Some Reflections in Memory of Geula Cohen, of Blessed Memory (Column 264)
With God’s help
A few days ago, former Knesset member Geula Cohen passed away. Her death stirred ambivalent reflections in me, and I would like to share them here with you.
Geula Cohen was a fighter with every fiber of her being, throughout all her years—from the Irgun and Lehi to Likud and Tehiya, through the evacuation of Yamit, the peace agreement with Egypt, the debate over autonomy, the lifting of the closure on Soviet Jewry, and much more. At the same time, she was a gracious and broad-minded woman, with impressive powers of expression, who was beloved by many, including some who disagreed with her views. She also had a long career in journalism and radio, from her early days as a broadcaster on underground radio to the end of her life on Israeli radio (where she always served as the representative of the right, at least from the stage at which even that ‘dark’ wing was allowed representation in the media). I think the reason for her popularity is that her words rang true, and it seems that people of every stripe appreciate people of truth, especially when they are intelligent and gracious.
For many years, Geula Cohen—and the secular right generally—have prompted reflections and questions in me about the meaning of this phenomenon. On the one hand, right-wingness (mainly political, but in recent years not only that) is very deeply connected to religiosity. The phenomenon of a secular right gradually disappeared over the years, but in recent years it has begun to reawaken. Her ideological fervor had something like a religious hue, and the pathos with which she presented her positions and protested against her opponents repeatedly sharpens the point that nationalism and religiosity do not really manage to detach themselves from one another. The connection to history and Jewish identity cannot be entirely severed from Jewish religiosity, even among those who did not live within a religious way of life. But I have spoken more than once about that correlation. Here I wanted to devote a few words to the question of the relationship between values and ideology in general and religion, a topic I have also addressed more than once.
What was far more surprising to me in Geula Cohen was not the nationalism but the very existence of normative-ideological fervor, regardless of its content. In the modernist era, quite a few grand ideologies arose, including atheist ideology, that acted and spoke with religious fervor. But it quickly became clear that such a connection is rather weak. In the absence of a religious and believing background, it is hard to sustain an active and effective ideology. Some attribute this to technical difficulties, since standing before God, together with the reward and punishment awaiting one who acts rightly or wrongly, spurs a person to act and not rest on his laurels. But in my view there is a deeper and more fundamental dimension here, beyond the technical aspects.
In Part C of the fourth notebook (now: the fourth talk in the book The First Existent) I argued that there is no morality without God, and in fact no values without God. The dictum of the ethicists is well known: If there is no God in this place, they will kill me (‘if there is no God in this place, they will kill me’), from which they learn that without God there is no morality. Some understand this as meaning that a secular society or a secular person necessarily behaves less morally than their religious counterparts. This claim is usually based on technical considerations. Once again, reward and punishment, or even merely standing before God in the sense of Know before Whom you stand (‘know before Whom you stand’)—God is watching you even in private—spur a person to act morally and avoid improper deeds. But as I explained there, to the best of my judgment (and surprise), that is not the case. Secular people and groups often act morally, and sometimes even more morally than religious societies. I do not think there is any clear advantage here for either side.
And yet, I fully agree that If there is no God in this place, they will kill me, except that in my view this is not on the practical plane but on the theoretical one. My claim is that even if a secular person behaves morally, there is an inconsistency in this. There may perhaps be moral behavior without God, but there is no morality without God. The claim is that values and morality have no validity without a background of belief in God. As I see it, the problem of a world in which there is no God in this place is not necessarily the person’s motivation and incentives to act, but the very validity of the values themselves. My claim is that in a world devoid of God, one cannot reasonably ground commitment to values. A person can of course act in some way simply because it is pleasant for him, or because he feels like it, or because that is how he is made (evolution), and that is that. But as I explained there, moral action is not merely doing good because it feels pleasant. It is not even doing good because it is useful (to another or to myself), and certainly not doing good because that is how I am built. Moral obligation cannot be based on a teleological-consequentialist consideration (see columns 253–4). Such explanations may perhaps define what moral behavior is, but they cannot provide its binding force. When I act to improve the condition of the weak, the action is defined as moral because of its results (their condition improves), but the binding force obligating such an action cannot be that it improves someone’s condition. The improvement is a fact, and as such it cannot be a sufficient basis for a moral duty. The same is true of evolutionary explanations. ‘I behave morally because that is what was implanted in me through evolutionary processes’ may perhaps explain my behavior, but it cannot give it binding force. It explains the fact that I behave this way, but it cannot explain why I am obligated (!) to behave this way. A nature within me obligates nothing. It is simply there, and that is all. Obligation is grounded in something that lies outside my nature.
