Category Archives: Uncategorized

This was forwarded to me. Doing PR work for Israel’s poor attempts at hasbara is now formally defined as kiruv. What isn’t kiruv at this point? On the other hand, now kiruv can be separated from mizvot and be applied to AIPAC or ZOA work. Thoughts?

From the description of Yeshivat Torat Shraga

To this end, YTS provides many shiurim in these
areas, including a entitled “Kiruv Training Seminar”. This provides
the student with the background and ability to handle any and all
questions that the student may be faced with in the world outside the
Yeshiva, including the media’s portrayal of Israel.

Ezriel Guenzig (1868-1931) was a Orthodox rabbi in Moravia and later, he became the head of the Mizrahi Tahkemoni School in Antwerp. In his time, as editor of the journal Ha-Eshkol, he was a conduit of Western and academic knowledge to his Hebrew reading rabbinic audience; unfortunately, he is remembered little today. Besides Hinduism, Guenzig wrote on Abulafia and other interesting topics. It seems he was influenced and even wrote a book about Fabius Mieses, the source for Rav Kook’s knowledge of modern philosophy. And his journal Ha-Eshkol is available as a free android app.

In 1900, he wrote an appreciation of the recently published works belonging to the series Sacred Books of the East edited under the direction of Max Muller. He compares the Hindu positively to Judaism, noting the similarities of the two religious worldviews Kabbalah and Hinduism, especially emanation, nirvana, eyn sof, sefirot, and theories of the soul. Guenzig’s approach consists of focusing on the Vendata philosophic works and the ancient Hindu scripture to formulate a Hindu monotheism, which he then connects to his own Perennialism. Mentions of Indian thought in Rabbinic thought in the first part of the 20th century proceed in a similar manner. Note his labeling monotheism as the “moral foundation” for humanity gained through cultural evolution.

In perusing these works we find many concepts and images, mores and customs, principles and many doctrines that also stand in the highs of our religion. We see astounding similarities in many ways between the faith of the Hindus and the faith of Israel, not just in details but even in the principles of purpose, their studies, and their opinions…Just as the Therapeutae in Egypt brought Neo-Platonism into Judaism, the Essenes in Judea brought the secrets of Buddhism- the masters of secrets in India- to the masters of secrets in Alexandria and other Jewish works who, in turn, brought these allusions in the secret of our holy writings.

The belief in the Oneness of the creator and the unity of existence is a sublime step in the cultural evolution of humanity, the moral foundation for all religions of Enlightened peoples.

Also the [Hindu] doctrine of the relationship of the individual soul to the universal soul and the spiritual perfection by cleaving to divinity, freed from all desire and physical lusts… is found in many Jewish believers and also is found by our ancient wise and the early kabbalists who followed them.

If a scholar delves into the Vedas will see that the early kabbalists, the fathers of the philosophic Kabbalah most of them followed the Hindus…

Ezriel Gruenzig, “Hindu Philosophy and Kabbalah” [Hebrew] Ha-Eshkol 3 (Cracow: 1900) 40-48.

(“Solehah” hopeful Nur Shamseeda preaches during an audition for the new Islamic reality television show “Solehah” in Kuala Lumpur June 18, 2011/Bazuki Muhammad)

A forthcoming Islamic reality television show in Malaysia aims to find the best women preachers and change conservative mindsets on the role of women in Muslim societies. The 13-episode prime time program titled “Solehah,” an Arabic word meaning “pious female,” is a talent contest that will feature charismatic young Muslim women judged by clerics on their religious knowledge as well as their oratory skills and personality.

Although Islam allows both men and women to preach the religion to society, the field remains dominated by males in most Muslim countries, something the show’s producers in this mainly Muslim but multi-religious Southeast Asian country hope to change.

“If American Idol can help their contestants develop as singers, our show aims to help Muslim women develop as Islamic preachers,” said Zulkarnaen Mokhtar, brand manager at the private television station which produces the show. It will start airing in October and follows on the heels of the hit Islamic themed show “Imam Muda,” or Young Imam, which is shown on a rival TV station and seeks the best Imam or male Muslim leader. Imam Muda is set to enter its second season.

Continues from Part I here and from Part II here.

Here is another post about the 1985 book A Living Covenant. I assume that I will receive the interview with Charlie Buckholtz soon, then and only then will I address the new book directly.
In the very friendly review of Hartman by David Ellenson of HUC in Modern Judaism, we learn that Ellenson finds Hartman as exemplar of what Orthodoxy, nay the entire modern rabbinate should be. And then Ellenson gives a few broad critiques. Why does Hartman base himself on Talmud and Rabbinics and not the Bible? What would compel the modern Jew to follow Hartman’s Talmudism? Important questions for the ex-Orthodox Ellenson who continuously looks to Orthodox Teshuvot for guidance.

This review by Neil Gilman of JTS. offers a strong contrast to the review of Landes and Elleenson.

Gilman pegs Hartman as a follower of the approach of Jacob Katz in which sociology changes halakhah. In that for Jacob Katz there is an “interpretive power of the community to interpret halakhah- based on what the community will accept. God’s Torah can be interpreted in a liberal way if the community accept it. [AB- but it is important to note that Hartman himself makes his argument from ethics, not from historical change.]
(Back in the 1960’s the Jewish Observer considered the use of Jacob Katz enough to make one Conservative, by the 1980’s there came to be a YU interpretative of Katz without the historic change or historicism.)

But Gilman asks is that enough or even justified. For Gilman there is a human role in the writings of the Torah. The Bible and the entire creation of Talmud as human documents. When Gilman quotes Hartman as saying that the debate over tanur shel achnui shows the potential of God’s word, Gilman adds [SIC] after Hartman’s mention of “God’s word” to demonstrative to his reader that – of course it is not God’s word. How could Hartman be so foolish to belief that?

For Gilman, to interpret means that it is a human product. He does not understand how for Hartman and Berkovits to reinterpret is a power of the Divine halakhah itself. For Gilman innovation means a human change from the past, not a continuation of the tradtional idea of chiddush (AB –catch that Hartman’s belief in Chiddush is not Maimonides and closer to what we consider Nahmanidean- see Halbertal on the topic of the continuous growth of halakhah.)

In this review, we see that the Orthodoxy of Berkovits and Hartman argues for ethical consciences: and pragmatics in the law. The Conservative approach of Gilman needs the Torah to be a human text, he needs a rejection of traditional theology, and historical/sociological argument.
On the question of Hartman’s relationship to Rav Soloveitchik in his writings. Landes – did not see any break. Depending on the topic, Hartman was closer to the Rav thought then was Landes. However, Gilman sees a break. I already have read the new 2011 book and in that one there is clearly a break.

