“The New Religious Conservatism”: Between Innovation and Preservation (Column 249)
Why contemporary "conservatism" is not just preserving the old
The column distinguishes between the literal meaning of conservatism and its common political-intellectual use. Today, "conservatism" is a collective label for economic freedom, nationalism and particularism, family values, religion, opposition to judicial activism, and more; liberalism itself originally belonged to this bundle. The connection among these elements is historical, not essential: each was once attacked by "innovators," and therefore remained under the label "conservative" even when it no longer really preserves anything. Hence the principled criticism: both conservatism and progressivism often become an a priori starting point instead of examining each idea by its actual content.
The new conservative pole in Israel: a welcome addition to the debate, but also the danger of a package deal
The column describes how, unlike the United States, Israel had for years an almost progressive monopoly in the media, academia, and publishing, and only recently has a parallel conservative network of journals, publishers, foundations, and conferences emerged. In his view, the very multiplication of voices is a welcome development, even for someone who opposes conservatism as an ideology, because a monologue does not allow for balanced judgment. But that very success creates a new problem: the right gradually becomes a comprehensive ideology that bundles together ideas with no necessary connection, and pressures people to choose a whole "basket" instead of deciding each question on its own.
Why religious people are drawn to conservatism, and why he refuses to place himself on the map
The column agrees that there is a clear correlation between religiosity and conservatism, especially in the Religious-Zionist sphere. One possibility is that this is an artifact of the name itself: even if there is no real connection among the components of conservatism, a religious person may feel obliged to stand with the "conservatives" because religiosity is associated, in his mind, with preservation. That is also the point of the personal example: he refuses to be trapped in the usual mapping of right/left, liberal/conservative, Haredi/Zionist, because in practice his positions cut differently in each issue. In his view, the fact that he is hard to place is not a flaw but a sign that the discussion is being conducted on the merits.
What is missing in Pirer's description of the move from Religious-Zionist revolutionism to conservatism
At this point the column turns to Ehud Pirer's article, which sketches a path from old Mizrachi-style religiosity, through Gush Emunim, hesder yeshivot, the new Hasidism, and the hilltop youth, up to the "new religious conservatism." He accepts some of the observations, but argues that the picture is partial and tendentious: Gush Emunim was revolutionary only relative to its own time, and it also sought to restore old values; the hesder yeshivot were not such a grand revolution but a necessary step in creating a serious Torah basis; the renewed Hasidism and the hilltop youth are a genuine rebellion, but a marginal one. The major omission, in his eyes, is precisely religious postmodernism and the movement of what was once called "light" religiosity into the normative center, backed by theory. He suggests that current conservative fashion may itself be, at least partly, a reaction against that process.
The new religious conservatism is also a kind of avant-garde
Before discussing Pirer's explanations, the column makes three remarks that undermine the very thesis of a "reversal." First, if religiosity and conservatism fit each other so naturally, then it is דווקא the more radical periods that require special explanation. Second, in an intellectual world dominated by innovation and postmodernism, adopting "conservative" values is itself an innovative and reactionary move, that is, an attempt to build a new anchor against the existing hegemony. Third, conservatism is always relative to its surroundings: that is why the new conservatives resemble Gush Emunim itself in one sense—they rebel enthusiastically against the dominant environment, even if what they propose is a "return" to older anchors. The conclusion is that this is less a deep substantive reversal and more a recurring cycle.
Why Pirer's two explanations are unconvincing
Pirer first offers a historical-political explanation: disappointment with Religious-Zionist revolutionism, especially after the disengagement, together with the bourgeois settling-down of the founding generation. The column grants that this is part of the picture, but says it does not explain the more important question: why today's young people are not rebelling again. Pirer's second explanation is psychological-theological: conservatism justifies attachment to a Torah that is perceived as irrelevant and to a halakhic world that appears arbitrary, simply because that is how things have always been done. Here he disputes both the facts and the logic. In his view, a renewed and relevant Torah is indeed developing in different directions; and on the merits, if people truly become convinced that the old system is useless and does not improve anything, that is actually a strong argument for revolution, not for conservatism. Moreover, most of the new conservative discourse deals with social and political questions, not with an internal theological problem as such.
Why psychological and sociological reduction misses the point
From here comes the broader criticism: explanations about "distress" and about social or psychological motives may perhaps describe why people adopt an idea, but they do not address whether the idea is true. If one starts on that plane, each side can explain the other's view through hidden motives and evade the arguments themselves. Therefore the column insists that discussion must begin at the substantive level—for or against conservatism—and only afterward, if needed, speak about the psychological or sociological conditions that enabled its adoption. In this context he also criticizes a hollow intellectualism that settles for citing thinkers and conceptual associations instead of presenting direct arguments.
Traditionalism as a parallel case: emotion is not an argument
At the end, the column applies the same criticism to "traditionalism." In his view, one can understand a person who continues ancestral practices because they warm his heart or create a sense of belonging, but that does not amount to substantive value or a binding reason. Turning loyalty to tradition into an educational value is, for him, the same failure as conservatism: replacing substantive examination of ideas with loyalty to what used to be. He therefore agrees with Pirer's criticism of both conservatism and traditionalism, but disagrees with his method: first one must show, on the merits, what is right and what is wrong, and only afterward—if at all—try to explain sociologically how these positions arose.
With God’s help
In column 217 I discussed two conferences that were taking place at the same time, one of which was the conservatism conference. There I explained my reservation about conservatism as a policy, and in fact expressed a principled reservation about any policy of that sort. I am opposed in principle to an a priori policy that determines a position regarding some idea merely because it either did exist in the past (the conservatives affirm and the innovators deny) or did not exist in the past (the conservatives deny and the innovators affirm). Every idea should first be examined on its own merits, and only once we reach a point at which we have no decision can we perhaps resort to policy considerations or an a priori starting point.
In recent years several articles have been published dealing with the new affinity between religiosity and conservatism. Thus, for example, a few weeks ago someone sent me an article by Ehud Pirer from The Seventh Eye (I do not know why this counts as media criticism), "Thoughts on the New Religious Conservatism," which deals with the current Religious Zionist tendency toward conservative worldviews. And indeed, it cannot be denied that this is a phenomenon that is growing stronger (thus, for example, religious people are generally more capitalist and more nationalist). I wanted here to touch on this phenomenon, but before that we need a brief survey and introduction, somewhat simplistic, to the subject of conservatism.
What’s "new" here?
The very term "the new religious conservatism" raises a question. Seemingly, it is only natural to identify religiosity with conservatism. Religiosity preserves old principles and old forms of thought, unlike secularity, which by its nature tends more to adopt whatever seems reasonable to it regardless of whether it is old or new. So why is something new seen in the affinity between religiosity and conservatism? It is hard to deny that the simple intuition contains some truth. Factually, conservatism in Israel, and especially the conservative religious renaissance, really are new phenomena.
To understand this, I must first explain why that identification is not as trivial as it seems at first glance. The concept of "conservatism" in the contemporary context has little in common with its literal meaning. A conservative today is not necessarily someone who preserves old ideas; rather, it is a collective label for several almost unrelated ideas: economic and social freedom (capitalism, and originally also a liberal worldview), patriotism and nationalism, indeed particularism (as opposed to universalism), support for family values (and opposition to abortion), religious faith, opposition to judicial overreach, and more. I assume quite a few readers will be surprised to hear that liberalism, not only economic liberalism, is originally part of the conservative outlook.
