External Religiosity – Lasher Cohen (unpublished – 2005)

With God’s help

Is it really externalization?

Response to Asher Cohen's article in the latest issue of 'Akademut' (15) 'The Crocheted Kippah and What's Behind It'

introduction

Asher Cohen, in his article in the latest issue of Akademut, presents the results of a survey he conducted regarding the degree of commitment to observing the mitzvot among religious Jews living in urban communities in central Israel. In my response, I will deal only with the theoretical-conceptual introduction to the article (although there is much to comment on as well as the results presented and their analysis), as it contains several significant assumptions, which, although they seem plausible on the surface, as we will see below, are fraught with failures and errors that have important implications in several contexts.

In his principled introduction to the presentation of the survey results, Cohen insists on a distinction between identification criteria, which define the very religiosity of a person or society, such as the conversion process or the mother's Jewishness, and identity criteria, which serve to define the essential-planned definition of themselves and their world.

As we will suggest later, this very distinction is presented in the article in a vague manner, which masks several serious theoretical failures. There is no space here to elaborate on this, but the rest of our discussion may shed some light on this more general point as well. We will begin the discussion with a brief review of the points in the article that are relevant to our subject.

Summary of the points in the article that relate to our issue

Cohen continues to review the identity criteria that prevail in contemporary religious society, and reveals that they are completely different from the criteria of identification. In other words, there is no correlation between the halakhic severity of the offense and its centrality as a component of the totality of religious identity.

To examine this, Cohen moves on to define two circles of identity: the hard core, which is the collection of critical parameters in defining religious identity, and the more distant, peripheral circle, which contains components that have less of an impact on this identity.

The prominent example that opens the article is, of course, Yigal Amir. Cohen poses the question pointedly: Would any of the religious educators (most of whom strongly condemn Amir's actions) present him as a non-religious person? Would someone who stole be presented as non-religious?[1] On the other hand, when a person stops wearing a kippah, or turns on a light on Shabbat, he certainly falls outside the category of a 'religious person.' These, according to Cohen, are examples of the distinction between identity and identification.

Cohen goes on to argue that a review of the halakhic parameters that constitute Jewish identity in contemporary religious society suggests that the fundamental distinction is not between the commandments between a person and his fellow man and the commandments between a person and the place. Evidence of this is prayer, for example, which is not considered a dominant parameter in contemporary religious identity discourse.

We will present here two lists of laws from the article: one, laws that are, surprisingly, parameters from the second circle. And the second, laws that belong, surprisingly, to the first circle. Both lists express, for Teri Anfi, the polarity of the distinction between halakhic validity (=which is an identification parameter) and the centrality of the law discussed in the discourse of religious identity.

1. Incest and bloodshed, two of the three most serious offenses (incest is almost irrelevant today, but I would add that there are also signs of incest that also belong to the outer circle), clearly belong to the peripheral circle. Almost no one would define an incestuous person and a murderer as a non-religious person. Add to this, cheating, accepting bribes, giving bribes, stealing, avoiding prayers.

2. In contrast to all of these, kashrut, wearing a kippah (as opposed to a head covering for women), and observing Shabbat (to a certain extent) are parameters that clearly belong to the hard core, and some of them (like the kippah) are not at a high level of halachic severity, and certainly not like murder and adultery.

As mentioned, Cohen raises the possibility of basing the criterion on the commandments between man and place, and explains this on a socio-historical level, as a response to the need of a religious society to differentiate itself from the surrounding secular society. In recent generations, this society has also adopted the universal moral norms of the commandments between man and his fellow man, and therefore identity shifts the weight of gravity to the commandments between man and place. We have already mentioned that he rejects this distinction, by virtue of the example of abstaining from prayer, which is certainly no less serious than not wearing a kippah.

To conclude the review, I will present his conclusion, in his own words (p. 14):

It seems that the most important distinction for clarifying the design of the religious discourse of identification (I think of it as identity) is the distinction between external commandments, that is, commandments whose existence and observance are visible to the external, non-religious environment, and the other commandments. It is precisely the wearing of the kippah, which from any point of view is of lesser rank than the observance of Shabbat and kosher, that clarifies the distinction. The kippah is the most external symbol of affiliation, since everyone sees it. The kippah constitutes a permanent and constant declaration of affiliation with the religious society in the face of the non-religious society. Hence the great importance attributed to it, and the perception of the personal decision to remove the kippah from the head as a critical turning point in the process of leaving the religious society.

