At First Glance Archive
Welcome to At First Glance. Here you will find quick takes by the CLAL faculty on new books, articles and movies, new music and fashions and on cultural trends more generally. Here we will keep you abreast of what we, in our journeys around the country, find most interesting and notable in Jewish and general culture. And, in just a few sentences, we will try to indicate why. Every other week you will find something new on this page.
To access the At First Glance... Archive, click here.
To join the At First Glance... conversation, click here.
The Day After
David Hartman's Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debates its
Future
(Yale University Press, 2000)
By Michael Gottsegen
Today the smoke that rises from the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians
obscures other fissures within Israeli society. One of the most significant of these is
the rift between religious and secular Israelis – a rift that is sure to open wide
again when the external threat abates (if not before). This rift is social and political.
More importantly, it is cultural and ideological. Between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as it
were, a fight is raging over the meaning of Israeli identity and over the question of what
it will mean to be a Jew and an Israeli in the twenty-first century. It is a local
dispute, but it has wider ramifications and resonance. We in the Diaspora who continue to
wrestle with our own conflicted and complex Jewish identities have an interest and a stake
in the outcome.
In his new book, Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating its
Future, Rabbi David Hartman endeavors to chart a way beyond the increasingly
polarized terms of the current debate. Hartman has something to say to each side and
cautions against either extreme. Should either side win out absolutely, the consequence
would be disastrous. Neither ultra-Orthodox nor ultra-secularist positions speak to the
felt-experience and aspirations of the majority who live in the middle between the poles,
who want to retain modernity and their Jewishness but are at a loss as to how best to
combine the two. Hartman also fears for the future of the Jewish people should either
extreme answer to the question of Jewish and Israeli identities prevail.
Hartman’s response to the crisis is three-fold. He begins to articulate the basis of
a new common or Jewish public culture that might gain the allegiance of the majority of
Jews who occupy a range of positions between the ideological poles and who care about one
another enough to still be interested in continuing the conversation. Hartman also speaks
to the concerns of two constituencies in particular, the religious Zionists who have been
rudderless since the collapse of their messianically charged vision of a Greater Israel,
and the Jewish, secular Israelis who are seeking a way of meaningfully connecting with the
Jewish tradition without letting go of modernity. While Hartman addresses the concerns of
both of these groups, each of whom he must enlist if his conception of a new Jewish public
culture is to have any chance of being realized, this book is primarily aimed at the
religious Zionists. Hartman seems to assume that if the religious Zionists can be
persuaded to sign on, and if they can be persuaded about the wisdom of creating a Jewish
public culture that might appeal to the Jewishly-interested secular populace, then this
latter group will also sign on. In this book, however, Hartman does not speak to the
latter as directly as he does to the former.
According to Hartman, the Bible served as the common touchstone of the Israeli public
culture that existed through the 1980s. For the secular Zionists, the Bible recalled the
era when the Jewish people were last rooted in their land and, with the text as their
guide, the secular Zionists renewed their attachment. The Bible also recalled a
“normal” existence, close to nature, vigorous and robust. The secular Zionists
sought to restore these qualities and drew inspiration from the Bible in this endeavor.
The religious Zionists also drew their inspiration from the Bible, especially after the
Six Day War in 1967, as they went forth to settle the biblical cities and the biblical
lands of Judea and Samaria. For the religious Zionists, who gathered under the banner of
the “Greater Israel Movement,” the Bible supported their belief that they were
engaged in the final stages of a process that would culminate in the advent of the Messiah
as promised in biblical prophecy.
Though they read the Bible in very different ways, both religious and secular Zionists
tacitly accepted that it was the foundation of, and warrant for, Jewish life in
present-day Israel. According to Hartman, however, by the late 1980s this common cultural
basis had largely disintegrated. For secular Israelis, the need to legitimate their
existence in the Land of Israel that had drawn them to the Bible had become less pressing
than it had been a generation earlier. Israeli existence seemed self-justified and without
need of external supports. For the religious Zionists, on the other hand, it was Oslo and
the very fact that the country had now agreed in principle to cede the biblical lands in
exchange for peace with the Palestinians that finally undercut the Bible’s power to
provide an existential and ideological orientation.