Some of these ideas do indeed preserve the past, but others do not necessarily. And even when they preserve something, support for them does not always come because of conservatism as such. A person may be a capitalist or a convinced nationalist, but not out of conservative motives; rather, because those specific ideas seem correct to him. In that case, there is no reason he cannot simultaneously be an ardent supporter of abortion and of equality for women. The term "conservatism" became connected to these debates for historical reasons. Each such idea was once the object of attack by innovators, and therefore support for it received the heading of conservatism. Thus, for example, economic-social liberalism was once attacked by communism-socialism, and thereby came to be included under the heading of conservatism down to this very day. Hence the Right is conservative and the Left is progressive (=advanced). The label "progressive" attached to leftist approaches is, of course, also an anachronism. Today, after Stalin, to call communism "progressive" and its opponents "reactionary forces" sounds a bit absurd. But such are the ways of history. Even the "young people of the National Religious Party" (most of whom are by now long deceased) were once young, but as is well known they remained under that flattering label until old age and gray hair. In this context it is worth noticing that "modernism," which once served as the label for everything revolutionary and rebellious (communism is a clear expression of modernism), has now, under postmodern attack, become the banner of conservatism. Today, to be a modernist means to be conservative (that is, not modern).
Thus the term "conservatism" in its literal sense is relative: at any given moment, preservation refers to the ideas that prevailed until that moment, and innovation to new ideas. But what is new today is old tomorrow. Still, the term "conservatism" has an inertia of its own. Approaches that were born as conservative continue to shelter under that name even long after there is nothing conservative about them, and vice versa. It is therefore no wonder that the broader discourse on "conservatism" hardly deals with the question of preservation at all, but rather with that collection of ideas on their own merits. Debates over questions such as whether one should adopt a conservative or socialist economic policy, whether to support abortion or not, whether to be universalist or national-familial-communal, and the like, constantly invoke the term "conservatism," but usually touch only slightly on the question of preservation and tradition.
"New Conservatism"
In the United States, the struggle between conservatism and progressivism is old and intense, and both sides maintain think tanks, foundations, journals, and publishing houses. Both also have intellectual backing, although there too the "progressives" tend to treat their opponents with great disdain. In our tiny country, until recent years the situation was different. There was almost total control by the "progressives" over the media, academia, think tanks, and major publishing houses, and because of the size of the market there was no possibility of establishing a significant conservative pole with its own intellectual leadership that could compete in that arena.
But in recent years, the conservative elements in Israel have begun to organize and to respond to the attacks of the postmodern age. In Israel too, journals and newspapers are suddenly being established (Tekhelet, HaShiloach, Makor Rishon, Israel Hayom, and others), publishing houses (Shalem, Sela Meir, and others), foundations (the Tikvah Fund), exactly as the "progressive" Left has long done. And it is indeed succeeding, just as it succeeded for the Left. With the generous help of wealthy Americans, the conservative message is being imported into Israel, exactly as the European Union and its foundations bring us the message of progressivism. In the age of the global village, the size of the Israeli market is no longer such a severe limitation on opening the marketplace of ideas, since even we small players have become part of the global map. Thus in recent years Israel has become part of the international arena of struggle between conservatism and progressivism, in all their aspects. There are political aspects to this (the attitude toward the Palestinians and peace), intellectual aspects (modernist thought against postmodernism), economic aspects (equality versus freedom), social aspects (socialism and the welfare state versus capitalism), and more.
In recent years, right-wing intellectuals have arisen who are trying to compete on the big stage (=the progressive Left), and to present an orderly doctrine of their own (incidentally, there too there is a special place for "sane" leftists, like Gadi Taub and the like, who usually end up revealing that they are not a sane Left but a Right—cf. Irit Linur, Yuval Steinitz, and others). They organize seminars and conferences, publish books and articles, and try to formulate an orderly intellectual and practical doctrine. Even for someone like me, who opposes conservatism (in the literal sense, just as I oppose progressivism), this is in itself a welcome phenomenon, since one-sided discourse never helps form a considered and balanced position. It is important to make the public aware that alternatives exist, so that the discourse will be more fruitful, balanced, and useful.
Within that framework, the conservative movement in Israel, or "Israeli Conservatism" (the one that held the aforementioned conference), is also being established. It is trying to unite all these ideas under the conservative heading, and also to infuse them with ideological conservative content (see the conference program). That is, they (most of them, not all) are trying to promote conservatism itself as preservation—in other words, to proceed from a starting point that sees the past as an ideal model. Thus what was once called the Right is gradually becoming a more general (and more grounded) position that can be called conservative ideology.
But there is a catch. When the confrontation is arranged around two central ideological poles, there is a tendency to adopt wholesale one of these two baskets of ideas: either you are conservative or you are progressive (in some contexts that has already become a pejorative, in the crooked way of history). This phenomenon is very problematic in my eyes, since, as we have seen, there is no real connection among all these ideas. Presenting the confrontation in this way cripples our ability to make substantive decisions about each question on its own merits. Placing these ideas on one ideological platform in effect negates substantive discussion, and seeks to advance an ideological debate whose goal is the wholesale adoption of an entire basket of ideas that have no real connection with one another, thereby forcing each of us to decide whether he is "with us" or "with our enemies."[1] It was precisely against this that I argued in that column.
Back to the religious
What do religious people have to do with all this? It turns out that on most of the platforms and in most of the new conservative movements I have described, the main force leading them is the religious camp. Moreover, even without conducting an in-depth study, my impression is that the degree of religiosity tends to match the degree of conservatism. The more religiously observant crowd tends to be more conservative, and religious liberals generally oppose conservatism and lean left (on most fronts).
I have already said that personally I am unwilling to place myself on that map, indeed on any map of that sort. In my view every idea should be examined on its own merits, whether it belongs to the Right or the Left, to conservatism or to progressivism. It is not the affiliation and the label that determine things, but the content. More than a few times people have told me that they cannot place me on the religious map: am I a liberal (equality for women, tolerance and changes in Jewish law, separation of religion and state, opposition to religious nationalism, opposition to Haredism and Hardalism) or a benighted conservative (I see abortion as murder, oppose state-sponsored conversion in the style of Rabbi Druckman, and am economically right-wing)? Am I Haredi (a flag in the synagogue makes my skin crawl, I support separation of religion and state and the closing of the Chief Rabbinate) or Zionist (I recite Hallel on Independence Day, and oppose a blanket exemption for Torah students)? I must say that I see these perplexities as a badge of honor, because as I explained, in every issue I try to form a position on its own merits, without any connection to the labels under which it is sheltered.
I now want to return to the larger picture. If conservatism is not really connected to preserving the past but rather to an eclectic collection of ideas, why is there nevertheless an affinity between it and religiosity? It may be an artifact, an artificial byproduct, of the terminology. What I mean is that even if there is no real connection between the ideas called "conservatism" and conservatism itself, many people may not be aware of history’s tricks and of the fact that there is no such connection. But perhaps even someone who is aware of it, as a religious person, feels a need and an obligation to stand with the conservatives, for after all religiosity means conservatism.
After this brief survey, we can make the discussion more concrete by addressing Pirer’s article mentioned above.
