Hi, a bit like last semester, (only shorter this time and more specific). I have to answer three questions and I’ve got six days. today I answered the first one. Can anyone please check for spelling and other linguistic mistakes?
thanks,
Ben
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QUESTION 1
In what ways is it legitimate, in your mind, to see Benedict Spinoza as the beginning of modern Jewish thought? In what ways does he provide a challenge to all subsequent Jewish thinkers in articulating a modern Jewish identity? How specifically do Mendelssohn, Geiger and Hirsch respond to Spinoza’s assault on the legitimacy of the Jewish faith and community?
Used articles:
– HESCHEL, S., Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus.
– HIRSCH, S. R., The Nineteen Letters.
– MEYER, M. A., The origins of the Modern Jew (An Ephemeral Solution).
– MEYER, M. A., Abraham Geiger’s Historical Judaism.
– SMITH, The Theologico-Political Problem.
– SPINOZA, A Theologico-Political Treatise (on the Ceremonial Law).
The 17th Century Dutch Republic, even though it would be unwise and even wrong to say it was democratic was – compared to the rest of continental Europe – a haven of tolerance and freedom (movement, speech, press). Spinoza, being a descendent from Portuguese Marranos himself, adapted well into the commercial and political culture of Amsterdam. In our secular European tradition, he will always be remembered as one of the great philosophers of Rationality, Spinoza has left his ivory tower and wrote several articles on more practical political problems, in which he defended liberalism and provides us with an alternative to liberalism by way of Judaism (SMITH, 23). This is probably his biggest achievement: ever since Tocqueville, it has been common to think of liberal democratic ideology as a direct continuation of Christian and especially Calvinist Theology. Spinoza though, had to “reshape” Judaism, he had to question the authority of the rabbi’s (SMITH, 8) which eventually led to him being excommunicated from Judaism. However, he did not want to break with Judaism itself, he wanted to use Judaism as a tool for creating a new, liberal and rational world. Here lays the biggest difference with Shabbetai Zevi, who also opposed the religious establishment, but in an irrational way. The Sabbatians were radicals who accepted no authority other than their own and threatened the existence of the Jewish Community as a whole, whereas Spinoza saw a new role for Judaism in the modern world. He broke with the Mediaeval philosophy of Maimonides (SPINOZA, 80), believing one can read the Bible in a naturalistic way. This was nonsense according to Spinoza, as it was not God who created the Bible, but mortals, human beings. Hence, interpreting the Bible in a naturalistic way was impossible. In his Theologico-Political Treatise he made a clear distinction between the “Moral Law”, which was understandable in terms of reason opposed to the “Ceremonial Law”, which only had a context within pre-modern society.
“Christ, as I have said, was sent into the world, not to preserve the state nor to lay down laws, but solely to teach the universal moral law […] His sole care was to teach moral doctrines and distinguish them from the laws of the state, for the Pharisees, in their ignorance, thought that the observance of the state law and the Mosaic law was the sum of morality; whereas such laws merely had reference to the public welfare, and aimed not so much at instructing the Jews, as at keeping them under constraint.”
SPINOZA, A Theologico-Political Treatise, page 70-71.
This critique, not only towards the Torah itself, but the whole hierarchy Judaism was based upon, including the idea of Israel as God’s chosen people paved to way for Judaism to enter modernity. Even though Spinoza admired the universal idea behind Christianity, he never converted to it. In fact, he attacked Christianity as well, but in a more smooth way. (SMITH, 19). As Smith said : Spinoza adopted the strategy that he did, not out of an anti-Jewish animus, much less self-hatred (Levinas), but for the supremely political reason that Christians excelled Jews in power and influence. After Spinoza’s view on the Torah and Israel, we need one more step to understand why he was so crucial for all modern (Jewish) thinkers: his idea of God. Although he has been attacked as an atheist, German Romantics (Goethe, Heine) were right defining him as a pantheist instead. He was not a cold rational (opposed to Empiric) philosopher, nor was he a Chrystian mystic, he believed however a good person could not be the carrier of bad ideas.
