Who Is a Jew and What Is Judaism – An Introduction to the Issue of Conversion

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The well-known eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that Judaism is not a religion but a kind of social practice. What he meant was that the essence of Jewish religiosity is commitment to behavioral regulations (Jewish law), and that it lacks the emotional and experiential dimension, and perhaps also the moral one, that is supposed to characterize religiosity as such. And indeed, in the conception still common today, rooted, I think, mainly in Christian conceptions, religiosity is expressed chiefly in those two planes: morality, and religious feeling or experience. A cold person whose religiosity lacks an experiential dimension is regarded as not really ‘religious.’ And indeed, by these criteria it is rather hard to see Judaism as a religion. The main current of historical Judaism, certainly over the last two thousand years, placed at the center of its existence commitment to Jewish law, the code. Morality and experience stood at the margins of its identity, if at all. For my part, this is written not as criticism but as an empirical description with which I actually identify quite strongly. But I have no doubt that many will see this as a kind of criticism of Judaism, or at least of rabbinic Judaism. This criticism is not new. If we set aside earlier stages in our history, the main current in Pharisaic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period and afterward placed commitment to Jewish law at the center of its religious existence. The criticism of early Christianity concerned to a great extent the meaning and status of legal practice in relation to morality and religious feeling. As is well known, Christianity consequently broke away from the Jewish course of that time, and it is no wonder that it dropped precisely this central component—Jewish law—and put morality and experience in its place. Thus the field was divided between the two great monotheistic ‘religions'(?): Christianity took the emotional and experiential dimensions, and to some extent also the moral demand, whereas Judaism contracted into the four cubits of Jewish law. These are, of course, generalizations. There were various shades within both of these religions that departed from this scheme, but in broad terms I think this description is close to the truth. Over the years this polemic reappeared in various forms (German Pietism, certain mystical movements, various messianic movements, a bit of Spinoza, and more). But more than 1,500 years later, in the eighteenth century, this criticism returned to center stage, and this time too from within. Baal Shem Tov Hasidism arose and sought to present an alternative to Lithuanian rabbinic Judaism. It too tried to replace cold, intellectual commitment to Jewish law with a more popular and emotional religiosity and with moral demands. It seems that this was a major part of the aversion of rabbinic Judaism (the Mitnaggedim), who feared that Hasidism would abandon commitment to Jewish law altogether and follow Christianity. That did not happen, but the Hasidic critique is present in various forms to this day, and later it even deepened and penetrated entirely non-Hasidic circles (the Enlightenment thinkers, the Zionist movement, Reform, contemporary liberal religiosity, the secular movements of return to the Jewish bookshelf, and more). All of these seek to present an alternative of Judaism without Jewish law—that is, a Judaism not based on commitment to Jewish law—or at least to challenge the dominance of commitment to Jewish law as the exclusive, or even the dominant, criterion of Jewishness. This is essentially the contemporary phase of the critical process that began with Christianity and continued with Hasidism. The Zionist national movement stands at a somewhat different point on this map, since it tried—and still tries—to provide Judaism with other definitions, more national and cultural in character. It thereby joins the message that Judaism is not only Jewish law (and perhaps not only religion), but from a different angle, a national one. The description of Judaism as the four cubits of Jewish law is seen as a distorted development caused by the national lack and the stunted life of the Jews in exile over the last two thousand years. It is therefore no wonder that these two critiques naturally join together when the people of Israel return to their land and establish a state (I may address in a subsequent article the distorted conception prevalent among us of the role of Jewish law as an arm of government for solving various social problems). The criterion for Jewishness: commitment to Jewish law. The absence of religious experience from among the constitutive elements of Jewish identity seems understandable and easier to digest than the removal of morality from them. Usually, when I advance the claim that morality is not an important motif in defining Judaism, the quotations