The revolutionary period
After a general introduction, Pirer begins by saying that the tradition of Religious Zionism was revolutionary. Its avant-garde, Gush Emunim (I myself, together with several of my friends in the "Midrashiya," appear in Pirer’s article in the iconic photograph of the jubilation at Sebastia), spoke of social and political revolutions, similar to the historic Labor movement. But already here it is important to understand that everything is relative. Gush Emunim was revolutionary relative to the religious and political situation that prevailed in its day, but it did so in order to restore ancient values (the values of the Torah, as it understood them). Moreover, for some reason Pirer’s description ignores the situation that prevailed before and after the establishment of the state (until Gush Emunim), when the Mizrachi crowd were the symbol of conservatism and of bourgeois, complacent intellectual rigidity.
The next stage he describes is the establishment of the hesder yeshivot, whose study he portrays as a revolutionary avant-garde. There is something to this when one sets the yeshivot against the ideology of the Nahal and the pioneering ethos that had been accepted in Bnei Akiva until then. But to see a few years of yeshiva study as revolutionary strikes me as very forced and tendentious. There is no doubt that what we have here is the adoption of values that had always prevailed in the Haredi world, whose conservatism accompanied us all along and created the feelings of inferiority (justified ones) that led to the establishment of the yeshivot. People understood that one does not create an ideology and a religious way of life by means of laymen wielding spades. To establish the Religious Zionist position, yeshivot were the obvious need of the hour, and that does not look to me like much of a revolution. Without ideological and Torah backing, an ideological religious movement cannot survive when it is on the defensive against Haredi conservatism from the right and secular modernism from the left.
The next stage described in the article is the awakening of modern Hasidism (Breslov), to which I would add the awakening of religious existentialism and postmodernism, but also the hilltop youth and the curled sidelocks, the spring-dippers, who really do constitute a religious rebellion in a very deep sense. This is a rebellion both against the religious education they received and against the delimitation that identified serious religiosity with a very specific model. But note that there are several different groups here. The Hasidism and the hilltop youth represent a rebellion that in many respects closely resembles the original Hasidic rebellion. But again, it is hard to accept that this is an avant-garde leading the entire camp behind it. In general, it is hard today to speak of a single camp of Religious Zionism. But even insofar as one speaks sociologically about Religious Zionism, very little of it follows this wild Hasidic avant-garde. There is certainly a rebellion here, but it is marginal and esoteric.
For some reason Pirer did not touch on the awakening of religious postmodernism in recent years, which indeed seems more like a central and significant rebellion, one that rides the wave of the times. Within this framework, what until now was defined as "lite" religiosity receives an ideological anchor. Thus, for example, one can now discern serious religious people who nevertheless allow themselves to act in ways that do not conform to the usual conventions (including mixed couples, a left-wing worldview, equality and liberalism, humanism, engagement in unconventional fields—such as art and sports, and the like). Once these were characteristics of the religious margins, but today they are moving more toward the center and becoming normative, and are even being anchored in a more modern religious theory (recently I saw several articles that distinguish between modern religiosity and Religious Zionism, which in my eyes touch directly on this point). This point is absent from Pirer’s article, and that is very strange, because it is precisely here that one can see genuine religious radicalism, and it is certainly happening now. In my opinion it is entirely possible that the current conservative fashion stems in part from fear of these phenomena.
Pirer now moves on to describe the most recent period, in which, according to him, the wheel turns over completely: the new religious conservatism.
The new religious conservatism
At this stage Pirer moves on to describe the phenomenon of the proportion of knitted-kippah wearers at conservative conferences and in conservative activity generally (as described above), and summarizes it as follows:
In short, if the virtue of Religious Zionism was once radicalism or youthful enthusiasm, then in recent years the virtues—at least among some of its spokesmen—have been caution, moderation, the avoidance of radical changes, and adherence to the ways of the fathers. It seems that the parent generation, those once much-maligned Mizrachi types, have now become a model for imitation. A kind of paradigm to which one should look up.
This is the phenomenon to which his article is devoted, and the explanatory proposals will immediately follow. But before we get to them, I want to make three comments.
First, I already mentioned that religiosity fits quite well with conservatism. If anything, it is the phenomenon of rebellious radicalism that occurred in previous years that requires explanation. Second, beyond the feeling of enthusiastic radicalism, this new phenomenon too (the new religious conservatism) can be seen as innovation. It is a rebellion against the innovation and postmodernism that are so beloved in our environment (a reaction against them). It is an attempt to offer a stable anchor in a world that has lost its roots and its anchors. In that sense there is nothing here that is truly conservative. In fact, holding to conservative values and ideals today involves a great deal of novelty in the intellectual world of our time, certainly in Israel. I cannot help recalling the classic Monty Python episode from the film Life of Brian (see here from minute 1:04:00 onward), in which Brian tells the crowd following him that they are all individualists, and they all repeat after him in uniform chorus, "Yes, I am an individualist," while only one lone voice is heard hesitantly saying that he probably is not. So who here is the individualist?!… And third, I have already pointed out here that conservatism is something relative to the environment in which it appears and operates. Almost every religious innovator returns to some utopia that once existed, and rebels against those in his own time who behave differently from it. In that sense, the new conservatism he describes is definitely an avant-garde that rebels against both the religious and the secular environment alike, which at least on the intellectual plane has in recent years been clearly dominated (certainly in Israel) by a discourse of innovation. In fact, just as the radicals of Gush Emunim rebelled against the tranquil Mizrachi style that preceded them, the new conservatives are rebelling (with great enthusiasm) against Gush Emunim and perhaps also against avant-garde enthusiasms in general. In my opinion nothing has really changed in this respect, and the wheel turns in the world. All the streams flow into the sea, and the wind goes round to its place (all the rivers go to the sea, and the wind circles back to its place).
But Pirer assumes that there really is a reversal here, and for some reason he thinks that it is precisely the last stage of this process that requires explanation. As I said, I disagree with both of those assumptions, but let us continue with him. He offers several explanations of his own, which we will now consider.
The first explanation
The first explanation he offers is based on disappointment with most of the revolutionary banners that Religious Zionism waved, particularly following the disengagement in 2005. This of course parallels Gush Emunim’s disappointment with the Mizrachi style that preceded them, which led to that rebellion. So here I see no principled difference between the periods (this is our generation’s version of ‘HaDor’).
He immediately adds another, more technical, aspect. All in all, years have passed since the settlement period of Gush Emunim, and that rebellious youth naturally grew up and became bourgeois. To that I would say that I am not even sure of it. It seems to me that the rebels of that time remained rebels even today, but the young people of today are not rebelling as they did. Which of course leads to the obvious question: why are today’s youth not doing the same thing (and afterward becoming bourgeois)?! I did not find in his remarks here an explanation for that phenomenon.
The second explanation
The second explanation he offers is psychological-theological in character. His claim is that the new conservatism provides an answer to two principal distresses of contemporary religious society. The essay ‘HaDor’ explained why the Torah’s lack of relevance had to lead to the appearance of a new and more relevant Torah, the Torah of the Land of Israel. But this was slow to appear (according to Pirer’s assumption, with which I do not agree at all). Therefore a justification is needed for continuing to study that same irrelevant Torah (oxen and cows, first and second vessels, and the like). Conservatism offers such a justification: this should be done because that is how it has been done until now, even if we have no sufficient explanation on the merits.