When I first read the book in 85, then I just did not recognize the Rav Soloveitchik that I knew in the pages of Hartman’s Living Covenant Even though the Rav’s influence came out in Hartman’s public talks, I did not see it int he book. In the 1980’s Hartman would talk about how much therapy time he spend working through his relationship with Rav Soloveitchik, how he had an Oedipal relationship with the Rav. But at the time, I felt that Hartman’s presentation of Rav Soloveitchik’s creativity vs submission is not the same as the Rav’s own majesty and humility.I chalked it up to my youth and to maybe the 30 year difference in the Rav. And in those years, people were much more troubled by revisionism from the right since, at the time, it seemed a complete distortion.

Gilman review- he does not think that Hartman has a liberal enough theory of revelation, talks too much about God’s Torah, he wont win against rising Fundamentalism. But he likes his Zionist theology.

Alternatively, he could adopt a view of revelation that denies literal-ism in favor of acknowledging a more substantive human role in shaping the contents of Torah

But both of these positions would inevitably require Hartman to redefine what he means by mizvah and to reconsider the issue of the authority of Torah, thereby undermining the traditionalist cast of his entire study. (His subtitle is, after all, “The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism”). In fact, under both of these models, the authority is transferred from God to the community. Both poles of the dialectic, the autonomous and the theonomous, become embodied within the community. But has not Hartman, himself, conceded this result in accepting Jacob Katz’s definition of the limits of interpretive freedom as “. . . what the community is in fact prepared to accept as Torah”?

On this issue, then, Hartman is in a bind. As a result, the issue is avoided and his covenantal anthropology, however acutely perceived, authentically rooted and programmatically desirable, floats in a theological vacuum.

In fact, A Living Covenant ends up as a much richer and more substantial version of Eliezer Berkovits’ Not in Heaven, with much the same shortcomings. Like Hartman, Berkovits argues for a more open recognition of the subjective, flexible, pluralistic understanding of the halakhic process as a legitimately human undertaking. Berkovits, too, plumbs the tanur shel akhnai anecdote which he interprets, much as Hartman does, as insisting on “the human share and responsibility in the interpretation and administration of the revealed Word of God (sic)”, and that “the affairs of men cannot be guided by absolute objectivity, but only by human objectivity.” Halakhah represents not “objective truth” but “pragmatic validity” (p.48). “Once a Jew accepts the Torah from Sinai, whatever it teaches him in his search for its meaning and message is the word of God for him” (p.51). Berkovits repeatedly invokes what he calls the “halakhic conscience” which he perceives as impelling the rabbis to limit the application of, or, at times, even render inoperative, a piece of biblical legislation which they find morally offensive (p.28). But, again, one searches in vain for a theology of revelation which might ground his understanding of the halakhic process.

While Berkovits limits his argument to the issue of halakhic development, Hartman’s canvass is much broader. It encompasses a phenomenology of much of Jewish religious life and teaching. The book remains, then, a passionately argued and authentically documented defense of a humanistic, pluralistic, flexible, and creative reading of traditional Judaism. Programmatically, then, it serves as an apologia for Modern or Centrist Orthodoxy. This position is clearly under siege today, both in Israel and in America. If anything, the current wave of fundamentalism in religion reflects a preference for the temper of submission and self-denial which Hartman rejects. This contemporary style in religion, together with Hartman’s critique of much of Soloveitchik’s theology, will unquestionably render this volume suspect in the eyes of precisely those of Hartman’s confreres who could benefit most from his inquiry. If this is, indeed, the outcome, the Jewish theologically concerned community as a whole will be the loser.

But, if for no other reason, this book should be studied and taught for its concluding chapter, “The Third Jewish Commonwealth.” Here, Hartman applies his reading of Judaism to the new challenges posed by the creation of the State of Israel. He insists that even if we reject, as he does, a simplistic reading of the rebirth of Israel in messianic terms as reflecting God’s overt intervention in history, this event can yet exert extraordinary religious influence on the life of the community. Economic, social, and political issues, the moral quality of the army, the exercise of power moderated by moral sensitivity, can all be brought under the purview of Torah.
In fact, Israel also exposes the moral and spiritual inadequacies in the Jewish tradition and can thus provide ” . . . unique conditions for a serious critique of Judaism as it is practiced by commited halakhic Jews” (p.294).

Not unexpectedly, then, Hartman calls for a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of the place of religion and halakhah in Israeli life. But even beyond this, the chapter provides the most compelling argument for the Jew’s throwing his lot in with Israel in a direct and personal way, not, as the usual Zionist rhetoric has it, because diaspora Judaism is doomed, but, rather, because Israel provides the broadest possible canvass for Judaism’s engagement with modernity.

From Neil Gilman, ” The exciting future of Jewish theology, Judaism, Spring 1990, Vol. 39, Issue 2.

I am proud that two former students are finishing their PHD’s and are continuing as academics. Unfortunately, Modern Orthodox tends to confuse being a wonker or engaging in “hocking” about scholarship with actual academia. Ringel defends on June 30th. Congratulations.

Joseph Ringel, The Sephardic Rabbinate, Sephardic Yeshivot, and the Shas Educational System, Brandeis University (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
Joseph Ringel’s dissertation explores the debates over Sephardic identity by examining how Shas’ network of schools and Sepahrdic yeshivot transmit what they consider to be Sepahrdic values in the student body. This process of identity reconstruction includes the search for a usable past in order to confront the challenges modernity poses to the Sephardic religious tradition – this process has resulted in the preservation of certain religious practices and traditions, the creation of new customs and ideas through re-interpretation, and the misinterpretation and distortion of other elements of the Sephardic tradition. In exploring the debates within the Sephardic world surrounding Shas’ reconstruction of Sephardic identity, Ringel’s dissertation explores the complexities of connecting past experiences and traditions to current realities.

Joshua Z. Teplitsky, Between Court Jew and Jewish Court: David Oppenheim, the Prague Rabbinate, and eighteenth-century Jewish politics, New York University

David Oppenheim (1664-1736) was, among other things, the scion of a rabbinic family, the chief rabbi of Moravia and then of Prague and Bohemia, a legal authority, and a Talmudic commentator. Oppenheim’s various roles placed him at the crossroads of several important developments of the early modern period for both the history of Jewish political cultural development and the history of the Habsburg monarchy and its imperial politics. Joshua Teplitsky’s dissertation views the changes in the relationship between the Habsburg state and local Jewish communities in the early modern period through the lens of Oppenheim’s career.

