Only the Servant of God Is Free: 5. On Secular Jewish Identity – “Our Nation Is a Nation Only Through Its Torahs” (Column 130)

With God’s help

I opened Column 126 by noting that Passover and the Exodus from Egypt contain two aspects that challenge the claim that we passed there from slavery to freedom. One aspect is the renewed subjugation we accepted at Mount Sinai to God, and that is what we dealt with in the four columns up to this point. The second aspect is the collective one. With the Exodus from Egypt the Jewish people were born, and now each of us is no longer alone. But “to be free is to be completely alone,” isn’t it? In the present column I will begin to touch on this aspect of the question and its implications. Since the column became too long, I split it, and the discussion will continue in the next column.

A preliminary answer

In light of what we have seen so far, the answer virtually suggests itself. Rav Kook would explain to us that the very fact of our being part of the collective enables us to act in accordance with our deepest and truest will. Deep in our hearts we very much want to belong to the collective, and its will is our will. A person cannot truly be free unless he also has national expression. Moreover, if I do not act within a collective framework, it is harder for me to realize my desires and values.

Truth be told, here I am actually more inclined to agree with this claim, since indeed part of human identity, at least nowadays, is national identity. The formation of the nation enables us to express another aspect of ourselves. True, it limits our individual dimension and does not allow us to act as we would wish were we living and acting in empty space. But who wants to live in empty space?![1] It seems to me that here his answer converges with mine: the limitations imposed on us by collective belonging do indeed impair our freedom, but precisely thereby they enable us to express our liberty. The constraints within which we act give meaning to the autonomous choices we make within them. They enable us to be free persons.

The difference between the previous question (commitment to the commandments) and this one is that with respect to commands I am willing to accept that my deepest desire is to obey them, but not that my deepest desires coincide with the commandments themselves (to redeem a firstborn donkey or not to eat pork). By contrast, in belonging to a collective there is only the first dimension. I want to belong to it because it is part of me and I am part of it. What about the values of the collective? If these are the values of the Torah and Jewish law, then we have returned to the previous question. If not, then there really will be a clash between my desire to belong to it and practical functioning within its framework. My assumption here is Saadia Gaon’s well-known statement that Our nation is a nation only through its Torahs (“our nation is a nation only through its Torahs”). The values of the Jewish collective are the values of the Torah (= Jewish law + morality). Other values are not Jewish values, even if in practice many Jews believe in them.

In fact, one can say even more than that. Belonging to the collective is merely another facet of the commitment to Torah and Jewish law itself. The Torah was given to the community, to the Jewish people, and not to a private individual. Therefore commitment to the Torah also entails belonging to the people that received it, and its realization takes place within that framework. It will now be clear that all the arguments I raised with respect to subjugation to Torah and commandments are relevant also to belonging to the collective. The collective limits freedom but precisely thereby enables liberty. In the absence of an externally imposed and limiting framework, there may be freedom but there is no liberty. The question that arises here is what this belonging obligates, and how far it may dictate our ways and thoughts. A related and equally important question is what I, as a private individual, do within this framework. Do I let it dictate my ways and thoughts, or do I shape them autonomously within it? It is here that our autonomy and liberty come to expression.

I have linked belonging to the collective to commitment to Torah and commandments. The assumption is that these two go together and are bound up with one another. This leads me directly to the question of Jewish identity, and how much freedom or liberty it allows, and to the second source I brought in Column 126, Amos Oz’s article, A Full Wagon and an Empty Wagon?, in All the Hopes – Thoughts on Israeli Identity.[2] Amos Oz essentially repeats Ari Elon’s approach and calls for a pluralistic Judaism, and a secular one as well. If this is possible (and it is not), it of course pulls the rug out from under the answer I gave here to the second question.

First, I will briefly describe the course of his remarks and his central argument. I hope the reader will forgive me for the long quotations. They are simply gems, and Amos Oz does this much better than I could have done. Still, after the praise, there is one very important and fundamental respect in which he is badly mistaken, and that is what will bring us back to our discussion of freedom and liberty.

Summary of the article

In his article, Amos Oz describes the ossification that halakhic Judaism has undergone in recent generations. According to him, it accumulates more and more binding norms and authoritative sources that may not be disputed, and that does not allow us, as members of it, to live and act freely. In his view, this is what prevents religious thought from grappling with events such as the Holocaust and with ever-renewed reality, in contrast to modern Hebrew literature, which is alive and vibrant and constitutes a worthy continuation of ancient Judaism, which was recalcitrant, resistant to rule and authority, creative, and innovative.