Let me say at the outset that I disagree with him entirely already regarding the factual basis of his explanation. In my opinion, a renewed Torah has certainly appeared, and continues to appear all the time, in several directions and forms. This is happening even in the more conservative districts, though at a slower pace. True, I do not think this is specifically connected to the Land of Israel so much as to our restless and changing era, and to the different tools that have developed in world thought. But setting mystical elements aside, distress produces quite a bit of novelty and renewal. I strongly disagree with the claim that no responses to these distresses have emerged. In my estimation there are far more responses and proposals today than we ever had in the past.
Pirer goes on to argue that at the root of this difficulty lies a deeper theological point: after all, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not really supposed to care whether one slaughters from the throat or from the back of the neck (that is, about the technical details of Jewish law with which we occupy ourselves). So what relevance is there to everything with which we occupy ourselves in this world? He argues that our religious values and principles are irrelevant not only because the world has changed, but by virtue of its being a material world that is to a large extent arbitrary. It is hard to accept that the Holy One, blessed be He, is deeply interested in the law of an ox that gores a cow, even in a place where we all actually have oxen and cows, or in cooking in a second vessel even in a place where people think there is a significant difference between cooking in a first and a second vessel. Or in this form of slaughter rather than that, and so on. None of this seems useful in any way, and it probably does not even make us better people. Conservatism, according to Pirer, allows us to cling to this entire system despite its irrelevance, simply because that is how things have always been done.
Beyond the dispute about the facts, I am very doubtful even about this explanation itself. First and foremost because it is not consistent. If people are persuaded that the Torah does not improve us and is of no benefit either to us or to the world, how does the conservative claim answer their distress? Conservatism tells us that the institutions that have operated until now are better and should therefore be preserved. But if we have reached the conclusion that factually they are not good and not beneficial (and that, according to Pirer, is the root of the distress), then you could hardly have a stronger basis than that for innovation and revolution. This is an argument that refutes conservatism; it does not explain it. Moreover, the conservative argument is indeed led by religious speakers, but in most contexts it arises not specifically in the religious sphere, but more in the social-political sphere. So it is hard for me to see why a theological distress provides an explanation for it.
A note on psychological and sociological explanations
I pointed to the inconsistency of this explanation, but I am not sure that psychological and sociological explanations require consistency. If people believe this, they will act accordingly, even if it is inconsistent. That is precisely why I am wary of that kind of explanation and prefer to deal with the substance. In my view, what matters is asking whether and why a certain approach or claim is correct, not why people adopt it and what distresses it answers. A debate that focuses on answering distresses as an explanation for ideas can continue in that strange way indefinitely: now the conservatives will ask Pirer why he offers such explanations. Perhaps his explanations too are intended only to answer distresses that he feels. And so everyone digs into the motives of the other instead of discussing his claims substantively. That is a reliable recipe for diverting the discussion into irrelevant territory. It is important to clarify that I am not claiming here that a sociological-psychological explanation is necessarily incorrect, only that it is not an explanation (at least not in the sense relevant to the discussion).
Psychological and sociological reductions are nowadays perceived as engagement with essence, values, and content, whereas in reality they divert the discussion into irrelevant territory. One may claim that these ideas are adopted for psychological or sociological reasons (such as distresses) only after one has shown that they are not true and not sensible. A discussion must begin with arguments on the merits, and only afterward can one claim that the adoption of such an absurd position stems from sociological reasons. But explanations on the psychological-sociological plane cannot serve as an explanation for a school of thought, and certainly not as an argument in a debate about it.
I must say that this is a grievous ill in our circles, and unfortunately many suffer from it, and and mighty are all those she has slain (its slain are mighty). People explain the motives of a movement or a mode of thought, instead of discussing it itself (for or against). Such explanations are for some reason presented as intellectual "deep explanations," whereas the truth is that they flatten and divert the discussion (see this from a somewhat different angle in columns 238–9).
This matter reminds me of a convention that prevailed among an important group in the forum "Stop Here, We Think" (in which I participated until a few years ago), according to which in a discussion about some claim or school of thought one should not bring as an argument any quotation or mention of some source or thinker. One should discuss the claim and the school themselves on their own merits, and raise arguments for or against them, without declaiming in a learned and ponderous tone that this is a Humean, Kantian, Levinasian, or existentialist statement. None of that interests me. Say whether in your opinion it is true or not, and present arguments explaining why. Afterward you can remark that according to what you have said, one may as well throw Kant into the trash—but that is a conclusion of the discussion, not an argument advanced within it. In my estimation, if we adopted this convention, it would be possible to erase from the face of the earth almost all the intellectual literature produced in recent generations.
Well, there is no need to say that this description is somewhat exaggerated, since intellectual connections can certainly illuminate the issues under discussion. But it is important to understand that there is something to it. The extremism that rejects recourse to sources and to links with the doctrine of this or that thinker arose as a reaction against empty intellectualism, which deals only in connections and reductions instead of dealing with the subjects themselves.
Traditionalism
Pirer concludes his article with a remark about traditionalism. That does not directly concern our matter, but I will nevertheless take the opportunity to comment on this point as well. Traditionalism is becoming more and more present in our world. What was once a source of embarrassment (and rightly so) has now become an ideology (wrongly so). In brief, this is an outlook that advocates preserving the values of tradition simply because they are tradition. Not because they seem to me correct or binding, but simply because of a feeling of loyalty to my forefathers and to the tradition I received. By that logic, an idol worshiper too should enthusiastically worship his god because of loyalty to the tradition he received from his fathers. This is conservatism par excellence, despite the differences, some of which Pirer notes at the end of his article.
But this is precisely the root of my criticism of this strange approach. I have no problem if some person, for whatever reason, feels that it is pleasant for him to act as his forefathers acted. If that gives him some connection to them, or some pleasant warmth in the belly—good for him. But I find it hard to understand how one can assign such a thing value in the essential sense. It is a personal inclination or taste, nothing more. How can I criticize someone who does not adopt the values of his forefathers, simply because he does not feel like it, or because he disagrees with them? On the contrary, I expect him to do exactly that, and to overcome the warmth he feels in his belly when he continues the path of his fathers. It is important to understand that the essence of the renewed traditionalism among us is the transformation of this inclination and personal taste into a value that must be respected and inculcated (part of the "Judaism as culture" movement). I am willing to accept arguments regarding a person’s right to be traditionalist (that is, casual, not really religious, but emotionally connected to tradition and therefore selecting from it the parts that speak to him). Good for him. But I do not understand how one can turn traditionalism into a value, or what arguments could support such a strange approach.
Almost everything said so far about conservatism can be said to the same extent about traditionalism (for example, that it was born as a justification for someone who sees no reason or value in these practices in and of themselves; that it contains an after-the-fact justification for weakness; and so on). It is therefore no wonder that the criticism I raised at the beginning of the column toward conservatism is also relevant to traditionalism. Ideas are supposed to be examined on their own merits, not because that is how things were or were not, and not because they do or do not continue the tradition. That is simply irrelevant to substantive discussion, unless one assumes that conservatism or traditionalism are themselves arguments for the truth of a position. That is at least consistent, even if in many cases, in my opinion, it is not really justified.
In that sense I fully share Pirer’s criticism both of conservatism and of traditionalism. I simply do not think he proceeded correctly when he analyzed the phenomena by way of psychological-sociological reduction, at least so long as he did not first preface that with substantive arguments against conservatism showing its absurdity.
