National Scholar Updates

January 2021

Despite the COVID-19 era, we are grateful to continue to provide meaningful content via Zoom, publications, and other venues.

I am excited to give a three-part series on Israel and the Bible. The Zoom classes will be held on Thursdays: December 31, January 7, and January 14, from 12:00-1:00pm. The classes are free but advanced registration is required. Please register here: https://www.jewishideas.org/article/zoom-class-rabbi-hayyim-angel-israel-bible

These classes also are being held in honor of the publication of my recent book, Cornerstones: The Bible and Jewish Ideology. The book contains twelve essays that explore aspects of our core values at the Institute.

The book is available at amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cornerstones-Jewish-Ideology-Hayyim-Angel/dp/1947857436/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hayyim+angel&qid=1603212552&sr=8-1

On Monday, December 28, I will be giving a teacher’s training class to the Bible Faculty at Naaleh High School in Fair Lawn, NJ. Teacher’s trainings continue to be one of the most effective ways of promoting our ideology into the community, as a result of the multiplier effect when teachers transmit these values to their students.

I am teaching a series of classes on the Book of Psalms with the Beit Midrash of Teaneck. For more information and to join the Zoom sessions please contact Leah Feldman at [email protected]. These classes are free.

We are working on Conversations 37, which contains an excellent array of essays on Judaism and Critical Thinking—values cherished by our Institute! Stay tuned for its upcoming release in the spring.

As always, I profoundly thank the members and supporters of our Institute for enabling us to disseminate our vision around the globe. We are constantly corresponding with interested people and are making a genuine impact with our classes and publications.

May God bless us all with good health,

Rabbi Hayyim Angel

National Scholar

A three-part Zoom series with Rabbi Hayyim Angel on Israel in the Bible. The series serves as a celebration of his newly published book: Cornerstones: The Bible and Jewish Ideology.

The series will be held on Thursdays: Dec 31, Jan 7, Jan 14, from 12-1 pm EST.

To join, please register here: https://www.jewishideas.org/rabbi-hayyim-angel-israel-bible

Introduction

God communicated to people through prophecy for nearly the entire biblical period, from Adam until Malachi. According to a prevalent Jewish tradition, prophecy ceased with Malachi, not to be renewed until the messianic age. In this article, we will consider a few traditional explanations of why prophecy ceased and some spiritual implications for Judaism over the ensuing 2,500 years and counting.

Overview of Malachi

Unlike Haggai and Zechariah, whose prophecies pulsated with messianic potential, Malachi lived a generation or two later—a generation in which that messianic potential appears to have been lost. At that time, the people’s political and economic suffering contributed to:

their feelings of rejection by God (1:2–5),
corruption of the priesthood (1:6–2:9),
rampant intermarriage (2:10–16), and
laxity in tithing (3:8–12).
God-fearing people were losing heart as well. Why remain righteous? Their sinful compatriots were successful, while God-fearing people suffered (2:17; 3:13–21)! All Malachi could answer was that for now, the mere fact of Israel’s continued existence proved that God still loved them (1:2–5). Only in some unspecified future would God bring complete justice (3:13–24).

According to a prevalent Jewish tradition, Malachi was the last prophet (see, for example, Tosefta Sotah 3:3; Yoma 9b; Sanhedrin 11a). That his book is positioned last in the Twelve Prophets does not prove he was the last prophet, since the book is not arranged in chronological order. However, it seems from textual evidence that he likely was the last of the Twelve. Radak and Abarbanel observe that unlike Haggai and Zechariah, Malachi does not mention the Temple construction; it was in use already. Malachi also condemns intermarriage (Mal. 2:10–16), a shared concern of Ezra and Nehemiah (458–432 B.C.E., see Ezra 9–10; Neh. 13:23–28). The widespread laxity in tithing (Mal. 3:8–12) also likely dates to Nehemiah’s time (Neh. 10:35–40; 12:44; 13:5, 10–12).

Even if Malachi were the last of the biblical prophets, there is no statement at the end of his book or anywhere else in the Bible stating categorically that prophecy had ceased. For example, Nehemiah battled false prophets (Neh. 6:5–7, 11–13) but did not negate the existence of prophecy in principle.

Nevertheless, the tradition that Malachi was the last prophet opened the interpretive possibility that Malachi was conscious of the impending end of prophecy.

A pronouncement (massa): The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi (Mal. 1:1).

Most commentators understand the book’s opening word massa as another generic term for “prophecy.” However, Abarbanel notes that the term could also mean “burden.” One Midrash similarly understands massa in this vein:

?[Prophecy] is expressed by ten designations…And which is the severest form? ... The Rabbis said: Burden (massa), as it says, As a heavy burden (Ps. 138:5) (Gen. Rabbah 44:6).

Within this interpretation, it is possible that Malachi viewed his mission with additional weight, conscious of his being the last of the prophets.

Similarly, several interpreters understand the book’s closing verses as a self-conscious expression that prophecy was about to end:

Be mindful of the Teaching of My servant Moses, whom I charged at Horeb with laws and rules for all Israel. Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord. He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents, so that, when I come, I do not strike the whole land with utter destruction (Mal. 3:22–24).

Kara (on 3:22), Ibn Ezra (on 1:1), Abarbanel (on 1:1), and Malbim (on 3:22) explain that Malachi was aware that prophecy would stop with him. The word of God would henceforth be available only through the written word of the Bible. Malbim links the exhortation to observe the Torah to the prediction of Elijah’s coming. With the end of prophecy, the Torah would sustain the people of Israel until the messianic era, at which point prophecy will resume.

Why Prophecy Stopped

We now turn to three leading trends in traditional Jewish thought as to why prophecy ceased: sin, the destruction of the Temple, or a metaphysical spiritual transition.

Sin

Some sources suggest that the loss of prophecy was punishment for sin. Over 200 years before Malachi, the prophet Amos predicted the cessation of prophecy:

A time is coming—declares my Lord God—when I will send a famine upon the land: not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the Lord. Men shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it (Amos 8:11–12).

Avot D’Rabbi NathanB:47 explains that prophecy ceased as a consequence of people mocking the prophets.

Radak (on Hag. 2:5) suggests more generally that lack of fidelity to the Torah resulted in the loss of prophecy. A Midrash (Pesikta Rabbati 35) states that many Jews failed to return to Israel after Cyrus gave them permission, and therefore prophecy ceased. Commenting on Yoma 9b, which blames the lack of redemption in the Second Temple period on the fact that many Jews did not return, Maharsha similarly states that prophecy ceased as punishment for the non-return from exile.

Destruction of the Temple

Ezekiel chapters 8–10 describe a vision wherein God shows the prophet the rampant idolatry in Jerusalem. God’s Presence abandons the Temple and goes into exile. Radak (on Ezek. 9:3) explains that the absence of God’s Presence ultimately contributed to the disappearance of prophecy.

Although Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi prophesied after the destruction of the First Temple, a number of sources consider the destruction to have dealt a fatal blow to prophecy.

?In five things the first Sanctuary differed from the second: in the ark, the ark-cover, the Cherubim, the fire, the Shekhinah, the Holy Spirit [of Prophecy], and the Urim ve-Thummim [the Oracle Plate] (Yoma 21b).

As Benjamin is the last tribe, so Jeremiah is the last prophet. But did not Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi prophesy after him? R. Lazar says: they had limited prophecy. R. Samuel b. Nahman says: [Jeremiah’s] prophecy already was given to Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi (Pesikta D’Rav Kahana 13).

The last prophets were diminished or, alternatively, were mere transmitters of Jeremiah’s message. Malbim (on Zech. 1:5–6) presents a more benign form of this approach:

I will not send new prophets, since there is no longer any need for prophets as you have seen all the prophecies of doom fulfilled against you…there is no longer any need for prophecy since you already understand God’s hand in history.

According to Malbim, there no longer was any need for prophecy since the message had already been given through earlier prophets.

Metaphysical Transition

Seder Olam Rabbah30 states that prophecy ceased in the time of Alexander the Great. Based on the rabbinic chronology, the Greek Empire began immediately following the end of the biblical period, so this time frame would synchronize with Malachi. Following this chronological assumption, R. Zadok HaKohen of Lublin observed that a metaphysical transition to an age of reason occurred in Israel and in Greece at the same time:

The proliferation of idolatry and sorcery in the gentile world paralleled divine revelation and prophecy in Israel. When prophecy ceased and the era of the Oral Law commenced, there appeared Greek Philosophy, which is to say, mortal wisdom (Resisei Laylah, 81b, Bezalel Naor translation).

This idea meshes with a talmudic statement that at the beginning of the Second Temple period, the temptation for idolatry ceased being the force it had been during the First Temple period (Yoma 69b). R. Yehudah HeHasid argued that once the urge for idolatry vanished there no longer existed the need for prophecy to counterbalance magic (Sefer Hasidim, Wistenetzky ed., p. 544; cf. R. Elijah of Vilna, commentary on Seder Olam Rabbah 30; R. Zadok, Divrei Soferim, 21b).

Similarly, a certain spiritual intensity was lost. Once the urge to idolatry had declined, prophetic revelation would have too much power if left unchecked. To preserve free will, prophecy had to cease as well (R. Eliyahu Dessler, Mikhtav me-Eliyahu III, pp. 277–278).

Religious Implications

According to the sin approach, the deprivation of the supreme gift of prophecy was a devastating punishment that has diminished the connection between God and humanity for the past 2,500 years since Malachi. Within the destruction of the Temple approach, the disappearance of prophecy was a necessary corollary of that cataclysmic event.

Although the loss of prophecy was a spiritual catastrophe, there still are some spiritual benefits to its suspension particularly within the approach that there was a divinely ordained metaphysical shift from prophecy-idolatry to human reason. In 1985, Professor Yaakov Elman published two articles analyzing the position of R. Zadok HaKohen of Lublin in reference to the transition from the age of prophecy to the age of Oral Law. According to R. Zadok, the end of prophecy facilitated a flourishing of the development of the Oral Law, a step impossible as long as people could turn to the prophets for absolute religious guidance and knowledge of God’s Will. Sages needed to interpret texts and traditions to arrive at rulings, enabling them to develop axioms that could keep the eternal Torah relevant as society changed.

Although the decline of revelation distanced people from ascertaining God’s Will, it simultaneously enabled mature human participation in the mutual covenant between God and humanity. This religious struggle is captured poignantly by the talmudic passage:

And they stood under the mount: R. Abdimi b. Hama b. Hasa said: This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, overturned the mountain upon them like an [inverted] cask, and said to them, ‘If you accept the Torah, it is well; if not, there shall be your burial.’R. Aha b. Jacob observed: This furnishes a strong protest against the Torah. Said Rava, Yet even so, they re-accepted it in the days of Ahasuerus, for it is written, [the Jews] confirmed, and took upon them [etc.]: [i.e.,] they confirmed what they had accepted long before (Shabbat 88a).