Moral and value commitment is demanding. It requires a person to act in some way not because of certain results (as noted, grounding morality in results suffers from the naturalistic fallacy). Some will say that moral action is binding regardless of the results, but on this point I am not sure I agree (see column 122 on the consequentialist game of the categorical imperative in light of the prisoner’s dilemma). Such commitment also involves demanding that others act in this way, and condemning those who do not. That cannot arise merely from the fact that this is how I am built or that this is what I feel like doing.
And indeed, it is no wonder that the discourse of values began to sink with the strengthening of secularization. There was a short, illusory period of modernist movements that acted with religious fervor and messianic energy, but the postmodern trend quickly arrived, extinguished that fervor, and exposed the vacuum that had been hidden within it from the outset. The modernists were naïve, because they thought one could behave morally and in accordance with values without an infrastructure of belief in God. The postmodernists are more clear-eyed. They already understand that there is no substance to such discourse.
In recent years I have felt a significant reaction to this process. Broad segments of the public are unwilling to give up on moral and value discourse. Many denounce the postmodern emptiness chiefly because it does not allow such discourse. But these alternatives usually build strange houses of cards meant to justify such discourse without the religious envelope and infrastructure that accompanied it from the beginning (this is a retreat back to modernism and its failures). We now constantly see movements being born on behalf of various values—ecology, concern for nature, vegetarianism and veganism, concern for societies and countries in distress, and so on—and they too act with messianic fervor in defense of human rights, of people in distress, or of animals throughout the world. And yet this is a retreat, not progress. Postmodernism exposed modernism’s nakedness, that is, the vacuum that modernism ignored, and now the reaction brings back modernism without offering any real solution to the problem at its foundation. The theoretical difficulty remains hidden somewhere beneath these phenomena. There is a serious lacuna there for which there is no answer: in a world devoid of belief in God, it is impossible to speak validly and coherently about values. The fervor remains, but in the absence of belief this structure rests on very shaky foundations.
Exactly as in the modernist era, so too today this does not prevent many people from acting with fervor without troubling themselves with the question of the validity of the values for which they act. The naturalistic fallacy is the star of this discourse. The arguments are always consequentialist: how can one stand idly by when one sees distress, or people suffering?! The philosophical question of why that should concern me (that is, if I really can stand by, and I do not suffer from your stomachaches, what is wrong with that?) never arises. And if it does arise, the answer is always result-based (that is, it suffers from the naturalistic fallacy). Therefore there will always be some cynical intellectual who holds up a mirror to these people and mocks their position. They will not be able to present him with any real answer. These movements of return to naïve modernism are built on a clear lack of intellectual seriousness—on the assumption that one can act with fervor without first ensuring that there is some theoretical and intellectual basis for it.
I think this is the root of the phenomenon of returning to the Jewish bookshelf and the new study halls. Here too there is a demand to connect to our tradition, but without commitment and without God. So why connect? What is the value in it? What basis can there be for such value demands? Some people, speaking honestly, will tell you: that is how I feel, and that is that. That is of course not a value but merely a psychological need. From others you will hear phrases like, ‘A people disconnected from its past has no future,’ and other consequentialist chatter. Let us not be confused. Those too are not value-based arguments but survivalist consequentialism. Suppose the people will not continue to exist—so what? What is the value of the people’s existence? In whose name are you making demands of me? Even if we assume that one can speak of a value to human life (which itself cannot truly be grounded in such a world), it is still not clear why human beings are supposed to remain defined around a national platform. And if they are scattered among the nations, what will happen? None of them will die, so what is wrong with that? Jewish-Israeli culture is a kind of fact, and I fail to see what value there is in preserving it (or indeed what place there is at all for value discourse in a secularized world). If it speaks to me—excellent, and if not—no less excellent. To each his taste, to each his culture.