immediately arise: ‘You shall be holy’ (Lev. 19:2), ‘And you shall do what is right and good’ (Deut. 6:18), and ‘For transgressions between one person and another, the Day of Atonement does not atone’ (Mishnah Yoma 8:9), together with their assorted commentators and sources (not especially numerous or diverse, I must say). In any event, the fact is—and the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, ‘the Third Isaiah,’ already pointed this out in his blunt way—that on the practical plane the criterion for being Jewish was never moral and/or experiential. It rested solely on commitment to Jewish law. Likewise, the activity of the believing Jew and the rabbinic scholar throughout the generations focused mainly on the study and observance of Jewish law, and much less on moral or philosophical aspects, or on the study of the Bible and its commentators, and still less on the meaning and place of religious experience. As for that—who even mentioned it. For the man of Jewish law, the (correct) claim that morality too is a religiously binding category requires… Who Is a Jew and What Is Judaism? An Introduction to the Question of Conversion. Michael Abraham. Rabbi Michael Abraham holds a Ph.D. in physics and works in general philosophy, Jewish philosophy, and logic. Psifas, Kislev 5775, December 2014, 50

grounding and explanation. It is by no means self-evident. The conflict between cold commitment to Jewish law and religiosity in its experiential, emotional-moral sense is present in many controversies to this day, and not only between Hasidim (at least those of old) and Mitnaggedim. For example, the absurd claims about the Jewishness of those who fell while serving in the army in defense of the state (‘He is good enough to serve in the army and fall defending the state, but not good enough to be buried as a Jew’). This is a classic argument from the national side. Another clear example of the same critique from the moral side is the fashionable claim regarding conversion procedures, according to which, instead of placing at the center of the process the ritual components of Jewish law (dietary laws, the laws of family purity, Sabbath, and festivals), one should replace them—or at least supplement them—with matters such as honoring parents, helping others, and, in general, commandments governing relations between one person and another and between a person and his society, and perhaps also emotional identification with the nation. Underlying these claims is the same criticism of the cold legal formalism that characterizes rabbinic Judaism. But even if I remove for a moment the double-breasted Lithuanian yeshiva frock coat in which I have wrapped myself (its blessing being: ‘Blessed are You … who has commanded us to wrap ourselves in a frock coat’), and whatever my principled attitude may be toward religious feeling (marginal and irrelevant) or toward morality (very important), this criticism is mistaken. There is indeed room to improve our attitude toward the commandments between one person and another, just as toward the commandments between man and God. And it is also true that the commandments between one person and another are no less important than those between man and God. After all, the prohibition of murder is one of the three gravest transgressions, and it is certainly graver than Sabbath desecration and dietary laws. And nevertheless, my point stands: what stands, rightly, at the center of Jewish identity is Sabbath and dietary laws, not murder, and not even the commandments between one person and another or morality in general. Let me sharpen the point a bit: I am not claiming that, from the standpoint of Jewish tradition and Jewish law, morality is unimportant. My claim is that morality is not a relevant criterion of Jewish identity. Morality is an additional requirement, in my view a very fundamental one, but Judaism is characterized by Jewish law, not by morality. The reason for this is not a hierarchy of legal or religious importance, but simple logic. Aristotle taught us that when we want to define a phenomenon or a concept, we must do so by presenting genus and species. Thus a human being is defined as a speaking animal. In terms of genus, he belongs to the class of animals, and his species within that general genus is the speaking animal. Is it not true that a human being has two legs and two arms? Is it not true that human beings breathe and walk? Certainly it is. But none of these are unique characteristics, and therefore they are not the right features to use when we want to define the creatures called human beings. True, without breathing a person dies, and therefore there is no doubt that breathing is a very important parameter for human existence (more than that, one who does not breathe is not a human being), and yet breathing is not a unique and constitutive feature of human beings, and therefore it cannot serve as a definition of the human species. Similarly, morality may be very important, and the Torah and Jewish law certainly