Author Archives: Alan Brill

There is a new book by Robert Wuthnow, from Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies, one of America’s leading sociologists of religion, called The God Problem: Expressing Faith and Being Reasonable. Wuthnow observes that while the United States is one of the most highly educated societies on earth, it is also one of the most religious. This one is an empirical study of how Americans can be both believers and rationalists at the same time. But the book is also a theological work of how “cultural theology” works.

From the blurbs:

America is a nation with both unusually high levels of educational attainment and unusually high levels of religious belief and behavior. The God Problem considers religion as people experience it, relying heavily on common threads from 165 interviews conducted in 2006-2007 that show how “well-educated, thoughtful Americans have found a way of having their cake and eating it too: affirming their faith while also maintaining their belief in reason” (p.3).

Wuthnow’s approach relies on the earlier work done by many scholars and through popular surveys to measure religion, while also seeking to move toward new clarity through analysis of how people use language to overcome that which he terms the God problem – a seemingly paradoxical relationship between faith and reason. For example, in a chapter on prayer Wuthnow explains how six language devices – schema alignment, ontological assertion, contingency referents, domain juxtaposition, code switching, and performative competence – enable thoughtful people to pray without being drawn into deep theological considerations about the nature of the divine.

Rather than attempting to construct philosophically sound and/or theological deep answers to the problem of theodicy (why a good and powerful God allows bad things to happen to good people) most people simply deny that the divine is involved in planning events humans consider to be big scary catastrophes, and functions more like a “CEO who keeps the universe under control but lets people make their own decisions for good or for ill” (p.143). In a similar manner, most religious people believe that heaven exists and is a wonderful place yet limit any attempts to further explain that reality by using provisional language that often relies heavily on biblical authority and through appropriate expressions of doubt and uncertainty.

Wuthnow think the problem of how Americans can have dogmatic beliefs and at the same time be rational lies in language. For him, “the secret does not lie in mental compartmentalism, as critics of American culture sometimes argue, or in a failure of the educations system.” Nor does he think that the combination of faith and reason is wishful thinking, bad logic, or mindless intuitive yearning. His study shows that believers who use God language people do have serious doubts. So believers have two goals to maintain their devout belief and at the same time not sounding like an untutored bigot. Wuthnow places the line between Evangelicals and other true believers from Fundamentalist on whether one is willing to sound like an untutored bigot or idiot.

Criticism that religion is irrational have been voiced by the new atheists, but it appears the American middle class has managed to forge a path between fanaticism and atheism. They know, as Wuthnow claims, that while belief in God is often associated with irrational, uninformed, undemocratic, destructive, and fraudulent behavior, one shouldn’t assume that nonbelief is free from such ills. He gives the reader greater insight into how the average educated middle-class American thinks about religion. According to Wuthnow, the antagonism of academics toward religion isn’t representative of the general public. Generally speaking, the American middle class exhibits a laissez-faire attitude that is more conducive to frank discussions about faith.

The recent critics of religion are correct – there is a God problem. How can people accept God without being an idiot. So God is quite problematic, intellectually, morally- God is not the nice guy, religion is un-provable. So how do believing Americans seen well-informed, reasonable, and democratic

The recent dogmatic religion may be well versed in own religion but usually nothing else. They have shut out the last 200 years of the critiques of religion, the existence of other faiths, or even the challenge of art, music or science. They are not open to new ideas, do not advocate free inquiry, or pursuit of ideals. In general, they defend at all costs wisdom from the past. Religious believers who are conservative are by nature anti-democratic because democracy needs people to defend their faith through rational means. But in their case, they preach dogma that cannot be questioned based on Divine authority.

It is not impossible to be religious persona and well informed – think of Sir Isaac Newton but the approach of synthesis is not the current era.

Wuthnow also points out and should be noted that college does not make American’s more skeptical or losing faith. In the 1970’s when believers were first generation college it lead to a secularization but now in 2013, where students are second and third generation college – combining their faith and professional education is the norm.

So how do Americans believe?

First, religion gets watered down and shallow.-God is considered as a buddy and the Bible as instruction manual for a happy life. Believers in the US consider their conservative views as a form of positive thinking and popular psychology. When they say “we want a miracle” think of it as spoken by a football coach, it’s a pep talk. (think of all the Orthodox popular psych and tips for living)

Second, they do not really understand their religion. They have little knowledge of philosophy, theology, or the meaning of their words outside their utilitarian usage. And there is no incentive to be more thoughtful. America’s middle class are void of thoughtful reflection, oblivious to sound theological instruction, or simply lack good answers to the bigger questions that have no utilitarian relation to everyday life. (anyone teaching Albo or even Berkovits anymore?)

Wuthnow turns to linguistics and cultural sociology. He shows that everyday religious language is not set apart, we engage in multiple circles and have a heteroglossia of combining household language, science and religion in the same conversation. Wuthnow points to six phenomena that allow belief. (1)schema alignment- when asked to explain a concept it will always correspond to the givens of science. God healing or helping is always through the natural order.
(2)ontological assertion- we say we don’t understand God or no one really knows what these theological things mean.
(3) contingency referents- we did not do our part or other events interfered
(4) domain juxtaposition –prayer and science as two realms; or one is giving a halakhic shiur without reference to the outside world
(5) code switching- I take the religious language as a different code such as from my interior life or my spirituality.
(6) performative competence- the religious act was an end in itself.

Are Americans who pray about ending hurricanes nuts? No. They treat it as either ending through natural means, or we don’t understand but we are commanded to do it, we need to do our part to help and prayer reminds us, or the prayer serve to maintain a spiritual sense of providence. In sum, ”Middle class Americans have found a way to pray that neither violates their basic intellectual integrity nor threatens to be in any way socially disruptive . There is an implicit uncertainty.”
The key is to imagine God as a powerful and beneficent other without turning God into a magical image that insults an educated person’s intelligence. Not for a miracle but to give people strength, psychological not mechanical. Today’s believers are highly self-aware that anthropomorphic conversation with God is different than science.

To talk reasonably about God, Americans find ways to affirm that they believe in God’s existence, but at the same time steer clear of assertions that claim too much knowledge of God, or that make God too much like a human person, or that too dramatically contravene standard ways of thinking about the natural world and human behavior. (299)

Returning to the discussions of the importance of popular culture for those committed to faith, Wuthnow found that shifts in the discussion of religion often involve injecting humor to “break the spell.” They introduce something completely out of context, betraying ambivalence, discomfort, or uncertainty regarding a topic. Wuthnow’s study reveals a certain ambiguity about the faith that is more shaped by the shared vocabulary of popular culture than by Orthodox beliefs.

The “God problem,” as it were, is that affirming faith seemingly requires us to find ways to make clear that we aren’t bigoted, dogmatic, stupid, thoughtless, and heartless. In other words, one needs to find a middle path between dogmatism and atheism in order to be considered reasonable in American culture. According to Wuthnow, it seems that thoughtful, well-educated persons have figured out a way to be informed and devout by relying on multivocality—using the rhetoric of society’s pluralistic speech community—when discussing issues of faith.

From Peter Berger’s review:
Peter Berger- Why Americans Don’t Think God Talk is Weird

Robert Wuthnow says modern believers maintain a creative tension between the worldviews of naturalism and religion.

There are two polemical edges to the book. Less central, and mainly of interest to other social scientists, is Wuthnow’s suspicion of survey methods in the area of religion. Surveys rely on structure questionnaires; much of the time we don’t understand what the answers mean unless we actually talk to the people who gave them. (By the way, I share the suspicion—without denying that surveys, if used judiciously, can indeed disclose some religious realities.) Wuthnow uses a very sophisticated methodology of so-called “discourse analysis”—semi-structured interviews, followed by a careful examination of the language used by the interviewees. Essentially, this is the sort of approach used by anthropologists, leading to what Clifford Geertz (another Princeton social scientist) called “thick description.”

Faith in America (and by implication in any modern society) occurs in a context of culturally instituted “norms of reasonableness.” These norms are expressed in a discourse which does not presuppose supernatural interventions. Religious people do assume such interventions—indeed, they regularly pray for them—but they try to speak about them in terms compatible with the naturalist norms. While many people say that, in principle, they believe that God can perform miracles, they do not usually assume that he does so apart from natural processes. For example, religious people often pray for healing, and they believe that God may answer such prayers—but not usually by a miracle, but rather through natural processes of remission, or by the skill of a surgeon, or the efficacy of medication. Thus there occurs a “mingling of languages.” Needless to say, there are some religious people in America who refuse this mingling of discourses and militantly reject the naturalist one. But they are a minority, and even they will revert to the naturalist discourse if they find themselves in the emergency room of a hospital.

In other words, most people want to be “reasonable”—the opposite of being “wacko” or “weird.” As an example of something widely perceived as not being reasonable, Wuthnow discussed an incident that happened in 1985: The famous evangelist Pat Robertson claimed that his prayer caused a hurricane to alter its course away from his headquarters in Virginia. Andy Rooney, as a televised representative of the “norms of reasonableness,” called Robertson “wacky” and “crazy as bedbugs.” Another way of putting this is to say that Americans are religious without believing in magic.

Wuthnow makes an important point: While the schema of faith can persist and co-exist in the same mind with the schema of natural reason, it is the latter which is taken for granted in most of ordinary life. Wuthnow calls it the “default condition”—that is, one has recourse to it automatically and one falls back to it unless one can explain (to oneself as much as to others) why the religious discourse also applies. “Default” means that it does not have to be explained, it is simply given; it is the deviations from it that must be explained. If one cannot do this, one risks being seen as “wacko” or “weird” by others .

Below is a summary of a much longer paper I gave in Oxford in January. There are many more names, people, and issues in the full version of the paper. This gives you a gist.

Louis Jacobs expected to publicly teach Biblical criticism while remaining an Orthodox pulpit rabbi. Was it axiomatic that in order to accept the higher biblical criticism you need to leave Orthodoxy or was Jacobs needlessly attacked by his critics for acceptable positions? This paper will explore the question from a descriptive historical perspective based on rabbis from 1920-1960 and then situate Jacobs in that historical framework. Specifically, it will seek out answers as to why he thought he could be both Orthodox and simultaneously accepting of biblical criticism. This paper will also look at and agree with those who disagreed with his position and believed he crossed a religious line.

This paper does not assume that the definition of Orthodoxy is the same for all countries and decades. According to Mark Noll, a scholar of Protestantism, during the first half of the twentieth century this question separated American and British Evangelical Protestants. In the United States, there was a less academic critique of religion rather congregants turned to pastors; academics were not conventionally accepted clergy. Hence, even mild academic critique was not tolerated from the pulpit in the United States.

In contrast, English academic dons were in fact viewed as members of the clergy and of the House of Lords. The Evangelical and Anglican Church turned to academics for answers, but fully aware of their simultaneous role as pastors, the academic critique was not sharp. The professors were not accidentally religious, but conservative Protestants who need to confront scholarship. They accepted a realistic and historical approach to the text, while preserving its divinity. We find a similar distinction between the countries when we look at Jewish authors.

A. Precursor Hayyim Hirschenson
Hayyim Hirschenson, creative thinker and rabbi of Hoboken, declared Biblical criticism the main issue of our time to solve. Hirschenson thought higher criticsm was completely false and heretical. But he concludes it would not be necessary for the Orthodox Jew to boycott the Hebrew University if some of its professors espouse the cause of Higher Criticism because of religious tolerance. Hirschenson suggests (Maiki Ba-Kodesh, Vol. I and II, St. Louis, 1919-1921) that the main objection in the Talmudic sources to the rejection of the doctrine of “Torah from Heaven” is that, such a rejection, impugns the honesty of Moses by suggesting that he claimed to write something he had not received from God. In a long essay, he shows that we can accept ascription of much of the Pentateuch to other hands as longs as we maintain- that Torah is from heaven, a position very similar structurally to Heschel’s 1960 position.

B. Hebrew University
When Hebrew University was established in the 1920s, its founders sought a Professor of Bible who was competent in both rabbinic worlds and with Biblical criticism. They first selected the Chief Rabbi of Vienna, Hirsch Peretz Chajes (d. 1927). He was a Gemenide rabbi with Orthodox training who accepted biblical criticism. Already there was protest that Hebrew University could not accept a biblical critic, so he withdrew his candidacy. Israel Levi said in the name of the British Lord Rothchild that there will be no bible chair for someone who accepts Biblical criticism. Greater tolerance was allowed for observant Orthodox professors to have liberal views in their seminaries than was given at Hebrew University.

Hebrew University found a compromise by finding lecturers who rejected the Documentary Hypothesis but accepted a predominately human formation of the bible such as Segal, Tur-Sinai, Seligmann and Kaufman.

C. From Moshe Seidel to Mordechai Kaplan: The creation of the Conservative Movement

The proximal background to the Jacobs Affair was the divide between Orthodox and Conservative movements in the United States.

Moshe Seidel taught bible at the Orthodox Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Rabbinical seminary in the 1920s and 1930s.Seidel sought to push the limits of Orthodoxy by wanting to teach Biblical criticism. He also corresponded with Rabbi Kook about Biblical criticism and brought Rav Kook to visit the United States. Rav Kook held that there is no cause for dealing with this heresy, which constitutes total falsehood, and he wrote to his disciple, Rab Moshe Seidel, asking him not to engage in resolving the contradictions posited by Biblical Criticism, but rather continue to observe the holiness of the Divine Torah as an integral unit.

