Encore Archive

Welcome to Encore, the place where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on topics of the moment. Each week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

To access the CLAL Encore Archive, click here.

To join the conversation at CLAL Encore Talk, click here.

What We Learned From the 1970's II

(Sh'ma 10/185, January 11, 1980 )

At Sh'ma's annual meeting of the contributing editors last June, a symposium was held on the implications of the past decade on Jewish life. Our previous issue included the first Part of that exchange - Opening, prepared remarks by Nora Levin and Arnold Jacobs Wolf and David Novak and Michael Wyschogrod's comments with which the ensuing discussion began. We resume here with the highlights of that discussion and the closing remarks of the third of the initial speakers.

David Novak

I don't think that I painted such a pessimistic picture. What I am saying is that the great issue of what Jewish existence means both inside and outside of Israel is finally going to come out of the closet for open discussion. At last we may have an atmosphere of quasi-normality that will allow us to discuss an issue that has not really received the discussion that it deserves. The only way that we can discuss it is on theological grounds, and I agree with you Gene, that the 1970's have given us a respectability for the logical discussion that heretofore did not exist in American Jewish life.

Another positive factor is that Jewish normative ethics are being taken seriously on the general intellectual scene. Who would have believed some years ago that prestigious academic journals are interested in Halacha, and its stand on ethical issues? So the '80s promise to be extremely exciting because we had a period of development the '70s which provided the groundwork we previously lacked to enter certain intellectual discussions.

Balfour Brickner said something where he agreed with me, but I wonder if he agreed with me for the right reason, and that is when I mentioned humanistic models within Judaism. I don't equate a humanistic model within Judaism with either liberalism or secularism. I do equate a humanistic model with a concept of man or a concept of humanity. I don't think that is a question of liberalism. I have found myself in the past ten years or more on the liberal and the conservative sides of political issues both based upon Jewish criteria. I was certainly with the liberals - although, I must say, not for liberal but Jewish reasons -in opposition to the Vietnam war. My first real political involvement was marching around the Lincoln Memorial all night in 1964 and sitting in the gallery of the Senate. That was due to the influence of my teacher.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was one of my great teachers. I find myself on the conservative, even the reactionary side in my involvement in the pro-life movement. There I don't see where a stand of affirming elective abortion is consistent with anything in Jewish tradition whatsoever.

Redemption Has Not Yet Come

As for Michael Wyschogrod's point, there is no question that there is a sanctity to the Land of Israel and even to the state of Israel which does not exist elsewhere. However, to say that Israel, the state of Israel as it exists here and now, has solved the Problem of the Golah which in theological terms means the self-alienation of the Jewish people in this world, is pseudo-Messianism. The fact that the state of Israel has been invested by the Jewish world with Utopian qualities has been detrimental to both Israel and the Golah. The basic problem is the redemption of the Jewish people and the redemption of the world. Neither has taken place yet. If you want to consider the state of Israel, as an indispensable part of redemption, I agree with you. I consider myself a Zionist and I consider myself to be an affirmative traditional Jew. But I think that that notion which seems to equate living in the state of Israel, being part of the state of Israel, with the geulah (Redemption), not Jewishly defensible. The fundamentalism of Menachem Begin and his non-compromising stand, especially on the whole question of the territories, for example, where he attempts to base it upon Jewish tradition, is wrong. I could show him where, for example, the city of Akko in Talmudic times was divided down the middle of the street, the Jewish side being considered Eretz Yisrael, the other, Eretz Ha'Amim (the gentiles' land).

We need to balance our elation at the state of Israel's existence and accomplishments, with frank recognition of how much further we all have to go before the Jewish people and the world are redeemed. The '70s have given us very good preparation for the discussions of the '80s. I look forward to them neither with optimism nor pessimism nor what-have-you. We recognize the problems - but Jewish problems are always exhilarating for serious-minded Jews.