Readers who have already gotten to know me will surely understand that, ostensibly, the fellow is simply taking the words out of my mouth. And yet I think he is badly mistaken. Not necessarily in the critical conclusions, but in the method and in the philosophical and conceptual infrastructure underlying them. The important point is that when such criticism comes from me, as one committed to the system, that criticism is reasonable and acceptable. But criticism that comes from outside in such a context is utterly meaningless and baseless. I will explain this further below.

On the anarchic character of Judaism

Amos Oz opens his article with a beautiful description of the anarchic character of Judaism from time immemorial:

Jews have no pope. If a Jewish pope were ever to arise, everyone would come up, slap him on the shoulder, and say: Listen here, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but your grandfather and my uncle once did business together in Zhitomir, or in Marrakech, and so give me two minutes to explain to you once and for all what God really wants from us. To be sure, there are all kinds of pretenders, and there are those who follow them blindly, but throughout its history the Jewish people has not liked to obey. Ask Moses our teacher, ask the prophets. God Himself keeps complaining that the Jewish people is not disciplined but argues about everything; the people argues with Moses. Moses argues with God, even tenders his resignation. In the end Moses retracts his resignation—but only after negotiations, and only after God yields and accepts the main thrust of his demands (Exodus 32:32). Abraham haggles with God over Sodom like a used-car dealer, fifty righteous people, forty, thirty, and even hurls at God the piercing accusation Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice? (“Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?”; Genesis 18:25–33); and we have not heard that fire came down from heaven and devoured him for those dreadful words of heresy. The people quarreled with the prophets, the prophets quarreled with God, the kings quarreled with the people and with the prophets, Job railed against heaven. Heaven refused to admit that it had wronged Job, and nevertheless granted him personal compensation, and even in later generations there were Hasidic rabbis who put God on trial in a religious court.

Jewish culture has a certain anarchic core: it does not want discipline. It does not simply obey orders. It wants justice. A pursuer of she-asses and a shepherd upon whom the spirit has rested can rule Israel or compose the Psalms. A dresser of sycamore figs rises and prophesies. The shepherd of Kalba Savua’s flock, or some cobbler, or blacksmith, teaches Torah, expounds interpretations, and leaves his stamp on the day-to-day life of every Jew. And yet—always, or almost always—the question hovered around them: Who appointed you? How do we know you are the man? Perhaps you truly are great in Torah, but on the next street there lives another great man, and he disagrees with you and offers the opposite conclusion, and not infrequently Both these and those are the words of the living God (“these and those are the words of the living God”). Usually the question of interpretive authority was settled by some sort of partial consensus, not unanimously. The history of Jewish culture over the last thousands of years is a chain of bitter disputes, including ugly disputes drenched in passion, and fruitful disputes as well. Usually there was no formal, authoritative mechanism of decision; more often than not, rabbi so-and-so was greater than his colleague simply because he was considered greater than his colleague, and that was all.

Jewish culture at its best is a culture of give-and-take, of negotiation, of seeing things this way and that, of the sharp force of persuasion, of dispute “for the sake of Heaven,” of quarrel for the sake of May he magnify the Torah and make it glorious (“to magnify and glorify Torah”), of arguing that the opposite is more plausible, and also of intense passions disguising themselves as disputes “for the sake of Heaven.” This is a spiritual foundation that fits well with the idea of democracy as polyphony—a choir of different voices orchestrated by a system of agreed rules. Lights and not light. Beliefs and opinions and not belief and opinion. True, there were and are in Jewish culture certain “enclaves” of blind obedience. Those enclaves are, in my view, a deviation from the tradition, even when they pretend to be the revelation of the tradition. For all the differences between the Lithuanian rabbi who rules under a kippah and the messiah from Lubavitch, and between both of them and the saint from the town of Netivot, for example, all three create around themselves a papal obedience, and those subordinate to them accept discipline. Blind obedience cannot be moral. We will do and we will hear means: we shall do, on condition that we hear. For thousands of years there has not been a single act that all Jews as one agreed to see as a miracle or a wonder. There are always dissenters, doubters, and heretics. Opposite almost every authority there appears a counter-authority. Only a few individuals existed whose authority was accepted without objection by their contemporaries and by the generations after them. In the end, the “source of authority” in Jewish culture is the willingness of the people—or of part of it—to accept the teacher, or the halakhic decisor, or the miracle-working righteous man, or the guide, as a source of authority. Even the Great Eagle became a great eagle by virtue of being accepted in the heart of the people and not by virtue of being crowned by a handful of cardinals. The hierarchy is voluntary. In this respect, Jewish culture has a deep and unmistakable democratic streak; and it is worth recalling this especially in days when we have among us all kinds of sages for whom the actual contradiction between the authority of Jewish law and the authority of elected government is not enough, and they portray the spirit of democracy as a threat to Judaism, or the spirit of Judaism as a threat to democracy.