Seidel had several major students who transferred from RIETS to JTSA and became the founders of the Conservative movement, especially Jacob Agus and Ben Zion Bokser (who, not coincidentally, wrote the first two books in English about Rabbi Kook). Agus and Bokser were also the two sides on the permissibility to drive on the Sabbath, each on opposite sides. Bokser, remaining true to Seidel, mildly accepted Biblical criticism and believed that God spoke words to humans but there was a human element.

Agus, in contrast, influenced by Mordechai Kaplan, maintained men were inspired by God and wrote based on their own perception: “We recognize that the divine light in scripture is necessarily clouded by the contingent passions and limits of the human agents of revelation.”

Agus also polished the isolated bon-mot from Franz Rosenzweig’s passage about R as Rabbanu, to falsely imply that Rosenweig was concerned with biblical criticism. Rather, Rosenzweig was concerned with revelation and holiness, not the historical text.

Just as a student of William James knows how to put every “religious experience” into the correct cubbyhole of the psychology of religion, and a Freudian student can analyze the experience into its elements of the old yet ever new story, so a student of Wellhausen will trace every commandment back to its human, folkloristic origin…
“Where we differ from orthodoxy is in our reluctance to draw from our belief in the holiness or uniqueness of the Torah, and in its character of revelation, any conclusions as to its literary genesis and the philological value of the text as it has come down to us.

My full discussion will include Solomon Goldman, another product of RIETS who became a leading student of Kaplan’s, was the protagonist in the major court case that started the separation of the two movements. Goldman rejected the Documentary Hypothesis but assumed the Bible was a human document.

D. American Orthodox reaction
The modern Orthodox reaction that became dominant in the early 1950s made the acceptance of the revelation of Torah directly from God into the dividing line between the Conservative Movement and Orthodoxy. A great variety of statements were issued by Mizrachi and other thinkers condemning the Conservative movement’s stance on revelation and Biblical criticism. Fox, Berkovits, Wurzburger all focused on the existential commitment. This culminates in the conclusion that held true in the United States that the concept an “Orthodox biblical scholar is an oxymoron.”

Wurzburger wrote: “This is an existential choice we cannot abdicate to anyone else. . . . In the final analysis, cognitive factors cannot resolve the question whether to accept or reject religious faith; it is a purely subjective decision . . . we cannot escape responsibility for choosing the categories with which we seek to understand our world.”

This reaction did not differentiate between liberal and conservative approaches, between the approach of Agus and Bokser, or between naturalism and supernaturalism. The position of American modern Orthodoxy was not sufficiently nuanced to analyze British Jewry.

E. England – Rabbi Hertz and Herbert Loewe
David Ruderman, the historian of Early Modern Jewry, states that most British Jews knew their own formulation of Judaism only through a massive English translation project, couched in English non-Hebraic terms. This produced their religious attitudes and behaviors, reflective of upper class English Protestants. British Orthodoxy was more academic and open-minded than in the United States and tolerated progressive thought as long as they deferred to the Anglican church- or in this case, the United Synagogue. Therefore, a Reform leaning preacher like Rev Morris Joseph who accepted Biblical criticism and had Reformist views of ritual was tolerated by the United Synagogue as long as he did not make waves.

But what about those that considered themselves Orthodox? Rabbi J.H. Hertz, in his well-known commentary on the Pentateuch, wrote that “Judaism stands or falls with its belief in the historical actuality of the Revelation at Sinai”

However, Herbert Loewe, reader in Semitics at Oxford was in tension with Chief Rabbi Hertz for his acceptance of Biblical criticism, but it did not write him out of Orthodoxy accepted that there was real person Moses who received revelation and was a significant author, but not all of the text is from him. Loewe thinks that the Biblical text was recreated by Josiah after losses of material. Loewe accepted an “inherent revelation” in which great eternal moral values are adapted for their age. In the introduction to a Rabbinic Anthology by his son Raphael, he credits his father with a commitment to the Bible and Orthodoxy not for sentimentality but as the germ of ethical values and theological notions of Rabbinic Judaism.

J. Abelson, leader of a congregation had a similar position and is cited by Jacobs.

F. Cohen and Epstein

Let us turn to the direct antecedent of Jacobs and works that were available in every United Synagogue member congregation.

Abraham Cohen (1887-1957) was the editor of the Soncino Books of the Bible and participated in the Soncino translation of the Talmud and Midrash. He most notably, explained his views in the essay, “The Message of the Bible.” The work demonstrates Cohen’s comprehension of the Bible.

The essay opens with a broad introduction that the Bible is a library of books, heterogeneous, and not speaking one word. The Biblical authors wrote based on their expectations for the times and current events, as well as based on their personal circumstances. What holds all these books together is their “unity of principle” in teaching “the revelation of God’s will as the controlling force in the life of man and laws for the government of the Israelite community.” The Bible provides individual and collective testimonies to the saving power of God. The book blends religion and morality with history

The Bible shows the need for revelation and teaches not only the limitation of human intellect but also the inadequacy of reason for understanding the mysteries of the universe and human living. Cohen follows the natural theology of the early 20th century. The message of scripture does not depend for its vitality on belief in doctrines but “upon its claim to be the communication of God to man.” This revelation was made through four media, nature, direct utterance, indirect intimation, and human experience.”

The first category of revelation includes the natural phenomena of those who know of God’s eternity, wisdom, infinite power, and mercy and leads to the second category of prophets: “To Moses, as well as to Israel, revelation assumed this direct form and in this respect he was an exception…the corpus of religious and ethical teaching and social legislation which he was instrumental in delivering to Israel from God is known as Torah.” Prophets were not just preachers but rather “they had consciousness that they were the spokesmen of God.” Following this, the third category, God is deduced from contemporary events.. The forth category is direct human experience where we sense God.

Cohen rejects the 19th century Protestant Biblical criticism which denigrated Judaism as a tribal legalistic and priestly religion that was rejected by the prophets. He rejects the critics who claim that there was evolution from the primitive Judaism to the developed prophets. Furthermore, he shows that one cannot use the divine name to separate the Pentateuch into authors. Cohen also shows that there are not two voices in the Bible one in favor of priest cult and one against. Yet, Cohen writes of the Garden of Eden that “this allegory framed in language understandable by the primitive mind”

Cohen’s Jewish statement that, “The revelation of God’s will as the controlling force in the life of man […] tThe Bible provides individual and collective testimonies to the saving power of God” is not far from the Anglican-Catholic definition that, “The authentic record of God’s revelation to man and is a revelation valid for all men and all time. In the Bible we have God’s revelation of Himself, His saving activity, and moral demands.”

G. Epstein
Isidore Epstein (1894–1962) was Orthodox rabbi and rabbinical scholar in England the editor of the Soncino English translation of the Babylonian Talmud. Epstein’s major work, The Faith of Judaism, offers a rational exposition of the doctrinal foundations of the Jewish region. Judaism must be founded to “make sense and answer to the rationality which is fundamental to human nature.” And his second allegiance is to the Jewish people in which the author as a “son of a people” must report on the “objective revelation of God in history involving the whole community of Israel. Epstein is dismissive of the recent turn to a religion of humanism, he is dismayed by those Jews who turn to Dewey, Mordechai Kaplan, or Julian Huxley.

The importance of Sinai was to confirm with human eyes the mission of Moses. Sinai gave him authority and thereby it gave authority to the Oral Law throughout the ages. Other prophets are now limited in what they can say and are limited to interpreting God’s word to Moses. Revelation is the foundation of all vital religion because it is needed to assert the existence of personal relationship to God. “If this is true of religion in general, it is at least equally true of the religion of Israel, out of which all higher religions have proceeded.”

Revelation is a psychological experience which implies the inter-penetration of the infinite mind of God and the mind of man.” If there is a personal god then it must be able to find entrance into finite minds. But it remains a mystery as to how and this communication of God does not denote interference into the natural course of things.

Both Cohen and Epstein leave opening in the Sinai Revelation for a human element. The instructors at Jew’s College were similar to the right wing of the American Conservative movement.

H. Louis Jacobs

The question becomes quite simply: why exactly did Jacobs think his views would be accepted?

In 1957, Jacobs was just a little more critical than the later discussed Epstein and Cohen because he rejected natural theology, and acknowledged that parts of the Bible are primitive.“The real significance of the Jewish religion lies in its ascent, in the height which it has reached and maintained, and not in the rudimentary forms out of which it has risen.”

How do we evaluate what is truly Biblical, he maintained that, “[I]it will be asked, if there are higher and lower teachings in the Bible how are we to recognize which are higher and which lower, how are we to distinguish between the eternal and the ephemeral? The answer is, surely, that the distinction is perceived by the human heart and worked out in Jewish tradition.” His views are dependent on sensing God in history; we sense through historical change what is no longer acceptable.

Dayyan Grunfeld’s complaints were not the issue because for example, he underlining Jaocb’s passage about the late date of the book of Daniel, was a position accepted by Epstein and Cohen. Jew’s College was positive historical not Hirschian.

However, between the years 1964 and 1965, Jacob’s writings had taken a turn out of Orthodoxy and began writing passages closer to Jacob Agus, a liberal position even within the American Conservative movement. Now, six years later it the bible a human work and you cannot study Semitics without acknowledging that. In the pages of the Jewish Chronicle, he threw down a gauntlet that if you don’t agree with him you are a fundamentalist, either/or.

Some of these views were already expressed orally since 1958, and he was in conversation with the NY JTSA to become part of their rabbinical faculty. But the influential editor of the Jewish Chronicle, William Frankel who wanted the United Synagogue to be more like the American Conservative movement goaded Jacobs ever to the left.

When Biblical criticism and historical scholarship generally have done their work the picture which emerges with the greatest clarity is of a human work, produced as all other human works are produced and thus amenable to literary analysis and philological investigation, which does not impart anything like infallible information.

Some Reform congregations today tend to hold similar views and in so far as they do are very close to our position. In the United States we would belong to the ranks of the Conservatives.

In discussing difficult biblical passages the rabbi can introduce his congregation to the idea of demythologizing.

By 1965, he already spoke about the difficulty of seeing a divine element in entire parshiot and that we have to grasp the demythologized message of the Bible. He also wanted criticism to be discussed from the pulpit, a position that was rejected by the Conservative movement and still frowned upon even among Reform preachers.

And by 1973, Louis Jacobs agrees with the Reform theologian Jacob Joseph Petuchowski that there was an existential meeting of the Jews and God, a human experience that produced no content. “God did “command” them but not by direct communication – as in the traditional view – but through the historical experiences of the people of Israel… The various propositions are, then, not themselves revelation but are the by-product of revelation.” Bible is primitive work does not offer direct moral guidance. He remained Masorati and was not Reform)

To reconstruct the development of the Genesis narratives is probably impossible now and a strong element of guesswork is involved in any attempted reconstruction. But something of the following would appear to be not too far from the truth. Out of the early myths, tribal movements and ancient traditions, the Genesis narratives were woven and told originally in the form of saga. These traditional stories were eventually put together to form the more or less continuous narrative we have in Genesis as part of the Heilsgeschicht, the sacred history in which God makes His covenant with the Patriarchs and their descendants… The various propositions are, then, not themselves revelation but are the by-product of revelation.

Even when discussing the ethical system of Saadia who considered that in the “revealed Scripture we have the precise details of how ethical norms are to be applied in concrete situations.” Jacobs commented: “But such a solution is not open to anyone who, under the influence of biblical criticism, cannot see the biblical laws as direct divine guidance of this kind.”

Jacob’s ideas were not unfairly rejected as un-Orthodox. And if his ideas were accepted it would not have created a more modern Orthodoxy, rather a British United Synagogue closer to the liberal side of the American Conservative movement. Jacobs was a liberal theologian operating against an Orthodox background.

The reaction to the Jacob’s affair, however, made the more historical approaches of Epstein, Cohen, Hirschenson, and even Loewe fade from the scene. This paper only covers until 1973. It does not discuss anything about today or evaluate contemporary thinkers.

The Orthodox Forum in 2011 was on Orthodoxy and popular culture is about to be published. My article contains much of the material discussed in my blog posts from Fall 2010 and early 2011, such as cruise ship religion and the disneyfication of American religion. The embedding of Orthodoxy in popular culture has changed traditional religion more than all the ideological topics that people debate about. Because of the topic, I intentionally had a good time with the project. This final version is 51 pages! You can print it out as a fitting reading as everyone begins their long weekend of popular culture – BBQ, picnics, swimming, fireworks, and amusement parks. Below are parts of the opening paragraphs and outline.

The Emerging Popular Culture and the Centrist Community-Alan Brill

I have been asked to comment on the role of popular culture in contemporary modern Orthodoxy in light of the current research by social scientists and cultural critics. This paper should serve as an introduction to the current literature on the topic along with a few descriptive observations. That being said, the views in this work should not to be taken as sociological generalizations. A quantified survey would be needed to start the process of analysis.Studies of the approach to popular culture in our current individual communities as well as historical communities in Italy, Eastern Europe, and Germany are a desideratum for showing not just the official ideologies but also actual lived practice.

