Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Prague-born Jew, one of the outstanding figures of modern world literature. His name has become an adjective: Kafkaesque. His writings feature eerie situations, disconnected characters, labyrinthine story lines.

     Kafka was raised in a moderately assimilated, German-speaking family, and was not given much of a Jewish education. Trained as a lawyer, he worked full time for an insurance company.  His great ambition was to be a writer, but during the course of his short lifetime he published very little. When he died, he left numerous manuscripts—diaries, stories, novels-- to his closest friend Max Brod, with the instruction that Brod burn all Kafka’s papers! Fortunately, Brod did not heed Kafka’s last wish. He devoted years to organizing Kafka’s papers and getting them published. Great fame came to Kafka…but only after he had died. During his lifetime, he mostly considered himself to be a failure.

     Kafka sensed that he could be a great writer; but he was a perfectionist who never seemed to be satisfied with his own work. In an entry in his diary, June 21, 1913, he wrote: “The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather to be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me” (The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913, p. 288). His day job prevented him from devoting himself to his writing. In his diary (August 21, 1913) he complained: “My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility….I am, not only because of my external circumstances but even much more because of my essential nature, a reserved, silent, unsocial, dissatisfied person…” (Ibid., p. 299). His diary entry for November 10, 1919 lamented: “I haven’t yet written down the decisive thing. I am still going in two directions. The work awaiting me is enormous” (Franz Kafka, Diaries 1914-1923, p. 190).

     For Kafka, writing was the essence of who he was; and yet he was unhappy with his writing…and with himself. In a letter (November 5, 1912) to his beloved Felice Bauer, he spelled out his dilemma: “Shouldn’t I stake all I have on the one thing I can do?  What a hopeless fool I should be if I didn’t! My writing may be worthless, in which case, I am definitely and without doubt utterly worthless” (Letters to Felice, p. 38). Kafka’s internal life was linked inextricably to his writing, as he explained to Felice (January 14/15, 1913):  “For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind….Writing that springs from the surface of existence—when there is no other way and the deeper wells have dried up—is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes that surface shake. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. This is why there is never enough time at one’s disposal, for the roads are long and it is easy to go astray” (Ibid., p. 156). He confided in Felice (March 4/5, 1913): “The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always ‘something,’ and if for once I am ‘something,’ I pay for it by ‘being nothing’ for months on end” (Ibid., p. 213).

   Kafka’s life was peppered with failure. He had a very negative relationship with his father. Although he had several lovers, and was actually engaged to be married, he never did marry. He was unhappy with his office work. He wasn’t satisfied with his writing. He suffered from tuberculosis and died while just forty one years old. If it were not for the devoted efforts of Max Brod, Kafka would have been just another forgotten scribbler who made no perceptible impact on the world of literature. But as it happened, Franz Kafka, the Prague-born Jew who suffered so much and died so young, became a leading light in modern literature.

     Kafka’s works are characterized by unexpected and inexplicable events. In Amerika, an early unfinished novel, the main character is a European young man who has to flee to America; he befriends the ship’s stoker and they decide to work together once they arrive in the new land. But when the young man and the stoker go to the captain’s office, they find the captain speaking with a senator—who happens to be the young man’s uncle! The senator immediately takes responsibility for the young man and treats him very well. But at some point the nephew offends his uncle, who immediately disowns him. Left to his own devices, the young man has various adventures, most of which end badly.

     In his most famous novel, The Trial, the main character is simply identified as Josef  K. He seems to be a perfectly respectable man, but is one day confronted by officials who place him under arrest. K. asks: “But why?’ The men reply: “We weren’t sent to tell you that. Go to your room and wait. Proceedings are under way and you’ll learn everything in due course” (The Trial, p. 5). K. is outraged and wants to defend himself, even though he does not know what charges have been brought against him. K. is advised: “You can’t defend yourself against this court, all you can do is confess. Confess the first chance you get. That’s the only chance you have to escape, the only one. However, even that is impossible without help from others…” (p. 106). K. seeks help from others, to no avail. He thinks about submitting a petition in his defense, but that turns out to be another hopeless approach. The “court” itself is in a nondescript building, with a confusing group of officials and defendants scattered here and there. K.’s situation is a nightmare…but it is not a dream. It is reality, and his life depends on getting acquitted. He is told:  “Our judges, then, lack the higher power to free a person from the charge, but they do have the power to release them from it. When you are acquitted in this sense, it means the charge against you is dropped for the moment but continues to hover over you, and can be reinstated the moment an order comes from above” (p. 158). In other words, the accused is always condemned to live under threat of arrest. He does not know his crime. He does not know who is making charges against him. He does not have the opportunity to defend himself before a responsible panel of judges. He is guilty, and will forever be guilty, without knowing why, and without any defense.  The novel ends with two men coming to K. to execute him. “But the hands of one man were right at K.’s throat, while the other thrust the knife into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing sight K. saw how the men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek to observe the verdict. ‘Like a dog!’ he said; it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him” (p. 231).

     What was the shame that was to outlive K.’s execution? Perhaps it was the very shame of being human, of living in an unjust and unforgiving world, of suffering perpetual guilt even when one is innocent. The shame was not just K.’s. The executioners are shameful individuals; they are nameless and faceless bureaucrats who follow orders even when those orders are wicked and cruel. They commit cold-blooded murder under the guise of obeying the prevailing legal system. Did Kafka eerily foresee the Nazi era when Jews, innocent like K., were simply arrested, accused, imprisoned, murdered…all in the name of the Nazi legal system?

     Kafka’s sense of human helplessness is a theme in his novel, The Castle. K. is a land surveyor who receives an order to do some work for “the castle.” When he arrives, he is not at the castle, but in the village. A vast maze separates the castle and the village, and K. has a frustrating time trying to find his way to the castle. He seeks advice; he tries different strategies…all to no avail. As he remains in the village, he is ominously told:  “You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who isn’t wanted and is in everybody’s way, a man who’s always causing trouble…” (pp. 63-64). This is a classic Kafka dilemma. K. seems to be an honorable person with a respectable profession, a land surveyor; and yet, he is totally at a loss in the face of a massively complicated system he cannot negotiate. He doesn’t belong, he can’t belong, he will never belong. K. is the eternal misfit, the condemned stranger.

     The signature Kafka feelings of alienation fill his stories. In “Investigations of a Dog,” the dog complains: “But where, then, are my real colleagues? Yes, that is the burden of my complaint; that is the kernel of it. Where are they? Everywhere and nowhere” (The Great Wall, p. 23). In “The Burrow,” the mole digs a maze of holes in which it can feel safe from predators. But it never feels safe. “There have been happy periods in which I could almost assure myself that the enmity of the world towards me had ceased or been assuaged, or that the strength of the burrow had raised me above the destructive struggle of former times” (Ibid, p. 55). In his story, “He,” Kafka poignantly describes his dilemma: “He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive” (Ibid., p. 154). In his most famous story, “Metamorphosis,” the “hero” turns into a despicable cockroach, unable to function within his family, at work, or anywhere else. Ultimately, he dies without ever having fulfilled his role as a human being.

     Some students of Kafka have viewed him primarily as an alienated and estranged Jew. Yet, his characters have no distinctive identifying qualities, and some don’t even have full names. Even if the characters may reflect the classic dilemma of alienated Jews in Western society, they obviously relate to the general human predicament in modern times: the growth of bureaucracies, the insignificance of individuals, the feeling of powerlessness against the “establishment,” the loss of traditional religious and sociological moorings. Kafka is widely read and widely respected because his writing touches moderns in a unique and piercing fashion.

     But Kafka’s Jewishness was an essential part of who he was. Even if he was not devoutly religious in a traditional sense, he identified as a Jew, he studied Hebrew, he attended Yiddish language dramatic presentations, and he felt a connection with the national Jewish aspirations connected with Zionism. In his diary (December 25, 1911) Kafka noted his Jewish roots: “In Hebrew [actually Yiddish] my name is Amschel, like my mother’s maternal grandfather, whom my mother, who was six years old when he died, can remember as a very pious and learned man with a long, white beard” (The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913), p. 197).  A few years later (December 17, 2013), he has the following entry in his diary: “The good strong way in which Judaism separates things. There is room there for a person. One sees oneself better, one judges oneself better” (p. 324).

     Kafka was not impressed with the “churchly” qualities of Germanic synagogues that attempted to be modern and dignified. He was drawn more closely to Eastern European Jewish immigrants who seemed to be genuinely religious. On Yom Kippur in 1911, he attended the Altneu Synagogue of Prague, which he described as having the “suppressed murmur of the stock market.” By contrast, though, he noted three pious, apparently Eastern Jews, in socks, bowed over their prayer books. They were praying humbly; two of them were crying (Ibid., p. 72). Kafka saw these Eastern Jews as more sincere religiously, more authentic.

     His sympathetic view of Eastern Jews was evidenced in a letter to Milena Jesenska (September 7, 1920). He described a hall where over one hundred Russian-Jewish emigrants were waiting for American visas, in a crowded, uncomfortable situation. Kafka wrote that “if someone had told me last night I could be whatever I wanted, I would have chosen to be a small Jewish boy from the East, standing there in the corner without a trace of worry, his father talking with the men in the middle of the hall” (Letters to Milena, p. 197).

     In a letter to Felice Bauer (January 10/11, 1913), Kafka reflects on the sad state of Jewish life. “Because the Jewish public in general, here at any rate, have limited the religious ceremonies to weddings and funerals, these two occasions have drawn grimly close to each other, and one can virtually see the reproachful glances of a withering faith” (Letters to Felice, p. 151). The loss of religious vitality was not restricted to Jews, but was a phenomenon of modernity. “Today there is no sin and no longing for God. Everything is completely mundane and utilitarian. God lies outside our existence. And therefore all of us suffer a universal paralysis of conscience” (Conversations with Kafka, p. 51).

     But the Jews faced greater insecurity and self-doubt than others. “Their insecure position, insecure within themselves, insecure among people, would above all explain why Jews believe they possess only whatever they hold in their hands or grip between their teeth, that furthermore only tangible possessions give them a right to live, and that finally they will never again acquire what they once have lost—which swims happily away from them, gone forever. Jews are threatened by dangers from the most improbably sides, or, to be more precise, let’s leave the dangers aside and say: ‘They are threatened by threats’” (Letters to Milena, p. 20).

     Kafka’s first-hand experience with anti-Semitism led him to wonder about the Jewish future. Writing in Prague (November 8, 1920), he made his concerns clear:  “I’ve been spending every afternoon outside on the streets, wallowing in anti-Semitic hate….Isn’t it natural to leave a place where one is so hated?...I just looked out the window: mounted police, gendarmes with fixed bayonets, a screaming mob dispersing, and up here in the window the unsavory shame of living under constant protection” (Ibid., p. 219). Like K. in The Trial, Kafka stood accused by people he did not even know, and who did not know him. He was oppressed, without knowing why, and without any satisfactory recourse to justice.

     Zionism was a logical answer for Jews who were in search of a safe space of their own, a place where they could shape their own lives and destinies. “The Jews today are no longer satisfied with history, with an heroic home in time. They yearn for a modest ordinary home in space. More and more young Jews are returning to Palestine. That is a return to oneself, to one’s roots, to growth. The national home in Palestine is for the Jews a necessary goal” (Conversations with Kafka, p. 105).

     His beloved Milena Jesenska wrote words of remembrance about Kafka as a posthumous tribute. “He was shy, anxious, meek, and kind, yet the books he wrote are gruesome and painful.  He saw the world as full of invisible demons, tearing apart and destroying defenseless humans. He was too clairvoyant, too intelligent to be capable of living, and too weak to fight….He understood people as only someone of great and nervous sensitivity can, someone who is alone, someone who can recognize others in a flash, almost like a prophet” (Letters to Milena, pp. 273-74).

                                         *     *     *

           I first read Kafka in our freshman English class at Yeshiva College. We were assigned to read “Metamorphosis,” and I was vaguely intrigued and repelled by the story. I went on a “Kafka binge,” reading one book after the other; and then I stopped reading Kafka for many years.

           For college age students, Kafka has a particular appeal. He is original, surprising; he doesn’t follow conventional patterns. His loneliness and alienation, his frustration with the “establishment,” his desire for personal greatness—these qualities resonate in the minds and souls of young aspiring thinkers and writers.  

           But then I came back to Kafka’s books much later in life, when I was well into “middle age.” Surprisingly, I found that Kafka still spoke to me clearly, powerfully, cogently. When I read his novels, I found myself laughing out loud at some of the absurd scenes; but I also found myself shaking within at the pathos, the dread.

           And now, as a man in my late 70s, I still read Kafka and find him powerful and pertinent. The world hasn’t improved much, if at all, from the time that Kafka was writing his ominous stories. He continues to be a prophetic voice. If only humanity would listen!

References

Amerika, Schocken Books, New York, 2008.

The Castle, Schocken Books, New York, 1974

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913, ed. Max Brod, Schocken Books, New York, 1965.

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1914-1923, ed. Max Brod, Schocken Books, New York, 1965.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jurgen, Schocken Books, New York, 2016.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena, ed. Philip Boehm, Schocken Books, New York, 1990.

The Great Wall of China, Schocken Books, New York, 1970.

The Trial, Schocken Books, News York, 1998.

Balint, Benjamin, Kafka’s Last Trial, W. W. Norton Company, New York, 2019.

Brod, Max, Franz Kafka, A Biography, Da Capo Press, New York, 1995.

Janouch, Gustav, Conversations with Kafka, New Directions Books, New York, 2012.

Relationship Between Ideals and Commandments in Judaism

By Pinchas Polonsky (Ariel University, Israel), Galina Zolotusky, Gregory Yashgur, and Raphael BenLevi (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)

(Thanks to Lise Brody, Rivka Efremenko, and Lilian Mellech for translation and editing, and

to Prof. Michael Sherman for corrections and helpful discussions.)

Introduction

For many hundreds of years, Judaism has been defending its ideals against those of Christianity. In the Medieval Era everybody knew which religion they belonged to, and conversion from one religion to another was more of an exception than the rule. In the modern era, however, an overwhelmingly large proportion of Jews and Gentiles have become indecisive about which religion they belong to. This has caused the relationship between Judaism and Christianity to change drastically: Judaism is now in a constant state of competition with Christianity for the souls of these uncertain individuals.

So far, Judaism has been losing, and the reason is clear: While Christianity has always revolved around ideals, Judaism has evolved to be a religion of commandments. This is, of course, very disturbing because original and authentic Judaism is very clearly a religion of ideals. If Judaism were to return to its ideals, more and more Jews would find meaning in identifying with and practicing it. However, Judaism must win this contest for another, much broader reason: for the sake of the general advancement of the world through the acceptance of Jewish values. Even if this proves to be too vast a goal, then Judaism must win for the sake of these assimilated Jews.

These two goals are intertwined. The only way to develop the world and to bring the assimilated Jews back to their roots is to restore Judaism to what it used to be in the times of the Tanakh—namely a religion of ideals and morals; the commandments function as a tool to express its values. Once this transformation occurs, both Jews and Gentiles will understand the truth of Judaism, and that in itself will be a great achievement for all of humanity.

Part 1: A Problem in the Orthodox World Today: Jewish Religious Consciousness Lacks the Concept of “Ideals”

            Historically, Judaism has come to be seen as a religion of commandments and laws. If someone unfamiliar with Judaism approaches many contemporary rabbis with queries, they would likely briefly be told about faith in God and the Bible, but then would immediately be encountered by an enumeration of commandments and laws. Similarly, in the library of any Orthodox synagogue or yeshiva, we would find a huge number of books under the general category of halakha (Jewish law), with the laws of everyday life, the holidays, Shabbat, kashruth, and so forth. What we are unlikely to find in this collection is a book called The Ideals of Judaism. We may find bits and pieces in different places, but a systematic exploration of ideals in Judaism is lacking. For this reason, the Judaism that has evolved in the Diaspora, at least outwardly, creates an impression of being a religion that is devoid of ideals.