This is a wonderful description, and essentially a factual rather than an evaluative one, with most of which I fully agree. But below I will argue that these things have a background that completely reverses the entire picture.

The big bang and the parable of the room and the furniture

The central point in the article is the parable Amos Oz brings later on (p. 45):

A spiritual and emotional bunker

The world of Jewish law, like the universe itself, begins with a “big bang”—the giving of the Torah, the revelation at Mount Sinai. Since then and until today, or since then until just the other day, Jewish culture has been a culture of expanding ripples, of interpretations, layer upon layer. But the farther one gets from the giving of the Torah, the interpretive space narrows and closes in because it is more and more densely populated. The space keeps shrinking, because each generation adds, and no generation is permitted to subtract, and nothing may be put away. The house fills with furniture, the furniture fills with objects, there is no way out, and very soon there will be no way in either, because there is no room.

In the world of Jewish law, scholarly mastery, punctilious devotion, sharpness, or fervor of heart grow ever stronger, while the space for creativity closes in and becomes blocked. Self-regard too keeps shrinking, for If the earlier authorities were like human beings, then we are like donkeys (“if the early authorities were like human beings, we are like donkeys”): the farther one gets from the revelation at Mount Sinai, the Judaism of Jewish law preserves more and more and creates less and less. At most—Jephthah in his generation is like Samuel in his generation (“Jephthah in his generation is as Samuel in his generation”). And certainly the later authorities are not permitted to alter the words of the earlier ones. Indeed, different spiritual clocks showed different hours in Sephardic Judaism and Ashkenazic Judaism, in Eastern Europe and in Salonika and Baghdad and Yemen—but all the clocks showed that the revelation at Mount Sinai keeps getting wrapped in a pillar-cloud of interpretive texts upon interpretive texts. Hence the feeling of suffocation.

The parable of the room created in a big bang at Sinai and since then gradually filling up indeed describes the feeling of many. Apparently our freedom and ability to maneuver really do keep shrinking. Below I will use this parable to examine Amos Oz’s arguments.

He then describes the passive responses of Jewish law and Jewish thought to all the developments within and outside the Jewish people in recent generations, and here I fully agree. But contrary to what he says, this is not a necessary product of the initial description (the bang and the filling of the space). On the contrary: as I will argue below, only filling the space could have made something else possible, and unfortunately that really does not happen. But before I get into that, let us see what alternative Oz himself proposes.

Modern Hebrew literature

The alternative Jewish avant-garde Amos Oz proposes is, surprisingly enough, modern Hebrew literature:

Whether in the face of the Nazis or, mutatis mutandis, in the face of the Zionists, halakhic Judaism, for the most part, was not capable of taking a religious stand. It is precisely in modern Hebrew literature that one can find deep religious stances in the face of the slaughter of the Jewish people and in the face of the establishment of the state. In effect, several writers and poets took upon themselves what the authorities of Jewish law fled from. One could almost speak of the separation of religion—not, no, not the separation of religion from the state, but the separation of religion from the religious:

The striking fact is that theological confrontation did not disappear, but largely passed from the hands of those who observe the commandments into the hands of the most creative force in the Jewish people in recent generations—modern Hebrew literature, in poetry, prose, and thought. These did not “leave God alone”; rather, they insisted on tugging at His sleeve, probing some of His intentions, or putting Him on trial. Writers, most of whom saw themselves as secular, did not cease to engage in theological anguish. A whole line of creators, from Bialik and Berdyczewski and Agnon through Uri Zvi Greenberg to Yizhar and Dan Pagis and Amichai and others, write—in one way or another—about the hiding of the divine countenance (“the hiding of the divine face”). It seems that in the last hundred years most of the dynamic and creative manifestations in Jewish culture have taken place outside the kingdom of Jewish law, though in dialectical relation to it, or in a relation that shatters it. But even a shattering relation is still a relation, and at times there is more intimacy in it than in the relation of museum curators polishing the glass panes of their locked display cases. Heresy too is part of Jewish culture. Unbelief too, railing against heaven too. All these are distinctly religious stances.

What replaces traditional and rabbinic Judaism is sovereign Judaism in the style of Amos Oz. Modern Hebrew literature, in his view, is the only thing that stands before the events and before their Author with characteristic Jewish courage, saturated with religious pathos (contrary to what one would expect from creators most of whom are secular). It continues the sacred Jewish rebellion, and therefore it alone offers a real grappling with the historical and cultural events through which we are passing.