Not a student but a relevant topic. It is on how the whole question of authority (serara) in the public sphere is an American Christian influence.
Caroline Block, The Spirit of Tradition and the Institution of Authority: Knowledge and Community in American Orthodox Women’s Talmud Programs, Johns Hopkins University (Anthropology)
Caroline Block notes that while these women are enrolled in postgraduate programs that are part of the Judaic tradition of preparing for rabbinic ordination through textual studies, they are also profoundly affected by the American practice of denominationalism, particularly due to the way in which the rabbinate in the U.S. has been influenced by the Protestant tradition, and “rabbi” has come to refer not to an academic distinction, but to a job in the public sphere. Block’s dissertation explores the tensions of American Jewish denominationalism and particularly how denominationalism relates to Modern Orthodoxy.

My recent post on the YCT graduation speech generated a large bevy of comments; go read them -many of them are excellent. But is seems to have hit a raw nerve with some readers of the blog. Was this nerve hidden until now?

The comments did not deal with the speech itself. The comments offered several detailed and well thought out comments on Modern Orthodoxy, way beyond what we are used to hearing. Go read them.

It seems to have revealed the live issue among the commenters. But what was the issue? What was the meta-issue at stake? There seems to be two clear sides with at least 6-7 on each side. Neither side was advocates of an intellectual ghetto and neither side wanted to relinquish Orthodoxy. Yet, half the commenters evoked a visceral reaction from the other half who called the first half negative or cynical. So what is the dividing line? Why so emotional?

One side wants to be Orthodox and read Hegel, Derrida, and Biblical criticism but does not work on resolving any problems. This position seems to strike the other side as a rejection of Modern Orthodoxy, as Neo-Haredi, as anti-Orthodox. Why? Is the other side clamoring for synthesis works? And why the emotions?

Is it that one side sees Orthodoxy as a social imaginary in the Charles Taylor sense, non-foundational and not subject to apologetics.

One side wants Torah uMadda volumes of apologetics that are comforting even if they don’t prove anything because maybe they do prove something? Or they show the strength of Orthodoxy to confront modernity.

Is it that one side wants truth claims even if apologetic and the other side relinquishes the need for truth?

Is it that one side thinks that one must be invested in a specific ideological project called Modern Orthodoxy and the other more loquacious side believes that one can be committed to Orthodoxy and Western culture without a specific ideological project, or to a specific project of synthesis?

Is it simply that one side has a double truth theory and the other side has a single truth theory. Why does the position of Averroes, Maimonides, Albalag, Narboni, Ibn Caspi or in modern times Krokhmal and Isaac Breuer seem to betray Orthodoxy to the other side?

Is this mid-brow vs high-brow?

And what about the struggle and angst? Do people on the synthesis side really think that everyone has to have it? Or is it just a need for confrontation of ideas and not necessary angst?

There are lots of good lines to quote in all the substantive comments but to give one:
Isaac- “Maybe the whole struggling trope is an existential answer to the contradictions of modernity and Orthodoxy, rather than a strategy for overcoming or resolving them.”

Deep struggle with ideas in graduate school in a chosen discipline makes sense after training a field for many years and where one knows the prior data and method. Then struggle can lead to new knowledge. But does intellectual struggle to achieve synthesis and confrontation mean something without training or enough prior mastery of the problem so that one can formulate something of significance? Is it important to struggle to go though open doors?

Bottom line- some blogs have their identity on a fault line of pro and con skepticism, others are pro and con feminism, it seems this topic is one of the live fault lines on this blog. So those of you who responded viscerally or felt that the anti-synthesis side is wrong. What is the issue?

So Nachum, Jon, Isaac – how do you explain the fault line? Even if you called the other side negative – what do you offer in its place that AS & EJ did not offer?

I was out of town, but this past month David Barton was featured in the New York Times and on the John Stewart show. Barton is a Christian Conservative author who preaches a Christian view of the past, corresponding to the Jewish history as it should have been, Artscroll approach. He is a revisionist of the first order. What is interesting for me is that lesser authors are arguing with him about how he distorts the truth and is not academic. But the better reviews know right for the start that he is no doing anything corresponding to academic research, so they ask: what is his religious appeal? How does he come up with his opinions? They treat him as object, nor subject.

This had me thinking about the Modern Orthodox types who criticize Artscroll history, as if it was all about comparative methodology. They tend not to treat the Yeshivish versions of the past as object for study or beneath critique.

The debate around Barton opens up questions of how the Evangelical or Orthodox determine who gets to give a homily or write narratives about the past. What is an expert, degrees, and qualifications to write a religious narrative that is not academic? Why are bad credentials seen as good? The Evangelicals have many similar cases of a teacher in an Evangelical school paskening American history, preachers and roshei yeshiva who fracture history, or an implicit providential exceptionalism, which confuses the theological mesorah with the secular activity of the historian.

Actual scholars don’t care or don’t debate the views of Evangelicals on the Founding Fathers, nor do Jewish academics care to even refute Roshei Yeshivah about their views of Maimonides, Rabbi SR Hirsch or the Holocaust. They don’t refute them they are not historical- there is no philology, no historical context, no application of social sciences. They consider the relgious stories as products, manufactured accounts for a specific audience.

This first review is from a trained Evangelical historian Paul Harvey who works on the role of religion in American history, but he feels David Barton does not deserve to be called a historian. And that it does not pay to refute him because his audience wont care.

I don’t question the necessity of pointing out Barton’s history of outright falsehoods, explaining the fallacies of his presentism (as in using a 1765 sermon or a 1792 congressional vote to show that the original intent of the founders was to oppose bailout and stimulus plans), and introducing to non-experts the abundant evidence calling his historical worldview of the Christian Founders into question. Yet while these kinds of refutations are necessary, they are not sufficient. That’s because Barton’s project is not fundamentally an historical one.

Barton v. the Historical Profession

That’s why historians’ takedown of his ahistorical approach ultimately won’t matter that much. Nor will historians’ explanations of his presentism, and his obvious and unapologetic ideological agenda (albeit considerably muted for his appearance on The Daily Show). While all the historians’ refutations are good and necessary, ultimately they won’t matter for the audience which exists in his alternate intellectual universe, one described in much greater detail in my colleague Randall Stephens’ forthcoming book The Anointed: Evangelical Experts in a Secular Age.

And it’s also why insinuations about his pedigree (a degree in education from Oral Roberts University) will only heighten his followers’ sense of the cultural elitism of his critics.