            This tendency to reduce Judaism to a system of law and observances is not a recent development, however. Beginning with early Christianity this charge was being made, most famously by Paul of Tarsus, who argued for the abolition of the Mosaic Law, at least in any obligatory sense, identifying the law itself as the cause of sin. The charge was that Rabbinical Judaism, and the very institution of the law, was associated with the neglect of higher divine ideals. This motif continued to be echoed almost two millennia later among German Idealist philosophers, particularly Kant and Hegel. In their understanding of Judaism, the Torah is, above all, law. Kant held that if the Torah was given by a deity external to reason, then the Mosaic Law could not represent morality based on autonomous reason. Hegel also believed that, for this reason, Judaism had been superseded by Christianity, and therefore become irrelevant to history’s march toward absolute universal religion, which, he said, was on the horizon in his day. Many contemporary thinkers continue to give voice to this view today.

            However, this view of Judaism is incorrect and represents merely a reduction of the authentic Hebraic system in which moral ideals are in a dynamic interaction with the law. It is correct, however, that, unfortunately, as a result of the long exile where the Jewish people could not manifest the original idea of a sovereign and independent society, there arose a tendency within Judaism to emphasize the laws and commandments over moral ideals. This tendency is still prevalent today and permeates much of the discourse in Jewish Orthodoxy.

            Judaism, in fact, has a two-fold approach to the issue: It recognizes that people generally dislike laws, mainly because laws evoke a sense of obligation. Even if a person agrees with the necessity of obligations, he would still prefer that ideals, goals, and meaning stand behind these obligations. It is no coincidence that Christianity focuses precisely on this issue and accuses Judaism of being a religion of duties, laws, and formalities, devoid of freedom and flight of the soul. On the other hand, the need for laws is also defended: After all, everything falls apart without the laws; the laws are the basis of life. Without self-restraint, spirituality would greatly suffer. Thus, laws have a clear dichotomy: Although they push some away from Judaism, others find Judaism meaningless without them. We claim that while laws are an important part of Judaism, an obsession with, or imbalanced over-emphasis on them, destroys the spiritual content of Judaism.

            Some think that what drives people away from observing commandments is the external secular influence of our day. The problem, however, is much deeper; the divine nature of humanity resists seeing the commandments, the laws, and the duties as the main focus of Judaism. Freedom is a divine quality. It is intrinsic to human nature to strive to emulate God, and everything that creates a distinction from God makes us feel uncomfortable. Therefore, seeing Judaism as merely a set of commandments creates a negative view of the human soul. The commandments are necessary, but only after a person moves freely in the direction of ideals. Self-restraint must stem from freedom, and not the other way around.

The Source of Morality

            There are two levels to this topic that should be differentiated. The first question is that of the source of morality: Is God the exclusive source of moral knowledge for humans, meaning that an act is good solely because God has declared it to be so—and if He were to declare otherwise any act would become moral or immoral accordingly? Or is moral knowledge, from the human perspective, something that can be engaged with independently of revelation by God—and that God, in fact, cannot or will not change it?

            We argue that the Jewish answer to this question is that it is actually a false dichotomy. The truth is that God is, on the one hand, the source of everything, including the moral conscience of humanity. On the other hand, because God endowed humans with the capability for moral thought, it is incumbent upon humanity to use it.

            The most classic source that illustrates this is Genesis (18:25), where Abraham is described as arguing with God. God informs Abraham of his intention to destroy Sodom, but Abraham resists, asserting that God must do justice. Beyond the obvious implication arising from the text that Abraham has the ability to engage in a debate over morality with God, none of the classic Jewish commentators criticize Abraham for asserting his opinion.

            Of course, the account of the Binding of Isaac (the Akeidah) is often raised as the ultimate example that proves that God’s will must be obeyed even in the face of morality. This is also, we argue, a simplistic and inaccurate reading of the story. A thorough treatment of this story is beyond the scope of this article but it can be explained as follows: The most important point to note, here, is that at the end, Abraham does not actually slaughter his son. And it is clear from passages throughout the Tanakh[1] that God is not interested in child sacrifice. In fact, God forbids it in the strongest terms.

            The message of the Akeidah can be understood thus: to clarify once and for all that, by definition, there cannot be a situation where God will command something that is immoral—not because God’s command defines morality, but because God wants to promote moral behavior. The Akeidah story is a dramatic way of driving this point home. Rabbi Avraham Yitchak Kook relates to the Akeidah in his commentary on the Siddur, Olat Hara’ayah (I, p. 92):

…the ultimate [moral] command, whether the imperative to not engage in the evil of murder, or from the natural avoidance of anything that undermines the feelings of love of a father for his child, stands stridently in its place. The clarity, that is natural and holy, which is engraved in the spiritual and material nature, does not lose its high stature at all, by the encounter with the higher vision of God’s word…. Do not think that there is any inherent contradiction between the pure love of a father for his son, and the higher love of God.

            R. Kook is saying that the natural moral conscience—that rejects hurting Isaac—is not in contradiction to the divine command. Any apparent contradiction between humanity’s moral conscience and God’s command will always be superficial. This is because both the feelings of love of a father for his son and the moral conscience that rejects murder are both integral parts of the system of God’s command. Accordingly, Kant’s mistake is that he saw autonomous morality and heteronomous morality as being contradictory to begin with. In Judaism they are not and cannot be so.

            R. Kook says this even more clearly in Orot haKodesh (Section 3:12):

The fear of heaven must never be allowed to thrust aside man’s natural morality, because then it would cease to be a pure fear of heaven. A sign of the pure fear of heaven is when the natural morality, rooted in man’s upright nature, is brought to higher and higher heights that he would not otherwise reach, because of it [the fear of heaven].

            But this is not only a position held by R. Kook. The classic sages seem to say the same thing. R. Nissim Goan (990–1062) states that all people, including non-Jews, are beholden to the moral imperative, even if they were not directly commanded by explicit divine revelation. The human conscience is also a source for approaching God’s will, even where God has not spoken. He states: “All the commandments that are dependent on common sense and the hearts’ understanding are obligatory from the day that God created man in this world” (Introduction to Sefer haMafteah).

            Likewise, R. Abraham ibn Ezra in his commentary on the Torah (Exodus 20:1), states:

God forbid that even one of the commandments should contradict common sense, but we must in any case observe everything that God commanded, whether its secret is revealed or not. And if one of them seems to contradict common sense, we must not understand it at face value, and must search our sources for its meaning, possibly as a parable.

            Maimonides, in his Guide to the Perplexed (II:45), argues that humanity’s internal moral compass is itself a form of prophecy:

The first degree of prophecy consists in the divine assistance which is given to a person, and induces and encourages him to do something good and grand, e.g., to deliver a congregation of good men from the hands of evildoers; to save one noble person, or to bring happiness to a large number of people; he finds in himself the cause that moves and urges him to this deed. This degree of divine influence is called “the spirit of the Lord.”

            The nineteenth-century Italian rabbi, Elijah Benamozegh, puts it slightly differently, in what he called the “unity of the law”—the unity of the universal or divine law, and the law of humanity. He explains that the law of the universe and of humanity are one and the same. “God keeps the laws,” as it were, and this is the meaning of the midrashic statements where God is described as observing the commandments such as tefillin and sukkah. R. Benamozegh says that God and humanity are bound to the same moral imperative, in essence. Humans are expected to emulate God because they must both meet the demands of morality. In fact, God observed the mitzvoth [the commandments] before there were humans; and it is because God did so that God commanded humans to do so as well. As he states in his work, Israel and Humanity:[2]

The many biblical passages which declare that the true knowledge of God is moral knowledge, the fear of the Lord, thus become clear… Practical morality or ethics is thus raised to the level of divine knowledge. The law of man and the law of God are but a single identical law…. (p. 226)

…The Torah affirms that the moral life is indispensable to the dignity of all men without distinction… Moses says: “for all the abhorrent things were done by the people who were in the land before you, and the land became defiled” (Lev. 18:27), suggesting that ethical laws are universal, applying to Gentiles as well as Jews…. This text is but a single example… in which we see God approving or condemning, rewarding or punishing the Gentiles—appraising their conduct, whether as Lawgiver or Judge, and doing this with reference to a higher law to which they are held as responsible as the Israelites, which is in fact the same for all men. This universal moral standard is invoked not only in the pagan’s relation to God but also in his relation to Israel, and in a general way in the relations of all men with one another…. Moral values are perhaps assumed to be generally known, whether by a natural instinct of mankind or through a tradition common to all peoples. (p. 279)

The Reasons for the Commandments (Ta’amei haMitzvoth)

            This first level of the fundamental source of morality leads directly to the second level, which is how exactly this morality is related to Judaism’s system of commandments. Should we be occupying ourselves with the details of this relationship at all? And how are we to incorporate general moral considerations when deciding issues of halakha over time and in different contexts?

            Here, there seems to be a certain tension that is built into Judaism even among the classic commentators. All seem to recognize that, in principle, there are deep reasons for all the commandments; but many express great caution over involving ourselves with these reasons out of concern that it will result in a loss of the fear of heaven and lead to neglecting observance. So the obligation to observe the commandments even without directly engaging with their particular moral ideals is a fundamental part of the rabbinic tradition. It is only the over-emphasis, the extreme imbalance that we seek to correct. Let us take note of some of these sources.

            The most famous source that demonstrates a deep skepticism of the attempt to engage with the higher ideals of the mitzvoth is in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 21a:

Why were the reasons in the Torah not revealed? Because the reasons for two commandments were revealed and the great one failed through them. It says: “[The king] must not have many wives, so that they not make his heart go astray” (Deuteronomy 17:17). Solomon said: “I will have many, but I will not go astray.” And it says: “And it was, when Solomon become old, his wives led him astray after foreign gods” (I Kings 11:4). It says: “[The king,] however, must not accumulate many horses, so as not to bring the people back to Egypt to get more horses” (Deuteronomy 17:16). Solomon said: “I will have many, but I will not bring them back.” And it says: “And the horses went up out of Egypt” (I Kings 10:29).

Here, the sages demonstrate that the concern regarding revealing the reasons behind the commandments is justified. If a reason is given, people may come to see the validity of the commandments not as resting in God, but as resting in the supposed reason. In such circumstances, it will be human nature to relate to it in a lax fashion and propose changing it if it seems out of date or inconvenient, as King Solomon demonstrated.

            Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, known as the Ba’al haTurim, writes in his major work of halakha the following: “We need not seek out the reason behind the commandments, because the King’s command is upon us, even if we don’t know the reason” (Tur, Yorah Deah, 171). He expresses the concern that knowing the reason will undermine our recognition of the kingship of God, and we will only observe the commandments with which we identify with and feel attachment. Other sages over the generations have voiced similar opinions. It should be noted, however, that none of them seem to believe that there is no deeper reason behind the Mosaic Law, but only that we, as humans, cannot fully grasp it, and, that pursuing this realm of knowledge will do more harm than good.

            The above quotations notwithstanding, many classic and modern commentators very much believed that we should be engaging ourselves in the pursuit of the meanings, ideals, and reasons behind the Mosaic Laws. In Guide to the Perplexed (III:31), Maimonides writes clearly that the commandments include intelligible logic and that a person can and should understand them:

There are persons who find it difficult to give a reason for any of the commandments, and consider it right to assume that the commandments and prohibitions have no rational basis whatsoever. They are led to adopt this theory by a certain disease in their soul, the existence of which they perceive, but which they are unable to discuss or to describe…. But if no reason could be found for these statutes, if they produced no advantage and removed no evil, why then should he who believes in them and follows them be wise, reasonable, and so excellent as to raise the admiration of all nations? But the truth is undoubtedly as we have said, that every one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts serves to inculcate some truth, to remove some erroneous opinion, to establish proper relations in society, to diminish evil, to train in good manners, or to warn against bad habits.

            Nachmanides presents a similar view in his commentary on the Torah (Deut. 22:6):

…this is one of two possible positions: There is the position that there are no reasons for the commandments beyond God’s desire, but we are of the second position that every commandment has a reason…. The only explanation for cases where we do not know the reason is our own intellectual blindness.

            Often, the commandments are classified into two categories, mishpatim and hukim, meaning commandments that are rationally understandable and ones that are not (Yoma 67b; Maimonides, Guide III:26). However, many sages did not seem to feel that this distinction is so absolute as to preclude finding ideals and meaning even in the commandments that are not readily understandable.

            R. Samson Raphael Hirsch described the commandments as symbols that come to express ideas. In his book The Mitzvot as Symbols, he states that God commanded the observance of practices so that we will be constantly aware of certain concepts and truths and that they will be engraved in our hearts. For him, it is precisely the commandments that are not clearly rational that have symbolic meaning that represent ideas to those who perform them. In justifying his approach, he explains that the reformers of his time claimed that because they identified the higher ideal behind the commandments, actual observance of them was no longer needed. As a reaction to this, he explains, the traditional circles that came to be called “Orthodoxy” insisted that there is no symbolic or expressive meaning at all. Both, however, are wrong in R. Hirsch’s eyes, because there is symbolic meaning in all the mitzvoth.

            R. Kook agrees that all the mitzvoth have meaning beyond the simple fulfillment of God’s will. However, he disagrees with R. Hirsch’s position that the mitzvoth only represent philosophical ideas, that they are symbols of the idea. Instead, R. Kook says that the mitzvoth are not just philosophical symbols but are organically related to the world. They act on the world independently of our understanding of the ideas behind them. He states,

When one penetrates to the depths of knowledge it is clear that the commandments are not symbols, that come merely to remind us and to emulate a depth on the imagination. Rather, they are the substance that make up the human and cosmic reality. (Igrot Hara’ayah II, letter 378)

            R. Kook proposed a synthesis whereby he rejected the clear distinction between hukim and mishpatim altogether. We can’t say any of the commandments are merely rational, but they’re certainly not irrational either. He proposed that within each category of commandment, both hukim and mishpatim, there is both a rational quality and irrational quality. We understand somewhat, but we can never understand them in the totality of their depth. Both aspects must be felt when observing the commandments and, in doing so, we can connect to their higher meaning without coming to devalue the divine authority vested in them.[3]

            The above sources are but a sample of the numerous classic and modern Torah scholars who state clearly that the commandments do hold within them moral ideas and ideals. Despite this, much of Jewish practice has become imbalanced, where the emphasis was put heavily on the side of the irrational and blind commitment at the expense of the substantive ideals. Furthermore, the focus of the engagement with ideals that has existed was on the personal, individual realm, mainly in character development and not the national societal level.

            The reasons often discussed are of two types: hidur mitzvah (the enhanced performance of a commandment) and tikkun haMiddot (a person’s continual struggle to improve his personality traits). Some of the few classical ideals discussed in books like Mesilat Yesharim are zerizut, haste in the performance of the commandments; zehirut, prudence, carefulness not to sin; tseniut, modesty; teshuva, repentance; and so forth. Hovot haLevavot speaks mainly about one’s obligation to believe in God’s existence, unity, and eternity, in His wondrous wisdom and His providence.

            The problem with placing middot (character traits) at the center of Judaism is that they are not ideals toward which society as a whole can strive; they do not provide a direction for national development. Ideals, on the other hand, are not limited to personal goals but rather they transcend the boundaries of neighborhoods, communities, and countries. A system of middot played an essential role in the closed Jewish communal life in exile. Being part of the “national life” was not an option for individual Jews due to external factors and internal self-censorship. Today, with the creation of the State of Israel and the exposure of the Jews to the larger world, Jews can no longer progress without adapting the broader view of Jewish ideals. Middot, therefore, are only a part of a system of ideals and must be viewed as such. Perfecting one’s middot is a worthy cause for an individual, but a system built only on middot is insufficient for the end purposes of a community or society or, all the more so, a government.

            As such, much of the discussion of the reasons behind the commandments focused on providing interpretations for the various commandments, and not necessarily presenting a coherent, overarching system of ideals and how they interact with each other. It seems, that during the exile period, it was natural that legalistic concerns and the individual realm became the focus of scholars’ attention. However, with the return to a national existence we must refocus our attention precisely on clarifying the system of ideals. This is not just because we live in modern times but also because of the universal meaning expressed by the Jews’ national existence as a holy nation.

            We believe that the very essence of Judaism is the integration of laws and ideals, where ideals are placed before the commandments. To become a leading force in promoting Judaism, the ideals should not be derived from commandments, but on the contrary, commandments should be derived from Torah ideals, and serve to protect and preserve these ideals.

            Developing the ideals into a well-formulated logical system will promote Judaism as a world religion, and consequently provide the motivation for increased observance of the commandments by Jews, as people are willing to do what is meaningful to them. Indeed, the non-observant Jews do not keep the mitzvoth not because they are difficult to observe, but because these Jews do not see the rationale behind the commandments.