The boundaries of Jewish pluralism: secular Jewish identity

His conclusion is that the ranks must be opened—or rather, that they have always stood open:

What is included in “Jewish culture”? Everything the Jewish people has, everything that has accumulated within it over the generations, what was born inside and what was absorbed from outside and became at home. What is practiced and what used to be practiced, what is accepted by everyone and what is accepted only by some. What is accepted today and what was accepted in earlier generations. What is in Hebrew and what is in other languages. What is written and what circulates outside the written texts. Perhaps also certain patterns of conduct and modes of response tied to a shared memory: perhaps a distinctive hue of humor and cleverness, a marked tendency toward criticalness, self-irony, self-pity, and also self-righteousness, pragmatism wrapped in fantasy, ecstasy and skepticism, euphoria accompanied by foreboding, melancholic gaiety, and also a certain suspicion toward any authority, along with some measure of resistance to injustice—though of course these traits are not stamped into every individual, and their presence in the future is not guaranteed. There are sensitivities that are not hard to identify, but are very hard to fix in definitions. Some of those sensitivities are now disappearing among us. In the State of Israel, a bitter conflict is raging between the Jews of the “Shulchan Arukh” in their various shades and those who do not live according to Jewish law. The attitude toward the state is the most immediate and conspicuous issue in this conflict, but it is not the main issue.

The Judaism Amos Oz proposes is the free use of the “room” (= the Jewish space) and arranging different pieces of furniture according to our taste. Taking out what does not suit us and bringing in what does. Arranging the furniture in various ways and not ruling out other arrangements. That is Amos Oz’s position up to this point. I will now explain where, in my opinion, he is mistaken and where he is right, and this will take us back, inevitably, to the discussion of freedom and liberty.

Another look at the furniture parable

Amos Oz is essentially proposing that we see Judaism as a room without any binding furniture. Everything is left to our choice. We can bring furniture in and out as we see fit, and arrange the room as our heart desires. But then the question is: what remains as the defining feature of Judaism? What is the framework within which this game is being played? You may say: the size and shape of the room, which are given to us in advance? But that too is a limitation, and what holiness is there in it? Why can we not demolish the room and build another room, of a different shape or size? If so, what nevertheless remains as the system of rules within which the game proposed by Amos Oz is played?

Think of someone who poses you a riddle: reach the number 100 using the four arithmetic operations, while using only the numbers 1, 8, 20, and 2, each one exactly once. Such a riddle may have several solutions, and each person, according to his creativity, can find them (at the moment I see only one). What will happen if we remove the restriction that each number be used only once? The number of solutions will of course grow enormously. And what if we do not define the permissible arithmetic operations at all, and everyone may choose them as he wishes? The number of solutions becomes infinite and the riddle is emptied of meaning. And what if we omit even the numbers that may be used and leave that too to the solver’s choice? Then we have completely finished off the whole matter. Think of the following “naked” riddle: reach the number 100. That is all. When there are no constraints, the riddle has no meaning, and certainly creativity will not appear there either. The differences between solvers and solutions lose their meaning.

By the same token, a religious-cultural system that is not defined within some set of rules or framework cannot claim for itself a specific name (Judaism, Christianity, or anything else). If you can do whatever you want with all the furniture in the room, I do not see in what sense you are Jewish. By this definition, the Eskimo too is Jewish, except that he replaced all the furniture (and the room too, with an igloo). A Hindu too is a Jew who gave up a different part of the rules and adopted others. This is an empty definition of Judaism, and in fact of any concept whatsoever. Even definitional freedom must live within some framework that defines it. In my terminology, this is of course liberty and not freedom. There is no free definition of things, though there certainly is a definition possessed of liberty (flexibility within a framework).

It is worth noticing that Amos Oz explains to us what one may remove or bring in and what one may give up, but he does not even hint at what must remain and what must occur because of the rules. Is there anything rigid that does not depend on his personal taste, or that of each of us? How can one offer so foolish a “definition” as an alternative?

Amos Oz is conflating freedom with liberty. He is calling for freedom, that is, the removal of constraints, whereas the only relevant call possible is for liberty within constraints.

I, as one committed to Jewish law, join many of his criticisms of ossification, but I do so from within. I accept the rules and propose a different interpretation of some of them from the accepted one. There is a framework that I too do not replace and cannot replace. This framework sets the constraints and the rules of the game. Within it the game is played, and the degree of liberty of each of us is measured. Whoever does not accept the dictates of right and wrong, good and evil, that were given by God and established the Jewish framework, cannot play this game. He is in fact not playing any game. He lives in Switzerland, and his decisions are nothing but lottery or responsiveness to impulses, and therefore of course devoid of value and meaning.

