In Response to the Haredi Demonstration and the Chief Rabbinate Elections
Contents of the Article
Responses to Previous Issues – 866
In response to ‘Impart Knowledge, Not Educate,’ by Nadav Shnerb, Pekudei issue
Don’t Believe Him!
Prof. Shnerb wants us to establish schools in which education is secondary, if at all, and everything is devoted to ‘knowledge.’ But do not believe him. There is no such thing. Every school is built on a central educational conception that it inculcates in its students. The only question is which values.
Shnerb’s method, for example, exalts intellectual achievement. That is the central value he wants to instill in students constantly. It is relatively easy to impart this value (at least to gifted students), because it is close to man’s low and egoistic common value denominator. The writer has no problem with this (only the low academic denominator bothers him), because he is despairing, by his own admission, of human beings’ ability to reach a higher level.
But if this assumption is correct, what will prevent the phenomenon of cheating, against which Prof. Shnerb protests? And what, in general, is the connection between achievement and a ‘proper social order’ or a ‘fair legal system’ to which he aspires? I assume the intention is not that only the strong should determine what is ‘proper and fair’ as they see fit. But why should successful citizens want ethical and moral public systems, if in their formative years care was taken to prove to them, explicitly and implicitly, that this has neither importance nor benefit?
Of course, Prof. Shnerb is right that academic achievement is a central educational value. It should be cultivated, together with the other values. Unfortunately, the task is difficult, and there are no shortcuts.
Elikim Krombain
Rabbi Elikim Krombain is a lecturer at Yeshivat Har Etzion
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Values alongside Knowledge
Let me begin by saying that in education, as in many things in life, everything is a matter of proportion. There is no one path or one act that alone is correct and every other pursuit is invalid. I mean Shnerb’s central claim against engagement in value education, which he turns into a disease that he calls ‘educationitis.’ If the education system were occupied only with value education, if most of a student’s time in school were devoted only to volunteer activities, if the reforms proposed by the Ministry of Education were aimed at that — I would agree with him.
But in reality, that is not what is at issue. We are speaking about a situation in which the education system has increasingly cast off almost all activities whose purpose is educational and value-oriented, and has placed emphasis almost only on what can be measured and evaluated. Part of this casting off stems from ideological reasons, מתוך a postmodern claim of ‘Who are we to educate the young how to think and in which values to believe,’ and part stems from the Western pragmatic approach of achievement and competition. The Minister of Education comes and seeks to restore to the system some of what it had in the early years after the establishment of the state, together with the statement that we adults have something to say to the young. And I permit myself to add, from my considerable experience, that young people have a great willingness to receive educational values from us adults, and not only knowledge.
The second point on which I disagree with Shnerb is connected to the subject of the Meitzav tests. In my view, the Meitzav is the clearest representative (and, to my taste, for the worse!) of the takeover of the culture of evaluation and measurement in the education system. Never mind that all teaching in grades 10–12 has become matriculation-oriented, and that in high school it is almost impossible to speak with students about anything connected to processes of learning, the acquisition of skills, and the broadening of the mind. Let us assume that this is indeed essential for the sake of continuing to higher education. But to introduce this malignant ill already in grades 5 and 8 (the year groups in which the Meitzav was administered)? Again, one can talk about ideals, but in reality many schools placed such a great emphasis in these two year groups on teaching aimed at success in the Meitzav, at the expense of imparting skills and at the expense of simple learning מתוך the curiosity that exists at a young age, that teachers’ complaints had already reached such a point that the Ministry of Education was led to undertake a rethinking of the entire issue. I hope the results of that rethinking will be unequivocal: to abolish not only the subject Meitzav exams, but also the climate Meitzav, which likewise provides no real information and reflects nothing other than meaningless statistical gimmicks.
