does the passage of Shema precede the passage of “veHaya im Shamoa”? So that a person would put on the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and only afterward the yoke of the commandments” (Berakhot 13a). Although the second paragraph also speaks of love of God, the first paragraph is called kabalat malkhut shamayim (accepting the yoke of heaven), and the second one kabalat mitzvoth (accepting the commandments) because the second paragraph discusses rewards and punishments. The word “yoke” gives the impression of some type of obligation. However, the first passage is not talking about responsibilities, but about ideals. Of course, the first fragment can be read in a halakhic sense, deriving from the commandments of the Shema, tefilin, and mezuzah. However, focusing too much on the commandments prevents us from seeing the ideals, namely, to love God and to understand the divine unity. This is an example of how an ideal is realized through a mitzvah: The ideal of loving God is facilitated by the mitzvoth of tefilin and mezuzah mentioned in the Shema. This understanding of the interplay between mitzvoth and ideals should fill all aspects of our lives (both in our secular and religious pursuits), sitting at home or traveling on the road, lying down or getting up.

Interplay Between Commandments and Ideals in Halakha

            The above discussion has related to the issue of the essential meaning of the various mitzvoth; but there is an additional realm—the practical application of the commandments in life in various contexts—the determination of halakha. To fully appreciate the complexity of authentic Judaism, we need to further analyze the interconnection between ideals and halakha. It is important to note that any positive aspiration may develop in the wrong direction if it is not restricted. Ideals are not absolute and their implementation is not a guarantee of any “good.” Ideals are important, but they are also dangerous. Therefore, in addition to ideals we also need commandments that will preserve the ideals. The commandments become vessels and the ideals become the substance that fills these vessels. Another major difference between commandments and ideals is that each of the commandments is intrinsically valuable. However the ideals are valuable primarily as the building blocks of a system. If a person fulfilled commandment A but did not do commandment B, the fulfillment of A is still good. However, if a person realizes ideal A at the expense of ideal B, then the result is dubious. It could be that the person is acting wickedly although the ideal is very good.

            The question is what happens if we encounter a contradiction between the commandments and the ideals? Which one takes precedence? Let us consider the following allegory: driving by car through the city. Locally, the traffic signs direct the car’s movement, but it is the final destination that defines the car’s ultimate direction. So, too, regarding commandments and ideals: As we go through life, the commandments take precedence locally, but it is the ideals that guide us in the bigger picture. Without understanding the ideals, the commandments can easily turn into an empty formal system that does not interact with the reality around us. Hence, the commandments and the ideals do not contradict each other but rather, the commandments show us how to successfully and correctly implement the ideals into our day-to-day life.

            The twentieth-century scholar, R. Eliezer Berkovits, discussed this issue at length in his writings. He took a clear position that the halakha is primarily about moral values rather than rules. He states that the halakha is meant to translate the intention of the Torah into application in real-life situations, and in doing so, it grants “the priority of the ethical, according to which it is understood as furthering the larger moral principles embodied in the Torah.”[6] Thus, the law is a vehicle for realizing this morality in society and advancing human history.

            R. Berkovits’s approach is not the same as that promoted by Conservative Judaism. For the Conservative movement, changes in halakha are necessitated by the need to create a synthesis between traditional Judaism on the one hand, and modern life and its values on the other. The impetus for change, then, is not the result of eternal Jewish principles, but from some external source, from modernity. R. Berkovits’s understanding of halakha, and what is being described by the present authors, is entirely different. For R. Berkovits, change in halakha is meant

…to reflect the careful, incremental adjustment of legal means to further moral ends that are themselves intrinsic to Judaism and unchanging. These moral ends are not an external “anti-thesis” with which the tradition must come to terms by changing its internal content in keeping with them; they are themselves the moral core of the same revealed message from which the law receives its authority… while the law may change, the values which underlie it do not; on the contrary, the purpose of the change is to permit the continued advancement of the Bible’s eternally valid moral teaching under new conditions.[7]

            To summarize, the Judaism of the Diaspora has come to emphasize the system of commandments. In this essay we have presented a very different approach, claiming that Judaism is really a system of ideals, and the commandments are required for the correct realization of these ideals. We believe that the more people see the truthfulness of the second approach, the more advanced Judaism will be.

Conclusion to Part I

            We do not intend to provide an analysis of all the Jewish texts here, but rather are endeavoring to intuitively derive some of the ideals from the Torah. “Intuitively” means that we use our modern way of thinking to build a system of values. This is not the usual way for Judaism that customarily uses the traditional galut philosophy developed during the Talmudic Era and the times of the Rishonim. On the other hand, if we believe that there is an ongoing Divine Revelation, then the fact that today we look at the world differently is also part of the Divine Revelation. Therefore, when this philosophy is used for the derivation of ideals, this means that the ongoing Revelation is being integrated with the Classical Revelation (of Sinai). This methodology is far from perfect, but for the purposes of this article, it will suffice.

Note that the purpose of this article is merely to give food for thought and to crystallize and categorize the main points, to begin the discussion but not to end it.

Part II: Organization of the Ideals

            We looked at the ideals of freedom and love of humanity and the way they are intertwined with mitzvoth, but what are the other ideals in Judaism? Is there a way of systematizing them into one concrete, all-encompassing scheme?

            Let us begin by looking for ideals in the Torah that are not derived from the commandments. The natural place that comes to mind is the Book of Genesis, as this book precedes the vast majority of the commandments that begin only in the middle of the Book of Exodus. We see that ideals take up a large part of Genesis; it is therefore critical to formulate the commandments so that they take their rightful place in our contemporary understanding of Judaism.

It would be logical to put the ideals into the following categories:

a) Ideals of Adam and Noah: ideals of humanity as a whole
b) Ideals of Abraham, Isaac,and Jacob: ideals of our forefathers
c) Ideals of Joseph and his brothers: family ideals
d) Ideals of Moses and Aaron: ideals of the Nation of Israel
e) Ideals of the Mashiah: a special group of messianic ideals for future times.

            In this section we are going to talk about the ideals of Adam haRishon (primordial man), Noah, Abraham, and a bit about the Messianic ideal. The ideals of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Aaron are currently in the process of being developed. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

Ideals of Adam and Noah: Ideals of Humanity as a Whole

            The first mitzvah that Adam receives is, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and rule over it” (Genesis 1:26–28) or, in modern terms, develop the world. In a similar way, two aspects of human’s mastery over nature are described later on: “The Lord God took man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to guard it” (Genesis 2:15). It is clear what “cultivate the world” means, but from whom or from what should man guard the Garden? The answer is from man himself. For, as we all know, it was man himself who destroyed the Garden through the violation of the prohibition of not eating from the Tree of Knowledge. In our society, we protect the world and the environment from the destructive influence of humans. Progress and environmental protection can coexist, but they should keep each other in check. Progress is a spiritual necessity, although the role of religion is to keep it from self-destruction.

            These sources disprove the common notion that religion opposes the advancement of civilization, progress, and technology. According to the Rambam, authentic Judaism is very much concerned with material and technological progress—so much so that it sees scientific and technological progress as a religious value.

            To counter the mitzvah to advance the world comes the Torah’s account of the creation of humans, “…in the image of God He made him” (Genesis 1:26–28). This verse teaches us that a person as an individual becomes closer to God by imitating Him through one’s own personal choices.

            The story of Noah comes to show us how seriously God takes an improper imbalance between advancement of the self and advancement of the world. Noah was a man of great righteousness, who “walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). He wanted to be closer to God, but at the same time, as the commentators tell us, he did not have a sufficient sense of responsibility for all of humanity. Extremely laborious work in the Ark during the flood corrected Noah in that it showed him the importance of the correct balance between closeness to God and responsibility for civilization. Noah learned to balance Adam’s ideals, and his children took this balancing act even further. Shem became responsible for the ideal of coming closer to God, and Japheth for the ideal of building and advancing civilization. They were all instructed to integrate: “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem” (Genesis 9:27).

            By juxtaposing the story of Adam and Noah, we see that a personal level of self-advancement must be counterbalanced by building and advancing civilization. If Imitatio Dei can be understood on an intuitive level, granting religious significance to building a civilization is far from being obvious. These two ideals exhibit internal tension: striving toward a transcendental God may lead a person away from the world, while building a civilization forces him to be very much involved in the world. Being in opposition to each other, it is important that these ideals co-exist in equilibrium and that none of them are realized at the expense of the other. If a person leans toward the ideal of Imitatio Dei and exhibits indifference to civilization, it would mean that his Imitatio Dei is deficient. The opposite situation also holds true: If one is only involved in the needs of civilization, leaving aside “striving to imitate the ways of God,” one will not be able to rectify the world, and all one’s efforts would lead to the wrong result. Thus, the creation of humans in the image and likeness of God is the starting point of a human endeavor to bring humanity as a whole as close as possible to God.

Imitatio Dei in Judaism versus Imitatio Dei in Christianity

            The Jewish version of Imitatio Dei is clearly stated in Leviticus 11:14: “Ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy.” We see that holiness is something that increases the similarity between God and humans, and brings us closer to God. This is a Jew’s obligation toward God, on a solely individual level.

            The ideal of Imitatio Dei is not only found in Judaism. Christianity borrowed the same idea from Judaism and accepted it as a pure monotheistic principle that stands at the core of its ethics. The essence of monotheism is that the Higher Power, or God, has a personality. It is based on the fact that God created the entire world and created humanity in His own image. Of course, human is not God, but the more one realizes the divine potential, the closer one moves toward God. For example, Imitatio Dei is based on the commandment of keeping Shabbat: “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:2). The implication is clear: So you, too, should have a day of rest.

            However, Judaism and Christianity implement Imitatio Dei rather differently. In the Christian view of the world, the Gospels evoked an image of Jesus that identified with God; therefore, the Christian ideal is to be similar to Jesus and Imitatio Dei turns into Imitatio Christi. Accordingly, all of the classical Christian ethics hallow poverty and missionary work, as this lifestyle imitates Jesus’s life. Judaism, on the other hand, believes in imitation of the divine attributes or divine actions that we find in the Torah. The Talmud explains this idea (Shabbat 133b) as a commentary to this verse: “Just as He is merciful, so should you be merciful. Just as He is kind, so should you be kind.” Similarly, Maimonides cites Deuteronomy 11:22 as the main source for a specific biblical commandment to develop a virtuous personality: “If you carefully safeguard and keep this entire mandate that I prescribe to you today, [and if you] love God, walk in all His ways, and cling to Him.” Maimonides interprets “Ve-halakhta bidrakhav” (and walk in all His ways) as imitating God’s traits. Thus, in Judaism there is no other way to “be like God” than through action or perfecting of the self.  

A Closer Look at Imitatio Dei in Genesis

            In this section we will show how ideals can be derived from the first few verses of Genesis. The first verse in the Torah, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), shows that God is the Creator. So, it is clear that the first ideal of Judaism is to create. Creating is the most divine act that a person is capable of doing. Creativity brings a person pleasure and divine light. However, there are not many books about Judaism that emphasize this as the main ideal. Creativity cannot be commanded. A commandment is an obligation, and creativity is free in its very essence; therefore, ontologically, creativity is independent because it precedes the commandments and carries forward the entire system.

            Creativity, like religion, cannot be realized without restrictions, for once restrictions are removed, creativity also disappears. If an architect creates freely without considering the laws of gravity and the laws of mechanics based on strength of materials, the structure will collapse, and creativity will have no effect. Any freedom has to be limited by some rules to make it possible for this freedom to be realized. If these rules are violated, freedom has no effect. Similarly, in religion there are rules called commandments, and if these commandments are violated, the religion collapses.

            The second act of God represents another ideal: “And God said: Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). This verse shows that words have the power to create. Indeed, human beings, whose creativity stems from God’s creativity, live in order to express and possibly to create something of importance using words. A variety of arts, such as music, literature, and sculpture may well fit into this definition. Art strives to communicate something of consequence, and this desire should be recognized as an important aspect of Judaism. Thus, opening an art school would not only be a cultural act but a divine one. Similarly, if words are so powerful that they serve as the building blocks of the universe, then a School of Rhetoric would not only teach individuals to attain personal eloquence, but would have religious meaning as well. Thus, building a system of ideals in Judaism has practical implications for Jewish culture today.

            The third act of God is described: “And God saw the light” (Genesis 1:4). This is obviously not referring to simply a “vision” but “an evaluation of the situation.” Therefore, we, like God, like to assess and evaluate, regardless of any practical application. Judaism should see this personality trait as an important part of a person’s religiosity, and should advance and encourage people to develop and state their opinions.

            God’s fourth act is, “And God separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4). We, too, like to divide the world into black and white, into right and wrong, into good and evil, in our understanding of things. This should not be seen as simply a tendency of the human mind, but part of the religious experience. Therefore, like creativity and the desire to evaluate, Judaism should encourage people to develop their ability to discern right from wrong.

            Finally, people like to give definitions to everything because “God called the light day” (Genesis 1:4). When we give a definition to a certain event, experience, or idea, we imitate the Creator and thus perform a spiritual act.

            The ability to differentiate between good and evil, to create, and to evaluate a situation are characteristics that God implanted in us. To develop these characteristics is an ideal. The problem with contemporary religious society is that it does NOT present these ideals to its followers. This is unfortunate because what is really significant is what ideals we (the society) define as religiously meaningful; this in turn influences society’s development. This is so because a society is very much defined by the development of those ideals that are encouraged by its followers. The question, “What is an ideal?” means, “Which characteristics do we want to develop?” Obviously they are all implanted in us; otherwise there would be no possibility of developing them. Therefore the question, “What are the ideals whose development should be considered of religious value?” is crucial to the advancement of Judaism.

            Thus, in the first four verses of the Torah, we are presented with the basic ideals of human life in relation to the divine. By integrating ideals into Judaism, we let it influence our lives to a much greater degree.

The Ideal of Truth

            The Torah states: “Keep away from anything false.” (Exodus 23:7). From this we learn that there is a basic ideal of Truth in Judaism. Surprisingly, this ideal is not trivial, as there exist cultures that lack it, where personal advancement dominates over truth, and therefore lying could be a social norm.

Ideals of Abraham

            Let us proceed to the next subject of our study: the ideals of Abraham. First, we note that in Judaism there are two kinds of covenants between God and the Jewish people. One is called “the covenant of Abraham” and the other “the covenant at Sinai.” In “the covenant at Sinai” the Israelites received a system of precepts, and at its foundation lay the Ten Commandments. The “covenant of Abraham” was built on ideals and was in no way connected to commandments. Even circumcision was not a commandment per se but a symbol of the covenant. It is not our goal here to analyze in detail all of the ideals of Abraham and the Patriarchs. We will only attempt to learn what lies on the surface and understand what is relevant to us today.

Universalistic vs. Nationalistic Ideals of Judaism

            As discussed in the first part of this essay, universalism is an important part of Judaism. We see this explicitly written in the Torah when God selects and blesses Abraham, “All the nations of the world shall be blessed through your descendants—all because you obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:18). Thus, a universalistic goal of Judaism is to make an impact on all of humanity, to become a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) and to look broadly beyond the scope of Jewish life.

            On the other hand, Abraham did not just spread religious and ethical teachings; he was commanded to create a nation, a special, separate people that would realize his ideals. Here too, we see that all aspects, the universal, cosmopolitan and the national, have to strike a balance to create a nation that is universalistic.

The Ideal of Progress through Argumentation

            One of the important characteristics of “Jewishness” is the capacity to debate with God. Abraham argues with God regarding Sodom. This is the most striking example of a dispute with God in all of the monotheistic literature. This dispute is not simply a request or presentation of arguments. Abraham is openly critical of the divine plan, and he doesn’t refrain from using rather severe words: “It would be sacrilege even to ascribe such an act to You—to kill the innocent with the guilty, letting the righteous and the wicked fare alike. It would be sacrilege to ascribe this to You! Shall the whole world’s Judge not act justly?” (Genesis 18:25). If a person on trial in a state court said anything like that to a judge, he would be accused of contempt of court. God however does not react in that way. On the contrary: He provokes Abraham to argue with Him. Abraham’s debate with God teaches us an important lesson about how humanity progresses: If a person always agrees, he will never grow in understanding. To truly understand, one must first put forward arguments and then discuss them. Judaism should therefore strive to encourage Jews to ask questions, no matter how sensitive they are, and they should not to be afraid to seem “impious,” for even Abraham disputed with the Almighty!

            In monotheism, there are three levels of humanity’s relationship with God: the level of subordination, when people carry out the divine orders; the level of love, when God wants to bestow benefits upon humanity; and the level of a dialogue, when God conducts a dialogue with humans. Judaism stresses the importance of all three levels. When God commands Abraham to “walk before me” (Genesis. 17:1), commentators note that it is said about Noah that he “walked with God.” “Walking with God” is to agree while “walking before God” is to argue and disagree when the divine guidance contradicts the divine spark of intuition within humans. Thus, the Jewish ideal is to “go before God.” Later, the Torah explains the reason for selecting Abraham as follows: “I have given him special attention so that he will command his children and his household after him, and they will keep God’s way, doing charity and justice. God will then bring about for Abraham everything He promised” (Genesis18:19).

            The way of God is a covenant of ideals. One of them is a combination of tzedakah (kindness) and mishpat (judgment). It is impossible for the world to exist on mercy alone, but the world cannot survive solely on justice either. Theoretically, we could say that one of the ideals is mercy, and the other is justice. This however would not be precise: mercy and justice must be pursued together rather than separately. This synthesis of mercy and justice is the ideal that God teaches us through our ancestors. Each of our forefathers added a fundamental ideal: Isaac taught us a lesson of self-sacrifice, and Yaakov sanctified God’s name by building a nation and wrestling with God.

Messianic Ideals

            Christianity puts messianic ideals at the center of its belief system. Judaism also has these ideals, but we believe that there is great danger in attempting to implement messianic ideals at a time when society is not ready for them. Any attempt to implement these ideals will immediately lead to undesirable results. Perhaps that is why the messianic ideals of Judaism are not given in the Torah, which is a guide to action, but rather are given in the Books of Prophets. Pacifism, a situation of “beat their swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4), is precisely one of the criteria of the Messianic Era. A few other messianic ideals include nations of the world bringing offerings to the God of Israel and vegetarianism, which R. Kook believed to be a messianic ideal.

            It is well known that different strands of Orthodox Judaism agree mainly in understanding the actual commandments but differ significantly on the question of hiddur mitzvah. Apparently, with regard to ideals, the same holds true. It is imperative to start formulating the ideals of Judaism. By doing so, we will promote Judaism and move closer to being a “Light unto the Nations.”

Instead of a Conclusion: Moses’s Appearance Is Like that of Abraham’s

            The Midrash relates that when Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, the angels opposed him claiming, “Is a man fit to receive this Torah? It should not be given to humans!” Then God made Moses’s appearance and face similar to Abraham’s, and He then asked the angels: “Was it not to him that you came and with him that you ate?” The angels had no choice but to agree.

            According to R. Kook (Kovets, “The Last of the Boyska,” § 24), the angels did not object to Abraham’s teachings being given to humans. Abraham taught that the world has a single Master, who created humans in His image and after His likeness, and from this concept he deduced principles that could be understood by humankind, such as loving and helping one’s neighbor. Abraham taught ideals of mercy, love for all creatures, and above all, love for one’s neighbor; these concepts are so comprehensible that it is clear why people need them. Moses’s teachings, on the other hand, are commandments whose meanings are not always clear; this raises the question whether or not this doctrine is suitable for humans. By rendering Moses’s appearance and face similar to Abraham’s, God demonstrated to the angels that Moses’s commandments are rooted in Abraham’s ideals and that they are the specification and implementation of the ideals that Abraham proclaimed. As a consequence, the angels withdrew their objections.