Having investigated how Spinoza paved the way for other Jewish thinkers, we can ask ourselves how some of these thinkers did explicitly think about his assault on the Jewish faith and community. Smith (SMITH, 17-18) argues there are three ongoing explanations on the question why Spinoza attacked Judaism: one by Herman Cohen and Samuel Levinas (self-hatred), one by Leo Strauss (a desire to liberate philosophy from ecclesiastical supervision and the last one by Yirmiyahu Yovel (his Marrano background). However, we have already seen Spinoza didn’t mean to destroy Judaism, rather he wanted to use it as a way of integrating into the modern world.
Moses Mendelssohn, living a century later than Spinoza, responded to him when he wrote Jerusalem. As an enlightened philosopher his concept of God is not so different from Spinoza. God is not mysterious: the goodness of God is but the goodness of men in the highest degree. Human reason provides a perfectly adequate bridge to the Deity, enabling man to explain God’s relationship to him by a single motive: his intention that the entire human race should be happy. His concept of God may look like Spinoza, he doesn’t deny the particularity of the Jewish people. The revelation at Sinai was not however, a way in which God could single out Israel exclusively for salvation, but to bestow certain laws as a “special favour” for “very special reasons”. (MEYER, 37-38). Judaism differed from Christianity because it was based on three entities: Eternal truths (based upon reason), Historical truths (Torah) and the Ceremonial Law revealed by God and upon every Jew to follow. He does not laugh away the Ceremonial Law as something “pre-modern”, he places it on the same level as the Eternal Truths. The Ceremonial Laws are not meant as dogma’s to be followed strictly without any given reason, it is a symbolic language which reminds us of the Moral Laws. According to Mendelssohn a community of Jews characterized by a common Ceremonial Law it is not opposed to the enlightened, unfanatic Jewry, but are in fact, two ideals which are perfectly combinable. (MEYER, 40).
Abraham Geiger and Samson Hirsch have one thing in common which they took over from Mendelssohn: the spiritual mission of Israel. Both consider the Torah as the “portable” land of Israel. Even though there is a huge gap between the Reformists and the Neo-Orthodox, both stress on the particularity of Judaism, as opposed to Spinoza’s universal beliefs. Both want to preserve Judaism, although in different ways. For Geiger contemporary Judaism, by reclaiming its biblical and Pharisaic roots, could retain its world-historical difference, whereas he thought contemporary Christianity had nothing to do with the faith of Jesus. (HESCHEL, 7). He considered Jesus to be a Jew whose teachings were the typical liberal Pharisaic teachings of his day. The “Jewishness of Jesus” was central in his theory . For this he was attacked by two sides. Firstly, by German Nationalists who not only identified Jesus as an Aryan but as the great enemy of everything Jewish. Secondly, by the Neo-Orthodoxists. In the correspondence between rabbi Naphtali and the young Benjamin, who thought the Torah and the Talmud offered nothing but to fear God, Hirzsch gives us an alternative. Contrary to what Reformist believers think, the Torah is the sole source of Jewish Law, written and oral and the essence of Israel’s being (and not social action). The only subject of reform, however, is the fulfilment of Judaism by Jews in our time, not the lowering of the Torah to the level of the age. (HIRSCH, 4).
The question however was not to explain the ideas of Mendelssohn, Geiger and Hirsch, but to see their reactions on Spinoza. All of the three thinkers focused on the particularity of the Jewish faith and community and on the mission of Israel.
By: Ben. - 30th May 2005 at 14:21
Well if it read fluently it’s OK. 🙂 There are some sentences which are taken literally from a book or article and others which I have made myself. as long as there’s no huge contrast between the academic language and my own crappy pidgin english it’s ok 😀
By: Barnowl - 30th May 2005 at 13:50
It READS okay to me, but if you’re deductions are correct.. you’ll have to trust yourself on that score…
BARNOWL
By: Ben. - 30th May 2005 at 11:09
QUESTION 2
Compare and contrast the following thinkers on the rationale and the purpuse of Jewish peoplehood in the modern era: Achad ha-Am, Martin Buber, Mordechai Kaplan and Samuel David Luzzatto? In what ways were these thinkers alike in their conceptions and in what ways were they different? How did their immediate context affect their distinct positions?
Used articles:
– Ahad Ha-am. In: The Zionist Idea, HERTZBERG, A., ed.