[1] See, however, column 241, where I discussed the relation between kindness and judgment, and its connection to the question of capitalism versus socialism. This is not to say that a person cannot hold a right-wing outlook (kindness) in one issue and a left-wing outlook (judgment) in another. This affinity does not compel an ideological connection (though at times it does allow one).
Discussion
I do not assume materialism. But I assume the commenter doesn’t either, otherwise there would be no point in writing and discussing.
I very much liked the “anti-boxed-in” argument you presented. There really is not much point in the pseudo-ideological plasticizing of conservatism-versus-innovation of the current variety. Let us bring an idea and see.
But I didn’t really understand why you mock the traditionalist position, for example that of Meir Buzaglo. On the contrary, in his book A Language for the Faithful he devotes considerable effort to defending the claim that tradition is true, and not merely handed down from the parents. I am puzzled.
A. It is strange how a simple fact escaped Ehud Pirer’s notice: the above-mentioned new conservatism, appearing in the very heart of Modern Orthodoxy, is itself revolutionary! Within a world moving rapidly in various radical directions, toward the dismantling of old institutions—such as the family—they present, in their view, an alternative that is no less than revolutionary.
B. The establishment of the first Bnei Akiva yeshiva in Kfar HaRoeh was entirely revolutionary, against the background of pioneering settlement ideology as the only option. Bringing Torah values from the yeshivot of Europe, mainly the Lithuanian Musar movement yeshivot, was revolutionary in the world of the religious kibbutz! Context, as stated, matters, and the revolutionariness takes place against that backdrop. The establishment of the hesder yeshivot as a kind of natural continuation of the “young” Bnei Akiva yeshiva, and as a substitute for enlistment in the Nahal, was another certain revolutionary act.
At the same time, Gush Emunim and the degree of its revolutionary nature are matters of dispute. From fairly extensive research I conducted (while writing a book [still in manuscript] about Rabbi Zuckerman, one of the founders of the first Bnei Akiva yeshiva in Kfar HaRoeh), it emerges that on the one hand Gush Emunim is a natural continuation of the path I have described up to this point, and therefore there is nothing revolutionary in it. The revolutionariness perhaps lies in acting against the law: settling land without permission (in the name of love of the Land of Israel, Torah law, and the like), and perhaps there is also here a counter-call (revolution?) against the atmosphere of dejection in Israel after the Yom Kippur War. On the other hand, this whole movement is an imitation of the secular pioneers of old who also settled land against the wishes of the British, so it is not certain that “revolutionary” is the right name for it.
I intentionally did not bring in Meir Buzaglo because I do not know the details of his arguments (I haven’t read his book, although I have heard him several times, and I think he is somewhat trying to dance at two weddings: truth and the worthy/proper, or just because that’s what I feel like and it’s legitimate). But I definitely argue that traditionalism, in the essential-conceptual sense, is what I described. So this is not mockery. Moreover, it is no more and no less ridiculous than the boxed-in thinking of the conservatives-innovators. There are many intelligent people who hold these views, which in my eyes are absurd. So my criticism of traditionalists and traditionalism is no exception to that.
I completely agree. That is exactly what I wrote. There is only a difference in the matter of radical fervor and the sparkle in the eyes. But that really is not very essential in my view either.
Their leading spokespeople definitely have a *sparkle* in their eyes. Literally and figuratively, and in both vocalizations of the Hebrew word 🙂
I understand, and even so everyone can see the difference. Pirer’s feeling, after all, is not as unfounded as you present it. Many people have such a feeling, and with some justice.
Hello Rabbi,
You wrote: “Either you are conservative or you are progressive; this phenomenon is very problematic in my view, since as we have seen there is no real connection between all these ideas.”
In my humble opinion, the two central poles that tend to adopt the basket of conservatism (modernists, traditional/religious people, and political/economic right) or the progressive basket = (postmodernism, secularism, and political/economic left) actually correspond to the central distinction in your quartet of books (wonderful, I should note) regarding the roots of the analytic and synthetic outlooks.
Thus you wrote in the introduction to Two Wagons: “One of the book’s central claims is that many of the sharpest public debates taking place these days in Israel, as well as in the wider world—between right and left, between religious and secular, and even between modernity and postmodern approaches—have a very similar conceptual structure.”
Do you not think that the synthetic outlook corresponds—at the level of generalization, of course—to conservatism with its basket of ideas, and similarly the analytic outlook to the progressive basket?
There is some correlation, but it is not necessary. Already in the books I pointed to the difference between analytic equality and synthetic equality. And so it is with most of these ideas. Thus, for example, analyticity leads to individualism, but syntheticity does not necessarily lead to collectivism (it allows it but does not compel it). In general, consistent analyticity compels a vacuum and is therefore more monolithic, whereas syntheticity opens up many possibilities.
With God’s help, 25 Tishrei 5780
Without entering the whole discussion about conservatism and innovation, I will comment regarding what was said in note 1): that the economic “right” expresses kindness, whereas the economic “left” expresses “justice”—which, in my humble opinion, seems the reverse.
Capitalism upholds the “justice” that each person should earn according to the fruit of his deeds: whoever increases diligence and effort will increase his wealth, and whoever lessens them will lessen his wealth.
Whereas socialism holds that assets should be equal for everyone, without preference for one who invests and labors more. That is precisely a concept of “kindness,” which wants to do good to everyone—deserving and undeserving alike.
Regards, Shatz
It seems that the Torah’s outlook balances between “justice” and “kindness.” On the one hand, there is care for preserving private property, and one may not show favoritism to the poor in his lawsuit; on the other hand, the rich person is commanded by countless mitzvot obligating him to support his poor brother. Elsewhere I called this outlook “solidarity capitalism.”
Hello. I think conservatism or progressivism do not come into play in situations where there is an absolute and clear decision, and where one can examine things on their own merits, but rather in cases where we have no clear verdict from past experience. In such cases there are two possibilities:
One possibility is to say: presumably, what people did for a thousand years contains some justice because of experience and basic natural intuitions; therefore, if I come to change it, I must proceed cautiously (not that one never changes, but one moves carefully)—and that is the conservative position. Another possibility is to say: although in the past they did X, that carries no weight at all for me, and therefore I see no obstacle to changing quickly—and that is the progressive position. Therefore I do not understand your claim that each thing must be examined on its own merits.
On the one hand, the free market is preserved, allowing a person to sell his ancestral holding; on the other hand, there are “stations”—the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee—that stop the free game and restore the state of equality.
The Tabernacle too gave expression to each person’s generosity of heart, but the foundation on which everything stands—the sockets—was made from the half-shekel that every person gave equally.
Regards, Shatz
Absolutely not. Socialism does not advocate acts of kindness; rather, it determines a mandatory equal distribution by justice (the law). The claim is that this is what people deserve—justice, not charity.
You are repeating things I wrote.
If religiosity is connected to conservatism, why is it דווקא the Haredim and Hardalim who are the most progressive on issues of the welfare state, affirmative action, and reducing the sphere of action of the individual in the public domain (public transport on Shabbat, the pride parade), and more? Is it all special pleading?