            Today, we in our lower world need to do what God did in His upper world on high at the time of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai—show that Moses’s appearance resembles Abraham’s, and that Moses’s commandments are the realization of the ideals that Abraham declared; in this way we need to demonstrate that Abraham’s ideals are primary, while Moses’s commandments are a means of realizing these ideals. This understanding will help bring humankind closer to the Torah.

[1]Faith, Science, and Orthodoxy

How can an Orthodox Jew in today's world maintain faith in Torah in the face of the apparent challenges of natural science to that faith? I will here examine Maimonides' approach to the issue and then propose my own approach, one which relies upon reverting to what I understand as classic Jewish definitions of faith.

Before beginning I should like to note that I think that my task is relatively simple. Real challenges to Orthodoxy today do not come from the natural sciences but from literary criticism and history, which cast doubt upon the textual integrity of the Written Torah and upon Orthodox understandings of the nature of the Oral Torah;[2] from ethics, which challenges traditional Jewish understandings of the relationship of the sexes and of Jews and non-Jews, among other problems;[3] and from Enlightenment thought generally, which emphasizes the value of autonomy over faithful submission to God.[4]

How did Maimonides approach the reconciliation of Torah and science? He starts off by taking the text of the Torah as literally true in every case: "I believe every possible happening that is supported by a prophetic statement and do not strip it of its plain meaning."[5] But, there is an exception to this general rule: "I fall back on interpreting a statement [allegorically] only when its plain meaning is impossible, like the corporeality of God; the possible however remains as stated." What makes prophetic references to God as corporeal impossible to accept? Maimonides tells us in the Guide of the Perplexed (II.25, p. 328): "That the deity is not a body has been demonstrated; from this it follows necessarily that everything that in its plain meaning disagrees with this demonstration must be interpreted figuratively, for it is known that such texts are of necessity fit for figurative interpretation."

Maimonides' point is relatively straightforward: the Torah must be accepted as literally true in every case where its teachings do not contradict that which has been demonstrated to be true. By demonstration, Maimonides means "a syllogism both of whose premises are apodictic."[6]

Maimonides' position clearly makes demonstrated truth to be the criterion we use for determining which passages in the Torah we read literally, and which passages we read allegorically. If a scientific claim is demonstrably true, and the plain sense of Scripture contradicts it, we may not ignore or reinterpret the scientific claim; we must, rather, reinterpret Scripture. To all intents and purposes, science becomes our measure for understanding the Torah.[7]

Maimonides could be confident that this approach would cause him no problems since, at their deepest levels, Torah and science taught the same thing. Maimonides clearly states that ma^'aseh bereshit is the rabbinic name for that area of study called by the philosophers, “physics,” and ma^'aseh merkavah is the rabbinic name for that area of study called by the philosophers, “metaphysics”.

Maimonides had further reason for calm: the sciences he was concerned with, physics and metaphysics, proved that which he wanted them to prove, that God exists, is one, and is incorporeal. It is acceptance of these three beliefs, as taught by science, that Maimonides construes as the first commandment, “the great principle upon which all depends” ("Laws of the Foundations of the Torah," I.6), the “foundation of all foundations and pillar of the sciences” ( I.1). Monotheism is the central axis around which the entire Torah revolves, denial of which is tantamount to denial of the Torah in its entirety.

In short, as long as science does not refute the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God –and it appears that there is no way it could – progress in the sciences in no way threatens acceptance of the Torah and obedience to the commandments.

Maimonides opened his magisterial law code, Mishneh Torah with the following statement (here translated loosely):

The most important principle of all the principles of the Torah, and the fundamental axiom of all the sciences is the same, to wit, to know that there exists a First Existent, that It gives existence to all that exists, and that all existent beings, from the heaven to the earth and what is between them, exist only due to the truth of Its existence.

Knowing this, Maimonides goes on to say, is a positive commandment – indeed the first positive commandment in his Book of Commandments, not to mention the first of the 'Thirteen Principles'.

In making these claims Maimonides imports science (in the guise of ma'aseh bereshit, Greek physics, and ma'aseh merkavah, Greek metaphysics) into the very heart of Torah. Indeed the Twentieth Century's leading Maimonidean, Rabbi Josef Kafih, went so far as to deny the possibility of secular studies (limmudei hol) for Maimonides: if a discipline yields truth, it is not secular.

Moreover, to know something, for Maimonides (following Aristotle), is to know it through or with its causes. The first commandment of the Torah is to know that God exists; and, as Maimonides makes clear in the Introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed, the only way to fulfill that commandment is through the study of physics and metaphysics.

The implications of this are vast:

• The study of science becomes incumbent upon all Jews who want to fulfill even the first commandment of the Torah.
• Psychoanalysis may be a Jewish science, as its opponents claimed, and Lysenko's biology was certainly socialist 'science', but surely no reader of this book would claim that there can be a Jewish physics or Jewish metaphysics. Thus, the science which Jews are commanded to study is precisely that science which is taught (for Maimonides) by uncircumcised Greeks and oppressive Muslims.
• One who has mastered what Maimonides calls (in the Introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed) the legal science of the Torah (i.e., the Talmudist) is thus inferior to one who has mastered the secrets of the Torah, i.e., the person who understands physics and metaphysics. (It is no wonder that many who read Maimonides expostulate: "This is Greek to me!" and that medieval rabbis wanted to burn or at least excise the 51^st chapter of the third part of the Guide.)

Truth is absolute and objective; there can thus be no such things as intellectual (or spiritual) authority per se. Statements are true irrespective of the standing of the person making them. Maimonides could thus have no patience for the sorts of claims to rabbinic authority which underlie the contemporary doctrine of da'at Torah (charismatic rabbinic authority) in its various permutations.[8]

Thus far Maimonides, for whom natural science meant physics, who operated in a theistic universe, and for whom the greatest question posed by science was whether or not the world was created. What of contemporary thinkers, whose natural universe gets along quite well, thank you, without a final cause, confronted by the claims of geology, paleontology, and evolution, all of which demand far greater liberties with the "plain meaning" of Scripture than did Maimonides' naturalistic explanation of various miracles (but no greater liberty, I should note, than that demanded by his radically non-anthropomorphic reading of verses attributing corporeality to God)?[9]

Maimonides' position, challenging as it is to many contemporary conceptions of Orthodoxy, relies for its cogency upon conceptions of demonstrative truth foreign to the present-day scientific enterprise. Since little that science teaches today is demonstrably true in Maimonides' sense, his position offers us no guidance on how to relate Torah and science in the contemporary world.

Much of contemporary Orthodoxy has, it appears, backed itself into something of a corner with respect to the question of science and Torah. It has rather unreflectively adopted a kind of quasi-Maimonideanism according to which Judaism teaches truth in much the same way that science teaches truth. What brings Orthodoxy to adopt this stance? It makes two crucial assumptions, or, I should say, accepts two Maimonidean teachings which lock it into this position. The first concerns the "centrality of faith-commitments in Judaism" and the second the idea that Judaism recognizes a category of "commandments addressed to the intellect."[10]

Much of Orthodoxy today holds, in the words of Rabbi J. David Bleich, that "basic philosophical beliefs are not simply matters of intellectual curiosity but constitute a branch of Halakhah" and that matters of dogma are decided like other areas of halakhah. Bleich has recently reiterated the same position: "matters of belief," he maintains, "are inherently matters of halakha. It is not at all surprising that disagreements exist with regard to substantive matters of belief, just as is the case with regard to other areas of Jewish law. Such matters are subject to the canons of halakhic decision-making no less than other questions of Jewish law."[11] This position invites conflicts between science and Torah since matters of belief include issues under the purview of the sciences. That is what Maimonides did; but how many of today's Orthodox Jews who agree with this position today would be willing to follow Maimonides in making "demonstration" (i.e., science) the arbiter of what the Torah means?[12]

There are a number of things which have to be said in response to this sort of position. First, I think that it misrepresents Maimonides: basic philosophical beliefs are neither simply matters of intellectual curiosity nor a branch of halakhah. They are attempts to understand the true nature of the universe to the greatest extent possible. Ma'aseh bereshit is the rabbinic term for what the Greeks called physics; ma'aseh merkavah is the rabbinic expression for what the Greeks called metaphysics – and these two are called the "roots" of the specific halakhot (gufei Torah). Considering that these roots are either true or false absolutely, it is literally inconceivable that Maimonides could have held that their truth status depends upon rabbinic psak (decision), as would be the case were they matters of halakhah. This leads to my second point: can we seriously credit the idea that Maimonides would have held that before he "paskened" (decided halakhically) that Moses was superior to all the other prophets before and after him, for example, that the question was undecided in Judaism? Similarly, of course, with respect to the other twelve of the Thirteen Principles. Of course not. Third, even were this understanding of Maimonides correct, the latter's position is quite clearly an innovation in Judaism and it is simply incorrect to read it back into rabbinic texts.[13]

None of this is meant to minimize the contribution of Maimonides to Judaism. Maimonides' position that truth is objective and must be accepted whatever its source[14] and his willingness to understand the Torah such that it cannot conflict with the teachings of reason are two aspects of his thought that make it possible for many people today to remain faithful to Torah and Judaism without feeling that they must turn off their brains. These teachings concerning Judaism only make sense if we insist that the Torah addresses the intellect and not just the limbs.[15]

But if the Torah contains the truth, why not command its acceptance, or at the very least, teach it in a very clear and unambiguous fashion? The reason is that for Bible and Talmud the translation of ultimate truth into clearly defined and manageable statements was less a pressing need than it was for Maimonides. Let me put this as follows: Maimonides and the Talmud agree that God's truth is embodied in the Torah. The Talmud finds pressing the need to determine the practical, this-worldly consequences of that truth, while Maimonides, in addition, finds its necessary to determine the specific, cognitive content of that truth. On one level, Maimonides is clearly right: Judaism does teach truth; but, on the other hand, his insistence on expressing that truth in specific teachings is an innovation in Judaism.

The point I am trying to make here comes out in the well-known talmudic story concerning the oven of Akhnai (Bava Mezia 59b). The Sages debated whether a particular kind of oven could become ritually impure. The text says:

On that day R. Eliezer brought all the answers in the world [to support his position] but they were not accepted. He said to them: "If the halakhah accords with my opinion, let this carob tree prove it!" The carob tree uprooted itself and moved 100 amot [c. 50 yards] – some say, it was 400 amot. The [other] rabbis said to him: "One does not bring a proof from a carob tree." He continued, saying "If the halakhah accords with my opinion, let this pool of water prove it!" The water thereupon flowed backwards. They said to him: "One does not bring a proof from a pool of water." He continued, saying "If the halakhah accords with my opinion, let the walls of this house of study prove it!" The walls of the house of study thereupon began to fall inward. Rabbi Joshua reproved them [the walls]: "By what right do you interfere when Sages battle each other over halakhah?" The walls did not fall [all the way] out of respect for R. Joshua and did not stand upright [again] out of respect for R. Eliezer. To this day, they stand at an angle. He then said to them, "If the halakhah accords with my opinion, let it be proved by Heaven!" A voice from Heaven [immediately] spoke forth: "How do you disagree with R. Eliezer, when the halakhah accords with his opinion in every place?"[16] R. Joshua then stood upon his legs and said, It is not in Heaven! [Deut 30: 12]. [The Talmud then asks,] "What is the significance of It is not in Heaven?" R. Jeremiah said, "Since the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai we pay no attention to voices from Heaven [in determining halakhah] since You [i.e., God, the source of heavenly voices] have already written in the Torah at Mt. Sinai, turn aside after a multitude [Exodus 23:2]. R. Nathan met Elijah and said to him, "What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do when this happened?" Elijah replied: "He smiled and said, 'My children have defeated me! My children have defeated me!'."

Much can be (and has been!) said about this fascinating passage. Here it will suffice to quote an insightful comment of David Kraemer's: "Of course, we must assume that if the heavenly voice supported R. Eliezer's view, his view must have been closer to the 'truth.' Nevertheless, his truth is rejected, and the view of the sages, though objectively in error, is affirmed."[17] Judaism teaches truth, and that fact must never be forgotten. But the ultimate truth taught by the Torah need not necessarily be understood in its detailed specificity for us to live in the world in a decent fashion; while there is one objective "truth," the Talmud is interested in arriving at a halakhic determination, rather than at a determinate understanding of the final truth. We can safely put off determining the exact truth until the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9);[18] but in the meantime we must know how to live.[19]

This talmudic position, I think, makes it possible for Jews to reach ever-greater understandings of the truth taught by the Torah and allows them to express that truth in language appropriate to each age. Had Judaism adopted a Maimonidean, as opposed to talmudic, understanding of the nature of our relation to the truth taught by the Torah, we would be forced to express our vision of the Universe in terms of the Neoplatonized Aristotelianism adopted by Maimonides. Our situation would be similar to that of Habad hasidim, who feel constrained to accept Maimonides' Ptolemaic description of the physical universe as "Torah from heaven," or to that of those Catholics who accept Thomism as normative and authoritative. But "the Torah is not in heaven" – it must be lived in this world, while the absolute truth which it embodies remains "from heaven," a constant challenge to our understanding, a constant critique of our tendency to intellectual complacency. The talmudic position, as hinted at in the story of the oven of Akhnai, allows Judaism to live and breathe in today's world as much as in yesterday's.

Maimonides, I have argued in a number of places, understood religious faith primarily in terms of propositions affirmed or denied. Bible and Talmud understood religious faith primarily in terms of trust and loyalty. This being so, "orthodoxy" is actually a misnomer, since Judaism, before Maimonides, knew no doctrines (=doxos) concerning which one absolutely had to be clearly and self-consciously "straight" (=ortho).

It is further important to realize that even though classical Judaism does not understand the nature of emunah as Maimonides does, and therefore places little value and emphasis on precise theological formulations, there are limits to what one can affirm or deny and still remain within the Jewish community. Note my terminology here: there are limits to what one can affirm or deny and still remain with the Jewish community. Denying the unity of God, for example, or that the Torah is of divine origin in some significant sense, or affirming that the Messiah has already come, are claims which place one outside of the historical community of Israel.

Returning to the issue of "faith, science, and Orthodoxy," I am here proposing that we understand Jewish faith in terms of loyalty to God, Torah, and Israel, loyalty which finds expression in the fulfillment of the commandments and less as "commandments addressed to the intellect." It follows from this that the criterion for what we now call "Orthodoxy" should be construed less in terms of adherence to specific dogmas and more in terms of behavior which evinces trust in God. I further propose that we follow Maimonides in taking demonstrated truth to be the arbiter of how we understand Torah. But since we are not yet in the age of the Messiah, and the knowledge of the Lord does not yet cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, that means that we understand neither science nor Torah fully. One does not have to be a fan of Star Trek to know that we live in age in which we expect our scientific paradigms to change. One can be a fully "Orthodox" Jew and maintain that, yes, the Torah teaches truth, but that we do not yet really understand that truth.

In concrete terms, I am calling for modesty, both as scientists and as believers. Modesty yes, a total suspension of belief/disbelief, no. To reject the claim that the earth is vastly old, for example, is not only to reject the science of geology, but the entire edifice of contemporary physics and chemistry. The cosmos simply cannot be 5769 years old. This, of course, is only a problem for the most stubborn of Biblical literalists. But how about Noah's flood? There is no geological or archeological evidence that the entire earth was once covered by water; nor is it possible for humanity, in its rich diversity, to have developed and spread over the globe in the roughly four and one half millennia which have passed since the time of Noah. In these and other matters, the Written Torah cannot be taken literally without rejecting the crushingly overwhelming weight of scientific evidence.

But in many other, and more important areas, we may not fully understand the Torah, but science has not yet had its last word either: on God's existence, the creation of the cosmos, Sinaitic revelation, providence, prophecy, miracles, efficacy of prayer, the special relationship of God to the Jewish people, divine retribution, etc., science seems to have little definite to say to us, and it appears to me, is not likely to have much to say in the foreseeable future.

In the final analysis, if we are really to use the eyes God gave us,[20] we can do no other but revert to a qualified Maimonideanism: the Torah cannot contradict that which has been proven scientifically but science often proves less than what some scientists think they have proven. We must live in a world of fewer absolutes than many thinkers (rabbis and scientists alike) would like: the Torah cannot teach what science rejects as false, but the evidence of science is not yet fully in, so we do not yet know what the Torah really teaches^.[21]

Book Review

Sukkot: Insights from the Past, Present, and Future (The Habura, 2022)

          We once again have the privilege to review a book by The Habura, a recently-founded England-based organization that has been promoting thoughtful Torah learning since 2020. It is headed by Rabbi Joseph Dweck, Senior Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Community of the United Kingdom (see www.TheHabura.com).

          The Habura promotes the inclusion of Sephardic voices and ideas in Jewish discourse, coupled with an openness to the broad wisdom of the Jewish people and the world. In this regard, their ideology strongly dovetails ours at the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

          In addition to their Zoom classes and other programs, they have been publishing holiday companion volumes (as well as other material). I reviewed their Pesah volume last April (https://www.jewishideas.org/article/book-review-haburas-passover-volume).

Their recently published Sukkot volume contains an array of eighteen essays. The first two are by Sephardic rabbis of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Rabbis Abraham Pereira Mendes (1825-1893, Jamaica, England, and the United States) and Hayim David Halevi (1923-1998, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv). The rest of the book is divided between contemporary rabbis and scholars, and younger upcoming scholars who participate in the learning of The Habura.

          The essays span a variety of topics pertaining to Sukkot in the areas of Jewish thought, faith, halakha, and custom. They generally are well-written and well-researched, and often present enlightening ideas. In this brief review, I will summarize three essays that I found most edifying.

          Rabbi Joseph Dweck explores the unusual commandment to rejoice on Sukkot (Deuteronomy 16:14). It is curious that other faith traditions viewed the changing of the seasons to autumn (in the northern hemisphere) as cause for bleaker holiday reactions. Roman Catholics observe All Soul’s Day, which appears in Mexico as the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This holiday translates to the more widespread Halloween. The Angel of Death is even nicknamed “The Grim Reaper,” reflecting the incoming gloom of winter that follows the harvest season. How does Sukkot become such a profoundly joyous time?

          A central theme of Sukkot is the fleetingness of the physical world. This realistic perspective enables us to experience joy while recognizing that it is temporary. Sigmund Freud wrote an essay entitled “On Transience,” in which he asserted that life’s transience helps us appreciate the preciousness and beauty of each experience.

          Rabbi Dweck believes that Freud has identified the root of our joy on Sukkot and concludes, “When we can come to this understanding about the world, we can truly come to embrace and accept life on its own terms—and in doing that, we can truly know happiness.”

          Pursuing a different angle into the theme of joy on Sukkot, Gershon Engel explains that nowadays, we indeed emphasize our dependence on God rather than relying on the permanence of our homes (e.g., Rabbi Yitzhak Aboab, Menorat HaMa’or III, 4:6). Of course, the biblical Sukkot revolved around the harvest. This holiday was uniquely joyous in ancient Israel, as the harvests were in and farmers did not need to rush home as they would after Pesah and Shavuot.

          By transferring the meaning of Sukkot from agriculture to more universal religious themes, Jews were able to preserve a sense of joy on Sukkot even after the termination of the agrarian life that had characterized our people for much of our existence.

Engel quotes Benjamin Disraeli in his classic work Tancred, who expressed awe in the Jews for retaining their sense of joy on Sukkot while in the exile:

The vineyards of Israel have ceased to exist, but the eternal law enjoins the children of Israel still to celebrate the vintage. A race that persists in celebrating their vintage, although they have no fruits to gather, will regain their vineyards. What sublime inexorability in the law! But what indomitable spirit in the people!