Rather than explaining R. Aha’s question away, Rava understood that revelation in fact crippled an aspect of free will. He proposed Purim as the antidote, since that represents the age when revelation ceased.

Although prophecy was the ideal state—and we pray for its return—its absence enables the flourishing of human reason, as we no longer have access to absolute divine knowledge. We must take initiative in our relationship with God or else the relationship suffers. R. Zadok applied this human endeavor to the realm of Torah study. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik understood prayer as replacing prophecy, precisely with the imperative of our responsibility to keep the lines of communication between God and humanity open:

In short, prayer and prophecy are two synonymous designations of the covenantal God-man colloquy. Indeed, the prayer community was born the very instant the prophetic community expired and, when it did come into the spiritual world of the Jew of old, it did not supersede the prophetic community but rather perpetuated it…If God had stopped calling man, they urged, let man call God (The Lonely Man of Faith [New York: Doubleday, 1992], pp. 57–58).

Institutionalizing prayer rescued intimacy with God by creating a new framework for this sacred dialogue.

Although prophecy disappeared some 2,500 years ago, the underlying spiritual struggle continues to be manifest in contemporary society. Many people long for absolute knowledge of God’s Will. Consequently, there exists a compelling pull toward holy men (rebbes, kabbalists) or the over-extension of a da’at Torah concept that accords near-infallibility to Torah scholars. Though that appeal may be understandable, it must be remembered that (a) these individuals are not prophets and therefore do not have the certain divine knowledge that many accord to them; and (b) in an age lacking prophecy we have a far greater responsibility to learn Torah and pray, and to take that spiritual energy to infuse every aspect of our lives with sanctity. This requires a healthy dose of human reason and effort, coupled with an ongoing consultation with spiritual guides who can help us grow.

For further study, see:

Hayyim Angel, “The First Modern-Day Rabbi: A Midrashic Reading of Ezra,” in Revealed Texts, Hidden Meanings: Finding the Religious Significance in Tanakh(Jersey City, NJ: KTAV-Sephardic Publication Foundation, 2009), pp. 217–226.
Hayyim Angel, “The Theological Significance of the Urim VeThummim,” in Through an Opaque Lens (New York: Sephardic Publication Foundation, 2006), pp. 195–214.
Gerald Blidstein, “In the Shadow of the Mountain: Consent and Coercion at Sinai,” Jewish Political Studies Review 4:1 (1992), pp. 41–53.
Yaakov Elman, “R. Zadok HaKohen on the History of Halakha,” Tradition 21:4 (Fall 1985), pp. 1–26.
Yaakov Elman, “Reb Zadok HaKohen of Lublin on Prophecy in the Halakhic Process,” in Jewish Law Association Studies I: Touro Conference Volume, ed. B. S. Jackson (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 1–16.
Lawrence Kaplan, “Daas Torah: A Modern Conception of Rabbinic Authority,” in Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1992), pp. 1–60.
Bezalel Naor, Lights of Prophecy (New York: Union of Orthodox Congregations, 1990).

THE INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH IDEAS AND IDEALS NEEDS YOU! 

Thank you for your support and encouragement. You have helped the Institute in its work to foster an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Orthodox Judaism.

THANK YOU FOR CARING AND SHARING. RESPOND TODAY TO CREATE A BETTER TOMORROW.

AS WE CELEBRATE OUR THIRTEENTH ANNIVERSARY, YOUR PARTNERSHIP IS VITAL.

If you are already a member of the Institute, please consider making an additional gift at this time. If you are not yet a member, please join our growing community. Each contribution is a vote for a revitalized, intelligent, active and diverse Orthodoxy.

PLEASE KEEP THE INSTITUTE IN MIND WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR
END-OF-YEAR CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS.

TO CONTRIBUTE:  You may contribute online at our website: jewishideas.org  Or you may send your check to Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, 2 West 70th Street, New York, NY  10023. If you wish to contribute securities, please contact us for details.

Supporting the Institute helps with the following:

· Our engaging and informative website reaches many thousands of visitors

· Our active social media and youtube pages continue to garner new viewership 

· Our National Scholar, Rabbi Hayyim Angel, offers numerous online classes/shiurim

· Through our University Network we provide publications and guidance to students 

· We have published 36 issues of our journal, Conversations 

· Our weekly Angel for Shabbat column reaches thousands of readers worldwide. Our Zoom classes have been highly attended and appreciated

· We have launched a “Sephardic Initiative”, offering publications, conferences and other resources to expand awareness of the Sephardic/pan-Sephardic experience

· We are an important resource for anyone seeking guidance on questions of halakha, religious worldview, communal policies, conversion to Judaism… and so much more!

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT. TOGETHER WE ACCOMPLISH GREAT THINGS.

Since the beginning of the modern era, the halakhic community and its decisors have had to grapple with the question of what halakhic status to give to the majority of Jews who were now non-observant. The Talmud (Eiruvin 69b) had ruled that a public desecrator of Shabbat was considered invalid to perform certain halakhic acts and Rambam (Laws of Shabbat 30:15; Laws of Divorce 3:15) declared that he was categorically invalid, going so far as to state that such a person was to be considered like a non-Jew in all areas of halakha.

What, then, was to be done in the period following the Haskalah, when most Jews were no longer Sabbath observers? Were the large majority of the Jewish people to be considered halakhically as non-Jews? While a number of decisors did, and continue to, rule in such a way, other great decisors found halakhic means to adopt a more inclusive policy.

The groundbreaking responsum on this issue was penned in 1861 by Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger, teacher of Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, and author of the Arukh La-Ner. Rabbi Ettlinger posits using the principle of tinok she’nishba, the infant taken captive and brought up in a non-Jewish household, and who, as an adult, is unaware of his Jewish identity. The Talmud (Shabbat 68b) had ruled that such a person was not to be held liable for his transgressions, and Rambam, later in his life (gloss to Mishna Commentary, Hullin 1:2, gloss to Laws of Rebels 3:3), had applied this category to Karaites who grew up in Karaite homes and could thus not be held responsible for not adhering to Rabbinic beliefs and commitments. [It is worth noting that in those passages Rambam only ruled that we were not to seek out their destruction, and did not actually use this principle to argue for genuine inclusion. See, however, his responsum #449, where he does promote a proactive inclusive policy in regards to Karaites.] While Rambam’s ruling had been debated, it was by-and-large accepted by later decisors (see, for example, Mishneh Berurah 385:1). On the basis of this precedent, Rabbi Ettlinger ruled that the children of the Reformers who had broken away from traditional Judaism, but who themselves had been raised in a Reform household and did not know any better, should be placed in the category of tinok she’nishba (Binyan Tzion HaHadashot 23).

Following his lead, almost all poskim who have adopted a more inclusive position have used the principle of tinok she’nishba to justify their rulings. While the tinok she’nishba category would seem to exclude a now-secular person who was raised in an observant household, Rav Kook called for a welcoming and inclusive stance here as well, using the principle of ‘ones, involuntary compulsion, and stating that even such people have been seduced by the almost irresistible cultural and intellectual forces of the larger society (Iggrot Reayah I:138). It would seem, then, that for those wishing to adopt a more inclusive policy, the halakhic groundwork has been well laid and firmly established, and no more conceptual grappling or deliberations are left to be done.

This is not the case. For while the desired end result has been achieved, the path that has brought us there and the resultant discourse that we have created is less than ideal. Is not the use of tinok she’nishba vis-à-vis our coreligionists patronizing and infantilizing? Imagine if the situation were reversed. Consider a responsum from one of the other denominations deliberating on whether it was appropriate to count an Orthodox Jew towards a zimmun, or whether one could fulfill one’s obligation of keriat megilah if the megilah were read by an Orthodox Jew. Given that Orthodox Jews affirm such “unethical” religious institutions as mehitsah, mamzerut and agunah, this responsum would argue, they should be excluded from performing such religious functions. This imaginary responsum (and responsa such as this do, in fact, exist) would conclude, however, that Orthodox Jews are indeed valid inasmuch as they cannot be held responsible for their “unethical” beliefs, as they are all tinokot she’nishbu.

What would be our reaction to such inclusiveness? Would it be satisfaction with the end result, or anger and frustration over how our beliefs and commitments had been trivialized? The truth is, that if non-Orthodox Jews are tinokot she’nishbu as a result of their education and upbringing, then Orthodox Jews are as well. Indeed, every person on this planet is a tinok she’nishba, to the degree that his or her beliefs and commitments are historically, societally, and environmentally conditioned. If we are prepared to make this claim regarding others, we must make it regarding ourselves.

Both out of self- respect for my own convictions, and out of respect for the differing convictions of others, I, for one, am profoundly reluctant to use the category of tinok she’nishba or its related category of ‘ones. Whether these are the arguments we give to our congregants and colleagues, or whether they are just the arguments we articulate to ourselves, they produce a discourse that does not do justice to a truly inclusive and respectful approach towards our fellow Jews.

What other justifications for inclusion, then, are available? Interestingly, in Rabbi Ettlinger’s responsum two other justifications appear before he posits the tinok she’nishba category. Those two arguments warrant revisiting. The penultimate argument he gives is that in the past, Sabbath observance was a critical boundary issue because to violate the Sabbath was to deny God and Creation (see Rashi, Hullin 5a. See also Rambam Laws of Shabbat 30:15). Today, he argued, Sabbath violation does not necessarily reflect a rejection of these faith principles, as many non-Sabbath observers recognize Shabbat in some way and may, regardless, believe in God. Such Jews, then, should not be halakhically excluded.

This approach, which recognizes the religious beliefs of other Jews, produces a very different discourse. It is a discourse which is inherently validating rather than patronizing, and one that is much to be preferred (there is some precedence to this approach in discussions regarding Karaites – see Responsa Radvaz 2:796. See, also, Ramban Bemidbar 15:22, regarding an alternate belief system embraced by a community.) It is, however, more limited in scope, in that it would not warrant inclusiveness regarding Jews who avowedly do not believe in God or in Creation. Here we must turn to Rabbi Ettlinger’s first argument. The Talmud in a number of places deals with the phenomenon of omer mutar, one who believes that a given forbidden act is permissible. The Talmud (Shabbat 72b, Makkot 7b and 9a) at times relates to such a person as ‘ones, free from any blame, at times as shogeg, negligent, and at times as shogeg karov le’meizid, negligent on the verge of willful violation. The difference seems to be the degree to which one can say that such a person should have known better (see Tosafot Makkot 9a s.v. d’omer and Ramban, Makkot 7b, s.v. prat). Rabbi Ettlinger accurately described the non-Sabbath-observant Jews of modernity as omer mutar.