– KAPLAN, M. M., Questions Jews ask: Reconstructionist Answers.
– Martin Buber. In: Zionist Idea, HERTZBERG, A., ed.
– Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen : A debate on Zionism and Messianism.
– Mordecai M. Kaplan: The Reconstruction of Judaism.
– The Religion of Morality: Luzzatto. In: Jewish philosophy in Modern times
– Zionism. In: the Jew in de Modern World.
The Italian scholar Samuel Luzzatto believed there are two oppositional forces in the Western Culture. There’s Atticism, the world of the ancient Greeks, which offers us all the beauty, the arts, the intellect, in short the ‘rational world’. This world is opposed to the ‘emotional world’ of Judaism: the morality which springs from the heart and from selflessness and love of good (Luzzatto, 33). Luzzatto goes further, claiming that eventually Athens would destroy Jerusalem if we try to combine both (as did Maimonides or Zunz who launched the program of ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’). The Torah is a book of morality and ethics, we should not try to understand it in a philosophical way, neither does the “cold” study of the Torah makes a person moral. Religion has a pragmatic use which is not to reveal truths but to serve the interests of morality. The Torah has a threefold task: the sentiment of pity, which is the root of ethics (1), the principle of reward and punishment – because man is incurably evil the Torah offers a system to aid morality – (2) and the election of Israel (3). Luzzatto is a strong supporter of moral action which springs from the heart, however, he opposed both the Utilitarians (who thought of a concept as “calculated morality”) and the Neo-Kantians (who believed ethics rested on imperatives). He proclaims the chosen-ness of the Jewish people, because the unique-ness of Israel makes it possible to act morally. When Luzzatto claims that “Israel should be isolated from the surrounding nations” he means Judaism should be preserved as a separate religion and peoplehood (the combination which makes it unique). He does not talk about the state of Israel as a political entity, as he lived prior to the Zionist movements, in the first part of the 19th century, when the Jewish community was still trying to integrate in the newly created nation-states.
Due to tensions and growing Anti-Semitism in Europe, the idea of returning to the land of Israel was created. Not only in Western-Europe (Dreyfus-affaire), but mainly in Eastern-Europe, after the murder on czar Alexander II and the pogroms following this event. In origin Zionism was a secular ideology, derived from the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightment. There were different forms of Zionism however: Zionism as an expression of Jewish Messianism (much luke Reform Judaism) opposed to the idea of a ‘Switzerland in the Middle-east’. Also, the notion of the Jew as a builder versus the Jew as a fighter. The philosophy behind the Kibutz and the IDF (the first armed Jews since the Macabees) grew out of each of these components. Not all of the Zionists supported the idea of ‘physically’ returning all Jews to Palestine (like Herzl). Apart from this political Zionism there’s also a more moderate version of cultural Zionism. Both Ahad-Ha-Am and Martin Buber belong to the latter group of Zionists. What unites all Zionist though is the rejection of Exile, the galut. (Zionism, 530).
Ahad Ha-Am saw Israel as the spiritual centre for all Jews in the world, where an elite group of leaders would ‘nourish’ the Diaspora. He took over many of Luzzatto’s positions: as an agnostic he affirmed the chosen-ness of the Jewish people and he also believed morality made Judaism unique in this world. At the same he was also heir to the Haskalah. He stressed on Judaism as a common cultural experience more than as a religion: “Literature responds to the demands of life, and life reacts to the guidance of literature.” (Ha-Am, 251). On the other hand, he also criticized the Haskalah: “Coming into Jewish life from outside, Haskalah found it easier to create an entirely new mold for its followers than to repair the defects of the Jewish mold while preserving its essential characteristics.” (Ha-Am, 255). Ha-Am saw continuity as essential for Judaism, hence one could not just deny the importance of the ghetto-experience which was a miracle without parallel in human history. (Ha-Am, 259).