          Addressing the halakhic question of wearing tefillin on hol ha-mo’ed the intermediate weekdays) of Pesah and Sukkot, Yehuda J.W. Leikin observes that the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds both appear to suggest that wearing tefillin on the middle days of Pesah and Sukkot is normative.

The three halakhic pillars behind Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Shulhan Arukh—Rabbi Yitzhak Alfasi (Rif), Rambam, and Rabbenu Asher (Rosh), all agree that wearing tefillin on hol ha-mo’ed is the proper observance. While several other leading medieval rabbinic authorities, including Rabbi Shelomo ibn Aderet (Rashba) and Rabbi Avraham ben David (Ra’avad), maintain that tefillin should not be worn, Rabbi Karo generally follows his three pillars of rabbinic ruling.

          In this case, however, Rabbi Karo forbids the wearing of tefillin on hol ha-mo’ed, and rules prohibitively because the Zohar strongly opposes the wearing of tefillin on hol ha-mo’ed (Bet Yosef, Orah Hayyim 31:2). Rabbi Karo reports that in Spain, the original practice was to wear tefillin on hol ha-mo’ed until they discovered the Zohar’s prohibition. In contrast, Rabbi Moshe Isserles (Rama) maintains that Ashkenazim should wear tefillin, following the ruling of Rabbenu Asher (Rosh).

          Thus, the Sephardic practice to refrain from wearing tefillin on hol ha-mo’ed reflects an unusual move from classical halakhic sources to kabbalah. Leikin concludes that Rabbi Yosef Karo may have been inclined to accept the kabbalistic ruling in this instance, since there also were great halakhists who also opposed wearing tefillin on hol ha-mo’ed.

          There are many other fine essays in this Sukkot companion, and we look forward to future volumes from The Habura.

*

          I had the privilege of giving a three-part series for the Habura in February-March, 2022. You may view these lectures on our YouTube channel:

Tanakh and Superstition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD68xZ4J4M8&t=5s

Torah and Archaeology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN1XAtia_x0&t=24s

Torah and Literalism: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K__jp8V9sXY&t=4s

          I also am scheduled to give two talks to the Habura on April 17 and 19, 2023.

The Institute looks forward to further partnering with The Habura in the future and building our shared vision together.

Our National Scholar, Rabbi Hayyim Angel, reviews two recent books on the interface between traditional and academic Bible study, with consideration of the religious ramifications of various approaches.

The article appears in the current issue of Tradition, the journal of the Rabbinical Council of America.

You may access the article online here: https://traditiononline.org/when-blurring-peshat-and-derash-creates-a-new-theology-a-critique-of-participatory-revelation/

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Noah

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

It is painful to hear hateful words. Unfortunately, hardly a day goes by when we aren’t confronted by statements of anti-Semitism, racism, political mud-slinging. So-called “celebrities” spout their malicious lies about Jews, about Israel, about any group they wish to slander.

Why is hateful speech so widespread?

Erich Fromm has written of the syndrome of decay that “prompts men to destroy for the sake of destruction and to hate for the sake of hate.” Because of their frustrations, feelings of inferiority and malignant narcissism, many people poison their own lives with hatred. Indeed, some only feel truly alive and validated when they express hatred of others.

When we hear bigots rail against “the Jews” or “the Israelis,” we instinctively sense that these haters are morally blind, ignorant about Jews and Israel.  When we are confronted by so-called human rights organizations and academics who malign Israel, we are appalled by their hatred and perversion of truth.  Haters are dangerous. It is imperative for moral and informed people to stand up and refute the lies and calumnies.

Hateful words are uttered by many people on various rungs of the social ladder. The common denominator is their participation in the syndrome of decay. Their hatred not only erodes their own lives, it contributes to undermining the social fabric of society as a whole. It makes all good people feel uneasy. Where will this hatred lead? To spreading hatred among others? To violence?

In this week’s Torah reading, God orders Noah to build an ark. Humanity had become so corrupt that the Almighty decided to destroy all but Noah and family. In providing instructions for the construction of the ark, God tells Noah: “You shall make a light for the ark”—tsohar ta’aseh latevah. Our commentators suggest that this light was a skylight window or a precious stone that could refract light throughout the ark.

A Hassidic rabbi offered a different reading of the text. The word “tevah” means ark; but it also means “word.” In his homiletical interpretation, the verse should be understood as follows: “make your word generate light.” When you speak, your words should be positive, encouraging, enlightening. They should contribute light to a world struggling against the forces of darkness.

Martin Buber diagnosed a serious problem within modern society. “That people can no longer carry on authentic dialogue with one another is not only the most acute symptom of the pathology of our time, it is also that which most urgently makes a demand of us.”  His observation relates to the breakdown of honest communication among people, especially among people outside one’s immediate circle of family and friends. It also relates to the breakdown in communication among nations.

Instead of viewing ourselves as co-partners in society, the syndrome of decay leads us to view others as enemies…real or potential threats to our well-being. When we can’t trust each other, when we can’t speak kindly to each other or about each other, then society is afflicted with the pathology that Buber laments.

Tsohar ta’aseh latevah: each of us, in our own way, can add light and understanding to our world by speaking words of encouragement, kindness, and respectfulness. We should work toward a society that repudiates hateful words and deeds, where the haters themselves will come to see the error of their way.

Those whose words are hateful generate darkness, mistrust, societal disintegration.

Those whose words bring light to the world are humanity’s only real hope.

The Nature of Inquiry: A Common Sense Perspective[1]

 Rabbi Shalom Carmy 

In an article in the first issue of The Torah U-Madda Journal, “Torah u-Madda and Freedom of Inquiry,” Rabbi Yehuda Parnes makes no fewer than three major claims that require more careful analysis. One is a theory about the nature of what he calls madda. The second is a reading of Rambam in Hil. ‘Avodah Zarah 2:2–3, the burden of which is to confine study of divrei kefirah (heresy) and idolatry to situations of le-havin u-le-horot (“understanding and decision-making”). Finally, his conclusion: “Based on all of the above, Torah u-Madda can only be viable if it imposes strict limits on freedom of inquiry in areas that may undermine the thirteen ‘ikkarei emunah” (principles of faith) (QED).[2] 

The second issue of this journal carried a response by Lawrence Kaplan and David Berger offering an alternative reading of the Rambam, and touching indirectly on Rabbi Parnes’s conclusion. They also say a great deal on behalf of a broad interpretation of le-havin u-le-horot, namely “[t]he possibility that grappling with a particular book or system of philosophy may lead to a revised and deeper understanding of Torah principles.”[3] 

My own contribution to the debate will consider all three of Rabbi Parnes’s contentions. On the matter of le-havin u-le-horot, I am very much in sympathy with Kaplan and Berger, as my remarks in this essay should amply illustrate.

I

Rabbi Parnes asserts that liberal arts education (= madda) cannot permit “any constraint on honest and inquisitive searching for truth” (p. 69). This is not true. Such constraints are quite common, on both ethical and intellectual grounds. 

Examples: Biological experiments in which human beings are tortured are generally prohibited, even when they promise to yield interesting scientific results. Scientists are increasingly reluctant to torment animals in the name of science. Many refuse to make use of results obtained through immoral research, such as that conducted by Nazi doctors in the concentration camps, in this respect adopting a standard more stringent than that required by halakha.[4] Many secularists (most notably in the feminist movement) would proscribe the reading of various works of pornography as inherently immoral. Others would advocate a moratorium on research dealing with racial and gender differences for reasons of social morality. Seriously entertaining false beliefs of an insidious tendency, taking them to heart, even when motivated by the “honest and inquisitive searching for truth” is, according to this view, morally wrong. Other concerns, not inherently moral in nature, would likewise stay the hand of inquiry according to most educators. Study that is likely to squander such precious resources as time, intellect, and money would be frowned upon and, beyond a certain point, effectively curtailed. When such considerations come into play, does it matter that the inquiry to be snuffed out is “honest and inquisitive searching for truth”? Surely not. No doubt there are laborers in the scientific vineyard who would try very hard to reject any, or all, of these constraints on research. For them “honest and inquisitive searching for truth” is an absolute, or almost absolute, value, which therefore cannot be overridden by any duty or competing value. It is also natural that those who love knowledge and wisdom will be averse to any limitation on inquiry, and loath to give voice to proscription even when they reluctantly recognize its appropriateness. This is especially so since suppression of free inquiry and free thought has often been employed deceitfully, to uphold the fraudulent heaven-groping facade of self-proclaimed authority, or to shelter the darting-eyed wickedness that cannot tolerate the light of day. Surely many contemporary demands to suspend critical thought on various subjects of consequence in the name of political correctness are self-important, self-serving, and redolent of intellectual and moral indolence and cowardice. 

Because restraining inquiry and its free expression has gotten a bad name, scientists and humanists usually conceal the fist of authority, both moral and intellectual, in a velvet glove: Only if the deviant fails to recognize his/her insensitivity, lack of sophistication, or ignorance will the stronger medicine come into play: the control of grades, fellowships, jobs, etc. We are a civilized society: The “wrong” position on homosexuality no longer rates the stake; merely suspension without pay at CBS (with prospect of early parole if the ratings warrant).[5] But whether particular moral curbs on free inquiry and expression are justified or not, is not significant for our characterization of liberal arts education. What matters is that claims on behalf of such restrictions on “honest and inquisitive searching for truth,” however skeptically scrutinized, are not dismissed out of hand, as violations of madda. 

Thus madda, as it is actually practiced, recognizes, for a variety of reasons and in a variety of circumstances, limits on freedom of inquiry. No intellectual activity can take place in isolation from the rest of our knowledge (a point that will become important to our discussion below); by the same token, no intellectual activity may be pursued in an ethical vacuum. Of course there is a difference between violating the moral and utilitarian norms incorporated in the practice of madda and violating the Torah’s prohibitions. It is the difference between being a fool and being a sinner, between breaching a man-made rule and rebelling against a divine law. But that difference, important as it is, has nothing to do with the fact of constraint itself. 

            The whole idea that whoever advocates or accepts any constraint on free inquiry runs “counter to madda and all that it implies” (as Rabbi Parnes puts it on p. 69), and is presumably self-banished from the garden of madda, is so fantastic that I must pause to consider why one would entertain a conception of madda so remote from reality and so alien to healthy common sense. Any attempt to explain the perennial attraction of the “absolute freedom” theory of madda must distinguish the differing motivations of its proponents. 

1. Thinkers opposed to Torah aim to exploit our healthy bias in favor of intellectual honesty either to undermine Torah or to divert our attention from the fact that madda does not really tender absolute and unrestricted allegiance to the unfettered search for truth. If Torah is against intellectual honesty, and madda is for it, then madda leads 1–0. 

2. Those who favor Torah, but oppose Torah u-Madda, would like to exploit our presumed healthy bias in favor of Torah to undermine either madda or our healthy bias in favor of intellectual honesty. If Torah is against it, but madda demands it, then some of us will reject madda. (What about the people who draw the opposite conclusion and reject Torah? Presumably their commitment was deficient to begin with, so we needn’t bother about them.) 

3. Many individuals, with no polemical agenda of their own, may accept the “absolute freedom” model of madda simply because they have not thought through the issues on their own. As R. Bahya ibn Pakuda points out, one of the consequences of eschewing philosophical reflection is that your mind is held hostage to what other people say.[6] 

4. A different account of the power exercised by the “absolute freedom” doctrine would occur to someone who has thought about the history of science and philosophy in the last several centuries. Such an individual might, at the risk of oversimplification, tell something like the following story: 

Early in the modern period (the sixteenth century would not be too early), scientific inquiry was held back by certain views prevalent among the official exponents of the then-current Christian teaching. As science succeeded in pushing back the frontiers of ignorance in many areas, while religion seemed to distinguish itself primarily in the promotion of strife, many thinking (and even more non-thinking) people concluded that the teachings of biblical religion were either false, or had been falsely interpreted. In addition, many were taken by the idea, going back to Plato, that the kind of argumentation traditionally employed in mathematics is the exclusive highway to privileged truth. Since Judaism, like Christianity, with its historical and anthropological orientation, does not speak in the name of mathematical truth, it must apply for recognition to science rather than itself judge the validity of human investigations. Hence, the best thing for truth is to let science alone, and certainly not to let religious “values” (by this point “religious knowledge” had been so discredited as to become a virtual oxymoron) hold sway over intellectual endeavor. 

The individual who has reflected on the matter knows that the inference of the last sentence is not conclusive. That religious authority has been abused, that even when properly exercised it is liable, occasionally, to fall into folly while fleeing from sin, does not imply that it ought never to be exercised. Observing those who fall under the three classes described above, the advocate of the last approach concludes that they have succumbed to an exaggerated account of the dichotomy between the freedom supposedly held out by madda and the bunker mentality ascribed to Torah. One knows that one owes one’s liberation from the evil enchantment of the “absolute freedom” fantasy, at least in part, to one’s understanding of the historical process whereby the spell was cast. One’s own ability to embrace the Torah’s limitations on free investigation is indebted to that enhanced understanding. One suspects that, had one not worked through the epistemological trauma and scotoma of modernity, one would have ended up either rejecting Torah or working one’s self into a vehement yet, at the same time, slyly vacuous exercise of piety, as one humoring a slightly deaf, and more than slightly rich, elderly relation. 

II

Rambam’s normative limitation of free inquiry, as understood by Rabbi Parnes, is the centerpiece of his critique. Both Rabbi Parnes and Kaplan and Berger agree that the key to a precise definition of the Rambam’s proscription is to be found in the rationale by which he augments the halakha: 

Any thought which leads a human being to uproot one of the principles of the Torah, we are enjoined not to take it upon our heart, and we should not divert our minds to such, and dwell [upon it] and be drawn after the thoughts of the heart. This is because man’s understanding is slight, and not all minds can attain truth thoroughly. If a man is drawn after the thoughts of his heart he may destroy the world as a result of his limited understanding. How? At times he will rove after idolatry. At times he will think about God being one: maybe it is so, maybe it isn’t. What is above, what is below, what is before, what is after. And sometimes about prophecy: maybe it is true, maybe it isn’t. And sometimes about the Torah: maybe it is from Heaven, maybe it is not. And he does not know the categories by which he should judge [ha-middot she-yadin bahen] in order to know truth thoroughly; hence he is liable to deviate into minut. 

Rabbi Parnes examines two interpretations of the restriction: (1) Rambam only prohibited study undertaken with the purpose of forsaking Torah, thus leaving the Torah u-Madda advocate untouched. This is untenable, for such a prohibition would not require a rationale. Thus we are left with (2) Rambam intended to prohibit what Rabbi Parnes calls “honest and objective freedom of inquiry” (p. 70). Kaplan and Berger, for their part, emphasize Rambam’s warning about the frailty of untrained human reasoning. In their opinion, Rambam prohibits individ­uals who are intellectually unprepared from undertaking the study of idolatrous literature and the like. 

Note that the two approaches to the Rambam do not necessarily exclude each other. Rabbi Parnes may very well maintain that Rambam prohibits “honest and objective freedom of inquiry” (except in cases of le-havin u-le-horot) and that he also prohibits inquiry by unqualified individuals. Conversely, one might agree with Kaplan and Berger that Rambam restricted inquiry only to those who are intellectually prepared, yet also agree with Rabbi Parnes that “honest and objective freedom of inquiry” is off limits as well. The difficulty in attempting to harmonize or contrast the two approaches is that I am not quite sure what Rabbi Parnes means by “honest and objective freedom of inquiry.” The precise meaning of this phrase is clearly crucial to the entire discus­sion, and we shall get to it in a moment.  First, however, let us direct our attention to the next part of Rambam’s rationale, which was not brought into the debate by any of my colleagues. Here Rambam sketches the outstanding features of the inquirer whom we are told not to emulate. What is this intellectual up to? This is a person who, as the occasion bemuses him or her, holds some principle of faith at arm’s length and speculates whether it is true or false. Yes, that person is not doing so in order to forsake Torah. Is that person then engaged in the “honest and objective freedom of inquiry” in which madda glories? By that person’s own lights he or she is. If that person is justified in regarding his or her activity as “honest and objective freedom of inquiry,” then Rambam’s vignette strikingly confirms Rabbi Parnes’s interpretation of the prohibition: What he infers from the existence of a rationale, I derive directly from the content of the rationale. If, however, Rambam’s anti-hero cannot lay claim to the halo of “honest and objective inquiry,” then Rambam is, in effect, adding a noteworthy dimension to his depiction of the unprepared person discussed by Kaplan and Berger. The unqualified person is not only one who is deficient in the tools of inquiry; he or she is also one engaged in an aimless free-floating speculation about religious matters, rather than a faith striving for greater understanding.[7] 

In this connection we should also take note of Rambam’s comment on Avot 2:14 (“know what to answer the apikoros”): “Even though you study the opinions of the nations to respond to them, beware that you not take to your heart any of those opinions.” Is Rambam prohibiting intellectual honesty, or is he enjoining us, in the course of studying heretical views, from “taking to heart,” i.e., seriously entertaining the heretical views?[8]

In any event, we cannot properly understand Rabbi Parnes’s position without trying to define what he means by “honest and objective inquiry.” To this task we shall now proceed. 

            Earlier we have seen that Rabbi Parnes means no more and no less than the ideal of “absolute freedom,” when he refers to the “honest and inquisitive searching for truth,” the tiniest deviation from which runs “counter to madda and all that it implies.” In formulating his halakhic position, he introduces the term “objective” to characterize the kind of inquiry the Rambam would rule out. 

“Objective freedom of inquiry”: What does it mean? The concept of objectivity has, of course, a long and elusive history in the philosophical literature. It would seem safe to assume, however, that Rabbi Parnes’s usage is based on ordinary language, rather than tracking the specialized meanings developed by professional philosophers over the centuries. The dictionary yields two meanings of objective that might apply to beliefs: 

1. belonging to the object of thought rather than the thinking subject; 
2. free from personal feelings; unbiased. 

Both definitions are confusing if they are applied to Rabbi Parnes’s account of the inquiry banned by the Rambam. Atheists indeed maintain that God, prophecy, Torah, and other articles of faith are not objective truths, but productions of “the thinking subject.” Believing Jews do not. We hold that the ‘ikkarei emunah pertain to reality independent of humanity, not merely to “the thinking subject.” As to the second definition: believing Jews assent to these propositions because they are convinced of their “objective” truth, not because they are indulging their personal feelings or predilections. To deny, let alone prohibit objectivity, in these senses, goes against the very idea of a revealed religion. This cannot possibly be Rabbi Parnes’s intent. 

Despite the linguistic muddle, it would not be presumptuous to explain Rabbi Parnes’s aversion to objective inquiry in the following manner: Madda, or more precisely the different intellectual disciplines that constitute the liberal arts body of knowledge as it is studied in the standard modern university, depends upon some consensus about data and methodology. Each discipline and discourse, from this perspective, is treated as autonomous and sovereign within its own boundaries. Each discipline determines its own methodology and recognizes the range of data to which the appropriate methods of investigation are applied. To introduce material—data or principles of thought—from outside the discipline, violates “the very integrity of the madda process itself” (to borrow Rabbi Parnes’s phrase earlier in his article). In less drastic language than Rabbi Parnes’s, the infusion of material extraneous to the disciplinary matrix is not acceptable because it is liable to raise diffi­culties for the orderly, methodical pursuit of research, and impedes scientific cooperation. Hence, the individual who, seeking admission to the temple of madda, brings along data external to the discipline, and who ignores the gatekeeper’s admonition that all beliefs must be checked in at the door; challenges the conventions; and, unless he or she succeeds in changing them, is charged with smuggling unsuitable personal predilections into the academic domain. Such stubborn insistence on one’s own perception of truth could be stigmatized as lacking objectivity. Now, as it happens, the gatekeepers of madda do not include, among the recognized disciplines and modes of discourse, any that accept the truth of the ‘ikkarei emunah. Because the believing Jew is committed to the normative beliefs taught by the Torah, he or she cannot approach the sciences or the humanities without those beliefs, and in many areas—in the most important areas—his or her inquiry will be guided by those beliefs. Therefore, on this account, the believing Jew is incapable of objective inquiry in virtually all the areas that really count. 