            It is vital that the true rapport that exists between the ideals and the commandments enters into the public conscience. To achieve this, it would be necessary to write an entire book that will organize and promote the ideals of Judaism as an essential part of our spiritual horizon. To make things clear: We certainly have no intention of creating a new religious system. On the contrary, we seek only to return to Judaism in its original form. This article is only a preliminary sketch that outlines the general direction of our work. To give a wider picture of the ideals in Judaism, it would be necessary to give a detailed analysis of each of the ideals rooted in the Talmud and the Rabbinic and contemporary Jewish philosophy literature. Our immediate goal in this article is only to define a specific problem in the Jewish Orthodox worldview and to outline a way of solving it.

Particularism versus Universalism in Judaism

            Rabbi Marc. D. Angel, founder and director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals,[4] claims that Judaism’s main goal is to maintain equilibrium between being both particularistic and universalistic, i.e., be careful about preserving our traditions and rituals, but at the same time maintain the universalistic vision of being “a light unto the nations.” He claims that the current tendency in the Modern Orthodox world has been to lean toward particularism, as manifested by the extreme growth of the Haredi community and its domineering influence throughout all aspects of Jewish thought. The turn inward, which can be explained by centuries of persecution and the negative attitude toward Gentiles that are expressed in rabbinic literature, is the result of a tradition of hateful attitudes toward the Jews. Even today, modern leadership is cautious regarding our acceptance and responsibility toward Gentiles. For example, R. Aharon Soloveitchik argues that our responsibility toward the non-Jews is conditional: If they are decent to us, we are obligated to act decently to them; if they persecute us, however, we have no hiyyuv (obligation) to work for their wellbeing.

            In another article, Rabbi Angel[5] quotes Rabbi Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio, a nineteenth-century Italian Torah commentator, on the verse “love your neighbor as yourself” to mean as follows:

Torah Judaism demands not only a keen commitment to truth, but also a keen sense of responsibility to human beings. Rabbi Reggio’s universalistic understanding of the “golden rule” teaches that all human beings—whatever their race, religion, or nationality—are entitled to be treated “like ourselves.” They too, were created by God. They, too, have the human qualities with which we are endowed. If we can see “them” as being just like “us,” we are more likely to develop a sense of kinship and responsibility to all of humanity.

            R. Angel is echoing here the view expounded greatly by R. Elijah Benamozegh. R. Benamozegh believed that Judaism has an inherently universal dimension and that this is reflected in both the Mosaic and Noahide laws. The Mosaic Law, is incumbent only on the Jewish people, whereas the Noahide law is meant for all humankind. Regarding the relationship between the two codes of law, he writes (Israel and Humanity p. 317),

The eternal truths, practical as well as theoretical, are—like the universal Noachide Law—older than the revelation to Moses. This does not, however, mean that they are not part of it. Indeed, the entire Noachide code is contained in the Mosaic revelation, at the same time that (from a different perspective) the one is independent of the other… From the philosophical point of view, all this may be summed up in the concept of a double law: the rational and the supranational, the knowable and the unknowable, the intelligible and the super intelligible. It is the first of these two dimensions which we find in the Noachide Law; it is the second which corresponds to the Torah.

            As a prime example of the way Judaism’s particularism is itself directed toward a universalist aspiration, R. Benamozegh cites the sages’ comment on the passage in Deuteronomy (11:12): “It is therefore a land constantly under God your Lord’s scrutiny; the eyes of God your Lord are on it at all times, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.” On this passage, The Midrash Sifrei asks if we are to understand that God is only interested in this corner of the Earth, and answers: No—but through the care that He lavishes on the land of Israel, God extends His providence toward all the other countries. On this R. Benamozegh writes (Israel and Humanity p. 318),

It seems to us that the strikingly universalist idea which the sages derive from this text, which is apparently so exclusive in its implication, beautifully characterizes the authentic spirit of Judaism. A country which finds itself chosen to be a means of grace and blessing for the entire world, but is in no way licensed to hold others in contempt: This is dominating the concept of the entire law, written and oral, beginning with Abraham, in whom all races should be blessed….

Deriving Ideals from the Torah

            We said before that introducing the concept of “ideals” into the social consciousness is essential for a proper structural organization of Judaism. We also discussed at length the correct interrelation between mitzvoth and ideals, but what are these ideals that we are discussing here? Consider two specific examples of ideals: freedom and love of humanity.

            We all know that freedom plays a crucial role in Judaism. It is clear that without freedom of will there can be no true fulfillment of the Torah. Into what category should freedom be included? Obviously freedom is not a commandment enumerated among the 613 mitzvoth, but we do have a mitzvah to remember that we were slaves and then became free. If we were to have a category of ideals, then liberty and freedom would become the most essential parts of Judaism. Jews became a nation when they received the Torah on Mt. Sinai, but first they had to leave Egypt to become a free people. Thus, while the commandment of “zekhirat yetziat mitzrayim” (remembering the Exodus from Egypt) is written explicitly in the Torah, the ideal of freedom is derived from this commandment.

            The second example also has this double aspect of commandment and ideal. In the non-Jewish world, the verse “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is understood as love for all of humanity. In Judaism, however, the commandment of “love your neighbor” obligates us to love only the Jews but not non-Jews. It often happens that when non-Jews hear about this, they are dismayed. How can this be? Does Judaism not have that same love of humanity that they believe to be the most important achievement of the Jewish Bible? The answer is that, of course, Judaism has the concept of love for all of humanity. But again, the commandment of “love your neighbor” is written explicitly, while the ideal of loving humankind is culled from the text.

            This dichotomy is also felt in the halakha that rules that there is a fundamental difference between the love for Jews and the love for Gentiles: Loving other Jews is an obligation, whereas loving all of humanity is an ideal. Again, only after we introduce the category of ideals, is it possible to assign the “love of humankind” to its rightful place in Jewish hashkafa (worldview). Additionally, love of humanity is ranked; the love for those who are closer to you precedes the love for those who are more distant. As the Rambam states (Matanot Aniyim 7:13):

A man’s poor relative has priority over any person; the poor in his own household have priority over the poor in his town; the poor in his town have priority over the poor of another town as it is written: “Open your hand to your brother, to your needy, to your poor in your land” (Deut. 15:11).

(A similar idea is expressed in the English expression, “charity begins at home.”) In this way, Judaism defines “love your neighbor” in a much more complete manner by coupling a commandment with an ideal, as opposed to Christianity, which sees this principle only as an ideal.  

            A third example is found in the traditional commentary on the Shema, which says: “Why does the passage of Shema precede the passage of “veHaya im Shamoa”? So that a person would put on the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and only afterward the yoke of the commandments” (Berakhot 13a). Although the second paragraph also speaks of love of God, the first paragraph is called kabalat malkhut shamayim (accepting the yoke of heaven), and the second one kabalat mitzvoth (accepting the commandments) because the second paragraph discusses rewards and punishments. The word “yoke” gives the impression of some type of obligation. However, the first passage is not talking about responsibilities, but about ideals. Of course, the first fragment can be read in a halakhic sense, deriving from the commandments of the Shema, tefilin, and mezuzah. However, focusing too much on the commandments prevents us from seeing the ideals, namely, to love God and to understand the divine unity. This is an example of how an ideal is realized through a mitzvah: The ideal of loving God is facilitated by the mitzvoth of tefilin and mezuzah mentioned in the Shema. This understanding of the interplay between mitzvoth and ideals should fill all aspects of our lives (both in our secular and religious pursuits), sitting at home or traveling on the road, lying down or getting up.

Interplay Between Commandments and Ideals in Halakha

            The above discussion has related to the issue of the essential meaning of the various mitzvoth; but there is an additional realm—the practical application of the commandments in life in various contexts—the determination of halakha. To fully appreciate the complexity of authentic Judaism, we need to further analyze the interconnection between ideals and halakha. It is important to note that any positive aspiration may develop in the wrong direction if it is not restricted. Ideals are not absolute and their implementation is not a guarantee of any “good.” Ideals are important, but they are also dangerous. Therefore, in addition to ideals we also need commandments that will preserve the ideals. The commandments become vessels and the ideals become the substance that fills these vessels. Another major difference between commandments and ideals is that each of the commandments is intrinsically valuable. However the ideals are valuable primarily as the building blocks of a system. If a person fulfilled commandment A but did not do commandment B, the fulfillment of A is still good. However, if a person realizes ideal A at the expense of ideal B, then the result is dubious. It could be that the person is acting wickedly although the ideal is very good.

            The question is what happens if we encounter a contradiction between the commandments and the ideals? Which one takes precedence? Let us consider the following allegory: driving by car through the city. Locally, the traffic signs direct the car’s movement, but it is the final destination that defines the car’s ultimate direction. So, too, regarding commandments and ideals: As we go through life, the commandments take precedence locally, but it is the ideals that guide us in the bigger picture. Without understanding the ideals, the commandments can easily turn into an empty formal system that does not interact with the reality around us. Hence, the commandments and the ideals do not contradict each other but rather, the commandments show us how to successfully and correctly implement the ideals into our day-to-day life.

            The twentieth-century scholar, R. Eliezer Berkovits, discussed this issue at length in his writings. He took a clear position that the halakha is primarily about moral values rather than rules. He states that the halakha is meant to translate the intention of the Torah into application in real-life situations, and in doing so, it grants “the priority of the ethical, according to which it is understood as furthering the larger moral principles embodied in the Torah.”[6] Thus, the law is a vehicle for realizing this morality in society and advancing human history.

            R. Berkovits’s approach is not the same as that promoted by Conservative Judaism. For the Conservative movement, changes in halakha are necessitated by the need to create a synthesis between traditional Judaism on the one hand, and modern life and its values on the other. The impetus for change, then, is not the result of eternal Jewish principles, but from some external source, from modernity. R. Berkovits’s understanding of halakha, and what is being described by the present authors, is entirely different. For R. Berkovits, change in halakha is meant

…to reflect the careful, incremental adjustment of legal means to further moral ends that are themselves intrinsic to Judaism and unchanging. These moral ends are not an external “anti-thesis” with which the tradition must come to terms by changing its internal content in keeping with them; they are themselves the moral core of the same revealed message from which the law receives its authority… while the law may change, the values which underlie it do not; on the contrary, the purpose of the change is to permit the continued advancement of the Bible’s eternally valid moral teaching under new conditions.[7]

            To summarize, the Judaism of the Diaspora has come to emphasize the system of commandments. In this essay we have presented a very different approach, claiming that Judaism is really a system of ideals, and the commandments are required for the correct realization of these ideals. We believe that the more people see the truthfulness of the second approach, the more advanced Judaism will be.

Conclusion to Part I

            We do not intend to provide an analysis of all the Jewish texts here, but rather are endeavoring to intuitively derive some of the ideals from the Torah. “Intuitively” means that we use our modern way of thinking to build a system of values. This is not the usual way for Judaism that customarily uses the traditional galut philosophy developed during the Talmudic Era and the times of the Rishonim. On the other hand, if we believe that there is an ongoing Divine Revelation, then the fact that today we look at the world differently is also part of the Divine Revelation. Therefore, when this philosophy is used for the derivation of ideals, this means that the ongoing Revelation is being integrated with the Classical Revelation (of Sinai). This methodology is far from perfect, but for the purposes of this article, it will suffice.

Note that the purpose of this article is merely to give food for thought and to crystallize and categorize the main points, to begin the discussion but not to end it.

Part II: Organization of the Ideals

            We looked at the ideals of freedom and love of humanity and the way they are intertwined with mitzvoth, but what are the other ideals in Judaism? Is there a way of systematizing them into one concrete, all-encompassing scheme?

            Let us begin by looking for ideals in the Torah that are not derived from the commandments. The natural place that comes to mind is the Book of Genesis, as this book precedes the vast majority of the commandments that begin only in the middle of the Book of Exodus. We see that ideals take up a large part of Genesis; it is therefore critical to formulate the commandments so that they take their rightful place in our contemporary understanding of Judaism.

It would be logical to put the ideals into the following categories:

a) Ideals of Adam and Noah: ideals of humanity as a whole
b) Ideals of Abraham, Isaac,and Jacob: ideals of our forefathers
c) Ideals of Joseph and his brothers: family ideals
d) Ideals of Moses and Aaron: ideals of the Nation of Israel
e) Ideals of the Mashiah: a special group of messianic ideals for future times.

            In this section we are going to talk about the ideals of Adam haRishon (primordial man), Noah, Abraham, and a bit about the Messianic ideal. The ideals of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Aaron are currently in the process of being developed. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

Ideals of Adam and Noah: Ideals of Humanity as a Whole

            The first mitzvah that Adam receives is, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and rule over it” (Genesis 1:26–28) or, in modern terms, develop the world. In a similar way, two aspects of human’s mastery over nature are described later on: “The Lord God took man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to guard it” (Genesis 2:15). It is clear what “cultivate the world” means, but from whom or from what should man guard the Garden? The answer is from man himself. For, as we all know, it was man himself who destroyed the Garden through the violation of the prohibition of not eating from the Tree of Knowledge. In our society, we protect the world and the environment from the destructive influence of humans. Progress and environmental protection can coexist, but they should keep each other in check. Progress is a spiritual necessity, although the role of religion is to keep it from self-destruction.

            These sources disprove the common notion that religion opposes the advancement of civilization, progress, and technology. According to the Rambam, authentic Judaism is very much concerned with material and technological progress—so much so that it sees scientific and technological progress as a religious value.

            To counter the mitzvah to advance the world comes the Torah’s account of the creation of humans, “…in the image of God He made him” (Genesis 1:26–28). This verse teaches us that a person as an individual becomes closer to God by imitating Him through one’s own personal choices.

            The story of Noah comes to show us how seriously God takes an improper imbalance between advancement of the self and advancement of the world. Noah was a man of great righteousness, who “walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). He wanted to be closer to God, but at the same time, as the commentators tell us, he did not have a sufficient sense of responsibility for all of humanity. Extremely laborious work in the Ark during the flood corrected Noah in that it showed him the importance of the correct balance between closeness to God and responsibility for civilization. Noah learned to balance Adam’s ideals, and his children took this balancing act even further. Shem became responsible for the ideal of coming closer to God, and Japheth for the ideal of building and advancing civilization. They were all instructed to integrate: “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem” (Genesis 9:27).

            By juxtaposing the story of Adam and Noah, we see that a personal level of self-advancement must be counterbalanced by building and advancing civilization. If Imitatio Dei can be understood on an intuitive level, granting religious significance to building a civilization is far from being obvious. These two ideals exhibit internal tension: striving toward a transcendental God may lead a person away from the world, while building a civilization forces him to be very much involved in the world. Being in opposition to each other, it is important that these ideals co-exist in equilibrium and that none of them are realized at the expense of the other. If a person leans toward the ideal of Imitatio Dei and exhibits indifference to civilization, it would mean that his Imitatio Dei is deficient. The opposite situation also holds true: If one is only involved in the needs of civilization, leaving aside “striving to imitate the ways of God,” one will not be able to rectify the world, and all one’s efforts would lead to the wrong result. Thus, the creation of humans in the image and likeness of God is the starting point of a human endeavor to bring humanity as a whole as close as possible to God.

Imitatio Dei in Judaism versus Imitatio Dei in Christianity

            The Jewish version of Imitatio Dei is clearly stated in Leviticus 11:14: “Ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy.” We see that holiness is something that increases the similarity between God and humans, and brings us closer to God. This is a Jew’s obligation toward God, on a solely individual level.

            The ideal of Imitatio Dei is not only found in Judaism. Christianity borrowed the same idea from Judaism and accepted it as a pure monotheistic principle that stands at the core of its ethics. The essence of monotheism is that the Higher Power, or God, has a personality. It is based on the fact that God created the entire world and created humanity in His own image. Of course, human is not God, but the more one realizes the divine potential, the closer one moves toward God. For example, Imitatio Dei is based on the commandment of keeping Shabbat: “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:2). The implication is clear: So you, too, should have a day of rest.

