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Yeshiah Leibowitz's Radical Orthodoxy

By Arnold Jacob Wolf (Sh'ma, 11/215, May 29, 1981)

The three most important living Jewish thinkers, Emmanuel Levinas, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Yeshiah Leibowitz are all remarkable combinations of traditional and highly original thinkers. Perhaps only the combination of rigor and imagination, of halachic structure with aggadic spontaneity make possible creative thinking among Jews. Be that as it may, no writer has more distinctive and, to my mind, important things to say to us than has Professor Leibowitz, whose work is finally being translated into English, but who personally has been kept from the American scene by a combination of fear and inanition. It is time we listened hard to this uniquely passionate and learned scientist, scholar and believing Jew.

The Torah is, of course, the basis of Judaism (says Leibowitz), but the Written Torah is created (not merely interpreted) by the Torah she-b'al peh. The Bible is a code, which Rabbinic interpretation cracks. It is a primitive, remote, inaccessible book which the rabbis humanize and make available. The Torah provides no reliable information; not about God and not about the world. It is literal nonsense. But the oral interpretation which is human feed-back to Divine obscurity, uproots literalism and translates doubtful history and second-rate literature into Law.

Judaism is nothing more or less than obedience to the Law. It is avodat Hashem, slavery to God, "Islam." (Surrender to God, pious designation.) It is all getting there, all road and no destination, no goal, no rest. It is all means with no end (as God, too, is En Sof). It is all content, detail, form, never merely shell. God is only in the details; there is no essence. Judaism seems objectively absurd; it fills no human need. But is creates Israel, a community of observance and obedience. Judaism wisely permits all opinions, but is mandates halachic behavior.

For Leibowitz, Halacha Does Not Redeem

The halacha is a prosaic precis of a divine poem which we cannot comprehend. It is not ethics nor philosophy nor ideology; it is a praxis, almost in the Marxist sense, an outcome of ratiocination which annuls and uplifts all prior theoretical speculation. Halacha is infra-structure; theology is super-structure. The Law is no escape from our mundane predicament. Ha'olam k'minhago noheg; the world goes on as if nothing and no One had happened. The Law does not redeem from sin, right after the Day of Forgiveness, Yom Hakippurim, ends, we immediately say: He is merciful and will forgive sin. We are sinners even in the hour after N'e'ilah. We are and always will be. The halacha is a law for sinners.

There is no final redemption in this kind of world. Therefore, the commandments remain valid. The only result of obedience is an infinite task of adding commandment to commandment. Joy must be intrinsic; there is no reward other than the doing of the command. Of course, as the rabbis say, one who performs under orders is greater than one who freely does right. Judaism is about slavery, not option. It is a conscientious giving of self, not an auto-emancipation.

The halacha is at present in trouble because of the disobedience of halachic authorities, and their want of courage. In a world with a Jcwish state, the halacha must be reconstructed again, as it was so many times before. What once was Temple sacrifice became prayer (avodah). What once was High Priestly ritual became the most central act of a people's reconciliation (the Day of Atonement). Now we must again perform similar acts of transformation, but always and only by the standards of halachic method itself.

God is unknowable, but the mitzvot are clear and present obligations. The good is Platonic and mysterious, but we know what is "good and right in God's eyes," because he told us. Judaism is keva, a decisively fixed obligation into which kavannah, spontaneous piety can be poured. It is a task which human beings, Jews, can perform and, because they can, must. We know exactly what we must do, and if we do not do it, that is only because we refuse to do it. If we do the Law, the Law will enslave us to freedom. What is written on the tablets (harut) is liberation(herut), only because God alone is our single chance to be. Enthralled by Torah, we turn our gaze toward the Giver of the Torah. Nothing changes, but everything is different from what it was.

Need for Separation of Church and State

Though an Orthodox Jew, perhaps because he is one, Yeshiah Leibowitz is angry at the dati establishment in Israel. Since the siege of Jerusalem in 1948, they have consistently separated themselves from the community, seeking special privilege instead of communal standards. The state uses jewish symbolism, like "Rock of Israel" in the declaration of independence, for political purposes. Equivocation reduces religion to a kind of "public utility." Instead of struggling for values, the religious parties have engaged in clerical politics, fake coalitions and partisan deals. From the responsibilities of state-building, they have sought exemption (heter), not accepted the onus of leadership. They want to keep Shabbat or eat kosher while other Jews man the security stations on Saturday and eat what is left over. They want the privilege of studying Torah instead of serving the people, while other Jews must always serve and never study. The halacha applies to all Jews. Only contemporary Orthodoxy makes a smaller claim than that.

Religion in Israel "only interferes with values that the secular state might otherwise develop." Religious Jews have become a mere sect (kat) instead of a model. Therefore, the established synagogue must be disestablished. Church and state must be cleanly separated, once and for all. Religious Jews should undertake all civil responsibility, without exception, that their siblings who are less devout must. They should not act as if the Jewish state were Poland or Iraq, where evasion and duplicity were necessary to keep Judaism alive. The present task is not to suffer for Torah, but to act vigorously in its spirit and by its direction.

The question, "Who is a Jew?" is a halachic question, which only the rabbis can decide. But the question, "Who is a citizen?" is a political one which only the state can decide. Talmud and Codes were documents of exile. The real question now is: what would a Roman procurator do if he lived by the Torah? A new situation calls for a new enactment "al pi ha-Torah." Times ask changing questions, which the halacha must continually address.

A Call for Neutrality and Peace

Above all, this means that the Jewish State must not be an immoral state. Victory in war never can produce religious insight. Expansion of territory has created a parasitic Israel, dependent on American arms, a concubine of Western nationalisms, a pawn of foreign strategies. Many incidents, like Kfar-kassem and Qibya were military violations of the halacha. Where was the religious outcry? When the synagogue gives approbation to conquest, it is heretical, Sabbatean. The Six Day War was like the wars of Jeroboam, which the prophets at least denounced. Security is a mask for ambition. In a pre-World War III world, there is no security, and Israel has not made mankind more just or more safe.

The State of Israel should become more neutral than Switzerland, more harmless than any other, if it is not to violate Jewish law. Unlike the Soviet dissidents, Israeli intellectuals are silent, if not also silenced. Their voice for peace is almost unheard. The religious and the thoughtful collaborate with militarism and acquiesce in sin. But, "nothing of value is achieved by mere unity. Everything of value has been achieved only by severe internal struggle." Dissent should always be permissable, but now is considered disloyal. Without dissent, we are inevitably lost in our own pride and insularity.

The State should disengage from the occupied territories. "We must at once, this very night, get out of the territories inhabited by a million and a half Arabs, barricade ourselves in our Jewish state and invest our entire strength in maintaining it. There is another possibility, a remote one, that a settlement will be imposed on us by the great powers ...." We must evacuate the territories without determining who will rule, for the sake not only of the Arab Palestinians but of believing Israeli Jews.

Yeshiah Leibowitz has been saying these things for years. Why have we not heard? When shall we begin to listen to our greatest thinkers and teachers? "Blessed be He who shares His wisdom with those who fear Him." And they with us.