Ideas Packaged as Products

Some of that is because of the skill of Barton and his organization WallBuilders at ideological entrepreneurialism. Barton’s intent is not to produce “scholarship,” but to influence public policy. He simply is playing a different game than worrying about scholarly credibility, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. His game is to inundate public policy makers (including local and state education boards as well as Congress) with ideas packaged as products that will move policy.
Historical scholarship moves slowly and carefully, usually shunning the public arena; Barton’s proof-texting, by contrast, supplies ready-made (if sometimes made-up) quotations ready for use in the latest public policy debate, whether they involve school prayer, abortion, the wonders of supply-side economics, the Defense of Marriage Act, or the capital gains tax.

Besides this sort of organizational skill and personal charisma, however, Barton’s success at withstanding the phalanx of professional critics comes because he taps into a long history of “Christian Nation” providentialism.

A Manufactured “Debate”

The issue, then, is not Christian conservatives advocating their views in the public square. The problem, rather, is their claim (at least in places such as The Daily Show or the New York Times) that their Providentialist beliefs and readings of documents from the past represent a kind of legitimate scholarship that should have its place in the public “debate.”

Aside from its remarkable influence on the writing of American textbooks, perhaps the biggest success of the Christian nationalist intellectual ideological universe is to insert points of controversy where there aren’t any in actuality.
But the presentation of the American certificates of birth—the “short form” of the Declaration of Independence, and the “long form” of the Constitution—will not quiet the Christian Nation “debate.”

I use the term “debate” in quotes because it is fraudulent. Even advocates of the viewpoint of the “godless Constitution” (such as historians Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore) fully understand the religious base of American history. They suggest simply (as Jon Stewart was trying to get at) that the framers rather deliberately excluded religion, not because they sought an exclusion of religion from the public square, but simply to avoid any special privileges for it at the federal level. Eventually, those views were incorporated into state laws through the 14th Amendment, through the pluralization of American life in the twentieth century, and through the epochal court cases of the 1940s through the 1970s.

The Christian Nation “debate” is not really an intellectual contest between legitimate contending viewpoints. Instead, it is a manufactured “controversy”
On one side are purveyors of a rich and complex view of the past, including most historians who have written and debated fiercely about the founding era. The “other side” is a group of ideological entrepreneurs who have created an alternate intellectual universe based on a historical fundamentalism. In their drive to create a usable past, they show little respect for the past as a foreign country.

This next historian points out how Evangelicals don’t know there are other positions out there and they frame everything as “secular academics” vs Evangelicals. They don’t realize that there could be an Orthodox historian.

But I think what prevents me from doing so is the fact that there are many people out there–mostly evangelical Christians–who embrace Barton’s ideas because they are unaware that any other Christian position on this Christian nation debate exists. I have seen this first hand as I have traveled to churches and taught Sunday School classes. There are a lot of people who can’t imagine that a fellow evangelical could disagree with Barton. When evangelicals learn that such a position exists some of them are open to change.

Here is a major Clearinghouse page of the reviews and reactions to Barton.

My final quote is from the Atlantic, written by a former Maimo Student of mine, Yoni Applebaum. He points out Evangelicals read history the same way the read Bible, directly from the text and without a sense of historical distance. One reads an Eighteenth century documents without philology or context and as having a message for today. How do Orthodox accounts of the past allow carry over their techniques from the beis medrash? Applebaum says that it is not about credentials, method, or peer review.His critics are barking up the wrong tree. It works because it is part of the same process of Evangelical reading of scripture by opening the text and laying on one’s heart. What is the Yeshivish process of history as a phenomena of modern popular relgion?

Barton’s errors, exaggerations, and elisions have been exhaustively cataloged; no credible historian defends his work or his conclusions. And yet millions continue to find his message compelling. Why do they trust him?

Barton himself provides an answer on his organization’s website:

The heart of our educational work, and that which makes WallBuilders so unique, is our library of rare books. We have collected thousands of first-edition works of our Founding Fathers — including their own handwritten documents — and it is primarily in these original sources that we conduct our research.

This emphasis on primary sources is the cornerstone of Barton’s pitch. He explained to Jon Stewart that he is in the business of “historical reclamation,” adding that he has “about a hundred thousand documents from before 1812.” He took the Times reporter on a tour of his library, showing off his volumes and their yellowed pages. And he uses these documents to brush aside complaints that he lacks any formal academic training in history. “I don’t have a doctorate in that, no,” he told Stewart. “I’ve got a lot of documents … and what I got taught and what I’ve seen in the actual documents aren’t the same thing.”

Perhaps most crucially, Barton insists that the meanings of these texts should require no additional context.

Barton’s focus on returning to the original text, and his pointed disdain for the scholars whom he accuses of distorting its plain meaning, seems to resonate with his largely evangelical audience. There is a reason for this. It echoes the general doctrine of sola scriptura, the bedrock of the Reformation, that the text of the Bible alone contains the knowledge necessary for salvation. It draws on the tradition of prooftexting, using verses lifted from a larger text to buttress specific points. And in particular, it mirrors the notion of the perspicuity of Scripture — that its essential teachings are sufficiently clear that “not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”

In other words, Barton frames historical texts in the manner that his audience is accustomed to encountering the other texts that it routinely studies. He discards the accreted mass of scholarly interpretations, just as Reformation preachers jettisoned the layers of scholastic traditions. He selects key passages for use as texts, and constructs his historical sermons around them. And, perhaps most crucially, he insists that the meanings of these texts should require no additional context; that they are readily evident to all who have eyes to see, and a mind to understand and discern. He proclaims a professoriate of all believers.

When his critics insist that he subject his work to peer review, or disparage his credentials and his logic, they only reinforce the strength of his appeal to his target audience.

This may be beating a dead horse already. But this past Shabbos, a older speaker who would be a self-described defender of an older Modern Orthodoxy was describing the Ibn Ezra as an ideal Modern Orthodox person. He knew Torah, and he also knew the sciences, poetry, Biblical commentary, grammar, linguistics, and philosophy. He was a rationalist and sought peshat.
In the middle of his presentation, the person sitting in front of me turned to me and whispered:

Ibn Ezra had difficulties earning a living, he was not so successful in business, and had no fixed income. Therefore he could not be Modern Orthodox. It costs a lot to be Modern Orthodox.

The person does not read my blog or my essays, so they are not parroting me. They earn a seven figure income.

I was surprised that no one commented on David Hartman Part I – here. I expected people to come back over the weekend after reading the review. If anyone is interested, the post New Wedding Simplicity went viral and got over 35 facebook posts, without being cross-posted on another blog or JID. It got more hits than a major cross-post. It now gets as many regular hits as half-shabbos. So expect some simple weddings in 2012.
I assume that everyone has read the tikkun articles by now. Go to David Hartman Part I for the links. So now after reading everyone can help me think this through.Let me know the value and innovation of what Hartman said in 1986, so I can evaluate what is new for 2011.