For the religious Zionists who had regarded themselves as the Messianic vanguard, the
implications of these political changes were dizzying and devastating. The basis of their
self-understanding was undermined. The change in the political winds also deprived them of
the broader social and ideological significance that they enjoyed through the Begin years.
It is no wonder that with the ideological eclipse of religious Zionism, ultra-Orthodoxy
has boldly stepped forth to occupy the resulting vacuum and, in the process, has
precipitated a new culture war for the soul of the country. More concerned with the
government’s settlement program in the territories than anything else, and trusting
in a Messianic process that would take care of everything else in good time, the religious
Zionists were not as intent upon imposing their own definitions of Jewish life upon the
secular majority as the ultra-Orthodox now seem to be.
In the face of this disintegration of a common culture and in the midst of the ensuing
culture war, Hartman’s book finds its sense of urgency. Reading the book, much of
which reads like a friendly appeal to the religious Zionists who have lost their
revolutionary élan and raison d’etre, one senses that Hartman would like to persuade
these “revolutionaries without a cause” to become the agents of the new Jewish
culture that he espouses. Clearly, he also wants to arm them ideologically and
religiously, lest they fall into the ultra-Orthodox camp. But more than this, he seems to
want to enlist them as soldiers in a new cause. They are much more sympathetically
inclined toward the secular Israeli masses than are the ultra-Orthodox and toward the
Zionist project more generally. Thus while there is no chance of ultra-Orthodoxy ever
joining Hartman’s revolution, the chances of enlisting the disaffected religious
Zionists are much better.
One of Hartman’s primary tasks in this book is to demonstrate that in the wake of
religious Zionism’s demise, ultra-Orthodoxy is not the only authentic religious
alternative. Hartman makes this point by developing an argument that turns on the contrast
between two very different kinds of Jewish spirituality, one exemplified in the writings
of Yehudah Halevi (1075-1141) and one exemplified in the writings of Moses Maimonides
(1135-1204). In the central chapters of Israelis and the Jewish Tradition, Hartman
develops this contrast, concentrating first on Halevi’s philosophy of Judaism and
then upon that of Maimonides. In this contest, Maimonides’ philosophy of Judaism
emerges as the winner. It is Maimonides who offers today’s Jews the spiritual and
philosophical means with which to secure the Jewish and Israeli future. When we first
encounter Maimonides’ philosophy in the book, Hartman presents this thought in its
own terms as representing a compelling alternative to Halevi. In the final chapter,
however, Hartman presents his Maimonidean-inspired vision of the cultural construct that
would meet the needs of the present hour. Before turning to Hartman’s own
neo-Maimonidean vision, a glance at Hartman’s conception of the contrast between
Maimonides and Halevi is in order.
In Hartman’s depiction of the difference between Halevi and Maimonides, Halevi
becomes the progenitor of an “event-based, biblical theology” that emphasizes
Jewish uniqueness, the supernatural and non-rational character of Torah and a God who
reveals himself through supernatural prophecy and in the history of Israel. According to
Hartman, this Halevian worldview underlies both the Greater Israel movement and a mystical
conception of Jewish practice that sustains the contemporary fascination with kabbalah. It
also resonates with certain aspects of the ultra-Orthodox worldview.
In Hartman’s view, the Halevian form of Jewish spirituality is ill-suited to serve as
the basis of a common Jewish culture in which secular and religious Jews could participate
on equal terms. For Halevi, only the observant Orthodox Jew is in any position to
participate in a discussion about spiritual truth since there is no plane of rationality
that transcends Torah. The Torah itself, Jewish rituals and the mitzvoth are also
a-rational inasmuch as they are held to be products of a form of prophecy that has no
contact with rationality. During the Middle Ages, there developed a literary genre known
as taamei mitzvoth, or reasons for the commandments, which sought to provide a rational
explanation for the commandments. Halevi rejected this genre as based upon an utterly
wrongheaded presupposition. The mitzvoth are supernatural and super-rational. They come
from God and we cannot know the reasons for them, not in general nor in particular.