require moral behavior, but moral behavior is not unique to the Jew. A gentile is obligated in it just like the Jew. It is a feature of the genus, not of the species. It would be absurd to define a Jew by honoring parents or by ‘You shall not murder’ (Exod. 20:13; Deut. 5:17), or even by helping others and moral behavior in general. All of these are of course very important commandments even on the legal plane, but they do not distinguish the Jew. A Jew who is not moral is still a Jew (though perhaps not a human being. He belongs to the species, not necessarily to the genus). (One moment, I am putting the frock coat back on.) A Jew who has no religious experience is a strictly kosher Jew, although a Jew who lives with such an experience is also a kosher Jew—just under ordinary Rabbinate certification. But if these are to be our definitions of Judaism, a considerable portion of humanity will be Jews. We thus learn that using non-unique characteristics, important as they may be, empties the definition of the concept of content and renders it worthless. If the criterion for a convert’s observance of the commandments is honoring parents and helping others, it seems to me that most of the gentiles living among us do not need conversion at all; they have long been Jews already. It is therefore right to assess the Jewishness of converts precisely by their observance of the Sabbath, dietary laws, and the laws of family purity, and wrong to drag honoring parents or commandments between one person and another into this question. As stated, this is not a religious mistake but a logical one. An Aristotelian definition of a Jew is: a human being (and as such one obligated to morality) who is obligated to Jewish law. A Jew is homo legalis, a homo sapiens committed to Jewish law. So why do so many among us, religious and secular alike, fail to understand this simple logic? Sometimes the harmful confusion here is between religion in its Christian sense and its… Mark Neyman, GPO. ‘A Jew is someone who feels himself to be a Jew.’ Psifas, Kislev 5775, December 2014, 51

Jewish sense, which I have already discussed, and sometimes the confusion between religion and state. For many, an Israeli citizen is perceived as synonymous with a Jew. The fulfillment of civic obligations toward the state replaces the fulfillment of one’s obligations under Jewish law (see the case of dying in military service). But at least among secular people, if I may risk some psychologism, this also involves repression. For if the definition of Judaism is dietary laws and the laws of family purity, in what sense is the secular person Jewish? By reading Bialik or Amos Oz? By speaking Hebrew? By living in the land or paying taxes to the State of Israel? By moral behavior? Fulfilling obligations to the state plays an important role in creating a secular Jewish identity. But there are many in Israel and around the world who possess most or all of these characteristics, and they are not Jews by any accepted standard. Judaism without Jewish law is simply an oxymoron. There is no such thing as secular Judaism. The prevalent non-legal definitions of Judaism fall into one of two pits: either the circular pit (a Jew is someone who feels himself to be a Jew, or someone whom the Nazis slaughtered—or whose parents they slaughtered—for being Jewish), or the legal pit. The legal pit consists in adopting a definition that covertly hangs on the legal definition. The only characteristic that unequivocally defines a non-observant person as Jewish is the ethnic-racial one: he or she is the child of a Jewish mother. And in what sense is his mother Jewish? Two possibilities: either she too is the daughter of a Jewish mother, and then the question returns with respect to the grandmother; or, if we have already reached the true stopping point in our genealogical research, she is Jewish because she ate kosher and observed the laws of family purity. That is, somewhere in the background, well hidden, the legal definition always stands. Does concern over intermarriage (the cornerstone that justifies the existence of the Jewish Agency and the Zionist Organization) mean concern over marriage to someone who does not speak Hebrew or who does not study the Bible? Concern over intermarriage is concern over the marriage of a Jew in the legal sense with someone who is not such. This claim, which is of course not new, is somewhat embarrassing and infuriating for many of us. Its meaning is that there really is no such thing as Judaism outside the legal meaning of the term. Secular Judaism is not even plagiarism, for plagiarism is copying that preserves the original without mentioning the author. Here there is no preservation of the original; on the contrary, a distortion is put in the original’s place. Humanistic secular Judaism is a popular but rather pathetic attempt to cover over this failure. Humanism has become a substitute definition of Judaism in place of Jewish law. There is an absurd disregard of the simple fact that humanism is