Considering Larger Issues of Jewish Identity: Rabbi Korn book review

In the most recent issue of Meorot, Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn writes an interesting review, touching on important issues regarding Jews and the larger world. What jumped out to me, amongst other parts of the review was the following significant passage about the Jewish people in the present day (p. 6):

After Auschwitz and Israel's wars, we are indeed a nervous people feeling that Jewish destiny is determined by fate, not faith. To use R. Soloveitchik's dichotomy, berit goral (the covenant of fate) has overwhelmed berit yi’ud, our covenantal destiny of sacred purpose. Fate has seduced us into seeing ourselves as objects, robbing us of moral agency and our covenantal calling. This is spiritually deflating as well as existentially self-defeating, for in the open and autonomy oriented cultures in which most Jews live today, a Jewish identity built on fear and the specter of persecution will convince few Jews to cast their lot with Jewish destiny. Committed Orthodox Jews may do so, but if it is only Orthodox Jews who remain Jewish, we will cease to be a people and become a sect—much to the dismay of God, who demands in His Torah that we be “a kingdom of priests and a holy people.” Sacks is convinced that King Solomon was correct: “Without a vision, a people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

One thing that reading the above reminded me of was Rabbi Avi Weiss' descriptions of "Positive" and "Negative" Judaism.
Before getting to this paragraph, he wrote (p. 6):

The Jewish people has turned inward, sustained by neither hope nor purpose, but by the common cause of defending ourselves against perceived anti-Semitism. The Other is hostile and ubiquitous, be he the Christian, the secular liberal or the Middle East Muslim. Jewish politics has become the politics of fear. Contrary to our rabbinic tradition, the pagan Balaam's observation that Jews are “a people that dwells alone” (Num. 23:9) has become an ideal: We are a people that ought to dwell alone.

Rabbi Dr. Korn has a few more gems in his review piece, one of which is his discussion on the proliferation of books on Jewish practice, where he was "struck that the sefarim—both Hebrew and English—consisted overwhelmingly of volumes dedicated exclusively to" Jewish law, which is interesting as "the shelves mirror where Orthodoxy is today." (p. 2) But this isn't bad, indeed, "Halakhah has always been the essential mode of Jewish religious expression and a necessary stabilizing force for our lives as a people" (p. 2). But, he says, it's not enough:

Even the consummate halahkic man, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, recognized early in life that an exclusive diet of halakhah leads to “a soulless being, dry and insensitive.” In the end, no amount of elaboration on the rules can nurture a spiritual personality or satisfy deep spiritual hunger; and no amount of technical logical analysis can soothe one troubled after a dark night of the soul.

He goes on (pp. 2-3):

There are also sociological and ideological implications. Like the eruv, halakhah is meant to fashion a closed communal space that is carefully circumscribed by formidable barriers. In addition to acculturating Jews to the culture of the beit midrash, it creates a private, often esoteric, language that undermines shared communication with those outside the halakhic community.

The larger problem that then arises is that (p. 3):

Orthodoxy's current pan-halakhism seems to have lost interest in the human condition per se, and is rapidly losing the language to discuss universal human concerns like ethics, justice, spirituality and human purpose.

However, he continues, "a joy to note, therefore, two recently published books that reveal the theological reflections of Rav Soloveitchik and Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom."

-----
The essay: Eugene Korn, "Windows on the World - Judaism Beyond Ethnicity: A Review of Abraham’s Journey by Joseph B. Solveitchik, edited by David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky and Reuven Ziegler (Jersey City: KTAV, 2008), and Future Tense by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (New York: Schocken, 2009)," Meorot 8 (September 2010).

Abandoning Judaism for Religion

Last night, while reading in bed, I came across the following passage that certainly was something that has been on my mind, but was nice to find an articulation of Jews abandoning their heritage because of "religion":

If Judaism was presented in an immature manner during a youth's earlier years, he has an obligation to himself and to four thousand years of stubbornly proud ancestors to boldly seek out his roots. No sensitive, enlightened youth should reject Judaism because of the way assimilated regions of American Jewry have corrupted it.