Moreover, to the degree we can attain insight into the principles of the Torah, it is only
available by prophetic inspiration and only to those who keep the mitzvoth in every
detail. But if the Torah and Jewish law are irrational or super-rational in this way, then
there is no possibility of discussing them critically and no possibility of the
Torah’s becoming a common culture shared by those who keep the law and those who do
not. The latter can have no place at the table.
A better foundation for the common culture Hartman would like to create is to be found in
the philosophy of Moses Maimonides, who is widely regarded as the greatest Jewish
philosopher of the Middle Ages. Maimonides’ philosophy of Judaism not only provides
the basis for a new public culture that can be shared by observant and non-observant Jews
(and by non-Jews as well). Maimonides also articulates a philosophy of Jewish existence
that is intrinsically powerful and well-suited, in Hartman’s opinion, to the
intellectual and spiritual needs of the modern Jew who would be true to his God and to
modern culture at the same time.
What makes Maimonides’ thought so serviceable in this era is the primacy he gives to
rationality over uniqueness. This establishes a common rational basis for conversation
between Jew and non-Jew, philosopher and rabbi, Orthodox Jew and secular Jew. And, not
least, it establishes a basis for a conversation between Israeli Jews from across the
religious spectrum.
In Hartman’s deft hands, Maimonides’ theology emerges as the polar antithesis of
Halevi’s. Where Halevi would give primacy to revelation over reason, Maimonides gives
primacy to reason over revelation. For Halevi, true monotheism and knowledge of God is
achievable only by Jews through obedience to the law, which in turn enables an experience
of the divine presence. For Maimonides, by contrast, monotheism and knowledge of God is
achievable by anyone, Jew or non-Jew, who applies his reason to the topics of physics and
metaphysics. Where Halevi would insist on the mysterious and fundamentally supra-rational
character of the mitzvoth, and of the ceremonial laws (or huqqim) in particular,
Maimonides insists that the laws all have rational and pragmatic purposes that we are able
to fathom. Where Halevi argues that the laws given to Israel are beyond history,
Maimonides argues that the laws are products of history and represent a divine
accommodation to human frailty. Thus, for example, the sacrificial cult, which Halevi
regards as a timeless, recondite spiritual technology, is understood by Maimonides as a
divinely ordained compromise with the idolatrous forms of worship which the Israelites
were accustomed to practice. The sacrificial cult has no intrinsic necessity or inherent
spiritual dignity. It achieves nothing that might not be achieved by a philosopher who
employed his speculative reason to the end of knowing God. For all this, Maimonides does
not deny the value of the Temple cult or of the mitzvoth even as he denies their intrinsic
ultimacy and necessity. They are effective pedagogical devices for uplifting the
non-philosophic masses to a higher form of existence and are conducive to a good social
order. Moreover, Maimonides does not only assert this to be the case, but provides reasons
demonstrating that this is so. In giving reasons, Maimonides shows himself to be open to
argument and counter-argument. In the end, reason would prevail.
As Hartman observes, for Maimonides, opposition to idolatry is the mainspring of Judaism,
and the pivot around which Judaism turns. But as Hartman also notes, this opposition to
idolatry seems almost quaint and essentially meaningless to us today. Hartman argues
against this perception of irrelevance and suggests that the critique of idolatry must be
applied today against misplaced and excessive reverence for the unique and the particular,
whether it is one’s unique faith, ethnic group or cause. God alone is unique and
worthy of such exclusive devotion. As Hartman hastens to add, idolatry has an ethical
dimension that is as pernicious today as ever before in history. Indeed, the most
commonplace indicator of contemporary idolatry is the correlative lack of respect that is
shown toward whatever is the other of one’s idol. In other words, the best evidence
that one’s faith or ethnic group has become one’s idol is the hatred or
disrespect one shows toward other faiths or ethnic groups. Hartman takes cognizance in
this context of the strife between Jew and Jew in Israel today that, he intimates, emerges
from an idolatrous attitude that privileges one’s own and disrespects the other
party. Rejecting the claim of the ultra-Orthodox that their contempt for the secular
majority is dictated by Jewish law, Hartman articulates a principle of interpretation
that, in the spirit of Maimonides, interprets Jewish law in light of the story of creation
which tells us that every human being is created in the image of God and as such must be
regarded with respect and treated with decency. Practicing what he preaches, Hartman takes
the opportunity to express his appreciation for the positive aspects of the Jewishness of
secular Israelis and makes clear that he regards them as dialogue partners. Clearly, he
hopes that his religious Zionist readers will follow suit.