            However, Judaism and Christianity implement Imitatio Dei rather differently. In the Christian view of the world, the Gospels evoked an image of Jesus that identified with God; therefore, the Christian ideal is to be similar to Jesus and Imitatio Dei turns into Imitatio Christi. Accordingly, all of the classical Christian ethics hallow poverty and missionary work, as this lifestyle imitates Jesus’s life. Judaism, on the other hand, believes in imitation of the divine attributes or divine actions that we find in the Torah. The Talmud explains this idea (Shabbat 133b) as a commentary to this verse: “Just as He is merciful, so should you be merciful. Just as He is kind, so should you be kind.” Similarly, Maimonides cites Deuteronomy 11:22 as the main source for a specific biblical commandment to develop a virtuous personality: “If you carefully safeguard and keep this entire mandate that I prescribe to you today, [and if you] love God, walk in all His ways, and cling to Him.” Maimonides interprets “Ve-halakhta bidrakhav” (and walk in all His ways) as imitating God’s traits. Thus, in Judaism there is no other way to “be like God” than through action or perfecting of the self.  

A Closer Look at Imitatio Dei in Genesis

            In this section we will show how ideals can be derived from the first few verses of Genesis. The first verse in the Torah, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), shows that God is the Creator. So, it is clear that the first ideal of Judaism is to create. Creating is the most divine act that a person is capable of doing. Creativity brings a person pleasure and divine light. However, there are not many books about Judaism that emphasize this as the main ideal. Creativity cannot be commanded. A commandment is an obligation, and creativity is free in its very essence; therefore, ontologically, creativity is independent because it precedes the commandments and carries forward the entire system.

            Creativity, like religion, cannot be realized without restrictions, for once restrictions are removed, creativity also disappears. If an architect creates freely without considering the laws of gravity and the laws of mechanics based on strength of materials, the structure will collapse, and creativity will have no effect. Any freedom has to be limited by some rules to make it possible for this freedom to be realized. If these rules are violated, freedom has no effect. Similarly, in religion there are rules called commandments, and if these commandments are violated, the religion collapses.

            The second act of God represents another ideal: “And God said: Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). This verse shows that words have the power to create. Indeed, human beings, whose creativity stems from God’s creativity, live in order to express and possibly to create something of importance using words. A variety of arts, such as music, literature, and sculpture may well fit into this definition. Art strives to communicate something of consequence, and this desire should be recognized as an important aspect of Judaism. Thus, opening an art school would not only be a cultural act but a divine one. Similarly, if words are so powerful that they serve as the building blocks of the universe, then a School of Rhetoric would not only teach individuals to attain personal eloquence, but would have religious meaning as well. Thus, building a system of ideals in Judaism has practical implications for Jewish culture today.

            The third act of God is described: “And God saw the light” (Genesis 1:4). This is obviously not referring to simply a “vision” but “an evaluation of the situation.” Therefore, we, like God, like to assess and evaluate, regardless of any practical application. Judaism should see this personality trait as an important part of a person’s religiosity, and should advance and encourage people to develop and state their opinions.

            God’s fourth act is, “And God separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4). We, too, like to divide the world into black and white, into right and wrong, into good and evil, in our understanding of things. This should not be seen as simply a tendency of the human mind, but part of the religious experience. Therefore, like creativity and the desire to evaluate, Judaism should encourage people to develop their ability to discern right from wrong.

            Finally, people like to give definitions to everything because “God called the light day” (Genesis 1:4). When we give a definition to a certain event, experience, or idea, we imitate the Creator and thus perform a spiritual act.

            The ability to differentiate between good and evil, to create, and to evaluate a situation are characteristics that God implanted in us. To develop these characteristics is an ideal. The problem with contemporary religious society is that it does NOT present these ideals to its followers. This is unfortunate because what is really significant is what ideals we (the society) define as religiously meaningful; this in turn influences society’s development. This is so because a society is very much defined by the development of those ideals that are encouraged by its followers. The question, “What is an ideal?” means, “Which characteristics do we want to develop?” Obviously they are all implanted in us; otherwise there would be no possibility of developing them. Therefore the question, “What are the ideals whose development should be considered of religious value?” is crucial to the advancement of Judaism.

            Thus, in the first four verses of the Torah, we are presented with the basic ideals of human life in relation to the divine. By integrating ideals into Judaism, we let it influence our lives to a much greater degree.

The Ideal of Truth

            The Torah states: “Keep away from anything false.” (Exodus 23:7). From this we learn that there is a basic ideal of Truth in Judaism. Surprisingly, this ideal is not trivial, as there exist cultures that lack it, where personal advancement dominates over truth, and therefore lying could be a social norm.

Ideals of Abraham

            Let us proceed to the next subject of our study: the ideals of Abraham. First, we note that in Judaism there are two kinds of covenants between God and the Jewish people. One is called “the covenant of Abraham” and the other “the covenant at Sinai.” In “the covenant at Sinai” the Israelites received a system of precepts, and at its foundation lay the Ten Commandments. The “covenant of Abraham” was built on ideals and was in no way connected to commandments. Even circumcision was not a commandment per se but a symbol of the covenant. It is not our goal here to analyze in detail all of the ideals of Abraham and the Patriarchs. We will only attempt to learn what lies on the surface and understand what is relevant to us today.

Universalistic vs. Nationalistic Ideals of Judaism

            As discussed in the first part of this essay, universalism is an important part of Judaism. We see this explicitly written in the Torah when God selects and blesses Abraham, “All the nations of the world shall be blessed through your descendants—all because you obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:18). Thus, a universalistic goal of Judaism is to make an impact on all of humanity, to become a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) and to look broadly beyond the scope of Jewish life.

            On the other hand, Abraham did not just spread religious and ethical teachings; he was commanded to create a nation, a special, separate people that would realize his ideals. Here too, we see that all aspects, the universal, cosmopolitan and the national, have to strike a balance to create a nation that is universalistic.

The Ideal of Progress through Argumentation

            One of the important characteristics of “Jewishness” is the capacity to debate with God. Abraham argues with God regarding Sodom. This is the most striking example of a dispute with God in all of the monotheistic literature. This dispute is not simply a request or presentation of arguments. Abraham is openly critical of the divine plan, and he doesn’t refrain from using rather severe words: “It would be sacrilege even to ascribe such an act to You—to kill the innocent with the guilty, letting the righteous and the wicked fare alike. It would be sacrilege to ascribe this to You! Shall the whole world’s Judge not act justly?” (Genesis 18:25). If a person on trial in a state court said anything like that to a judge, he would be accused of contempt of court. God however does not react in that way. On the contrary: He provokes Abraham to argue with Him. Abraham’s debate with God teaches us an important lesson about how humanity progresses: If a person always agrees, he will never grow in understanding. To truly understand, one must first put forward arguments and then discuss them. Judaism should therefore strive to encourage Jews to ask questions, no matter how sensitive they are, and they should not to be afraid to seem “impious,” for even Abraham disputed with the Almighty!

            In monotheism, there are three levels of humanity’s relationship with God: the level of subordination, when people carry out the divine orders; the level of love, when God wants to bestow benefits upon humanity; and the level of a dialogue, when God conducts a dialogue with humans. Judaism stresses the importance of all three levels. When God commands Abraham to “walk before me” (Genesis. 17:1), commentators note that it is said about Noah that he “walked with God.” “Walking with God” is to agree while “walking before God” is to argue and disagree when the divine guidance contradicts the divine spark of intuition within humans. Thus, the Jewish ideal is to “go before God.” Later, the Torah explains the reason for selecting Abraham as follows: “I have given him special attention so that he will command his children and his household after him, and they will keep God’s way, doing charity and justice. God will then bring about for Abraham everything He promised” (Genesis18:19).

            The way of God is a covenant of ideals. One of them is a combination of tzedakah (kindness) and mishpat (judgment). It is impossible for the world to exist on mercy alone, but the world cannot survive solely on justice either. Theoretically, we could say that one of the ideals is mercy, and the other is justice. This however would not be precise: mercy and justice must be pursued together rather than separately. This synthesis of mercy and justice is the ideal that God teaches us through our ancestors. Each of our forefathers added a fundamental ideal: Isaac taught us a lesson of self-sacrifice, and Yaakov sanctified God’s name by building a nation and wrestling with God.

Messianic Ideals

            Christianity puts messianic ideals at the center of its belief system. Judaism also has these ideals, but we believe that there is great danger in attempting to implement messianic ideals at a time when society is not ready for them. Any attempt to implement these ideals will immediately lead to undesirable results. Perhaps that is why the messianic ideals of Judaism are not given in the Torah, which is a guide to action, but rather are given in the Books of Prophets. Pacifism, a situation of “beat their swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4), is precisely one of the criteria of the Messianic Era. A few other messianic ideals include nations of the world bringing offerings to the God of Israel and vegetarianism, which R. Kook believed to be a messianic ideal.

            It is well known that different strands of Orthodox Judaism agree mainly in understanding the actual commandments but differ significantly on the question of hiddur mitzvah. Apparently, with regard to ideals, the same holds true. It is imperative to start formulating the ideals of Judaism. By doing so, we will promote Judaism and move closer to being a “Light unto the Nations.”

Instead of a Conclusion: Moses’s Appearance Is Like that of Abraham’s

            The Midrash relates that when Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, the angels opposed him claiming, “Is a man fit to receive this Torah? It should not be given to humans!” Then God made Moses’s appearance and face similar to Abraham’s, and He then asked the angels: “Was it not to him that you came and with him that you ate?” The angels had no choice but to agree.

            According to R. Kook (Kovets, “The Last of the Boyska,” § 24), the angels did not object to Abraham’s teachings being given to humans. Abraham taught that the world has a single Master, who created humans in His image and after His likeness, and from this concept he deduced principles that could be understood by humankind, such as loving and helping one’s neighbor. Abraham taught ideals of mercy, love for all creatures, and above all, love for one’s neighbor; these concepts are so comprehensible that it is clear why people need them. Moses’s teachings, on the other hand, are commandments whose meanings are not always clear; this raises the question whether or not this doctrine is suitable for humans. By rendering Moses’s appearance and face similar to Abraham’s, God demonstrated to the angels that Moses’s commandments are rooted in Abraham’s ideals and that they are the specification and implementation of the ideals that Abraham proclaimed. As a consequence, the angels withdrew their objections.

            Today, we in our lower world need to do what God did in His upper world on high at the time of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai—show that Moses’s appearance resembles Abraham’s, and that Moses’s commandments are the realization of the ideals that Abraham declared; in this way we need to demonstrate that Abraham’s ideals are primary, while Moses’s commandments are a means of realizing these ideals. This understanding will help bring humankind closer to the Torah.

The book of Ezra-Nehemiah (viewed by Jewish tradition as a single book, to be called EN) chronicles some of the final episodes of the biblical era. The Return to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple lie at the heart of the first period in EN (538–516 b.c.e.). Zerubbabel, the political leader, and Jeshua, the High Priest, lead the community in tandem. These men are generally mentioned together, and they both work closely with the people.

In contrast, the two great leaders of EN’s second period (458–432 b.c.e.)—Ezra, the priest-sage; and Nehemiah, the political leader—model distinct leadership typologies in their attempts to guide their community to a more committed religious life.

EN introduces Ezra with an extended pedigree tracing all the way back to Aaron the Priest (Ezra 7:1–5). Ezra emigrates from Babylonia to Israel in 458 b.c.e., bearing a document from King Artaxerxes of Persia according him virtually unlimited halakhic authority over the people (Ezra 7:11–26). Given this remarkable introduction, one may expect Ezra to dominate the narrative and exert power over the people, both as a priest and as a sage. Yet, the opposite proves to be the case.

The first half of Ezra 8 lists those who returned to Israel along with Ezra. Ezra involves others and gives them credit for their participation. At the conclusion of the roster, Ezra invites others to help bring Levites to Israel (Ezra 8:15–20). A certain Levite named Sherebiah is a particular success story for Ezra. He remains prominent throughout EN after having been empowered by Ezra (see Ezra 8:18, 24; Neh. 8:7; 9:4–5; 10:13; 12:8, 24). Ezra similarly appoints twelve other priests—though he is one himself—to care for the Temple treasures (Ezra 8:24–30). Despite the immense power and authority granted to him by King Artaxerxes, Ezra involves others and is surrounded by name lists. These features of Ezra’s leadership set the tone for his transferring most of his authority to the people.

Ezra’s reaction to the scourge of intermarriage follows the same pattern. Upon learning of the problem, Ezra pulls his hair in grief and prays on behalf of his people. Members of the community spontaneously join him:

When I heard this, I rent my garment and robe, I tore hair out of my head and beard, and I sat desolate. Around me gathered all who were concerned over the words of the God of Israel because of the returning exiles’ trespass…. (Ezra 9:3–4. All biblical quotations are NJPS translations.)

While Ezra was praying and making confession…a very great crowd of Israelites gathered about him…the people were weeping bitterly. (Ezra 10:1)

After the completion of this prayer, the people propose and implement the solution, with Ezra simply endorsing their plan (Ezra 10:2–4).

According to Ralbag on Ezra 10:44, Ezra was a brilliant strategist. He realized that confrontational top-down rebuke would not be effective, and he therefore contrived an alternate plan to bring members of his community into the process. However, one could argue that Ezra believed in this model of leadership as the ideal. He was not an authoritarian leader. He wanted others to take active leadership and participatory roles. He also wanted to create a leadership that could perpetuate itself, rather than forcing the community to become entirely dependent on him. Ezra is an exemplar of the dictum attributed to the Men of the Great Assembly in the first Mishnah in Avot: Ve-ha’amidu talmidim harbeh— raise up many disciples.

Nehemiah also is a strong God-fearing leader, but he is characterized differently from Ezra. When Nehemiah comes from Babylonia to Israel in 445 b.c.e., no other names are listed with him. Nehemiah dominates the narrative and forcefully exerts his own power and authority.

When Ezra had come to Israel thirteen years earlier, he declined a military escort, since he wanted to sanctify God’s Name to the King of Persia:

I proclaimed a fast there by the Ahava River to afflict ourselves before our God to beseech Him for a smooth journey for us and for our children and for all our possessions; for I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us against any enemy on the way, since we had told the king, “The benevolent care of our God is for all who seek Him, while His fierce anger is against all who forsake Him.” So we fasted and besought our God for this, and He responded to our plea. (Ezra 8:21–23)

In contrast, Nehemiah accepted a military escort:

The king also sent army officers and cavalry with me. (Neh. 2:9)

            We have seen that Ezra pulled his hair in sorrow upon learning of the intermarriage in his community. In contrast, Nehemiah threatens and uses physical force against the people:

Also at that time, I saw that Jews had married Ashdodite, Ammonite, and Moabite women; a good number of their children spoke the language of Ashdod and the language of those various peoples, and did not know how to speak Judean. I censured them, cursed them, flogged them, tore out their hair, and adjured them by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters in marriage to their sons, or take any of their daughters for your sons or yourselves. (Neh. 13:23–25)

Ezra tears out his own hair; Nehemiah tears out others’ hair.

Another significant contrast between the two leaders arises during the one occasion they are seen together: the religious revival and covenant recorded in Nehemiah 8–10. The people gather together and invite Ezra—their accepted teacher—to read from the Torah. Ezra is not the one who initiates the ceremony. Ezra is flanked by thirteen other people (Neh. 8:4), again highlighting his allowing others to initiate and share center stage in every aspect of his leadership. The people voluntarily turn to Ezra because they respect him as a teacher, not because he exerts his authority over them.

Despite the narrator’s assertion that the people initiated the reformation and covenant (Neh. 8–10; cf. 12:44–47; 13:1–3), Nehemiah casts himself differently in his first-person report (Neh. 13). He repeatedly gives himself credit, almost as a poetic refrain:

O my God, remember me favorably for this, and do not blot out the devotion I showed toward the House of my God and its attendants. (v. 14)

This too, O my God, remember to my credit, and spare me in accord with your abundant faithfulness. (v. 22)

O my God, remember it to my credit! (v. 31)

And also:

O my God, remember to my credit all that I have done for this people! (Neh. 5:19)

Nehemiah’s repeated stress on his personal accomplishments stands out starkly, especially after the narrative in EN, which credits the people for their initiatives. Additionally, Nehemiah makes it appear that the religious state of the people was entirely dependent on him. He attributes the spiritual decline and other woes on the fact that he had left the community and returned to Babylonia (Neh. 13:6).

            To summarize, Ezra was given immense authority—but deliberately moderated it. Instead, he raised new leaders and engaged the members of the community to take active roles in their spiritual development. He surrounded himself with people and shared or transferred authority to others. He raised many disciples, thereby broadening the base of the leadership and also ensuring continuity rather than dependence on him. In turn, the people voluntarily gravitated to him for guidance and teaching. Nehemiah, on the other hand, tended to occupy center stage. He gave orders to others, and often threatened them and used physical force to implement his goals. He credited himself for his accomplishments, even though the narrator credits the people for their initiatives. He portrayed himself as an indispensable leader whose community failed as soon as he left them.