I think that the return to tradition and faith as well (albeit in varied forms), which has become so widespread in recent years, is also an expression of that same hidden distress. People are seeking an anchor, for at least in their unconscious they sense the vacuum lying at the foundation of their world. They are looking for an answer that is not religious, but that still contains God, at least in the sense that He gives validity and an anchor to values and moral claims. I assume that nationalism and national identity, described above, are layered onto this as well. These movements at least offer a coherent worldview, since when there is belief in God, talk about values can be valid.
In that sense, Geula Cohen was a dinosaur of an extinct species. I do not know what her religious worldview was, but despite the pathos and religious fervor she employed, I sensed in her no truly religious dimension. True, she cooperated with religious groups and figures because by its nature that is the (consistent) right, but it seems to me that in herself she was at peace with her secular nationalism (or nationalist ideology). Not for nothing did she prefer to cooperate with Raful, Yuval Ne’eman, and Moshe Shamir, rather than with the religious right. I understand this as a kind of secular stubbornness, one that even carried a note of defiance: yes, I can be value-driven and nationalist even without the religious envelope.
To my mind, this is an inconsistent and naïve approach. Geula Cohen belonged to the modernist period, when the contradiction between atheism and values had not yet been felt and remained hidden somewhere inside. It is no wonder that, to her sorrow, the next generation—in which this contradiction had already begun to emerge and eventually burst forth—was endowed with less fervor and found it difficult to cling to those nationalist positions without the requisite religious background. As stated, one generation after that (the current generation) already feels all this keenly, and therefore it is beginning to return to its foundations of belief, albeit in different and varied forms.
The interesting question is how much one ought to appreciate such people. On the face of it, a woman like Geula Cohen, infused with ideological and value-driven fervor and willing to pay prices for it, deserves a great deal of admiration. She was a woman who did not give up her beliefs and her path, even when she found herself in splendid political, ideological, and social isolation. Even when her comrades and ideological leaders (such as Begin) abandoned the path and left her by the wayside, she insisted on standing there and sounding the warning. On the other hand, as I explained, all this was probably based on a naïve illusion about the possibility of values existing in a secularized world. There really is no such creature. It is hard for me to idealize lack of awareness and lack of understanding, or even foolishness (see column 62, especially my remarks there about the pious Yavetz). Religious-style activism without the religious intellectual infrastructure is a kind of naïveté that in my view does not merit great admiration.
Geula Cohen brought the ark out into the town square, as religious folk do in situations where there is nothing to do except appeal upward (drought, plague, or a leader’s serious illness). But when she had nothing to do, she brought the ark into the street without having an ‘Above’ to which she could appeal. She stood against the current and protested when the entire world, including her own friends, was against her. She was unwilling to compromise at all on her values. Pragmatism was utterly foreign to her. It seems to me she despised it. People on the left (at least the old-time left) tend to act pragmatically, another goat and another dunam. The right’s strength lies in rhetoric and declarations. Geula Cohen, in the manner of right-wing people, preferred to legislate laws and issue declarations (Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel). Focusing on phrases instead of deeds is also a kind of religious-style conduct. We will do our part, and show God that we care. He will do the rest. The declarative plane and rhetorical splendor replace results. As I said, her conduct was religious, but without the infrastructure needed for that. Is this worthy of admiration? Do such naïveté and inconsistency characterize great figures? I do not know. In practice, I do indeed feel deep admiration for her.
In fact, there are two possible ways to interpret the phenomenon of Geula Cohen: 1. Either she was an inconsistent atheist. 2. Or she was an unconscious believer. Deep down, she believed in God, and only because of that did she allow herself such unequivocal and decisive value discourse (without that there is no reasonable explanation for the value-laden and ideological fervor she expressed). If I am right, then her adherence to values was indeed connected to faith, even if she was not aware of it. I am inclined toward the second possibility, if only because of the principle of charity (see column 248), which instructs us to prefer the more generous interpretation. It is better to attribute lack of awareness to such a woman than inconsistency. The question is whether the principle of charity is a rule of courtesy (in which case it does not really claim anything about reality) or an interpretive principle (that is, whether this is in fact the more correct way to interpret people). These matters are of course also connected to the columns in which I dealt with false consciousness (see columns 203–4, 233, and others).