Short version
Landes declares that “My problem with Hartman is that his lovers model is so absolute in and so defined in structure that it ultimately idealizes the divine –human encounter from a frozen embrace.” There is more out there that you are rejecting.
Hartman responds: Look at everything that I am solving. Jews are too magical, too miraculous, too other-worldly, and too irrational- they think God will intervene at any point. They are therefore manic-depressive. They are more Nahmanides than Maimonides. My Living Covenant model solves everything. I have not rejected anything, I just solved everything.

Long Version
Landes on Hartman’s Living Covenant
Landes is in favor of Hartman’s creating a halakhah that accepts some some aspects of modernity such as autonomous moral spirit, human adequacy, commitment to the ethical, universalistic world view, pluralism, and a this worldly focus.

Landes frames the opposition as Satmar who demonized halakhah into a sharp weapon of hate, Rav Kook who spiritualized it into a mystic rite, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz- objectified it into a servant’s blind obedience.

Rav Soloveitchik is indeed the hero who saw the problem was not truth or conflicting truths but the problem that religion as irrelevant in the modern age.

Now a soft critique – Hartman finds Soloveitchik as anti-heroic and self-defeat and in contradiction to a philosophy of victory.

Hartman is correct that morality needs to be national community
And Hartman understands the importance of God as creator who transcends world, and revealer of the law as immanent. Hartman correctly emphasizes creator, God role in history, and Torah.

For Landes worship – tefilah is about submission, dependency, and inadequacy [Sounds like Schleiermacher via Berkovits]

Soft critique – Instead Hartman wants prayer as the intimacy of two lovers & Hartman emphasizes communal liturgy, and fixed times for prayer. Landes complains that Hartman’s version of prayer is a monologue and he does not have the Hirschian elements (Landes would not like Maimonides, Albo, or even other Jewish thinkers like Rav Soloveitchik on prayer.

Landes like that Hartman views the return under Ezra, bait sheni, and the Ten martyrs as showing love for Torah

Hartman’s typology:
Exodus- unilateral divine power and then human responsibility
Sinai — as mutuality through Torah study

Hartman says that Zionism demands this-
Landes’ big critiques-
1] Hartman defines God in a single way and thereby eliminates God’s complex personality His autonomy, and His adequacy.
2] Hartman has an atheistic quality in which we have sole responsibility to make world better- not enough covenantal partner.
3] No criteria for which modern values to accept or critiques.

Hartman Responds (by restating his basic views)
I don’t have a problem with suffering and defeat- just don’t expect God to sort it all out.
I want the God of Maimonides who does not intervene to clean up the problems of life. We live based on our passionate love for God and Torah.
Most in the community are Nachmanideans, in which God is above nature and history and can intervene at any time with miracles and redemption. [AB- so if you want a rational this world Judaism they why all this relationship model and all this covenant talk?- Rather give me a Maimonidean religion.]

Hartman claims that there is religious language of king/subject, master/servant, but I want to develop husband/wife and teacher/student

Yes, Judaism has submission but he wanted to present what would be if there was more human control.

He is not championing modern autonomy but autonomy to grown like in a relationship and in love – autonomy to apply revelation in relationship. He does not want secular humanism but the humanism from reading Torah with self-dignity.

Kierkegaard ‘s suspension of the ethical is not covenantal, not dignity, not victory minded. Suspension of the ethical – numbs moral integrity and destroys a natural sense of fairness. [ab- Rabbis Amital, Wurzburger, and Jonathan sacks said same thing without all this emotional drama ]

Hartman says that Zionism means to create responsible halakhah. [AB- but didn’t Rabbis Herzog, Unterman, Goren said that already and did not need the discussion of relationship or God as a lover?]

Hartman is against anything mystical or Hasidic as Non-covenantal , pantheistic and theocentric Religious consciousness is not a covenantal moment. Mizvot don’t relate to the mystical they are this worldly. [AB- I would have definitely checked out and rejected this in 1986.]
Following Rav Soloveitchik, Halakhic practice cannot be the carrier of religious emotion rather Torah study should be primary.

Hartman correctly notes that Landes would also be against Rav Soloveitchik’s view of prayer as found in essays like Redemption, Prayer, Talmud Torah. Hartman has nothing against petitionary prayer just prayer that is magical, and other-worldly redemptive and takes away our responsibility for working in the world. Not what God can do for us – but an affirmation of our Sinai commitment He thinks that Landes misreads him if he see a limit on God in his thought, rather he is concern about responsible motives of the one praying

Hartman is in favor of self-sacrifice to keep mizvot, to be shomer Shabbat even if economic loss, to preach Torah to a congregation that does not want to hear. But not for reward in the world to come nor as something forced that one is resentful for doing. One puts on tefillin is love not submission.

Hartman states: God actions do not depend on how I write books but on His infinite wisdom.
Furthermore, Buber and Halevi for whom Judaism is event centered are manic –depressive, since events end.

Landes responds
“My problem with Hartman is that his Lovers model is so absolute in and so defined in structure that it ultimately idealizes the divine –human encounter from a frozen embrace.” He is exclusive in his model. Many other models out there.

Landes is deeply committed to defend prayer as based on typology of dependence like in the Rabbi Saul Berman introduction to the RCA siddur – we learn to pray from different moments of the Avot. Therefore, there are many functions to prayer.

In addition the Lovers model is not a constant. What If one lover is on a self-destructive course then the other one needs to step in to help- it is not always equality.

Using Berkovits terminology, Landes states that hestair panim is temporary not permanent condition of life. [Hartman does not even speak that language of hestair panim]

1986-2011
So why do I need Hartman’s Living Covenant?
Do I need relationship and therapeutic language not to be magical and other worldly?
And did his theology published right before the first Intifada give insight into making a living Zionism?

Here is Rabbi Linzer’s YCT graduation speech to the newly minted rabbis arguing that we do not know what and where the promised land is anymore. We live in an age of unstable reality because of Enlightenment and Emancipation, because of modernity, because of the Holocaust, because of post-modernism. The speech argues that we cannot hide and assume that the basic assumptions are still true. Not accepting all these changes is to be considered as running back into a nostalgia for the past. Who are they criticizing as running away?