Both Ezra and Nehemiah were God-fearing individuals dedicated to rebuilding Israel physically and spiritually, and both were effective to a large degree. There are no explicit evaluations of either Ezra or Nehemiah by the narrator, typical of biblical narrative. Several rabbinic traditions give clear preference to Ezra, while showing ambivalence toward Nehemiah.

Rabbi Yosei said: Had Moses not preceded him, Ezra would have been worthy of receiving the Torah for Israel. (Sanhedrin 21b)

When [Hillel] died, they lamented over him, “Alas, the pious man! Alas, the humble man! Disciple of Ezra!” (Sotah 48b; cf. Sanhedrin 11a, Sukkah 20a)

By likening Ezra to Moses and by using Ezra as a paradigm for their beloved Hillel, these Sages enshrine Ezra as one of the greatest biblical figures.

Working on the assumption that Ezra and Nehemiah co-authored EN, the Sages wondered why the book was called only “Ezra” (as they referred to it). One responded that Nehemiah was penalized for his self-aggrandizement by having his name excluded from the title of the book:

The whole subject matter of [the book of] Ezra was narrated by Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah; why then was the book not called by his name? R. Jeremiah b. Abba said: Because he claimed merit for himself, as it is written (Neh. 5:19), “O my God, remember to my credit.” (Sanhedrin 93b)

Another believed that Nehemiah viewed himself as indispensible, while denigrating all other leaders as ineffective, though some of his predecessors certainly were righteous and competent:

R. Joseph said: Because he spoke disparagingly of his predecessors, as it is written (Neh. 5:15), “The former governors who preceded me laid heavy burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine more than forty shekels of silver, etc.” (Sanhedrin 93b)

            It appears that the aforementioned Sages have balanced Nehemiah’s positive and negative traits when compared and contrasted with Ezra. These exceptional individuals from the biblical period, as interpreted in traditional rabbinic sources, have much to teach contemporary Jewish leaders about leadership.

For further study, see my article, “The Literary Significance of the Name Lists in Ezra-Nehemiah,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 35:3 (2007), pp. 143–152; and Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).

How the Torah Broke with Ancient Political Thought[1]

by Joshua Berman

For some, the proposition that the Torah needs to be understood in its ancient context seems to diminish from the sacredness and divinity of the text. However, it is precisely through appreciating the Torah in its ancient context that we can arrive at a set of illuminating insights into how the Torah stands out from that context and reveals its divinity, particularly in its approach to political thought.

In ways that were astonishingly new and counterintuitive, and in ways that served the purposes of no known interest group, the political philosophy of the Torah rose like a phoenix out of the intellectual landscape of the ancient Near East. Throughout the ancient world the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. It is in the five books of the Torah that we find the birthplace of egalitarian thought. When seen against the backdrop of ancient norms, the social blueprint espoused by the Torah represents a series of quantum leaps in a sophisticated and interconnected matrix of theology, politics, and economics.

Equality: A Brief History

To appreciate the claim that the Torah represents the dawn of egalitarian thought, let us set the idea in historical perspective. It is only in the European revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that we find the rejection of the privileges of rank and nobility that resulted in the delegitimation of entrenched caste, feudal, and slave systems. Greece and Rome had known their respective reformers, yet nowhere in the classical world do we find a struggle to do away with class distinctions. Nor do we find this articulated as a desideratum by any of the ancient authors in their ideal systems. “From the hour of their birth,” wrote Aristotle, “some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”[2] It was assumed that some would be rich and that many, many more would be poor—not simply because that was the way things were, but because that was the way things were actually supposed to be. Justice, for Aristotle, meant that equals would be treated as equals and unequals as unequals. The Greeks and Romans possessed an overwhelming belief in the harmony of various classes.

The medieval mindset, too, believed that an ordered society was one in which each socioeconomic class performed its tasks for the common good. Social stratification was likewise endemic to the empires and lands of the ancient Near East. Nowhere in the region is there articulated the ideal of a society without class divisions founded on the control of economic, military, and political power. It is not merely that the notion of social mobility was unknown to the ancient world; it would have been unthinkable. These cultures believed that the only way that a society could function was if everyone knew his or her station in life. The modern ideas of free choice and equal opportunity would have struck them as surefire recipes for anarchy and chaos. It is in the books of the Torah that we find the world’s first blueprint for a social and religious order that seeks to lessen stratification and hierarchy and to place an unprecedented emphasis on the well-being and status of the common person.

Religion and Class in the Ancient World

The Torah’s revolution of political thought begins with its theology. The attempt to treat things political as distinct from things religious is a thoroughly modern notion; in not a single culture in the ancient Near East is there a word for “religion” as distinct from “state.” To appreciate the ancient mindset and the conceptual default settings that it supplied, imagine that we are archaeologists digging up an ancient culture called “America.” Deciphering its religious texts, we discover that the paramount god of the pantheon bore the title “Commander in Chief,” resided in a heavenly palace called “White House,” and would traverse the heavens in his vehicle, “Chariot One.” We further discover that Commander in Chief had a consort known as “First Lady”—herself a goddess of apparently meager powers, yet assumed by some to be a barometer of desirable values and fashionable dress. In the heavens was another palace, this one domed and populated by 535 lesser, regional deities, who routinely schemed and coalesced into partisan groupings, and who were known, on occasion, to have been able to depose the Commander in Chief.

Put differently, what we would discover is that the institutional order “down below” manifests the divine order of the cosmos “up above.” This phenomenon, wherein the political structure of the heavens mirrored that of the earthly realm, was widespread in the ancient world, and it is easy to see why. Political regimes are, by definition, artificial, constructed, and therefore tenuous. Always implicit is the question: Why should he reign? The imposed institutional order can receive immeasurable legitimation, however, if the masses underfoot believe that it is rooted in ultimate reality and unchanging truth, that the significance of the political order is located in a cosmic and sacred frame of reference. Ancient religion is the self-interested distortion that masks the human construction and exercise of power.

For example, we find that Enlil, the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon, utterly resembles his earthly counterpart, the king. Enlil, like his earthly counterpart, rules by delegating responsibilities to lesser dignitaries and functionaries. Like his earthly counterpart, he presides over a large assembly. He resides in a palace with his wives, children, and extended “house.” Generally speaking, the gods struggled to achieve a carefree existence and enjoyed large banquets in their honor. Like kings, gods needed a palace, or what we would call a temple, where they, too, could reside in splendor in separation from the masses, with subjects caring for them in a host of earthly matters.

If a god wanted something—say a temple repaired, or the borders expanded—he communicated through various agents with the king, and the king was his focus. The gods never spoke to the masses, nor imparted instruction to them. Within ancient cosmologies, the masses served a single purpose: to toil and offer tribute. They were servants, at the lowest rung of the metaphysical hierarchy. The gods were interested in the masses to the extent that a baron or feudal lord would have interest in ensuring the well-being of the serfs that run the estate and supply its needs. Servants, no doubt, play a vital role in any monarchical order, but it is an instrumental role. From an existential perspective, it is a decidedly diminished and undignified role.

Religion and Class in the Torah

By contrast, the Torah’s central accounts—the Exodus and the Revelation at Sinai—preempt claims of election and immanent hierarchy within the Israelite nation. The Exodus story effectively meant that no member of the children of Israel could lay claim to elevated status. All emanate from the Exodus—a common, seminal, liberating, but most importantly equalizing event. Although we normally think of the Revelation at Sinai in religious terms, its political implications are no less dramatic, and constitute the bedrock of the Torah’s egalitarian theology. Elsewhere, the gods communicated only to the kings, and had no interest in the masses. But at Sinai, God spoke only to the masses, without delineating any role whatever for kings and their attendant hierarchies. The ancients had no problem believing that the gods could split the seas, or descend on a mountaintop in a storm of fire. Nevertheless, the stories of the Exodus and Sinai necessitated an enormous stretch of the imagination, because they required listeners to believe in political events that were without precedent and utterly improbable, even in mythological terms. Slaves had never been known to overthrow their masters. Gods had never been known to speak to an entire people.

The pact or covenant between God and Israel displays many common elements with what are known in biblical studies as ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties, which were formed between a great king and a weaker one. In these treaties, we typically find that the more powerful king acts on behalf of a weaker, neighboring king; sensing an opportunity to foster a loyal ally, he may send food during a famine, or soldiers to break a siege. In return, the lesser king demonstrates his appreciation to the powerful one by agreeing to a series of steps that express his gratitude and fealty. In these treaties the vassal king retains his autonomy and is treated like royalty when he visits the palace of the powerful king. Having been saved from Egypt by God, the children of Israel sign on at Sinai to a vassal treaty as sign of fealty, becoming junior partners to the sovereign king, God. The theological breakthrough of the Torah was the transformation of the metaphysical status of the masses, of the common person, to a new height, and the vitiation of nobles, royalty, and the like. The common man, in short, received an upgrade from king’s servant to servant king.

Yet no less significant is the Torah’s call that these stories should be promulgated among the people as their history. The point requires a note of context for us as moderns. Although there are over one million inscriptions in our possession from the ancient Near East, there is nowhere evidence of a national narrative that a people tells itself about its collective, national life, of moments of achievement or of despair, recorded for posterity. Stories abound in the ancient Near East—but they revolve around the exploits of individual gods, kings, and nobles. The most important audience of these materials was the gods themselves—as witnessed by the fact that these texts were often discovered in temple libraries, buried, or in other inaccessible locations. Myths were recited to remind the gods of their responsibilities. Details of a king’s achievements on the battlefield were to constitute a report to a deity about the king’s activities on his or her behalf; they were not composed for the masses. The Kadesh Inscriptions of Rameses II were the exception that proves the rule: Those inscriptions were not only textual, but pictorial; and they were not only carved on stone, but copied and disseminated via papyri. However, most inscriptions of royal activity in ancient times were limited to monumental structures in writing that was inaccessible to the common person.

We may take a page from the history of technology of communication to understand the implication of the Torah’s call to promulgate the accounts of Israel’s early history. The distribution of printed texts in the early modern period is said to have occasioned the birth of modern citizenship within the nation-state. The vernacular languages that were now fashioned and standardized led to the creation of newspapers and novels designed for a mass readership comprised of people who were in disparate locales but could now envision themselves as a public sharing a common heritage, destiny, and range of interests—religious, social, and political. People could now imagine themselves as a political collective, and thus was born the political “we.”

It is in the Torah that we see for the first time the realization that the identity of a people may be formed around an awareness of its past. Indeed, the Hebrew Bible is the first work of literature before the Hellenistic period that may be termed a national history. Moreover, the Torah displays an attitude toward the dissemination of texts among the populace that is in sharp contrast to the relationship between texts and society that we find elsewhere in the ancient Near East. It is a contrast, further, that is a reflection of the egalitarian agenda that the Torah seeks to pursue, over against the entrenchment of class distinctions. In an age and place such as our own, where literacy is nearly ubiquitous, access to texts of many kinds and the knowledge they bear is unfettered and, in theory, available to all. But in the ancient world physical access to written texts and the skills necessary to read them were everywhere highly restricted. Indeed, in the cultures of the ancient Near East as well as of ancient Greece, the production and use of texts was inextricably bound up with the formation of class distinctions: Those who possessed the capacity to read and write were members of a trained scribal class who worked in the service of the ruling order.

Writing in the ancient Near East was originally a component of bureaucratic activity. Systems of writing were essential for the administration of large states. Indeed, the elite in these cultures had a vested interest in the status quo, which prevented others from gaining control of an important means of communication. Far from being interested in its simplification, scribes often chose to proliferate signs and values. The texts produced in Mesopotamia were composed exclusively by scribes and exclusively for scribal use—administrative or cultic—or for the training of yet other scribes.

The Cambridge anthropologist Jack Goody notes that a culture’s willingness to disseminate its religious literature inevitably reflects an emphasis on the individual within that culture.[3] The comment sheds light on the Torah’s agenda to establish an ennobled egalitarian citizenry, as we are witness to an impetus within the biblical vision to share the divine word with the people of Israel. Moses reads the divine word to the people at Sinai (Ex. 24:1–8). Periodically, the people are to gather at the Temple and hear public readings of the Torah (Deut. 31:10–13). It is telling that the Tanakh never depicts kohanim or scribes as jealous or protective of their writing skills, as is found in neighboring cultures.

In sum, we have seen something remarkable about the most basic, familiar aspects of the Torah. The idea of covenant; the story of the Exodus; the fact that the Torah is a written, publicized text—these are as significant politically as they are religiously. They each point to the equal and high standing of the common person in Israel.

The Torah’s Radical Conception of Political Office

Turning from theology, we see that the Torah radically revamped regnant notions of political office and the exercise of power. What is most striking about the Torah’s statements on political office are two radical ideas about how these offices are to be governed. First, we are witness here to the transition from the law of rule to the rule of law. Elsewhere in the ancient world, the kings composed and promulgated law, but were above it, not subject to it. Before the thinkers of Athens came along, the Torah arrived at the notion of equality before the law. All public institutions in the Torah—the judiciary, the priesthood, the monarchy, the institution of prophecy—are subordinated to the law. Moreover, the law is a public text whose dictates are meant to be widely known, thus making abuse of power more obvious and safeguarding the common citizenry.

Second, we may see that the most important body of authority in the polity envisioned by the Torah is none other than the people themselves. The Torah addresses the fraternal and egalitarian citizenry in the second person, “you,” and charges them with appointing a king—if they desire one—and appointing judges. Put differently, the Torah specifies no nominating body for appointing leaders or representatives. Rather, the collective “you”—the common citizenry—bears ultimate responsibility to choose a king and to appoint judges. From American history we know how unthinkable it was only a few generations ago for many to contemplate the notion that persons of color or women should play a role in choosing who rules. For the royal monarchies of the ancient Near East, the notion that the masses—who elsewhere were serfs and servants—would hold any sway over those that ruled them was equally unfathomable.

If the people did elect to have a king, the Torah was determined that he should be but a shadow of what a king was elsewhere. Elsewhere kings played central roles in the cult. In the Torah he plays none. Elsewhere, the king aims to build a strong army. The Torah calls for him to have a limited treasury and to forgo a cavalry (Deut. 17:16–17), limitations that would leave him commanding only a small army. Moreover, were a royal chariot force to serve as the backbone of the nation’s defense, it would inevitably emerge as an elite military class. The great jurist of Athens, Solon, extended preferred status to the members of the cavalry over other citizens. But what confers status in the Torah is citizenship in the covenantal community, and this is shared by all. Elsewhere, the king would consolidate his power through a network of political marriages. The Torah forbids the king from taking a large number of wives (Deut. 17:17).

Finally, we see in the Torah a page in the history of constitutional thought, one that would not be written again until the American founding. It pertains to a highly advanced notion of the separation of powers. Classical Greek political thought had already understood that in the absence of a strong center in the figure of a monarch or a tyrant, factionalism threatened the stability of the polity. It was inevitable that the population would contain rich and poor, nobles and commoners. The absence of homogeneity led classical theorists to balance power by ensuring that each faction within society would receive a share of the rule. Yet, the balance of power was not a balance of institutions of government, as we are accustomed to today. Rather, the balance was achieved by allowing each of the socioeconomic factions a functioning role within each seat of government. Thus, in Roman jurist Polybius’ conception, the legislative branch of government in the republic was to consist of two bodies—the senate for the nobles and the assembly for the commoners—with each institution permanently enshrined in law.

The notion that the effective division of power was predicated upon its distribution across preexisting societal seats of power was one that would hold sway throughout most of the history of republican thought, from Roman theorists through early modern thinkers. It is central even to the thinking of Montesquieu, the father of modern constitutional theory, who is credited with proposing the separation of powers into three branches—executive, legislative, and judiciary—in his 1748 work, The Spirit of the Laws. Looking at the English model of his day, Montesquieu held that the legislative power should consist of a body of hereditary nobles and of a body of commoners. He saw hereditary nobility not as a necessary evil, nor even as an immutable fact of life, but rather as a boon to effective government. The nobility, with its inherent wealth and power, would serve as a moderating force within government against the abuses of the monarch. Moreover, the fact that the nobility’s strength was derived from its own resources would endow its members with a sense of independence. This, together with developed education and time for reflection, would enable the nobles to contribute to effective government in a way that members of the lower classes could not. Montesquieu could not conceive of a classless society and a regime in which the division of powers was purely institutional and instrumental, where the eligibility to hold office was independent of class.