Hello Rabbi, despite the really simple things the Rabbi wrote, one cannot ignore the fact that tradition throughout the generations, almost without exception, adopted the conservative method: starting from the Amoraim, who did not disagree with the Tannaim, through the Rishonim toward their predecessors, and so on. So it is no wonder, in my opinion, that the continuers of the tradition adopt the same position. True, one must discuss things on their own merits and understand why they took this approach, but in my opinion before we even look into the issue, it is very difficult to adopt an examining and independent stance while continuing to adhere to the tradition of the Oral Torah, which seems fairly closed and conservative..
P.S. I write with a heavy heart, but I cannot ignore what seems to me to be true..
Who revealed this secret to you? The claim about the new conservatism is precisely that this is not the case. Regarding transportation on Shabbat, that is a different question, because in their opinion a person harms himself and all of us. Quite a few liberals support intervention when another person is trying to harm himself. And besides, that itself is what I wrote: not every issue sheltered under the heading of conservatism is in fact connected to one another, or connected to preservation (conservatism in the literal sense).
There is no possibility—and therefore no need—to ignore the truth, meaning what seems to you to be true. But in my opinion you are mistaken (that is, it is not the truth). The authority of the Amoraim or the Tannaim does not stem from the fact that they are necessarily right; rather, it is a determination aimed at setting a framework. I have discussed this in several places here on the site and elsewhere. The Knesset too has authority, not because it is necessarily right, but because that is the framework. And even if that were the truth, why must I adopt the outlook of the Tannaim or the Amoraim? I am bound by their halakhic determinations, not by their worldview claims (that itself is a result of viewing their authority as something formal rather than essential).
Does the Rabbi really believe that this is also how the Rishonim and Acharonim thought? That the authority of their predecessors is only formal? When Tosafot remains with a difficulty unresolved on the Gemara, do they mean that there is in fact an error in the Gemara?
And when Rabbi Akiva Eiger prays that God should “enlighten his eyes” to understand the “astonishing” words of Tosafot, is he saying that only out of politeness?
With God’s help, 26 Tishrei 5780
In Maimonides’ words (in his introduction to the Mishneh Torah) it is explained that the superiority of the Sages is not only in that all Israel accepted their words, but also in their being transmitters of the tradition, one from another, and that this knowledge was the possession of a large community of sages, and that those foundations were agreed upon by a large gathering of sages—a fact that gives a strong indication that the matters are based on tradition or on solid reasoning.
On the principles of religion, Maimonides bases things on explicit statements in Scripture, just as he bases things on what is explicit in the texts and on reason, as any fair reader will see; and in accordance with these “parameters” he accepts the position that seems more agreed-upon and straightforward (as he also does in deciding halakhah).
It is unreasonable to try to attribute to Maimonides—who was first and foremost among the formulators of the “Thirteen Principles”—the view of Mendelssohn and the like, that the Torah’s filling itself with matters concerning the foundations of faith is not intended seriously at all, and is nothing but a “dry collection of laws” devoid of sense and meaning. If that were so, why did Maimonides invest tremendous effort in defining those “principles of faith” and even discuss severely one who denies them?
Regards, Shatz
Paragraph 2, line 3
… the position that seems more agreed-upon and straightforward …
Usually it does not seem that way. So what? They too were mistaken about this.
But beyond that, one must remember that in many cases it seems the sages used polite language and meant to say that there is an error there. Like “an erring student wrote it,” or “nature has changed.”
The Kesef Mishneh at the beginning of chapter 2 of Hilchot Mamrim writes explicitly that the authority of the Talmud is because we accepted it upon ourselves, but in principle one may disagree with anyone (except for the Sanhedrin).
First, who attributed this to Maimonides? Second, I too agree that there is an advantage to one who received the tradition and is close to the source, and I have written this more than once. Still, it is clear that there is no blind trust here and no impossibility of error.
And how Mendelssohn got into this, I really did not understand.
It seems to me that a “conservative approach” does not mean an approach that preserves its ideas, but rather an approach whose goal is preserving the person and society
(from takeover by untested approaches or ones carrying high risk)
Which approach a person adopts depends on the question of how much risk he takes, or how important progress or experimenting with new ideas is to him.
Meaning that conservatism does not preserve its ideas, it only protects them from changing, God forbid (except for ideas that have already been tested, meaning it actually is willing to accept new ideas that have already been tested—in other words, old ideas that already existed). I see an oxymoron here.
At the basis of the conservative approach lies the fear that new ideas may destroy society. The goal is preserving the person.
So conservatives will adopt without blinking new methods for preserving the person.
Regarding the comparison between the authority of the Knesset and the authority of the Gemara: the Knesset establishes the laws of the state and is not aiming at any correct laws as such, whereas the Gemara does not establish the laws of halakhah but tries to aim at the will of the Holy One, blessed be He (except for rabbinic laws, where they establish the laws as in the Knesset). That is, what need is there for creating a formal framework, or for accepting an authoritative body in a formal way, regarding biblical law? Seemingly, with biblical law we ought to look only at substantive authority and not formal authority. I thought perhaps to answer that we did not create the formal framework; rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, created it in the commandment to heed the words of the sages. That is, whoever was accepted by the public as “the sages of the Sanhedrin” has a biblical obligation to obey its determinations, even where I think differently from them (in the sense of “rabbinic words” in Maimonides’ terminology). But according to this it is still difficult why the Amoraim saw the Tannaim as a formal authority (and not only a substantive one), for the Amoraim themselves were the formal authority in their own generation, and as such they could also disagree with the Tannaim where they saw fit.
See Rabbi Oz Bluman’s article
Definitely interesting. Thanks.
Hi,
I am trying to get to the bottom of your view regarding the formal status of the authority of Hazal. You were asked above about the comparison you made between the formal status of the Knesset and rabbinic legislation. The questioner noted, rightly in my opinion, that the difference between the two is significant. Hazal believe that they succeed in hitting upon divine truth, that is, they rely on substantive authority; by contrast, the divine truth interests members of the Knesset about as much as last year’s snow.
So I am unable to understand how the analogy matches the point being illustrated.
Bottom line: if I am right, it seems to me that the attempt to save Hazal’s authority in the formalist arena alone is problematic.
Your view?
There is indeed a difference, but it is not relevant to our issue. Even if Hazal try to hit upon some truth and fail, they still have formal authority and their decision is binding (at least so long as it is not abundantly clear to me that they erred). Truth alone does not determine what is proper to do.
But the sages of every generation also have formal authority, so why do the sages of generation X align themselves with the authority of the sages of the previous generation (formally—that is, beyond the substantive aspect)? For example, why did the Amoraim accept the authority of the Tannaim when they themselves had formal authority and could disagree with them?
My feeling is that religious people, as a minority group, have some sort of intellectual or conceptual “anchor” outside the harbor of the dominant culture. As a result, they tend—for better and for worse—to be swept along less by those winds of the age whose source is “outside,” and to be swept along more by those winds that come from within, or at least by those that can be presented convincingly enough as deriving from Judaism.
A conservative is someone who is afraid of change, or fears social ostracism (a conformist). The extreme conservative experiences change as equivalent to actual death. This fear leads to the development of mythic ideas as though the past had been perfect. It is very similar to that same fear of death that leads to imagining that the future after death is perfect.
The result of conservatism is a sense of security and stability. Most human beings aspire to attain this feeling. And everyone reaches it to some degree or another.
In short, all human beings are conservative to some degree or another.