I think that people who feel within themselves a burning faith in values and ideology are worthy of admiration, even if naïveté and lack of awareness stand at the foundation of their method. A person who acts merely inadvertently is not worthy of admiration. But when a person decides and pays prices, and his lack of awareness lies deep on the theoretical plane—that does not detract from his worth. Many of us are not prepared to act decisively for our values, and she did so on a grand scale. Sometimes theoretical awareness and understanding of complexity even hinder decisive ideological action. Although I have already written in column 62 what I think about the myth of the pious Yavetz, which glorifies ignorance and lack of thought, at least on the human and value plane there is room for great appreciation of such people.
But as I explained there, in my opinion it is clear that it is not right to educate people toward ignorance and lack of awareness in order to achieve value-based behavior. I am opposed to a return to naïve modernism, especially since that is not the only possible response to postmodern deconstruction. I think that secular education today, even if it is very sophisticated, fundamentally educates people toward lack of awareness and lack of thought. They are preached at to be value-driven and moral, while the conceptual framework within which they operate does not really allow this on the theoretical plane. One simply does not enter that plane with them, so as not to run into problems. Holy lies (see column 21) and thought-dogmas exist in every society, and perhaps more in the secular one than in the religious. We have advanced beyond the modernist era, and even if there are no longer people like Geula Cohen today, I still think our situation is better because it is wiser and more self-aware. Unaware idealists deserve admiration, but I would not educate toward that. Geula Cohen was a quintessential product of her native landscape. Not for nothing did she long for Ben-Gurion, her bitter enemy, because she saw in him a man of her own generation. Ben-Gurion too wrote her a letter about her book, which describes her struggle and her fighting (among other things, against him), and said that the pen that wrote it was holy. They are both dinosaurs, and I place them both in our pantheon, but they belong to the past, and that is a good thing. The answers to the hard and genuine questions of our generation do not call upon us to return to the past, but to seek ways that answer the questions consciously—that is, ways that develop values and value discourse on a genuine basis (that is, belief in God).
And oops, back to the trilogy once again… J
Discussion
That is what I wrote.
One should remember that moral appreciation is not given to a person who acts as a mere “unwitting participant,” but only to one who acts מתוך מחויבות לצו, out of commitment to a command. Therefore it is really not far-fetched to demand that he also be aware of the command and its basis. But as for the conclusion, I agree. I wrote exactly what you wrote here.
Okay, I understand. I completely agree. And by the way, after the trilogy it is time for a post slaughtering psychology…
I highly recommend Haggai Segal’s column interviewing Geula a decade ago, in 2008. (Link at the end.) This is already a time of summation, and she sounds different there. Mention is made there, in passing or not so much in passing, of her pragmatic compromises after the withdrawal from Sinai. Really just one more goat and one more dunam. So did she become a leftist, or are these categories purist and Platonic?
Dear R. Michi,
There is much to discuss and reply to in these words of yours.
First, on the level of intellectual honesty, it seems to me that a polemic with proponents of atheist morality requires a deeper analysis of their doctrine as they themselves describe it (your words were a relatively simplistic summary of these arguments, and it is a pity that you did not follow your usual path of presenting an orderly doctrine, even of your disputants, before—and certainly when claiming to refute it).
But my main problem with your words is something that seems to me a basic logical fallacy.
Does religiosity necessarily entail morality?
One need not support Leibowitz’s radical position that these are categorically distinct concepts in order to see the anthropological situation in which indeed the religious are committed [and some of them are even enthusiastic] to the observance of the “commandments of religion.”
But are they more committed to “morality” in everything that lies outside what they identify as a “commandment”?