Here was an entire category of Jews – the majority of the Jewish people – who did not believe that the traditional categories of prohibited work on Shabbat were binding. What status of omer mutar should apply to them? In dealing with first-generation Reformers, Rabbi Ettlinger considered them as karov le’meizid­­ – they should have known better. However, in our current post-advent-of-Modernity reality, where religious truths have completely lost their taken-for-granted nature, it is impossible to argue that anyone who is not observant – even someone who grew up observant – should have known better than to hold his beliefs. It is true that such a person may very well know what the beliefs of observant Jews are, and may well know that observant Jews believe that he is also obligated, but how can we argue that he should have known well enough to have adopted this belief as his own? No matter how strongly we personally aver our own beliefs and convictions, is it not – in today’s world – just as reasonable for a person not to believe as to believe? A look at the ratio of non-observant Jews to observant-Jews should certainly clear up any lingering doubt in this matter.

This argument, then, is structurally similar to that of tinok she’nishba, but in terms of the discourse it is drastically different. Rather than taking a patronizing stance vis-à-vis other Jews, we are actually adopting a more humble and self-aware position. We recognize – we are saying – that since the advent of Modernity there is no presumption of the truth of a given community’s religious claims. As such, while we firmly believe in our religious truths, we have no expectations that someone else would believe them to be binding.

We must, however, ask ourselves how our halakhic system treats people who do not believe, and are not expected to believe, that this system applies to them. To this, our answer is that such people are not to be held liable or excluded as a result of their non-compliance with this system. Omer mutar accurately describes today’s reality of the multiple and competing faith claims (and non-faith claims) that exist within Judaism. It is perfectly descriptive and non-judgmental, and should be a major part of our inclusive discourse.

The use of these two arguments, then, is an important and critical part of reshaping our discourse of inclusion. Recognizing that many non-Orthodox Jews are also believers in God and Creation, and approaching the non-observance of other Jews in descriptive, and not judgmental or patronizing, language, is necessary if we are to create an inclusive discourse that is also a discourse of respect. What these two arguments share is an affirming of the traditional halakhic boundaries of the community (belief and observance), but succeeds in including those who might otherwise be considered outside of those boundaries (by recognizing shared belief, or by not judging non-observance). What remains unexplored in this article is the possibility of defining the boundaries of the community in other ways, in ways which would be inclusive in the very drawing of the boundaries themselves. The discussion of this approach – both the halakhic feasibility of it and the pragmatic and religious costs and benefits that it entails – will have to await a future article.

Hasidic song expressed exultation in the Lord. It seemed to celebrate Israel’s marriage to God…

When Russia occupied Poland in 1792, few Jews knew the Russian language. Once a Cossack visited a Jewish homeowner and asked him, “Are you the khazyayen [the owner]?”

The Jew did not understand. His wife translated wrongly: “The Cossack says: ‘Are you a cantor [a hazan]? Sing for me.’”

So the Jew began singing the chant “The sons of the Temple.”

The Cossack lost his temper and began to beat him.

So his wife explained: “He obviously doesn’t like that song. He wants another one! A new song!”

—A Passion for Truth, pp. 284–285

                                                                   *

“I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder and You gave it to me.”

—Abraham Joshua Heschel

                                                                                    *

“The central thought of Judaism is the living God. It is the perspective from which all other issues are seen. And the supreme problem in any philosophy of Judaism is: What are grounds for man's believing in the realness of the living God?”

—God in Search of Man, pp. 25–26

These words, penned by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, summarize one of the great challenges facing contemporary Jews. How can one achieve spirituality? Of course, there is the problem of how to properly define spirituality. Heschel does an excellent job when he considers the “realness of the living God.” The essential problem is the difficulty in feeling the proximity of God in our lives.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1907 to a family of Hassidic rabbis. Following a traditional Jewish education in Warsaw, Heschel went to Berlin, where he studied at the university. He earned his PhD degree in 1933.

In 1938, Heschel arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he joined the faculty of Hebrew Union College in 1940. He later became professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. Heschel was married to concert pianist Sylvia Straus, and they had one daughter, Susannah. Heschel remained at the Jewish Theological Seminary until his death in New York City on December 23, 1972.

Heschel was a pioneer of Jewish involvement in the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s to end discrimination against African Americans. He spoke out against the war in Vietnam. Heschel met with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican to discuss Jewish feelings concerning Vatican Council II.

Rabbi Heschel presents a blueprint of how to live a life feeling the realness of God. It is a program that is simple to understand, and, at the same time, is quite profound. It is not a simplistic program, as it grapples with serious theological questions and requires considerable thought. It may best be described as “the longer shorter way” based on a story in the Talmud (Eruvin 53b) and popularized by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi in the Introduction to his classic work, Tanya. The phrase “the longer shorter way” represents an approach that requires hard work, but will, in the long run, lead to success in helping individuals develop a relationship with God, as opposed to a quick fix that is short lived.

Immediately upon attempting to offer a way to God, Heschel first stops to consider, and then rejects, the possibility that feeling the realness of God is based solely on belief in events of the past. For Heschel, such an approach is too distant and does not reveal the “realness of the living God.”

Heschel asks:

Is it true that Judaism derived its religious vitality exclusively from loyalty to events that

occurred in the days of Moses and from obedience to Scripture in which those events

occurred? Such an assumption seems to overlook the nature of man and faith. A great

event, miraculous as it may be, if it happened only once, will hardly be able to dominate

forever a mind of man.” (God in Search of Man, p. 26)

Heschel distinguishes between memory and personal insight in terms of ways of religious thinking. Both, says Heschel, are required modes for religious development. Heschel does distinguish and even prioritize, when he suggests that first comes the personal insight, helping a person arrive at “This is my God” (personal insight), which subsequently leads to: “He is the God of my father” (memory).

Heschel’s approach to spirituality can be contrasted to the approach presented by his contemporary, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits. According to Berkovits, while the prophets were able to personally encounter God, non-prophets are left with the memory of those encounters as recorded in our sacred literature. Those encounters and their records are powerful enough to craft faith. (It is interesting to note that they both speak of the “Paradox” of the encounter with God as described in the Bible and wonder how it is possible for a human being to survive such an encounter. Their answers are remarkably similar as well).

Heschel was not satisfied with a faith based on someone else’s encounter with God, and he goes to great lengths to devise a system in which a direct encounter with the Divine is available to all. In trying to define real faith, Heschel notes:

What does having faith mean? To follow the path of your ancestors? To carry out what is contained in a creed? Such simple faith is the backbone of all religions. After all, hundreds of generations of Jews have borne testimony to the existence of God. So one may accept their words, their beliefs. Yet the Kotzker refused to be a follower, living on spiritual crumbs left by the princes of the past…” (A Passion for Truth, pp. 187–188)

According to Heschel, faith could not be inherited; every person has to earn it. He warns against settling even on our own ideas and conceptions. Not only must we be original, our very originality must be challenged and fine-tuned.

It is impossible to be at ease and to repose on ideas which have turned into habits, on canned theories in which our own or other people's insights are preserved. We can never leave behind our concern in the safe-deposit of opinions, nor delegate its force to others and so attain vicarious insights. We must keep our own amazement, our own eagerness alive.” (Man Is Not Alone, p. 14)

It is often the case that educators and rabbis direct students to focus on the approaches and insights of others in terms of forming the basis of faith and closeness to God. Heschel is suggesting that in order to experience closeness to God one must be empowered and encouraged to find one's unique and specialized path.

This may be true in the realm of Torah study as well. Perhaps more time can be spent on developing the personal interpretations of Jewish texts, not as a means of supplanting traditional interpretation, but as a means toward greater connection to the text.

The idea that each person has a unique connection to Torah is expressed in the law that mandates a teacher go with his students to an Ir Miklat—a city of refuge when the student kills inadvertently. This is precisely because once the student has found a teacher he can successfully learn from, the halakha is hesitant to separate them.

A similar idea may be behind the prayer “grant us our share in your Torah” that is part of the concluding supplication of the amidah, among other prayers. It also expresses that individuals have a specific “share” or portion in Torah.

In the realm of spirituality, individuals can be given license to develop their unique route to feeling the realness of God. Once that is accomplished, connection via prayer and study may be attainable. Often the reverse method is used, in that individuals are expected to initially connect to God via prayer and study. This is not to suggest that people should not be taught how to pray until they acknowledge a connection to God. Rather, it can serve as a reminder that prayer may not serve the purpose of connecting a person to God. Once a person has developed a relationship to God based on personal insight, meaningful prayer may simply be the symptom of that relationship or a means to rekindle it after a period of diminution.

In focusing on the importance of individual and unique spiritual development, Heschel is echoing a classic Hassidic approach made popular by Shneuer Zalman of Lyadi in Tanya. In the introduction to that work, Rav Shneuer Zalman explains that one of the shortcomings of the written word is that people have different approaches to spirituality and will thereby not necessarily find inspiration in a book written for a general audience. He points out that the challenge of a leader is to be able to relate to the unique personality of each individual. He also notes that the blessing said upon seeing a group of 600,000 people—“knower of secrets”—points to idea that every person is distinctive. All of this boils down to the need for individuals to develop their own spiritual path.

It is important to point out that although Heschel saw the development of the personal God (“This is my God”) as coming before other’s appreciation of God, (“The God of my fathers”), he very much considered the mitzvoth and Torah study as the path to a personal relationship with God.

A heretic, the Talmud reports, chided the Jews for the rashness in which he claimed they persisted. “First you should have listened; if the commandments were within your power of fulfillment, you should have accepted them; if beyond your power, rejected them.”…Do we not always maintain that we must first explore a system before we decide to accept it? This order of inquiry is valid in regard to pure theory…but it has limitations when applied to realms where thought and fact...theory and experience are inseparable. It would be futile, for example, to explore the meaning of music and abstain for listening to music. It would be just as futile to explore Jewish thought from a distance, in self-detachment. Jewish thought is disclosed in Jewish living. (God in Search of Man, p. 282)

Wonder and Radical Amazement

Heschel's key idea in terms of a relationship with God built on personal insight is the notion of wonder or radical amazement. Personal insight as far a feeling God's realness is dependent on wonder.

Rabbi Heschel uses a familiar Midrash as a means to understanding wonder.