Therefore it requires investigation what the interest was of those who invented this classification of conservatives and non-conservatives according to criteria that are in no special way related to that fear of losing security. It is suspicious that these criteria are connected to things involving power, money, and control—never to personal matters between one person and another.
A person who keeps manners and rules in the group in which he is found is conservative just like the religious conservative.
In short, intellectuals invent things that do not exist. Dreamers of ideas.
Michi,
In the world of the modern legislator there is always, in the background of the law, a “margin of safety” permitting every citizen to choose natural justice in those cases where it clashes with dry law. That legislator—if he is a bit intelligent—will tell you that the aspiration is that there be no clash, but in practice there may be one, and in such a case a rational and autonomous person should choose justice and not the command of the system.
A legislator who tells you this is effectively smuggling into his answer the concept of substantive authority (there is a truth outside the Knesset…).
By contrast, among Hazal the “command of the system” begins with the idea of Torah from Heaven, and from there it cascades down to the very last small details (about which, in Hazal’s view, there is definitely much to clarify and dispute).
The problem, seemingly, is that Hazal will tell us that a Jew may not deviate from this chain of transmission.
That is, according to their method as you describe it—even if we think it mistaken or foolish—a Jew has a formal obligation to comply with the command of the system (which descends from the revelation at Mount Sinai) and to believe what they believe.
As though there were a command concerning belief (at least the foundational belief).
Of course, if you show me significant sources in Hazal saying that this is not the case, and that according to Judaism one is really obligated to believe the truth even if it clashes with the idea of Torah from Heaven, you have a pretty good case against me.
I know Maimonides and others dealt with this question, but I still have not found in them (or in you) a solution to this question within Judaism.
Therefore your claim that there are differences between the Knesset and Hazal but that they are not relevant to the discussion seems mistaken to me. They certainly do seem relevant to me.
Where do you get formal authority for the sages of every generation? Maimonides’ proposal that the agreement of all the sages of the Land of Israel can restore authority is disputed. The agreement of the nation (of R. Shlomo Fischer in the name of Rabbi A. I. Kook) is a different mechanism.
The sages of any given generation do not need to align themselves with the sages of the previous generation or previous generations, and usually they do not. The Talmud is an exception, and so is the Mishnah. And perhaps in general the sealing of periods (Rishonim, Geonim), but there the authority is not full.
Acceptance of that authority stems from many reasons, only some of them a sense of inferiority regarding Torah greatness. Mainly it is about preserving the framework.
This is basically saying what I said: that each side here (the conservatives and the innovators) is being swept along by something irrelevant (an a priori ideology). Instead of discussing the claim on its own merits and examining whether it is convincing or not. On the religious side they try to persuade me in favor of an absurd claim on the grounds that this is how people always thought. And on the innovative side they try to persuade me to go along with an absurd claim because it is very new and fashionable.
At first I thought you were writing about deviating from the system where the matter requires it (conscientious objection, margin of safety). And that of course is exactly parallel to what happens in halakhah. Moreover, I did not invent this; the matter is well anchored in tradition. In the Talmud there is the rule of “a transgression for its own sake,” a deviation from halakhah that is justified in special circumstances. The Hazon Ish spoke about the fifth part (which does not exist) of the Shulchan Arukh, which tells the decisor when not to rule according to the Shulchan Arukh. In other words, conscientious objection is an integral part of any commitment to a system, including halakhah (I discussed this in my introduction to Truth and Not Stable).
But in the end you suddenly move to speaking about the very commitment to Torah from Heaven, and not about deviation or margin. Here we have already reached the realms of fantasy. הרי זה מקביל לגמרי לחריגה מעצם סמכות החוק במדינה. האם לדעתך החוק כן מקבל זאת? ודאי שלא. אז מה ההבדל בין החוק להלכה לעניין זה?
This of course does not mean that if the law or halakhah does not accept this, I myself would not do exactly that when I feel that this is the situation (I have lost trust in the system). But the system does not accept this and cannot accept it.
Where does the formal authority of the agreement of the nation come from? Seemingly, the agreement of the nation and the agreement of the sages are fairly similar, no?
There is no authority for the sages of every generation, but the agreement of all the sages of the generation creates authority from below. Perhaps even according to those who disagree with Maimonides, authority can be created from below, and what they do not accept is the restoration of ordination (which is authority from above).
On the meaning of the agreement of the nation, see Beit Yishai, Derashot, section 15.
Is the agreement of the nation considered authority from above? Or is it, like the agreement of the sages, considered authority from below?
Anything that is not from above is from below. Maimonides’ innovation is that agreement below creates authority from above (ordination, which allows continuing to ordain).
The things you said here are already almost slipping into historical anachronism. In fairness, one should note that your analysis of the rabbinic conception of authority perhaps manages to escape anachronism at the last moment… since you are not trying to present Hazal’s conception in their own eyes, but rather to set out a principled (“logical”) picture of the rabbinic enterprise (the truth as you understand it).
But what? There is value in addressing the historical background, because from it, in my opinion, it emerges that you are mistaken even on the principled level. In fact, I think you are mistaken on the principled level twice, and from two opposite directions.
The first time you are mistaken is when you downplay Hazal’s motivations for turning to substantive authority. These people believed with all their heart that their entire enterprise was grounded in factual-historical truth and even metaphysical truth (the revelation at Mount Sinai).
All rabbinic legislation is grounded in this belief, and in their eyes this is its source of validity. Unless you want to enlighten me and argue that there is another significant approach there…
In modern liberal law there is (almost) no such thing as relying on such bombastic truths, and certainly not on metaphysical truths. If you miss this, then you also miss the fact that Hazal (and in my view other “legislators” in the ancient world) rely on a “substantive” mechanism much more than the modern crowd.
The second time you are mistaken is from the opposite direction. Hazal’s substantive authority (reliance on belief in the revelation at Mount Sinai) undermines its own efforts precisely because of the exclusivity they grant to that truth. For them there can be only one truth that gives validity to their legislation, and in any case they are “locked in”—in this sense alone—to one single mechanism. Enslavement to such a single mechanism brings them much closer to formal authority than their modern counterparts.
For example, in a modern liberal state one can quite well imagine that the law would permit a Jewish, Christian, or Muslim fundamentalist to educate, preach, and even organize in order to change the constitutional character of the state (to turn it into a theocracy)—so long as he does so peacefully. All this because he believes that his principles are “truer” than the truth of the liberal regime.
Another example could be the idea of granting rights to animals while harming human rights.
Both examples demonstrate the greater openness of the modern system to self-examination, that is, its willingness to accept that there are “truths” competing with those of the liberal regime. Such openness implies a more “substantive” stance.
Of course, if you want to argue that dry law (modern and perhaps halakhic too)—as opposed perhaps to the philosophy behind it—does not permit breaking the law (because that is an internal contradiction), you could somewhat soften the tension I have described. But if you do that, you will in effect strip our discussion of its main content. The discussion is not so much technical-juridical as mainly philosophical.
Well, the time has come (as expected) to part as friends.
So in fact the agreement of the nation and the agreement of the sages both create authority from below. According to this, why did the Amoraim not want to disagree with the Tannaim? After all, the group of Amoraim could have created authority from below just as the Tannaim did. That is, in practice they were not limited by the rulings of the Tannaim in a place where there was broad agreement against a certain tannaitic ruling.
