Another Look at the Predicament of Secularism: How Do You Deal with an Empty Wagon? (Column 425)
In the last two columns I touched, in various ways, on secular values and the secular predicament that accompanies them. Here I wish to conclude this trilogy, that is, to address directly the predicament, its meaning, and its implications. I’ll preface by noting that I’ve already addressed most of these points in the past; my aim here is mainly to focus and sharpen them.
The context
In column 423 on Rabin’s assassination I commented on the secular vacuum that creates an acute need for a rebbe and a path-setter—a need that leads people to treat a redhead with no heritage as if he were a world-class thinker and a leader of historic stature, and to wail and mourn his death as if their grandpa or their rebbe had been murdered. In column 424 I discussed the value of life, which is also being devalued in secular culture. One can still hear pathetic verbiage about the “sanctity of life,” but in my estimation this is a leftover from religious discourse (see, for example, in the talkback here and in my response), and it’s no wonder that it fades with time. Gradually it’s being replaced by the value of autonomy, and in fact by the dominant value (soon the only one) of a value-vacuum and the absence of sacred principles beyond bare life and the right to do whatever you feel like (what the existentialists, in their confused parlance, call “existence precedes essence”).
Against this backdrop I recalled that a few days ago I saw an article by a man named Rami Livni (who, as I noticed, tends to write in Haaretz columns about secular Judaism), in which he argues, with good taste and sense, that Judaism needs secularism. The article’s headline is “Only the secular will continue Judaism,” but I assume the site provided the headline rather than the author (as is customary). Be that as it may, I presume I needn’t describe to you what’s written there. All these columns are predictable, banal clones of one another, and needless to say they’re all vanity and a striving after wind. Sometimes they point to problems (some real) in religious and traditional Judaism; in most cases they explain what secular Judaism is and leave it to the fevered imagination of the reader to understand why secular Judaism is the sure prescription for an authentic and productive continuation of Judaism.
Is there criticism here? The “empty wagon” predicament
The predicament created by the secular vacuum (an empty wagon) is understandable. It’s hard to live without anything worth dying for. Rotblit wrote it and Ariel Zilber sang it—and eventually decided to take a step to improve the situation. It’s difficult when you have no binding values, no rebbes (why do rebbes sprout like mushrooms after rain in the Hasidic world?), no heritage, no national and cultural identity, and the like (see here, here, here, and here, and in the series of columns 336 and on). In such a situation nothing is supposed to matter to you. I’ve already clarified in the past that I claim this on two levels: (A) If there are secular values, there’s nothing Jewish about them. They are universal. So even if there are secular values, a secular Jewish identity is certainly not present here (see the links in the parentheses above). (B) The existence of such values in a secular world is inconsistent, since in fact there cannot be values in a world devoid of God (see my book The First Being, Fourth Conversation, part C). This is the emptiness of analyticity and the emptiness of secularism that emerges from it and in turn reproduces it.
I have made clear more than once that I am making a philosophical claim here, not an empirical-factual one. There are many secular people who are wonderful human beings—by my impression, no fewer in number and quality than among the religious. My claim is that they are inconsistent. Their wagon is empty in the philosophical sense, not necessarily in the human sense. In other words, secular morality exists as a phenomenon on the psychological plane (values are embedded in them and they act accordingly) but not on the philosophical plane (they cannot infer the values and decide to be committed to them). At most there is here an implicit faith (that is, someone who is committed to values is a covert believer, even if he himself is unaware of it; see columns 191 and 194).
By the way, these words of mine are not a critique of secularism but a description of it and of what emerges from it and is reflected through it. This is indeed the picture that follows from a secular world. I certainly do not expect that someone suffering from such a predicament will repent because in the religious world he will find values and rebbes (come spend Shabbat with us). My critique of the religious world is also well known in certain respects regarding adherence to values and leaders solely out of psychological need (opium for the masses, as Marx rightly said). If that is a person’s outlook, so be it; he must make peace with it. Nor am I interested in rubbing salt into the wounds of a population in distress (though in most cases they are not aware of this predicament; it finds expression in various ways). What would be fitting in the face of such distress is to turn to a psychologist who will create meaning for them where it doesn’t exist. It’s hard to live without meaning. True, it comes out a bit amusing (see column 159), but at least it’s an understandable and natural outlet. If there are no real meanings, let us create something artificial that will at least keep us going.
My critique here is directed only at those whose distress drives them out of their senses and leads them to find values where there are none; that is, to think that the meanings they have created ex nihilo are equivalent to real meanings. That’s what leads people to write, again and again, nonsense like this.