Here the Torah stands distinct. For the first time in history we see the articulation of a division of at least some powers along lines of institution and instrument rather than of class and kinship, where office legitimizes preexisting societal seats of power. Anyone who is “among your brethren” (Deut. 17:15) is eligible to be appointed king. Moreover, the king is appointed by the collective “you” that we mentioned before. How that selection occurs, apparently, is an issue that the Torah deliberately left open so as to imply that there is no body that a priori has a greater divine imprimatur than any other. In this sense, the Torah’s notion of offices that are entirely institutional and instrumental is an idea that would again appear only with the American Founding Fathers.

The same is true with regard to the judiciary, as outlined in the book of Deuteronomy. Anyone may be appointed judge, and no less importantly, anyone, in theory, is eligible to participate in the process of appointing judges (Deut. 16:17). One could have thought of any number of bodies that could have been charged with appointing judges: the king, the prophets, the kohanim, or other judges. But the Torah insists: “Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourself” (16:18). The appointment of judges is mandated with the sole purpose of achieving the execution of justice, rather than the assignment of office to perpetuate the standing of a noble class. As Montesquieu noted in the eighteenth century, it is critical that the people appoint judges, so that they have faith in the justice that is meted out. The only source prior to Montesquieu to arrive at this insight was the Torah.

God the Economist

The Torah understood that in order to create an egalitarian order, it would also need to re-envision the economic structure of society, for without equity, there is no equality. What the Torah proposes is the Western tradition’s first prescription for an economic order that seeks to minimize the distinctions of class based on wealth, and instead to ensure the economic benefit of the common citizen.

A ubiquitous feature of the socioeconomic landscape of the ancient Near East was the threat faced by the common person of falling into irreversible insolvency. Social stratification would emerge as the common people would have to sell off their farm animals, their land, and even their own freedom to repay debts. Famine, drought, or war could lead to precisely the kind of economic landscape we witness in the account of Egypt under Joseph, in Genesis 47. The Torah sought to remedy this through radical legislation on several fronts. Elsewhere, the norm was that land was owned by the palace and by the temple. The Torah, in contrast, knows of no land holding for either king or cult. Instead, nearly the entire land is given to the people themselves, in an association of free farmers and herdsmen, subsumed within a single social class. The idea that wide tracts of available land should be divided among the commoners was unprecedented. Perhaps the most famous example of such an initiative from modern times is the American Homestead Act of 1862. With the Great Plains open to mass settlement, nearly any person 21 years of age or older could acquire, at virtually no cost, a tract of 160 acres that would become his after five years of residence and farming. For millions of new arrivals and other landless Americans, the Homestead Act was an opportunity to acquire assets and to bring equality of economic standing in line with equality before the law.

The Torah also took specific aim at the institution of taxation. Elsewhere, taxes to the state and to the cult were deeply integrated. In the Torah, no taxes are specified for the state. Of course, no regime would be able to function without taxing its populace—but the Torah apparently envisioned that taxes would be levied without sacral sanction, as was so prevalent elsewhere. God would not be invoked as the tax collector. Moreover, far less surplus is demanded from the people of Israel for the Temple than was customary in the imperial cults of the ancient Near East.

Whereas elsewhere cultic personnel controlled vast tracts of land, the Torah balances the status that these groups maintain in the cult by denying them arable lands of their own. They are dependent upon the people they represent for their subsistence, and in some passages are even grouped together with other categories of the underprivileged. The Torah further legislates that one type of tax—the ma’aser ani—should not be paid to the Temple at all, but rather distributed to the needy—the first known program of taxation legislated for a social purpose (Deut. 14:28–29).

What is most remarkable about the Torah’s economic reforms is the manner in which the new economy is incorporated into a new measure of time. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the calendar was based upon readily perceptible astronomical rhythms: The counting of days stems from observing the rising and setting of the sun; of months, from observations of the waxing and waning of the moon; of years, from observing the seasons and position of the sun. The ancient Near East, however, knows no calendar that incorporates the notion of a week. The week is the invention of the Torah, and is rooted, of course, in the Torah’s account of Creation, in which God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. The result is that throughout the Torah the Shabbat principle determines the schedule of the laws of social welfare, and serves as a great equalizing force between haves and have-nots. Shabbat day is a day of rest for all. In the seventh year—the Sabbatical year—the field lies fallow and is available for all to enjoy, and debt release is enacted. Time itself is marshaled in the establishment of the egalitarian agenda.

A Revolutionary Document

What power interest could have been served by this program? We have already seen that it was a program that favored neither the king, nor the rich, nor the priesthood. Prophets are hardly mentioned in the Torah, and the criteria set out for validating an individual as a prophet are exacting in the extreme. Sages or philosophers are nowhere mentioned at all. No immediate candidate jumps out of the pages of the Torah as the interested party in the formulation of this new egalitarian order.

Throughout the ancient world, the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. They saw the world they had created and, behold, it was good. It was good, they deemed, because it was ordered around a rigid hierarchy, where everyone knew his station in life, each according to his class. For the first time in history, the Torah presented a vision to the masses in which the gods were something other than their own selves writ large, a vision with a radically different understanding of God and humanity. It introduced new understandings of the law, of political office, of military power, of taxation, of social welfare. It conceived in radically new ways the importance of national narrative, of technologies of communication, and of a culture’s calibration of time. What we find in the Torah is a platform for social order marked with the imprint of divinity. Within the annals of political thought it is difficult to think of another document that revolutionized so much in such anonymity, and with so little precedent to inspire it.

Of course, these notions of equality are but early precursors of our more developed notions of equality today. Yet, the Torah instructs us with the implicit understanding that society changes, and with it, the form in which we fulfill God’s will. We can marvel at how utterly removed the Torah’s political thought was from the prevailing spirit about such things in ancient times. And, at the same time, we can appreciate that without believing that we are limited to the notion of equality as it had been expressed in those ancient times. Rather, the Torah serves as an inspiration for the further elaboration of those ideas as times change and events warrant so doing.

Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak ha-Cohen Kook (1865–1935) is, without doubt, one of the most celebrated rabbis of the twentieth century. He is known to most people simply as Rav Kook, the founder of Religious Zionism, and we frequently overlook the fact that the foundations of his teachings reflect a deep modernization of the Jewish faith itself and of its approach to an array of contemporary problems.

To discuss the religious approach to the role of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in today’s world, we must turn to the ideas of Rav Kook who saw Zionism in a religious light. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Zionism was not seen as an aspect of Judaism. In fact, it contradicted Judaism in many ways, and occasionally even came into sharp conflict with some of Judaism’s conceptions.

Despite these contradictions, Rav Kook not only “supported” Zionism, as did many rabbis, but he also formulated Zionism in religious terms. Furthermore, he demonstrated Zionism’s importance for the development and deepening of Judaism. We will examine how Rav Kook’s conception of Zionism shaped a more profound form of Judaism.

The central idea of monotheism is that God created humankind in His likeness. The individual is the image of God, and our entire life is a dialogue with Him. All of our actions are the words we speak to God, and everything that happens to us is His answer to us. Rav Kook’s main philosophical concept is that the Jewish understanding of life as a dialogue with God has not one but two central themes: a dialogue on an individual level and a dialogue at the national level, i.e. a dialogue between God and the Nation.

The religious significance of the State of Israel is that its very creation compels the Jewish people to act as a single entity. Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel bring the Jewish people back into a full dialogue with God.

Rav Kook was a poet by nature, not a university professor. Thus, he believed that mysteries are explained only by other mysteries. This approach makes a systematic study of Rav Kook’s philosophy difficult. In the following article, we will attempt to outline Rav Kook’s philosophy in more concrete terms.

1. A Step in the Development of Judaism

According to Rav Kook, one vital step in the evolution of Judaism is the revival of those sparks of Divine light that have hitherto been lost, or that were insufficiently realized in the process of historical development. It must be noted that the outline presented below represents a simplification of Rav Kook’s views. It is described in more detail in his article, “The War of Ideas and Faiths” (Orot, p. 129; see also Shemona Kevatzim 1:16).

The central problem Rav Kook faced was the wave of Jewish souls leaving Judaism for various ideological movements alien to it. This wave was particularly strong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when many deserted yeshivas closed their doors and Jewish youth turned en mass to secular Zionism, socialism, or other “isms.” According to the mainstream Orthodox view, these departing youths were “lost and mistaken,” the problem was thought to lie

in them—they were not taught correctly, they did not fully understand their traditions, and so forth. Thus, the task of religious leadership was to influence these souls through explanation and teaching so that they would return to Judaism.

It was at this moment that Rav Kook proposed an entirely different approach to the problem. According to him, the reason Jews were rejecting the Torah lay not only in the error of their ways, but also in the flaws of the modern religious world—in Judaism as it existed at the time. In order to bring about the return to Judaism of those who had fled, it was necessary not to drag them back to the Judaism that they had rejected, but to correct the defects within Judaism itself. Then those Jewish souls would gradually return of their own accord to the renewed Judaism of tomorrow. In other words, Rav Kook regarded the exodus of Jews from Judaism as an indicator of the presence of flaws in Judaism; furthermore, he saw it as a sign that the time was ripe for correcting these defects and believed that social/historical circumstances required that we do so without delay.

Basing his approach on Kabbalah, Rav Kook maintained that if a large number of Jews rushed to a particular ideology under the banner of morality and virtue, this meant that despite its apparent distance from Judaism, or even hostility to it, that ideology must contain a spark of Divine light. The anti-religious appearance of this alien ideology would merely be its shell, which fed off the energy of the spark inside. It is that spark, not the shell, that attracts the souls of those who turn away from Judaism, as Jewish souls, on the whole, are drawn to good and reach for it innately. Furthermore, the “breach”—the spontaneous, morally grounded mass movement of the Jewish people—is itself an indicator of the ripeness of the spark, a sign that it is time for its activation.

2. The Teaching of Rav Kook as Torat haKelal, Teaching for the Entire Nation
Of course, Rav Kook did not believe that every Jew is an entirely upright person, who strives for good in every deed. We know perfectly well that among Jews there are plenty of fools and criminals. However, when a large group of Jews leave their tradition for another ideology, we see not the rejection of the Torah by an individual Jew, but a socially significant movement. Such a movement is always accompanied by a sense of moral righteousness declared and subjectively felt by its participants. Without this sense, a social movement cannot develop.

Rav Kook believed that a human sense of morality, which is the manifestation of God in the individual, is the world’s driving force. Therefore, he viewed a spontaneous, morally grounded social movement by the Jewish people as a definitive manifestation of the role of the Jews as the chosen people—even though the form that this manifestation takes might directly contradict the directives of the Torah—and held that we must, in the end, view the situation as “hitgalut Elokim,” the revelation of the Divine.

Thus, Rav Kook’s teaching is a Torat haKelal, a teaching of national unity, viewing the Jewish people as an integral whole, capable only as a single entity of bringing the Torah to the world, and seeing disparate groups within the Jewish people as essential parts of the whole.

3. Flaws in Judaism and the Process of their Correction
Continuing our analysis of the outline for Judaism’s development, it is important to note that the ideas presented so far—that inside every shell are concealed sparks of holiness and Divine light, that the shell feeds off the energy of this spark, and that Jewish souls carry within themselves—the role of the chosen and the attraction to good—do not constitute the unique and truly revolutionary teaching of Rav Kook, as all of these ideas have been stated and discussed many times in Kabbalah and in Chassidism.

The true revolution in thinking put forth by Rav Kook lies in the proposition that this situation arises due not only to the attraction of the sparks, but, above all, to a defect in Judaism as it exists, evidenced in the lack or insufficient activity of a given spark within it.

The process of activating the spark involves several stages. The first step is to extract the sparks from the shell (see Shemona Kevatzim 1:71, also p. 63, passage 9). Guided by our Divine moral intuition, we must explore and determine the precise nature of the Divine spark that is drawing masses of Jewish souls to a particular ideology. To do this, it is necessary not only to approach the views of those who have joined the new ideology or movement with extreme respect and deep attention, but also to demonstrate genuine sympathy for the “ism” itself.

In the language of Kabbalah, we must feel the Divine spark locked within the foreign ideology. Clearly, in order to extract the spark from any specific “ism,” it is necessary, while staying within the framework of Judaism, to show sympathy toward the “ism,” as sympathy and empathy are the first steps toward understanding. But any individual religious person may not sympathize with every ideology. Some may simply be too deeply repulsive to him or her. This merely shows that this person is not equipped to extract the spark of Divine light from those particular “isms.” Rather, that person must work with those ideologies that he finds himself naturally in accord with, as only in them he or she will be able to find the spark of Divine light. It is impossible for any one person to sense the sparks in all “isms,” and it is wrong to attempt to spread oneself so thin. Every person must focus on what is genuinely close to his or her Divine soul.
At this stage, those who, in the course of their lives, have spent time near to or even within the foreign ideology being examined may play an especially important role. In particular, when Western values are integrated into Judaism—or, to put it more precisely and formally, when those sparks of Divine light that nourish the values of contemporary Western culture are revived within Judaism—an important role must be played both by Jews from Western countries and by Jews from Russia, who have been educated in the crucible of totalitarianism and communism.

The process of identifying the Divine sparks in secular ideologies is only the beginning of our work since, as stated above, we cannot integrate that spark into Judaism directly. Such a heavy-handed transplant would lead to a rejection of the tissue, which could even result in the death of the entire organism. Therefore, unlike Reform Judaism, which swallows the spark whole from the other teachings and so takes in with it elements of shell that radically contradict the Jewish approach and tradition, the Modern Orthodoxy of Rav Kook strives before all else to find this spark’s native, authentic manifestation in Judaism. Orthodoxy must seek out the spark and its true Jewish form in the fundamental tenets of Judaism—that is, in the complete and ideal Judaism, encompassing all the ideas contained in all of its texts and oral traditions. To do this work, one must not only be an expert in Torah, Halakha, and Aggadah, but one must also have the particular wisdom to sense behind the traditionally expressed formulations the deep contemporary content that accurately reflects their Divine light while resonating in today’s world.

Next, the given spark must be cultivated within a renewed Judaism. The process of the cultivation of sparks is carried out in our model through modern Judaism, as it does not alter the existing, historically formed Judaism, but supplements and corrects it. (See for example, Midot HaRe’aya, Emuna (Faith) 28.) The concept presented here is not Reformism, which is associated with the abolition of ritual commandments, but Modern Orthodoxy, in which a process of development is continually taking place alongside the preservation of tradition. Judaism loses nothing, but only increases.

Rav Yochanan Fried, who studied at Mercaz HaRav in the seventies, gives an example of this complementary kind of learning. He once received a letter which related how two Mercaz HaRav students, Yochanan Fried and Hanan Porat, were invited by Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook to the Ein Harod Kibbutz to participate in a discussion on “What does the youth do in its free time.” When their turn came to speak their mind, they said, “Yeshiva students don’t have free time. Therefore, we don’t have this kind of problem. Yeshiva students are above all this—we study Torah continuously and don’t have time for recreation.” As a result of their words, an hour-and-a-half long discussion evolved, at the end of which a women sitting at the end of the hall stood up and asked, “If you are so great, what can you learn from us?” When Rav Tzvi Yehuda later heard about the question, he asked the students, “What did you answer her?” When they responded that they didn’t answer anything, he criticized them. “Be ashamed of yourselves! You traveled all the way to Ein Harod and didn’t learn anything about love of the land and about hard work? You didn’t learn anything from the wonderful relationships that exist between members of Ein Harod?” This encounter gave rise to a correspondence between Rav Tzvi Yehuda and Hanan Porat, who published his letters in his book Et Ahai Anohi Mevakesh (first published as Et Anat Anohi Mevakesh).

As a result of the activation of the spark, the defect in Judaism is corrected, and Judaism takes a new developmental step. In place of the existing Judaism of today comes the Judaism of tomorrow. Furthermore, because the spark whose light had been attracting the souls who left in process is now restored and active within Judaism, these souls begin to return to Judaism (see Shemona Kevatzim 8:51).