I therefore support the direction of the Minister of Education, and the ideas of reducing measurement and evaluation to a minimum. I am definitely in favor of restoring the education system to sanity, restoring to it the ability and legitimacy to educate and impart values, not at the expense of imparting knowledge but while giving meaning to the knowledge acquired. Perhaps the reforms are being born too quickly, perhaps some of them are published in the media before the field knows how to cope with them and absorb them, but the direction is correct.
Since I think that in most schools meaningful learning has in fact been practiced in most stages of study until today as well, I would perhaps suggest changing the Ministry of Education’s slogan (‘Moving to meaningful learning’), and I would formulate it as ‘Giving emphasis to meaningful learning,’ thus expressing appreciation for the teachers who have labored for so many years to give meaning to their teaching, while also emphasizing the direction toward which the system seeks to aspire — which, as noted, is a change of direction, a blessed change in my view.
To conclude, I would like to draw from my experience not only as a middle-school principal for many years, but also as someone who spent four years as an emissary in Canada. In Canada there are no matriculation exams. Students receive ‘credit’ for the courses (subjects) they study in school, and they must reach a certain number of credits, and good grades, in order to be accepted to university. When I taught twelfth-grade girls in Toronto, their learning was strong and meaningful until the end of June of twelfth grade, because the grade they received from me (the teacher!) mattered to them very much. This gave teachers a position of strength, together with time to teach, impart knowledge, educate, guide the writing of papers, and so on. Would that we might merit this here as well!
Gershon Tzin
Dr. Gershon Tzin holds a doctorate in education and the teaching of history. He founded and directed the middle school at the Himmelfarb School in Jerusalem and lectures at Lifshitz College
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A Disappointed Grandfather
Nadav Shnerb’s article truly took the words right out of my mouth. As a grandfather disappointed by the level of knowledge of his dozen grandchildren, I agree with almost everything that was written. To be sure, one may be a bit less extreme and devote at least one weekly hour to education, but abolishing exams together with the plague of educationitis will wreak havoc on the student population.
Alex Lachish
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Fear and Reward
Nadav Shnerb replies:
I did not succeed in understanding Rabbi Krombain’s words. Has the rabbinic dictum escaped him: ‘Were it not for fear of the government, a man would swallow his fellow alive’ (Avot 3:2)? The interest of all creatures in the existence of a fair legal system and a proper social order is simply fear of the all-against-all war and the rule of brute force that would certainly await them under any other system.
Social order, at every level, is founded on fear of punishment and the promise of reward — that is, on an appeal to man’s utilitarian calculation. This does not mean that man has no good and altruistic side, or that those good qualities have no useful role in the world, but rather that it is impossible to sustain a human society without the elementary condition of fear of government. Whoever doubts this should ask himself whether he would agree to move to an island where there is no police and no law enforcement in any form whatsoever, even if the inhabitants of that island are the most devoted disciples of the greatest moral preachers. Even if such a person exists, I fear that insurance companies would refuse to sell him a policy, and rightly so.
Man can and should reach inconceivable heights of moral and human nobility, but he can also descend to the depths of bestiality and depravity, and not infrequently the greatest preachers of the first path are also the greatest leaders to results of the second kind. In a society that contains many individuals there will always be both sorts, and one who ignores this, even if his intention is admirable, will bring about harsh consequences. Therefore, the reason that ought to deter students from cheating on examinations is simply strict supervision accompanied by sanctions against anyone caught (and certainly not that ‘education’ in the absence of proper oversight and in the familiar problem of ‘the righteous man who fares badly,’ otherwise known as the ‘honor test’).
Dr. Tzin’s remarks can be summarized briefly: Come, pour a sea of money over us, but do not under any circumstances dare to examine the outputs of the system. Trust us! We have good intentions and we know what we are doing. Somehow I have the feeling that when Tzin enters a bank, buys an apartment, or even a used car, he does not apply this set of considerations. Why should we, who pay from our money more than half a million shekels to the education system (ten percent of the state budget, and therefore our proportional share of the tax total), be expected to adopt it?