A collection of some of the fallacies in the argument/description proposed in the article

There are several methodological errors in the article, and several errors in the analysis itself. For the sake of brevity, I will list only a few of them here:

1. Cohen ignores the fact that there is no mitzvah between a person and his fellow man that belongs to the hard core of religious identity. How can this be explained, if indeed the distinction between mitzvahs between a person and his fellow man and place is not important here? Admittedly, the avoidance of prayer is an example in one direction: there is a mitzvah between a person and a place that does not belong to the inner circle. But what about the opposite correlation (that there are no mitzvahs between a person and his fellow man that are included in the hard core)? The obvious conclusion from this is that, contrary to Cohen's firm conclusion, mitzvahs between a person and his fellow man are indeed not included in the discourse of religious identity. It is true that not all mitzvahs between a person and a place are included in it, but this is a somewhat trivial claim, since it is clear that there is a difference between levels of severity, halakhic or identity-based, within the circle of mitzvahs between a person and a place. Does anyone expect all mitzvahs to receive the same status, halakhic or identity-based? This makes no sense, and therefore there is nothing surprising in this result. Therefore, the distinction that Cohen rejects, between commandments between a person and a place and his fellow man, is valid and stands, and from an empirical point of view is unassailable (one can argue with a value critique about this, and so on).

2. From this we can conclude that there is an incorrect methodological assumption in the article, which is: that there must be one criterion that unites all the halakhic components of the religious identity discourse. As we have seen, the hard core is the commandments between man and place, but not all of them. In other words, the identity criterion includes at least one more parameter. What is this methodological assumption based on? Why should we rule out a priori that there are several such criteria? Moreover, how can we, by virtue of a single example (prayer, which points in only one direction. See the previous section) decide the question of the relevance of types of halakhic components in the religious identity discourse?

3. However, Cohen's general conclusion already borders on the absurd. Here, it is no longer a question of lack of proof, but of an internal contradiction. His conclusion is that the fundamental distinction in the discourse of identity lies in the difference between extroverted commandments and those that are not. To understand the absurdity, let's take, as an example, murder, and in particular the murder of a prime minister. Ostensibly, this is Cohen's ultimate example of a commandment that is not extroverted, since right at the beginning of his remarks he states that it is irrelevant in the discourse of religious identity. Is it possible? Has any of us not heard of Yigal Amir? And what about theft, bribery, and fraud?

4. More generally, it can be said that harming another, by its very definition, is always an externalized commandment. Therefore, Cohen's two most fundamental assertions in this part of his article are simply contradictory claims: on the one hand, he states that the distinction between commandments between a person and his fellow man and the place is not an important criterion in the discourse of identity. On the other hand, the criterion he proposes is the degree of externalization of the commandments. As everyone understands, commandments between a person and his fellow man are the most prominent example of externalized commandments. After all, they are usually seen by at least that friend, the one who is harmed or the one who benefits. In contrast, commandments between a person and a place are usually more discreet, between the person and his fellow man and his four apostates (certainly kashrut and Shabbat - the A'A'Kh deal with the desecration of Shabbat in public, and these are precisely, according to Cohen's justified claim, the most important parameters in the discourse of identity. I wonder!).

And here, among the commandments discussed in the article, there is one commandment between man and place that is certainly prominent even externally: public prayer. However, disappointingly, it is not part of the hard core (as Cohen himself claims), while kashrut and Shabbat, which are much less external than it, do belong to it. Therefore, on pages 14-15 a rather impressive Talmudic argument is presented, which turns the table upside down: Cohen shows with signs and wonders that kashrut and Shabbat are externalized commandments, while prayer in the synagogue (=which is a closed communal space, as he puts it) is not.

1. In light of what we said above, we can say that Cohen himself, in his article, unequivocally proves that the criterion for any mitzvah to belong to the hard core is not the degree of externalization it contains.