How did Abraham arrive at his certainty that there is God who is concerned with the world? According to the Rabbis, Abraham may be “compared to a man who was traveling from place to place when he saw a palace full of light (birah ahat doleket). “Is it possible that there is no one who cares for the palace?” he wondered. Until the owner of the palace looked at him and said, “I am the owner of the palace.” Similarly, Abraham our father wondered, “Is it conceivable that the world is without a guide?” The Holy One, blessed be He, looked out and said. “I am the guide, the sovereign of the world.” It was in wonder that Abraham's quest for God began. (God in Search of Man, p. 112)

Lift up your eyes on high. Religion is the result of what man does with his ultimate wonder, with moments of awe, with the sense of mystery. Heschel warns us not to waste moments of wonder.

It is interesting to note that elsewhere Rabbi Heschel uses this very same Midrash to deal with the problem of evil. He does so by changing his interpretation of the phrase birah ahat doleket, from a “palace full of light,” to a “palace in flames.”

In many ways, Heschel's response to the problem of Evil is the flip side of the coin of his doctrine of wonder. For Heschel, the existence of evil in the world, “living as we do in a civilization where factories were established in order to exterminate millions of men, women and children...” is the result of what can be termed the absence of negative wonder, or what Heschel refers to as “the loss of our sense of horror.” Heschel lays the blame for the Shoah squarely at the feet of humanity when he notes in his rewording of the above Midrash: “The world is in flames, consumed by evil. Is it possible that there is no one who cares?” It is God who declares: “I am the Guide, the sovereign of the world” (God in Search of Man, p. 367).

Divine Care and the Human Encounter

All of reality was a source of amazement for Heschel as every encounter with the world was by definition an encounter with God. “Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality” (God in Search of Man, p. 74).

This is especially true when it comes to the encounter with human beings. Heschel demonstrates exceptional spiritual sensitivity when he depicts the nature of human encounter. 

The awe that we sense or ought to sense when standing in the presence of a human being is a moment of intuition for the likeness of God which is concealed in his essence…The secret of every being is the Divine care and concern that are invested in it. Something sacred is at stake in every event. (Ibid., p.74).

Wonder and Science

Heschel is quick to remind us that he is not referring to the well-known argument from design. “Depth-Theology” is the term he uses to hone in on the distinction between wonder and science. In explaining “Depth-Theology” Heschel writes: “To apprehend the depth of religious faith we will try to ascertain not so much what the person is able to express as that which he is unable to express, the insights that no language can declare.” Heschel quotes F. P. Ramsey and notes that: “We must keep in mind that ‘the chief danger to philosophy, apart from laziness and woolliness, is scholasticism, the essence of which is treating what is vague as if it were precise and trying to fit it into an exact logical category.’”

The difference between science and wonder is that for the prophets “wonder is a form of thinking” and that “the fact that there are facts at all” creates a sense of “perpetual surprise.”

Petition and Thanksgiving in Prayer: Rabbi Heschel and Rabbi Soloveitichik

         The central place of wonder in the thought of Rabbi Heschel is made clear when considering his focus on praise and thanksgiving as the central motif of prayer. The importance of praise and thanksgiving in the prayer scheme of Rabbi Heschel is illuminated when contrasted with the approach of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik.

         Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik sees petition as the foundation of prayer. He makes this point with great clarity and force in his essay: Prayer, Redemption and Talmud Torah. In this essay Rabbi Soloveitchik defines the ability to cry out to God as a medium toward redemption as well as being a symbol of a free existence.

         Related to the centrality of petitional prayer, Rabbi Soloveitchik remarks:

Therefore, prayer in Judaism, unlike the prayer of classical mysticism, is bound up with the human needs, wants, drives and urges, which make man suffer. Prayer is the doctrine of human needs. Prayer tells the individual, as well as the community, what his, or its, genuine needs are, what he should, or should not, petition God about. Of the nineteen benedictions in our Amidah, thirteen are concerned with basic human needs, individual as well as social-national. Even two of the last three benedictions are of a petitional nature. The person in need is summoned to pray. Prayer and Tsa’ar (trouble) are inseparably linked. Who prays? Only the sufferer prays. If man does not find himself in narrow straits, if he is not troubled by anything, if he knows not what Tsara is, then he need not pray. To a happy man, to contented man, the secret of prayer was not revealed. God needs neither thanks nor hymns. He wants to hear the outcry of man, confronted with a ruthless reality. (Rabbi Joseph B. Solovetichik, Prayer, Redemption and Talmud Torah)

         Rabbi Heschel offers a different focus of prayer.

To worship God means to forget the self; an extremely difficult, thought possible, act. What takes place in a moment of prayer may be described as a shift of the center of living—from self-consciousness to self-surrender. This implies, I believe, an important indication of the nature of man. Prayer begins as an “it-He” relationship. I am not ready to accept the ancient concept of prayer as dialogue. Who are we to enter a dialogue with God?” (“Prayer as Discipline” in The Insecurity of Freedom, pp. 255–256)

This conception of humanity in relation to God leads Rabbi Heschel to conclude that priority in prayer must be given to praise.

This is why in Jewish liturgy primacy is given to prayer of praise. One must never begin with supplication. One begins with praise because praise is the prerequisite and essence of prayer. To praise means to make Him present.... (Ibid.)

         Heschel strengthens his point when he argues that not only is wonder the central religious mood of a Jew, it also requires daily maintenance.

The profound and personal awareness of the wonder of being has become a part of the religious consciousness of the Jew. Three times a day we pray:

                   We thank thee…

                   For thy miracles which are daily with us,

                   For thy continual marvels…

Every evening we recite: “He creates light and makes dark.” Twice a day we say: “He is one.” What is the meaning of such repetition? A scientific theory, once it is announced and accepted, does not have to be repeated twice a day. The insights of wonder must be constantly kept alive. Since there is a need for daily wonder, there is need for daily worship.” (God in Search of Man, pp. 48–49)

How Do We Know?

         One of the basic issue Rabbi Heschel deals with in terms of wonder is the question of how do we know we have experienced it. Interestingly, for Rabbi Heschel, the characteristic of a spiritually developed person is the ability to “draw a distinction between the utterable and the unutterable, to be stunned by that which is but cannot be put into words” (Man is Not Alone, p. 4).

         We are often taught that one can only claim to understand something when it can be put into words. This may be true of knowledge; it is not so, according to Rabbi Heschel when it comes to experiences. “Always we are chasing words, and always words recede. But the greatest experiences are those for which we have no expression...To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words” (Ibid., pp. 15–16).

Our Challenges

For Heschel there are two fundamental reasons why it is so hard for human beings to experience the “realness of God.” He first turns his attention to the “Dogma of Man’s Self Sufficiency.” He views both social reforms and technological advance as having failed to replace belief in revelation of God’s will. The development of human power and social awareness are not enough to pacify the human drive to cruelty. We need God, argues Heschel, because we are not great and because God is great. The Dogma of Man’s Self Sufficiency in not only based on the overestimation of humanity's greatness, but on the underestimation of God’s greatness. For the so-called self-sufficient man, the only thing not known is when all will be known. Ultimately, all mysteries will be solved and all obscurities made apparent.

Heschel refers to the perception of humanity’s unworthiness to be in a relationship with God. Referencing the Shoah, Heschel argues that it seems impossible that God wishes any relationship with a species capable of such fantastic horrors. It is the very physical strength of humanity that calls for a spiritual response. In fact, the one being powerful enough to respond to the destructive power of humanity is God. In short, although humanity may not be worthy of a relationship with God, God imposes it, in order to save humanity form itself.

Here too, humanity’s distance from God is based on an inability to recognize greatness. This time, however, it is not God’s greatness that is overlooked, but human greatness in the guise of potential, and in Heschel’s lifetime, realized destructiveness.

In Heschel's comments on wonder and the problem of evil, one can sense a concern for the general inability to experience strong passion. Underlying both radical amazement and the loss of the sense of horror is a generic “Hardness of Heart” as Heschel calls it. For Heschel, it is impossible to ignore a world so full of the magnificence of God and the dreadfulness of humanity.

Seeing the Ultimate

Heschel uses a powerful illustration in regard to living in radical amazement.

Let us take a loaf of bread. It is the product of climate, soil and the work of the farmer, merchant and baker. If it were our intention to extol the forces that concurred in producing a loaf of bread, we would have to give praise to the sun and the rain, to the soil and the intelligence of man. However, it is not these we praise before breaking bread. We say, “Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” Empirically speaking, would it not be more correct to give credit to the farmer, the merchant and the baker? To our eyes, it is they who bring forth the bread… It is not possible to dwell each time on what bread is empirically. It is important to dwell each time on what bread is ultimately. (God in Search of Man, p. 63)

Who Moved?

Paradoxically, although God desires to be in relationship with the world, humanity’s refusal to reciprocate causes God to depart.

Man was the first to hide himself from God, after having eaten of the forbidden fruit. The will of God is to be here, manifest and near; but when the doors of the world are slammed on Him, His truth betrayed, His will defied, He withdraws, leaving man to himself. God did not depart of his own volition; He was expelled. God is in exile. (Man Is Not Alone, p. 153)

The real God is not the hiding God, but the discovered God. Humanity has worked itself into a terrible problem. The challenge for humanity is how to reintroduce God to the world. Heschel offers an important understanding of God’s place in the world: God’s place in the world depends on humanity—not God. He begins with the radical statement that God is lost in His world.

God who created the world is not at home in the world…. Of Noah it is said, Noah walked with God, and to Abraham the Lord said Walk before Me. Said the midrash: 'Noah might be compared to a king’s friend who was plunging about in the dark alleys, and when the king looked out and saw him, he said to him, Instead of plunging about in dark alleys, come and walk with me. But Abraham’s case is rather to be compared to that of a king who was sinking in dark alleys, and when his friend saw him he shone a light from him through the window. Said he to him, Instead of lighting me through the window, come and show a light before me. (God in Search of Man, p.156)

The dilemma is summed up well in the following analysis of the approaches of the Baal Shem Tov and Rav Menachem Mendl of Kotzk.

The Baal Shem constantly reminds us how close God is to man and all things. Reb Mendl perennially recalls how alienated, how estranged man is from truth, from God. The Baal Shem discloses the presence of God, the Creator of the Universe, within the world; he brings heaven nearer to man. But for what purpose; says Reb Mendl, since man’s corruption spurns the Divine…When asked where God dwelt, the Baal Shem answered, everywhere, the Kotzker, where he is allowed to enter…” (A Passion for Truth, pp. 32–33)

Heschel desired to help the world realize the contemporary existence of these two paths. God so very much desires to be in the world and for all intents and purposes God is close to man, but humanity has spurned God’s advances so we must light the path for Him to return.

God and Torah

Heschel points to another potential pitfall in one’s quest to feel the realness of God—halakha.