According to the speech, there is a need to deal with Biblical criticism and the Holocaust. For the latter, you can tell everyone to read Kol Dodi Dofek, Yitz Greenberg, and Eliezer Berkovits but what are they expecting for Biblical criticism? Are they telling graduates to embrace it or just to spend an afternoon reading Mordechai Breuer? An if the goal is to open afresh: Why be Jewish? What answers do they expect?
He said “did we once again say that halakha will answer all religious questions?” Where are the new answers going to come from? How are they expecting the young graduates to grapple with these topics? Read Newsweek and blogs? Are these the topics that they should bring up with their congregations?

And what does any of this have to do with the quest of the actual graduates for social justice, simplicity, dairy weddings, and AJWS trips to third world countries?

Now, it is relatively easy to construct a perfect system, with Torah and mitzvot, with God in the center, as long as one is in the desert.

Since then, we have been encamped in another stable reality – in a pre-Modernity, galut Judaism. When change came this time, when our reality was shaken – were we ready to move forward? When Modernity and the haskalah presented compelling alternate views of the world, when they posited epistemological assumptions and value-systems that were at odds with those of tradition – did we rise to the challenge or did we build our walls higher? When the Holocaust destroyed a third of our people and raised the most profound questions about God as a God of history – did we begin to think theologically or did we once again say that halakha will answer all religious questions? When post-modernism raised questions about any and all truth-claims, and when feminism raised profound questions about power, equality, and morality – did we also struggle with these, or did we continue to live in an imagined, romantic past?

For many the response at this time was obvious. Judaism had lost all relevance, all claims to truth, all claims to morality. The answer was to leave – כתינוק הבורח מבית הספר. And for many others, the only solution was to pretend as if nothing had happened. To shift from the nice stable reality that they had become accustomed to over all these years, was unthinkable. The solution was to remain firmly encamped in the desert. Only a few understood that we had entered a new parsha, that we needed to move, but that we had to discover how to move – על פי ה’ יסעו- how to move forward with the aron at the center. While this new parsha will undoubtedly mean struggles, challenges, and risks, the alternative is unthinkable – to remain encamped in the desert, to relegate ourselves to irrelevance.

But you also know that to do just this is to keep the Torah from moving forward. You know that to truly face the challenges of today, you must be prepared to take on questions of the relevance of Torah Judaism, questions of faith and Biblical criticism, questions of God and the Holocaust, questions of the legitimacy of the State of Israel, questions of the morality of halakha.

You know that perhaps the most pressing question today is not how to get to the Promised Land, but what and where is the Promised Land? Not in the geographic sense, but in the spiritual, religious sense. What is the purpose of being Jewish? What does God want from us? What is our role in the world? You know that to not address these questions is another type of תינוק הבורח, another way of running away from the demands of the Torah, a Torah that must be brought into our world. You know that this is your responsibility, as you know become our rabbis, our religious leaders. You are the ones that will, that must, lead our people forward, to grapple with these challenges openly and honestly, to find their way out of the desert. Read Full Version Here.

Rav Shagar Z”l of Yeshivat Siah Yitzhak used to speak of the lack of clear direction in the post-modern world. We need to do teshuvah- to return- but to where? Rav Shagar’s solution was to look into the self, Neo-Hasidism, and its fragmented perceptions. I am not sure it is the same here.

Discussion on Synthesis and Modern Orthodoxy continued in later post here.

I have just read David Hartman’s new book
David Hartman with Charlie Buckholtz, The God Who Hates Lies: Confronting and Rethinking Jewish Tradition (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2011).

I am not sure what to make of it since I have never found his published books very interesting. So it is difficult for me to figure out what is new here.

Hartman’s major book A Living Covenant (1985) is 26 years old this year. Many people love it. I have never known what to do with it. I first encountered the book when it was published, I was still enveloped in the thought of Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Aharon Lichtenstein. More than that, I was interested in Polish Hasidut – Izbitz, Reb Zadok, Gur, as well as spirituality in general. I did not see how the book related to any of that.

Over the years, I have taught the writings of Art Green, Arnie EIsen, Eliott Dorff, as well as Rav Aharon, Rav Dessler, and Rav Aharon Kotler. But I have never taught A Living Covenant. I have taught Hartman’s Torah and Philosophic Quest (1976), as an excellent example of a Torah UMadda use of Maimonides. Nevertheless, I never found a way to include his later works.

So what we are going to do is have a public discussion like we did with the new Arthur Green book. I will go back to A Living Covenant in order to be able to evaluate the new book. Those of you submit relevant long comments will have then turned into posts.
Part I –General Intro
Part II- Landes on Hartman’s A Living Covenant, Hartman response, maybe some other 25 year old reviews. I want to understand Hartman’s cental book before commenting on the new one.
Part III Charlie Buckholtz, who co-authored the new book, will answer a few interview questions about the new book.
Part IV- I will attempt to offer a few comments on the new book.

I am not interested in an ad homonym discussion nor am I interested in labeling him Orthodox or not. I am interested in what he has to say and what does it contribute. In order to do that we will start with the book review written by Daniel Landes in Tikkun magazine in the very first year of the journal in 1986, followed by Hartman’s response and then Landes’s response.

I choose this starting place because a liberal review is not starting with Rav Soloveitchik’s halakhah and more conservative Orthodox review would not accept Hartman’s thought. But Landes is an ideal starting point as a Rav Soloveitchik student who is a follower of Rabbis Eliezer Berkovits and Yitz Greenberg and who likes covenant language. Landes earlier this year has shown his commitment to Berkovits over Arthur Green and Neo-Hasidic models.

Here are the three articles. Go Read them carefully and then come back to comment. I will not post comments that do not look like they at least read the reviews in depth.
I also will not post comments by people who parachute in with jingles that are not informed by books or reviews. If you wish to publicly argue for or against Hartman, then get reading.

When you click on them the URL will appear in the navigation bar.You may have to double click on the URL in the navigation bar and then reload in order to get the pdf to download.
If the link does not work, then you can quickly find them in a Google search.
Daniel Landes on David Hartman: A Vision of Finitude

Human Autonomy and Divine Providence: Hartman on Human Autonomy: A Response to Landes’ Review

Landes Responds to Hartman.
The later two articles get down to the issues. SO don’t just read the first article.

David Hartman recounts in all of his works how he left Lakewood to discover a wider world, which he did when he was connected to Rav Soloveitchik but he felt there were more issues to deal with. His vision of himself is as Yeshiva bakhur and he is remembered by many as an enthusiastic pulpit rabbi dancing for his love of Torah. Even three years ago, on the shabbos before Shavuot, I heard his exhort everyone he saw to understand that Shavuot was not just lectures but our Torah study that shows our love and commitment to the joy and responsibility of Sinai and the giving of the Torah.