For example: are religious people more careful about honoring others (for example in the current political struggle, in their attitude toward the elites, etc.)?
Are they more careful about avoiding danger to human life on the roads? In practical concern for the deteriorating state of the universe? In the struggle for social justice (regardless of any particular model for achieving such justice), in arrogance and contempt toward others (and see the experiences of ba’alei teshuvah described again and again, and all the more so their attitude toward their secular parents, etc.)?
After all, many have already cried out about trampling underfoot explicit Torah commandments such as evil speech, lashon hara, and even honoring parents, because there is no “religious” act here in its narrow interpretation.
In other words—I do not see significant signs that the average religious person is more moral. Of course there are the usual slogans like “proper conduct precedes Torah” and “you shall do what is right and good,” etc. — (and certainly there are individuals for whom these are not empty slogans, but such people also exist among atheists).
On the contrary! At times it seems that precisely the “blanket of religiosity” fills the sense of worth, allowing the religious person to exempt himself more easily from more basic moral duties.
Thus, for example, the willingness among many religious people to cheat the state, and perhaps an even more disturbing phenomenon that I know deeply from broad experience in the third sector: religious nonprofits tend to delay payment of wages more easily than “secular” nonprofits. My (unproven) explanation is that they feel that since they are acting for the sake of Heaven, their goals are more important than the distress of the small salaried worker.
Another striking example is the treatment of victims of abuse and assault (and see the affair of the son of the Gerrer Rebbe that was published last night, and Litzman’s overall conduct, etc.),
Also regarding the motives of the religious person—it seems to me we would agree that most of them observe out of rote habit and because of social pressure, not because of identification [and consequently enthusiasm] with the moral values that stand
In short—there is no doubt that religiosity causes more religious behavior than secularity does, but in no way necessarily more moral behavior in what lies “outside” sociological religiosity (or even theological religiosity).
And perhaps this is also an answer regarding the religious matter. Perhaps her religiosity believed in an amorphous, merciful Creator not far from her mother’s belief. Perhaps this is what the Sages warned against: “Whoever says that the Holy One, blessed be He, overlooks [sin]…”
Udi, are you sure you read this column? It seems to me you did not.
By the way, I referred to the fourth notebook for a discussion of God and morality. This is not the place for it.
Even if we believe in God and use that to ground our obligations, we still do not escape the naturalistic fallacy. Even if God commanded, who says we have to do it? And if we assume that as an axiom, then we can also assume other assumptions that would obligate us to the same extent. I do agree, however, that this is a point with more theoretical value, since the masses will assume nothing except the duty to obey God (for only He knows everything).
A justification for a norm always begins from facts. But the facts are not enough, and one also needs a bridging assumption (which links the norm to the facts). God commanded is a fact, and therefore it is not enough to ground obligation. But the assumption one should obey God is reasonable (by the way, not necessarily because He knows everything).
By contrast, the obligation to do good to so-and-so has no basis whatsoever. Why should there be such an obligation? What is its source? In a materialist world there is no plausibility to speaking about obligations. Stones, anemones, and mice have no obligations. In addition, there is no law without a legislator.
A person can always declare that there is an obligation to obey every odd-numbered sentence uttered by a person whose ID number is divisible by seven, and thereby solve the naturalistic fallacy. But that is mere formalism. There is no sense in it. It is far more plausible that such a person is merely voicing his own thoughts and subjective feelings.
Does the rabbi think there is a difference between the proper attitude toward Geula Cohen and the proper attitude toward most of the pioneers? Seemingly they too acted מתוך תחושה של צו, out of a sense of command, for otherwise it would be hard to explain their lives in the Land of Israel, which really were accompanied by self-sacrifice.
That is, the attitude of Rav Kook toward those immigrants of the first aliyot—is it justified in the rabbi’s view?
It is indeed very similar. I disagree with him only on the question of whether there is a commandment here.