Amos Oz of course does not live in a vacuum, nor does he call for life in a vacuum. He is in favor of morality, use and creation in the Hebrew language, relation to our sources and our culture (together with the surrounding culture, leaving and bringing in as seems fit). But all these constitute a framework that he himself decided upon. Someone else can think differently. In the discussion of Ari Elon in the previous columns, we saw that if a person himself legislates the rules for himself—he is always right and righteous. That is not liberty but freedom, and therefore it is meaningless.

Secular Jewish culture/identity[3]

The conclusion that emerges from my remarks is that “secular Jewish culture” is an empty expression. There are, of course, various characteristics of the Jewish people and of its conduct. They are described with great talent in the words of Amos Oz quoted above. The anarchy, the rebellion, the unwillingness to accept authority, the constant argument, the factionalism, the language, the connection to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and so on. But all these are de facto characteristics, simple facts. The question is which of them is, in Amos Oz’s eyes, a binding value. Every people has its own characteristics, and that includes the Jewish people. The characteristics may be good or bad, pleasant or less pleasant, but I do not see any value in belonging to a people as such. Such belonging is a fact. A person can have Belgian or Moroccan characteristics, and if those are his characteristics, then those are his characteristics. The question is whether I have complaints against someone who denies them or proposes to replace them. These are factual characteristics, not evaluative ones. It is like being the son of my father or mother. That is not a value but a fact of life. Amos Oz accuses Judaism of deviating from its original characteristics. And is that wrong? Is he against change? If he argues by force of some evaluative claim, the question is what its basis is. A divine command in which he does not believe? So if my ancestors thought or behaved that way, why must I do so too? It seems that in this dispute it is actually Amos Oz who is the greater conservative.

It is important to note that the term “Jewish identity” serves us in two different senses: among the religious it denotes a binding system of values. It is important and proper to be such, and one may not deviate from this. Whoever does not do so is not in order. By contrast, among the secular identity is a collection of national characteristics. A set of facts. That is what we are, and that’s it. So what? Why is it important? What is there to discuss about it? Am I forbidden to deviate from the national character? Why is it so important to discuss it and belong to it? What is the meaning of this obsessive preoccupation with neutral facts? If I want to be Belgian and conduct myself according to Belgian lines of character, what is wrong with that?

Here, in effect, we return by the back door to the distinction between an asset and a value. Jewish culture in its secular sense is at most an asset, or a banal and contingent factual characteristic. Therefore I do not see how one can make claims or criticize someone in its name. In whose name does Amos Oz come and preach to me to behave differently? In the name of Judaism? Is there an obligation in Judaism to be argumentative? Why is this obligation holier than the obligation to recite Grace after Meals or observe the Sabbath, which he does not keep? What is its source? If the average Jewish height were 1.80 meters, would he demand that we act to make the shorter among us taller? After all, that too would be a fact characterizing Jews, and therefore part of Judaism. If Amos Oz chooses furniture for the room according to his wish, then I do so as well, and I do not see on what basis he criticizes me. Like Ari Elon, he too implicitly assumes an objective, binding system or yardstick, one that is not the result of our choices. He criticizes me on its basis, without admitting its very existence. But in the absence of an agreed framework there is no possibility of discourse. Amos Oz’s dialogue is nothing but a monologue with himself and those like him.

So far I have dealt with the nature of these characteristics (value or fact). I now turn to discuss their distinctiveness. Which of all these characteristics is, in Amos Oz’s eyes, a criterion for defining Judaism? Does he think that someone who is not argumentative is not Jewish? Does someone who accepts authority cease to be such? There are plenty of non-Jews like that. So how can one see in this framework a definition of Judaism?! When Amos Oz and his friends speak about Jewish identity and attach it to military service, obedience to the law, payment of taxes, moral conduct, use of the Hebrew language, study of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), or argumentativeness, I wonder why he thinks all these are criteria for Judaism. All these characterize complete non-Jews as well. Druze are loyal citizens of the state, speak Hebrew, pay taxes, and conduct themselves morally. So why are they not Jews? If there is an argumentative Indonesian who does not accept authority (and is moral too), is he, in Amos Oz’s eyes, a Jew? Christians study the Hebrew Bible more than we do, so are they Jews too? Jews abroad do not speak Hebrew, so in his opinion are they not Jews? And even if by his definition they are indeed not Jews, why is that important? Does it have any evaluative significance? Does he have any claim against them?