This paper will ultimately suggest that the changes in society have definitely changed the conceptual framework. Popular culture is considered intrinsic to a particular community, regardless of size, and thus should not be viewed as an external or deviant activity. This notion relates to both high and low culture in complex ways.
1. By stating brief, starting definitions of high, middlebrow, and low culture, there will be a clear distinction between terms.
2. T he contributions of Michel de Certeau, John Fiske, and Gordon Lynch are crucial in the creation of the concept of popular culture. This section explains that Torah is not something separate from popular culture but rather that Torah becomes popular culture, and vice versa.
3. T he contributions of Nancy Ammerman and Skye Jethani show the combination of suburbia, life, and popular culture, thus creating Torah suburbia. If the Centrist community has defined itself as requiring earning in the top 6 percent of U.S. income, then to fulfill one’s “station and its duties” as part of upper-middle-class suburbia, one becomes part of popular culture and consumerism.
4. T he contribution of Pierre Bourdieu to current concepts of social distinction and what it means for the Centrist Torah community. Bourdieu’s followers, namely Annette Lareau and Ann Swidler, offer insight into the upper-middle-class concepts of parenting, schooling, and everyday life.
5. T he biggest change has been in the rise and advancement of technology. We look at generation theory to explain to the older audience the role of the new media for both Generation Y and Generation
6. T here has been a change to culture in our era of postsecularization, globalization, and spirituality. We now say that religion is immanent within society. Charles Taylor and Robert Wuthnow define the theory of secularism as having a religion immanent in one’s own life as a personal “meaning and moral order.” Among the changes are pop culture forms of religion, which serve a dramaturgical function and contribute to the widespread defining and experiencing of religion vis-à-vis music and art.
7. This turn toward meaning and moral order has led to the success of evangelicals and Orthodoxy. This leads to a discussion of Christian rock and Oprah as showing the religious uses of music, TV, and prosperity gospel. Religion itself is part of popular culture and serves the needs of spirituality and certainty.
8. We turn to H. Richard Niebuhr and Christian Smith to answer: How do we conceptualize religion and culture? Has the turn to religion changed our American culture?
9. Concluding observations. What is the relationship between Centrism and popular culture?
10. A personal coda on high culture.

I would like to thank readers for their thoughtful comments.

1. The initial problem I seek to resolve is how to defend the traditional Jewish belief in TMS (Torah min haShamayim), when faced with evidence that appears to contradict it.  Beyond the usual difficulties (challenges to the notion of divine authorship on grounds of erroneous content, questionable morality, and a complicated literary genesis which testifies to evolutionary historical development), I am especially troubled by the very notion of divine revelation as verbal communication – given that language is a distinctly human activity, inevitably rooted in a particular perspective and cultural bias. My solution is to regard belief in revelation as an “as if” statement, a useful fiction (or, in Maimondian terminology, a “necessary truth”) whose purpose is to represent and engender certain attitudes rather than to describe an objective occurrence.  I see this understanding as closely related to views of religion as commitment to a range of doctrines and norms which serve as a cultural-linguistic filter constructing the way we view the world, rather than as an objective account of reality – metaphysical or otherwise.
2. I think that most believers in the past adopted such an attitude unreflectively, understanding belief in TMS simply as loyalty to the Torah and to the way of life that it propagates, without delving into overmuch detail regarding its doctrinal content.  However, when such an attitude is adopted consciously as a blanket response to new loss of innocence, conducting day to day life according to its guidelines could be more problematic.  This has driven me to develop a theory of revelation (as unfolding through time and the development of human understanding) and a picture of God (as both immanent and transcendent) that might counteract such difficulties, by conflating the dichotomy between divine reality and human input.
3. In such a view, questions such as that of Joebug (“why would God structure aII world with ongoing revelation based on an imperfect morality?  Why not just start with good ethics to begin with?”) are inappropriate.  The whole picture of God is of process, rather than personalist, so that questions of intent and motive are out of place, except when speaking on a certain level of mitzidenu.
4. As I see it, the main critique of my position, expressed by a variety of posters, is that I am trying to dance at too many weddings at once.  In the eyes of such critics, I would do far better adopting an approach of bifurcation, as represented by the later Wittgenstein’s language game theory, recognizing that religious discourse has its own rules, and is therefore immune to questions raised by scientific inquiry.
5. The truth of the matter is that I start out with this position. The sub-title of the paper I am writing on the topic (“Orthodoxy and the Challenge of Modern Biblical Criticism”) is: “Some Notes on the Importance of Asking the Right Question”.  This is because I begin with the same position as Brian Klug, who – in the wake of the later Wittgenstein – seeks to emphasize that the meaning of belief in a scientific and religious context is not the same.  In the first instance, it is a statement based on empiric evidence.  In the second, it is a profession of allegiance and commitment.  
   But, as opposed to Evanston Jew’s analogy, I do not see the two realms as separate, self-contained locations speaking different languages, with only high traveling costs as the problem.  A more appropriate analogy is a Jewish ghetto, situated alongside other distinctive communities, within a larger municipal framework.  Ghetto members speak their own language amongst themselves, but are often called upon to adopt a more universal tongue when engaging with their neighbors. The language of the neighbors also seeps into ghetto territory and infiltrates their native tongue.  Because of such  overlaps, which intensify considerably in an age of increased mobility and globalization, Evanston Jew’s (and Josh Stadlan’s?) suggestion that we “try to patch together an overriding picture that will clarify our frequently conflicting intuitions” into some form of “reflective equilibrium” simply by adopting different rules of inference for religious and secular worlds can only go so far. (And as an aside to Josh Stadlan: I have no more problem than you do with “suggesting that certain parts of the Bible were originally political polemics, etc.”, and only  retroactively appropriated as d’var Hashem, but I would certainly be interested in hearing more of your take on the matter).
6. Another recurring criticism of my views is their impenetrability.  I sympathize with objections to use of jargon, and must admit that I found similar difficulty in deciphering the meaning of some of my critics, so I apologize if I have fallen into the same trap.  I also realize the limits of an over-sophisticated theology.  But although philosophical speculation is not the religious bread and butter of most believers, I do believe that its general thrust is being developed intuitively on the ground, where the true destiny of any theology is really determined.  This can be discerned, for example, in an increased interest in mysticism, in the interconnected nature of all that exists, and in a variety of spirituality that is unmediated by reason and more formal institutional structures.
7. In response to Chavrusamatch – my decision whether to interpret revelation, as well as other miraculous events of the exodus literally or metaphorically is one that is determined exclusively by scientific evidence and not by doctrine.  This policy is close to that of the medieval rationalists, who – in the words of Maimonides – “try to reconcile the Law and reason, and wherever possible consider all things as of the natural order” – succumbing “only when something is explicitly identified as a miracle, and reinterpretation of it cannot be accommodated” (Ma-amar tehiyat hametim).  But I am even more sympathetic with the approach of R. Kook who contends that as the world progresses, what was previously defined as miracle now becomes nature, with new miraculous horizons taking their place, and his rather casual response to the question of limits.  When asked just how far non literal interpretations can be extended, he suggests leaving the answer to this question to the “clear sense of the nation” which “finds its paths not in isolated bits of evidence, but in general impressions”.
8. As for objections to the claim that my theological approach relies only on later thinkers, I disagree.  True, the allegorical interpretation to the doctrine of Tzimtzum is a recent development from the 17^th century onwards, but suggestions regarding the fluid nature of Torah, the subjectivity of human perceptions of God and His word (including that of Moshe Rabbenu), the attunement of Torah to history, and even cognizance of the constructive nature of religious belief, can be traced from Hazal onwards (for more detailed discussion, see chapter 10 of my book: Expanding the Palace of Torah). But I also do not believe that we are utterly bound by precedent in developing new ideas. As I have already stated, reference to Tzimtzum shelo k’peshuto does not mandate acceptance of kabbalistic metaphysics lock, stock and barrel.  Issues of realism versus non-realism are a perennial philosophical theme, and have assumed many forms.  Nevertheless, the Misnagdic and Hassidic concept of layered levels of consciousness that indicate layered levels of reality is instructive.
9. Questions were raised regarding the repercussions of a cumulative view of revelation on traditional Talmud Torah.  I contend that accepting the revelation at Sinai as a foundational myth rather than a historical fact does nothing to diminish its formal role as the foundation for any subsequent interpretive activity.  I admit that a cumulative view is more hospitable to innovation, rejecting positivist efforts to establish THE definitive view of Torah on any particular issue.  But such open-endedness is still committed to the centrality of the Torah text and to working with the traditional categories and methods of the past, even as these are altered by new contexts.
10. Another serious question raised by a view of revelation as humanly determined (i.e., as dependent upon human recognition rather than a divine bang on the head) is that of criteria – i.e., how do I adjudicate between competing truth claims?  Ostensibly, a simple believer can rely on the unequivocal truth of his religious tradition as the direct word of God, whereas I can only appeal to the grip that its picture has upon me and my identity.  But I must point out that even the simple believer’s identification of TMS as an inescapable truth is a subjective one that could have been otherwise.  The only solution to relativism or subjectivism, as has been suggested, is pragmatic – but a pragmatism that is informed by a willingness to learn from other points of view and to incorporate these, when necessary, into one’s own perspective.
11. In response to SK, I daresay the willingness of most baalei Teshuva to change their pre-Orthodox personal convictions regarding ethical behavior has more to do with an attraction to the Orthodox lifestyle and what it offers than with any purportedly objective argument, and it is this that leads them to view Torah as truth.

As I mention previously on this blog, I have in my files almost two years of drafts, or at least outlines, of unfinished blog posts. One of them was on the book by Rabbi David Stav on popular culture, Bein Hazemanim (Yediot Aharonot, 2012). At the time of its publishing, I was working on my Orthodox Forum article on popular culture but it was not germane to my presentation. However, as of late, Rabbi Stav’s views on popular culture have come to a broader audience through the opposition to his allowing Orthodox Jews to see films. Gasp!

 Bein Hazemanim, released a year ago, frames the question as what to do with one’s leisure time. The goal is to reduce the growing gap between Torah and routine activities of the public. Modern life is characterized by abundance of leisure relative to previous generations, and it is filled with patterns of cultural and entertainment which are not expressed in “genuine” religious literature. How does one relax after work, spend vacations and go for family outing? The book was reviewed by all major Israeli papers and as they all noted in unison, that there was a greater promise of offering answers to bigger questions that were not answered such as choosing between going to South America or India after the army, the worlds of art and literature, the role of being a sports fan, or which Mp3’s should be on one’s phone? The Rabbinic approbations treated the very questions of leisure as not ideal (bedieved), only for those who could not live the ideal life, so the content of the book was much less than the promise. The tone was that unless we permit certain things, the dam won’t hold.

The opening of the book offers the dichotomy of extremes, either not wasting any time because of bitul Torah as opposed to the Talmudic statement that the recitation of the Shema could serve as one entire obligation to study Torah. Leisure is presented as the down time from Torah study, or more plainly as the human need for relaxation and the human tendency to play. Each chapter offers a form of leisure,  such as reading, art, sports, hiking, movies and theater,  treated by his collection of Biblical verses and followed by responsa. For example, music is discussed by its genealogy to Yuval in Genesis, music playing in the temple, Simchat, Beit Hashoeva, and then to modern sources. Each topic includes both lenient and strict sources but returns to the original approach, showing recreational and leisure are not improper in themselves. The book concludes with a discussion of tzedakah and volunteering one’s time for chessed.

Here are some of Rabbi Stav’s bottom lines: one can attend a non-religious wedding but no mixed dancing, you can play basketball without tzizit, you may hit a friend in a wrestling match, you can swim without a kippah, and talk about Torah in the pool. You can also do yoga (but not Transcendental Meditation), are allowed to read newspapers, and to watch sports competitions.  The ostensive reason for opposition to Rabbi Stav is that he states that one can watch movies as long as you close your eyes at the “problematic scenes.”  (page 208). He does not allow one to watch a female singer on TV. He also allows all classical music even religious music such as masses and requiems, expanding Rav Lichtenstein’s leniency. (Chaim Navon offers a positive review of the work as a concise halakhic work in line with other Religious Zionist works.)

The short review in Ynet (h/t Menachem Mendel) states the Religious Zionist problem with the book in succinct terms.

My problem with the book is that […] this ship has sailed long ago. Most of the Religious – National do not looking for permits to see movies or listen to music. In contrast, the ultra-Orthodox community, at least outwardly, does not admit that they consume Western culture, prohibition or permission.

Rabbi Stav is rabbi for the Ezra youth movement founded in the spirit of Hirsch’s Torah and Derech Eretz. Rabbi Hirsch did not do these contortions to permit Beethoven, Schiller, and hiking the alps. He had a vision of an integrated culture. More directly: Did anyone in Bnai Akiva seek permission to listen to Shlomo Artzi or to hike the trails of Israel?

The review in the Religious Zionist newspaper, Makor Rishon, was a full-fledged rejection of the book as irrelevant religious leadership.  The review written by Dr. Roni Shweka, whose PhD is in Talmudic Studies and who is a member of The Friedberg Geniza Project Computerization Unit and author of New Song: Essays on the Formation of Israeli Rock (Carmel, 2011), delivers a manifesto on the role of culture and Religious Zionism.

Right from start, Shweka informs us that, “In my opinion the book failed in this goal. The book sins in its lack of understanding of the challenge which it seeks to answer, and as a result he answers irrelevant questions” that are not our modern questions. “In many cases, the author seems to be avoiding direct dealing with the matter in question, either by escaping into quotes from classical halakhic literature[…]” that are at best vague instructions, restating the obvious and at worst missing any content. “In short, those who seek guidance and religious perspective in relation to modern culture will not find it in the book”

Shweka asks that if a student came to him for guidance on balancing Torah study, his social life, college, and leisure would Rabbi Stav open the case books of law or will talk with the embarrassed boy and try to figure out where his heart tends, where are his qualifications and on what path will he have the most success to himself, the community, his spiritual personality, and his professional future? Most of these questions are about balance, personality formation, maturation. Since the reviewer is left to assume that Rabbi Stav would approach it that way in person, one cannot help but question the minimalist formalism of the book.