And why does the rabbi not accept that the assumption that one must not kill another person is reasonable? I also assume that the rabbi believes or holds that God commanded A and not B, so the plausibility is correspondingly weakened. (There are two assumptions here, each of which is only plausible: one must obey; the scope of the command or will includes the obligation of A. Instead of 80/100, there is only 64/100.) Does the rabbi not agree that it is reasonable, at least to the same extent, that there is an obligation not to kill another person as it is reasonable that there is an obligation to do A (to read the weekly Torah portion twice with the Aramaic translation once, to redeem a firstborn donkey, or to perform halitzah for a yevamah, for example), which, as stated, requires those two assumptions? I emphasize again that in my opinion, submission to God is more effective on the practical level.
In my opinion, Geula Cohen did indeed believe in God, just not in observance of the commandments. I remember that once she told in an interview that her mother would light the primus on Shabbat while her father was at prayer; she was very surprised and asked her mother to explain the matter. Her mother explained to her that it was more important that her father have hot food in honor of Shabbat than the prohibition against kindling fire… Also from her stories about the two meetings with the Rebbe, one can sense her esteem for him and belief in his power out of her world of faith. (There are videos on YouTube.)
With God’s help, 26 Kislev 5780
There are few atheists even among those who define themselves as ‘secular,’ and certainly among Jews of Middle Eastern communities there are very few ‘atheists.’ I have no information whether she in fact defined herself as ‘secular,’ and where she stood regarding observance of tradition.
Geula Cohen voiced her faith in God and her prayer to Him in her remarks at the ‘Women in Green’ march around the gates of the Temple Mount on the Ninth of Av 5772:
‘If I have a prayer today to the One enthroned on high—even if You are fed up, and even if You are tired of returning to save us from ourselves until we become worthy of doing so by the force of our own will—please, just as You compelled us with a mighty hand to leave Egypt—please compel our redemption upon us; and just as You compelled the Torah upon us at Sinai—hold the mountain over us, from which and to which all the roads that lead to the Jerusalem above and the Jerusalem below extend, the Temple Mount.’
(In the article: ‘Geula Cohen: We are here out of faith that one day we will gather on the Temple Mount,’ on the Arutz 7 website)
In her article ‘Pearls from Geula Cohen,” Sivan Rahav-Meir quotes several sayings of Geula Cohen that express her deep bond to the heritage of Judaism. For example:
Of all the pleasant sounds of music that I hear at weddings—the sound that is sweetest to my ears is דווקא the sound that rises from the breaking of the glass, in memory of the destruction of the Temple…
‘Behold, it is a people that shall dwell alone’—a blessing? a curse? If instead of others reminding you that you are a Jew, you remind yourself every morning that you are a Jew; if consciousness rather than compulsion determines your being—then the curse will turn into a blessing…
There is no greater theft than that by which the ministries of education robbed the students of Israel of a deep encounter with the spiritual and cultural treasures, and with the heroes of spirit and thought of our people—not only by hiding them, but also by mocking them…’
How meticulous she was in the laws I do not know, but it seems to me that ‘the treasures of spirit and thought of the Jewish people’ did not constitute in her eyes ‘excess fat’ that should be gotten rid of…
With illuminating Hanukkah blessings, S.T.
Paragraph 3, line 1
… If I have a prayer today to the One enthroned on high—even if You are fed up…
This is not at all a question of plausibility. The issue here is not how I know something, but whether there is anything to know. It is like asking you which there is more of: human kindness among people or water in the ocean? You will not be able to answer, not because you lack the necessary knowledge, but because there is no answer. In a materialist world without God, there are no values and no forbidden and permitted. It is not that we do not know; one cannot posit their existence. Exactly as in a state without a parliament, the question what the law is is not a question that is hard to answer because of lack of knowledge. In such a state there is no law. Therefore this is not a question of whether and how I know something—that is, of plausibility.
I wrote that I have no concrete information, but this was quite a strong impression I had of her. The quotations you bring do not point in any way to faith, but at most to religious feeling.
None of these examples expresses belief in God. Therefore they only strengthen my remarks from the column.
I will quote the rabbi’s words: “the assumption that one should obey God is reasonable.” From that sentence I understand that it is indeed a question of plausibility.