Of course, the Druze and the Indonesian themselves do not define themselves as Jews, whereas the Jew abroad does define himself as Jewish. So what? In Amos Oz’s eyes those Indonesians are Jews. On his view, in fact there are no definitions, and each person takes shelter under whichever word he finds dear. But I am asking about the meaning of the concept, not about the accidental uses different people make of it. I am asking by virtue of what Amos Oz comes with demands and complaints against me if I chose to shelter under a different word or under the same word with a different definition. Is the use of a word at all a basis for evaluative criticism? At most there is here a linguistic criticism.

Even the connection to the Hebrew Bible and Hebrew are not unique characteristics. There are a great many non-Jews who are connected to the Hebrew Bible far more than Jews are (Christians are much more connected to it). Druze and Arab citizens of Israel speak Hebrew, and some of them create in Hebrew as well. Druze and Bedouin serve in the army. So are all these Jews too? And if they were not such, would Amos Oz attack them for it? Even the willingness to pay prices and make revolutions, which is indeed a fairly distinctively Jewish characteristic, is still only a factual characteristic (albeit one with evaluative significance). The fact that my ancestors were such does not mean that I too should be such any more than anyone else. If a revolution must be made, the demand is addressed to every person as such. Some meet it and some do not, but I do not see here any demand by virtue of my Judaism or his. If there is a people that is scrupulous about giving charity, does charity define its essence? This is a demand relevant to every moral person. Perhaps the clustering of these characteristics among us is more pronounced. But that is merely a statistical fact. And one certainly cannot demand that we be that way simply because these are the factual characteristics of Jews. That is ridiculous.

When a religious Jew claims against the secular person that he is not Jewish, he is making an evaluative claim. On that view, every Jew must behave in a certain way, and one who deviates from it betrays his values and his obligation. But when the secular person claims against his religious counterpart that he is not Jewish, he is making a merely factual claim. There is a fundamental asymmetry in the discourse here, and for some reason secular people, even the intelligent among them, do not understand this.

On racism and subjectivity

Amos Oz’s evaluative vacuum implicitly assumes a racist and/or circular criterion for Judaism: in his eyes a Jew is one who was born to a Jewish mother, since on his view Judaism has no other essential and binding evaluative characteristic. No wonder he attaches Judaism to a collection of factual characteristics, and these are of course nothing but the genetic inheritance of the Jewish mother and the cultural inheritance of our religion and national character. One must understand that the Judaism of Jewish law also sees Jewishness in this ethnic “racist” way. Except that this is not a definition of Judaism but of a Jew. Judaism is commitment to Torah and Jewish law, except that this task is imposed upon the children of a Jewish mother. In Amos Oz’s case the definition is purely racist, without any cultural or evaluative dimension.

To escape this, many of Amos Oz’s fellow-travelers in opinion think that whoever declares himself a Jew is a Jew, regardless of his values and his commitment to Jewish law and the Torah. Here we are already in the realms of circularity. The concept “Jew” has no concrete content whatsoever. It is the fruit of the deeds of Jews. And who are Jews? Those whose deeds are Jewish. One little goat, one little goat.

This is, of course, the framework of secular Judaism, either racist or circular. Within it there is Amos Oz’s own subjective Judaism: a Jew is one who behaves as Amos Oz wants. Preferably moral, using Hebrew, and also possessing a Jewish character (provided he is not a Druze who does all these things too). A bundle of facts or universal values.

Facts or universal values as Judaism: Our nation is a nation only through its Torahs:

In fact, when Amos Oz speaks of “secular Judaism,” this is an empty concept, and by virtue of it he attacks others who do not behave as he (Amos Oz) thinks they should. Not, God forbid, some specific content—only technical characteristics, such as argumentativeness, refusal to accept authority, factionalism, democraticness, and so forth, or universal values. Even if all these are values in his eyes, their validity is unrelated to their Jewish source and to his Judaism or mine. He demands this of every human being, and hangs it on Judaism.

One can hear in our circles, at every turn, ridiculous statements like “I am Jewish because my parents were murdered in the Holocaust” (Hitler as a criterion for who is a Jew), “I am Jewish because I speak Hebrew,” “my Judaism is democracy and human dignity,” “my Judaism is morality and concern for the weak,” “loyalty to the State of Israel and its laws,” and so on and so forth. All these tiring and threadbare inanities attach universal values, which are required of every human being in the world (or of every Israeli), specifically to Judaism. These hollow statements point clearly to the Jewish vacuum among secular people.