Shweka finds some of the material unnecessary and embarrassing. For example, if someone want to know what to do after the army, then what is the connection between the punishment of Cain to wander, the diversification of tongues or Patriarch Isaac walking in the field with a question about should one hike in Nahal Yehudah, motorbike in the Golan, visit the classic cities of Europe, or do a three-month trip to the Far East? In a similar view, he asks, seriously, what is the connection between Jacob wrestling with the angel and our modern problems in “Sport and physical culture?”

Rabbi Stav finds Rav Kook innovative because of Kook’s belief that melancholy, ill patients or those with a sad heart could walk occasionally. Shweka in turn asks if any of us seek a responsa for permission to take a long walk. Each form of leisure is shown to contribute to the health and peace of mind through the rest and relaxation needed from time to time. The Sages treated walks favorably.

Sweka thinks that this approach reveals a lack of understanding about modern culture, its social contexts, and what roles and needs it fills. Talking a relaxing walk is the paradigm, sports are also relaxing to watch but there is no recognition of the culture of sports its violence or ethos. Literature is relaxing but no discussion of the edifying and cultural role of literature, which is so prevalent in American discussions.

With regards to music, he mentions classical and folk music, both of which he permits. And he treats the rest- jazz, rock, rhythm and blues- as “just songs”? Shweka notes that “music in general and rock culture in particular are one of the most dominant forces shaping Western society” This would include “The most significant social revolutions in the second half of the twentieth century, including the anti – war and the feminist movement, associated with the musical culture that defined a generation. All these energies were just songs?”

Shweka’s review becomes a manifesto when he declares that the book is still written as if it is 1904 when Rav Kook wanted the secular Israeli artist and novelist to become to become part of the holy religious renewal. Rav Kook saw secular literature as heresy, hence the need for orthodox literature. However, today our lives and thoughts are immersed in literature and film. And more importantly, we now recognize that the literary impulse is fundamentally beyond the closed religious world. Even the novels of Agnon, Rav Sabato, or even Emunah Elon are based on the categories of Western aesthetics, the emptying of certainty and dogma, and a personal psychological perspective. Hence, the question of which movies and novels have a positive or negative content does not need rabbis but aesthetic education. The chapters should not have been on leisure activities but on the nature and context of the formation of cultural understanding and aesthetic sophistication (Makor Rishon, 10/08/2012) .

In contrast, Haaretz gave the book to the Haredi journalist David Zoldan, one of the first graduates of the new Nahal Haredi program and author of The Fate of the Haredim, who castigates the book from the Haredi perspective.For Zoldan, the book’s approach is characteristic of the Beit Midrash “Tzohar,” which is basically the traditional approach of religious Zionism through the ages, in that it often prefers human laws over the laws of the Torah.”

Many of the questions related to leisure culture arose only in recent years mainly due to technological development. But Zoldan thinks that Rabbi Stav has brushed away problems by creating new clear lines. If there are problems with modesty, then his solutions are too easy: you can allow the viewing of the film and just close your eyes at the problematic scenes.

For Zoldan, Stav’s malicious hand changes the law and threatens to destroy the Jewish tradition.Conversely, Zoldan thinks that there will be those, especially traditional or secular Jews who will welcome this book.

But these three book reviews are  not where the story ends; popular culture has become the fault line in a much bigger cultural war. In 1997, Rabbi Zvi Tau led a schism in the Merkaz world against the integration of a teachers college that used Western pedagogy and basic geography. Rabbi Tau is completely anti-Western culture and with the return to the land, he believes religious Jews should cease to have any connection to Western culture. He considers Western culture the same as the pagan Amorites that needed to be driven from the land. He thinks we are blinded by west – the same way we were blinded by communism. Rabbi Tau also believes that life is entirely about the collective and the family unit, while individualism is Western showing the West’s selfish, greedy, and cruel nature.

Rabbi Stav’s attempt as head of Tzohar at allowing Western culture, leisure, and individualism cuts at the core of Rav Tau’s approach. Much of the opposition to Rabbi Stav comes from the followers of Rabbi Tau as a form of cultural war. At the same time, these followers of Rabbi Tau fear a schism in Religious Zionism if a Chief Rabbi would be in favor of Western culture such as higher education, individualism, and leisure. Such a Chief Rabbi would situates them as the polar opposite of the rabbinate, one side seeking integration with western culture and the other side driving out Western culture. A Merkaz Harav or Haredi Chief Rabbi would keep the broad status quo in Religious Zionism because they would be pragmatic and not be intrinsically in favor or opposed to Western culture.

This cultural split between Rabbis Stav and Tau goes back 30 years to when the senior Rabbi Tau asked his students at Merkaz Harav to interfere with the concert where they played Handel’s Messiah. The then 23-year-old Rabbi Stav said this was not the way to act and was not allowed to attend further classes by Rabbi Tau.

Currently, the followers of Rabbi Tau inconceivable that a candidate for the chief rabbinate admits to having gone to movies and to having read novels with racy graphic scenes such as the Israeli author Yochi Brandes’  Melakhim III and “haPardes shel Akiva.” On the tension of the students of Rav Tau and Rav Stav- see here   And see the discussion at these two blog posts about the tension- Rav Tzair and Minim. Here’s a general interview with Rabbi Stav on other topics.

Finally, Rav Ovadiah Yosef, who has publicly  opposed and insulted Rabbi Stav, is a big fan of the female Egyptian vocalist Umm Kulthum and permits listening to recordings of female singers; he only forbids the attendance at their live concerts. (Even Bob Dylan thought she was great, really great!) The press cites that he objects entirely to Rabbi Stav’s watching films (and one recent article adds that he objects to Rabbi Stav’s seeing no problem with any and all touching of women when not for affection).  Raising the question of how does one adjudicate between radio and cinema. Is it hearing as opposed to seeing?

I am less interested in politics and want to return to the cultural questions which our overtaking our era.  In America, we have greater use of pop culture even from the pulpit. It fills our lives and serves as Torah for many Orthodox rabbis for whom anything used to serve Torah is OK. The issue will keep coming up and may lead to division in the future.  In the meantime, you may want to listen to this wonderful NPR documentary about Umm Kulthum, especially since we do not even know who is Rabbi Stav’s favorite pop singer.

Brian Klug is a Senior Research Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy at St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford and a member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University. Many years ago he attended Hasmonean and after the Jacobs crisis his family switched congregations from the New West End Synagogue to the New London synagogue to follow Jacobs.

Nevertheless, Klug rejects Jacobs as having his wires crossed for asking what: Do we have Reason to Believe? Reason and belief are two separate categories. Alternately, scientific belief is based on evidence and religious belief is based on the role it has in my life. (This approach of two separate realms used to be fairly common in Orthodox circles, see the followers of Rabbi Isaac Breuer, or more recently Rabbis Sol Roth or Prof Shalom Rosenberg.)

The evidence based fields of science and history have nothing in common with an affirmation of faith. The problem of the fundamentalist is not that he won’t use modern science to understand sacred texts but that they think the texts are scientific and offer scientific truth. In Klug’s approach based on Wittgenstein, religious statements are entirely outside the realm of evidence. (There are grey cases beyond the scope of this paper. Klug’s approach should not be confused with the Wittgenstein Fideism of thinkers such as D. Z. Phillips. For those seeking introductions to the topic see here and here.)

Is Torah from Heaven like crediting God with the naturalistic production of bread in hamotzei or is it like the miraculous manna? Do we focus on the “from” in the phrase and try and figure out a more naturalistic process of the Divine entering the human, or do we focus on “heaven” and ask what Heaven means in our lives?

GRAMMAR FROM HEAVEN: THE LANGUAGE OF REVELATION IN LIGHT OF WITTGENSTEIN (Selected paragraphs from paper)
Brian Klug  St Benet’s Hall Oxford

The Section Heading are not in the Original and were added to aid in mobile reading.

Reason and Belief –Empirical questions or grandeur and power

But when [Jacobs] avers that “belief in God is entirely reasonable”, I feel as if wires are being crossed. ‘Reasonable’ and ‘belief in God’ are not, for me, phrases that can be uttered in the same  breath. If it were a matter of reasonableness, then belief in God would be hostage to ‘the facts’; for what appears reasonable at one time can seem unreasonable at another in the light of new information. It would be like believing that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. Given our current state of knowledge, rational people disagree about this: some find the idea plausible, some think it is ridiculous and some suspend judgment. If  one day a space probe discovered a washing machine on another planet, then the question  would have to be revisited. And if belief in God were on the same footing it would, as it were, extinguish the fire of belief. (Instead of fire, belief would be like a pair of scales, for reasonableness is about the balance of probabilities.) By the same token, if belief in  revelation – in the doctrine of Torah from heaven – is held to be merely ‘reasonable’,  then eo ipso it loses its grandeur and does not retain its ‘ancient vigour and power’.

I am with Jacobs completely when he says boldly: “We refuse to accept that the only choice  before us is the stark one of either rejecting all modern knowledge and scholarship or rejecting belief. We believe that we can have both.” But on what terms? What are the terms of this accommodation?

If Torah had this ‘meaning and resonance’ for [Jacobs], it implies that the doctrine retained its grandeur, its ‘ancient vigour and power’, for him too. In which case the question becomes this: Does his own solution to his own conundrum – his reinterpretation of the doctrine – possess these qualities of grandeur, vigour and power? I am not convinced that it can. Not that I speak as a ‘fundamentalist’ – as someone  with a ‘pre-scientific attitude’.

Location of the Solution

[Louis] Jacobs’ solution is to reinterpret the preposition: he homes in on the ‘min’ or ‘from’: “In the light of modern knowledge,” he says, “the ‘from’ in the doctrine that the Torah is from Heaven … has to be understood in terms of divine-human co-operation”. Citing the late American Jewish scholar Jakob Petuchowski, he draws a parallel with hamotzi, the blessing over bread: when we say that God ‘brings forth bread from the earth’, we do not mean “that God brings bread ready-made or ready-sliced from the ground, but that He does so through the labours of the farmers, the bakers, and the distributors”. Similarly, to say that Torah is from Heaven is to say that God reveals himself through the labours of the prophets, the rabbis and the Jewish people as a whole. In short: “The Torah is still God-given if the ‘giving’ is seen to take place through the historical experiences of the Jewish people in its long quest for God.”

If [many focus on]  on ‘Torah’ and Jacobs on ‘from’, it is ‘heaven’ that catches my ear. What does it mean to attribute a book or text to heaven? What sense does it make? What difference does it make to the status of a piece of writing on earth when we ascribe it to heaven? Of course, to put the question this way is already to have in hand a distinction between heaven and earth. It therefore presupposes another question: How does the word ‘heavenly’ inflect the word ‘earthly’? What does it do to our sense of the mundane when we see the world as sublunary? For suddenly our whole point of view has changed. Wittgenstein touches on this change of point of view when he reflects on the difficulty  he has in believing in the resurrection of Christ. “I cannot call him Lord,” he says. Why not? Because, he says, “I do not believe that he will come to judge me; because that says nothing to me”. Then what would it take to enable him to believe in the resurrection? His answer is complex but I shall cut to the quick. “[T]his can only come about,” he says, “if you no longer support yourself on this earth but suspend yourself from heaven. Then everything is changed and it is ‘no wonder’ if you can then do what now you cannot do”.

It might seem paradoxical to refer to the resurrection of Christ at a seminar in Jewish Studies and in the context of a discussion of Torah min HaShamayim. But Wittgenstein’s reflection is as good an entrée as I can think of to the body of my paper. For what I would like to suggest, in a similar vein to Wittgenstein, is this: everything is changed when you see Torah not as the product of earth but of heaven. And this is where or why the analogy with hamotzi breaks down. It is one thing for bread to be brought forth from the earth, another for Torah to be given from heaven. The shift of location changes everything; and this change is as great as the difference between a merely reasonable belief and a belief that possesses the grandeur, the vigour and the power required for ‘a basic article of Jewish faith’.

What is Belief? What is the Difference between Scientific and Religious Belief?

Take the word ‘belief’. Belief in Torah from heaven is a belief. So is belief in the ‘big bang’. But does ‘belief’ operate in the same way in both cases? (Are the language games the same?) “In a religious discourse,” said Wittgenstein in the first of three lectures on religious belief that he gave in 1938, “we use such expressions as: ‘I believe that so and so will happen,’ and use them differently to the way in which we use them in science.” The example he discusses is belief in the Last Judgment:

Suppose, for instance, we knew people who foresaw the future; make forecasts for years and years ahead; and they described some sort of a Judgement Day. Queerly enough, even if there were such a thing, and even if it were more convincing than I have described, belief in this happening wouldn’t be at all a religious belief.

Similarly, suppose Apple invented an electronic device for ‘post-seeing’ the past, giving access to events that took place years and years ago… And suppose someone using this device sets the dial for the 6th of Sivan in the year 2448 from the day of creation (1313 BCE), seven weeks after the Children of Israel left Egypt.

On the monitor of this device, after a degree of  crackling that sounds like thunder and looks like lightening, a scene comes into focus of an entire people gathered at the base of a mountain in the wilderness of Sinai. A dark cloud sits on the summit and a booming voice can be heard from on high, enunciating commandments. Strangely enough (Wittgenstein would say), even if there were such a device, and even if the images on the screen were more  convincing than I have described, belief in this epiphany – belief that Torah was given from heaven – would not be a religious belief.

Then what makes a belief religious? “It appears to me,” wrote Wittgenstein in 1947, “as though a religious belief could only be something like passionately committing oneself to a system of coordinates. Hence, although it’s belief, it is really a way of living, or a way of judging life.” The point is that this is what the word ‘belief’ does when the context of its use is religious rather than scientific or Wissenschaftlich. It does not  indicate a process of weighing evidence and drawing a conclusion. What it indicates is a commitment, a commitment that shows in the life of the believer: in the way they think and in their whole approach to life. So, getting back to the example of the Last Judgment, Wittgenstein imagines someone who has “what you might call an unshakeable belief” and comments: “It will show not by reasoning or by appeal to ordinary grounds for belief, but rather by regulating for all in his life.”