People do good and fight for moral principles because they sense in a deep intuition that this is the right thing to do, not because it is ‘pleasant for them.’ On the contrary, sometimes it is not pleasant at all, and is even difficult or agonizing, and nevertheless they will act according to their recognition and pay a heavy personal price for it. There is great courage in this choice, and it is worthy of appreciation because of that effort, despite the fact that behind it there is not the philosophical foundation you propose. About such a case we would say—contrary to your quotation from the Mussar movement—’there is a God in her heart.’ I know of (I wrote about her) a righteous gentile who risked her life and saved a Jewish child, ultimately paying with her life for it, and she did this according to her best understanding that this was the morally right act to do. She left the Catholic Church in full awareness (in light of what she saw around her in the Holocaust, and in light of the priest’s immodest behavior toward her), and in her understanding became a kind of atheist, and nevertheless this is what she did.
Hayuta, I could not have described better what I wrote in my column.
You asked: “The interesting question is to what extent one should appreciate such people.”
You also wrote this:
“As stated, her conduct was religious, but without the foundation necessary for it. Is that worthy of appreciation? Do such naivete and inconsistency characterize great personalities? I don’t know. In practice, I do feel deep appreciation toward her.”
And I am left wondering—A. what is the question at all? B. The fact that she is not aware of the philosophical structure you propose for linking morality to belief in God does not diminish the force of the aforementioned intuition. So the question returns—what, then, is the question?
The title made me think: Geula Cohen caused Michi impure thoughts… There is something problematic about that, no? Of course, all in humor. A little smile.
Hayuta, I explained all this in the column. It seems to me that you are conflating the initial supposition with the conclusion. My conclusion is that there is indeed something flawed here (because part of the appreciation for a moral act is the awareness and the commitment, and I explained the two kinds of awareness), and at the same time there is room for great appreciation.
It seems to me that this whole matter of strong emotional faith without observance of commandments (or strong national feeling and connection to roots that people connect directly to God)
is an indirect influence of certain currents of thought (starting from Chabad of the last decades, Rav Kook, and going back in time to the Maharal of Prague and certain currents in Kabbalah) that really emphasized the repair of Knesset Yisrael or of the Jewish nation as no less important than observance of commandments.
Regarding God and morality—indeed, theoretically only God can determine for us what is moral and what is not, and because of this the matter of atheists speaking about morality is indeed astonishing. On the other hand, this is only theoretical, because many tend to confuse morality with feelings—and that is what causes people like Yaron Yadan and various Hofesh sites and other anti-religious sites (quite apart from their arguments and their sometimes very poor quality) to invent concepts like: “the values of the secular sector,” “the secular identity,” “secular soul-searching,” “the pain of parents whose children became religious.”
There is an attempt here to invent some particular objective morality, strong and stable, that cannot and must not be challenged (and along the way to invent an imaginary sector called “secular people” in which there is agreement on all these principles). It seems to me that these people are confusing, as you noted, between morality, which can derive only from faith, and human feelings and things that matter to them subjectively.
And from a third side there is a somewhat different interesting claim that says: certainly if God existed He would never command such terrible acts (like destroying a city of idol worshippers, the prohibition against saving a gentile on Shabbat, agunot, and the like).
The question is whether that claim—which says, or perhaps testifies to, a certain belief that God “must” be good in modern terms—is not also, in some sense, faith.
With all due respect, it is not clear to me why specifically the deceased should arouse in M.A. “reflections” and questionings. Beyond that, I am not convinced that appreciation of the deceased should be made specifically on the “moral” plane.
As for the question of moral judgment—morality among people of Jewish origin who are not committed to God—is also an ideology, but so too among Jews committed to divine commandments. Now, when we are dealing with people of ideological standing, like the deceased, and when the deceased’s nationalist ideology is an ideology in every respect—the judging perspective need not, or even can, be specifically another ideology, not even some “moral” ideology; and from a Jewish point of view, the judging perspective should be only a halakhic one.
The question is therefore how to judge the deceased from the perspective of halakhah. In the case of the deceased, precisely because of her ideological standing and her political position, this judgment includes not only the narrow plane of how faithful she was to these or other concrete commandments and what significance arises from that, but also the broader plane of the results—the impact of the deceased as such (and those like her) on the overall standing of Judaism.