Through sheer punctiliousness in observing the law one may become oblivious of the living presence and forget that the law is not for its own sake, but for the sake of God. Indeed, the essence of observance has, at ties, become encrusted with so many customs and conventions that the Jewel was lost in the setting. Outward compliance with externalities of the law took the place of the engagement of the whole person to the living God. What is the ultimate purpose of observance if not to become sensitive to the spirit of Him, in whose ways the mitzvoth are signposts? (God in Search of Man, p. 326)

In this passage, Heschel enters into the debate surrounding the telos of the mitzvoth and he comes down clearly on the side of those who believe that the telos of the commandments can be ascertained.

As an antidote to this potential problem, Heschel offers the study of aggada. For Heschel, aggada can save God from halakha.

The preciousness and fundamental importance of aggada is categorically set forth in the following statements of the ancient Rabbis: ‘If you desire to know Him at whose word the universe came into being, study aggada for thereby will you recognize the Holy One and cleave unto his ways’…The collections of aggada that have been preserved contain an almost inexhaustible wealth of religious insight and feeling, for in the aggada the religious consciousness with its motivations, difficulties, perplexities and longings came to immediate and imaginative expression. (God in Search of Man, p.324)

The study of aggada, then, becomes another way to achieve wonder.

Heschel goes so far as to identify an “anti-aggadic” strain within Jewish teaching.

The outstanding expression of the anti-aggadic attitude is contained in a classical rabbinic question with which Rashi opens his famous commentary on the Book of Genesis. “Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah should have commenced with chapter 12 of Exodus, since prior to that chapter hardly any laws are set forth.” The premise and implications of this question are staggering. The Bible should have omitted such non-legal chapters as those on creation, the sins of Adam and Cain, the flood, the Tower of Babel, the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the lives of the twelve tribes, the suffering and miracles in Egypt.” (God in Search of Man, p. 328)

 In a fascinating modification of the positive notion of “lifnim mishurat haDin” generally understood as a legalistic term encouraging additional stricture than those minimally required by law, Heschel writes that this dictum is referring to an aggadic approach to Torah—to not just fulfilling the mitzvoth, but fulfilling them with God in mind.

Is It Possible?

How is wonder supposed to help us overcome the decisive religious and theological questions that we often grapple with? For Heschel, the sense of wonder is so overwhelming that it conquers our doubts and questions about evil and meaning in a world that often seems absurd. Significantly, Heschel is not on a quest to ultimate solutions, but rather “to find ourselves as part of a context of meaning.”

Heschel is willing to let absurdity and wonder go head to head.

We do not need to drink the whole ocean to know what kind of water it contains. One drop yields its salty flavor. Our very existence exposes us to the challenge of wonder and radical amazement at the universe despite the absurdities we encounter. It is possible on the basis of personal experience to arrive at the conclusion that the human situation as far as one can see is absurd. However, to stand face to face with the infinite world of stars and galaxies and to declare all of this absurd would be idiotic. (A Passion for Truth, pp. 294–295)

Potential for All

According to Heshcel perceiving God is a phenomenon, “of which all men are at all times capable.” Feeling the realness of God is not something reserved for the religious genius. In fact, he argues that the absence of radical amazement represents a shortcoming and lack of effort. Subjectivity is the absence, not the presence, of radical amazement. Such lack or absence is a sign of a half-hearted, listless mind, of an undeveloped sense for the depth of things” (Man Is Not Alone, p. 21).

It is important for Heschel to make this point as he is attempting to construct a theology and approach to God that can be implemented. He is concerned with the spirit of humanity and the dangers faced by a society that does not live in the presence of God. In a way, Heshcel suggests that his program is quite simple for those who are willing to be open to a relationship with God as such a relationship is available to us in “every perception, every act of thinking and every enjoyment of valuation of reality” (Ibid., p. 20).

Partial Reading List of Works by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

A Passion for Truth, Jewish Lights Publishing, 1995

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955

I Asked For Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Samuel H. Dresner, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1983

Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951

The Earth Is The Lord’s, Jewish Lights Publishing, 1995

The Ineffable Name of God: Man: Poems, Morton M. Leifman (Translator) Continuum; Bilingual edition, 2005

The Prophets, Hendrickson Publishers, 1962

The Sabbath, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1975

Biography

Edward K. Kaplan and Prof. Samuel H. Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, Yale University Press, 2007

Edward K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972, Yale University Press, 2007

Rabbi Dr. Sabato Morais (April 13, 1823-November 11, 1897) was described by a New York Yiddish newspaper as “without doubt…the greatest of all Orthodox rabbis in the United States.” This encomium was written several years after the death of Morais, when a full picture of his life and accomplishments could be written with historical perspective.

Few today remember this remarkable religious leader; even fewer see him as a model of enlightened Orthodox Judaism whose example might be followed by modern day Jews. Yet, Sabato Morais was a personality who deserves our attention…and our profound respect.

Born in Livorno, of Portuguese-Jewish background, he was raised in the Sephardic traditions of his community. As a young rabbi, he became the Director of the Orphan’s School of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London where he served for five years. In 1851, he began service as rabbi of Congregation Mikveh Israel, the historic Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Philadelphia. He remained with Mikveh Israel for nearly five decades, until his death toward the end of 1897.

Rabbi Dr. Alan Corre, who served as rabbi of Mikveh Israel from 1955 to 1963, wrote an appreciation of his early predecessor. He noted that “in everything he [Morais] writes and does, he comes across as a warm, loving, eminently humane individual, with self-respect, yet remarkably free of egotism for a man in public life who was the recipient of much honor, including an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania.” Rabbi Morais sought “to live as a Jew without qualifiers, one who revered and loved the Jewish tradition and desired greatly to perpetuate it.”

Dr. Corre has pointed out that Rabbi Morais is somewhat of an enigma to many, in the sense that he cannot be easily classified according to the ideologies and styles of the major branches of American Jewish life today. “Orthodox as he was in practice, he does not fulfill the role model of the Talmudic sage, and has about him a somewhat assimilated air at which the strictly Orthodox might well look askance. For the Conservative, he is insufficiently innovative, to unwilling to take religious risks. And of Reform, he was a life-long opponent.”

Rabbi Morais was a fine representative of the Western Sephardic rabbinic tradition of his time. Western Sephardim valued general culture, refinement, orderliness, social responsibility. They fostered a Judaism that was loyal to traditional ritual, while at the same time being worldly and intellectually open. Personal piety was to be humble, not ostentatious.

Rabbi Morais wrote: “True worship resides in the heart, and truly it is by purifying our hearts that we best worship God; still, the ordinances which we are enjoined to perform aim at this object: to sanctify our immortal soul, to make it worthy of its sublime origin.”

He laid great stress on ethical behavior, on compassion, on concern for others. He worked not only on behalf of the Jewish community, but showed concern for society as a whole. He was a vocal opponent of slavery and an avid admirer of President Abraham Lincoln. He supported the cause of American Indians; he spoke against the Chinese Exclusion Acts during the 1880s. He cried out against the persecution of Armenians in 1895. Working together with Jewish and non-Jewish clergy, he fostered an ecumenical outlook that called for all people to respect each other and to work for shared goals to improve the quality of life for everyone. In all of his work, Rabbi Morais did not seek glory or public recognition. He was compassionate, graceful and idealistic. Perhaps it was his self-effacing style that won him so much admiration and respect from so many. They saw him as an authentic religious personality, not as one who was serving his own ego.

Arthur Kiron, in a fascinating article that appeared in “American Jewish History,” September 1996, observed that “those who knew and loved Morais repeatedly referred to him in their memorial tributes in idealized terms, as a religious role model, a prophet like Jeremiah, a man of constancy, duty, absolute sincerity, piety and humility.”

One of Morais’s memorializers described him as follows: “For the critical eye of man [Morais] has left behind no visible monuments of great achievements, but to the eye of God he has reared a monument far greater than any of those famed by man. That greatness was his goodness, which in point of intrinsic merit will compare with the greatest wonders of genius. Were it possible for man to measure the amount of good he dispensed among the sorrowing and afflicted…the historian would not hesitate to enroll his name among the world’s truest and noblest immortals….To do good was the first duty of his creed, to do it in silence always, and in secrecy wherever possible, was his second.”

Rabbi Morais and his New York colleague Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes were co-founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary. They had hoped that this institution would train American-born Orthodox rabbis to lead congregations throughout America. These two rabbis of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregations of Philadelphia and New York worked closely on other communal projects, always in a spirit of devotion to God and community. They both sought to promote a Judaism loyal to tradition, committed to social justice, marked by dignity and gravitas.

Orthodoxy of today is often characterized by increasing narrowness, obscurantism, authoritarianism, and xenophobia. Orthodox rabbis of the ilk of Rabbi Morais are a vanishing breed. The classic Western Sephardic religious worldview is on the verge of extinction. What a phenomenal loss this is for Judaism and the Jewish People!

Yet, as we remember the life of Rabbi Sabato Morais, we know that the memory of the righteous is a blessing. It continues to influence and inspire. The stature and vision of Rabbi Morais will emerge to guide new generations in an Orthodox Judaism that is faithful to tradition, cultured, refined, genuinely pious, humane, and humble. “Happy the man who has found wisdom, the man who has obtained understanding.”

Does Judaism have a theology of other religions? Emphatically, yes. Judaism has a wide range of texts that offer thoughts on other religions. In my book, Many Nations under God: Judaism and other Religions, I present the broad range of traditional sources bearing on this question of the theological relationship between Judaism and other religions. How does one theologically account for the differences between religions? How do we balance our multifaith world with the Jewish texts? These questions are important for both self-definition and social action.

Globalization

As a prelude to encountering other religions, Orthodox Jews need to learn to kick the secularization habit, viewing the outside world as secular. The same forces that allowed the upswing of Orthodox Judaism during the last decades also led to the rise of Christian, Islamic and Hindu traditionalism. In the 1990’s people still thought that traditional religion and religious conflicts were simply a throwback to a pre-modern era. Religion now plays a major role in the entire public sphere of politics, media, and culture.

Currently, as mentioned in a recent issue of the Economist, “everywhere we look, we have religious problems. Globalization has propelled traditionalism as a barrier against change, and for the prosperous suburbanite traditional religion has become a lifestyle coach. In a post 9/11 world, religion in its traditional forms has returned as a force in politics and civil society. Religion is a major role in world conflicts and resolutions, a world where people can compromise on territory but not on messianic visions.”

The debates between proponents of Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and those of Thomas Friedman’s Lexus and the Olive Tree have replaced the local concerns of the nineteen-fifties. Like modernity and nationalism, globalization has potential for both good and bad, creating a new reality, which demands confrontation and response. Globalization offers very real and very immediate threats. Globalization creates a need to choose greater openness in place of fear and closure, and to choose real politics over academics.