He discovered the wider world in his 30’s during the 1960s. He discovered pop-psych books like Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving which contrasts mature and immature love, and the relationship of parent-child compared to spouses. From also rejected authoritarian approaches and considered fix law as running away from freedom. I am observing a similar phenomena now with guys who were all learning and beis medrash in their 20’s during the 1990s. They were no way associated with the liberal parts of the community. Bu now that they have pulpits- they have been avidly reading as autodidacts everything relevant to the real life of the pulpit including psychology, Evangelical Christianity, and sociology. Now they are seeking to combine their new American horizons with their beis medrash vision.

Hartman’s ideal that the study of Talmud should be the locus for Jewish identity and that all modern Jews should have beis medrash style study has caught on everywhere, The idea that one should find modern Jewish thought in a debate of Maimonides and Nahmanides or another classical text has now replaced lectures on Jewish History or peoplehood.

His beis medrash had direct break off creating Shapells/Darché Noam, then Hamivtar. And his approach of traditional study with modern questions was the inspiration of everything from Beit Morasha, Elul, Pardes, Hadar, Shalem, and Yakar.

Hartman is involved in a recurring recapitulation of wanted to study his love- Gemara and then asking modern questions and then discussing his frustrations in his Lakewood past, his YU past, with the Israeli rabbinate, or in the Gemara itself. From my limited perspective, he keeps promising integration with the modern world, and I keep hearing his frustrations. Yet I do not hear solutions for curriculum, halakhah, theology, or actual integration.

He is asking secular questions and then looking for the answers in the Gemara. That is why you cannot ask where he fits into the spectrum or gamut of Jewish thought because he is asking secular questions and returning to the Talmud. Lakewood to Modern Issues and then he returns to the Talmud. What he is not doing is reading the options of modern Jewish thought or modern Jewish thinkers and then situating himself between several of them. His assigned his classroom to read Locke and then turns to the Talmud to ask what is the political thought of the Talmud?

When Hartman left to Israel in 1971 at age 40 with his family after 15 years in a major pulpit, there was a post-Six Day War euphoria that we will build our ideal Jewish reality and restore Judaism as a living religion. Many of the other American rabbis who moved in those years had a similar utopian liberal vision. But what does he mean here in America?

In the meantime, while I wait for people to read the Landes- Hartman debate of 1986, here is a review of the new book from the Jewish Journal. I only clipped the general parts- I will return to issues germane to the new book itself after the interview with the co-author.

Two adolescent encounters with two important teachers shaped the person I have become and formed the core of my scholarly and personal values. One was with David Hartman, then a young rabbi. I had just given what I thought was an imaginative d’var Torah at a Yeshiva University Young Leadership Seminar. Self-impressed with my seeming erudition, I quoted original sources, Biblical and Rabbinic—even Maimonides commentary on the prohibitions of an Israelite King acquiring too many horses or marrying too many wives. Hartman approached me and asked: “Do you believe what you said and did you say what you believed? Or did you merely want to appear impressive and not rile up your audience?” I internalized his question and have asked it again and again whenever I speak and whenever I write.

Ironically, Hartman preferred to be seen as a religious thinker, not as an institution builder.

If you have not read the books then go download the pdf’s – and come back after shabbos. If have read the prior books and have thoughts to add then please comments.

Q & A – WITH RABBI RISKIN-
[Posted May 21, 2011 on Ohr Torah Stone Website].
Notice the blanket acceptance of Evangelicals and the permission to participate in a Church service if it is for educational purposes.

Question:
Am I allowed to attend my friend’s wedding in a church? Are Jews allowed to enter churches at all?

Answer:
Evangelical churches do not have icons or statues and it is certainly permissible to enter Evangelical churches. Catholic and most Protestant churches do have icons as well as paintings and sculptures. If you enter the church in order to appreciate the art with an eye towards understanding Christianity and the differences between Judaism and Christianity so that you can hold your own in discussions with Christians, then it is permissible. Participating in a church religious service is forbidden unless it is for learning purposes or unless it would be a desecration of God’s name if you don’t attend, as in the case of Chief Rabbi Sack’s attendance at Prince William’s wedding.

Here are a number of things on Orthodoxy and pop culture that I have collected in the last few months.

The first is a local Orthodox synagogue that is promoting “a healthy Jewish lifestyle.” The president of the congregation is going on a diet and “asking congregants to make a donation to the synagogue for every pound lost.”

But beyond his “immediate goal to lose weight and bring in extra finances,” he said, what has been achieved is that “a number of people have been inspired to make changes in their own lifestyles and their family’s lifestyle.” He said this is his “most noble goal: that other people get inspired by this.”

He also periodically sponsored a “healthy table” at the synagogue’s kiddush, where people can discuss any issue while nibbling on healthy food.

With the coming of spring, he said, he is organizing fitness walks with congregants.
“We are talking about not only helping the body, but the spirit as well,”
“Weight loss is not only an American obsession; it’s also a mitzva to take care of your body.”
Read the Full Version Here

Second, there was a local fundraiser for Maalah – the religious film school in Jerusalem. The one running it perceptively noted that to be Orthodox and making films is not the American model of Orthodoxy.

“the Maale offers a vision not found in the American Orthodox community.”
“It broadens the possibilities that exist for professional development and creativity for Orthodox young people,” he said. “It shows that there are ways to fulfill one’s creative urge that go perhaps beyond the box of what many Orthodox people think are the possibilities.”
Read the Rest Here

Third, there is an apologetic website for Orthodox Judaism that first paints nasty stereotypes about Orthodox Jews and then using humor tells you they are not true. There is a curious tension there of still being bothered by those horrible stereotypes, which even most non-religious Jews and non-Jews don’t think are true. The site has a conversion from Conservative to Orthodox orientation and is supported by Maayim Bialek as a poster child for Orthodoxy. But notice the nature of her Orthodoxy that does not observe second day Rosh Hashanah but still thinks she needs to tell people that Orthodoxy is not anti-science.

[I]n the forthcoming episode for which Bialik was filmed, “How do I convey to people that the science that I’ve studied fits in with the Jewish beliefs that I hold dear?”

Bialik said that her desire to wear skirts rather than pants has mostly meshed with the socially-challenged character she plays on “The Big Bang Theory.”

“There was an episode where the character had to wear a casual outfit and the producers said, ‘You’re going to be wearing a sweat suit.’ They allowed me to wear a long shirt over it.

“I don’t have enough power to walk away from the job. Did I get off for the first day of Rosh HaShanah? Yes. The second day? No.”