The conclusion is that there is no such thing as “secular Judaism.” There is a Jew (according to the religious definition) who is secular (according to his conduct), but there is no secular Judaism. This is truly an infantile invention, and every time I am amazed anew by how much intellectual effort smart people invest in trying to pour content into it without a shred of success. Go to “Elul” and other pluralistic study houses or secular yeshivot, and you can get an impression of the vacuum that reigns there. You will not find there a single Jewish value that is not a universal value. What you will find is a repeated conflation of values with facts (that is, treating factual characteristics as values), and also treating everything on earth as Judaism (especially the pathetic treatment of universal values as Judaism).

Of this Saadia Gaon already said: Our nation is a nation only through its Torahs. Indeed, every word is weighty.

A note on the status of universal values in Judaism

It is important to understand that I do not mean here to say that universal values are not binding from the standpoint of God’s will and the Torah. Of course they are. But in my view they bind all human beings (including the seven Noahide commandments). Therefore using them as a definition of Judaism is a logical error. It is like defining a Jew as one who has two legs or at least one kidney and is without a tail (contrary to our image in Der Stürmer). Basing a definition on characteristics that do not distinguish the defined concept is a logical fallacy. One can perhaps define secular Judaism as a collection of factual characteristics that distinguish Jews (if indeed there are any), but that would be a definition devoid of evaluative content. At most one would have here an academic description of Judaism or of Jews, and no more. Universal values of course bind the Jew as well, but that is because they bind all human beings. Therefore these values cannot form part of his definition as a Jew.

If I sum up: secular Judaism is a collection of factual characteristics. On that there is principled agreement, but it has no significance. Religious Judaism is a collection of binding values (mainly Jewish law). But that is only in the eyes of those who believe in it, of course, and therefore there is no agreement on it. Universal values, by contrast, do not define Judaism but humanity (of which Judaism is, of course, a part).

On the significance of the range of possibilities

Amos Oz speaks of many Judaisms and of pluralism within Judaism. But those possibilities are defined as a variety within a shared overarching framework. Without the framework, the variety has no meaning. A kid’s good-heartedness and a cloud’s color are not two possibilities within the variety of any group, because there is no connection between them. To speak of variety, one must define a framework for the discussion. That is why different, varied, and creative solutions to the mathematical riddle I presented above are meaningful, but in the absence of the constraints (the arithmetic operations, the numbers), all that vast variety that arises has no meaning. There is no correct and incorrect solution there, because all the possibilities are equivalent and therefore also devoid of taste and value. This is in fact the condition of freedom in Switzerland, where freedom emasculates the value of the voting choices.

The conclusion is that only a rigid and binding framework makes possible within it different forms of conduct. Within such a framework, one can have argument between different paths, criticisms, polemics, rebellions, reforms, and the like. All these must take place within the framework, and Amos Oz points to no such framework, only to different possibilities. This is similar to the example of the kid’s good-heartedness and the cloud’s color above. He complains about the absence of liberty and proposes freedom.

Therefore similar criticism of ossification in Judaism when it comes from me has meaning (in my opinion), because it is made within the framework and grounds itself in the tools of Jewish law and halakhic interpretation. But Amos Oz’s criticism is empty of content and has no meaning. It is similar to a criticism that I might level against Shinto, to the effect that they do not perform their rites correctly. How can it be that they do not recognize the (fictional) Popko sect that advocates standing on one leg every day at 11:00 for about five minutes? After all, this expresses Shintoism much better (to which I am of course not committed, and which has no definition at all from my point of view). The fact that Amos Oz is an ethnic Jew, and that genetics and cultural sources ensured that he has some factual characteristics similar to mine, does not enable him to criticize me. He can of course criticize (there is democracy), but not in the name of Judaism. This is not a proposal for a different Judaism but a proposal for something else, which is not really something else, because it is not proposed within any framework but in a vacuum.

Modern Hebrew literature

Amos Oz claims that modern Hebrew (and secular) literature is the substitute for the rabbinic failure to grapple. But that is nonsense, of course. What is there for a secular writer to grapple with regarding the Holocaust? If he does not believe in God, then he has no question. So what is he supposed to grapple with? Human evil? With that we all need to grapple. That is not a substitute for the religious grappling with God’s conduct during the Holocaust. The religiose aroma Amos Oz speaks of is nothing but pathos stemming from remnants of religious thought and terminology, nothing more. A secular writer who summons God to a religious court, as Amos Oz describes, is a pitiful joke and not grappling. Such a summons can be impressive when it comes from the mouth of a rabbi or Hasidic rebbe who is committed to Torah and believes in God. To summon to a religious court the holy vacuum in which you do not believe is perhaps literary creation, or in my view mainly a tasteless joke. There is certainly no grappling here with anything.