not a uniquely Jewish characteristic, if it is even that. I have already expressed my opinion above about defective definitions of this sort. No doubt one can always take a concept and generate derivative concepts from it by means of various metamorphoses. Thus, for example, people who use terms such as energies, fields, and the like can call themselves physicists even if they are merely alternative healers (and thus the exact science of alternative medicine was founded). Others who practice astrology can regard themselves as scientists, for they too, like astronomers, deal with stars. Bookbinders can call themselves authors, since they too deal with books. Writers of rhymes can thereby earn the title of poets. Sorcerers, dispensers of blessings and amulets, and extortionists can call themselves rabbis, since they too are dressed in rabbinic robes and adorned with splendid beards (some of them even know a little reading and/or writing in Rashi script, and perhaps even speak indistinctly). In exactly the same way, someone who speaks Hebrew and is a dubious descendant of Abraham our father can go on calling himself a Jew. Conceptual acrobatics can stomach anything. And if this learned definition is not enough, the secular humanist Jew would do well to add something about the necessary vagueness of definitions of this kind, or to assert in whining self-righteousness, ‘You do not have a monopoly on …’ (fill in the blank), and the like. These are winning cards. Tried and true. The fact that Jews wrote poetry, spoke Hebrew, studied the Bible, and lived in the Land of Israel does not mean that whoever does all these things is a Jew. Nor does it mean that one who lacks these characteristics is a gentile. There are entirely kosher Jews who lack some of these characteristics, and no one doubts their Jewishness. Jews throughout the generations also had two legs, and they also breathed. The definition of their Jewishness depends on the question of what the essential characteristics of Judaism are. There are quite a few gentiles who study the Bible and know it well, and even feel a much deeper connection to it than some of my best Jewish friends. There are good gentiles who live in the land, speak Hebrew, and even write poetry in Hebrew. The only litmus paper I can think of as a defining criterion of Judaism is commitment to Jewish law. At this point, of course, legal objections are likely to arise. They will argue against me that we live among quite a few people who are not committed to Jewish law, and they are Jews (kosher?) by every opinion. But this is a mistake. They are Jews according to the legal definition, for Jewish law defines a Jew as the child of a Jewish mother, and ‘even though he has sinned, he remains an Israelite’ (Sanhedrin 44a). But that is a legal definition. I find it hard to see how someone who denies Jewish law nevertheless accepts precisely the legal definition as the basis of his identity. More than that, it is important to distinguish between Judaism in its essential sense and Judaism in its technical sense. When I say that a person who is not committed to Jewish law cannot be defined as a Jew, I mean his identity, not the legal treatment that one is obligated to accord him. These are two entirely different questions. In short, one can say that I am really speaking about the definition of Judaism as a concept, as a framework of values, and not about the definition of a person as a Jew in the legal sense. Indeed, according to this definition, in the technical-ethnic-formal sense there are many ethnic Jews who have no Jewish identity. They are not necessarily worse people because of that, but they are certainly much less Jewish because of it. Although Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (Iggerot Ha-Re’iyah, vol. 1, p. 47) instructed us, ‘Let us return not to Kant, but to the Red Sea, to Sinai, and to Jerusalem,’ if I may nevertheless be permitted a transgression for a higher purpose, I shall conclude by returning to the Kant with whom I began. Over the generations, many of Kant’s Jewish disciples and continuators (such as Markus Herz, Hermann Cohen, and later Julius Guttmann, S. H. Bergmann, and others) argued that the basis of his remarks about the Jews lay in misunderstanding or unfamiliarity with Judaism (and in the influence of Spinoza, that thorn in the side). Yet, to the best of my judgment, their gentile master understood the matter better than they did. Judaism truly is not ‘religion’ in the Christian sense of that term. In our language the term religion denotes law (‘and the law was promulgated in Shushan the capital’ [Esth. 3:15], ‘those who know law and judgment’ [Esth. 1:13], and the like). Morality and experience are spices sometimes added to the basic definition and sometimes not. The shared label applied both to religion and to law, and likewise to one kind of judgment and another, often causes—between one affliction and another—contentious disputes in our gates. Photo: GPO. Psifas, Kislev 5775, December 2014, 52