Of course, we do not in any way mean to say that those who will return to Judaism are the very same people who earlier left it. The step in development described here occurs over the course of several decades, and those who have left have left. At the individual level, a return to Judaism is possible at any moment; but the return of a whole generation is impossible without the restoration of that spark that gives life to the new ideology and that triggered the exodus from Judaism in the first place—a process that must ripen over many decades. Finally, people with “kindred souls” to those who left earlier now return, as they are the souls attracted to this particular spark—but this takes place two to four generations. In other words, it is their spiritual grandchildren and great grandchildren.

4. Example 1: The Integration of Sparks from Zionism
We will now use examples to illustrate how this model functions in practice.
For the first example, we will examine a fairly simple “ism,” with regard to which the above model has been fully carried out from beginning to end: secular Zionism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, “Judaism” and “Zionism” were not only contradictory, but in many ways hostile to one another. The first heralds of Zionism were religious (Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, Rav Yehuda Ben Shlomo Chai Alkalai, and others) but they did not succeed in creating a mass movement. The Zionist mass movement sprang up in the twentieth century and was mostly secular. At that time, the slogan of secular Zionism was “we will become a nation like all others.” This entailed, in particular, the abandonment of religious principles as a basis for Jewish self-identification in favor of a civil-national identity. Because of this, many rabbis condemned secular Zionism as an attempt to destroy the Torah and traditional Judaism.

Under these circumstances, Rav Kook took an entirely different position. He maintained that we should not berate secular Zionism for being outwardly wrong, that is, for straying from the Jewish heritage, the Torah, and God. His method was not to focus on the outward defects of Zionism, but to seek out its inner truth, to find its Divine spark and then, to correct the existing Judaism accordingly by integrating into it the spark that had attracted Jewish souls to secular Zionism. As Rav Kook writes,
The nefesh [that is, the lower part of the soul in kabbalistic tradition] of sinners of Israel in the “footsteps of Messiah”—those who join lovingly the causes of the Jewish people, Land of Israel and the national revival—is more corrected than the nefesh of the perfect believers of Israel who lack the advantage of the essential feeling for the good of the people and the building of the nation and land. But the ruah [that is, the higher part of the soul] is much more corrected in the God-fearing and Torah observant… The tikkun [correction] will come about through the “Light of Messiah”… Israel should bond together, and the nefesh of the observant will be corrected by the perfection of nefesh of the better transgressors, in regard to communal affairs, and material and spiritual ideals attained to human understanding and perception. Whereas the ruah of these transgressors will be corrected by the influence of the God-fearing, observant and great of faith. And thereby both groups will receive Great Light… The higher tsaddikim, masters of neshama [the third and highest part of soul] will be the uniting conduits, through which the light of the nefesh will flow from left to right, and the light of the ruah from right to left…This will be accomplished through the light of Messiah, who is David himself, who erected the yoke of teshuvah. For the sake of David, Your servant, do not rebuff Your Messiah.” (Arfilei Tohar, § 21, published also in Orot, Orot HaTehiya 51)

The situation was somewhat simplified by the fact that this spark consisted of the desire to resurrect a full and authentic Jewish national life in the land of Israel. Not only does this ideology not contradict Judaism, as many mistakenly believed at the beginning of the twentieth century, but, on the contrary, it is an essential condition for Judaism’s further existence and development. Therefore, Rav Kook focused on the study of those sources in Judaism that address the religious significance of Jews coming back to their Land [See, for example, Orot HaTehiya 8]. In his articles and books, he conducted a thorough and deep analysis of these sources, and he made this analysis the central component of his educational program at the Zionist “world-wide Yeshiva” (Merkaz haRav) that he founded. After his death, Rav Kook’s students, and especially his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, brought up a new generation of rabbis and religious activists at that yeshiva, for whom Zionism—the claiming of the Land of Israel and active participation in its government—was an integral part of the living Judaism that they studied, taught, and abided by. Graduates of the yeshiva Merkaz haRav transmitted the same active contemporary Zionist spirit to their students and to the religious circles they influenced.

Since this teaching was in keeping with the times, it began to spread far and wide. All of this took place as an undercurrent over the course of nearly half a century, from the 1920s to the 1970s. And when, after the Six Day War (1967) and especially after the Yom Kippur War (1973), the question of creating Jewish settlements in the territories of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza came up, the tens of thousands of students of Rav Kook’s school, united in the movement Gush Emunim, were the driving force behind the new wave of Zionism.

In other words, in the 1970s and 1980s, the religious Zionists—that is, the adherents of Modern Orthodoxy, Rav Kook’s school—became the leading Zionist group in the country. The perceptions of society were transformed: People’s ideas of “Zionism” and “Judaism” ceased to contradict one another and drew closer. The struggle for the settlement of the Land of Israel by Jews took on a religious character far different from the anti-religious character it had had at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a result, those who had a Zionist soul, who cared about Jewish settlement in Israel, began to draw closer to Judaism, rather than to distance themselves from it. One could say that in the late twentieth century, Zionism “returned” to Judaism the souls that it had “borrowed” at the beginning of the century.

As a result of all of these processes, the right wing of Israeli society (that is, people who seek to settle and claim all of the territory of the Land of Israel) is today significantly closer to religious values than the left wing. This distinction is so strong that the expression “religious right” has become a stock phrase in the Israeli political lexicon. In the 1920s, it was the opposite—those concerned with the settlement of Israel were significantly farther from religion than those who were indifferent to the issue. In this way Judaism has completed a step in its development, having extracted a spark from secular Zionism. A side-effect of drawing “Zionist souls” to religion was, in particular, that hardly any such souls remained on the atheist side; this has led to the fact that today secularism is most often associated with a rejection of Zionism, or “post-Zionism.”

5. Example 2: The Integration of Sparks from Atheism
We will now examine a different example, one that may appear shocking at first, but that nevertheless fits within Rav Kook’s overall model for approaching secular ideologies (see, for example, Orot Hakodesh 3, Musar Hakodesh, pp. 125–127, 129.) Specifically, we will apply the system described above to atheism. We will attempt to carry out the process of extracting a spark of Divine light and furthering the development of Judaism by means of atheism.

Rav Kook writes,

Atheism displays the power of life. Therefore, the real spiritual heroes extract sparks of great kindness from their atheism and turn its bitterness into sweetness. (Arfilei Tohar, § 120)

The destructive wind of disbelief will purify all the filth that gathered in the lower realm of the spirit of faith... all will grow in purity and strength, in supernal holiness, from the firm, pure exalted kernel, which no negativity can affect. Its light will shine as a new light upon Zion with a wondrous greatness. (Shemona Kevatzim 1:476, Orot haTehiyah, ch. 51, p. 199)

Atheism, according to our model, fully qualifies as an outside “ism.” It stands in opposition to Judaism, it displays the banner of rejection of religion, yet Jews join its ranks in significant numbers, proclaiming its morality and worth.

Because in Rav Kook’s time atheism was actively growing and attracting supporters,
Rav Kook devoted a significant amount of attention to its analysis in his works (for example, Midot HaRe’aya, Emuna (Faith), pp. 27–28; Orot Ha’Emuna, Kfira (Heresy), p. 84). As always in his approach to a foreign ideology, Rav Kook did not focus on a critique of atheism’s mistakes, its rejection of God and tradition, and so forth. This would have been trivial, and it was attended to at the time by much of the religious establishment. Rather, he attempted to understand where the deep attraction of atheism lay, what was in it that drew Jewish souls, and how Judaism needed to evolve so that, instead of leaving, souls of this type would find their rightful place in it.
What is the “spiritual core” of atheism, its Divine spark? In order to find this, we can ask the following question: From where do members of this group derive pride? For pride reveals the correlation between our achievements and our Divine spirit. We take pride in those achievements that gladden our Divine spirit, seeing them as truly worthy. In other words, the point of pride of any ideology signals what must be culled from it, as it is the root of the attraction of the Divine soul. This, therefore, is where we must seek out the concealed spark.

In what, then, do atheists take pride, specifically as atheists? Of course, I am not speaking here of those atheists who have never given either religion or atheism a serious thought, and who were simply taught to be atheists. Any movement has fools in plenty; we must not focus on these, but on those who think for themselves. We speak here of real atheists—intelligent, thinking, and active. In what do they take pride as atheists? Based on my own acquaintance with atheists and their books, I believe that the atheist prides himself on being a doubting, critically thinking person. The atheist says: “You, the religious, merely believe. But I doubt. I cannot unquestioningly accept all of this. I am a skeptic.” It is not for nothing that a conversion to atheism in Israel is called hazarah beShe’ela, literally, a “return to the question” (as opposed to coming to religion, which is traditionally known as hazarah beTeshuva, or “return to the return,” which can also be read as “return to the answer.”) With this formulation, atheists establish themselves in opposition: “You, the religious, have the answer (teshuva)—but we have the question (she’ela). This is their source of pride, that they “have the question.” We are not discussing simple questions, of course, such as what is or is not kosher, but the fundamental and eternal questions of existence. The atheist stresses: “You are attracted to answers, we to questions.”

Thus, the true atheist has skepticism as his or her core conviction and declares him or herself to be a critical thinker who has unanswered questions to which no one can have ready answers. Is this core of atheism attractive? Picture two teachers, one who says, “Come to me. I have answers for everything,” and one who says, “Come to me. I have questions and doubts for every problem.” Which of them seems more spiritually advanced? Whose lectures would you wish to attend? The skeptic’s, of course. We know that there are no ready answers to the truly complicated questions. We also know that answers are very often superficial and questions much deeper. Therefore, if one says that he has answers, and the other that he has questions, we will, of course, go to the one who has questions.

By means of this analysis, with the help of our own religious intuition, we have found the spark of Divine light in atheism. Our intuition clearly confirms that questions and doubts are a great thing, and that in them there lies the source of atheism’s spiritual attraction.

Does this component—unanswerable questions—exist within Judaism? Clearly, in Judaism as it existed 100 to 200 years ago, the emphasis was primarily on the “answers.” Today, unfortunately, within the popular, rather primitive Judaism with which certain demagogues try to “capture” the masses, the stress is also frequently placed on the answers. But if we are deeply convinced of the religious importance of unanswerable questions, then let us look to ideal Judaism and try to find out where within it the central questions and doubts lie.

The first thing that comes to mind is the book of Job. Job is a righteous and good man, yet he is showered with misfortunes: the destruction of his possessions, the death of his loved ones. And so, three of his friends come to him, and after the period of silent mourning, they begin to ask: Where is justice in the world? Why does the righteous man suffer? Job’s friends offer highly reasonable explanations, but Job rejects them all, telling his friends that they are wrong, that they understand nothing. The discussion continues for the length of the book, about 40 chapters. At the end of the book a voice rings out from the heavens, saying to the three men, “Ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7)

In other words, the Book of Job concludes by telling us that there is in principle no answer to these essential questions. The question of justice remains open. It is necessary to seek an answer, but one must never assume one has found it.
Thus, we have an example from a book from Tanakh that clearly states that there can be no answer to this and, apparently, to many other fundamental questions. Another such book is Ecclesiastes (Kohelet). And although this book ends with the words “fear God… for this is the whole man(Ecclesiastes 12:13) which can be seen as an “answer,” the entire book in essence tells us that answers to real existential questions do not exist. This is one more typical instance in Judaism of the “unanswerable question.” One must admit that had the books of Job and Ecclesiastes consisted of a collection of answers about the meaning of life, the Tanakh would have been greatly impoverished.

However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this aspect of doubt was not a developed area within existing Judaism. Its spiritual leaders considered doubt to be a flaw and discouraged their followers from discussing questions that sowed it. They were to stay inside and never venture out. The leaders feared that one of their flocks might leave—yet many did flee Judaism because those spiritual leaders were unable to reveal its inner potential to address adequately the problems of the times. The leaders discouraged the reading of certain books, but people read them and turned away from Judaism and its lack of tolerance for doubt.

We have found the Divine spark in atheism, and we determined that that spark was not realized in existing Judaism, which feared doubt to the point that the thirst for it became a force for the spread of atheism. Our next steps are to develop within Judaism the spark of doubt that we have discovered in its roots, so strongly that it will shine more brightly there than it does in atheism.

The following conception formulated by Rav Kook provides us with a roadmap for revealing the spark of doubt in Judaism. He tells us that any faith that lacks doubt is not an ideal faith. On the contrary, belief without doubt is primitive and simplistic [See for example, Shemona Kevatzim 1, 36; Orot, Zir’onim 5]: Doubts are an integral part of true faith. As the Divine is by its very essence eternal, and all things human are, by their essence, temporal and finite, including all of our thoughts, ideas, and reasoning about God, our understanding of God cannot, in principle, be correct.

But what are we to do, if we are finite and temporal? How can we at least draw closer to the eternal Divine, come to understand even partially? At the very least, we must doubt everything we think about the Divine, for when the finite being feels his limitations and doubts himself, he becomes “less finite,” some potential of the infinite appears within him. If we are sure of ourselves and do not doubt, then our finite and temporal conceptions of the Divine become “even more finite,” moving further from the eternal Divine. If what is finite wishes to become less finite and to move closer to the infinite, it must be dynamic. That is, we cannot become actually infinite, but we must at least be potentially infinite, if only through doubting the certainty of our understanding and wishing to move forward. Therefore, doubts are an integral, necessary part of true faith, aiding, not impeding, its progress.

When students in a yeshiva or school are taught this concept of faith, an entirely new generation of religious people rises up, whose views can be characterized as “religious post-atheism,” which uses the religious achievements of atheism in the development of Judaism. Unless it activates within it the aspect of doubt, religion will be primitive. Doubt is necessary for its existence. Because the aspect of doubt was not adequately developed in religion over the last centuries, atheism came along, smashed everything, and advanced among people the concept of the value of doubt—and for this, religion owes it a debt of gratitude.

Atheism comes, says Rav Kook, to ridicule the primitive form of religion and destroy it, clearing the ground for the construction of a more exalted religious system. From the point of view of the development of religion, atheism was a historical necessity, as we ourselves—even the religious community and leaders who recognize the importance modernization—would never have decided to destroy that primitive aspect of religion. We simply would not have had the strength and nerve. Therefore, atheism enters and does all of that work for us.

The observant religious person who has grasped the ideas of post-atheism holds a different sort of religious consciousness. He combines Orthodox religiosity with a willingness to doubt his own religious tenets. Such a person emanates this new type of faith, changing the ideas of those around him, opening the way to religion for doubting people. These doubting souls begin to approach Judaism, seeing that post-atheist Judaism contains the spark of doubt, and that the spiritual necessity of doubt is even more developed here than it was in atheism.

The difference between the post-atheist religious consciousness and the classical one is easy to see. The Israeli essayist and philosopher Dr. Daniel Shalit says that one needs to converse with a religious person for no more than ten minutes to determine whether he or she is post-atheist or pre-atheist. Approached this way, atheism is not an enemy of religion. It is an enemy of primitive religion, but an ally in the creation of a more advanced one. If we can make the ideas of atheism the general property of the religious world, we will move religion forward and make it possible for those whose souls instinctively and absolutely correctly thirst for skepticism and doubt to approach this religion.

What Is to Be Doubted?

Thus, according to Modern Orthodoxy and post-atheism, doubt is critical for the growth of faith; without it a person cannot believe truly. If people, limited by nature, do not doubt their own limited religious ideas, they will remain much farther from God in their understanding than those who, though limited, at least doubt.
When we frame the problem this way, we frequently encounter the following question: “Should one doubt everything? There must be something, from the religious perspective, that is absolutely beyond question. God’s existence is certain—how can that be doubted?” The answer, from the point of view of religious post-atheism, is that everything can and must be doubted. To doubt is not to deny, but to subject to criticism and analysis. This applies even to the tenet that God exists. What is to be doubted is not the words themselves, but our interpretation and understanding of them. Since doubt is not denial but analysis and clarification, it is necessary for our religious understanding. It would be incorrect to see doubt in the existence of God as a choice between the statements “God exists” and “God does not exist.” This is a different kind of doubt entirely. What we must doubt is the meaning that we give to the word “existence” as it relates to God.

Rav Kook proposes a completely radical approach to this problem. He explains that there is a faith that is not faith. And there is a lack of faith, or atheism, that is, in its essence, faith (see Shemona Kevatzim 1, 633). What does he mean by faith that is not faith? He refers to the person who believes in God, but whose belief is so primitive that his image of God is closer to a caricature than to what God is. And what is lack of faith that is faith? This is the situation when a person says that he does not believe in God, but he says that because religious groups have pictured God in such a primitive form that he is unable to believe in such a God. This unbelief reflects not a lack of faith, but a high level of religious feeling.