The view I have just described as implicit in Rabbi Parnes’s analysis of madda is asserted quite openly by others. I suppose that this is what is meant when certain academic types, including observant Jews, solemnly intone that no believing Jew can truly qualify as a biblical “scholar” because Orthodoxy prevents one from confronting the regnant academic theories with a genuinely open mind. I am less accustomed to hearing this argument from serious philosophers, for reasons that will shortly become clear. 

            Granted, the account of objectivity in madda that we have just encountered, according to which “honest and objective freedom of inquiry” and Orthodox Jewish belief do not mix, conforms to one strand in popular usage. Yet we may cast upon it a quizzical eye. Is it indeed the case that intellectual honesty requires us to forsake all knowledge that is not certified a part of the discipline we are studying at the moment? From a common sense perspective, inquiry that systematically ignores everything else we know (including the knowledge given us through revelation), is not honest. On the contrary—it is the height of perversity! 

To be sure, there are situations in which we legitimately, for a variety of reasons, set aside knowledge that we rely upon in other areas of life. A geometry student who is asked whether a triangle with sides 13, 12, and 5 inches in length is a right-angled triangle forgets that he has measured the angle (and pretends he has not peeked at the answer in the back of the book). Instead she appeals to Pythagoras’s Theorem. Why? Because the geometric method is constituted by a specific kind of reasoning, one that excludes measurement and/or looking at the back of the book. In real life, when laying bricks, for example, there is no objection to achieving a right angle by measurement, using a plumb line, or, if that is one’s pleasure, by consulting “the back of a book.” Similarly, the halakhic jurist must set aside the evidence of Moshe and Aharon because, as brothers, their testimony is not valid, without doubting in the least the truth of their assertions. The American juror, likewise, is occasionally instructed to erase certain information from his judicial consciousness not because it is false, but for reasons of legal propriety (e.g., the evidence was illegally obtained). As to the subject of the present discussion, an eminent school of Rishonim, including Saadia, R. Bahya ibn Pakuda, and Rambam, deemed it worthwhile to discover what religious knowledge can be obtained without recourse to the data of revelation. They were convinced that this study would deepen one’s understanding of the principles to which we, as religious Jews, are committed. 

In view of the frequent successes achieved by this method of isolating a discipline or discourse from its context in the real world, it is not surprising that many modern thinkers sought to establish all inquiry on the model of self-contained enterprises like mathematics. When we add modern people’s recurrent longing for self-guaranteed certainty, for intellectual self-sufficiency, for the God’s-eye perspective that the contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel has called “the view from nowhere,”[9] we can even understand how certain thought-intoxicated philosophers like Hegel aspired, incredibly, arrogantly, and influentially, to a total system of knowledge that would refer only to itself. But the advantages accruing from the occasional narrowing of our intellectual focus hardly justify the implausible theory that “honest and objective inquiry” is predicated upon the deliberate and systematic suppression of all knowl­edge not mandated by the discipline constituted in terms of that narrow focus. Only in the psychiatric ward (and in mathematics, which is not “about” the real world) is ratiocination extolled that proceeds without regard for reality. 

Nonetheless, the rationalist project of knowledge without presuppositions, or knowledge based upon foundations entirely transparent to thought, has enjoyed a long run in our culture. It would be important, but beyond the scope of this discussion, to examine the major manifesta­tions of this tendency in modern thought. These include currents otherwise antagonistic to each other, like Cartesian rationalism, Hume’s phenomenalism (which supplements the ideas of logic with the impressions of sense experience), and Hegel’s circular epistemology. The common denominator of all these movements is the assumption that the human cognitive venture can, and should, be conducted independent of what we know, or think we know, outside of the “integrity of the madda process.” 

The inspiring rationalist project has not gone unchallenged. Real men and women lead a real existence before, and apart from, their official intellectual identities. They can neither undertake knowing, nor make sense of their knowledge, or even endeavor to revise their errors, save by placing their thinking in the context of their lives. Our language, our habits of thought, our assumptions, and so forth, are not discovered by us. Instead we find ourselves given to them, to the residue of tradition and the common stock of human experience. Last but not least, believers in revealed religion, including those who have stood at Sinai, know the absolute autonomy of “the madda process” to be a dangerous illusion. These data of lived human experience did not go unnoticed by masters of philosophical thought. To begin with, some of the most prominent exponents of a narrow epistemology took their skepticism with a grain of salt. Hume cheerfully admitted that his laborious attempts to establish, through rational ingenuity, the reality of the experienced world, had little bearing on the way he lived: “I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further.”[10] Of greater consequence to us: Each great rationalistic philosophy was met by the passionate critique of a great adversary. Thus, Descartes was countered by Pascal; Hume had his Newman; Hegel provoked Kierkegaard. While philosophy is hardly a monolithic discipline, it may safely be said that contemporary philosophers are more interested in overcoming the legacy of absolute autonomy, in its various incarnations, than in perpetuating it. 

No reasonable person has ever appropriated, in real life, the peculiar doctrine that sequesters madda from our everyday knowledge (including that derived from Torah). Why then is it still taken for granted among writers on religion? Current philosophy is not at fault. Surely the Torah does not impose upon us allegiance to deficient, outdated views. Only nescience of the history of modern thought can shackle us to a conception that exaggerates unnecessarily the tensions between Torah and hokhmah, and that ends up by subtly promoting, however inadvertently, the misunderstanding that the fundamental principles of Judaism are, God forbid, projections of the human mind. 

To review the last stage of our discussion: Rabbi Parnes is correct to point out that a program of free inquiry cannot be deemed kosher merely because the inquirer is not seeking to forsake Torah. A believing Jew cannot engage in the “objective” investigation of religious truth, if objectivity is defined as a stance of absolute neutrality. As we have seen, such a vantage point is phenomenologically impossible; the reasons that have led many people to take it seriously are philosophically misguided. Because we are accustomed to regard “honest and objective freedom of inquiry” as something good, there are individuals who automatically identify Torah ve-Hokhmah with “honest and objective freedom of inquiry,” without feeling the need to inquire carefully into the accurate meaning of the phrase. Because, as we have seen, the concept of objectivity engenders linguistic muddle, such individuals are likely to admire and emulate precisely the kind of aimless and foundationless rumination the Rambam takes pains to alert us against. For such individuals, Rabbi Parnes’s entire attempt to raise the question comes as quite a surprise; and not a minute too soon, if you ask me. 

III

Many factors go into the formulation and execution of an educational program for the individual, for groups of individuals, for the community as a whole. One factor, not the least important, is the place, if any, to be accorded to studies that introduce thoughts of kefirah. Kaplan and Berger offer impressive illustrations of the manner in which these studies have enriched some of the most profound and most enduring works of Torah, as was freely acknowledged by masters like the Ram­bam and maran ha-Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Many lesser individuals can attest to the value of their liberal arts studies for the attainment of greater insight into Torah. We would also do well to recognize the need for broad knowledge and understanding of human culture in the service of our love for other Jews and even for humankind.[11] 

Furthermore, we must never overlook the fact that, as participants in the modern world, we are affected by it, be it consciously or unwittingly. Our brief excursion into the history of ideas highlighted the powerful attraction of the illusion that humans can take up an observation post above, and independent of, their prior experiences and beliefs. We ought not to indulge our absent-mindedness to the point where we forget that this applies to us too. There is no “view from nowhere.” Yet God has granted us free will. We need not remain captives of the unpropitious spiritual climate in which we find ourselves implicated; but, in order to free ourselves, we must shrewdly map out the terrain from which, and over which, we intend to make our escape. In other words, in order to undertake the slow, unending task of reviewing, revising, and elevating our thoughts and feelings, we must know whence we come and where we are to make our way. As Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein has observed, the apikoros (heretic), whom we are instructed to rebut, as often as not, is the “apikoros within.”[12] 

In the light of these considerations and others, we approach Rabbi Parnes’s final assertion: “Torah u-Madda can only be viable if it imposes strict limits on freedom of inquiry....”At first blush this statement is nothing but an obvious corollary of our entire discussion. A careful reading, however, reveals one word that invites additional analysis: the adjective strict. If Rabbi Parnes is using the word for emphasis, there is nothing more to discuss with respect to this particular point. It is possible, though, to give the adjective a more ambitious sense. Adopting this interpretation, Rabbi Parnes’s text would advocate the devising of a rigid, clear-cut index of studies permitted and studies forbidden, a kind of Kitzur Shulhan Arukh of Torah u-Madda. 

The formulation of a fixed, mechanical liberal arts canon is one way to settle the problem of halakhic constraints on general studies. In individual cases it may indeed be the best solution. As a sweeping disposition of a central intellectual dimension of our spiritual lives, however, it is the wrong approach. The complexity of the issues involved, both for the individual and for Jewish and American society as a whole, defy the imposition of black and white dicta. The inner life may draw sustenance from wise guidance; it requires, as we have seen, a measure of halakhic constraint and humility. But it is the glory of God that each individual’s inner life presents a portrait of abilities, inclinations and needs that can never be replicated. “Each individual possesses something unique, rare, which is unknown to others; each individual has a unique message to communicate, a special color to add to the communal spectrum.”[13] Hence, the inner life, whether it is manifested in the intellectual adventure, in our relations to our fellow human beings, or in the lonely encounter with God, cannot be completely comprehended and controlled from the outside. 

Much hostility to Torah ve-Hokhmah is accompanied by a tendency to downplay the uniqueness of human inwardness. Many opponents of Torah ve-Hokhmah also seem to be under the impression that doubt can be avoided if we just avoid thinking about questions of theology. This presumes that not thinking is the same as not being affected. R. Bahya b. Asher the Kabbalist, like R. Bahya ibn Pakuda the proponent of philosophy, disagrees. He states, in his Commentary to Avot (2:14): “Know what to answer the apikoros: [Traditional] faith should not suffice for you until you have faith through knowledge and wisdom. For one who has faith through tradition is likely to listen to the deniers.”            

Contemporary contemners of secular education boast of having constructed, in this age of rapid communications, compulsory education, mass media, etc., a more tightly insulated air bubble than was available to fourteenth-century Kabbalists! If the R. Bahyas are right, and their opponents are wrong, we have even more reason to be skeptical of static, mechanical limitations on the individual’s intellectual destiny within the boundaries of Torah. 

The reality and authority of inwardness, as it affects our confrontation with outlooks inimical to Torah, was clearly identified by Rambam. The Mishnah “Know what to answer the apikoros” is immediately succeeded by the dictum “Know before whom you labor.” Commenting on the connection between the two statements, Rambam explains: “Beware that you not take to your heart any of those opinions. And know that the One before Whom you labor knows what is hidden in your heart. This is why he says: Know before Whom you labor, meaning that he should lead his heart to the divine faith.” 

Here I shall also appeal to ma’aseh Rav. As Kaplan and Berger have noted, Rav Soloveitchik openly exhibited his mastery of the philosophical and theological classics of the Greek and Christian traditions. Though aware that not everyone was up to the experience, he had no inhibitions about recommending broad intellectual exposure and in speaking of his enthusiasm for such congenial thinkers as Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Karl Barth. On several occasions I presented to the Rav the difficulties that troubled some of our students confronting the challenge of the liberal arts curriculum, specifically their fear that the humanities include books by objectionable authors whose works it was wrong to read. Each time I entreated the Rav for hard and fast guidelines that I could share with students, he resisted the suggestion, recommending instead that I exercise my own judgment. Moreover, he scoffed at the notion that going to college, or what to study there, can be decided “like a question in Yoreh De’ah,” with the mechanical straightforwardness suitable to “the kashrut of fish.” 

I was privileged to benefit from the Rav’s guidance. Others, no doubt, will recollect similar conversations with him. 

IV

In the course of their demonstration that Rambam’s objections to the wrong kind of inquiry should not be viewed as a rejection of intellectual aspiration, Kaplan and Berger quote from the Guide I:32: 

The intention of these texts set down by the prophets and the Sages is not, however, wholly to close the gate of speculation and to deprive the intellect of the apprehension of things that it is possible to apprehend—as is thought by the ignorant and neglectful, who are pleased to regard their own deficiency and stupidity as perfection and wisdom, and the perfection and the knowledge of others as a deficiency and defection from Law, and who thus “regard darkness as light and light as darkness” (Isa. 5:20). 

The specter of an unspoken fear has haunted many readers of Rabbi Parnes’s essay. Has the position staked out by Rabbi Parnes given aid and comfort to proponents of spiritual and intellectual mediocrity who would palm off their indolence as piety, and are “pleased to regard their own deficiency and stupidity as perfection and wisdom, and the perfection and the knowledge of others as a deficiency and defection from Torah”? Quite possibly. Yet, in the free marketplace of ideas, the harm may well be outweighed by the benefits conferred upon followers of Torah ve-Hokhmah. By virtue of the care and precision of his essay, Rabbi Parnes has set a standard of earnest civility often absent from this kind of interchange. For that reason I, and those who think like me, are no less grateful to him than we are to the cogent and spirited rejoinder by Kaplan and Berger. 

The debate over the Rambam has helped to unmask and clear away certain persistent and popular misconceptions about the character and purpose of serious intellectual activity. And precisely because I, and those who think like me, do not believe in the wisdom of rigid formulas in this area, it is good that we are recalled, from time to time, to the intellectual challenge of self-examination, that we remember, as the Mishnah instructs us, before Whom we labor. 

Notes

Freedom in world history and American history is tied to slavery. Slavery and the exodus from slavery are central to Judaism. Many cultures, do, or have, celebrated emancipation. But only Jews have a major religious holiday that is focused on enslavement and an escape from enslavement.

My main focus here will be on Jews and slavery in what became the United States, from the seventeenth century to 1865, when the United States ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” However, to understand this very important topic, we need a longer historical perspective for world history and Jewish history.

I. Slavery and Freedom in Global Perspective

Slavery has been present in almost every human society, since at least the Neolithic period of pre-history. People of virtually every climate and culture have been masters and slaves, without regard to race, religion, or ethnicity. As the Harvard scholar Orlando Patterson observed, “There is nothing notably peculiar about the institution of slavery. It has existed from before the dawn of human history right down to the twentieth century, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized.” Patterson found slavery in every “region on earth” and concluded that “probably there is no group of people whose ancestors were not at one time slaves or slaveholders.”[1] Indeed, it is likely that almost all people today have ancestors who were both slaves and slaveowners.

Slavery has differed from place to place. In some cultures, slaves had rights or protections that slaves in other cultures did not have. In ancient Rome, for example, slaves could own some personal property, but in the United States (except in Louisiana) a slave could legally own nothing. Even their clothing belonged to the master. But whatever the differences, slavery was always predicated on the domination of some people by others, with the power of the state (or its equivalent in less formal settings) to support that domination.[2] It always involves force, violence, the dishonoring of those enslaved, the denial of basic human rights to those held in bondage, and the commodification of people as property. As Aristotle noted, the “the slave is not merely the slave of the master but wholly belongs to the master. These considerations therefore make clear the nature of the slave and his essential quality: one who is a human being belonging by nature not to himself but to another is by nature a slave, and a person is a human being belonging to another . . . is an article of property.”[3] Similarly, in discussing what penalties a Jewish master might face for punishing a slave—whether a fellow Jew or foreigner—to the point of death, the Torah notes that the law should not presume a master intentionally killed a slave “because he [the slave] is his [the master’s] property.”[4]

Many people assume that slavery in Europe died out after the fall of Rome and was somehow revived in the Americas, after the European expansion into the New World. But, in fact slavery existed in parts of Europe from ancient times until at least the eighteenth century. The very term “slave” comes from the Slavic peoples, captured by Norsemen (the Vikings) and sold in the slave markets of southern Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Throughout this period the Roman Catholic Church and all established Protestant Churches in Europe supported slavery and approved the enslavement of various classes of people. Systems of slavery operated on the southern rim of the Mediterranean from antiquity into the twenty-first century.[5] Slavery was endemic to Africa, the Middle East, south Asia, and found in many indigenous cultures of the New World before the arrival of Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century.

European nations formally rejected slavery at the Berlin Conference in 1884 and in the Berlin Act of 1885, declaring that slave trading was “forbidden in conformity with the principles of international law.” Five years later The Brussels Act “was the first comprehensive multilateral treaty directed specifically against the African slave trade.”[6]

The League of Nations pushed hard to end human bondage with the Slavery Convention of 1926, mobilizing international cooperation for the “abolition of slavery in all its forms.” Slavery was now broadly defined as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the rights of ownership are exercised.” The Convention and the League of Nations had some successes, such as pressuring Nepal and Burma to formally end slavery.[7]

 But this accomplishment was short lived. Slavery reemerged in the 1930s in the Soviet Gulag, the German Third Reich, and the Japanese empire. From 1939 to 1945, Germany transported some 12 million foreigners to the Reich proper as forced laborers. In the mid-1940s there would be as many people enslaved inside Germany as there had been enslaved in all of the Americas at the highpoint of slavery in the nineteenth century. In addition, millions of Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Roma, and captured Soviet prisoners of war, some of whom were Jewish, would be used as slave labor both outside and inside Germany, often in inhuman, barbaric conditions where they were literally worked to death. Enslavement was one of the crimes against humanity for which Nazi leaders were prosecuted and hanged at Nuremberg. After the War, the United Nations forcefully condemned slavery in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and subsequent documents. By 2013, every nation on earth had formally prohibited slavery, and numerous international agreements and treaties had also forbidden it.[8]

II. Slavery in the Ancient and Early Modern World

Slavery was common throughout the world when the descendants of Abraham morphed from being Hebrews to Jews. Not surprisingly, these ancient people had slavery. This would matter for Jews in British North America because on its face Jewish law permitted slavery.

Most ancient cultures and communities preferred to enslave foreigners—the ancient Greeks considered all foreigners to be “barbarians,” ripe for enslavement, while biblical law made it far easier to enslave a stranger than a fellow Jew. But members of both societies ended up in bondage in their own countries. As the historian Moses I. Finley observed, while most classical slaves were foreigners, there were “Greek slaves in Greece [and] Italian slaves in Rome.”[9] Similarly, there were Chinese slaves in China, Russian slaves in Russia, and Muslim slaves in Islamic societies. And there were Jewish slaves in ancient Israel.

Slavery existed among the ancient Hebrews and the post-Sinai Jews. Abraham, like masters in almost every slave culture, fathered children with his female slaves Hagar and Keturah. His grandson, Jacob, had children with his two wives, Leah and Rebecca, and with two slaves, Bilhah and Zilpah.[10] Throughout the ancient world, the children of a slave woman and her owner were often considered the children and heirs of their father. Jacob’s sons with his slaves, like those with his wives, were his heirs, and the founders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Thus, at least in theory, all Jews are the descendants of slaveowners (Abraham and Jacob) and their slaves, as well as the descendants of those enslaved in Egypt.