To understand Martin Buber fully, we need to see him in dialogue with Herman Cohen, the last of the philosophers to define Judaism as a religion based purely on Reason. From now on, Jewish thinkers will try to come up with a formula in which Judaism is more than simply a religion of Reason. As a secular professor of Kantian Thought, he uses Kant’s “categorical imperative” to define the ethical concerns. The four other thinkers object to this representation of God merely as a notion to be understood as an idea which links ethics with nature. Cohen is also opposed to the Zionist idea of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. “The ghetto mentality is not the ghost, but the true spirit of Judaism and of Jewish reality” (A debate on Zionism and Messianism, 573) he responds to Buber. Buber on the other hand believes the essence of Judaism is a dialogical relationship with God (Covenant). He claims that there could be no Jewish Religion without a Jewish Nation and no Nation without Religion. Unlike Cohen he did not think Zionism was opposed to the messianic idea. In fact, Israel would be a laboratory for the relationship between men and God. “We want Palestine not for the Jews. We want it for mankind, because we want it for the realization of Judaism.” (Debate between Cohen and Buber, 572). Bubber differed from both Ha-Am and Cohen, but neither can we consider him to be a political Zionist like Herzl. Instead of national egoism, the state of Israel had to be build upon Hebrew Humanism. “[…] Jewish nationalism which regards Israel as a nation like unto other nations and recognizes no task for Israel save that of preserving and asserting itself.” (BUBER, 459).
The last of our four thinkers, Mordecai Kaplan, is addressing more specifically to an American public of immigrant’s children. He was also a Cultural Zionist and there are some resemblances with Ha-Am. He also put more value into Judaism without a supernatural explanation and he found the concept of chosen-ness arrogant and irrational. Therefore, Anthropology had to replace divine Theology in order to fully understand Judaism. His idea of Reconstructionalist Judaism meant that the essence of religion is group emotion, and not the mission of Israel or the chosen-ness. Since God can not respond to prayer, ritual acts should be looked upon as folkways enhancing the life of the individual and the group. In a way, this resembles a bit like Rubenstein (post-Holocaust) who also considered the “group experience” more important than the divine religion. Therefore he made a program for the reconstruction of Judaism: The interpretation of Jewish traditions in terms of present day thought. (1) The fostering of the social solidarity of the Jewish people through the upbuilding of Palestine (2), and the establishment of Hehillahs and communal centers in the Diaspora (3). (Kaplan, 500). Note the difference with Ha-Am, who thought Israel should provide the Diaspora with help, while Kaplan, like Louis Brandeis thought the Diaspora, more specifically the North-American Jewish Community should assist the newly created state of Israel.
Ha-Am, Buber and Kaplan have one thing in common: they are all three Cultural Zionists. Especially Ha-Am found his inspiration for this unique model of Zionism with Luzzatto. Even though the state of Israel in 1947 was formed on the beliefs of Political Zionism (David Ben Gurion), these four thinkers as well have influenced the messianic idea of Zionism and it would be wrong to think of Zionism only as a right wing political ideology.
By: Ben. - 30th May 2005 at 11:08
QUESTION 3
Construct a dialogue/conversation among the following thinkers on the meaning of God in modern Jewish religion: Leo Baeck, Mordechai Kaplan, Abraham Heschel and Richard Rubenstein. How and why do their positions converge and diverge? What particular Jewish experiences in the 20th century are relevant in shaping their respective beliefs?
Used articles:
– BAECK, L., Judaism and Christianity.
– HESCHEL, A., The insecurity of Freedom.
– KAPLAN, M., Questions Jews ask.
– RUBENSTEIN, R., After Auschwitz.
A short interview with each of the thinkers.
How do you look upon God?
BAECK : The biggest mistake of our time is to think of Religion and Rationale as one. I am a rabbi, not a philosopher. I believe, there’s no such thing as Judaism, which is nothing but Kantian philosophy or ethical culture, nor a Judaism in which the idea of God is merely a decorative embellishment or a crowning pinnacle. There’s a difference between philosophical reality and the religious reality of the common believer. In my concept God has to be immanent and transcendent at the same time. Only in Judaism, such a union is possible: Jewish piety lives in the paradox, in the polarity with all its tension and compactness.
KAPLAN : I don’t believe in this concept of God as a “creator ex nihilo”, a “dieu horlogé”. God is not a supernatural creature, he is the sum of all the constructive forces like unity and creativity in our world. In opposition to God, there are the destructive forces. Man, therefore, is responsible for his own actions.