2. We will continue to navigate this winding path for a little longer: What can we say in light of the clear fact that in practice the degree of externalization is actually important in our identity discourse (see the example of the dome, whose severity is marginal and its belonging to the hard core is clear)? On the surface, Cohen's conclusion is correct. True, but not for the reasons he cites, nor in the same way, nor under the same methodological assumptions. In other words: Once again, we return to the conclusion presented above in section 2, which is that the assumption that there is one dominant parameter in defining religious identity discourse is wrong. Although the externalization parameter also plays some part in it, it is far from being the only one, and it is probably not even the main one.

3. Another mistake is the dependence on the level of sociological explanation. Even when Cohen proposes the distinction between the commandments between a person and his fellow man and the commandments between a person and the place, he places it on the basis of the need to separate oneself from the environment, non-Jewish or non-religious, which is becoming increasingly moral. However, the same proposal could also be placed on the basis of essential principles: the demand that a person be a person does not belong specifically to the religious level, but to the human-universal level. This is without any connection to the state of the external environment in which he lives. Religious identity focuses, by its very nature, on what distinguishes the religious person, that is, on the second level: the 'religious'-particular level. This does not mean that there is no religious obligation to be moral. On the contrary, some of the most serious commandments belong to the first level. However, since Aristotle we have known that the definition of a being should be based on its most unique and characteristic parameters, and not necessarily on the most serious and important ones. Would anyone suggest defining a donkey as a being with a spirit of life? The spirit of life is undoubtedly the most important parameter of the donkey, but it is not unique to it. The same is true of the status of morality in relation to Judaism. Therefore, the set of phenomena that Cohen describes are simply trivial, and the last thing I can say about them is that they are surprising, or improbable and unexpected.

In another way, we could say that offenses between a person and his fellow man do not necessarily indicate rebellion against God, but perhaps also weakness of character and bad habits. However, offenses between a person and a place express only rebellion against God alone. Isn't this a reasonable criterion for Jewish identity and identification?[2]

1. In light of what was said in the previous section, another methodological error arises. A proposal that distinguishes between commandments between a person and his fellow man and commandments between a person and a place on a historical basis (difference from a moral environment or not) should be examined in light of historical data. Although I have not conducted research, it is quite clear that the criteria for religious identity discourse have not changed to a great extent, even in environments of a different nature, and in other historical periods. It seems to me that prayer has never been a critical component of Jewish-religious identity discourse (in those places where there was a different Jewish identity. In other places, the identity discourse is not relevant, except perhaps towards Gentiles). On the other hand, kashrut and Shabbat have certainly always been considered as such. Again, the reason is that prayer exists in other religions as well, and therefore it is not unique to Judaism (see section 7).

2. Cohen points to a gap between the halakhic approach (which is associated with identification) and the approach of identity. However, as is well known, even from a halakhic perspective, violations of Sabbath prohibitions have a unique status that is not related to their halakhic status (not all commandments of stoning are given the same halakhic treatment). For example, a convert to the Sabbath is considered a convert to the entire Torah, and for some halakhic matters he is judged as a gentile. Is this an identity discourse or an identification discourse? Apparently, a halakhic determination, by its very definition, belongs to the identification discourse and not to the identity discourse. Cohen himself assumes this throughout, saying that the distinction between identification and identity is reflected in the fact that identity parameters that belong to the hard core are not necessarily severe from a halakhic (=identification) perspective, and vice versa. According to his argument, the distinctions between identification and identity are reflected in a deviation from the halakhic, or, at least, from its scale of values and priorities. If so, he agrees that the halakhic is an expression of identification and not identity. If so, how would a Cohen explain a different halachic approach to Shabbat prohibitions than to other prohibitions of the same level of severity?

3. Following the last sentence, we will return again in the summary of the speaker to the fundamental distinction between the discourse of identification and the discourse of identity. As stated, this distinction can be attacked on several levels. I already discussed one in the previous section: Halacha itself, which is the clearest expression of the discourse of identification (also according to Elia Dacohan), takes a position on questions of identity. As we have seen, even according to Halacha, the importance of laws is not always measured by their severity.[3] In the same way, the very consideration of being distinct from one’s surroundings can be (and indeed is) a Halacha parameter, and not just an external interest, or an expression of a spiritual need of one religious person or another.[4]

4. There is no room here for a conceptual analysis that would expose the systematic deception that exists in the dichotomous distinction between identification and identity. In short, I would say that the ambiguity in associating the adjective 'essential' with identification or identity can clarify this point well. Is what is essential identification or identity? Ostensibly, identity is the contingent and changing, while identification is the fixed (= the halakhic, at least the fixed halakhic framework from Torah). On the other hand, identity relates more to content, while identification is ostensibly only formal and not essential. An apparent absurdity emerges here, that the formal-eternal is not essential, and vice versa: the variable, sometimes erroneous, is the essential.