In this sense of ‘belief’, what Wittgenstein says about Christianity applies equally to Judaism: Christianity is not based on a historical truth, but presents us with a (historical) narrative & says: now believe! But not believe this report with the belief that is appropriate to a historical report, – but rather: believe, through thick & thin & you can do this only as the outcome of a life. Here you have a message! – don’t treat it as you would another historical message! Make a quite different place for it in your life. – There is no paradox about that! By the same token, there is nothing paradoxical about disbelieving the historical claim that the Torah was given to Moses from heaven – what would it even mean to believe this? – and believing it as a point of faith. This is a measure of the difference in meaning between ‘believe’ and ‘believe’ – a difference in the work being done – when the same word is used in these two different contexts. In light of Wittgenstein, we can say that the doctrine of Torah from heaven makes the following demand on us: embrace the idea with a passion – ‘believe, through thick & thin’ – or leave it be, but don’t ask for the evidence. It is not a hypothesis or theory.

Louis Jacob’s Mistake as Shatnez

Which brings me back to the question that I posed in the first section of the paper:  What are the terms of accommodation between the demands of Wissenschaft and faith?  Jacobs rejects the ‘traditional view’ of the doctrine of Torah from heaven on the grounds  that it is “contrary to the facts of history”. His new interpretation is intended to allow for the selfsame facts. But, if we approach this in light of the passage I have just quoted from Wittgenstein, we can say that the trouble with the ‘fundamentalist’ view is that it puts the doctrine in the wrong place. It puts it in the same place as a historical claim. Having done this, it then compounds the felony by refusing to let the doctrine be judged by historical criteria.

This is irrational and indefensible: Jacobs is quite right about this. But recall his definition of a fundamentalist in the Jewish context: a “Jew who persists in maintaining a pre-scientific attitude”. This suggests that the fundamental error of the fundamentalist lies in the second false move: rejecting the established criteria for judging claims about history. Whereas, in light of Wittgenstein, we can say that the fundamental error of the fundamentalist lies in the first: putting the doctrine of Torah from heaven into the box called ‘history’. For this is the wrong place for it. The way to correct this error is not to apply historical criteria in reinterpreting the doctrine – Jacobs’ approach – but to make quite a different place for it in the life of the believer. It is tempting (though too glib) to say that the trouble with the ‘traditional view’ is not that it is pre-scientific but that it is not post-scientific. But I did not say that.

“The Torah did not simply drop down from heaven” says Jacobs. He adds: “it has had  a history.”What I feel about this statement is that it is a hybrid, a kind of conceptual shatnez (a garment woven from wool and linen (Deut. 22:11)). No doubt, the text of the  book or books that we call ‘the Torah’ has been written over time (though the precise story of their writing is a matter of scholarly dispute). But viewed as the word of God, the Torah is eternal and cannot have a history.

How to view the traditional picture of Torah from Heaven

As I mentioned at the beginning of the paper, Jacobs recognises that “the traditional picture”, in which the Torah did, more or less, drop from heaven into Moses’ lap, “has grandeur and power”. But he thinks it has to go. But does it? “What am I believing in when I believe that men have souls?” asks Wittgenstein in the Investigations. There is, he says, “a picture in the foreground, but the sense lies far in the background; that is, the application of the picture is not easy to survey” (par. 422). He does not take issue with the picture per se; the issue he raises is about its sense, its use. As he remarks two paragraphs later: “The picture is there; and I do not dispute its correctness. But what is its application?” (par. 424).

When I read Jacobs, when I consider his trenchant critique of the position that he calls fundamentalist, the position that digs its heels in when confronted with ‘the facts of history’, I find that this is the question that arises for me. Not: Is the picture (the traditional picture of Torah given from on high) correct? But: What is its application? This means: How does it manifest itself in the life of the believer? For it is there, in the fray of life, that it gets its sense. And there might not be any other way of expressing what it expresses.

I shall conclude with a brief remark about the other side of the doctrine of Torah from heaven: Torah to earth; in other words, what it means to receive it from heaven. Earlier, I mentioned that Jacobs draws a parallel with hamotzi, the blessing over bread, which God ‘brings forth from the earth’. But I prefer a parallel with manna, the mysterious substance that sustained the Israelites in their wanderings through the wilderness, the food that fell from the skies. Manna was from heaven but the people had to gather it. The difference being that with the Torah there is no end to gathering its meaning. This, when you stop to think about it, is part of the weight of the doctrine of Torah min HaShamayim. (Words from heaven never settle on the page.) Which is why no thoughtful believer – no one who embraces the ‘traditional picture’ in all its majesty – could possibly be a fundamentalist.

Tamar Ross is developing a theory of revelation in which she wants to maintain the full drama of Torah life with its total devotion to living the Torah life yet at the same time to allow for the possibility of accepting the findings of Biblical criticism.

We have been working on this interview since January. Her approach uses an internal dialogue with other positions so neither the questions nor the answers in this post reflect my thinking in any way.

Ross’s theory is developed through her rejection of what she sees as a widespread but inadequate solution. The rejected solution is to live with consciousness of the fall from naiveté, continuing to live as if the Torah and Torah from Sinai are true, without any change in the conception of God and revelation. Ross finds the self-aware “as if” solution problematic, because such self -consciousness may cool our devotion and commitment. Secondly, we are living the falsehood of maintaining an inadequate and wholly supernatural metaphysics.

Ross’s solution is an understanding of revelation that blurs the line between God and human input, or the natural and the supernatural.  If we accept the allegorical interpretation of tzimzum as a paradigm, as presented in works like Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin’s Nefesh Hahayim and the writings of R. Shneur Zalman of Ladi, God is from His perspective (mitzido) an all-embracing monolithic unity. Hence revelation as an act of communication between two entities is, for Ross, entirely from our perspective (mizidanu).  She is attracted to Rav Kook’s model of God and creation that strives to meld the two perspectives by suggesting that from our point of view, God without creation, lacks the virtue of lack, which allows for dynamism, free will and the striving for perfection; He therefore requires creation and its upward striving in order to add the virtue of perfectibility (Hishtalmut) to the quality of perfection. This is the basis for Rav Kook’s interest in the evolution of human understanding and the universe at large as progressing to ever more sublime divine heights.

What is your approach to resolving the issues raised by Biblical Criticism?

I contend that it is still possible to maintain belief in the divinity of the Torah despite the modern critiques by breaking down the strict dichotomy between divine speech and natural historic process.  This task is facilitated by re-appropriating three assumptions that already have their basis in tradition.

 The first assumption I draw upon is that if the Torah is to bear a message for all generations, its revelation must be a cumulative process: a dynamic unfolding that reveals its ultimate significance only through time.

The second assumption is that God’s message is not expressed through the reverberation of vocal chords (not His, nor those of a “created voice” as some medieval commentators suggested in order to avoid the problem of anthropomorphic visions of God), but rather through the rabbinical interpretation of the texts, which may or may not be accompanied by an evolution in human understanding, and through the mouthpiece of history, a form of ongoing revelation.

The third assumption (supported by contemporary hermeneutic theory) is that although successive hearings of God’s Torah sometimes appear to contradict His original message, that message is never totally replaced, because on a formal level the original Sinaitic revelation always remains the primary cultural-linguistic filter through which these new deviations are received and understood. By blurring distinctions between the natural and the supernatural, the finite and the infinite, I contended that it is possible to relate to the Torah as a divine document without being bound to untenable notions regarding the nature of God and His methods of communication, or denying the role of human involvement and of historical process. Such an understanding allows the religiously committed to understand that the Torah can be totally human and totally divine at one and the same time.

The upshot is a process theology which allows for an ever evolving human view of the Divine. This approach, according to Ross, need not cool religious passion because there is no bifurcation of secular and religious understandings of the Torah.  All striving for perfection is part of the unfolding of God’s will.  In addition, since human activity is God’s instrument then there is no need for problematic supernatural metaphysics.

[AB- I am not sure to whom this theory would appeal. If one accepts the kabbalah as a solution, then one is Haredi and if one treats it as naturalistic metaphor then one is quite liberal. I am more than uncomfortable. Is it just reinventing the liberal solution with a Kabbalistic divine?]

1] What should I do after learning about Biblical Criticism?     Biblical criticism forces us to evolve and understand revelation in a more nuanced fashion. We don’t necessarily negate biblical criticism but neither do we substitute it for Talmud Torah. We continue teaching Torah in the traditional manner but with a greater appreciation for its open-ended character, in accordance with a more refined understanding of revelation.

2] What is this refined understanding of revelation?                  Accepting a natural sense of God and revelation. God is not merely transcendent but also immanent in the interpretive responses of humanity.

3] Isn’t this subjective? No, because it rejects the sharp distinction between God and human perception, between mitzideinu and mitzido.

4] How is this different from Mordechai Kaplan’s naturalism?           It preserves the idea of a supernatural metaphysical God, and the notion of divine perfectibility.  The more naturalistic aspects of my view of revelation also draw much more solidly on traditional Jewish sources from Rabbinics until today. [AB- that’s it?]

5] How can we still accept a metaphysical God? How can we still have metaphysics after the naturalistic critiques? By blurring the line between God and the universe and understanding the term “God” as ultimately striving to capture that monolithic unity which is beyond definition.

6] How is this better than the liberal supernaturalism of Louis Jacobs? Jacobs may well have been groping towards a theology of the sort I am suggesting.  In the epilogue to his 4th edition of We have Reason to Believe he contends that people have been mistaken when they understood him as suggesting that we can naively mark some passages in the Torah as divine and others as human.  Nevertheless he did regard some passages as more noble than others, so that he did not see all as equally binding.   My approach accepts the Torah in its entirety as the expression of God’s unfolding in history, and revelation as immanent in human activity. Even passages in the Torah which appear problematic to us today, and the historical context which triggers our discontent and moves us to seek new interpretations, are part of that process.

7] If the Torah was not given in the traditional way, then why choose Torah over Shakespeare or Buddhism? This is the cultural-linguistic system into which we were born and were educated.  In light of its remarkable spiritual legacy and resilience, we view it as offering a compelling prescription for life, ethics, and recognition of a spiritual dimension of reality beyond the everyday.

8] Isn’t your approach close to Spinoza with an immanent deity and a naturalistic revelation? Yes, in some respects.  But it allows me to still maintain the value of a theistic perception as an indispensable “chamber and reception hall” (as R. Kook puts it) to Spinoza’s vision of ultimate unity, along with the traditional understanding of Torah practice and study based on the halakhic model of avodat Hashem.

9] What is the role of history as a process? God from His perspective (mitzido) is an eternal undifferentiated unity, but from our perspective (mitzidenu) He unfolds immanently in time through historical development and human agency. The world is evolutionary and embellishes upon God’s infinity in the never-ending unfolding of a more intricate and particularized reality.

10] What do you think of the various non-foundational solutions for the problem of revelation including treating it as myth or treating the text “as if” true, or Wittgenstein’s linguistic understanding of religious belief?

Treating the traditional account of biblical revelation as a foundational myth can justly be taken as the apologetic of all apologetics, a type of meta-solution broad enough to cover even the most general and all-pervasive critique regarding the “truth” of Jewish dogma. Since the function of myths is not strictly cognitive, but rather to create a more elusive sensibility or way of relating to the world, it is far more important to live your life “as if” they are true than to uphold their propositional content. However, people adopting the “myth” approach have generally also been associated with the approach of liberal-supernatural theology (the Torah is part human and part divine) and so they tend to see this solution as a license for picking and choosing which elements to take and which to reject.

Jews who relate to traditional accounts of revelation and other biblical content in a cultural-linguistic context don’t ask what such statements convey or how factually accurate they are in mirroring our common-sense view of reality, but rather what is their function in the activities and world view of the speaker. Their function is primarily to act as props for the ritual practice and speech of a particular religion. Any weakening of arguments that link the authority of the halakhah with infallible doctrinal claims would appear to lead to an ultimate breakdown of the halakhah itself. As Judaic scholar Martin Jaffee has aptly phrased it: “Jewish practice without grounding in the divine has no more compelling a claim to the religious attention of Jews than the Code of Hammurabi.”

11] Instead of the misleading undertone of myth as something possibly false, you propose that assertion of faith is commitment to a particular language game. What do you mean by this?

The process of converting an unbeliever into a believer on this view resembles the teaching of a language, not because religion itself is a language, but because it functions as one, in helping us internalize views and acquire skills which have already been formulated and developed by others. When we acquire the knack for its conceptual syntax, we begin to intuitively know how to use its symbols in a manner that suits its internal logic. The final product of the religious learning process is not meant to be an authoritative list of religious dogmas or an ideal moral system, but rather implied or suggestive directives as to how to think about God and to conduct one’s life in accordance with these thoughts.

In a best case scenario, cultural-linguistic directives become second nature, and fulfill an essential role in fashioning the life of the believer. The purpose of religious discourse is not substantive (referring to a particular truth) but rather constitutive or regulative – offering us an entire universe of discourse, within which to live the life of faith.

Wittgenstein’s basic premise at his later linguistic stage was to regard all linguistic statements as acquiring meaning only by virtue of their use in a particular context.  To illustrate the diversity of contextual discourse, Wittgenstein introduced the concepts of “language games” and “forms of life”. The different functions or substructures of language comprise different “language games” – i.e., goal-directed social activities for which words are just so many tools to get things done in accordance with the “grammar” of their distinctive context.  Each language game does a particular job, conveying certain meanings to those who participate in its particular discourse. Justification is internal to the activity or “form of life” concerned.