HESCHEL : My view would be quite the opposite: the idea of G-d is beyond words. As the matter of fact, we can not even talk about G-d, we can only talk to him. G-d is ‘divine pathos’
KAPLAN : Talking to God is useless. God can’t hear our prayers. Still, praying itself is not useless, but I will explain later.
BAECK : I believe both of you forget one important element which makes Judaism different from the other world religions: the experience of both mystery and commandment. The reason why Paul left Judaism was because mystery became everything for him. Christianity is based upon dogma’s, which often make no sense. The boundary of Judaism is crossed by Paul at the point where mystery wanted to prevail without commandment, and faith without the law. However, you can’t abandon the other side too and this is your mistake: mystery is important too, and not just commandment. Mystery and commandment are not merely connected and interwoven but proclaim each other and give each other their distinctive essences.
How can the modern Jew get into dialogue with G-d?
KAPLAN : As I said, talking to God himself is pointless. God is not a creator, he’s ‘energy’. Praying has a function though, not within a theological context, but a sociological one. It is a creative process in which he Jewish people can express their solidarity among each other.
RUBENSTEIN : I agree with you here. Solidarity among the Jewish people in the Synagogue is more important.
HESCHEL : I must object. The basic Jewish problem of today is the disregard for Jewish thought, the disparagement of the spirit. The group, the community received all our attention, while the individual and his problems were ignored. It would be suicidal to reduce Judaism, as you try to do, to communalism, collectivism or nationalism. Jewish existence is a personal situation. God is in search of man! God must not be described as a human need. On the contrary, man must be understood as a need of God. Without Him all is vain: the state, civilization, the life of the individual and the society.
But if God loves Israel that much, how could he have allowed Auschwitz to happen?
KAPLAN : G-d is not responsible, men are independent creatures. The Holocaust is a case in which the total sum of destructive forces have outnumbered the constructive forces.
HESCHEL : The only way in which we can form a counterweight to this extreme form of evil is by obeying G-d’s commandments. Therefore, G-d needs to be transcendent and supernatural. The nazi’s were able to commit their evil act because they didn’t believe in a supernatural G-d with commandments, instead they thought god was among them, in an immanent naturalistic way “Gott mit uns.”. Nazi’s were atheists, they didn’t believe in the Christian concept of a supernatural God as well. Their sole god was the German Nation, the Aryan Race embodied by Hitler. This explains why, after Auschwitz, a supernatural G-d is more essential than ever before.
RUBENSTEIN : That doesn’t answer the original question. How could God have allowed this to happen? Among those six million Jews slaughtered, there must have been some who obeyed God’s commandment, so why did they still have to die? If God is supernatural and powerful and God loves Israel he would most certainly not have allowed Auschwitz to happen. (1) Now, we all know Auschwitz has happened. (2) There are only two options available. Either God doesn’t love Israel or God is not supernatural and powerful at all. (3) I would however prefer a non-powerful God above a God who doesn’t really care about Israel anyway. I couldn’t live with the idea of a God who’s nothing but a cynic observer.
To conclude, is there still a mission for Israel, after the Holocaust?
BAECK: Yes, the role of the Jewish community is to promote the commandment and mystery of Judaism. Ceremonial law can offer us a way to express our communal consciousness, within the State of Israel and the Diaspora.
KAPLAN: I agree with the communal consciousness, but Jewish rituals and Ceremonial Law are folkways that need to be constantly reinterpreted.
HESCHEL: Most certainly Israel has a mission. We can combine the mysticism of God with a commitment to social action.
RUBENSTEIN: The death camps of the Nazi’s spelled the end of my optimism concerning the human condition. Not only six million Jews, but God and the mission of Israel as well have died in Auschwitz. I agree with Kaplan that we should strengthen our communal consciousness within the synagogue, so that for the time being on this earth, we’ll at least have each other to rely on.
BAECK: Such a pessimist look upon religion doesn’t help the cause of the Jewish people. Nietzsche already said that God was dead, however, we’ve all witnessed the consequences of this German Romanticism and Nationalism in its most extremist form …
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May 28, 2005 at 11:21 am