No secular writer has created any grappling with even the slightest question about the Holocaust. Not only because their abilities do not surpass those of the rabbis (usually they are inferior), but mainly because one cannot grapple with questions that do not trouble him. Just as I have not grappled with the problems facing the ordinary Shinto believer. Again and again Amos Oz does not understand that in the absence of a framework there is no grappling. It is empty verbiage. Grappling is always within a framework, just as a riddle is always within a framework of constraints. Grappling without a framework is like a riddle without constraints. When I, as a believing Jew, stand before the Holocaust, I am required to give myself an accounting of God’s conduct. It does not fit with my beliefs about Him. Either I find an answer or I do not (I in fact do offer one, at least something partial). But one who does not believe in God is not supposed to grapple with His conduct.

This reminds me of the well-known joke about a couple of Holocaust survivors who abandoned their religious faith. One day the wife, Yocheved, hears her dear husband Shmerl railing and blaspheming against heaven. She is shocked and scolds him for it. The surprised Shmerl reminds her that in fact they have not believed in Him for quite a few years already. Then Yocheved says to him: “Yes, but the God in whom I do not believe is compassionate, gracious, and slow to anger—compassionate, gracious, and slow to anger. How can you revile Him in such a way?!” That woman, of course, implicitly believes in God, or is merely chattering out of remnants of her earlier faith that are not rational. It may be that the secular “grappling” described by Amos Oz is mere chatter, and it may be that it expresses implicit faith.

Secular people are angry at God for various reasons, and that anger can be an expression of a faith they deny. But I have already written several times that I do not deal with hidden motives and reasons, only with the arguments presented before me. If Amos Oz and his fellow writers are hidden believers—good for them. But his arguments about their grappling with the Holocaust are nonsense. Without a framework there is no discourse, and without faith there is no grappling with faith.

Summary

As I already mentioned, in my opinion Amos Oz is right in most of his criticisms. Judaism has indeed become overly ossified and frozen in place. But this is not a necessary derivative of filling the room with furniture. As I will show in the next column, filling the room precisely opens up a wider range of possibilities that do not exist for the free and flexible people who choose furniture as they wish. There are Jews who conduct themselves not as free persons, and take the accepted interpretations as binding and perhaps exclusive. In their eyes that is what defines Judaism. Amos Oz thinks this is a necessary result of fidelity to Jewish law because he does not distinguish between absence of freedom and absence of liberty. For me, this is a conception of subjugation to the framework, and that is the target of my criticism. But the very existence of the framework imposed upon me not only does not contradict liberty; it is a condition for conduct as free persons. Unlike him, I do not point to Jewish character as the basis for criticism, but offer halakhic and meta-halakhic considerations to justify it within Jewish law. Therefore my criticism proposes a different Jewish shade, whereas his, even if there is great similarity, is utterly devoid of meaning in the Jewish context.

Beyond this, he assumes that filling the room with furniture and the unwillingness to give it up necessarily entail absence of liberty and ossification. Just like Ari Elon, he too conflates freedom with liberty. It is precisely the constraints, the room and the furniture, that create the possibility of being a free person, something that total freedom of the kind he proposes does not allow. I share his criticism but strongly oppose its philosophical and conceptual infrastructure. Amos Oz conflates freedom with liberty, and in doing so throws the baby out with the bathwater. A criticism like his can, and in fact must, arise only from within. When it comes from outside, it has no meaning whatsoever.

In my article, Is Jewish law pluralistic (and I elaborated further in an unpublished article), I explained that there are two kinds of conservatism: literalist conservatism is subjugation to existing norms. Midrashic conservatism is a creative interpretation of those norms while preserving commitment to them. Beyond these two there is also heresy, which is in fact not committed at all to the norms under discussion. The midrashic conservative is a free person, since he raises criticism and offers interpretation regarding the principles that must be preserved. The literalist conservative lets the framework dictate the state of affairs and does not himself take part in that. Amos Oz belongs, in this context, to the third category, heresy, which empties his criticism of content. This is the criticism of one who is free, not of one who is at liberty.

[1] In paraphrase of a well-known quip: the institution of marriage is indeed a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?!

[2] The article can also be seen here. In a footnote in the above-mentioned column I noted that the first time I presented the core of the ideas brought here was in a lecture as part of “Sogrim Shavua BaMidbar” (see there), when I was asked to replace Amos Oz, who could not attend. I saw this as an opportunity to tell him (through the audience) at least part of what was on my mind regarding what he wrote in the above article. There are quite a few additional matters on which I disagree with him (in the article and in general), far beyond what I will write here.

[3] See on this at length in my article in Akdamot 2014, Suddenly a Person Gets Up in the Morning and Feels That He Is a Nation, and in my response in Nekuda here and also in Column 14 here on the site.