In addition, is there a biblical obligation to obey authority created from below? Something like “and you shall do according to what they instruct you”? Or does that apply only to authority that comes from above?
Indeed they could. And that is exactly my claim (and the claim of the Kesef Mishneh), that they chose not to do so. They accepted upon themselves the authority of the Tannaim.
As for the obligation to obey, it is not essentially different from the obligation to obey the law, which has been much discussed in legal and philosophical literature. A person who belongs to a society should uphold its laws.
Above you wrote that the main reason for accepting tannaitic authority is preserving the framework. But even if the group of Amoraim had disagreed with the Tannaim, the framework would still have been preserved, because the Amoraim themselves would have created a new framework (and so too every generation can create a new framework).
Correct, and they did create one. The Amoraim are the ones who turned the words of the Tannaim into a binding framework.
In general, a framework that changes in every generation is not a framework. In particular, when the people go into exile and scatter, there is much logic in fixing a framework that does not change, at least until they gather back together and there is a Sanhedrin. When that returns, I assume they will indeed reconsider the commitment to the Talmud. It seems to me that Rabbi A. I. Kook writes similarly in Perplexities of the Generation (regarding the demand for the rationale of the verse).
Let the reader judge.
What do you think about elements that characterized Religious Zionism in the past, such as the establishment of the Chief Rabbinate, including the expectation that it would become a Sanhedrin, talk of building the Temple, and a quasi-messianic social vision of the religious kibbutz? Would it not be correct to say that revolutionary/messianic/utopian characteristics that once characterized Religious Zionism (at least part of it) have to a large extent given way to a more moderate and conservative discourse?
These things were mainly thought and less action. As for the Temple, this was talk without any substance behind it. Nobody really planned to do anything. As for the religious kibbutz, that was very marginal, and besides it too was part of the vision of the general (secular) kibbutz, translated into religious values. And in general, all these visions were part of the Zionist revolution itself (in its religious shade). Within the Zionist framework, the old Mizrachi people were fairly fossilized.
As I wrote here, today conservatism too is a kind of revolution.
I accept your point, but it should be noted that the conservative movement today too is (at least for now) mainly thought and less action. And I agree that both in the past and today the processes were parallel to processes in the general public; that does not mean they are not happening or that they have no significance. However, in my opinion it is exaggerated to describe the rise of conservatism as a revolution, but rather more as a reaction.
I am still asking about a change in the spirit of the times. The Mizrachi people of the past may have been bourgeois in their lifestyle, but were very strong in the ideology of supporting the state and seeing it as the first flowering of our redemption. Do you not think that we are undergoing a shift from the idea that the Jewishness of the state will be expressed from above and in a centralized way, toward shifting the weight to communities and voluntary organizations? In this context, can one not also see the decline in the status of the Chief Rabbinate—currently in public matters and kashrut, and in the future perhaps in additional areas?
Absolutely: I’m with Michi.
That is completely clear. But the change you describe is not connected to conservatism and innovation. It is a natural reaction to the failures of the utopian vision that has prevailed until now. The Chief Rabbinate is, of course, a prime example of this.
I think your conception of traditionalism suffers from the same flaw that Leibowitz had in his extreme religious conception. People are not robots, and psychological motives of various kinds play a conscious and unconscious role in all their decisions, including those that seem completely rational. Beyond that, not every idea can be attached to a label of “true” or “false.” I grew up in a Mizrahi family, and beyond the fact that I am generally committed to the Shulchan Arukh, I also feel connected to the specific religious-intellectual tradition in which I grew up. I am a rationalist; the halakhic outlook of the later Sephardic authorities such as Rabbi Mashash and Rabbi Raphael Aaron ben Shimon is close to my heart, and I am very uneasy with “Ashkenazi” things such as Hasidism, religious extremism, or pilpul in Gemara study. Of course I can convince myself that I examine everything objectively and these are simply the conclusions I reached, but in my opinion that would be a mistaken conclusion, or at least not entirely correct. Presumably, if I had grown up in a Hasidic Ashkenazi home, I would believe in a different set of ideas and justify them to the same degree. The idea that you are part of something magnificent that has been going on for a long time is no less a good justification for certain behavior than other justifications. Of course, in some cases, if it clearly conflicts with other things I believe, I will have to give up part of the tradition. For example, I personally gave up almost everything connected with Kabbalah, which I oppose, even though it is a significant part of my family tradition. But a total negation of the traditional dimension in the decisions a person makes—as you do—is, in my opinion, too extreme and does not correctly reflect the structure of the human soul.
Hello Yoni.
You are mixing two planes. I have no interest in factual descriptions (what people do and why). The question is evaluative, not descriptive-factual. If a person does something because he connects to some heritage or tradition—that is completely legitimate, but it has not the slightest connection to the service of God and to the value of a commandment. It is like keeping Shabbat in Ahad Ha’am’s style in order to preserve the cultural character of our people. That may have value (I doubt it, in my view), and it is certainly legitimate (if you enjoy it—who am I to prevent you). But it is not a mitzvah in the sense of responding to a command.
I do not agree that it has not the slightest connection to the service of God. In my view this is the straightforward meaning of the verse, “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice.” When a Hasid wears a gartel before prayer, he preserves a certain tradition of halakhic interpretation regarding the laws of prayer.
It is the way of the Lord, not of his fathers. Abraham commands his sons to serve God, not to do what he did. They are not obligated to eat what he ate. How is this different from someone who keeps the commandments because it gives pleasure to his cat?
Maimonides’ well-known words at the end of chapter 8 of Laws of Kings:
Anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to observe them is among the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the World to Come—provided that he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had already been commanded concerning them; but if he performs them because of intellectual conviction, he is not a resident alien and is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but among their wise men.
This is simple reasoning, and I do not see how one can disagree with it.
Capitalism, which encourages competition and free initiative, brings economic dynamism, a situation in which entrepreneurs rise and fall and no one is protected from competition. By contrast, socialism protects the economic stability of individuals. One does not leap upward, but one also does not fall into the abyss. In this respect socialism constitutes “conservatism.”
Regards, Shatz
I did not understand the argument about women being disqualified from testimony because they were not educated…
If a woman sees a murder, then because she does not know how to read and write she does not identify the situation correctly?
Even animals understand that their young are being killed (and that is also the reason for “You shall not slaughter it and its offspring on one day”).
So is a foolish woman inferior to animals in understanding?
I have never heard testimony about a murder given by an animal, so I do not know how and from where you infer that animals understand anything. A person who is not involved in the life of society and commerce can err in understanding what he sees. A woman who does not know what war is will not understand that this is not murder. A woman who does not know what is done in a hospital will not understand that when a doctor cuts a person this is not wounding but healing. It is true that there are situations in which a woman can testify, and certainly there were women who were knowledgeable and whose testimony could be relied upon. But halakhah operates by rules, and the rule is determined according to the reasonable woman and the ordinary situation. If there are exceptions, that is given over to the court that sits over the matter, and indeed the cases of murder in the mikveh that I described testify to that.
Under a materialist (= analytic) worldview, is there any room for discussions about which ideology is “correct”? In such a world, the ideologies themselves lack objective meaning, and the only function they serve is precisely to fulfill needs or respond to human distress.
Only under a spiritual (= synthetic) worldview is there room for discussing ideologies on their own merits.