Since these things recur under every green tree (apparently due to the acute predicament and inferiority complex vis-à-vis the full wagon), I thought it right, after all, to devote to them a short column, even though most of the points have already been discussed by me elsewhere.
A first glance: three assumptions
The claim in the title of Livni’s article rests on three assumptions of different kinds, each of which requires examination:
- Factual-evaluative assumption: secularism is a continuation (at least possible, even if not necessary) of Judaism.
- Evaluative assumption: there is value in the existence and continuation of Judaism in this sense.
- Factual assumption: it is secularism that will continue Judaism.
As noted, Livni himself does not deal with survival but with the idea that Judaism needs secularism. But I assume that this need is for its existence and survival. Therefore I will continue to discuss these three assumptions.
Claim A is, at the very least, odd. Judaism has always been a religion. True, there was a nation that bore it, but what defined it was its origin and its religion. Its origin is an ethnic fact, and its religion is a value-laden and ideological decision. The origin is the technical framework, and the religion is the essential content that is passed on. Now the descendants of that nation-religion, who preserve only the ethnic framework without the essential content, come along and declare themselves its authentic (or at least: an authentic) continuers. Ethnically and genetically this is of course correct, but that’s a trivial fact, and I assume this is not the point of his claim nor of the debates against it. In the essential sense, in what way is he continuing traditional Judaism? That he speaks Hebrew? Studies the Bible or the legends of the Sages and Jewish history? That he is a moral person? That he lives in Israel? One can argue about each such feature, but even if I accept all of them as legitimate Jewish features (it seems to me that among these only Hebrew might perhaps qualify), why does this matter at all? This brings me to claim B.
Suppose that a set of genetic and ethnic features can sustain a definition of some type of Judaism. Definitions tolerate anything. Is there value in holding on to such features? What is the value in the continuation of Judaism in this sense? The claim that only secularism can continue Judaism, or that Judaism needs it, apparently assumes that there is some value here. I am Jewish in all these technical senses just as a Belgian is Belgian and a Tanzanian is Tanzanian. Is there value in an inborn affiliation that I did not choose? And if this group were to become extinct (physically or culturally), what would be bad about that? There will be other people who will conduct themselves in ways that seem right to them. And even if I did choose this affiliation for reasons of taste and sentiment—so what? Are following my personal taste and sentiment of any value? I also choose to wear black trousers and sandals made by Mahmoud Abbas. I belong there because that’s how I was born. That’s all; and even if I chose an ethnic affiliation (doubtful—it’s clear that most of us did not choose it), it has no evaluative significance. I chose to live in neighborhood A or B, or to engage in profession C or D. So what?
Were I not afraid to say it, I would ask him whether, in his view, anything in the characteristics of secular society constitutes the fulfillment of the will of the Almighty. I’m not speaking of positive values that this society has—values found in many societies worldwide. I’m speaking of its Judaism. That is the only point under discussion. Is there here a continuation of the mission of our forefather Abraham? Was his mission that someone speak Hebrew? What would have been wrong with Tanzanian?
Only after all this can we ask the factual question (which is already clear to be entirely unimportant): will secularism indeed continue Judaism? I very much doubt it—but time will tell.
Back to the article
If you look in his article for any hint of engagement with any of these three claims, it will be in vain. He merely describes the essence of secular Judaism without explaining in what way it is Jewish. Critical interest in the history of the Jewish people and its personalities is, in my view, far from constituting a criterion of Jewishness; nor is the establishment of a moral and open society. You will not find with him even any arguments for claim C (that Judaism needs secularism, or that secularism will continue Judaism). He focuses on describing the ambivalent historical and cultural link that secular Judaism has to the past—and that’s it. The conclusions—why this is necessary and vital, or why this is what will carry us forward—you will look for there in vain. That is left to the reader’s wild imagination. Not to mention arguments as to why any of this has value. In his remarks, as in all his hundreds of boring, bored, and boring clones—the humanistic secular Judaism crowd—there is not even a sliver of a hint on this matter. Imagine an article in which I described my relationship to the used sandals of women in Venice taller than 1.70 meters. I would devote my life to researching the matter and critically engaging with other approaches to those sandals. I would then expect you, my loyal readers, to understand why this is the most meaningful pursuit for the survival of Judaism—or even of the city of Venice—and why, for heaven’s sake, this peculiar occupation and its survival have any value at all.