            The story of Hagar illustrates the unpleasantness of slavery and the desire of slaves to escape their bondage. For nineteenth-century U.S. slaveowners it also supported the rights of masters to recover their fugitive slaves. After all, if God could send an angel as a slave catcher to recover Abraham’s property, then surely the United States could send a federal marshal.

The story of Joseph underscores the acceptance of slave status across the ancient world. The favored and clearly spoiled youngest son of the patriarch Jacob, who had given his son “a coat of many colors” the 17-year-old Joseph relished his father’s favoritism, bragging to his older brothers that one day they would be subservient to him. Given this favoritism combined with the teenager’s arrogance, it is perhaps not surprising that his older brothers “hated him . . . [and] could not speak a friendly word to him.” When their hatred boiled over, the brothers “sold Joseph for 20 pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who brought Joseph to Egypt.” [11] For Jacob’s sons, this was a plausible solution to sibling rivalry.

The Ishmaelites accepted Joseph as they found him: a youth devoid of any trappings of his status as the favored son of an elite family. He appeared to be a slave, and those who sold him clearly held him in captivity. The Ishmaelites never asked how or why Joseph became a slave or who his family was. They took Joseph as they found him—a teenager in bondage. The Ishmaelites later sold Joseph in Egypt. No one in this story doubted he had been legitimately reduced to the status of a slave by the people who sold him to the Ishmaelites. The fact of Joseph’s slave status—and its acceptance by the Ishmaelites and later the Egyptians—is emblematic of the law and international practice at the time.

            The Hebrews would later be enslaved in Egypt, and in the Exodus story—the central story of Jewish identity—they escaped their bondage, received the law at Mt. Sinai, and then moved into ancient Israel. Significantly, their Egyptian bondage did not turn them into abolitionists. The Ten Commandments admonishes the Hebrews—who are becoming Jews—to allow their slaves to rest on the Sabbath and also reminds them not to “covet” their neighbor’s male or female slaves.[12] The Sabbath provision suggests a level of humanity in Jewish slaveholding that was not found in some other slave cultures. But the language of both commandments also demonstrates that slaveholding itself was theologically and culturally acceptable.

The very next chapter (Exodus 21) contains rules on how to enslave fellow Hebrews or foreigners, how to sell one’s daughter into bondage, and how to treat slaves. The language (at least in English translation) in both chapters uses the words slave and “servant” interchangeably. This resembles the practice of the antebellum South, where some slaveowners referred to their slaves—people they bought, sold, and often whipped—as their servants. Similarly, the Latin term for a slave—servus—could also mean a “servant.”

Biblical law gave slaves some legal protections. For example, slaves severely injured by their owners might be emancipated, which is unusual in slave societies. And, unlike Roman law, biblical law did not allow masters to kill their slaves on a whim. American law would follow this biblical rule. But the text here is ambiguous. Throughout Exodus 21 the text provides that for various crimes the persons convicted “shall be put to death,” “die,” or in one case be exiled.[13] But here the text says only that “should a man strike his manservant or his maidservant with a rod, and [that one] die under his hand, he shall surely be avenged.” It is not clear what “avenged” would mean, given that the dead slave might have no kinfolk to avenge the crime, receive compensation for the death, or even seek some sort of punishment or fine by the government that would constitute “avenged.” Even here, the punishment (whatever it might be) was only for a slave who died while being punished. Under biblical law, a master was not liable for the death of a slave who survived a severe punishment but died a day or two later from his injuries. A master would not be punished for the subsequent death of a slave from injuries because “because he is his property.”[14] Like the later American law, a slave had no control over his children, who belonged to the master, and could marry only with the master’s permission.

III. Jews and Slaveholding in the Early Colonial Period

            Before 1500 Jews in Europe and the Middle East were slaveowners, just like Christians and Muslims. Many scholars have argued that Jews were also active slave traders from the fall of Rome into the early modern period. In 452 ce Pope Gelasius permitted Jews to transport heathen slaves to Christian countries, and according to the first edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia, “From the 8^th century until at least the 11^th century Jews were particularly active in selling Christians into the Muslim world, as well as bringing Slavs overland into the northern rim of the Mediterranean.” More recently, the Israeli scholar Michael Toch has challenged this argument. But, all scholars seem to agree that Jews themselves in Europe and the Middle East owned slaves, bought and sold them, and sometimes converted them to Judaism.[15]

Throughout this period the Catholic Church authorized the enslavement of heathens, some Christians who were captured in inter-European wars, and others. Columbus brought enslaved Carib Indians back to Spain after his first trip to the New World.[16] Thus, the initial Atlantic slave trade went from West to East. The direction of the Atlantic slave trade quickly changed, as European diseases, overwork, and savage Spanish treatment of natives led to massive deaths of Indians in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The Spanish and Portuguese insatiable desire for labor to support for sugar cultivation and mining led to the African slave trade.

Every European colony in the western hemisphere adopted slavery. With a few exceptions—most notably in Suriname—most New World Jews lived in urban places—usually ports—and few engaged in agriculture. They owned slaves to serve them in their houses and businesses. Some Jews were involved in the African slave trade, although in very small numbers. An extensive study by Eli Farber found that of 45,224 slaves imported into Barbados, only 128 of them were on ships in which Jews had invested in the voyage. No Jews actually owned any of these ships or were actively participating in the trade on a personal level. Farber’s research showed similar results for other Caribbean colonies.[17]

While Jews generally shied away from the brutal and horrible Atlantic slave trade, they were not squeamish about buying African slaves. Most of these early Jewish migrants had a Sephardic-Portuguese heritage. Slavery was a thriving institution in both Moorish and Christian Iberia from ancient times to the sixteenth century and beyond. Thus, Jews of the Portuguese Nation (as they called themselves) came from a culture where slavery was normal, common, and unexceptional. When they were expelled from Iberia, Jews brought their slaves to the southern rim of the Mediterranean.[18] As Orlando Patterson observed, for most of world history there was nothing peculiar about slavery.

Suriname and Barbados had the first two synagogues in the New World. Many urban Jews in both places owned some slaves, a few Barbadian Jews owned sugar plantations with many slaves. There were a significant number of Jewish plantation owners in Suriname. Jews in both places were pretty much like their Christian neighbors, eagerly purchasing Africans brought to the colonies. In Kingston, Jamaica, urban Jews were more likely to own slaves than Christians, but they owned fewer of them.[19]

In her superb recent book, Once We Were Slaves, Laura Arnold Leibman shows that in Barbados and Suriname—the two largest early New World Jewish communities—Jewish men often fathered children with slave women. Sometimes they acknowledged their paternity and even manumitted their concubines and raised their children as Jews. Sometimes they did not. Some of the mixed-race children and grandchildren of these relationships would marry into some of the leading families of Jewish America. Sarah Rodrigues Brandon, a mixed-race woman who was born a slave in Barbados, formally converted to Judaism, and married Joshua Moses, whose father was at one point the richest Jew in Philadelphia, a founder of Mikveh Israel, and later a leader of Shearith Israel. Their mixed-race son, Lionel Moses, married Selina Seixas, the granddaughter of Gershom Mendes Seixas.

IV. Jews and Slavery in the New Republic

            By the eve of the American Revolution the New World Jewish community was shifting to the mainland colonies. When the Revolution began, slavery was legal in every one of the thirteen colonies, as well as in every other New World colony. There were thriving Jewish communities in New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah, and slavery was important in all these places. Charleston was at the center of the slave trade into the mainland colonies. Its wealth was predicated on slavery. Jews there, and in Savannah, like those in the Caribbean, owned slaves in their urban households and businesses and on the few rural plantations some of them owned. These southern Jews and their descendants would remain committed to slavery until the U.S. army, President Lincoln, Congress, and the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery.

While the British overwhelmingly dominated the African slave trade into the mainland colonies, a small amount of slaving was done by Rhode Islanders, mostly out of Newport. The city’s most important slaver (and its wealthiest resident) was Aaron Lopez, a Jewish refugee from Portugal. Another Portuguese Jew in the city, Rodrigues Rivera (whose daughter Lopez would marry) was also a slaver. Lopez and Rivera probably brought about 3,000 slaves to the New World, while four other Jewish men in Newport invested in a few slaving voyages but were not the principal importers.[20]

In colonial Philadelphia and New York almost all whites—Gentiles and Jews—who could afford to owned slaves. It was simply part of their culture. For example, both the future president of the Pennsylvania Society of the Abolition of Slavery (Benjamin Franklin) and the future president of the New York Manumission Society (John Jay) owned slaves. After the Revolution they would become dedicated abolitionists. Jews, like their urban Christian neighbors, owned slaves as well. In a world without electricity, refrigeration, running water, or indoor plumbing, urban life required an enormous amount of labor. Slaves also provided the labor to run many businesses, as black slaves did the heavy lifting for Jewish merchants.

Before 1775 there was no organized opposition to slavery in the Anglo-American world. A few dissenting Christian faiths—Quakers, Mennonites, Methodists, and some Baptists (and some Congregational and Unitarian ministers)—had identifying slavery as sinful, and urged or even required their members to give-up slaveholding.[21] But, except for the Society of Friends, all major Christian denominations and established churches accepted slavery and many of their clergy and individual churches as corporate entities owned slaves. English and Anglo-American Protestants defended slavery, even as they baptized their human property. In the mid-eighteenth century, Rev. George Whitefield, the most famous Anglican preacher of the Great Awakening, believed in converting slaves to save their souls, but he also found biblical support for slavery and owned a Georgia plantation with about 75 slaves.[22]

            In this environment no Jewish leaders opposed, although a few individual Jews did. As David Brion Davis, the great Pulitzer Prize winning historian of slavery, noted: “The small number of Jews who lived in the Atlantic community took black slavery as much for granted as did the Catholics, Muslims, Lutherans, Huguenots, Calvinists, and Anglicans. And while at least one Jewish merchant joined New York’s first antislavery society in the 1790s, Judaism was as resistant as other tradition-oriented religions to such intellectual and moral innovations.”[23] In this sense Jews in colonial America were like the vast majority of other whites in the colonies.

            The Revolution changed American thinking on slavery. Even before the war began, slaves in Massachusetts petitioned the colonial legislature for their freedom. The first person to die in the Boston Massacre in 1770 was Crispus Attucks, was either a former slave or a runaway slave (the evidence is not clear). His status and race illustrated the problematic nature of white Americans wanting their liberty, while enslaving others. During the Revolution the English Tory Samuel Johnson ironically wondered, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”[24] By the time he asked this, many white Americans, mostly in the North, but also some in the South, were addressing the issue.

            On April 14, 1775—just five days before the Battle of Lexington and Concord, twenty-four Philadelphia men (seventeen of whom were Quakers) formed The Pennsylvania Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This was the first organization in the world dedicated to ending slavery. However, because of the war with Britain, the Society dissolved itself after just four meetings. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a gradual abolition law, which would lead to the end of slavery by providing that the children of all slave women would be born free, subject to an indenture. Those already enslaved were not freed. This was the first law in world history to begin to formally end slavery. By 1804, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey had passed similar laws. Meanwhile Massachusetts, New Hampshire and the new states of Vermont and Ohio simply abolished slavery in their first constitutions. In 1817, New York passed legislation freeing all slaves in the state on July 4, 1827.

            Under the gradual abolition laws the slave population in the North plummeted as many masters simply freed their slaves. For example, from 1800 to 1820 the New York the slave population declined from 21,000 to 10,000, while the free black population grew from 10,000 to 29,000. In the same period Pennsylvania’s free black population went from 15,000 to 30,000, while the slave population dropped from 4,000 to just 800.

After the war, the opponents of slavery in Philadelphia reorganized themselves as The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage (usually called the PAS) and shortly thereafter Benjamin Franklin became its president. In 1785, New Yorkers, led by John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, formed The New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May be Liberated. The PAS was heavily Quakers, with some deists (like Franklin, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Paine) and other Christians. The New York society was led by Episcopalians such as Jay and Hamilton. However, a few Jews also joined. Moses Judah, a leader of Shearith Israel, joined the New York Society in 1799 and served on numerous committees. In Philadelphia, Benjamin Nones, who had owned slaves most of his adult life, freed his slaves and joined the PAS. Other members of Mikveh Israel, including Mordecai M. Mordecai, Jonas Phillips, Moses Myers, and Isaac Moses freed their own slaves and were involved in the manumission of other slaves.

            These early anti-slavery Jews were a minority within their community. Most northern Jews, like most other northern whites, ignored the issue of slavery, especially because the gradual abolition laws and state constitutions had set northern slavery on the road to extinction. As slavery died out in the North, many masters manumitted their slaves, but some Jews held on to their slaves as long as possible. While Moses Judah in New York was actively fighting slavery, his hazzan at Shearith Israel, Emanuel Nunes Carvalho, owned three slaves, and bought at least one more when he moved to Charleston.[25]

Jewish southerners, like their white Christian neighbors, usually supported slavery, although there are records of individual owners manumitting particular slaves.[26] In 1961, Bertram W. Korn detailed southern Jewish slave owning from the Revolution to the Civil War in his presidential address to the American Jewish Historical Society. Korn found that most middle class and affluent urban Jewish southerners owned slaves who worked in their houses and businesses, but fewer than a dozen Jews owned plantations, with large numbers of slaves. He identified eight Jewish firms engaged in professional slave trading, buying slaves in the upper South and transporting them to the Gulf Coast states where when could be sold at huge profits. He found other Jewish mercantile and auction houses that sold slaves along with other merchandise.[27] The bottom line here is that Jewish southerners actively and with very few (if any) qualms, participated in the South’s most important economic and social institution—owning human beings and exploiting their labor. Freedom, for Jewish Southerners included the freedom to own, buy, and sell other people. Almost no Jewish southerners even blinked at the irony of black slaves serving food and clearing dishes at a Passover Seder celebrating the Exodus.[28]

V. Jews, Politics, and Slavery

A few Jews held various political offices in the new nation, starting with Francis Salvador, a slaveowner in South Carolina elected to the colony’s pre-Revolutionary provisional Congress in 1774. From the early national period to the Civil War there may have been more Jews elected to office in the South than the North, although the numbers for either section were small. But, whether northern or southern, until the Civil War most Jewish political leaders were either proslavery or silent on the issue.

The most important early Jewish politician was Mordecai Manuel Noah. Born in Philadelphia, he grew up in South Carolina, where he studied law, fully embracing southern views on race and slavery. While not apparently a slaveowner, he became a vigorous opponent of black rights and black freedom, and a supporter of slavery. He briefly served as a diplomat in Tunis, where he tried, and mostly failed, to liberate about a dozen captured American merchant sailors being held as slaves in Algeria. He did manage to help ransom two of these sailors. Noah’s acts illustrate his support for freedom for white people. He then moved to New York, where he was a Democratic Party leader, and held various offices, including sheriff of New York and a judgeship. At this time, the Democratic Party was dominated by slaveholding presidents—Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and later Andrew Jackson—and was aggressively proslavery and anti-black. Noah embraced this ideology. His newspaper, the National Advocate, railed against free blacks. In 1821, New York Democrats, led by Martin Van Buren, who had grown up in a slaveholding Dutch family outside of Albany, wrote a new state constitution which eliminated property requirements for white voters, but not for blacks. In the 1830s Democrats in Pennsylvania simply prohibited blacks from voting. Noah, as a Democratic Party leader, supported these policies.[29]

            In the southern states there was no movement to end slavery, and Jews in Charleston, Savannah, Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile, and elsewhere owned slaves and supported the system. Despite antisemitic claims, southern Jews were rarely involving in the interstate slave trade. And, since few Jews owned plantations, they were rarely owners of large numbers of slaves.

            In the 1830s a new abolitionist movement developed across the North, starting with the publication of William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator in 1831, and his founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. The Revolutionary-era organizations, such as the PAS and the N.Y. Manumission Society, had focused on ending slavery in their own states. The new movement focused on ending slavery throughout the United States. By the 1850s tens of thousands of northerners would be engaged in antislavery agitation. Much of the movement was rooted in evangelical Protestant theology and many of the movement’s leaders were clergymen. Many abolitionists were anti-Catholic, as well as anti-slavery, and a few articulated hostility toward Jews.

The abolitionist movement also undermined and altered many traditional roles. For the first time in U.S. history, significant numbers of women participated in public meetings and demonstrations and sent petitions to Congress. The movement was racially integrated, with African Americans—most famously Frederick Douglass—addressing integrated anti-slavery meetings.

            During this period the first dedicated opponents of slavery were elected to Congress, initially from New England, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. So too were the first Jews. Until the Civil War began, all the Jews in Congress were either aggressively proslavery, or passively supported the institution. In 1844, Pennsylvania elected Lewis Charles Levin, the first Jew to serve in Congress. Raised in South Carolina and always connected to the South, he was a member of a fringe, anti-immigration party. In the 1850s, he would oppose the Republican Party, in part for its stand against slavery. His main political interest was reducing Catholic immigration into the United States. In 1845, the new state of Florida sent David Levy Yulee to the Senate. He was a staunch defender of slavery and would leave the Senate in 1861 to support secession. Elected in 1850, Emanual Hart was a proslavery northern Democrat from New York. He served one term in Congress and then held patronage positions in the proslavery Pierce and Buchanan administrations. In 1852, Alabama elected Philip Phillips to the House of Representatives. He was a native of South Carolina and had attended Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston as a child. His wife, Eugenia Levy, was from a distinguished slaveholding Jewish family in Charleston. Phillips supported slavery, and helped draft the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed slavery in most of the existing federal territories. But while always a supporter of slavery, Phillips was also a unionist in this period. At the beginning of the Civil War, he was practicing law in Washington, D.C., and wanted to remain there. He was one of many southern leaders who remained loyal to the Union. However, his wife was a rabid secessionist and allegedly a Confederate spy. Thus, he was forced to return to the South.

The most important antebellum Jew in American politics was Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana. Like Phillips, he was raised in Charleston and attended Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. Benjamin made his living as a lawyer but purchased a sugar plantation with 140 slaves on it, making himself a proper southern gentleman, and the largest Jewish slaveowner in the country. He entered the U.S. Senate in 1853 (the same year Phillips entered the House), where he vigorously defended slavery. Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, who was vigorously anti-slavery, correctly referred to Benjamin as an “Israelite with Egyptian principles.”

Benjamin resigned from the Senate when Louisiana seceded and became a Confederate leader, holding three different positions in Jefferson Davis’s cabinet, where he vigorously defended slavery. After the War, Benjamin fled to England, where he was an enormously successful attorney, and where he continued to defend Southern slavery, even though the system no longer existed.[30]

While Benjamin was the highest-ranking Jew in the Confederacy many other Jewish southerners served in the Confederate army, with some rising to the rank of colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major. Jewish southerners killed, and were killed, trying to create a nation, as the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens put it, whose “foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”[31] Jewish Southerners, from the Revolution to the Civil War, were in the end, southerners who supported and profited from slavery. Freedom for them was the “freedom” to treat other people as property and commodities, to be bought, sold, and treated, or mistreated, with impunity.

VII. Jews, Anti-Slavery, and the Civil War

            From 1840 to 1865, about 150,000 Jews moved to the United States, expanding the nation’s Jewish population tenfold. Most came from Central Europe—Germany, Austria, Hungary, and what later became Czechoslovakia.[32] Many were fleeing the failed liberal revolutions of the 1840s and 1850s. Most went to northern cities, although some moved to the upper South—Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis. Educated, committed to liberty, and often idealistic, many gravitated to the Republican Party after 1854 and to the antislavery movement. When the Civil War began many of these new Jewish Americans served in the United States army, fighting against southern treason and for freedom. At least four Jews became generals—Frederick Salomon, Frederick Knefler, Edward S. Salomon, and Leopold Blumenberg—making them the first Jewish generals in any army in the western world. There would be a slew of other Jewish senior officers. These new immigrants universally supported the Union and opposed slavery. Illustrative of these new Jewish immigrants was the German-born teenager, Private Dankmar Adler, the son of a Rabbi, who served in the war and would later become one of the most important architects in American history, with his partnership of Sullivan and Adler in Chicago.