12] Why is this useful? A cultural-linguistic approach to religious discourse seems particularly suitable for modern Orthodox sensibilities because of the rare mix of intellectual liberty and fidelity to tradition that it supports, allowing us to absorb and combine various and even opposing points of view. It tones down the idea that religion must correspond to some predefined external foundational truth, which exists “out there.” Therefore, we can reject the notion of biblical inerrancy (i.e., that Scripture is completely accurate in all matters of history and science) because the bible is not about external truth. Even in matters of faith and practice, the rationality and relevance or “truth” of religious tradition is maintained not by appeal to external evidence, but rather by skillfully using the internal grammar of religious discourse to provide an intelligible interpretation on its own terms. As against this, however, subscribers to this approach appear almost reactionary and fundamentalist in their absolute commitment to abide by the constitutive guidelines of their religious tradition and to submit to its internal authority. In this they differ from those who feel that abandoning a fundamentalist understanding to religious truth claims leaves room for selectivity.

13] Doesn’t deliberate assumption of religion as a language game nevertheless interfere with “simple belief”?

The self-aware cultural-linguist can travel hand in hand with the naïve realist of simple belief for a very long way in preserving the psychological force of his religious commitments. So long as they are both functioning within the religious language-game itself and abide by its guidelines, the two will not differ radically for all practical purposes. The only difference between them will be the former’s consciousness of the fact that the basis for these adjustments stems from internal “form of life” rather than external truth claim considerations. This allows him to view his attempts at reconciling religious truth claims with a hypothetical objective “reality” more ironically, and to entertain the possibility that these may eventually be replaced by another more illuminating picture.

14] How does this approach help the blogger whom you cite in your extended paper  who treats the service as theater?  (Modern Orthoprax – July 2009, “Religion…is Tony and Tina’s wedding writ large…. If only I could forget about that damn camera man”). Won’t he just say that your approach to belief is heterodox and not a true Yeshivish belief in Torah min Hashamayim, hence you are orthoprax?

I admit that when the “as if” quality of religious belief, or its understanding as a language game supporting a particular form of life, is adopted consciously and deliberately as a blanket response to new loss of innocence, rather than as an internal solution to localized problems, conducting one’s day to day living in accordance with its guidelines could be more problematic.  Someone who says he accepts Biblical criticism but lives “as if” the Torah is true simply because this is the grammar of his religious language game still experiences the conflict of two different perspectives – inside the system and outside criticizing the system. My interest is in developing a rationale that can accommodate both.  This is where the contribution of modern kabbalah and its unique amalgam of realism and non-realism comes in. Meaning: that God and the world are real enough from our perspective and at the same time the world is not real, in the sense of a separate existence, from God’s perspective.  In an ultimate sense, both the world and God are not real, since on that level the very distinction between the two, or between existence and non-existence is obliterated.

Were R. Hayim of Volozhin, R. Shneur Zalman of Ladi, R. Dessler or R. Kook not true believers?  The divide is not between Yeshivish and non-Yeshivish, but between those who are inclined to reflect philosophically regarding the nature of their religious beliefs and those who are not.

15]  Your appeal to the linguistic approach and your view of breaking down the dichotomy of human and divine speech are two positions that can be separated. Why are they connected in your mind?

Breaking down the dichotomy between human and divine speech is a response to the challenges that ubiquitous human imprints and the attribution of speech to God in the literal, verbal sense, pose to the notion of a divinely authored text. Although a cultural-linguistic approach to religious belief allows us to relate to doctrine in an “as if” manner, this does not preclude the urge to make religious belief (especially its most basic tenets) rationally intelligible.  This activity is part and parcel of the religious language game itself.

16] How is this different than the position of James Kugel?          Firstly – Kugel, despite his emphasis on the interpretive process which converted the bible into Scripture, still seeks to ground the authority of the Torah – at least minimally – on some objective event at Sinai. As far as I am concerned, this may have been, but I do not find it necessary. Secondly, Kugel finds it essential to believe that the core message of that event (the command/s to serve God), no matter how it was transmitted, originated in some intentional movement on God’s part which somehow got filtered down to us in words. My view of God’s “speech” is rather as illocutionary acts that trigger humans to “hear” a message, and identify this as divine revelation.  The Torah surely records accounts of people believing that they had revelatory experiences, but its ultimate authority is grounded on the form of life that developed in the wake of such experiences and the strength of its grip upon us.  Thirdly, Kugel sees the basic message of the Torah as saying that the way to come close to God is by “becoming His employees” and serving Him in daily life.  I agree that this is the primary message of the Torah as subsequently interpreted, but my evolutionary understanding of Torah does not limit connection to God exclusively to this model.

17] What if someone does not accept kabbalah as their way to understand Torah, especially if they are not comfortable with the allegorical interpretation of Luria?  The importance of the allegorical interpretation, particularly on R. Kook’s understanding, is simply in offering a multi-layered view of God and revelation.  It allows us to maintain a continuum between immanence and transcendence, subjective and objective, natural and supernatural while preserving some distinction between them, and to also allow for an ultimate reality where all such distinctions are dissolved. One does not have to be bound by kabbalistic terminology and symbolism in order to accept this basic message.

Reread my  rules for comments before commenting.

As of this week, I return to regular blogging. I thank everyone who contacted me wondering where I was. A few points before we resume our regularly scheduled programming.

1] Due to recent events, comments will no longer be allowed from an unknown email or IP addresses. You can remain with an anonymous screen name such as EJ or IH, but you need a verifiable email and IP addresses corresponding to a person known on the web. No more malinator email accounts and no phony emails. I will not place an ID program on the blog. Just give me an email that I can google to verify with a matching IP. (I understand if you have a separate IP for home and work.) If you need to explain yourself, then do it in the line for URL. I already have a stable IP address and email for many of you but for those whom I don’t, you will need to start using one. Don’t take it personally.

2] It appears that the majority of my readers are not reading the posts in real time. They are noting the articles that they want to return to read and then returning on the weekend or in later weeks. People use Pocket (nee Read It Later) and other programs to mark the article to return to read. I get spikes on a post two weeks after posting. Hence, comments are no indication of number of people reading a post. It also means that people like longer posts so they can treat them as magazine articles.

3] I would like guest bloggers to fill in some of my time away. If anyone is interested and has material appropriate to this blog, then let me know.

An online discussion had a wonderful post by the important Jewish Medical Ethicist, Alan Jotkowitz MD. In the post he gives five programmatic directions for the future of medical ethics. Some are statements of his different starting points and others are open questions  (1) To recognize the lack of precedents for Jewish medical ethics and its reliance on aggadah and Jewish thought. (2) To encourage that it serve as a source for the general ethical discussion. (3) We  need a greater recognition of the role of patient autonomy is needed, similar to Western medical ethics. This goes with a lesser rabbinic presence. (4) Does the lack of consensus undercut the discipline? (5)There is a greater need to focus on the sources of confession and death bed to develop an ethic of empathy and altruism. I hope he finds time to write a book soon.

His approach breaks the denominational and legalistic straitjacket of the field in the last twenty years. I discussed some of these issues when I posted on Immanuel Jacobovits here and here. 

A Dialogue on Jewish Medical Ethics – Alan Jotkowitz MD, 

Associate Professor of Medicine, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva, Israel

There has been an explosion in interest in Jewish Medical Ethics since the publication of Lord Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits monumental work Jewish Medical Ethics and culminating in Avraham Steinberg’s Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics. Scholars and Rabbis have over the last fifty years developed a particular Jewish bioethics and given an authentic Jewish response to such questions as end of life care, artificial reproduction and abortion. Notwithstanding these achievements I think there are five fundamental areas that future Jewish bioethicists have to pay particular attention to.

1. An authentic Jewish ethical response is heavily dependent on Talmudic sources and precedent. However many modern ethical questions simply have no precedent in the Jewish sources as Louis Newman has pointed out in his landmark article On Woodchoppers and Respirators The Problem of Interpretation in Contemporary Jewish Ethics. (1) For example, how does develop a Jewish approach to such questions as cloning and the development of human-animal chimeras (not to mention the rapidly growing fields of public health ethics and bio-environmental ethics) where there is a paucity or absence of halakhic material. Jewish ethicists in the past have relied on aggadda and Jewish theology to help answer these questions but this also raises the methodological question of how to use these sources to develop normative law. (2)
2. Another question related to Jewish medical ethics is what is the relevance of the field to general medical ethics? In other words why should a non-Jew care about what the Jewish tradition says about a particular area? Daniel Callahan has argued that for the benefit of an extensive exposure “to the accumulated wisdom and knowledge that are the fruit of long established religious traditions. I do not have to be Jewish to find it profitable and illuminating to see how the great rabbinical teachers have tried to understand moral problems over the centuries.”(3) From a different perspective David Novak has long claimed that halakha and particularly the seven universal commandments, from which most of JME is derived, are rooted in natural law and therefore have universal applicability. (4)
3. In modern secular medical ethics there is a consensus that the ultimate decision maker should be the patient or their surrogate. Autonomy is one of the four basic principles of modern bioethics (and some say the ultimate principle) and the Charter on Medical Professionalism, which states as one of its cardinal principles “Physicians must be honest with their patients and empower them to make informed decisions about their treatment.” (5) Traditionally, from a Jewish perspective the Rabbi has been the ultimate authority and the question arises in the modern healthcare environment if that is still a tenable position. Rabbi Emmanuel Rackman has even gone as far as to suggest in relation to triage that “”when one must choose between two persons, who will live and who will die, the decision must be that of the person who will act upon it and not that of the state or any of its duly authorized agents. ….the rich legal literature of Judaism provides him with no imperatives. No court will authorize his action in advance and no functionary of the state will or should be his surrogate to decide for him. The only sanction he may suffer will come from his conscience and public opinion. His problem is exclusively ethical and not legal in character…. It seems to me that human beings who are confronted with the problem of making a choice must evaluate all the circumstances and make their own decision”.(6)
4. The question also arises of whether there can even be a Jewish bioethics due to the lack of consensus even among ultra-orthodox authorities not to mention inter-denominational differences of opinions. For example Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, two of the greatest poskim of the twentieth century, have widely divergent opinions on such fundamental questions such as abortion and end of life care. An esteemed halakhic authority can come to the same conclusion as the Catholic Church regarding abortion and an equally distinguished authority can rule that even late term abortion is permitted in certain instances. If this is indeed the case then what is the meaning and significance of a Jewish bioethic?
5. JME has traditionally been focused on the relatively straightforward clinical questions such as how aggressively to treat a patient at the end of life or in which cases an abortion is permitted. However, there should be much more to a Jewish approach to these questions reflecting the traditional concern with character development and supererogatory behavior. For example, beyond the question of whether an elderly demented patient should be fed which relates to the question of quality of life versus sanctity of life, the commandment to respect your parents and the obligation to feed them should enter into the discourse. (7) The requirements of Bikur Cholim and confession before death and how they are done appropriately should be a factor in the Jewish  discussion of the doctor-patient relationship and professionalism. (8,9) However this perspective has been missing in may modern presentations of JME which tend to focus more on the dry legal issues and less on how these dilemmas relate to the development of an altruistic and empathic personality. These latter concerns have been a staple of those concerned with virtue ethics and should also play a role in JME.

1. Newman L.E.  Woodchoppers and Respirators: The Problem of Interpretation in Contemporary Jewish Ethics. Modern Judaism 10:2 (February 1990):17-42.
2. Alan Jotkowitz  Nomos and Narrative in Jewish Law: The care of the dying patient and the prayer of the handmaid Modern Judaism in press
3. Callahan, Daniel. 1990. ” Religion and the Secularization of Bioethics” Hastings Center Report , Special Supplement: “Theology, Religious traditions and Bioethics” 20, no 4. (July/August): 2-4.
4. David Novak The Sanctity of Human Life Washington DC: Georgetown University Press 2007.
5. “Medical professionalism in the new millennium: a physician charter. Annals of Internal Medicine 2002 136(3):243-6.
6. Emanuel Rackman Priorities in the right to life Tradition and Transition: essays presented to Chief Rabbi Sir Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits to celebrate twenty years in office Ed. Jonathan Sacks London: Jews College Publication 1986. pp235-244
7. Jotkowitz A, Clarfield AM, Glick SM The care of patients with dementia. A modern Jewish ethical perspective Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2005:53:881-4
8. Jotkowitz A. Clarfield AM The Physician as Comforter. European Journal of Internal Medicine. 2005; 16:95-6.  
9. Jotkowitz A , Glick S. Confession at the end of life: A Jewish perspective. Journal of Palliative Care. 2005; 21:57-8.

Remember the culture wars in Modern Orthodox Judaism between 1995-2002? The age of Edah, the founding of YCT, the promulgating of the doctrine of mesorah, ban of WPG and furthering women’s role in the synagogue, the decline of the Orthodox Caucus and RCA Roundtable, and the tehillim rallies against the new President. Did anyone record the events week by week? Did anyone produce a book by 2003 delineating the struggle within Orthodoxy?

I recently discovered that the similar struggles within Southern Baptists were immediately documented by Barry Hankins in his well received book Uneasy in Babylon in 2003. The book had several good reviews here and here. His book explains to the moderates that the new conservative forces were not a throwback to some Fundamentalism, and he explains to the conservatives that the moderates were not liberals rather they expected a broad accepting Church.  He explains the differences in various liberal and conservative positions seeking  to inform his readers that they are not all the same. Most importantly, he shows how a leadership role for women was the wedge issue that divided the groups. Let me know if any of this sound familiar in Modern Orthodoxy.