It is not intellectually honest to abandon the Jewish faith because it was presented foolishly during childhood years. It is an insult to every cherished principle of enlightened inquiry to dissociate oneself from Judaism because "other religions" are chaotic, devoid of reason, and frequently counter-productive in terms of the bloodshed they occasion. It was Christianity which perpetrated the crusades, inquisitions, and blood libels "in the name of God." It was not Judaism. What a tragedy it would be if, in addition to the millions who died martyrs' deaths at the hand of Christian zealots, future thousands of Jewish youths will forsake their heritage because those bloody massacres have tarnished the reputation of "religion"!

- Dov Aharoni Fisch, Jews for Nothing: On Cults, Intermarriage, and Assimilation (Jerusalem & New York: Feldheim Publishers, 1984), 312.

A Medieval Changing of Judaism

This past shabbas, I read an interesting article, José Faur, "One-Dimensional Jew, Zero-Dimensional Judaism," Annual of Rabbinic Judaism 2 (1999): 31-50 after finding a bunch of articles of his and have started liking them a lot. In the aforementioned article, the following excerpt (pp. 43-45) was wildly fascinating:

Underneath the noise produced by the anti-Maimonideans rested a single issue: is Judaism a one-dimensional or a multi-dimensional system. If Judaism is one-dimensional, then any differing view ought to be repressed at all cost. The anti-Maimonideans embraced Christian ideology. They also adopted the ways of the Church. First and foremost, Judaism was to be conceived as a "religion" - a term for which classical Hebrew has no terminology-in the precise one-dimensional sense designated by the Catholic Church.⁴⁹ Their triumph led to the erosion of the multi-dimensional values of Israel, converting Judaism into a religious system mirroring Christianity. Systematically, the building blocks of Judaism were vacated from their original semantic connotations and imbued with a sense originating in Christendom. A good example is Kabbalah, originally standing for "the authoritative tradition" stemming from the Talmudic Court of Justice, the geonic academies, and the Rabbinic masters of Old Sepharad. The anti-Maimonideans transformed this term to indicate the mystical and the folklore, "even in the hands of the old men and women of our people" - to the exclusion of the legal traditions of the Talmudic Court of Justice, the geonim, and the Rabbinic masters of Old Sepharad.⁵⁰ Another such term is semikha. As noted by Abarbanel, it came to denote Christian "ordination" with no connection to the institution bearing this name in Rabbinic tradition.⁵¹ Similarly, "Talmud learning" - the rallying cry of the anti-Maimonideans - was nothing more than a blunt adaptation of the scholastic methodology of auctoritas (authority). In compliance with scholastic intellectual tradition, certain auctores (authors) were invested with authority; in turn, these auctores were divided into majores (= rishonim) and minores (= aharonim). Consequently, the Talmud was not to be approached directly but through a prism of interpretations and opinions expressed by a hierarchy of auctores. "Proof' consisted in citing one or more of these auctores, without having to have recourse to the subject matter itself.⁵² The purpose of the de-authorization of the Mishneh Torah was to convert halakhah into "canon law," in the precise Christian sense, whereby jurisprudence could be conditioned (from a legal perspective: "manipulated") to "theological" considerations.⁵³ The ultimate roots for the model of the "ideal" Jewish ghetto are to be found Augustin's Civita Dei, not in the Talmud. Political leadership and the cultivation of mundane sciences were to be regarded as pernicious and obtrusive to spiritual life and faith.⁵⁴ Faith meant, simply and plainly, obedience to the "superior." The most fundamental duty of the Jew became faith in the infallibility of the clergy (emunas hakhomim), especially in their transmission of lore professed to have been received through esoteric means. As in Christendom, it is the act of subordination that renders the individual a fidelis (faithful), "because the subject has faith in the superior's institutions."⁵⁵ The source of this doctrine, continuing to shape the very soul of Judaism, was first formulated by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, who declared that, "the verdict of the superior-no matter whether just or unjust-had to be obeyed by the inferior subject."⁵⁶ Accordingly, "rationalism," i.e., the application of critical knowledge by the fidelis, is an act of insubordination. Church policy developed along these lines. As noted by a prominent historian, "What was demanded was not criticism but credulity."⁵⁷ Contrary to biblical and Rabbinic law postulating that even the Supreme Court of Israel at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem is subject to error,⁵⁸ the anti-Maimonideans regarded their own rabbis as inerrant, like the head of the Catholic Church. In recent times, they were endowed with the power to penetrate the "mind of the Torah" (daas torah) and issue decisions based not on the classical texts of halakhah but on a special insight to which only they have right of entry. This doctrine was first formulated by Paul as the "Spirit of the Law," with the express purpose of abrogating the Law.⁵⁹