            Even before the war, a few examples of Jewish immigrants, among many, illustrate the changing nature of the Jewish response to slavery.

            When John Brown was trying to make Kansas into a free state—during the brief civil war there known as bleeding Kansas—his ragtag “army” of antislavery rough riders included Theodore Wiener a recent immigrant from Poland and August Bondi, a recent immigrant from Bohemia. They rode with John Brown and helped defeat the proslavery terrorists in Kansas. Bondi then served in the 5^th Kansas Cavalry during the war.

            While Kansas was in turmoil, Lewis Naphtali Dembitz moved from Prague to Louisville, Kentucky, with his brother-in-law and sister, Adolph Brandeis and Frederika Dembitz Brandeis. Dembitz was practicing Jew, a lawyer, and a Jewish scholar. In 1860, he was one of the very few slave state delegates to the Republican national convention.[33] He translated Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, into German. Although living in Kentucky, Dembitz was deeply antislavery. His greatest influence was on his nephew, Louis David Brandeis, who changed his middle name to Dembitz, to honor his uncle, and later become the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice and the president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Dembitz’s son, Arthur A. Dembitz, would become the founding professor of Jewish history at Gratz College, in 1897. All of this subsequent important social activism began with Lewis N. Dembitz’s opposition to slavery and his commitment to Judaism.

VIII. The Great Rabbinical Debate over Slavery

            In February 1860, Dr. Morris Jacob Raphall, of New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, became the first rabbi in American history to give the opening prayer at a session of Congress. A year later, in January 1861, with the Union dissolving, Raphall gave a sermon on slavery that was published in newspapers and reprinted as a pamphlet, as A Bible View of Slavery. Raphall’s sermon was vigorously proslavery. Like most southern ministers, he asserted that Africans were the cursed descendants of Ham, from the story of Noah, and thus doomed to be the “meanest of slaves,” although there is no scriptural support for this claim. He endorsed racist notions that blacks were mentally inferior to whites, and that blacks had never achieved “human excellence, either mental or moral.” He mocked ministers and others who condemned slaveholding as “sin.” Relying on both Jewish and Christian texts, he defended the system as ordained by God. He quoted the Ten Commandments to support his position. He claimed that Hebrew slaves were better treated than those in the South, but, using biblical analysis, he emphatically supported the fugitive slave laws. He concluded that slavery had “existed since the earliest time,” that “slaveholding is no sin” and that “slave property is expressly placed under the protection of the Ten Commandments,” and that the slave was “a person” who had some “rights not conflicting the lawful exercise of the rights of his owner.” He condemned anti-slavery northerners for being “righteous overmuch” and “denouncing ‘sin’ which the Bible knows not.” He suggested some unspecified reforms in southern slavery, while urging Jews and other northerners to accept its legitimacy.[34]

            Two Jewish leaders answered Raphall. The first was an editorial in the New York Tribune by Michael Heilprin, a Jewish scholar and journalist who fled Hungary after the failed revolution of Lajos (or Louis) Kossuth. His own history reflected that of many other recent Jewish immigrants, who were appalled by slavery. In this relatively short piece, Heilprin denounced Raphall’s notion that it was “his duty to proclaim from the pulpit that it is a sin to preach against Slavery in the South! I had read similar nonsense hundreds of times before; I knew that the Father of Truth and Mercy was daily invoked in hundreds of pulpits in this country for a Divine sanction of falsehood and barbarism; still, being a Jew myself, I felt exceedingly humbled, I may say outraged, by the sacrilegious words of the Rabbi. Have we not had enough of the ‘reproach of Egypt?’”[35]

A more substantive rebuttal to Raphall came from David Einhorn, a German-trained Rabbi at Congregation Har Sinai in Baltimore. Einhorn preached in German, but the sermon was quickly translated.

Einhorn conceded that “slaveholders may be men of honor and character.” He noted “Abraham was a slaveholder . . . any yet he is for us a model of virtue, when we take into consideration the age in which he lived.” The central question was: “’Is the institution of Slavery, per se, a moral evil or is it not?’” Einhorn’s unrestrained and sarcastic critique denounced Raphall’s claim that it was not a sin:

And here it is that Dr. Raphall, earned for himself the sorry reputation of declaring, on the authority of the divine law, the legitimacy of the moral rectitude of slavery, and inveighing sharply against Christian ministers who happen to differ from him. A Jew, the offspring of a race which daily praises God for deliverance form the bondage of Egypt, and whose fellow-believers are to this hour groaning under the have yoke of slavery in most of the cities of the old world and crying to the Almighty for help, undertakes to parade slavery as a perfectly sinless institution, sanctioned by God, and to confront those presumptuous people who will not believe it, with somewhat of an air of moral indignation! A more extraordinary phenomenon could hardly be imagined. 

Einhorn denounced Raphall’s use, or misuse of history “to invest his favorite institution with a halo of glory.”[36]

Einhorn used various texts to refute Raphall, but the real thrust of his position was the spiritual and ethical nature of Judaism. He argued that since Jews had suffered under Egyptian bondage they had a special obligation to oppose slavery. Starting with the story of Adam, he argued that it was inherently sinful to enslave and mistreated people who were created in God’s image.

            Einhorn’s sermon nearly cost him his life. A proslavery mob came for him, and he quite literally had to flee Baltimore (in the slave state of Maryland) in the middle of the night, taking a train to Philadelphia where he became the Rabbi at Congregation Keneseth Israel, which became known as the “Abolition Temple.”

            Einhorn’s response to Raphall, and his escape to Philadelphia, is perhaps emblematic of the change in the Jewish American community on the eve of the Civil War. Southern Jews still embraced slavery. They rejected freedom. So did some northern Jews, like Rabbi Raphall. But most northern Jews had moved to support freedom. Many of these Jews were refugees from European autocrats and understood that freedom had to be for all people. Northern Jews would soon join in the crusade that would end slavery in the United States. Ironically, this would also enhance Jewish freedom. When the Civil War began, no Jew had ever been a general in a western world army, and in the United States all military chaplains were Protestant ministers. By the end of the war, there would be a handful of Jewish generals and a fair number of colonels and majors as well as Jewish chaplains. Thus, the freedom for African American slaves also furthered the freedoms of Jewish Americans. In Lincoln’s words, this was a “new birth of freedom” for all Americans.

Notes

Psychology is the modern-day philosophy. If something is psychologically sound, it almost automatically becomes a desired reality that we should embrace. If it is not psychologically sound, it deserves to be dismissed, even if such dismissal contravenes religious norms.

            Consider the matter of guilt. Psychology has just about convinced the general population that guilt is psychologically unhealthful; it raises our anxiety level, interferes with our blood pressure, and compromises our ability to function happily. The remedy—drop the guilt by dropping the values that instill the guilt.

            We should therefore not be surprised that many of the hallowed values of yesteryear are under attack, either bluntly or subtly. Take for example the elementary idea of "should." The thought that we "should" do this or that, ostensibly because we are obligated, is the primary precipitant of guilt. This is because "should” and "ought" do not always translate into deeds. Those who “should” or “ought” (but actually do not fulfill), feel guilty about not living up to their responsibility. And we know where unresolved guilt can lead straight into the depression pit, an admittedly awful place, which in its extreme renders people incapable of any useful life activity. 

            Of course I am generalizing, even over-generalizing. Not all psychologists are radical anti-guilt proponents. But the main point is clear—that we live in an era of guilt avoidance, which has serious implications for any religion, and certainly for Judaism. We have no way of accurately measuring how many have left the fold entirely or even partially because they do not want to be imposed upon with obligations. With no obligations, there is no possibility of feeling guilty for failing to live up to those obligations. Thereby, one has removed a major obstacle to the ultimate apex of modern desires, to be physically and psychologically healthy. 

The entire Jewish package is a potential guilt inducer, as are the separate but inter-related components within Judaism. Shabbat and kashruth, as arguably the most onerous and ubiquitous of Jewish observances, are simultaneously the most likely guilt-inducers. Undoubtedly, the major factor in choosing to abandon these observances, if consciously made, is the challenge these affirmations pose when trying to squeeze in the best that modern society has to offer, including unfettered access to all sorts of eateries and food, as well as a full slate of weekend activities either social-, cultural-, or sports-related.

            Guilt is a factor in such value choice. How strong a factor I do not know, but a factor nevertheless. I have spoken to enough people over time that I can be sure of this; sure that some people have unburdened themselves of Shabbat, kashruth, and/or other components of Judaism, so that they do not have to feel guilty if they do not fulfill all the obligations.

            Assuming that these observations are correct, either partially or totally, the obvious question is—how do we tackle the situation? Is there a way around this? Is there a way to counter this trend?

            I would like to propose two approaches, one dealing with the psychology part, the other dealing with the Judaism part.

            For the psychology part, the issue of guilt avoidance as a way to live deserves further scrutiny. Clearly, psychological health is a major concern. We realize that the Divine Spirit (Shekhina) does not reside in melancholy (Talmud, Shabbat 30b). On the other hand, Judaism is loaded with mitzvah obligations, and general imperatives to fulfill them, aside from the explicit biblically based mandates. Such well known statements as "...if not now, when?" (Talmud, Avot 1:14), or "It is not incumbent on you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist therefrom..."(Talmud, Avot 2:21), speak to the notion of assuming responsibility and thereby living responsibly.

Judaism seems to run contrary to contemporary psychological wisdom, in that it affirms the value of a life that is depression free, yet seems to place upon its adherents a load of responsibility that if not fulfilled leads to guilt, which leads to possible depression. Obviously, there is a difference of world views.

            Judaism, let it be stated unequivocally, has a different view of guilt: Guilt is a healthy part of who we are. This sounds absurd, even crazy. But give the thought a chance to develop.

Guilt is a debilitator or a motivator, depending on the attitude we take to it. The attitude is the key. There are those who, in the face of having failed to fully actualize a responsibility, will be devastated by it, crushed to the point of being convinced they are unworthy. And there are those in the face of having failed are motivated to improve, to do better the next time.

Attitude is the key to whether failure is the excuse for more failure, or the catapult to future success. And it all begins with the importance of realizing that we are mortal, that we are not perfect, that we are not expected to be perfect. The aforementioned citation that, "It is not incumbent on you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist therefrom...," directly addresses this matter. We cannot do everything; we are not expected to do everything—but we are expected to try our best. 

            We will fail, either via acts of omission or commission. That is certain. What is not certain is how we will bounce up or down after that. And if we use past failure as the boost to future fulfillment, the failure itself is transmuted into fulfillment. How do I know this? I know this from the Talmud, and I know this from corroborating life experience. The Talmud (Yoma 86b) tells us that those who willfully sin but then, in the expression of penance, joyfully and completely renounce the sin and embrace the right way, have transmuted the sin into a fulfillment.

            This is something we see in so many different aspects of life; in the flunkee who jumps to the head of the class, the weakling who becomes strong, the loser who resolves to become a winner, the sinner who embraces the way of righteousness.

            Put another way, a life totally free of guilt, devoid of any responsibility, is most likely to become an unfulfilled life, even an empty life. And emptiness is itself a more dangerous harbinger of depression; anomie gives birth to aimlessness, to a vacuous, depression-inviting existence. It may therefore be forcefully argued that we need a balanced measure of healthy guilt in order to be fully human. It is all the difference between feeling "guilty from," or embracing the approach of "guilty toward."

            For the Judaism part, we need to look more carefully and critically at how we package Judaism—in the home, in the classroom, and from the pulpit. There is no escaping that the dictates of Judaism, the do's and the don’t’s, the affirmations and prohibitions, are obligations, not options. Whether or not we choose to observe does not diminish from the reality that we must embrace the full package.

The question is—how do we inspire ourselves and others to fulfill the commandments? There are those who have no problem imposing Judaism, precisely because there is no choice. They will sometimes succeed in at least achieving a perfunctory adherence to Judaic norms. But it is all too often realized at a heavy price, the price that is exacted when people feel imposed upon, with no joy in what they are doing.

            Enlightened pedagogues and parents will try to transmit the joy of Judaism, the meaning and fulfillment associated with each mitzvah. They will not resort to the harangue that if you do not do as God says, God will punish you. They will not convey the feeling that failure to observe should make one feel guilty. Instead, they will attempt to show that non-compliance is a missed opportunity to experience the joy of mitzvah fulfillment.

            This is guilt-free Judaism. It is Judaism perceived, transmitted, and lived in gratitude for having been blessed with such a wonderful formula for life. Gone is the imposition, gone is the guilt, and in its place, we find the wonderful opportunity to live life as God wanted for us. And God wanted it for us to enable us to appreciate the fullness of life in God's wondrous world.

The goal of Judaic value transmission needs to go beyond doing the mitzvoth. It needs as its aim that the mitzvah is actualized with joy and with enthusiasm. Lest you think this is apologetics, pray tell me how you understand the prophetic charge (Isaiah 58:13) to call the Shabbat "oneg," or delight? How can something transmitted as an onerous collection of impositions be experienced as a delight? Obviously, something is getting lost in the transmission. In other words, if we experience Shabbat as a burden, then you can be assured that you have missed the essence of Shabbat. 

It is clear that in order to teach Shabbat properly, its status as oneg is essential to the way we teach. Can anyone dispute the simple proposition that the more Shabbat is conveyed as oneg, the more likely that those being taught about Shabbat will be eager to embrace it fully and enthusiastically?

Does it sound absurd to suggest that God is “pained” when the mitzvoth of God are apprehended as burdens, rather than joys? If it sounds absurd, then again we have missed the boat. God did not put us here to tantalize us, waving all the niceties of life in front of us and telling us—do not touch, do not taste, do not enjoy.

We are told that we will have to answer for all the good things God created in this world that we failed to enjoy (Jerusalem Talmud, Kiddushin 4:12). The more we meaningfully enjoy God's world, the more we are likely to appreciate God in the fullness of appreciation. Of course there are rules guiding how we experience the world, and parameters for enjoying, but they are parameters, not the objective. The objective is to enjoy, to appreciate, to share; the parameters are to give proper context to how we enjoy.

How interesting it is that the guilt of which we speak is the guilt for "not enjoying," instead of the more standard, accepted, and wrong idea of guilt as associated with enjoying. It is clear that we are missing some vital ideas and ideals in the experience of living as God wants us to live.

            One of the issues associated with guilt is the damage that this causes to one's self image, or vice versa (the guilt that is caused by having a low self-image). It is the fad of this generation—the obsession with self-esteem. Try finding any mental-health worker who is not totally convinced that self-esteem is critical to proper functioning. And this is reinforced by the constant media barrage, linking delinquency, violence, addiction, and every other aberrant behavior with low self-esteem.

            There are many problems with all this. The first is that this seems to suggest that low self-esteem is at the root of the problem. But this would only be the case if we could show that the majority of people with low self-esteem descend into the ugly cesspool of deviance. That is not the case. The fact that most murderers have low self-esteem does not mean that people with low self esteem tend to be murderers.

            The same misleading presumption is true of the oft-cited fact that a higher percentage of abusing parents were themselves abused as children. This does not mean that most abused children become abusing parents. That too is not true. Most children who are abused do not abuse as adults. This does not excuse any abuser, but it does correct a misnomer that in a perverse way suggests to those who were abused that they are almost doomed to perpetrating abuse when they get married and/or have children. Such an implied suggestion is wrong—and irresponsible. 

            Another problem with self-esteem is that it can become dangerously addictive. If we demand to be told that we are good, and we are "lucky" enough to have parents and teachers who feed this esteem frenzy, then the moment that we get new teachers, or our parents slip up and do not offer compliments, we will be more open to becoming dejected or depressed. That is unhealthy, and the expectation to be constantly fed with prop-up compliments is fraught with unpleasant consequences when the unrealistic expectations are not met, which inevitably is the case.

            A third, and perhaps even more serious problem with self-esteem, is that the notion itself seems to welcome some measure of arrogance into our daily vocabulary. How could it be otherwise if we are urged to think of ourselves as good, as worthy? If we then get into a tiff with someone, are we not more likely to attribute the blame to the other person, since we are good, and therefore unworthy of blame?

            Arrogance, even a tinge of it, has no place within Judaism, which places uncompromising primacy on humility in the face of God. Arrogance is roundly condemned as being antithetical to Judaism. God cannot abide where arrogance exists (see Talmud, Sotah 4b).

            But we cannot so easily dismiss the notion of self-esteem. After all, self-esteem is intimately connected to the fulfillment of the enveloping imperative to love our fellow as we love our self (Vayikra 19:18), which Rambam says that we fulfill by saying nice things to others, to make them feel good, as we would feel when we are told nice things about ourselves (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot De'ot 6:3).

The middle ground in all this is that we need to think of ourselves as capable of achieving good things, that we are not bad (see Avot 2:18). But any good that we achieve is nothing more than preparatory to achieving more good. There is a lurking danger in doing good, and then resting on whatever laurels that such good brings. We are here to do good, so whatever we achieve is nothing more than justification for our being created (see Avot 2:9).

So, self-esteem as the potential to do good, to be good, is essential. Self-esteem as actually being good is arrogant, unacceptable, and unhelpful for human achievement. All this may spark off some angry reaction by you, the reader. But before you let loose, let me share with you something about anger. You and I, and almost everyone, have been raised with the teapot theory of anger—that anger is like a boiling kettle that needs to be expressed, to boil over, to spill over, rather than being repressed.

That too is a mistake. There is no way that you can read any of the major Jewish ethical treatises and not come away overwhelmed at how unanimously and fully anger is condemned. There is no halfway on this. Anger is put on a par with idolatry, and yes, according to Sefer Haredim, is biblically prohibited. Yes, you read that correctly—anger is biblically prohibited, like eating hametz on Pesah (see my Best Kept Secrets of Judaism, pp. 200–202).

The teapot theory itself is being questioned. Today, we are being told by more enlightened experts who have studied anger that rather than getting rid of the anger, exploding actually rehearses it. So what are we to do with anger? There are two facets to the approach. One is what to do when we are just about ready to explode. The mussar experts have suggested many good techniques, such as filling the mouth with water and holding the water for ten or fifteen seconds before letting the water out. Since anger is a seething fire, what better way to extinguish fire than by water?

The other approach is to confront anger on a long-range basis, to sit down and write an inventory of those things that are worthy of us losing our cool. If you try this on your own, you will be surprised at how empty your page will be. And then, having realized how few, if any items, are worthy of exploding over, the next step is to integrate that rational thought into our emotive selves. For some it is easier than for others—but it is an achievable goal.

This brings me to my final point. There are some who are more temperamentally cool than others, some who are more naturally hot-tempered than others. The main point is that with work, sometimes difficult work, we can overcome tendencies. We have the ability—and hopefully the will—to do so. We need to get away from the rampant psychological determinism that suggests that because we were abused, we will abuse; because we are hot-tempered, we will lose our cool; because our parents were alcoholics, or drug users, we will be the same; or that because we were once addicts, we are doomed to a life of addiction.

We have free will; we have the ability to transcend innate tendencies. Yes, there are many good things in psychology, but when the philosophy underlying the psychology comes into direct conflict with Judaism, I will go with Judaism all the time. My faith includes the full confidence that God Who created us knows us better than any conglomerate of mental-health professionals. 