The books starts with the once upon a time story that In 1967 southern Baptists were at ease in their enclave as Southern, Christian, Baptist- subculture “it was the catholic church of the south. ” However, by the end of the twentieth century it was no longer homogeneous (1) During this era there was a grand compromise of placing in control neither right or left. No one was seen as excluded, and their were various emphasis by congregations on mission to others, truth, service, and personal conversion (6)

In 1979, there were conservative appointments that were portrayed by moderates as a start of a takeover- originally seen as mild violation of grand compromise. (7) In the 1980’s conventions and meetings grew n size as each side began to recruit organize and mobilize. Liberals were seen as not believers and conservatives seen as power hungry.  Both sides focus on worst case scenario of the other’s position. (12) Hankins to avoid the conflict avoids using the words fundamentalist or liberals but conservatives and  moderates.

Many tried to tarnish the conservatives as Fundamentalists,  but Baptists were not fundamentalists in 1930’s. They have a denominational independence, they use different terms, are active missions,  (Compare Modern Orthodox vs Ultra-Orthodox split). Conservatives start in the 1980’s with rhetoric that they are the only true church (15) Prior to the 1980’s, Baptists have a negative view of evangelicals as narrow, card-carrying, and anti-denominational. Evangelicals are Yankees, Lutherans, or those preoccupied with Orthodoxy.   (16-17) Yet, by the end of the 1980’s there was a growing sense that they are becoming evangelical, reading Schaffer, and Christianity Today. (21)

Hankins has an interesting point on the difference between those groups like SBC  or RCA/ YU orthodoxy that is full service, in contrast northern Evangelicals and Artscroll/Community Kollel  are interdenominational in their publishing, in outreach work,  in colleges (and yeshivot),  and in periodicals.

The real story starts in 1996 when Albert Mohler takes over the seminary in Louisville Kentucky and turned it sharply right, accomplishing in three years a decade worth of turns. A turn to the right with a speed and velocity that overtook most students and faculty (28, 81) (Was it like this in Judaism?)In 1996, Mohler made women’s issues as the sole litmus test of hiring and firing, it left only a hardline group. Can a women be a preacher? He asked all incoming faculty and he made those faculty sympathetic to women clergy uncomfortable enough to leave. All speakers, authors, and affiliate personal could not affirm women clergy.

Hankins points out, and I have been saying it for years, that you can be hardline without being sectarian or fundamentalist. (or Haredi)  (85) Moderates could get phd but not speak in the university, now one should not read wrong authors in class, guest speakers now needed an ok. (28)

At the start of 1996, moderates called conservatives who didn’t accept critical theories morons. (33)The moderates had a false sense of academic elitism.  They saw themselves as conduits of college and graduate school study but Hankins points out that their sense of themselves was inflated and ideologically driven (Think of the Torah uMadda advocates).In reality these  moderates or liberals faculty were rather conservative by ivy league standards . (97, 104) Moderates say the right as combative in an un-Christian way against liberals, women’s roles, gays, and democrats  (98) This process removed the diversity of evangelicals (104)

The conservatives also started to portray America as a Christian country and to see state, university and media as against religion.  (119-120)

The seminary did not turn for inspiration to the new generation of believing philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, Keith Yandell,  nor did they turn to Evangelical defenses and rebuttals of historical study.

Albert Mohler embraces post-modernism to argue that (1) truth is not universal or objective but socially constructed, hence one only knows it through the Church (  AB- compare halakhic man’s Kantian constructivism to only knowing the text though mesorah of authorized Rabbis.) (2) There is no metanarrative that all are bound to, so one should accept the  Christian narrative. (3) The text has lost its meaning in Western culture so we can affirm the inerrant Bible without worrying about historical research.(47-48)

The book concludes that no Baptist congregation was ever punished for its stance on women’s leadership or participation, the only ones that were punished were those allowing same sex marriage (226).

After remaking the seminary, between 2003 -2010 -Albert Mohler turned outward and became an outspoken leader in American Evangelical religion whose positions are to the right of his colleges, but this does make him a return to Fundamentalism or superstition.

So where was this like Modern Orthodoxy circa 1996-2002? After?

(Let me know typos in comments and I will correct them.)

Unearthed: the authentic sound of Sigmund Freud

This piece from ten years ago by Rabbi Prof. Marc Shapiro, which was written for the Rabbi Abadie website, was circulating on my Facebook page this morning. I never saw it before, enjoyed it, and thought others would find it interesting. I asked Marc if I could post it: He said sure.

Q & A Board – View Post
Author: Marc
E-mail: not available
Date: 11/11/2003 8:02:00 AM
Subject: Clarification

Message: I have noticed that many people don’t understand the basic shitah of this website. With your permission, let me clarify something.
Rav Henkin, who together with R. Moshe Feinstein was the leading halakhic authority in the U.S. in the 1950’s and 1960’s, is quoted as saying that the entire basis for the existence of the kashrut organizations is the view of the rashba. What did he mean by this?
There is a machloket rishonim and the rashba holds that if a non-Jew, in the normal process of making a food product, adds some non-kosher element, even a very small percentage, then it is not batel. Bittul only works when it falls in by accident. This view is known by those who study Yoreh Deah since it is quoted in the Beit Yosef.
If you look at any of the standard Yoreh Deah books you will find, however, that the halakhah is not in accordance with this rashba. Rather, any time the goy puts a small amount of treif into the food it is batel, even if it is intentional on his part. There is a famous Noda Biyehudah that discusses this at length. See Mahadura Tinyana, Yoreh Deah no. 56 where he permits a drink that was produced using treif meat in the production but the amount of meat was very small and could not be tasted. He states that it is permissible. There is a Rama who has a teshuvah and states similarly. (I am sure if you describe the Noda Biyehudah’s case to people, even learned ones, and say that there is a contemporary rabbi who permits this, they will mockingly refer to him as a Conservative or Reform rabbi since in their mind no “real” rabbi who knows halakhah could ever permit something that has non-kosher meat in it!)

So now we can understand R. Henkin’s comment. If you go to the kashrut organizations’ websites and speak to them they will tell you that you need the hashgachah because sometimes the runs are not properly cleaned between kosher and non-kosher or milk and meat and some slight amounts of the objectionable ingredient might remain (yet here even rashba will agree that it’s not a problem!), or they tell you about release agents or that small amounts of ingredients are not listed on the label, etc. etc. The rashba indeed holds that these last cases are problematic, but the halakhah is not in accordance with the rashba. The hashgachot have raised the bar and are now operating at a chumra level here as well as in other areas. But the average person has no idea about any of this and has never even heard about the concept of bittul. Even if you explain the concept of bittul to him, his response will be: “OK maybe this is the strict halakhah, but I’m not starving so why should I eat something that we had to rely on bittul for. A person who cares about kashrut won’t eat something that has even the smallest amount of treif.” Since people haven’t been educated about the halakhot, they assume that bittul is a kula to be used in emergency situations, and it is not their fault that they believe this, since this is the view that the kashrut organization hold and publicize.
There is a good article waiting to be written about how in the last thirty years we went from halakhah to chumra when it comes to food issues.

Marc Shapiro

Reply: Educational!
AA

Author: Marc shapiro
Subject: Kashrut
Message: Take a look at

Click to access pardesforty3.pdf

Pardes 40: 3 pp. 12-13 and you will see that in 1965 the Israeli chief rabbinate held exactly like your father. The article is written by R. Shimon Efrati, head of Kashrut for the Chief Rabbinate

Afterword: In today’s email from Marc he adds “but it was pointed out to me that my description is too simplistic. E.g., R. David Zvi Hoffmann accepts the Rashba halakhah le-maaseh.”

Have a Zissen Pesach. Hag Kasher veSameach.
I have been very busy the last few weeks. I am still here and the blog will return with regular updates starting after the holiday.

Duluth, MN 1910

Manila, 1925

Washington DC, 1995

Kurshan, Lithuania 1930’s

At another session at the Yarnton Manor Conference on Modern Orthodoxy the topic was the sociology of the Orthodox community. The speakers were Daniel Sperber: “Tradition, Continuity and Innovation: Opposing Halakhic Concerns” Sarah Benor, “Frum Unity, Frum Diversity: The Orthodox Continuum in Popular Culture.”Samuel Heilman, “Old and New Orthodoxies”and Chaim I Waxman – Respondent. The presentation by Sarah Benor was novel and engaging. For those who just missed her at Limmud-NY, then catch her talk at Princeton University this Wednesday. (This blog has a sizable Princeton readership who should attend.)

Sarah Bunin Benor is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (Los Angeles campus) and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She teaches about the social science of American Jews, as well as about language and culture. In addition to the book Becoming Frum, she has published many academic papers and given lectures around the country about Jewish languages, linguistics, Yiddish, and American Jews. Dr. Benor edits the Journal of Jewish Languages and the Jewish Language Research Website, both of which she founded.

She is almost single-handedly (re)creating a field of Jewish Linguistics.

She has a website of Jewish-English keeping track of Yinglish, Hebrish, and other distinctive ways Jews speak English.

The goals of the Jewish English Lexicon (JEL) are to collect data on the English of Jews in America and elsewhere and to make it available to the general public. JEL is a collaborative database of distinctive words that are used in the speech or writing of English-speaking Jews. Think of it as the Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary of Jewish language.

She wrote a seminal paper on the language of American Jews as a Jewish language and concludes:

Yes, American Jews do speak a Jewish language comparable to Judeo-Persian, JudeoArabic, Judeo-Greek, and many other Diaspora languages.
When we analyze the distinctive repertoire available to American Jews, we find that it does have most of the components common among other Jewish languages. It has a non-Jewish coterritorial base language (English), a Hebrew/Aramaic component, influences from a previous Jewish language (Yiddish), displaced dialectalism, other distinctive features not linked to previous languages, avoidance of non-Jewish religious features, and a recognition that Jews use distinctive language.

In addition to these similarities, we also find important differences. Jewish American English is written in the same alphabet as general American English (albeit with occasional remnants of Hebrew orthography), rendering it more accessible to non-Jews than any language written in the Jewish alphabet.
American Jews are generally able to speak an English indistinguishable from that of nonJews—even to pass as non-Jews, if they so choose—leaving American Jews much less vulnerable to linguistic ridicule than some Jews of the past.

Prof Benor’s recent book is Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Go read it!)

The book has a website and here are some excerpts:

“One of the few times I heard Milldale Orthodox Jews listening to non-Orthodox music was in the Kramers’ van on the way to New York for a wed­ding. The Kramer parents both became BTs in their twenties, and their teenage children have grown up as FFBs. For part of the trip, they listened to an Orthodox band. When the tape ended, they turned on the radio, which was set to a classic rock station. When “American Pie” started, the children got excited. They sang along for the chorus and some of the verses. But just as the singer was about to say, “The three men I admire most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost,” the mother turned the volume all the way down. One of the sons asked why, and she answered, “It’s words you don’t want stuck in your head.” The older daughter said, “Probably something about Yoshke” (the Yid­dish diminutive form of Jesus and the name I generally heard applied to him in Orthodox communities). After “American Pie” was over, the mother put in another Orthodox tape, which happened to start with “Ani ma’amin,” a Hebrew song stating a “full belief” that the Moshiach (Messiah) will come. I couldn’t help but smile about the ironic contrast.” (p. 74)
“For many BTs, feeling or being called inauthentic does not stop them from participating in Orthodox practices. When Mark was a Peripheral BT, he told me that he felt he was not acting like himself when he used chanting intonation or wore a black hat. But he sometimes adopted these behaviors anyway, because, he said, “it’s fun.” So when he was planning his wedding, he told friends and family that it would be “black hat optional, and I’m opting in.” Although put­ting on this “costume” did not seem authentic to him, it was an enjoyable way of connecting with the community. As Ira, an advisor at a BT yeshiva, says, “To a large part, everyone’s putting on a costume in [a BT] yeshiva.” This self-consciousness tends to be only temporary; BTs who continue to participate in a cultural practice eventually feel it is an authentic part of who they have become.” (p. 178)

She has a fascinating article on the language of non-Orthodox Jewish elites, the super-Jews, showing their language as distinct from ordinary Jews.

I argue that the major factor in the distinctive linguistic profile of non-Orthodox Jewish elites is their interaction with others like them. Anyone who attends synagogue more than monthly, has spent significant time in Israel, and/or reports that most of their close friends are engaged in Jewish life (the three criteria we used to define super Jews) likely has regular conversations with others like them. In addition, almost half of young super Jews in the sample refrain from handling money on Shabbat, which suggests that they may also host and/or attend Shabbat meals regularly. We know from studies around the world that people who talk to each other on a regular basis often converge linguistically…Participating in Jewish religious and communal life offers Jews ample opportunity to converse with others like them and to learn and spread Hebrew and Yiddish words. Read the rest here.

And she has an article on how the language of Reform sisterhoods changed . “From Sabbath to Shabbat: Changing Language of Reform Sisterhood Leaders, 1913-2012.” In Women of Reform Judaism / National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods Centenary Volume

1) What was it like for you as a non-Orthodox Jew doing research in an Orthodox community? Is there anything you want to convey to the Orthodox community?