Lots of very interesting changes happened, apparently....

----

Notes from the excerpt above:

49 The present Hebrew dat denoting "religion" is a neologism. In the Scripture and Rabbinic literature, dat means "law."

50 See, "A Crisis of Categories: Kabbalah and the Rise of Apostasy in Spain," pp. 46-48

51 See "Texte et Société," n. 130, pp. 698-699.

52 See José Faur, "Sanchez's Critique of Authoritas, in Peter Ochs, ed., The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity (Mahwah, 1993), pp. 259-260; "Texte et Société," pp. 98-99.

53 Cf., "Monolingualism and Judaism," pp. 1719-1724.

54 See In the Shadow of History, pp. 204-207.

55 Quoted ibid., p. 33.

56 Quoted ibid., p. 36. For a survey of the subject, see ibid., pp. 28-29, 32-34.

57 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (New York), p. 572.

58 See "Law and Hermeneutics," 1666-1669.

59 See "Monolingualism and Judaism," pp. 1719, 1721-1724, 1732-1736. For an in depth analysis of the psychological background, see "De-authorization of the Law: Paul and the Oedipal Model," pp. 222-243. The power to penetrate the mind of God was first claimed by Balaam the pagan prophet bent on cursing Israel, see Num. 24:16.

Sleeping Direction in Judaism, Part 1: The Shulhan Arukh

When I was working on my avelus test two and a half months ago, I noticed the following interesting line written by Rabbi Yosef Karo in his Shulhan Arukh (YD 362.2):

נותנין המת על גביו ופניו למעלה כאדם שהוא ישן

We place the corpse on its back and its face upwards, like a person when they are sleeping.

From Rabbi Karo's having written this line, it would seem that he would say that people sleep on their backs. However, he also wrote in his Shulhan Arukh (EH 23.3) that

אסור לאדם לישן על ערפו ופניו למעלה עד שיטה מעט כדי שלא לבא לידי קישוי

It is forbidden for a person to sleep on one's neck and one's face turned upwards until one tilts a little in order so that one does not come to have an erection.

Although one could say that, with the latter text, Rabbi Karo means to say that it's kind of like one is lying on one's back, but with the modification of tilting, nevertheless, the first text is still rather interesting. I hope to continue further posts on the topic of Jewish sleep positioning, but, for now, I will end off with the following from Professor Jeffrey Woolf's recent article (HT), that

When it comes to sexuality, the Shulhan Arukh presents a markedly conflicted stance. On the one hand, the author dutifully codifies the relevant rulings that express a positive attitude toward sexuality. On the other hand, in a section of the work (Hilkhot Zeni'ut) that was more likely to achieve wider provenance (Orah Hayyim), he presents the student with a much more severe, ascetic view of sexuality.

- Jeffrey R. Woolf, "'La'avodat Bor'o': The Body in the Shulhan Arukh of R. Joseph Caro," in The Jewish Body: Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period, eds. Giuseppe Veltri & Maria Diemling (Leiden: EJ Brill, 2008), 177.