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In response to ‘The Haredi Demonstration and the Elections to the Rabbinate,’ by Michael Abraham, Vayikra issue
A Solid Zionist Foundation
Rabbi Michael Abraham’s remarks in his article attempt to create a sharp distinction that is both mistaken and dangerous. Religious Zionism is not a uniform ideological group with a clear manifesto signed by all its members; nor does it need to be such a thing. It is a sociological group with a spectrum of shared denominators, one of the central ones being its standing between two worlds — the world of Jewish law and tradition on the one hand, and the modern and liberal world on the other. When a person defines himself as committed to Torah and commandments, but is also part of the modern State of Israel, he is already in that intermediate space.
This encounter is not simple, and it contains many clashes and many unresolved questions. The shared principled stance is a desire to take from the modern world what is good in it, while avoiding its many negative aspects. But when one tries to spell this declaration out in detail, it becomes clear that the distinction is not at all simple. Consequently, it arouses a wide range of differing attitudes.
Almost every religious-Zionist rabbi or decisor adopts conservative positions on some issues and modern positions on others. It is impossible, and incorrect, to speak here of two distinct camps; rather, there is a continuum between the most conservative options and the most liberal ones. This is not a binary decision but a matter of dosage. One cannot and should not create a watershed line that assigns everyone to one of two camps (I did not understand, for example, on which side of the watershed Rabbi David Stav is located. And where does Rabbi Yaakov Ariel belong? And on which side belongs Rabbi Chaim Druckman, who opposed the Haredi demonstration?). In this sense, the shared Zionist denominator is very important — the positive attitude toward the establishment of the State of Israel and its institutions is the shared foundation that, for the time being, manages to be stronger than the disputes.
Fortunately, most of the rabbis of religious Zionism succeed in showing one another respect, even when they disagree on many issues. The various rabbinic conferences, the major journals, as well as this supplement, succeed in gathering within them most of the spectrum of opinions.
As with every spectrum, here too there are extremes: the conservative extreme and the liberal extreme. And as with all extremes, here too the extremes try to threaten the center and dismantle its existence. It is important to note — the great majority of those called ‘Hardalim’ are not included in this extreme! Most ‘Hardalim’ believe in a range of combinations between Torah and the modern world, even if in a different form and dosage from their more liberal colleagues. Some of them also joined, in my opinion mistakenly, the Haredi demonstration out of identification with the value of Torah (apart from all the manipulations, that too was there). At the conservative extreme under discussion stands a fairly small group characterized chiefly by an absolute negation of anyone who does not think as it does, and by an unwillingness to conduct substantive discourse with anyone who thinks otherwise.
At the other extreme stands, opposite it, a liberal group that at times seems to draw a significant portion of its religious fervor from hatred of the Hardalim as such. They tend systematically, on every issue, to choose the modern option over the traditional one, and to try to mark every opponent as an enemy of progress.
From their cultural positions, the two groups have tried, especially in recent years, to dismantle the center and compel everyone to decide: ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ The extreme liberal — what does he say? Either you are Hardali, meaning that you belong to the bizarre and fossilized extreme that rejects modernity as such, and in truth there is no difference between you and the Haredi, or you belong to the bulk of religious Zionism, which is nothing other than my own liberalism. The extreme Hardali — what does he say? Either you accept the word of God as static, as we received it from our rabbis, and we are the masters of its interpretation, or you are neo-Reform, and your religion is cultural assimilation. The vast majority of religious Zionism belongs to neither of these groups!
This immensely complex encounter between worlds can be fruitful and growth-producing, and it can also be paralyzing and polarizing. Religious Zionism has a chance to generate from within itself a wondrous combination of continuity and renewal, but there is also a chance that it will dissolve into a thin mixture that contains neither Torah nor modernity at its best. Success depends on strengthening the center, within which there is a continuum of views that respect one another, and not on defining a polar watershed line from which both sides will emerge as losers.
Amnon Dukov
Rabbi Amnon Dukov is a lecturer at the hesder yeshiva Beit Va’ad LaTorah in Otniel
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An Anachronistic Discourse
Rabbi Michael Abraham replies:
Rabbi Dukov insists that the division I drew between modernity and conservatism is not sharp. He also claims that it has a polarizing potential that violates the pastoral unity of the religious-Zionist camp, and that a coalition does not mean a uniform ideological and spiritual shade. He concludes with praise for diversity and fruitful dialogue, and expects wondrous growth to emerge from that dialogue.
What remains for me to say? Excellent words. I truly agree with every word. I only wonder what any of this has to do with my remarks. To sharpen the point, I will propose an interesting exercise to the readers: repeat Rabbi Dukov’s entire response while placing ‘the conservative’ where he has ‘the Haredi,’ and ‘the modern’ where he has ‘the Zionist.’ You will discover that everything remains true (see the last paragraph of my remarks here). If so, these are in fact words of praise and acclaim for my proposal. The question I addressed was which axis we should choose for this discussion: the Zionist-Haredi axis or the conservative-open axis. But regarding that, I saw no argument at all in his words. In fact I could end here, but I will nevertheless try to explain further.
Every political division contains a polarizing element. Every such division does violence to the diversity of reality. This is true of the division I propose just as it is true of the existing one. Only as an insignificant homework exercise: try, for example, to define me on this axis. A somewhat more relevant homework exercise: try to define the current chief rabbis on this axis. Not by slogans, but through content (identification with the state, contribution to society, imparting Judaism to society at large, approach to Jewish law, reciting Hallel on Independence Day, service in the army, and so forth). Did you succeed? Share the results with me.
Remove the Female Author
Perhaps the world would be wondrous if we did not divide it into dichotomous groups. Do we have such an option? Whether we like it or not, our world is defined by dichotomies. Political struggles are conducted through coalitions among people who are different but as similar as possible. People’s identities are defined by general headings, for better or worse (mostly for the better). The question I posed in my article is not whether to make dichotomous divisions, but which dichotomy is more useful and more relevant, around which it is more correct and more useful to form spiritual and political coalitions. That, and that alone, was my subject, and for some reason there is not a word about it in his remarks.
Is the Zionism-Haredism axis at all relevant to the questions that reverberate today through Israeli society? Only if the dispute that matters to you is the recitation of Hallel on Independence Day. In my article I asked a few simple questions about the Chief Rabbinate that will give us an indication: first, what would be the difference in the leadership of the Chief Rabbinate between a situation in which Rabbis Lau and Yosef serve there and a situation in which Rabbis Eliyahu and Shapira serve there? None at all. Second, had Rabbi Stav been elected, would anything have been different? In my assessment, yes (although only מעט. The Chief Rabbinate is a lost institution, but that is not our subject). So is it more natural and more correct to make a coalition between Rabbi Stav and Rabbi Shapira, or between Rabbi Shapira and Rabbi Lau? Is it correct to say that The Jewish Home and religious Zionism suffered a defeat when the first rabbis were elected and not the second? Why? In what sense?
This is perhaps the opportunity to point to some of the questions that, to the best of my judgment, are most relevant to religious discourse in our day. For example, the status and role of women. The status of secular fields and scientific methods. The ‘height’ of the Bible and the Talmud. The attitude toward Gentiles. Mixed-gender society and modesty. The attitude toward women denied a bill of divorce. The manner of legal decision-making (first-order and second-order rules). To which of all these is the Zionist position relevant?
I will add here a sad example that I encountered in recent months, which of course deserves a more specific discussion. Did you know that the religious-Zionist Torah journals do not allow women to publish articles in them (some of them only in the area of Gemara and Jewish law)? I received a humiliating proposal from a major and important Zionist Torah journal to remove the name of the female author (a student of mine) who signed the article with me and move it to a note of thanks at the bottom of the page. They are apparently preserving separation between men and women in print, in order to keep us far from sexual transgression. The excuses were, of course, fear of what our conservative friends — our partners in the spiritual coalition (the Zionist one, of course) — would say. This is what we gain from the anachronistic coalition built around reciting Hallel on Independence Day (in which Rabbis Lau and Yosef can also be partners).
I am reminded of Rabbi Dukov’s words, when he writes here: ‘The various rabbinic conferences, the major journals, as well as this supplement, succeed in gathering within them most of the spectrum of opinions.’ This of course happens only so long as the modern side pays the price of the coalition of conservatism, both in the journals and in the conferences. We will preserve marvelous unity, so long as there are those who remain outside and pay the price of ‘unity.’ Truly a Union of Groups and a United Kibbutz. If we also leave outside the Hallel-reciters, Knesset voters, Chabad, and the wearers of knitted kippot, then in my opinion one will also be able to attach Neturei Karta and Satmar to this marvelous union.
Arguments and Mutual Enrichment
Rabbi Dukov insists on preserving an anachronistic and irrelevant discourse which, in my opinion, only causes harm, and he does so without any reasoning. Why does he prefer the unity of shades within the Zionist camp (against the Haredim) over the unity of shades within the modern camp (or the conservative camp) against the conservative one (or the modern one)? Why is the difficulty of classifying the rabbis he mentioned according to the axis I proposed an argument against it? After all, he himself supports diversity within the camp. If each person goes his own way and fights for it, Torah will only gain. Then the encounter will be fruitful and beneficial, and the discourse will be sharper and clearer. I am certainly in favor of encounters, arguments, and mutual enrichment, and I am certainly not in favor of blurring positions. I do not see where Rabbi Dukov found otherwise in my words. I dealt with the question of what axis the discussion/dispute should be conducted around, and not with the question of how to conduct it and whether it is important to conduct it.
I can only conclude with Rabbi Dukov’s own closing paragraph, with the necessary substitutions: ‘This immensely complex encounter between worlds can be fruitful and growth-producing, and it can also be paralyzing and polarizing. Modern and open Judaism has a chance to generate from within itself a wondrous combination of continuity and renewal, but there is also a chance that it will dissolve into a thin mixture that contains neither Torah nor Zionism at its best.’
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In response to the article ‘The Haredi Reform,’ by Yoav Shorak, Vayikra issue
Haredi Judaism Is the Authentic One
Not only do I reject with utter disgust Yoav Shorak’s accusation that ‘this Haredi religion is not Jewish,’ I also argue forcefully that ‘Haredi’ Judaism is precisely the most authentic continuation of Judaism.
I will respond in the briefest of briefs on two points, for space is short.
Human and National Interest
Shorak wrote: ‘It seems to me that no one would deny that at its foundation Judaism… was intended to serve the human and national interest of the people.’ Really? I shall quote Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, because he formulated with particular sharpness what many thought and wrote:
Its constituting foundation [that of Judaism], which proved itself in its historical reality, the thing on which the continuity of its identity with itself through all the vicissitudes, changes, and transformations it underwent over the generations depends — this foundation is none other than the service of God through observance of Torah and commandments… As the slogan of this Judaism one may point to the first clause of section 1 of the Shulchan Arukh: ‘Let him strengthen himself like a lion to rise in the morning for the service of his Creator’ (Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 1:1). All other ideological superstructures erected upon the basis of guarding the Torah and observing its commandments have proved episodic, transient, or personal, and are not binding on the people who preserve the form.
We have no tendency to idealize the history of the people of Israel, as though our three thousand years of history were the embodiment of the first clause of the Shulchan Arukh. Needless to say, this is not so. But this is the slogan for that framework of tendency and consciousness which may be seen as the foundation expressing the continuity, the persistence of existence, and the identity of Judaism…
The verse ‘I have set the Lord always before me’ (Ps. 16:8), whose meaning is: I have not set man always before me. Attempts or tendencies to ground Judaism on a program for solving anthropological problems, whether they relate to man as an individual or to the human species — their meaning is the secularization of Judaism, the removal of the meaning of religion from Judaism (Judaism, the Jewish People and the State of Israel, p. 331).
Judaism is not a ‘human’ religion and not an ‘esoteric’ religion. Judaism is a demand that God places upon the Jew: to observe the Torah and the commandments. These were given to the people of Israel at Sinai by the Holy One, blessed be He — the Written Torah and the Oral Torah (which was revealed over the generations by the Sages) — together with rules, a framework, and tools for how to continue deciding Jewish law ‘according to all that they instruct you’ (Deut. 17:11). The test of Judaism’s continued existence (at least since the destruction of the Temple) is without doubt the test of fidelity to Jewish law.
Can one really deny that the Torah and the commandments — Judaism — are nothing other than the service of God (and not the service of man)?
Clearly, the Torah is a Torah of life, within the practical world, and Jewish law derives from ‘walking’; within it are mechanisms for coping with the challenges of every generation (see Maimonides, Hilkhot Mamrim, chs. 1–2). More than that: I believe with complete faith that by observing the commandments the Jew takes the right step in every respect, and much good thereby comes to him also in material terms, and in this way he serves the personal and national interest. But that is a result of the Torah and the commandments being God’s ‘operating instructions’ to the Jew as to how he should conduct himself in daily life. It is a result, not the point of departure. For the Jew’s point of departure is ‘We will do and we will hear’ (Exod. 24:7), to fulfill God’s will insofar as it is God’s will. Judaism as a religion and as a nation has no other meaning than this. ‘Our nation is a nation only through its Torahs’ (Saadia Gaon). The Torah and the commandments are the value, not the tool.
So it was in practice as well. Even in times when the personal interest was seemingly to convert to Christianity, a faithful Jew did not do so. Even in times when it seemed that the ‘national’ interest was to blend into Gentile society and distance oneself from the path of the commandments, Jews insisted, paid heavy prices (even with their lives), and remained faithful to the Torah and the commandments. For the Torah and the commandments were forced upon us like a mountain suspended over a tub (Shabbat 88a). Even when we do not see that they benefit us, the Jew is required to remain faithful to God, His Torah, and His commandments.
And I have still not entered into the kabbalistic and Hasidic world — which is certainly not the fruit of contemporary ‘Haredi thought’ — which surely sets the purpose of Torah and commandments as something completely beyond man and his benefit, as a way to make for God ‘a dwelling in the lower worlds,’ to repair the ‘shattering of the vessels,’ and so forth (see Tanya, ch. 37: ‘Through the actual performance [of the commandment], a person draws down the revelation of the infinite light of the blessed Ein Sof from above to below, to be clothed in the physicality of this world…’).
From the Hasidic point of view, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory defines it in one of his Hasidic discourses, the service of God in the mode of ‘serving personal interest’ is, in refined form, a matter of idolatry:
The main reason that [idolaters]… serve the sun and the moon, etc., whereas Israel serves only the Holy One, blessed be He, is that for them the essential thing is that they receive the flow, whereas for Israel the essential thing is to serve the King; the thought [behind observing the commandments] ‘only for one’s own good’ is analogous to the worship of stars and constellations (Otzar Ma’amarei Hasidut, p. 297, note 26).
Historical Context?
Shorak wrote: ‘In Haredi thought the Torah and the commandments are detached from every historical context. The conception of the Oral Torah shaped by the Sages, according to which the Torah responds to reality and is conducted by flesh and blood, has there been replaced by conceptions that sanctify a static tradition.’
These claims are flawed in several respects: 1. What does ‘response to reality’ mean? After all, a legal ruling that forbids enlistment in the army also responds to reality. 2. Assuming that the claim of ‘replacement’ is indeed based on something (and it is clearly not), on what foundations does the claim rest that this replacement occurred in the last sixty-seven years and not earlier? In any event, it seems strange to me that there is any need at all to prove that ‘static adherence to Jewish law’ is not an innovation. Its days are as the days of Jewish law itself.
I will bring one example of this, from a subject Shorak knows very well (as editor of the booklet ‘Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Non-Jewish Milk’) — the issue of non-Jewish milk.
The Mishnah rules that milk milked by a non-Jew without Jewish supervision is forbidden for drinking. From the Gemara (Avodah Zarah 35b) it emerges that the central problem with milk milked by a non-Jew is the concern that the non-Jew may have mixed impure milk into the kosher milk, and therefore Jewish supervision of the milking is required. What is the law in a place where there is an extremely high probability that the non-Jew did not mix impure milk into the kosher milk? Some early authorities hold that the milk is kosher even without ‘a Jew seeing the milking,’ but most of the early authorities decide that even in this case the milk will not be kosher.
I will quote the author of Sha’arei Dura (Germany, 13th century; part 2, no. 82), who explains this with a simple reason (and many others wrote likewise):
Even though the original reason for the decree was the concern that he mixed in an impure substance, nevertheless once they decreed and prohibited it by formal vote, they prohibited categorically all milk that a Jew did not see being milked… and according to all opinions the milk was prohibited by formal vote and is therefore forbidden in every place and at every time.
The author of Sha’arei Dura does not deny the historical context, and yet he neutralizes it (on a formal basis). Indeed, the prohibition of non-Jewish milk had a certain historical and realistic context, but that does not prevent the prohibition from being valid ‘in every place and at every time.’
I do not see any essential difference between the modes of Torah-Jewish-legal thought and decision-making as they are revealed in the Jewish library throughout the generations and those of the ‘Haredim’ in our generation. At its foundation and in its essence, the worldview of Haredi Judaism is characterized by acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven and immense fidelity to the word of God — that is Jewish law. This is the essence of the Jewish people, this is the essence of the eternity of Israel. This and nothing else.
Menachem Mendel Bronfman
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Bronfman wrote the book ‘The Haggadah of the Four Sons,’ appearing these days, and edited the books ‘The First’ and ‘The Seventh’
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Action and the Divine Foundation
Yoav Shorak’s article is precise, reasoned, and eloquent, to the point that I almost did not notice that I nevertheless disagree with it on two important points. The first point is Yoav’s choice to define Haredism as a theology, whereas it is quite clear that this is not a theology, nor even an ideology, but politics. By this I mean that the laws and rules according to which modern Haredi society conducts itself are dictated by the aspiration to control that sector which calls itself Haredi.
In other words, the Haredi leadership produces rules and commandments and definitions in order to entrench its rule and strengthen it, and its main struggle is to prevent Haredi individuals from experiencing another social reality and connecting to it.
This is why today the principal effort of Haredi society is the ‘raising of the walls,’ because these walls are essential to the continued existence of the ‘society of learners,’ that society in which ‘the great men of Israel’ and ‘the great Torah scholars’ rule. The entire Haredi system has no theological implications whatsoever. It does not deal with religion or divinity, but only with rule and authority.
The second problematic point is his conception of Judaism as ‘human’ in its essence. According to his words, great Jewish figures such as Maimonides and Rabbi Yosef Karo saw themselves as part of a Jewish religion whose purpose is to serve humanity. To my taste, this conception carries a trace of an atheistic scent, in the style of the religious atheism promoted by Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz. It uproots religious action and religious existence from their divine foundation.
Great Jewish figures certainly did not see themselves as repairers of the world in the political sense, but rather aspired to establish the living will of God within human society. For example, Rabbi Yosef Karo is associated with the book Maggid Meisharim, written from the mouth of a heavenly angel. This book, and similar books, do not belong to the category that Shorak calls ‘esoteric religion,’ but represent the divine guidance of religious and human existence.
Without such guidance, which is in fact a spiritual presence within the physical world, the concept of religion loses its original meaning and becomes a collection of social and moral ideas whose aim is conjectural and whose source is obscure. Only a religious existence in which the living divine presence is present possesses that spiritual added value that raises it above self-interested political approaches, such as those characteristic of the Haredi reform.
Bezalel Avnon
Bezalel Avnon is a civil engineer, a graduate of the Technion, and an expert in environmental quality and recycling
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A Developing Deviation
Yoav Shorak responds:
It seems to me that Bronfman did not fully grasp my remarks. First, I never claimed that Haredism is not an authentic continuation of the tradition of Israel. I claimed that within Haredi society such a deviation is developing, and it must be checked. Bringing proof from the words of the Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory is beside the point, because in my view he — like all the great Haredi figures of the previous generation — is not, heaven forbid, part of this deviation.
On the substance of the matter, the respondent clings to a sentence taken out of context. I did not claim that the Torah is intended to serve man. Heaven forbid. I claimed that it is intended to bring redemption to the world, and that it does so as an intensification of the human effort in that direction, not as a contradiction to it. This outlook, incidentally, I drew to no small extent דווקא from the teaching of the Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory as it is well explained in his attitude to the ‘kingdom of kindness,’ to the seven Noahide commandments, and so forth. Accordingly, the citation of Leibowitz’s words as well — who, incidentally, in my view is far from being a faithful representative of Judaism — is likewise beside the point.
Where do I disagree with the esteemed writer? In his statement that ‘Judaism is a demand that God places on the Jew to observe the Torah and the commandments.’ Is that all? That is Judaism? The observance of a halakhic way of life? Is that where it begins and ends? If the writer indeed thinks so, I do not know where to begin arguing with him. In the article I wrote that Judaism is the center of the human striving for repair, and that the Torah and the commandments are central tools in shaping the ideal society of Israel and transmitting it from generation to generation.
In a paragraph that was unfortunately omitted from the published version, I noted that ‘Such was the Judaism of previous generations, and for most commandment-observant Jews such is Judaism even today. When Judaism is grasped in this way, the questions of the attitude toward Zionism, the attitude toward secular studies, and the attitude toward career are indeed questions along which one can move from one pole to the other and still remain within that same Judaism. Someone who grew out of the world of tradition and drew from it his entire spiritual world could see Zionism as the realization of the Jewish messianic dream — as happened with Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner or Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook, Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever or Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer — or could regard it with much greater suspicion; someone who grew up within this world could look favorably upon general education and see it as a tool that complements Torah, as the Gaon of Vilna or Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch thought, but could also see in it a threat to the Jew’s innocence and to his faith, a threat whose benefit does not justify its harm. Be that as it may, these disputes do not alter the nature of Judaism or its general spirit.
This broad Jewish narrative was what nourished the spirit of all those exemplary figures of the previous generation, whom it is difficult to label by the well-defined camps of ‘Haredim’ and ‘Zionists’ (or ‘moderns’). Rabbi Elimelech Bar Shaul brought the world of the Musar movement to the pioneering youth of the religious kibbutz movement, and Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg spread it among the Jews of the Diaspora; Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov imparted to native-born Israelis the values of Polish Agudist Orthodoxy, and Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin and Rabbi Avraham Chen did the same with the world of Chabad. Like Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and like the great figures of America — Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Soloveitchik, and Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner — those we have listed here as well can easily be counted as part of the Haredi public. Some were closer to Mizrachi circles and some less so; all were respected by the Haredi world — for Haredim they were — but not one of them believed in the new Haredi religion.’
This new Haredi religion, I now add, is the one that holds that Judaism is nothing but commitment to a line of legal rules — detached from the human striving for repair.
Published in the ‘Shabbat’ supplement of ‘Makor Rishon,’ 12 Adar II 5774, 14.3.2014