The words “I believe in God” or “I do not believe in God” do not reflect true faith or lack of faith. We must hone the meaning of these words during our whole lives—not just our individual lives, but over the course of all human life. We can and must doubt these meanings in every way, for doubt is not denial; doubt is dissatisfaction with simple answers and a thirst for more precise understanding.

6. The Concept of Continuing Revelation

The religious concept of the continuing Revelation of God asserts that the Divine Revelation did not stop at Mount Sinai, but continued throughout time and continues still, manifested not in miracles, but in the course of human history, above all of Jewish history. Therefore, this Revelation can and must be listened to, and to do this we must see history as a dialogue with God.

There is no doubt that the very idea of monotheism as a religion of dialogue implies a continuing interaction between humans and God throughout all of human history. What is more, Jewish monotheism, as Rav Kook’s concept emphasizes, is characterized by the idea that not only does every individual carry on a dialogue with God, but the nation as a whole, and all of humankind do the same. It would be natural to suppose that through this dialogue, God continues to speak. Of course, God does not say anything to contradict God’s earlier words; God’s word cannot be revoked. The earlier Revelation is never rescinded, but it must be continually developed and added to. Thus, the idea of a national dialogue with God leads to the principle of continuing (or ongoing) Revelation, and that, in its turn, to Modern Orthodoxy.

The view of history as a dialogue between humans and God means that God is continually speaking to us, and all innovations that bring forth progress in culture, society, and religion are not simply human invention, but also Divine Revelation. Therefore, they must be integrated into our religious ideas and not discarded. In other words, the need for progress and modernization, even in the area of religion, is not merely a human trait; it is a manifestation of our Divine nature. Religion, therefore, must develop—not in order to make it easier and more convenient for us humans, but because without development religion will not adequately reflect God (see Shemona Kevatzim 8:43, as well as many other sources.)

It stands to reason that not everything that has occurred in the course of history is Divine. Many developments can and should be criticized, changed, repaired. However, it would be categorically wrong to cast away historical development as a whole, as we would be discarding with it essential elements of the Revelation. According to this conception, we do not have the right to reject historical change—not because we must protect human creative activity from primordial religious dogma, but on the contrary, because we adhere to a religious viewpoint.

7. 1. The Spiritual-Religious Value of Science and Technology

Science and technology play a big role in society, but do they have a spiritual-religious value in and of themselves? The general opinion is that they don’t. However, already in the first chapter of Genesis, immediately following the creation of Adam and Chava, God commands them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). This verse contains a commandment to conquer the earth, which means to build a civilization. This building is impossible without the development of science and technology. Conquering the earth means gaining control over nature. It means using power and knowledge to improve the conditions of human existence despite nature’s limitations: being able to turn on the light when it is dark outside, to heat your house when it is raining and cold, to move at great speed, to transmit sound over long distances. All this is included in the concept of “conquering,” and technological development needs to be seen as the fulfillment of this commandment. Why then is the “commandment of conquering,” i.e., constructing of civilization, not enumerated among the 613 commandments? The reason is that it pertains to humanity as a whole and does not address any individual or even any nation—and commandments that are intended for the human race are not counted among the commandments. There are those who interpret this verse as a blessing and not as a commandment; however, the grammar of the verse suggests the formulation of a commandment. Additionally, “be fruitful and multiply” is understood as a commandment. Therefore, if the first half of the verse is a commandment, it stands to reason that the second half is also a commandment. See also Orot Hakodesh 2, Hamegama Haelyona 33, page 563; Orot Hatechiya sections 16 and 30. According to Rav Soloveitchik as well (in The Lonely Man of Faith), the ambition to develop technology is engrained in humans, who are created in God’s image, and therefore, it is clearly a spiritual value. It follows, then, that science has religious worth. We must see those who advance science and technology as performing a commandment and feel national and religious pride towards Israelis who receive the Nobel Prize. Moreover, in order return those souls who are attracted to “Americanism” as expressed in the desire to conquer and develop nature, we must create a positive religious image of scientific and technological development; to do so we need the explicit support of our religious leaders. Many of them are focused on finding halachic solutions to the halachic problems that arise from technology. But unfortunately, very few of them see the religious significance of science and connect it with Torah.

7. 2. The Spiritual-Religious Value of Art

In ancient times, the sole purpose of art was decoration and beauty. In both secular and religious life, decoration and beauty were used to convey a divine message to the people. Judaism did not have a problem assimilating this view of beauty: there are numerous Jewish sources that emphasize its importance. For example, Ten measures of beauty came down to this world - nine of them were received by Jerusalem and the rest by the entire world (Kidushin 49b) and, “whoever did not see the Beit haMikdash that Herod built, never saw a beautiful building in his life” (Bava Batra 4a).

In the Renaissance period, the perception or art underwent a metamorphosis: art became an expression of the innermost world of the artist, and was no longer a means of transmitting a religious message. In the modern age, a new phenomenon that facilitates this newly gained purpose appeared: all of society began promoting and encouraging creativity.

During the course of history, art lost its association with religion, and became a secular, universal phenomenon. Religion did not comprehend this new kind of art, which exists in and of itself and expresses the inner world of the artist; religion surely did not see any religious value in it and therefore limited its interaction with art by using strictly halachic terminology, defining what is permitted and what is forbidden. The tension between religion and art intensified until they reached a point where each one saw the other as hostile and dangerous.

Rav Kook changed religion’s perception of art. He taught that there is religious value in the expression of a person’s inner world. (See introduction to Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs) in Olat Hara’ayah; Rav Kook’s letter to the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Mizmor 19 (Eretz HaTzvi in Ma’amarey HaRav Tzvi Yehuda.)
A person is created in the image of God, and the more a person comes closer to Him, the more he realizes himself as a human being and makes himself complete. The Torah opens with a description of the creation of the world—God creates the world and humans. Creation is the first act; thus, a person’s ability to create brings him closer to God. [In The Lonely Man of Faith, Rav Soloveitchik speaks a lot about how a man resembles God through creative action.] Therefore, art, which gives expression to human creativity and teaches society about creativity, opens before mankind a new way to draw nearer to God.

It should be emphasized that art’s religious significance becomes clearer when we contemplate art’s role in history rather than the lives of individual artists.

8. The Embedded Implication that Judaism Must Lag Behind Culture in Its Development
Looking at this model for the development of Judaism by means of sparks from “isms,” we are obliged to make note of one critical feature, which from a religious point of view might well be seen as an embedded “flaw.” Namely, the model presupposes that Judaism lags behind culture in its development. The “ism” appears first, arising in relation to progress in the larger society. As a result of this, people become dissatisfied with flaws in Judaism that earlier generations accepted (see Arfilei Tohar, 2 and 68); they leave and build a new ideology; and only two or three generations later does a segment of the religion adopt, develop, and realize the essence of these new ideas to create.

But if it is always thus, how will religion ever be able to lead? How will it accomplish what it is called upon to do?

The answer to this problem comes in two complementary parts.

The first is the fact that, indeed, within the structure of assimilating sparks from various ideologies and movements, Judaism will never be in a position to overtake those “isms.” However, Rav Kook explains that Judaism has “in reserve” another most important concept, namely, that of God’s dialogue not only with the individual, but also with the nation as a whole. Christianity or Western society never adopted this idea, inherent to Judaism from the start; humankind has only today begun to explore it. Therefore, Judaism will be able to lead civilization by means of this idea, rather than through its assimilation of sparks, which, as important as it is, merely serves to correct accumulated flaws that occur in the process of transition from Judaism of Diaspora to a Judaism of the Nation of Israel. Until we have adequately corrected these flaws, we will continue to fall behind and so will be unable to make ourselves heard by the world. We must continue to correct them, while at the same time developing that concept of national dialogue with God that is uniquely ours. We would later bequeath this concept to humankind, thereby making an essential contribution to the development of civilization.

This is the first part of the answer. However, the problem has another aspect. The second part of the explanation as to why Judaism lags behind culture in its development is that, as Kabbalah explains, our entire world is “tikkun olam”—“a world of correction.” Godliness is infinite and therefore human perception cannot fully grasp it. Similarly, no traditional movement can reflect Divine perception in its entirety because it is limited by time and wording. (Orot HaEmuna, p. 64) In kabalistic terms, God’s light cannot appear in our world immediately in its true form. At the beginning of Creation and again in every new stage of development, there is shevirat kelim, the breaking of the vessels, and the sparks of Divine light become enveloped by shells. Judaism’s “lag” is grounded in the very foundations of existence. Every idea first appears in a wrong form, in the context of the “ism.” And only afterward, as a result of our efforts to improve the world, it appears in a purer and more correct form.

This arrangement of things is, of course, not accidental. It is related to God’s desire to allow us to become God’s “companions,” God’s co-creators in the universe.

INTRODUCTION

         For over forty years preceding the destruction of the first Temple (627-586 B.C.E.), Jeremiah incessantly warned his people that Jerusalem, the Temple, and their lives were in the gravest jeopardy. The people mocked, threatened, and physically mistreated the prophet. Most scorned his message, thereby sealing their own doom.

          Finally, Jeremiah’s nightmarish visions became a reality. The Babylonians breached the walls of Jerusalem, killing and plundering, and burning the city to the ground. Other nations, including spurious allies, mocked Israel, looted her wealth, and even turned Jewish captives over to the Babylonians. The Temple was destroyed, and most of the humiliated survivors were dragged into captivity, wondering if they would ever see their homeland again.

         The Book of Lamentations describes this calamity from the perspective of an eyewitness. It contains five chapters. Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 contain twenty-two verses each, and chapter 3 contains sixty-six verses (three verses per letter). Chapters 1-4 are arranged in aleph-bet acrostics. There is meaning in the content of Lamentations, and in its structure. Both make the book particularly poignant.

          Chapter 1 casts the destroyed Jerusalem as a woman whose husband has abandoned her. While this initial imagery evokes pity, the chapter then adds that she took lovers and therefore deserved this abandonment. Israel admits that she has sinned and asks for mercy and for God to punish her enemies.

         Chapter 2 asks: how could God be so harsh? The tone shifts from one of shame and despair to one of anger. There also is a shift of emphasis from Jerusalem as a victim to God as the Aggressor. At the end of the chapter, there is another plea for God to help.

         Chapter 3 presents the voice of the individual who begins in a state of despair but who then regains hope. He expresses a desire to restore order and return to the pre-destruction state.

         Chapter 4 is a painful step-by-step reliving of the destruction. It also contains lamenting over how the destruction could have happened, and it curses Israel’s enemies.

         Chapter 5 depicts the people left behind as looking at the ruins, absolutely miserable. They call on God for help, but conclude with disappointment and uncertainty as to what the future will bring.

REFLECTIONS ON THE TRAGEDY[1]

        Chapter 1 acknowledges that the destruction of Jerusalem is God’s work (1:12-15). While the main theme of chapter 1 is mourning, the author repeatedly vindicates God for the disaster, blaming it squarely on Israel’s sins (see 1:5, 8, 14, 18, 20, 22).

        Throughout chapter 1, the author adopts a rational, transcendent perspective. Reflecting an ordered sense of the world, the aleph-bet order is intact, poetically showing a calculated sense of misery.[2]

          While chapter 1 acquits God, chapter 2 adopts a different outlook. Suddenly, the author lashes out at God:

How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not His footstool in the day of his anger!...He has bent His bow like an enemy...He has poured out His fury like fire... (Lam. 2:1-4)

          Chapter 1 gave the author a chance to reflect on the magnitude of this tragedy: death, isolation, exile, desolation, humiliation. In this context, the point of chapter 2 is clear: although Israel may be guilty of sin, the punishment seems disproportionate to the crimes. Nobody should have to suffer the way Israel has. The deeper emotions of the author have shattered his initial theological and philosophical serenity.

          This emotional shift is reflected in the aleph-bet order of chapter 2. While the chapter maintains the poetic acrostic order, the verse beginning with the letter peh precedes the verse beginning with ayin. Why would Lamentations deviate from the usual alphabetical order? At the level of peshat, one might appeal to the fluidity of the ancient Hebrew aleph-bet, where the order of ayin and peh was not yet fixed in the biblical period. If this is the case, then there is nothing unusual or meaningful about having different orders since each reflects a legitimate order at that time.[3]

          On a more homiletical level, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 104b) offers a penetrating insight. The Hebrew word peh means “mouth,” and ayin means “eye.” The author here put his mouth, that is, words, before what he saw. In chapter 1, the author evaluates the crisis with his eyes, in that he reflects silently, and then calculates his words of response. But in chapter 2, the author responds first with words (peh) that emerge spontaneously and reflect his raw emotions.

          In the first section of chapter 3, the author sinks further into his sorrow and despairs of his relationship with God (verses 1-20). However, in the midst of his deepest sorrow, he suddenly fills with hope in God’s ultimate fairness (3:21-41). The sudden switch in tone is fascinating:

And I said, My strength and my hope are perished from the Lord; Remembering my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul remembers them, and is bowed down inside me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. The grace of the Lord has not ceased, and His compassion does not fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. (Lam. 3:18-24)

The final section of chapter 3 then vacillates between despair, hope in God, and a call to repentance:

Let him sit alone and be patient, when He has laid it upon him. Let him put his mouth to the dust—there may yet be hope. Let him offer his cheek to the smiter; let him be surfeited with mockery. For the Lord does not reject forever, but first afflicts, then pardons in His abundant kindness. For He does not willfully bring grief or affliction to man…Let us search and examine our ways, and turn back to the Lord; Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God in heaven: We have transgressed and rebelled, and You have not forgiven. You have clothed Yourself in anger and pursued us, You have slain without pity. (Lam. 3:28-43)

          In chapter 4, there are further details of the destruction. Horrors are described in starker terms, climaxing with a description of compassionate mothers who ate their own children because of the dreadful famine preceding the destruction (4:9-10). The author blames God for the destruction (4:11), blames Israel for her sins (4:13), and expresses anger at Israel’s enemies (4:21-22). In both chapters 3 and 4, the poetic order remains with the peh before the ayin, reflecting the author’s unprocessed painful feelings. The author’s conflicting emotions create choppiness in the thematic order and logic:

Those who were slain with the sword are better than those who are slain with hunger; for these pine away, stricken by want of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people. The Lord has accomplished His fury; He has poured out His fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured its foundations...It was for the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, who have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her. (Lam. 4:9-13)

          Chapter 5 opens with a desperate appeal to God, a profound hope that He will restore His relationship with Israel. After further descriptions of the sufferings, the book ends wondering whether the Israelites would ever renew their relationship with God:

You, O Lord, are enthroned forever; Your throne is from generation to generation. Why do You forget us forever, and forsake us for so long? Turn us to You, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. But You have utterly rejected us; You are very angry against us. (Lam. 5:19-22)

Such a painful confusion leaves the reader uneasy. The author does not propose any solutions or resolution to the state of destruction. Reflecting this passionate plea, chapter 5 has no aleph-bet acrostic at all. With no clear end of the exile in sight, the author loses all sense of order. Perhaps the fact that chapter 5 still contains 22 verses suggests a vestige of hope and order amidst the breakdown of the destruction and exile.

          To review: the aleph-bet pattern goes from being completely ordered in chapter 1, to a break in that order for three chapters. The last chapter does not follow the controlled aleph-bet order at all, signifying a complete emotional outburst by the community. The book ends on a troubling note, questioning whether or not it is too late for Israel to renew her relationship with God.

CONCLUSION

          Although Lamentations attempts to make sense of the catastrophe of the destruction, powerful and often conflicting emotions break the ordered poetic patterns. This sacred work captures the religious struggle to make sense of the world in a time of tragedy and God’s ways and the effort to rebuild damaged relationships with God following a crisis.

          Our emotional state in the aftermath of tragedy often follows the pattern of Lamentations—we begin with an effort to make sense of the misfortune, but then our mouths come before what we see—that is, our deeper turbulent emotions express themselves. Ideally, we come full circle until we again turn to God. Our expression of persistent hope has kept us alive as a people.

          In the wake of catastrophe, people have the choice to abandon faith, or hide behind shallow expressions of faith, but even while emotionally understandable, both are incomplete responses. We must maturely accept that we do not understand everything about how God operates. At the same time, we must not negate our human perspective. We must not ignore our emotions and anxieties. In the end, we are humbled by our smallness and helplessness—and our lack of understanding of the larger picture. Through this process, the painful realities of life should lead to a higher love and awe of God.