Ultimately, Hartman seeks to create interest in, and the conditions for, an ongoing
dialogue that will include the widest spectrum of religious and secular Israeli Jews. He
hopes that over time these conversations would create a new Jewish public culture, and
seems to believe that they could also produce a shared basis for a civic identity that
transcends the deep rift between religious and secular Jewish Israelis. Hartman believes
that this common civic identity need not, in effect, be based upon the lowest common
denominator of practical self-interest. Rather, he believes that if the Orthodox would
enter into the conversation with a Maimonidean willingness to have their Torah-based
insights and policy proposals tested by public reason and rational debate, the net result
could be a Jewishly enriched public life and public policy. The standing of Judaism itself
would also be enhanced in the process and, as a result, many more secular Jews might
become willing to give Judaism a fresh look in their own individual quests for meaning and
fulfillment.
To those in the religious camp who argue that the “solution” to the problem of
increasing secularity is to employ the state’s coercive power to secure compliance
with Jewish religious law, Hartman responds by observing that the use of such coercion
would only be legitimate if the Israeli populace were already, at least tacitly, committed
to the authority of Torah and religious law. But this is not the case. Consequently,
before one can even begin to consider the question of coercion -- which Hartman would
likely oppose -- there is a need to revive the Jewish conversation and to create a new
“interpretive community” of Jews who are engaged with one another around the
classical texts of the Jewish tradition. Even on neo-Maimonidean grounds, the challenge of
creating this new community and culture is daunting. But in Hartman’s opinion there
is no other way to heal the growing rifts in Israeli society and no other way to make the
Jewish tradition relevant to the body of the Jewish people in the 21st century.
It almost goes without saying that much of what Hartman has to say is of relevance to
Jewish life in the Diaspora. His concern about the questionable viability of a Judaism
that is too much in love with its own uniqueness and irrational mystique and too little
interested in what it has to say to issues of our common life as citizens is well placed
in this era of increased emphasis upon the elements of Jewish particularity.
Hartman’s recommendations for how we might constitute a Jewish conversation that
encompasses Jews from across the religious/ideological spectrum are also germane to life
in a Diaspora that is increasingly sectarian and divided.
While Hartman acknowledges that the contrast he develops between the perspectives of
Halevi and Maimonides is in reality perhaps less stark than his absolute contrast would
suggest, there is no denying that the contrast enables him to crystallize an important
difference between two approaches to the meaning and significance of Jewish life. And
while Hartman espouses the Maimonidean approach in an era in which the Halevian approach
is ascendant, in practical terms, for most Jews, the real question is the one about the
balance to be struck between these two orientations. Most of us probably have some
affinity for both orientations and would not feel completely comfortable with a religious
life that was completely devoid of either. Hartman challenges us, however, to reflect upon
the balance we have struck in our own lives and in our own denominations. To quote
Maimonides’ hero, Aristotle, on virtue: we ought always to strive for the mean in all
things and so too here, by countering our natural inclination to one side or the other by
willing the opposite. If Hartman is correct, this will lead to a more meaningful and more
relevant Jewish life that is better suited to the modern conditions of our individual and
collective lives.
Have you seen, or read, or listened to a movie, an article or a piece of music mentioned here? What is your quick take? Are there other cultural items that have caught your eye that you would like to call to the attention of others in the CLAL on line community?
To join the conversation at the At First Glance... discussion forum, click here.
To access the At First Glance... Archive, click here.
To receive the At First Glance column by email on a regular basis, complete the box below:
