Elia Leibowitz on Torah and Science (Haaretz Books – 2001)

I would like to respond to Prof. Elia Leibowitz’s review of Prof. Yehuda Levy’s book (Haaretz, Books 15.8).

Leibowitz attacks the apologetic approach to contradictions between Torah statements and scientific truths, and on that point I, too, certainly agree with him. Beyond that, however, his remarks contain quite a few assumptions, some implicit and some more explicit, that seem very problematic to me, and I would have expected him, at the very least, to put them on the table in the course of the discussion.

1. Leibowitz argues that viewing Judaism as monolithic derives from the existence of a common name for the whole corpus of Jewish creativity. Literature and poetry, like every other field, also have a common name that characterizes the field. That does not lead anyone to assume that poetry is a monolithic domain, that is, one in which there is no diversity of opinions and approaches. The assumption that Judaism is monolithic does not derive from the common name for the whole corpus of Jewish creativity (whether it be “the Sages,” “Torah,” or “Judaism”), but from the belief that things written through divine inspiration or prophecy cannot be wrong.

There is no basis for comparing diversity of opinions in a particular field of thought with diversity of opinions about facts. I imagine that even in Prof. Leibowitz’s own field, physics, differences of opinion would not be accepted as legitimate unless the truth were not yet known. There is no room for diverse opinions about facts, unless some of them are wrong.

Furthermore, one may debate the assumption that all the statements of the Sages are free of error, for the Sages, unlike the prophets and the Torah itself, did not write their words by prophecy. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the claim that Judaism is not monolithic. Leibowitz assumes that all sacred writings, written and oral alike, are human creations, and therefore all are liable to error. Many, like myself, believe that some of them are of divine origin, and at least in that portion there can be no errors. We, sinful as we are, dare to assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, certainly knows even what Prof. Leibowitz knows. Since this is the central point on which Leibowitz disagrees with Levy (the divine origin of the Torah texts), I would have expected it to stand at the center of the critique, or at least to be put on the table. This omission—which it would not be unreasonable to suppose is deliberate—contains more than a trace of demagoguery. The self-evident assumption that the Torah cannot possibly have a divine source is the principal manifestation of positivism in Leibowitz’s review. Below I shall point to several more such instances.

2. Prof. Leibowitz takes it for granted that the sole criterion for the value of Judaism is its contribution to Western culture (see the closing paragraph of the review). I am astonished! In my eyes, the value of Western culture lies in the extent to which it is useful for understanding the Torah. This point too is presented by Leibowitz as self-evident.

3. Another puzzling assumption, which I find hard to believe Leibowitz himself accepts, is that only scientific knowledge can count as wisdom. Leibowitz criticizes Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who said that a single page of Talmud contains more wisdom than all the sciences and all the scientists in the world, and argues that here there is, in a manner “not uncharacteristic,” an “anti-scientific” approach, or a “rejection of the scientific method.”

I do not see why we should understand it that way. Every sensible person understands that there are different kinds of wisdom. Science is one kind, and the Talmud contains another. Rabbi Yosef’s assessment is that Torah wisdom is incomparably greater than scientific wisdom. There is no rejection of science here, only a rejection of Leibowitz’s crude positivistic-idolatrous approach, which, incidentally, is also “not uncharacteristic,” and which sees science as the be-all and end-all.

4. A similar approach appears toward the end of the review, where he flatly declares that the discussion in Jewish law of whether a man with crushed testes may enter the congregation is “anti-scientific, anti-rational, and anti-cultural.” The decision, according to Prof. Leibowitz’s learned opinion, “should be handed over to the family doctor.”

First he decides that the purpose of the prohibition is to prevent defects in offspring, and afterward he makes the above determinations. Once again, science is the be-all and end-all. Is it not possible that this prohibition has another reason, one that even Prof. Leibowitz, who knows everything, does not understand?

5. His recommendation to hand the decision over to the family doctor also points to a similar approach. It is akin to the current practice of entrusting traffic laws, such as setting the maximum permitted speed, to traffic experts, or the decision about abortion to doctors, and so forth.

This benighted approach points to a basic misunderstanding of the relation between facts and values. On this matter Leibowitz had, in his own home, the best possible teacher. The late Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz never ceased pointing to this fallacy, and yet “on the very point on which that righteous man took his stand, his descendants have stumbled.”

The decision whether a man with crushed testes fathers defective offspring is a scientific decision. But the moral decision whether to forbid him to procreate is emphatically not a matter for experts. Exactly as the decision whether a fetus at a given age has a certain function is a scientific decision, while the moral decision whether it is to be regarded as a human being, and the moral decision whether aborting it in that state constitutes murder, are emphatically not matters for experts.

On this point too Prof. Leibowitz continues his positivistic approach, which sees science as the be-all and end-all. It is therefore no wonder that Maimonides and his son, who come very close to a positivistic position, receive high marks from him for their rationality. It seems to me that by now it should be clear even to the most devout believers in the Church of Western Science that positivism is nothing more than superstition. If Prof. Leibowitz had advanced a little further along the path of the Western culture he so greatly reveres, perhaps he too would be aware of that.