To respond to the current decade, rehearsing old parameters is academic. To rehearse the statements of the tolerance of 1780 or even 1960 is not engagement.
We should be seeking guidance for the contemporary issues. We need to provide sanctity to the world. Social issues need a religious perspective. Not entering the modern world of globalization and dwelling alone is a form of “triumph without battle”. Creating closed ethnic enclaves does not address global issue or make the world a better place.

In order to learn about other religions and to see ourselves through the eyes of the other, we have to acknowledge that when we encounter religious people outside of Judaism we are addressing another religious community.

These encounters occur not just nationally and globally but even locally. Every Sunday my local community center in my predominately Jewish suburb, also containing a strong Christian and Muslim presence, has a continuous stream of Hindu, Buddhist, Sikhs, and Zoroastrian services using the classrooms. Diana Eck, a professor at Harvard University, points out that it is a new religious America. “We the people of the United States of America are now religiously diverse as never before and some Americans do not like it.” She advocates active engagement, real constructive understanding of others, without relativism or abdication of differences.

Whereas in the 1950’s people saw America as Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, now every county has Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and others. Mosques, halal shops, Bahai Temples, are in my seemingly Jewish neighborhood, and Hindu and Buddhist altars with food offerings are ever present in my local shopping area. Numerically many of these groups are quite small and America remains predominantly Protestant. Similar to the acceptance of Jews in the 1950’s as one of the 3 faiths of America, despite their small numbers, there is new atmosphere of religious pluralism. There was a time when we met others only as foreigners – as travelers in strange locations. In America they are now our co-workers, schoolmates and neighbors.

My starting point is, therefore, not tolerance based on eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideas that would discuss religious encounter in secular terms. Nor is my goal to simply – for pragmatic reasons- to hammer tolerance into the tradition. Presupposing a tolerance outside of religion does not respect religious positions because it claims that all that counts is the secular and it avoids the public dimensions of religion. Using Meiri to construct a liberal vision misreads the Meiri as if he was a Mill or Locke on secular tolerance, and, more importantly, it misreads the other whom we encounter as if they are secular. Others create tolerance by seeking a universal “image of God” (tselem elokim) to respect all humanity. But such universalism remains a universal tolerance of the enlightenment, that is, outside of the specifics of religion.

Current Trends

In order to come to terms with the increasing tensions between forces of globalization and those of tradition, we need to rise to the moral challenge. Religion offers an essential means of providing dignity, sanctity, and spirituality to meet these new challenges.

Rabbi Shaar Yashuv Cohen, the current chief rabbi of Haifa offers a Rav Kook inspired vision. “We need to find the best in each nation….and they need to be able to respect us. A nice garden is not just one flower but a variety …The world is God’s garden- it needs many flowers and we are God’s gardeners.”

Evangelicals have been the biggest supporters of Christian Zionism and have funded mainly Orthodox Jews to move to Israel as part of nefesh benefesh. This rapprochement with Evangelicals has led Rabbi Shlomo Riskin to speak of a double covenant theory with Christianity.

Recently, the chief rabbis of Israel have met with Hindu religious leaders in India and issued a joint statement that “their respective traditions teach that there is One supreme Being who is the Ultimate reality, who has created this world.”

Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks offers a universalism of one God beyond a particular religion based on Jewish texts.

Judaism is a particularist monotheism. It believes in one God but not in one religion, one culture, one truth. The God of Abraham is the God of all mankind, but the faith of Abraham is not the faith of all mankind… There is a difference between God and religion. God is universal, religions are particular.

For Rabbi Sacks, we can witness the piety, ethics, or even God of other religions as a manifestation of the God of Abraham, even while acknowledging that their religion is different from Judaism.

Religion can, and does, serve as meeting place of encounter within our globalized world. Facing others in a post-secular age, therefore, means that we must choose the moderate positions from within our own tradition as a basis for discussion. Traditional Jewish texts offer ample resources to make this possible. At this point the urgent agenda is to construct usable moderate theologies from the traditional religious positions.

Judaism and Other Religions
I have recently completed a work on Judaism and other religions where I set out the classical texts that can be used to address other religions.

Let me make clear that what I am presenting is not dialogue, but rather a precursor to any encounter that I envision between Judaism and other religions. I am laying out the possibilities with which Jewish theology can understand other religions and construct a theology of other religions based on traditional sources.

The first step is to understand some of the basic terms used for categorizing these texts: exclusivist, pluralist, inclusivist, and universalist.

Exclusivism, states that one's own community, tradition, and encounter with God comprise the one and only exclusive truth; all other claims on encountering God are, a priori, false.

Pluralism takes the opposite position, accepting that no one tradition can claim to possess the singular truth. All group's beliefs and practices are equally valid.

Inclusivism situates itself between these two extremes, where one acknowledges that many communities possess their own traditions and truths, but maintains the importance of one’s comprehension as culminating, or subsuming other truths. One's own group possesses the truth; other religious groups contain parts of the truth.

Universalism postulates a universal monotheism; it was widely taught by medieval Jewish philosophers who postulated a common Neo-platonic or Aristotelian truth to all religions.

My book presents the many Jewish texts that take these approaches. Inclusivist texts include: Halevi, Maimonides, Abarbanel, Emden, Hirsch, Kook, Philo, Kimhi, Gikkitilla, Adret, Arama, and Seforno.

The exclusivist texts include Toledot Yeshu, Kalir, Rashi, Abraham bar Hiyya, Naftali Zevi Berlin, Zvi Yehudah Kook, Luria, Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, and Tanya.

Universalist texts include: Saadyah, Ibn Garibol, Ibn Ezra, Maimonidian commentators, Immanuel of Rome, Nathanel ibn Fayumi, Mendelssohn, Israel Lipschutz, Luzzatto, Mendel Hirsch, Menashe ben Israel, Elijah Benamozegh, Henry Pereira Mendes, Joseph Hertz.

Can we compare other religions to Judaism? Both medieval texts and modern scholars have offered insight into whether we share monotheism, Biblical narrative, or human religious expressions. In addition, many are unaware that there are numerous references in Jewish texts to Eastern religions, especially Brahmins, and Indian religions.

Besides the classical texts, the civil religion of America challenges us to consider that we have a common covenant under one God. Does that work theologically? The book evaluates the clash between the positions of those in favor and those against. It is important to note how the confusion created in recent decades when the word covenant is used for a person’s individual religious commitments rather than a universalism.

The important point of all these texts and discussions is to avoid the false dichotomy between a medieval exclusivism or a modern pluralist individualism. One should learn not to seek a position where everything is equal or a common ground syncretism. Equal legitimacy of everything practiced in another faith is not a pre-requisite for an encounter. Encountering others is not a zero-sum- game of exclusivism or relativism.

I met a young rabbi who in his false humility and modern emphasis of the self, told a group of Imams that he cannot speak about God in Judaism since one can never be certain about God. He emphasized that since he cannot speak about his own tradition then he certainly could not affirm any commonality. For him, all commonality would be existentially false. Rather, for him, we can only speak as humans; God is not part of reality. Each community just lives as its ethnic community. This is not a useful approach for a theology of other religions. Many of those who say that a person cannot know anything certain about his or her own religion, thinking they are thereby creating pluralism, are in effect creating an exclusivism. If all we each have is our own subjective practices without any grounding, then it is a pluralism of human stories, not religion.

Knowing the Jewish texts about other religions means that Judaism does indeed have different rules than other religions. We need to come to the table with the breath and depth of our conviction. There are many positions and many sources. Different situations require different texts. All of them do play a role and all of them continue to be used in the community. We need to appreciate what the wide palette of traditional texts says about other religions and stop thinking that we already know the range of opinions. Our religious community has a robust tradition of varying interpretations of the texts, often yielding competing understandings. We have to be open to the multiple voices that can speak to the various sides of this discussion

We must be humble and honest in the acceptance of who others are and who we are. I reject a simplistic view of all religions in some collective approach where differences are minimized. Rationality and theology are important in accomplishing anything we can transmit and make use of for self-understanding. Theology of the other is not dialogue. To realize that we should not confuse the public policy decision of whether to engage in actual theological dialogue in a given situation, with the theoretical question of whether Judaism actually has a theology of other religions.

Challenge

One of the bigger challenges for a theological position today is to stop apologetics and acknowledge the demonizing exclusivism of many Jewish texts.

For the Jewish exclusivist, the universe is Judeo-centric and the other religions are not relevant; at best we can speak of individual gentiles as righteous and that there is knowledge among the nations, but the overlap remains in the realm of their coincidental adaptation of Jewishly acceptable ideas. Most of the time such a viewpoint remains a form of myopia, thinking that Jews are the only protagonists in the march of history. At its most particular, Judaism has a tribal view of itself as the only possessor of morality and portrays contemporary gentiles as bereft of morals.

The major form of Jewish exclusivism intrinsic to many classic Jewish texts is not merely chosenness, but rather a dualistic sense of separatism. Chosenness and the special status of Israel itself are not the problem. Rather, it is the splitting of the world into two groups, Jews and all others. Exclusivists, tend to consider themselves tolerant when they find grounds to refrain from condemning those outside the system.

However, we also possess horrific texts of demonizing the other. They cannot simply be ignored. This horrific approach moved the exclusivity of the past to a new and potentially dangerous realm. While the influence of Lurianic cosmology has certainly waned with modernity, these texts nevertheless occasionally and surprisingly appear in the rhetoric of contemporary Jewish separatists and are cited by anti-Semites eager to prove the racism of Judaism. Rather than avoiding them, we must acknowledge their existence and then distance ourselves from them. To repudiate a racist text is not necessarily to relinquish exclusivist texts or the concept of chosen Peoplehood.

Cherry picking out the positive statement about gentiles and other religions, the predominant response, is not adequate because it does not acknowledge the problem. It does not lead to fruitful discussion that leads to responsibility. Modern Orthodox apologetics has an implicit supersessionalism, thinking that it already has answers and moved beyond the other positions, which has left it unable to respond to the return of extreme exclusivist positions. The entire spectrum of positions must be represented and honestly presented.

Moving forward
Many Jews still say that Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, was responsible for horrible crimes in the past so how can we trust them? And many have similar feelings about Islam. Jewish participants need to agree to work to overcome their fear and distrust of the Church. Jews need to overcome their sense of minority status and find a new social model for their interactions. We need to move beyond bitterness, both in our relationship with the Church and in our own self-understanding of our place in the world community. And we will need to consider how we have relied on this culture of victimhood even when the other who surrounds us does not wish to destroy us. We should learn to cultivate a self-understanding appropriate for our current confrontations.