The Generation of the Lie (reprinted from Marc D. Angel, The Wisdom of Solomon and Us, Jewish Lights Publishers, 2016.)

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, even they both are an abomination to the Lord. (Proverbs 17:15)

Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they who indulge it shall eat the fruit thereof. (Proverbs, 18:21)

The United States suffered a horrible and horrifying terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Arab terrorists flew airplanes into the Twin Towers killing thousands of people. Two other airplanes were hijacked leading to the murder of all the passengers.  One of the hijacked airplanes was flown into the Pentagon, not only killing the passengers but killing or grievously wounding many individuals in the Pentagon that day. The trauma of that day for the survivors and the families of the victims will never entirely disappear.

Moral clarity prevailed in many circles. The terrorists were murderers, hateful and misguided individuals who believed that they would be rewarded in heaven if they murdered Americans. They were willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of inflicting damage on the United States. But, there were those who justified the wicked and who condemned the righteous. They described the murderers as “martyrs.” They rejoiced that America, the great devil, had suffered a serious blow. The same pattern often is evident when acts of terror are committed against Israel. The murderers are described as “militants” or as “martyrs.” The Israeli victims are blamed for their own deaths, and the murderers are honored by the societies from which they emerged. The United Nations routinely condemns Israel for defending itself against terrorism, and routinely ignores the heinous acts of murder committed against Israel.

We should not be surprised by the massive hypocrisy that justifies the wicked and condemns the righteous. This has been going on for many centuries. Not only does Solomon note this phenomenon in Mishlei, his father David screamed out against it in his Psalms. Psalm 12 has been described by Martin Buber as a prophecy “against the generation of the lie.” The Psalmist cries out: “Help, O Lord, for the pious cease to be…They speak falsehood each with his neighbor, with flattering lip, with a double heart they speak.” The generation is led by oppressors who say “our tongue will make us mighty,” who arrogantly crush the downtrodden. They act sinfully but are confident that their smooth talking propaganda will keep them immune from retribution.

Buber comments: “They speak with a double heart, literally ‘with heart and heart’…The duplicity is not just between heart and mouth, but actually between heart and heart. In order that the lie may bear the stamp of truth, the liars as it were manufacture a special heart, an apparatus which functions with the greatest appearance of naturalness, from which lies well up to the ‘smooth lips’ like spontaneous utterances of experience and insight” (Good and Evil, p. 10). The Psalmist is not merely condemning his “generation of the lie,” but future generations that also will be characterized by lying, bullying, oppressing; that will be led by smooth talking and corrupt demagogues. But the Psalmist turns prophet and proclaims that God will arise and protect the victims of the liars. Truth will prevail. “It is You, O Lord, who will guard the poor, You will protect us forever from this generation.” Although the Psalmist is confident that God will set things right, meanwhile the ugly fact remains: “But the wicked will strut around when vileness is exalted among humankind.” Although God will ultimately redeem the world from the “generation of the lie,” this will not happen right away. As long as people submit to the rule of the wicked, the wicked will stay in power. If the wicked are not resisted, they will continue to strut around and feel invincible.

The Nazis understood the power of propaganda. If you tell a big lie often enough and loud enough, people begin to believe it. Even if they do not fully believe it, they will lose the spiritual courage to resist the liars. They will either remain passive or will actively conspire with the wicked. The “generation of the lie” continues to flourish in our day, when tyrannies are viewed favorably and democracies are judged negatively. Every vote that justifies wickedness is an act of complicity with the wicked. Every abstention that refrains from condemning wickedness is also an act of complicity with the wicked. Albert Einstein described the moral decay which he felt was setting into society. “One misses the elementary reaction against injustice and for justice—that reaction which in the long run represents man’s only protection against a relapse into barbarism. I am firmly convinced that the passionate will for justice and truth has done more to improve man’s condition than calculating political shrewdness which in the long run only breeds general distrust. Who can doubt that Moses was a better leader of humanity than Machiavelli?” (Out of My Later Years, p. 10).

Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak ha-Cohen Kook (1865–1935) is, without doubt, one of the most celebrated rabbis of the twentieth century. He is known to most people simply as Rav Kook, the founder of Religious Zionism, and we frequently overlook the fact that the foundations of his teachings reflect a deep modernization of the Jewish faith itself and of its approach to an array of contemporary problems.

To discuss the religious approach to the role of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in today’s world, we must turn to the ideas of Rav Kook who saw Zionism in a religious light. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Zionism was not seen as an aspect of Judaism. In fact, it contradicted Judaism in many ways, and occasionally even came into sharp conflict with some of Judaism’s conceptions.

Despite these contradictions, Rav Kook not only “supported” Zionism, as did many rabbis, but he also formulated Zionism in religious terms. Furthermore, he demonstrated Zionism’s importance for the development and deepening of Judaism. We will examine how Rav Kook’s conception of Zionism shaped a more profound form of Judaism.

The central idea of monotheism is that God created humankind in His likeness. The individual is the image of God, and our entire life is a dialogue with Him. All of our actions are the words we speak to God, and everything that happens to us is His answer to us. Rav Kook’s main philosophical concept is that the Jewish understanding of life as a dialogue with God has not one but two central themes: a dialogue on an individual level and a dialogue at the national level, i.e. a dialogue between God and the Nation.

The religious significance of the State of Israel is that its very creation compels the Jewish people to act as a single entity. Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel bring the Jewish people back into a full dialogue with God.

Rav Kook was a poet by nature, not a university professor. Thus, he believed that mysteries are explained only by other mysteries. This approach makes a systematic study of Rav Kook’s philosophy difficult. In the following article, we will attempt to outline Rav Kook’s philosophy in more concrete terms.

1. A Step in the Development of Judaism

According to Rav Kook, one vital step in the evolution of Judaism is the revival of those sparks of Divine light that have hitherto been lost, or that were insufficiently realized in the process of historical development. It must be noted that the outline presented below represents a simplification of Rav Kook’s views. It is described in more detail in his article, “The War of Ideas and Faiths” (Orot, p. 129; see also Shemona Kevatzim 1:16).

The central problem Rav Kook faced was the wave of Jewish souls leaving Judaism for various ideological movements alien to it. This wave was particularly strong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when many deserted yeshivas closed their doors and Jewish youth turned en mass to secular Zionism, socialism, or other “isms.” According to the mainstream Orthodox view, these departing youths were “lost and mistaken,” the problem was thought to lie

in them—they were not taught correctly, they did not fully understand their traditions, and so forth. Thus, the task of religious leadership was to influence these souls through explanation and teaching so that they would return to Judaism.

It was at this moment that Rav Kook proposed an entirely different approach to the problem. According to him, the reason Jews were rejecting the Torah lay not only in the error of their ways, but also in the flaws of the modern religious world—in Judaism as it existed at the time. In order to bring about the return to Judaism of those who had fled, it was necessary not to drag them back to the Judaism that they had rejected, but to correct the defects within Judaism itself. Then those Jewish souls would gradually return of their own accord to the renewed Judaism of tomorrow. In other words, Rav Kook regarded the exodus of Jews from Judaism as an indicator of the presence of flaws in Judaism; furthermore, he saw it as a sign that the time was ripe for correcting these defects and believed that social/historical circumstances required that we do so without delay.

Basing his approach on Kabbalah, Rav Kook maintained that if a large number of Jews rushed to a particular ideology under the banner of morality and virtue, this meant that despite its apparent distance from Judaism, or even hostility to it, that ideology must contain a spark of Divine light. The anti-religious appearance of this alien ideology would merely be its shell, which fed off the energy of the spark inside. It is that spark, not the shell, that attracts the souls of those who turn away from Judaism, as Jewish souls, on the whole, are drawn to good and reach for it innately. Furthermore, the “breach”—the spontaneous, morally grounded mass movement of the Jewish people—is itself an indicator of the ripeness of the spark, a sign that it is time for its activation.

2. The Teaching of Rav Kook as Torat haKelal, Teaching for the Entire Nation
Of course, Rav Kook did not believe that every Jew is an entirely upright person, who strives for good in every deed. We know perfectly well that among Jews there are plenty of fools and criminals. However, when a large group of Jews leave their tradition for another ideology, we see not the rejection of the Torah by an individual Jew, but a socially significant movement. Such a movement is always accompanied by a sense of moral righteousness declared and subjectively felt by its participants. Without this sense, a social movement cannot develop.

Rav Kook believed that a human sense of morality, which is the manifestation of God in the individual, is the world’s driving force. Therefore, he viewed a spontaneous, morally grounded social movement by the Jewish people as a definitive manifestation of the role of the Jews as the chosen people—even though the form that this manifestation takes might directly contradict the directives of the Torah—and held that we must, in the end, view the situation as “hitgalut Elokim,” the revelation of the Divine.

Thus, Rav Kook’s teaching is a Torat haKelal, a teaching of national unity, viewing the Jewish people as an integral whole, capable only as a single entity of bringing the Torah to the world, and seeing disparate groups within the Jewish people as essential parts of the whole.

3. Flaws in Judaism and the Process of their Correction
Continuing our analysis of the outline for Judaism’s development, it is important to note that the ideas presented so far—that inside every shell are concealed sparks of holiness and Divine light, that the shell feeds off the energy of this spark, and that Jewish souls carry within themselves—the role of the chosen and the attraction to good—do not constitute the unique and truly revolutionary teaching of Rav Kook, as all of these ideas have been stated and discussed many times in Kabbalah and in Chassidism.

The true revolution in thinking put forth by Rav Kook lies in the proposition that this situation arises due not only to the attraction of the sparks, but, above all, to a defect in Judaism as it exists, evidenced in the lack or insufficient activity of a given spark within it.

The process of activating the spark involves several stages. The first step is to extract the sparks from the shell (see Shemona Kevatzim 1:71, also p. 63, passage 9). Guided by our Divine moral intuition, we must explore and determine the precise nature of the Divine spark that is drawing masses of Jewish souls to a particular ideology. To do this, it is necessary not only to approach the views of those who have joined the new ideology or movement with extreme respect and deep attention, but also to demonstrate genuine sympathy for the “ism” itself.

In the language of Kabbalah, we must feel the Divine spark locked within the foreign ideology. Clearly, in order to extract the spark from any specific “ism,” it is necessary, while staying within the framework of Judaism, to show sympathy toward the “ism,” as sympathy and empathy are the first steps toward understanding. But any individual religious person may not sympathize with every ideology. Some may simply be too deeply repulsive to him or her. This merely shows that this person is not equipped to extract the spark of Divine light from those particular “isms.” Rather, that person must work with those ideologies that he finds himself naturally in accord with, as only in them he or she will be able to find the spark of Divine light. It is impossible for any one person to sense the sparks in all “isms,” and it is wrong to attempt to spread oneself so thin. Every person must focus on what is genuinely close to his or her Divine soul.
At this stage, those who, in the course of their lives, have spent time near to or even within the foreign ideology being examined may play an especially important role. In particular, when Western values are integrated into Judaism—or, to put it more precisely and formally, when those sparks of Divine light that nourish the values of contemporary Western culture are revived within Judaism—an important role must be played both by Jews from Western countries and by Jews from Russia, who have been educated in the crucible of totalitarianism and communism.

The process of identifying the Divine sparks in secular ideologies is only the beginning of our work since, as stated above, we cannot integrate that spark into Judaism directly. Such a heavy-handed transplant would lead to a rejection of the tissue, which could even result in the death of the entire organism. Therefore, unlike Reform Judaism, which swallows the spark whole from the other teachings and so takes in with it elements of shell that radically contradict the Jewish approach and tradition, the Modern Orthodoxy of Rav Kook strives before all else to find this spark’s native, authentic manifestation in Judaism. Orthodoxy must seek out the spark and its true Jewish form in the fundamental tenets of Judaism—that is, in the complete and ideal Judaism, encompassing all the ideas contained in all of its texts and oral traditions. To do this work, one must not only be an expert in Torah, Halakha, and Aggadah, but one must also have the particular wisdom to sense behind the traditionally expressed formulations the deep contemporary content that accurately reflects their Divine light while resonating in today’s world.

Next, the given spark must be cultivated within a renewed Judaism. The process of the cultivation of sparks is carried out in our model through modern Judaism, as it does not alter the existing, historically formed Judaism, but supplements and corrects it. (See for example, Midot HaRe’aya, Emuna (Faith) 28.) The concept presented here is not Reformism, which is associated with the abolition of ritual commandments, but Modern Orthodoxy, in which a process of development is continually taking place alongside the preservation of tradition. Judaism loses nothing, but only increases.

Rav Yochanan Fried, who studied at Mercaz HaRav in the seventies, gives an example of this complementary kind of learning. He once received a letter which related how two Mercaz HaRav students, Yochanan Fried and Hanan Porat, were invited by Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook to the Ein Harod Kibbutz to participate in a discussion on “What does the youth do in its free time.” When their turn came to speak their mind, they said, “Yeshiva students don’t have free time. Therefore, we don’t have this kind of problem. Yeshiva students are above all this—we study Torah continuously and don’t have time for recreation.” As a result of their words, an hour-and-a-half long discussion evolved, at the end of which a women sitting at the end of the hall stood up and asked, “If you are so great, what can you learn from us?” When Rav Tzvi Yehuda later heard about the question, he asked the students, “What did you answer her?” When they responded that they didn’t answer anything, he criticized them. “Be ashamed of yourselves! You traveled all the way to Ein Harod and didn’t learn anything about love of the land and about hard work? You didn’t learn anything from the wonderful relationships that exist between members of Ein Harod?” This encounter gave rise to a correspondence between Rav Tzvi Yehuda and Hanan Porat, who published his letters in his book Et Ahai Anohi Mevakesh (first published as Et Anat Anohi Mevakesh).

As a result of the activation of the spark, the defect in Judaism is corrected, and Judaism takes a new developmental step. In place of the existing Judaism of today comes the Judaism of tomorrow. Furthermore, because the spark whose light had been attracting the souls who left in process is now restored and active within Judaism, these souls begin to return to Judaism (see Shemona Kevatzim 8:51).

Of course, we do not in any way mean to say that those who will return to Judaism are the very same people who earlier left it. The step in development described here occurs over the course of several decades, and those who have left have left. At the individual level, a return to Judaism is possible at any moment; but the return of a whole generation is impossible without the restoration of that spark that gives life to the new ideology and that triggered the exodus from Judaism in the first place—a process that must ripen over many decades. Finally, people with “kindred souls” to those who left earlier now return, as they are the souls attracted to this particular spark—but this takes place two to four generations. In other words, it is their spiritual grandchildren and great grandchildren.

4. Example 1: The Integration of Sparks from Zionism
We will now use examples to illustrate how this model functions in practice.
For the first example, we will examine a fairly simple “ism,” with regard to which the above model has been fully carried out from beginning to end: secular Zionism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, “Judaism” and “Zionism” were not only contradictory, but in many ways hostile to one another. The first heralds of Zionism were religious (Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, Rav Yehuda Ben Shlomo Chai Alkalai, and others) but they did not succeed in creating a mass movement. The Zionist mass movement sprang up in the twentieth century and was mostly secular. At that time, the slogan of secular Zionism was “we will become a nation like all others.” This entailed, in particular, the abandonment of religious principles as a basis for Jewish self-identification in favor of a civil-national identity. Because of this, many rabbis condemned secular Zionism as an attempt to destroy the Torah and traditional Judaism.

Under these circumstances, Rav Kook took an entirely different position. He maintained that we should not berate secular Zionism for being outwardly wrong, that is, for straying from the Jewish heritage, the Torah, and God. His method was not to focus on the outward defects of Zionism, but to seek out its inner truth, to find its Divine spark and then, to correct the existing Judaism accordingly by integrating into it the spark that had attracted Jewish souls to secular Zionism. As Rav Kook writes,
The nefesh [that is, the lower part of the soul in kabbalistic tradition] of sinners of Israel in the “footsteps of Messiah”—those who join lovingly the causes of the Jewish people, Land of Israel and the national revival—is more corrected than the nefesh of the perfect believers of Israel who lack the advantage of the essential feeling for the good of the people and the building of the nation and land. But the ruah [that is, the higher part of the soul] is much more corrected in the God-fearing and Torah observant… The tikkun [correction] will come about through the “Light of Messiah”… Israel should bond together, and the nefesh of the observant will be corrected by the perfection of nefesh of the better transgressors, in regard to communal affairs, and material and spiritual ideals attained to human understanding and perception. Whereas the ruah of these transgressors will be corrected by the influence of the God-fearing, observant and great of faith. And thereby both groups will receive Great Light… The higher tsaddikim, masters of neshama [the third and highest part of soul] will be the uniting conduits, through which the light of the nefesh will flow from left to right, and the light of the ruah from right to left…This will be accomplished through the light of Messiah, who is David himself, who erected the yoke of teshuvah. For the sake of David, Your servant, do not rebuff Your Messiah.” (Arfilei Tohar, § 21, published also in Orot, Orot HaTehiya 51)

The situation was somewhat simplified by the fact that this spark consisted of the desire to resurrect a full and authentic Jewish national life in the land of Israel. Not only does this ideology not contradict Judaism, as many mistakenly believed at the beginning of the twentieth century, but, on the contrary, it is an essential condition for Judaism’s further existence and development. Therefore, Rav Kook focused on the study of those sources in Judaism that address the religious significance of Jews coming back to their Land [See, for example, Orot HaTehiya 8]. In his articles and books, he conducted a thorough and deep analysis of these sources, and he made this analysis the central component of his educational program at the Zionist “world-wide Yeshiva” (Merkaz haRav) that he founded. After his death, Rav Kook’s students, and especially his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, brought up a new generation of rabbis and religious activists at that yeshiva, for whom Zionism—the claiming of the Land of Israel and active participation in its government—was an integral part of the living Judaism that they studied, taught, and abided by. Graduates of the yeshiva Merkaz haRav transmitted the same active contemporary Zionist spirit to their students and to the religious circles they influenced.

Since this teaching was in keeping with the times, it began to spread far and wide. All of this took place as an undercurrent over the course of nearly half a century, from the 1920s to the 1970s. And when, after the Six Day War (1967) and especially after the Yom Kippur War (1973), the question of creating Jewish settlements in the territories of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza came up, the tens of thousands of students of Rav Kook’s school, united in the movement Gush Emunim, were the driving force behind the new wave of Zionism.

In other words, in the 1970s and 1980s, the religious Zionists—that is, the adherents of Modern Orthodoxy, Rav Kook’s school—became the leading Zionist group in the country. The perceptions of society were transformed: People’s ideas of “Zionism” and “Judaism” ceased to contradict one another and drew closer. The struggle for the settlement of the Land of Israel by Jews took on a religious character far different from the anti-religious character it had had at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a result, those who had a Zionist soul, who cared about Jewish settlement in Israel, began to draw closer to Judaism, rather than to distance themselves from it. One could say that in the late twentieth century, Zionism “returned” to Judaism the souls that it had “borrowed” at the beginning of the century.

As a result of all of these processes, the right wing of Israeli society (that is, people who seek to settle and claim all of the territory of the Land of Israel) is today significantly closer to religious values than the left wing. This distinction is so strong that the expression “religious right” has become a stock phrase in the Israeli political lexicon. In the 1920s, it was the opposite—those concerned with the settlement of Israel were significantly farther from religion than those who were indifferent to the issue. In this way Judaism has completed a step in its development, having extracted a spark from secular Zionism. A side-effect of drawing “Zionist souls” to religion was, in particular, that hardly any such souls remained on the atheist side; this has led to the fact that today secularism is most often associated with a rejection of Zionism, or “post-Zionism.”