After her character drunkenly kissed her “non-boyfriend” boyfriend, she received an e-mail from a fan: “I thought Amy was shomer negiah — that she didn’t touch men.”
Replied Bialik: “I thought so too until I got the script.”
Read the Rest Here

Finally, before Passover as I was eating my pre-holiday last chometz meal of pizza and read the free magazines given out in the pizza place. I found a magazine for Orthodox youth put out by the OU called Ignite. What caught my eye was that Rabbi Steven Burg was the only dvar Torah in the issue that was entirely dedicated to how to have fun with pop-culture: laser tag, hiking, karate lessons, karaoke, water-skiing.
But the dvar Torah was truly memorable. It was on the verse “You shall be holy” and the interpretation of Nachmanides.

The Ramban tells us there that this means to elevate ourselves in that which is permitted. It’s all too easy to teach teens to avoid everything but that doesn’t prepare then for life. Rather, NCSY empowers teens by providing them with the skills to discern the kodesh from the chol, the holy from the mundane, and where possible, to elevate the mundane to new spiritual levels.

The dvar Torah stated that according to Nachmanides we have to be holy in all aspects of our lives and embrace the world of popular culture. Not to avoid the secular world but to choose the good and wherever possible make the secular holy. Yet, we have to make sure to take the good and avoid the bad. What made this memorable was that Nachmanides’ own comment was even if you keep the Torah you can still be a glutton with the Torah’s permission, there one needs to sanctify oneself even with the permitted, being puritan with food, sex, and engagement with the world. Here we have the new theologies of “Eyn od Milvado” – everything can be sanctified connected back to sources that said the opposite.

For those who are new to this blog, especially if you showed up because of the Riskin post then please read the rules for comments- and follow them. That post received the most nasty or inane comments of anything posted since I started. If you parachute in with a phoney email and a comment that did not require reading the post, it will most likely not get posted.

I have lots of good posts ready to post but little time to post them so this may either be a light blogging week or not, depending on my pre-yom tov schedule. Here is a book award a major prize last week.

Last week, the 2011 Michael Ramsay Prize was awarded to Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart.

Atheist Delusions:The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (Yale, 2009).
The book as a response to religion’s cultural despisers is not my cup of tea but the award as best theology by the Anglican Church will propel Hart into a position as a leading apologist. His work will not be accepted by skeptics but those believers out there who want to know what is considered an intelligent response should definitely read his books. Hart will socially fill a role as a CS Lewis or Chesterton for our age.

David Bentley Hart is Eastern Orthodox, but in his personal statements calls himself “Modern Orthodox;” don’t get confused.

In the book, Hart defends the role of Christianity in transforming the world for the better through the ages, contrary to the assertions of critics who assert the faith has done more harm than good. If the critics see region as a negative force in society, Hart defends the positive role for religion.

Archbishop Rowan Williams stated:
“But what makes it more than just another contribution to controversy is the way he shows how the most treasured principles and values of compassionate humanism are rooted in the detail of Christian doctrine.”
“No one could pretend after reading this that Christian theology was lacking in intellectual and imaginative force or in relevance to the contemporary world.”

There is a truly great Full Summary of the book out there on a blog. It is good enough to serve as spark notes. If you want the main ideas of the book then read it at the blog.

First Things review when it first came out.

Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies
From Amazon review:
To begin with, the book should probably be titled “Atheist Delusions About Ancient History.” This book is not so much a debate with our Fashionable New Atheists
It is more a long, and endlessly fascinating, revisit of Ancient History.

It may not be surprising to learn that there are at least two main narratives commonly provided for “The History of Western Civilization.” Here they are (very compressed):

Narrative #1: The Christian Version. “The world was lost in pagan immorality and darkness; man enslaved man and man dominated woman. Then, with the Birth of Christ, came the Divine Light, and the world was forever transformed. The barbarian, knuckle-dragging rapists of Europe were baptised and brought to Jesus, and the world got much, much better. Even today, there is no other known source of European civilization and we reject it at our peril.”
Narrative #2: The Modernist Version. “We had the Glory of Greece and the Splendor of Rome, but alas a bunch of superstitious people completely replaced the glories of Paganism with the knuckle-dragging ignorance of Blind Faith. The result was the Dark Ages, which only ended when Heroic Forces restored the classics of Greece to a benighted Europe. Then came the Enlightenment, and Democracy, and all manner of good things, once the Europeans cast off the shackles of Faith.” Arthur C. Clarke and many other modern thinkers followed this narrative
While classical atheism has often parried with Christianity on metaphysical grounds, the so-called “New Atheism” has for the most part attacked Christianity on historical grounds: that it was intolerant, anti-intellectual, destroyed classical learning, prevented social and political progress, etc. Hart takes on this widely circulated charges and clearly and decisively rebuts them.

Better than the book is the
The David B. Hart Appreciation Blog with many of his essays.
**Better than the book that won the award are his essays.**
After the Asian Tsunami when both Christian and Jewish clerics competed for the stupidest quote to explain why it occurred, Hart wrote a beautiful piece in the WSJ, which he expanded into an 80 page essay against the current trend to offer explanations for tragedies.
Buber’s essays that in the face of tragedy will care about how humans respond and not the theodicy is usually cited as retold by Rav Soloveitchik or Rabbi Sacks. Hart’s little work on theodicy belongs on the same shelf.

David B. Hart’s “Tremors of Doubt” WSJ

What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?

On Nov. 1, 1755, a great earthquake struck offshore of Lisbon. In that city alone, some 60,000 perished, first from the tremors, then from the massive tsunami that arrived half an hour later. Fires consumed much of what remained of the city. The tidal waves spread death along the coasts of Iberia and North Africa.
Voltaire’s “Poëme sur le désastre de Lisbonne” of the following year was an exquisitely savage–though sober–assault upon the theodicies prevalent in his time. For those who would argue that “all is good” and “all is necessary,” that the universe is an elaborately calibrated harmony of pain and pleasure, or that this is the best of all possible worlds, Voltaire’s scorn was boundless: By what calculus of universal good can one reckon the value of “infants crushed upon their mothers’ breasts,” the dying “sad inhabitants of desolate shores,” the whole “fatal chaos of individual miseries”?
…
In truth, though, confronted by such enormous suffering, Christians have less to fear from the piercing dialectic of the village atheist than they do from the earnestness of certain believers, and from the clouds of cloying incense wafting upward from the open thuribles of their hearts.

When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering–when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children’s–no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God’s inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God’s good ends. We are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to see this world as divided between two kingdoms–knowing all the while that it is only charity that can sustain us against “fate,” and that must do so until the end of days.
Read his full discussion, here and here.