Many American Jews who fail to see an immediate purpose to any interfaith encounter with Islam must remember that it is a long-term process. They should also know that extremists on either side are not part of dialogue; rather, dialogue aims to remove the ground from beneath extremists.

Dialogue does not assume that both parties enter dialogue on equal footing with comparable goals and motives. This approach would have guaranteed that the Jewish community would not have been speaking to Catholics or Protestants in the early days of Jewish-Christian reconciliation. Requiring shared motives is unfair and unreasonable.

After the Holocaust, the Christian communities undoubtedly had more work to do in the dialogue than the Jews. Should we not have engaged in that dialogue until we were "on equal footing"? Yet look at the amazing results from that encounter. When dialogue with Catholics started in the 1950s some Christians entered with a problematic
treatment of Judaism. Eventually, the Catholic Church moved from teaching contempt to recognizing Judaism as a living faith. It recognized the State of Israel, and sought to remove anything in Catholicism that can be used to teach anti-Semitism.

Yet, when Jews first engaged Catholics, the immediate narrow focus was
fighting anti-Semitism. Over time, Catholics began to address the very nature of their relationship with Judaism, and the problematic elements were overcome. So, too, with Islam, we need to start with small steps. Islam should be given the same chance to show reciprocity and respect.

Many in the Jewish community resist all such endeavors, and we are similarly aware that not all Muslim leaders are themselves prepared to sit with us. The Saudis may not yet be ready for religious tolerance, but right now, Muslims from Minnesota to Malaysia are seeking dialogue as a means of overcoming Western stereotypes of their faith. We should not kiss every hand extended to us, nor expect every initiative to be successful. But we should not refuse to shake hands with those who have the ability to significantly change the face and future of Islam.

Ethics
The goal should be hospitality, not just tolerance. Hospitality is simultaneously theological and ethical; it teaches us not to make serious misrepresentations of the other and to meet others in a way that makes demands upon us for welcome. The invitation to the other and then the time spent together generates actual familiarity, and a potential for change in ourselves through the activity

In engaging in hospitality in which we receive the other as a stranger in our life (and similar to receiving a stranger in one’s home), in each other’s presence we learn the patterns of behavior of the other. Tolerance offers no insight or encounter with the other. The opposite of intolerance is not necessarily tolerance, but hospitality and humanity. This is not the humanity of putting our religions away, or a subjective humanism that does not make demands on us. But, the opposite of intolerance is a humanism that demands that we cultivate an appreciation of religious difference and diversity.

We can start by thinking of the virtues of peace and reconciliation. Rabbi Moses Cordovero, the great sixteenth century Safed ethicist and Kabbalist wrote, “It is evil in the sight of the Holy One, blessed be He, if any of His creations is despised.”

How do we offer hospitality? Conversation, graciousness, and mutual respect are the keys. The art of listening, however, turns out to be a crucial factor in building healthy communities. Careful listening deepens into a discernment that goes beyond words. We come to these events truly knowing nothing about the other side and have to listen to the most basic elements. Interfaith relationships tend to be about friendship, cooperation, and collaboration around shared stories, values, and goals—not about dialogue or a lowest common religious denominator. One grows through experiences that stand out in memory as an encounter outside the normal “safety zone.” When one meets the other faith one seeks to be open to surprise or to be humbled, an experience of healing and hope. Hospitality is a commitment to a character trait and a culture of life. The goal is to learn to respect difference and diversity not just civil tolerance.

If we respect the Orthodox restrictions on dialogue and at the same time we are not seeking to find converts through theological discussion-- then what is our activity? The activity of hospitality offers a twofold answer: to expand our vision and to seek to diminish hatred and derogatory statements of others. Emmanuel Levinas mentions the ethical crime of the tyranny of the same in which I impose my categories on the other. We need to move beyond the smugness of thinking that we know everything about the other religions.

Another opposite of intolerance is to learn to engage in practical work together. Active encounter creates stories, positive stories of possibilities. Even when faiths clash in encounter or practice, we can still tell the story of where things went wrong and how we navigated the troubled times. Political states regularly engage in diplomatic relationships, cordial encounters, and practical negotiations without sharing a common political ideology.

Conclusion

Robert Wuthnow, the leading sociologist of religion, notes that Americans simultaneously give respect to all religions but at the same time harbor exclusivist views denying this very respect. The result, he says, is "a kind of tension that cannot be easily resolved . . . a tattered view of the world held together only by the loosest of logic."
Wuthnow concludes that we need to articulate middle positions between the extremes of a public pluralism and private exclusivism.

The articulation needs to be textual and theological, not just humanist. Any thoughts on these topics will have many ramifications for the Jewish self-understanding of our place in the world.

Jews need to put aside their frightened mentality and recognize the age in which we live. We have a choice of how to see the world: Is Abraham the start of monotheism, a father of many nations, blessed among people, or is he an “ivri” (literally other bank of the river) someone who dwells alone or in opposition? Rabbi S. R. Hirsch gave a model for openness and not dwelling alone:

And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great; become a blessing (Genesis 12:2)

“The people of Abraham, in private and in public, follow one calling: to become a blessing. They dedicate themselves to the Divine purpose of bringing happiness to the world by serving as model for all nations and to restore mankind. God will grant His blessing of the renewal of life and the awakening and enlightenment of the nations, and the name of the People of Abraham shall shine forth.”

This is a model of Abraham that is open to the world rather than set apart from the rest of humanity. R. Hirsch was not advocating the denial of Abraham’s differences from the religiosity in Ur of the Chaldeans; rather he grasped both elements.

In our age, there are no victories from isolationism, self-absorption, and polite tolerance. If we do not engage the world, our seeming religious victories would be hollow. The diversity of religion in America in the age of globalization will likely serve as one of Orthodoxy’s 21st century testing grounds.

For centuries, Sephardic Jews of Arab lands lived in relatively peaceful coexistence with their Arab-Muslim neighbors. While never perfect, life for Jews in Arab lands never reached the horrible pogroms continuously experienced by Jews living under Christian rule in Europe. Indeed, the Golden Age of Spain took place under Islamic rule, and only after the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims were Jews subject to the brutal inquisition and subsequent expulsion from Spain in 1492.

This relatively peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Jews is a far cry from the state of war between Israel and her neighbors in the modern Middle East. Historians will attribute this change to various political factors in the Middle East and the world, but many today will blame religion as a major stumbling block toward recapturing peace between the two peoples.

But can the voice of religion bring about a positive change? Rav Bension Meir Hai Uziel believed it could.

Born in Jerusalem in 1880 under Ottoman rule, Rav Uziel became the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jaffa in 1911, and was later the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine (1939-1948) and then of the State of Israel (1948 until his death in 1953). As such, he was a leader through three administrations in the land of Israel, and throughout his career — no matter who ruled the land — he sought peace and reconciliation with his Arab neighbors.

A deep believer in the power of religion as a medium to foster positive and peaceful relations, Rav Uziel issued a powerful message to the Arabs following the United Nation Partition Plan in November 1947:

“To the heads of the Islamic Religion in the Land of Israel and throughout the Arab lands near and far, Shalom U’vrakha. Brothers, at this hour, as the Jewish people have returned to its land and state … we approach you in peace and brotherhood, in the name of God’s Torah and the Holy Scriptures, and we say to you: please remember the peaceful and friendly relations that existed between us when we lived together in Arab lands and under Islamic Rulers during the Golden Age, when together we developed brilliant intellectual insights of wisdom and science for all of humanity’s benefit. We were brothers, and we shall once again be brothers, working together in cordial and neighborly relations in this Holy Land.”

Rav Uziel sought to re-create the atmosphere once lived by his Sephardic ancestors, and he felt that the true message of peace was deeply embedded in religious texts. In April 1948, on the last Passover before Israel declared her independence, Rav Uziel issued a stirring message of peace rooted in the Passover narrative:

“It is not by sword nor by war do we return to our ancestral homeland, as we do not desire war, bloodshed or loss of life. Our sages expressed a deep Jewish value by refraining from reciting the full Hallel (Psalms of Praise) on the seventh day of Passover, for on that day, the Egyptians drowned in the sea, and God declared: ‘My beings are drowning in the sea and you sing Hallel?’”

Rav Uziel then deepens his peaceful message:

“Indeed, Passover teaches us to love all those around us, including our declared enemies, as it is written: ‘You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land’ (Deuteronomy 23:8). This means that we do not bear any vengeful grudge toward Egypt or the Egyptians for the suffering and enslavement we endured in their land, rather we only remember that we were strangers in Egypt. We forget all negativity and recall only whatever positive treatment they gave us.”

Mindful that his Arab audience included present-day Egyptian Arabs, Rav Uziel used the Egypt of the Passover story as a subtle hint for contemporary reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. Despite any negative relations between Jews and Arabs, “we do not bear any vengeful grudge toward Egypt and the Egyptians.”

In a poetic metaphor on Jews having been strangers and slaves in Egypt, Rav Uziel wrote:

“We once again reach out to our Arab neighbors in peace, for our sole desire is to live together with you in this Holy Land that is sacred to all nations. Let us engage together in fruitful labor for the sake of peace for all inhabitants of this land. Let us work together, using all of our diversity in religion, beliefs, customs and languages, so that we can build and assure absolute freedom and equality for all inhabitants in this land. Let us together recognize that only God is the ultimate ruler over the earth, for we are all ‘strangers in God’s world.’”

As a “lover of peace and pursuer of peace,” and as a Chief Rabbi who creatively used his position as a leader and his Sephardic ancestry as a medium to seek peace, Rav Uziel never stopped talking or dreaming about peace between Jews and Arabs.

It’s unfortunate that Rav Uziel was not appointed as a special political envoy to help establish political relations with Arab leaders in 1948. Had that been the case, relations between Israel and her Arab neighbors might have taken a very different course.

Rabbi Dr. Phil Cohen, the rabbi of Temple Israel, West Lafaryette, Indiana, reviews an important book on the thought of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

Jonathan Sacks
Universalizing Particularity
Edited by Havah Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes
(Leiden, the Netherlands: Koninkijke Brill NV, 2014)

Jonathan Sacks, who bears the somewhat cumbersome but well-earned title Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks (to which could be added “Doctor”), is surely one of our most accomplished and thoughtful rabbis. He is a prolific author, including the current bestseller Not in God’s Name. He’s a much sought-after lecturer, a columnist, currently professor at New York University, Yeshiva University and King’s College, London. In addition to having held the aforementioned position of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth (1991-2003), as his title further indicates, he is a member of the House of Lords.