It was a great experience. I am a religiously engaged non-Orthodox
Jew, and I came to my research with a good deal of knowledge about
halacha, tefillah, brachot, and chagim. I also came in with
proficiency in Hebrew and Yiddish. In that sense, I had an easier time
making sense of Orthodox culture and fitting in than some new BTs and
gerim (converts) who come from secular or non-Jewish backgrounds. On the other hand, my experiences also mirrored those of a new BT in many ways, as
we both encountered new traditions, Ashkenazi pronunciations,
different gender distinctions, and a community that’s much more tight
knit than our own. One major difference between my experiences and
those of BTs: I knew that my participation in Orthodoxy was just
temporary, and they expect that theirs will be long-term. Some of the
people I met during my research expected that I would become frum
myself, and a few were disappointed that I didn’t. I hope that
Orthodox Jews will read my book, even though it’s written by a
non-Orthodox Jew. I hope they’ll see in my writing my deep respect for
Orthodox communities and culture. And I hope they’ll invite me to give
talks at their shuls and kiruv centers.

2) What is your method of sociolinguistics? And how does it produce different results than other sociological methods?

My main method is ethnography: hanging out with people, visiting their
homes, attending their lifecycle events, going to shul and school with
them, and going out to restaurants with them. I observe their
interactions, I talk to them informally, and I also do formal
interviews. Throughout this process, I write detailed notes about what
I observed and heard, and I analyze those notes regularly, leading to
more questions I can ask and hypotheses I can test. This is a classic
anthropological technique, and it’s increasingly used in sociology
too. In addition, I also listened carefully to their language and
analyzed their use of words from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish, their
grammatical influences from Yiddish, and other distinctive features
(like /t/ release). I also did a sociolinguistic experiment called a
matched guise test, in which I recorded an individual saying a
sentence in two slightly different ways (like “Do you know where he
was going?” and “Do you know where he was goingk” or “rosh chodesh”
and “rosh choydesh”), mixed up a bunch of speech excerpts, and played
them back for community members. I then asked them whether they
thought the speaker was Orthodox and FFB (frum from birth), and their responses told me a lot about the linguistic feature in question.

3) How does your data show Modern Orthodoxy as separate from the rest of Orthodoxy?

In my study of responses on Frumster.com, I found that users who
self-select the category Modern Orthodox Liberal differed
significantly from those who selected other categories (Modern
Orthodox Machmir, Yeshivish Modern, and Yeshivish Black Hat) in a
number of indicators, including head covering (kippah/hat type for
men, plans to cover hair for women), tzitzit, and skirts vs. pants. I
found a continuum in all four categories for several of the
indicators, but for some, Modern Orthodox Liberal was distinct from
the other three.

4) How do certain ways of pronouncing letters like stronger Ts show rabbinic authority?

Americans have a few ways of pronouncing a /t/ at the end of a word,
including with or without a release of air. The released /t/ is common among people presenting themselves with an air of authority. This is not just an Orthodox thing- it can be heard in diverse communities. I found that in Orthodox communities /t/ release is more common among men than women and that people tend to release their /t/s more when they are in a position of authority (or when they want to indicate a stance of adamance). It’s not just a rabbinic linguistic feature, but certainly many rabbis release their /t/s frequently, because they often seek to speak with authority.  ( AB- to articulate -a speech sound,  so as to produce an audible puff of breath, as with the first t  of total,  the second t  being  usually unaspirated.)

5) What do you make of the Orthodox rejection of liberal Jews from their purview? What do your HUC students not grasp about Orthodoxy or where are they most resistant (other than egalitarianistm)?

This is, in my opinion, one of the most pressing issues facing
American Jewry today: the fact that many Orthodox and non-Orthodox
Jews have disdain for each other. I think the problem stems mostly
from lack of knowledge and contact. In my fieldwork I heard some
Orthodox Jews (especially but not only ba’alei teshuva) making
critical comments about Reform and Conservative Jews and their
institutions. And in my everyday life in the non-Orthodox world (in
Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and post-denominational
egalitarian circles), I sometimes hear critical comments about
Orthodox Jews and their institutions. I also hear people on both sides
of this divide talking about “Jewish diversity and unity” and “klal yisrael” while
(sometimes inadvertently) excluding those on the other side. Most
people who make critical comments do not understand how diverse and
dynamic the other group is. Orthodox Jews tend not to know that some Conservative Jews observe Shabbat strictly and that some Reform services are now mostly in Hebrew. And non-Orthodox Jews tend not to know that some Modern Orthodox shuls have women’s tefillah groups and that many Haredim have professional degrees. People in both groups assume that those in the other group have no interest in them. I hope this book serves as a small step in addressing this issue: non-Orthodox readers will learn about a Black Hat community and about diversity in the Orthodox world, and Orthodox readers will understand that a non-Orthodox researcher can represent frum Jews and frum culture in a positive and respectful way.

5) Any thoughts on how Orthodox Academics shift their way of speaking in presentation, discussion, and dinner? Can you give examples?

At the conference on Orthodoxy, most of the participants were Orthodox. One of my favorite parts of the conference was the question and answer session after one particular talk. This one speaker gave his presentation in a very academic way, talking about the Pentateuch and referring to biblical concepts with their English names. As soon as he began his answer to the first question, he switched to a more Yeshivish style, using Hebrew names for biblicalconcepts and using other distinctive Orthodox features, like the Israeli hesitation click. His New York accent even became stronger. During the rest of the conference, including coffee breaks, meals, and other academic sessions, he (along with most of the other attendees) used varying degrees of Orthodox features in his English, but he never shifted back to pure Academese. This kind of style shifting is common and useful. We wouldn’t expect a frum scholar to use Yeshivish at AAR, and we wouldn’t expect him to use Academese at his rov’s mussar shmues.

6) How do ba’alei teshuva distinguish themselves from FFBs?

It depends on the individual. Some BTs (acronym for ba’alei teshuva),
especially those who have been frum for many years, are
indistinguishable from FFBs. Those individuals sometimes intentionally
pass as FFB and don’t correct people who assume they are FFB. But many
do not feel comfortable with this situation, and they avoid it by
referring to their non-Orthodox past or to their process of teshuva.
However, most new BTs are not able to pass as FFB. Some indicate their
BT status by trying too hard to fit in – maybe their skirt is longer
than it needs to be, they display their tzitzis too conspicuously, or
they say “baruch Hashem” and “mamish” too much. Others indicate their
BT status through unique combinations, like geflite fish made with
with Indian spices, a black hat worn with trendy sunglasses, or Hebrew
and Yiddish words combined with American slang (like “mamish keepin’
it real”). This distinctiveness is sometimes intentional and sometimes
not. As I write in chapter 1: “Even when BTs attempt to pass as FFB,
their in-between status may become apparent to those in the know,
based on the tilt of a hat, the slit of a skirt, or the shape of a
vowel.”

Here is one of the best, so far, of tributes to Rabbi David Hartman z”l in that it focuses on what he taught. It was written by Mishael Zion who has a great blog Text and the City together with his father, one of the earliest members of the the Hartman Institute. Below is about half of it- follow the link for the rest of it.

Five big Hartman Ideas 

If you walked into his class, you were probably going to get yelled at. The most boring thing you could say to him was “I agree with you.” His sharpness – and fallibility – managed to revive the Talmudic Beit Midrash, bringing students, intellectuals and politicians to his door.

Our teacher David Hartman, who passed away last week at age 81, was more Socrates than Plato. He challenged young and old alike on their sacred presuppositions.

In his honor, we offer five of his most influential ideas enshrined by the provocative catch-phrases he often used to describe them.

ONE: ‘Sinai or Auschwitz?’

In the 1970’s, the Holocaust came to dominate the strategies for enhancing Jewish identity in Israel and America. Hartman was sharply critical of what he saw as a “Holocaustization” of Judaism. Without detracting from the calamities of the Shoah, the center of Jewish experience must be Sinai, not Auschwitz, he claimed. Sinai is the blue print for a living community which seeks to embody in practice a world of justice, solidarity and service. Dwelling on the indignities of the past will not renew our passion for a just life – rather the creation of a vibrant future-oriented discourse must be the basis of our identity.

Hartman loved teaching a passage in Maimonides which addresses a seemingly ritualistic question: The Candle of Hanukkah and the Candle of Shabbat, which candle takes preference? In Hartman’s keen reading, this was a question of philosophy, not blind ritual: What takes precedence – commemorating heroic wars and the defense of God and the Jewish people, or conserving shalom bayit and the intimacy of a candle-lit Shabbat dinner? Maimonides resoundingly subordinates Hanukkah to Shabbat, which to Hartman was a call to subordinate historical memory and messianic dreams for the joy of a Shabbat meal and the vibrancy of family life. As his teacher Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik said: “The Jewish people were not put in this world simply to fight anti-Semitism.”

TWO: ‘From Sinai to Zion’ – from Children to Adults

Hartman’s book A Living Covenant was translated into Hebrew as From Sinai to Zion. For many Jews, Sinai represents the moment that God forced Israel to accede to his commandments, a God of paternal authority who threatens to destroy those who do not obey him. Instead, David Hartman’s theology emphasized God as a loving parent who gradually steps back. A wise parent creates room for his child to grow into an adult and make his own mistakes.

The Rabbinic project continues God’s ceding of responsibility to a preponderance of human wisdom in the partnership of God and Israel. Hartman made Rabbi Joshua’s cry – “it is not in Heaven” into the canonized text of all liberal minded Jews. God’s self-ironizing response: “My sons have out-argued me!” is the supreme expression of Hartman’s notion that Torah education is a millennial process of making Jewish children take on the adult responsibilities of shaping the Divine law in human hands. Zionism was the final stage in this movement, where the Jewish people took on not only law, but also history.

But where others saw messianic redemption in the State of Israel as the achievement of Judaism’s vision on earth, Hartman saw it as only the expansion of a challenge that puts our Jewish adulthood to the supreme test. The Jewish state in Zion with its empowerment over all aspects of society is the laboratory to test the Jews capability of fulfilling the desert vision of Sinai in a real world without miracles. But it is also a test-tube for Judaism to see if it has matured enough to provide not just idealistic sermons in the synagogues of the Diaspora, but to guide a modern democratic Torah-inspired state with a concern both for human rights and for security, for democracy and for Jewish identity.

THREE: ‘There is just as much a Jewish morality as there is a Jewish science!’

First, he recalled that historically Jews in all generations held a myriad of opinions and that the gap between even their best moral maxims and the actual communal behavior was often appalling. In this way, he was a student of the Biblical prophets who have pointed this out in every generation.

Second, the strength of Jewish thought is not in celebrating a common core but in revisiting the grand debates of Judaism. His books engaged in a series of living dialogues: the Bible versus the Rabbis, Maimonides versus Nachmanides and HaLevi, Rabbi Kook versus Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Rav Soloveitchik. Judaism is not a monolithic tradition, but a series of grand debates and fiery revolutions.

Third, “the God of Sinai is still the God of Creation,” and any other claim is a desecration of God’s name. Jewish ethics is first a universal ethics based on the creation of all human beings in the image of God. Human dignity is not divisible and the Chosen People cannot preach their own intrinsic superiority, discriminating against others in the name of becoming a holy people.

Hartman loved to cite the story of a Talmudic rabbi who was urged to use a legal loophole to justify cheating a non-Jew in the purchase of his donkey. The Rabbi retorts: “What, shall I become a Babrbarian?!” That Jewish law, like other systems, cannot prevent one from being a barbarian, was one of his most profound lessons. Hartman’s most uncompromising diatribes against venerable Jewish wisdom were his angry dismissals of the racist presuppositions he found in Kabbalah, Chabad or Rav Kook.

FOUR: ‘Out of the Bathtub of the Shulkhan Arukh!’

Hartman sought to hold two poles – the ghettoized and the cosmopolitan. On one hand there was Torah study as an all-encompassing passionate practice, such as he experienced in the Lakewood yeshiva among the great scholars of Lithuania who escaped the Holocaust. In Lakewood, just as since the destruction of the Temple all God has is the four ells of halacha, so today all a Jew needs is the four walls of the Beit Midrash. In many ways, Hartman never left that Beit Midrash.

On the other hand Torah is meant to be a torat hayim – a guide for life in all aspects of human endeavor. He loved to quote Maimonides who cited Aristotle’s Ethics to illuminate Pirkei Avot: “Accept truth from whomever has spoken it”. For Hartman this meant that Jewish scholars must come out of their intellectual ghettos to seek a critical dialogue with Western thinkers and with other religions.

Hartman could be sharply critical of liberal Judaism for neglecting deep Jewish learning in quality and quantity, even though he honored their commitment to adapting Judaism creatively. On the other hand Hartman, whose parents and siblings would today be called Haredi, would often lash out at the Orthodox community for what he saw as a turning of the “Talmudic Sea of Halakha” into the sordid “Bathtub of the Shulkhan Arukh.”  Halakhic Judaism had become obsessively concerned with libido – kosher eating, kosher sex and kosher dress.

FIVE: ‘What can I say? I love my people…’

David, whose name means lover, loved both the Torah and the Jewish people. He abhorred those who used Halakha to degrade the ordinary Jew’s failure to reach its ideals. Yet he never promoted a facile, apologetic Judaism to pander to Jews seeking a self-congratulatory religion. He loved the Jewish people with a passion, but wanted them to be a sea of raging intellectuals, a yeshiva where all Jews and indeed all seekers of truth could sit, study, and argue. He loved Rabbinic Judaism precisely because it preserves and engenders perennial ongoing debates about conflicting values.

His heart was made of many rooms, but these were not neatly distanced conference rooms for polite toleration of difference, rather it was one big Beit Midrash with many dueling study hevrutas. Rather than a return to the pristine days of old, Hartman celebrated the living covenant of Sinai, where each generation applies a constant reinterpretation to the ancient texts. In this way Judaism is not a community of shared beliefs or values, but rather a community of interpretation – where different readings of shared texts create the boundaries of the community.

Read the Rest Here