On the narrow plane, it seems to me that the assessment is fairly simple, and it is not positive. The deceased appears, quite simply, to have been an “apostate” with respect to many commandments. Assuming that the deceased did not have even minimal commitment to the commandments (and specifically as commandments commanded in the Torah!), then according to the lenient decisors on the issue of “who is not a Jew,” it is possible that the deceased left the category of “Jew” and was in fact an apostate to the whole Torah, that is, in the category of “not a Jew,” a gentile of Jewish origin, a Jew-origin gentile.
On the broader plane—it must be understood that the deceased had an openly nationalist ideology, one that in the best case places nationality as a central value and sees religion only as a cultural manifestation of nationality (and not the reverse—that Judaism is the central system and Jewish nationality is only a certain communal-social effect of it), and in the less good case aspires to distill nationality while exploiting religion, plundering religious symbols and concepts while emptying their authentic faith-content, and afterward through dilution and finally elimination of religion. In any case, this nationalism comes to replace Judaism. It seems to me that what is happening among the many apostates in religious Zionism illustrates the matter well (the apostates, by an overwhelming majority, associate themselves with the nationalist right and with nationalism as a substitute for religion, and almost never arrive at the social or political left, which is universalist in general, and certainly less particularist in terms of identity). This nationalism has created and is creating a destructive process against Judaism and against the Torah for more than the last 120 years, and that is a fact. In her nationalist preaching and actions, the deceased therefore took a real part in this destructive process and contributed to the shaping of Jews in a non-Jewish way, and from this perspective she is among those who “cause the many to sin,” at the very least, like many nationalist secularists (and also ideological non-nationalists).
For this reason it is not understood why there should be room for unusual “reflections” and questionings regarding the deceased, unless we assume that these things stem from a special sentiment, Zionist-nationalist or perhaps merely emotional—a sentiment that did not arise openly in M.A.’s words in his article.
At this point I want to say that I wrote my words only because “it is a commandment to publicize the wicked,” and to set those who err in their moral thoughts, noble though they may be, straight regarding their error.
At the core of the matter, I will note two points connected to two family figures that may have some significance for understanding the ideological ecosystem connected to the deceased:
1. The deceased’s son (today—Minister Hanegbi) was educated as a complete and declared atheist (from his own mouth, on several occasions). In his remarks on this subject in the past there was also often contempt toward a life of faith and commandments. There may be a connection between this and the deceased’s way of inculcating views in her son.
2. A sad story: one of the deceased’s brothers served for years as the director of “Midrashiyat Amalia” in Jerusalem, a girls’ seminary that in the past at least took in gifted girls from families that were “religious.” He was a kippah-wearing Jew, but according to the testimony of my wife—a student (an outstanding one) in the seminary—his Zionist-nationalist ideological fervor greatly exceeded his fervor and strictness in education for commandments, education that strove specifically for softened practical religiosity. At age 16, after a process of reflection, while still a student in the seminary, the student adopted a kind of Haredi outlook and behaved according to higher standards of halakhic observance. The director’s reaction was to persecute her and make her life miserable. He once expressed himself against her by saying that he would have preferred that she become secular rather than Haredi—literally so. The student’s clear impression was that the man’s religiosity was simply a distortion and a fraud. This too may indicate how religion was perceived among these people—and the deceased among them—as an apparatus in the service of nationalism. By the way, that brother of the deceased was very “successful” in his “work”: at a reunion held about eight years ago, when the graduates had reached age 50, it became clear that approximately 80% of the graduates live a lifestyle on the secular spectrum, as do many of the descendants of the rest. By contrast, all the graduates held thoroughly nationalist views, at times extreme.
I do not understand the side that would not appreciate her. Suppose she is inconsistent. Suppose she is also foolish. So what?! She is completely mistaken, but she is worthy of appreciation for her own efforts.
And perhaps we should accept a nuanced judgment: high appreciation for the deeds, and for the stubbornness along the way; and lack of appreciation for the failure to make an effort to formulate an orderly doctrine and to reflect on her positions.