Rabbi Doctor Lord Sacks has long been one of the Jewish world’s most prominent public intellectuals. He resides intellectually and spiritually in a particular corner of the Orthodox world which has over the course of his career compelled him to become increasingly open to speaking of religious and moral matters to the world.

He is innately open to dialogue with a vast plurality of religious communities within and beyond the Jewish world, enabling him to interact with and write about a number of important universal spiritual concerns, though from his understanding of the particularity of his Jewish self. This is visible in the titles of his books, such as, To Heal a Fractured World, The Dignity of Difference: How to avoid a clash of civilizations, and Celebrating Life: Finding happiness in unexpected places.

His openness comes in part from the general education he received from childhood on, including a Ph.D. in philosophy under the well-known British philosopher, the ethicist Bernard Williams (1929-2003), a degree he received before his semicha. For his writing, Rabbi Sacks has won innumerable awards, including three American National Book Awards.

Published in 2013, one of his most recent publications is Jonathan Sacks: Universalizing Particularity. This book is part of a twenty volume series, the Library of Contemporary Philosophers, conceived by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Director of Jewish Studies and Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism and Professor of History at Arizona State University, and Aaron W. Hughes, Philip S. Bernstein Chair of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. The book begins with a brief biography, written by Professor Hughes. This is followed by a representative selection of four articles chosen in concert with the author, “Finding God”, “An Agenda for Future Jewish Thought”, “The Dignity of Difference: Exorcising Plato’s Ghost”, and “Future Tense: The Voice of Hope in the Conversation”. This is followed by a substantive interview conducted by Professor Tirosh-Samuelson, and concludes with a select bibliography of 120 pieces. As with every book in this series, the volume devoted to Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks intends to make accessible to the broad audience of intelligent non-professionals the thought of a highly philosophical mind.

Sacks tells an autobiographical story that serves to frame the rest of his life. While working on his undergraduate degree, he took himself on a bus tour of North America with the goal of visiting rabbis. He only tells of his visit with two, whose names kept coming up while in conversation with other rabbis: Joseph Soloveitchik, the scion of Modern Orthodoxy the Rav, and Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe. Rabbi Soloveitchik challenged Sacks to think deeply about the connections between philosophy and halakah, and Rabbi Schneerson challenged him to lead, to understand the need for leaders. In the character of these two men, he says, “there was something…that was more than them, as if an entire tradition spoke through their lips…In their presence you could feel the divine presence.” (p.32)

Sacks carried away from these two encounters a sense of purpose, a growing understanding of what would become his life’s mission: to be loyal to Orthodoxy, to pursue philosophy, and to speak intelligently and with deep spiritual emotion to the Jewish people and to the world about things that matter.

The biography by Aaron Hughes places Sack’s intellectual career in context, and explicates the impressive claims about him Hughes makes in his opening paragraph:

“Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks represents one of the most important voices in current discussions that concern the plight of Judaism—and indeed of religion more generally—in the modern world. While his vision emerges out of the sources of Judaism, Sack’s inclusive and highly accessible approach ensures that his writings reach a large audience within the general reading public. Although his earliest work dealt specifically with the problems besetting Judaism in its confrontation with modernity beginning in the nineteenth century, his more recent writings examine the importance of cultivating a culture of civility based on the twin notions of the dignity of difference and the ethic of responsibility. Rabbi Sacks writes…as a rabbi, a social philosopher, a proponent of interfaith dialogue, and a public intellectual. In so doing, his vision—informed as it is by the concerns of modern Orthodoxy—is paradoxically one of the most universalizing voices within contemporary Judaism.” (p.1)

Hughes’s “paradoxically” comment at the end of the paragraph above appears to speak to the manner in which Orthodox Jews are often viewed as relatively closed intellectually and socially. Though one can easily point to corners of the Jewish world where Orthodox Jews do cordon themselves off from the rest of the Jewish community, surely this implied claim is significantly untrue. In our day a considerable number of Orthodox Jews have spoken to, served, and led the non-Orthodox community in many capacities. David Hartman, Yitz Greenberg, Avi Weiss, Richard Joel (who revitalized Hillel before becoming president of Yeshiva University), and Barry Shrage, to name only a few, come readily to mind. To these names we must add Jonathan Sacks whose work is by its nature philosophically inclusive.

We gain insight into Sacks’s personality and concerns in the interview conducted by Prof. Tirosh-Samuleson, which stands as the heart of this volume. It is from the interview that the ostensibly paradoxical subtitle of the book, Universalizing Particularity, emerges. Though focused on one specific intellectual problem, the term in a sense is the substrate for the entire interview, as well as much of Sack’s thought broadly speaking.

Defining Jewish philosophy, Sacks argues that the Jewish view of the world is one of intersubjectivity, of one in relation to another, moving toward a future that we bring into existence through our own actions. The way we know God and the way we know each other is through engagement (p.116) God engages humanity through revelation, and Jews talk back to God through prayer, to each other through endless conversations, “arguments made for the sake of heaven.” (p.117)

This is a never-ending process, the unfolding on both the human and divine side of God’s self-identification to Moses as “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh.” Not only does God continue growing and changing in the human mind, but humans, too, in a lesser but nonetheless profound way are in a liquid process of change. We constantly face an endless set of choices we have to make, and out of those choices we become who we become. From this grows what Sacks says are concepts Judaism understands better than “any secular philosophy with which I am familiar: human freedom, human dignity, and hope.” (p.117)

Sacks is asked how to speak philosophically about “difference,” a term referring to the diversity of human thinking and identity and the attempt to grant theological space for all streams of thought. He uses the term “difference” as a means of countering the Greek philosophical preference for universalism. Universalism absorbs the particularity of a thing by understanding what properties all things in a class possess. Greek philosophy prefers universals in thought—all good things must be like all other good things, no difference.

Sacks sees in Judaism the reversal of that value, the preference for the particular, for meaning is expressed in the particular. (p.26)

In that vein, in defining Judaism, Sacks wished that he could argue the importance of being Jewish out of the matrix of chosenness, but initially found chosenness a difficult topic to broach in our age. Chosenness indicates difference, particularity. In an age in which everything worth discussing must be seen as universal, “the concept of a chosen people sounds racist.” (p.122) This led to a problem: He could not discuss the meaning of Judaism without chosenness, but could not “use the idea of chosenness without sounding racist and supremacist.” (p.122)

Sacks resolves this intellectual conundrum by a move he calls universalizing particularity (the book’s subtitle), incorporating the notion of “the dignity of difference,” the title of one of the articles in this book (and, as well, of one of his books). Jewish chosenness, Sacks realized, did not actually marginalize others, since God is the God of all humanity. The God of the Jews enters the world at the conclusion of the Flood by making a covenant with all people. Thus, “The God of Israel is the God of all humanity, but the religion of Israel is not the religion of all humanity; it is something unique to the Jews.” (p124)

This realization is liberating. It allows for the particularity of the Jews, their teachings, chosenness, their covenant, while granting others significant theological space in this world through their own difference. It means that Jews can understand their existence among many peoples as sharing a home (Sack’s word), in which all people seek common good, everyone contributing, but from within the matrix of their own particular religious identity. We can see God in the face of the other without either individual in the dyad required to surrender their religious individuality. “Universalizing particularity”, then, is the view that bundles all particularist thinking into one sphere, honoring their separateness by not placing any one outside the sphere, and not obliterating the collective into one amorphous whole.

In the essay “The Dignity of Difference,” Sacks clarifies this point. Jewish particularity exists, he says, to teach the meaning of difference. The unity of God, refracted through Jewish existence, does not shut out everyone else. The Jewish covenant does not transcend the Noahide covenant. Rather, unlike Christianity and Islam, which teach that salvation comes only from within their group, the Jewish covenant acknowledges the universal covenant, teaching that all peoples share in divinity and hence the possibility of redemption. God, Sacks says, “turns to one people [the Jews] and commands it to be different in order to teach humanity the dignity of difference.” (p.46) The twin notions of the dignity of difference and the interplay of universalism and particularism means that Judaism can both possess its own domain, but at the same time can teach to the world, and learn from it. This twin concept informs much of Sack’s work both as a thinker and a leader. Understanding and formulating a means of working with the bifurcations in our world provides Sacks with a method of both seeing these bifurcations, but also knowing how to bridge them in intellectual and spiritual conversation.

This thinking arrives at an interesting juncture when asked about applying the notion of the dignity of difference within Judaism. As an Orthodox, Jew Sacks cannot surrender Orthodoxy’s halakhic worldview. Sacks cannot write off the non-halakhic community. Jews are bound together by fate, he says, regardless of belief. Yet philosophy of Jewish unity, he says, cannot be constructed in the current state of the Jewish community; too many variables divide it. The best we can do is address the current Jewish condition with two principles. 1) Jews ought to work together on issues that do not concern religion. 2) When religion enters the conversation and threatens to become divisive, Jews must respectfully understand the differences between them. Given Sacks’s presence in the world, these two principles appear sufficient at least to him.

Another area of Sacks’s interest is the unnecessary separation of religion and science, a phenomenon over which he grieves. The rise of the impressive Jewish participation in the sciences parallels the decline of Jewish interest the Talmudic tradition. Presuming that religion and science ought to be partners, Sacks refers to the thinking that stipulates either Talmud or science as a cerebral lesion, “where the two hemispheres of the brain are in perfect working order but they’re not connected.” (p.128) This creates a disjunction that constitutes a “massive problem” (p.129) among Jews. In the interview, he is unable to prescribe how to bridge this particular gap. He is asked, “Is it [the disjunction between Judaism and science] treatable?” To this all he says is, “I think it is.” (p.129)

Toward the conclusion of the interview, Sacks admits the Jews face a surfeit of serious issues all requiring our attention. The primary challenge facing the Jewish people, the one transcending all others is whether we can “develop that…sense of self-confidence that comes from faith.” (p.133). To Sacks faith is the idea that God believes in the Jewish people, even if the Jewish people lack sufficient belief in themselves.

Faith of course is that place where living Judaism begins. In our time accepting the existence of a God with whom the Jews have a relationship, indeed are group chosen from among all of humanity, is a much battered concept, among the Jews and non-Jews as well. Sacks’s thought makes room for a chosenness not radically exclusive of others. But the challenge to Jews to accept what underlies chosenness, a Living God who chooses, who cares for and believes in the Jewish people, is difficult.

This is the faith that undergirds all of Sacks’s work. Beginning with his youthful encounters with the Rav and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he has spent his life pursuing this faith and articulating its meaning. Though difficult for many to accept as their own faith, Sacks has shown formidable intelligence and creativity to speak about it in ways that are exceptionally noteworthy and which have drawn the attention of the world.