5. Example 2: The Integration of Sparks from Atheism
We will now examine a different example, one that may appear shocking at first, but that nevertheless fits within Rav Kook’s overall model for approaching secular ideologies (see, for example, Orot Hakodesh 3, Musar Hakodesh, pp. 125–127, 129.) Specifically, we will apply the system described above to atheism. We will attempt to carry out the process of extracting a spark of Divine light and furthering the development of Judaism by means of atheism.

Rav Kook writes,

Atheism displays the power of life. Therefore, the real spiritual heroes extract sparks of great kindness from their atheism and turn its bitterness into sweetness. (Arfilei Tohar, § 120)

The destructive wind of disbelief will purify all the filth that gathered in the lower realm of the spirit of faith... all will grow in purity and strength, in supernal holiness, from the firm, pure exalted kernel, which no negativity can affect. Its light will shine as a new light upon Zion with a wondrous greatness. (Shemona Kevatzim 1:476, Orot haTehiyah, ch. 51, p. 199)

Atheism, according to our model, fully qualifies as an outside “ism.” It stands in opposition to Judaism, it displays the banner of rejection of religion, yet Jews join its ranks in significant numbers, proclaiming its morality and worth.

Because in Rav Kook’s time atheism was actively growing and attracting supporters,
Rav Kook devoted a significant amount of attention to its analysis in his works (for example, Midot HaRe’aya, Emuna (Faith), pp. 27–28; Orot Ha’Emuna, Kfira (Heresy), p. 84). As always in his approach to a foreign ideology, Rav Kook did not focus on a critique of atheism’s mistakes, its rejection of God and tradition, and so forth. This would have been trivial, and it was attended to at the time by much of the religious establishment. Rather, he attempted to understand where the deep attraction of atheism lay, what was in it that drew Jewish souls, and how Judaism needed to evolve so that, instead of leaving, souls of this type would find their rightful place in it.
What is the “spiritual core” of atheism, its Divine spark? In order to find this, we can ask the following question: From where do members of this group derive pride? For pride reveals the correlation between our achievements and our Divine spirit. We take pride in those achievements that gladden our Divine spirit, seeing them as truly worthy. In other words, the point of pride of any ideology signals what must be culled from it, as it is the root of the attraction of the Divine soul. This, therefore, is where we must seek out the concealed spark.

In what, then, do atheists take pride, specifically as atheists? Of course, I am not speaking here of those atheists who have never given either religion or atheism a serious thought, and who were simply taught to be atheists. Any movement has fools in plenty; we must not focus on these, but on those who think for themselves. We speak here of real atheists—intelligent, thinking, and active. In what do they take pride as atheists? Based on my own acquaintance with atheists and their books, I believe that the atheist prides himself on being a doubting, critically thinking person. The atheist says: “You, the religious, merely believe. But I doubt. I cannot unquestioningly accept all of this. I am a skeptic.” It is not for nothing that a conversion to atheism in Israel is called hazarah beShe’ela, literally, a “return to the question” (as opposed to coming to religion, which is traditionally known as hazarah beTeshuva, or “return to the return,” which can also be read as “return to the answer.”) With this formulation, atheists establish themselves in opposition: “You, the religious, have the answer (teshuva)—but we have the question (she’ela). This is their source of pride, that they “have the question.” We are not discussing simple questions, of course, such as what is or is not kosher, but the fundamental and eternal questions of existence. The atheist stresses: “You are attracted to answers, we to questions.”

Thus, the true atheist has skepticism as his or her core conviction and declares him or herself to be a critical thinker who has unanswered questions to which no one can have ready answers. Is this core of atheism attractive? Picture two teachers, one who says, “Come to me. I have answers for everything,” and one who says, “Come to me. I have questions and doubts for every problem.” Which of them seems more spiritually advanced? Whose lectures would you wish to attend? The skeptic’s, of course. We know that there are no ready answers to the truly complicated questions. We also know that answers are very often superficial and questions much deeper. Therefore, if one says that he has answers, and the other that he has questions, we will, of course, go to the one who has questions.

By means of this analysis, with the help of our own religious intuition, we have found the spark of Divine light in atheism. Our intuition clearly confirms that questions and doubts are a great thing, and that in them there lies the source of atheism’s spiritual attraction.

Does this component—unanswerable questions—exist within Judaism? Clearly, in Judaism as it existed 100 to 200 years ago, the emphasis was primarily on the “answers.” Today, unfortunately, within the popular, rather primitive Judaism with which certain demagogues try to “capture” the masses, the stress is also frequently placed on the answers. But if we are deeply convinced of the religious importance of unanswerable questions, then let us look to ideal Judaism and try to find out where within it the central questions and doubts lie.

The first thing that comes to mind is the book of Job. Job is a righteous and good man, yet he is showered with misfortunes: the destruction of his possessions, the death of his loved ones. And so, three of his friends come to him, and after the period of silent mourning, they begin to ask: Where is justice in the world? Why does the righteous man suffer? Job’s friends offer highly reasonable explanations, but Job rejects them all, telling his friends that they are wrong, that they understand nothing. The discussion continues for the length of the book, about 40 chapters. At the end of the book a voice rings out from the heavens, saying to the three men, “Ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7)

In other words, the Book of Job concludes by telling us that there is in principle no answer to these essential questions. The question of justice remains open. It is necessary to seek an answer, but one must never assume one has found it.
Thus, we have an example from a book from Tanakh that clearly states that there can be no answer to this and, apparently, to many other fundamental questions. Another such book is Ecclesiastes (Kohelet). And although this book ends with the words “fear God… for this is the whole man(Ecclesiastes 12:13) which can be seen as an “answer,” the entire book in essence tells us that answers to real existential questions do not exist. This is one more typical instance in Judaism of the “unanswerable question.” One must admit that had the books of Job and Ecclesiastes consisted of a collection of answers about the meaning of life, the Tanakh would have been greatly impoverished.

However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this aspect of doubt was not a developed area within existing Judaism. Its spiritual leaders considered doubt to be a flaw and discouraged their followers from discussing questions that sowed it. They were to stay inside and never venture out. The leaders feared that one of their flocks might leave—yet many did flee Judaism because those spiritual leaders were unable to reveal its inner potential to address adequately the problems of the times. The leaders discouraged the reading of certain books, but people read them and turned away from Judaism and its lack of tolerance for doubt.

We have found the Divine spark in atheism, and we determined that that spark was not realized in existing Judaism, which feared doubt to the point that the thirst for it became a force for the spread of atheism. Our next steps are to develop within Judaism the spark of doubt that we have discovered in its roots, so strongly that it will shine more brightly there than it does in atheism.

The following conception formulated by Rav Kook provides us with a roadmap for revealing the spark of doubt in Judaism. He tells us that any faith that lacks doubt is not an ideal faith. On the contrary, belief without doubt is primitive and simplistic [See for example, Shemona Kevatzim 1, 36; Orot, Zir’onim 5]: Doubts are an integral part of true faith. As the Divine is by its very essence eternal, and all things human are, by their essence, temporal and finite, including all of our thoughts, ideas, and reasoning about God, our understanding of God cannot, in principle, be correct.

But what are we to do, if we are finite and temporal? How can we at least draw closer to the eternal Divine, come to understand even partially? At the very least, we must doubt everything we think about the Divine, for when the finite being feels his limitations and doubts himself, he becomes “less finite,” some potential of the infinite appears within him. If we are sure of ourselves and do not doubt, then our finite and temporal conceptions of the Divine become “even more finite,” moving further from the eternal Divine. If what is finite wishes to become less finite and to move closer to the infinite, it must be dynamic. That is, we cannot become actually infinite, but we must at least be potentially infinite, if only through doubting the certainty of our understanding and wishing to move forward. Therefore, doubts are an integral, necessary part of true faith, aiding, not impeding, its progress.

When students in a yeshiva or school are taught this concept of faith, an entirely new generation of religious people rises up, whose views can be characterized as “religious post-atheism,” which uses the religious achievements of atheism in the development of Judaism. Unless it activates within it the aspect of doubt, religion will be primitive. Doubt is necessary for its existence. Because the aspect of doubt was not adequately developed in religion over the last centuries, atheism came along, smashed everything, and advanced among people the concept of the value of doubt—and for this, religion owes it a debt of gratitude.

Atheism comes, says Rav Kook, to ridicule the primitive form of religion and destroy it, clearing the ground for the construction of a more exalted religious system. From the point of view of the development of religion, atheism was a historical necessity, as we ourselves—even the religious community and leaders who recognize the importance modernization—would never have decided to destroy that primitive aspect of religion. We simply would not have had the strength and nerve. Therefore, atheism enters and does all of that work for us.

The observant religious person who has grasped the ideas of post-atheism holds a different sort of religious consciousness. He combines Orthodox religiosity with a willingness to doubt his own religious tenets. Such a person emanates this new type of faith, changing the ideas of those around him, opening the way to religion for doubting people. These doubting souls begin to approach Judaism, seeing that post-atheist Judaism contains the spark of doubt, and that the spiritual necessity of doubt is even more developed here than it was in atheism.

The difference between the post-atheist religious consciousness and the classical one is easy to see. The Israeli essayist and philosopher Dr. Daniel Shalit says that one needs to converse with a religious person for no more than ten minutes to determine whether he or she is post-atheist or pre-atheist. Approached this way, atheism is not an enemy of religion. It is an enemy of primitive religion, but an ally in the creation of a more advanced one. If we can make the ideas of atheism the general property of the religious world, we will move religion forward and make it possible for those whose souls instinctively and absolutely correctly thirst for skepticism and doubt to approach this religion.

What Is to Be Doubted?

Thus, according to Modern Orthodoxy and post-atheism, doubt is critical for the growth of faith; without it a person cannot believe truly. If people, limited by nature, do not doubt their own limited religious ideas, they will remain much farther from God in their understanding than those who, though limited, at least doubt.
When we frame the problem this way, we frequently encounter the following question: “Should one doubt everything? There must be something, from the religious perspective, that is absolutely beyond question. God’s existence is certain—how can that be doubted?” The answer, from the point of view of religious post-atheism, is that everything can and must be doubted. To doubt is not to deny, but to subject to criticism and analysis. This applies even to the tenet that God exists. What is to be doubted is not the words themselves, but our interpretation and understanding of them. Since doubt is not denial but analysis and clarification, it is necessary for our religious understanding. It would be incorrect to see doubt in the existence of God as a choice between the statements “God exists” and “God does not exist.” This is a different kind of doubt entirely. What we must doubt is the meaning that we give to the word “existence” as it relates to God.

Rav Kook proposes a completely radical approach to this problem. He explains that there is a faith that is not faith. And there is a lack of faith, or atheism, that is, in its essence, faith (see Shemona Kevatzim 1, 633). What does he mean by faith that is not faith? He refers to the person who believes in God, but whose belief is so primitive that his image of God is closer to a caricature than to what God is. And what is lack of faith that is faith? This is the situation when a person says that he does not believe in God, but he says that because religious groups have pictured God in such a primitive form that he is unable to believe in such a God. This unbelief reflects not a lack of faith, but a high level of religious feeling.

The words “I believe in God” or “I do not believe in God” do not reflect true faith or lack of faith. We must hone the meaning of these words during our whole lives—not just our individual lives, but over the course of all human life. We can and must doubt these meanings in every way, for doubt is not denial; doubt is dissatisfaction with simple answers and a thirst for more precise understanding.

6. The Concept of Continuing Revelation

The religious concept of the continuing Revelation of God asserts that the Divine Revelation did not stop at Mount Sinai, but continued throughout time and continues still, manifested not in miracles, but in the course of human history, above all of Jewish history. Therefore, this Revelation can and must be listened to, and to do this we must see history as a dialogue with God.

There is no doubt that the very idea of monotheism as a religion of dialogue implies a continuing interaction between humans and God throughout all of human history. What is more, Jewish monotheism, as Rav Kook’s concept emphasizes, is characterized by the idea that not only does every individual carry on a dialogue with God, but the nation as a whole, and all of humankind do the same. It would be natural to suppose that through this dialogue, God continues to speak. Of course, God does not say anything to contradict God’s earlier words; God’s word cannot be revoked. The earlier Revelation is never rescinded, but it must be continually developed and added to. Thus, the idea of a national dialogue with God leads to the principle of continuing (or ongoing) Revelation, and that, in its turn, to Modern Orthodoxy.

The view of history as a dialogue between humans and God means that God is continually speaking to us, and all innovations that bring forth progress in culture, society, and religion are not simply human invention, but also Divine Revelation. Therefore, they must be integrated into our religious ideas and not discarded. In other words, the need for progress and modernization, even in the area of religion, is not merely a human trait; it is a manifestation of our Divine nature. Religion, therefore, must develop—not in order to make it easier and more convenient for us humans, but because without development religion will not adequately reflect God (see Shemona Kevatzim 8:43, as well as many other sources.)

It stands to reason that not everything that has occurred in the course of history is Divine. Many developments can and should be criticized, changed, repaired. However, it would be categorically wrong to cast away historical development as a whole, as we would be discarding with it essential elements of the Revelation. According to this conception, we do not have the right to reject historical change—not because we must protect human creative activity from primordial religious dogma, but on the contrary, because we adhere to a religious viewpoint.

7. 1. The Spiritual-Religious Value of Science and Technology

Science and technology play a big role in society, but do they have a spiritual-religious value in and of themselves? The general opinion is that they don’t. However, already in the first chapter of Genesis, immediately following the creation of Adam and Chava, God commands them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). This verse contains a commandment to conquer the earth, which means to build a civilization. This building is impossible without the development of science and technology. Conquering the earth means gaining control over nature. It means using power and knowledge to improve the conditions of human existence despite nature’s limitations: being able to turn on the light when it is dark outside, to heat your house when it is raining and cold, to move at great speed, to transmit sound over long distances. All this is included in the concept of “conquering,” and technological development needs to be seen as the fulfillment of this commandment. Why then is the “commandment of conquering,” i.e., constructing of civilization, not enumerated among the 613 commandments? The reason is that it pertains to humanity as a whole and does not address any individual or even any nation—and commandments that are intended for the human race are not counted among the commandments. There are those who interpret this verse as a blessing and not as a commandment; however, the grammar of the verse suggests the formulation of a commandment. Additionally, “be fruitful and multiply” is understood as a commandment. Therefore, if the first half of the verse is a commandment, it stands to reason that the second half is also a commandment. See also Orot Hakodesh 2, Hamegama Haelyona 33, page 563; Orot Hatechiya sections 16 and 30. According to Rav Soloveitchik as well (in The Lonely Man of Faith), the ambition to develop technology is engrained in humans, who are created in God’s image, and therefore, it is clearly a spiritual value. It follows, then, that science has religious worth. We must see those who advance science and technology as performing a commandment and feel national and religious pride towards Israelis who receive the Nobel Prize. Moreover, in order return those souls who are attracted to “Americanism” as expressed in the desire to conquer and develop nature, we must create a positive religious image of scientific and technological development; to do so we need the explicit support of our religious leaders. Many of them are focused on finding halachic solutions to the halachic problems that arise from technology. But unfortunately, very few of them see the religious significance of science and connect it with Torah.

7. 2. The Spiritual-Religious Value of Art

In ancient times, the sole purpose of art was decoration and beauty. In both secular and religious life, decoration and beauty were used to convey a divine message to the people. Judaism did not have a problem assimilating this view of beauty: there are numerous Jewish sources that emphasize its importance. For example, Ten measures of beauty came down to this world - nine of them were received by Jerusalem and the rest by the entire world (Kidushin 49b) and, “whoever did not see the Beit haMikdash that Herod built, never saw a beautiful building in his life” (Bava Batra 4a).

In the Renaissance period, the perception or art underwent a metamorphosis: art became an expression of the innermost world of the artist, and was no longer a means of transmitting a religious message. In the modern age, a new phenomenon that facilitates this newly gained purpose appeared: all of society began promoting and encouraging creativity.

During the course of history, art lost its association with religion, and became a secular, universal phenomenon. Religion did not comprehend this new kind of art, which exists in and of itself and expresses the inner world of the artist; religion surely did not see any religious value in it and therefore limited its interaction with art by using strictly halachic terminology, defining what is permitted and what is forbidden. The tension between religion and art intensified until they reached a point where each one saw the other as hostile and dangerous.

Rav Kook changed religion’s perception of art. He taught that there is religious value in the expression of a person’s inner world. (See introduction to Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs) in Olat Hara’ayah; Rav Kook’s letter to the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Mizmor 19 (Eretz HaTzvi in Ma’amarey HaRav Tzvi Yehuda.)
A person is created in the image of God, and the more a person comes closer to Him, the more he realizes himself as a human being and makes himself complete. The Torah opens with a description of the creation of the world—God creates the world and humans. Creation is the first act; thus, a person’s ability to create brings him closer to God. [In The Lonely Man of Faith, Rav Soloveitchik speaks a lot about how a man resembles God through creative action.] Therefore, art, which gives expression to human creativity and teaches society about creativity, opens before mankind a new way to draw nearer to God.

It should be emphasized that art’s religious significance becomes clearer when we contemplate art’s role in history rather than the lives of individual artists.

8. The Embedded Implication that Judaism Must Lag Behind Culture in Its Development
Looking at this model for the development of Judaism by means of sparks from “isms,” we are obliged to make note of one critical feature, which from a religious point of view might well be seen as an embedded “flaw.” Namely, the model presupposes that Judaism lags behind culture in its development. The “ism” appears first, arising in relation to progress in the larger society. As a result of this, people become dissatisfied with flaws in Judaism that earlier generations accepted (see Arfilei Tohar, 2 and 68); they leave and build a new ideology; and only two or three generations later does a segment of the religion adopt, develop, and realize the essence of these new ideas to create.

But if it is always thus, how will religion ever be able to lead? How will it accomplish what it is called upon to do?

The answer to this problem comes in two complementary parts.

The first is the fact that, indeed, within the structure of assimilating sparks from various ideologies and movements, Judaism will never be in a position to overtake those “isms.” However, Rav Kook explains that Judaism has “in reserve” another most important concept, namely, that of God’s dialogue not only with the individual, but also with the nation as a whole. Christianity or Western society never adopted this idea, inherent to Judaism from the start; humankind has only today begun to explore it. Therefore, Judaism will be able to lead civilization by means of this idea, rather than through its assimilation of sparks, which, as important as it is, merely serves to correct accumulated flaws that occur in the process of transition from Judaism of Diaspora to a Judaism of the Nation of Israel. Until we have adequately corrected these flaws, we will continue to fall behind and so will be unable to make ourselves heard by the world. We must continue to correct them, while at the same time developing that concept of national dialogue with God that is uniquely ours. We would later bequeath this concept to humankind, thereby making an essential contribution to the development of civilization.

This is the first part of the answer. However, the problem has another aspect. The second part of the explanation as to why Judaism lags behind culture in its development is that, as Kabbalah explains, our entire world is “tikkun olam”—“a world of correction.” Godliness is infinite and therefore human perception cannot fully grasp it. Similarly, no traditional movement can reflect Divine perception in its entirety because it is limited by time and wording. (Orot HaEmuna, p. 64) In kabalistic terms, God’s light cannot appear in our world immediately in its true form. At the beginning of Creation and again in every new stage of development, there is shevirat kelim, the breaking of the vessels, and the sparks of Divine light become enveloped by shells. Judaism’s “lag” is grounded in the very foundations of existence. Every idea first appears in a wrong form, in the context of the “ism.” And only afterward, as a result of our efforts to improve the world, it appears in a purer and more correct form.

This arrangement of things is, of course, not accidental. It is related to God’s desire to allow us to become God’s “companions,” God’s co-creators in the universe.