The alternative

To conclude, I will offer a brief formulation of an argument opposite to that presented in the article, as it emerges from the discussion so far (a more detailed reasoning requires a separate article):

1. I am convinced a priori that there is a correlation between identity and recognition. What serves as a critical parameter in the discourse of identification is founded on an essential parameter in the discourse of identity, and vice versa. This assertion even refers to biological affiliation, which seems to be the most immaterial criterion. This is precisely why some sages established the concept of the 'virtue of Israel,' whatever its meaning may be. The Kabbalists even went so far as to state that gentiles who convert probably belonged, biologically speaking, to the people of Israel. Thus, biology can also be a parameter of essence (with full awareness of the harsh connotation that accompanies such a statement), although perhaps not exclusively (see the entry 'Conversion'). In any case, I have not seen, neither in the article nor outside it, an argument that supports the opposite assumption. Therefore, this assumption, which is implicit in the basis of the analysis of the survey data, cannot be automatically considered acceptable.

2. The conclusion is that the laws that constitute a critical component in the discourse of identity are rooted in the discourse of identification and vice versa. The fact that Cohen does not find a single parameter that underlies the classification of identity itself indicates that the source is not rooted in identity but in identification. What do wearing a kippah, observing Shabbat, eating kosher, etc. have in common? Since there is no other common denominator, the answer is necessarily: they all constitute an expression of one thing – a religious Jewish existence. Isn’t this identification? The conclusion is that identification is the meaning of identity, and vice versa. There is something common to all the identifying parameters, but it itself is not an identity parameter but rather an identification (=my essence). There is no room for a dichotomous distinction between these two levels.[5]

3. Ultimately, in my opinion (which, of course, has not been sufficiently reasoned here, for lack of space), the relationship between identity discourse and identification discourse is like the relationship between semantics and syntax (although it is not always clear which is which). Anyone familiar with the basics of logic knows that there is a theorem, whose name in Israel is: 'The theorem of adequacy and coherence.' This theorem establishes a relationship of complete coordination between semantics and syntax, as befits any consistent system that strives for coherent meaning.

For our attention!

[1] This is in contrast to the common joke that no religious person is a thief, for if he stole then he is not religious. The very fact (which is justified in my opinion, see my article in the same issue of 'Akademut', p. 161 and in the editors' note there, as well as there around note 19, and in fact throughout the article) that this is a joke, says my preacher.

[2] Against this background, I will point out what many of the commentators of the Rambam have written (see the keynote in the Frankel edition at the beginning of Hilchot Memariam, in the second and third columns on P.A. Hilchot A-B). They claim that according to the Rambam, one who transgresses the commandments of the sages without fundamentally rebelling against their authority (apparently even if he transgresses intentionally, like a transgressor of a Torah commandment out of a desire to do so, which is not considered accidental), has not transgressed the commandment of "not to deviate." However, one who transgresses out of a fundamental lack of recognition of their authority, he and only he transgresses the law of the Torah. This is a good example of the argument presented above.

[3] See, for example, my article 'He gives evil to the wicked according to his wickedness – is that true?', Alon Shvut – Gabraham 9, Iyar-Sivan 1996, p. 145.

[4] Part of the point is that the collective develops identity through collective discourse, which is Halacha. The subject of identity is not just the individual Jew but Judaism as a whole, and as such the discourse of collective identification is part of the discourse of identity.

Therefore, halachic determinations, such as the process of conversion, are not imposed on us from the outside, as Cohen writes, who associates conversion with the discourse of identification and not with identity. The process of conversion is the result of our discourse with ourselves (according to the Torah, which is also a part of us), and therefore it belongs to the same extent to identity.

[5] There is significance, mainly sociological, to this distinction, but it requires much more subtle formulation and analysis. The dichotomy is very misleading in this case.