Consider, for example, the following pathetic passage:
When the secular Zionist looks back, he chooses not to focus first on the continuity of belief, texts, and rituals—that is, on “tradition”—even if he does not deny their centrality and power for those times. His attention is given first to the historical, national, linguistic, and experiential continuum; and also to literary and cultural aspects that do not derive their validity only from religion and go beyond it. He will be less interested in the question of what moral literature commands, and more in the question of how it influenced communal cohesion.
He speaks again and again of survival and continuity without defining what is at issue, and certainly without addressing the value of a mere simple factual affiliation and its continuation. Think about my experiential and historical continuum with the tall women of Venice and their sandals. Unlike them, I do not espouse their values or their beliefs—but I certainly engage with their sandals. And that’s really something, isn’t it!
When I referred Chayuta Deutsch to this article (and asked her for a working link—thanks for that), she said that, in her eyes, Livni proposes to continue the shoe size of our forefather Abraham. That gave me the association to the sandals of the women of Venice. It seems to me this is not a bad description of his article. Even in a talkback there (number 90), someone wonders what on earth Livni means when he says that Israel needs secularism. He did not even hint as to why—not even a subtle hint.
This article reminds me of the poor Chinese man who received two pennies of charity and bought with them a slice of bread and a flower. When asked why he didn’t buy two slices of bread, he replied: the bread is to live, and the flower is to have something to live for (look at me—I’m a legitimate continuer of Chinese culture; I just look at it and interpret it in my own way). Livni deals with the technical and factual framework while completely dropping the evaluative essence. So what’s the point of all this?
I have likewise written more than once (for example, in column 419; see also 139, 34, 240, and 266) about the Talmudic discussion of “He to study and his son to study—he precedes his son.” At times we have the sense that our goal is to pass on the Torah torch, and sometimes that overshadows the duty to study ourselves. But if we engage only in passing the torch, who in this chain will study Torah? For whom are we doing all this? Mere survival, absent content whose survival has value, has no value. A framework has no value if it is not dedicated to transmitting some evaluative content.
Later he speaks of historical memory and the (ambivalent) connection to the historical heroes of Judaism. But what is the value in all this? Why is this connection important if it does not serve to pass on values or certain evaluative missions? These connections are, first of all, a fact, and then a sentiment and a personal taste. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate hobby. Let everyone engage in what he fancies—but there is no reason to make an ideology out of it.
Is someone who obsessively (though critically) busies himself with the fate of his elementary-school classmates carrying a torch of significance for the generations? Is there any point in making an ideology out of this? To argue about it, to debate with people of other views? To explain why the memory of the class needs this engagement? Do whatever you want—just spare me.
Summary
I will repeat that I have no criticism of the emptiness of the secular wagon. That follows from its very essence, and my statements about the emptiness are a description, not a judgment. My criticism is of the blindness of those who drive it and of turning emptiness into an alternative content. I must further sharpen that my intent here is to emptiness in the Jewish sense (any secular individual or group may have rich content in several other respects—but his secularism is empty by definition).
What causes intelligent people to recycle, again and again, such foolish and tasteless claims—and even to get excited by them, write about them, and copy them from one another, as if there were here a new gospel for the universe? It seems to me this is a sharp, clear demonstration of the vacuum and the predicament described above. Sometimes the predicament is conscious and sometimes not, but in my estimation it is always there. People feel frustration in the face of the emptiness of their Jewish wagon; therefore, an alternative that ostensibly holds water suffices for them, and they are exempted from explaining in what sense this is a continuation of anything and what value there is in the survival of such phenomena. Others are satisfied with pointing to problems in the full wagon of the religious (which, thank God, are plentiful) to buttress their preposterous claims—but they do not bother to explain what their alternative is and in what sense it is Jewish.
Here I focused on the negative side, that is, on explaining where he is wrong and why one cannot even argue against his proposals—because he has no proposals (there is no such thing as a secular Jewish identity; see the series of links brought above). But it would seem that I am disqualifying by my own blemish, for I too did not explain what my alternative is. However, this is not the place to get into that. In several places in the past I have explained that the only positive side of Judaism—the only thing that can be considered “Judaism” in an evaluative sense and not merely a factual one—is Halakhah.
Discussion
With great sorrow and gloomy grief I can only agree with the main points of the column (if not with all of it). I too read Rami Livneh and shuddered at the depth of the shallowness.
One of the things that bothers me when I encounter such positions may stem from the fact that the person who holds them sins in two different senses, perhaps even completely opposed ones.
The first time, he sins against the critical spirit I would expect from a thinking person toward Judaism. Yes, Livneh insists a bit too much on his Jewishness, and that does not fit with his secular (and perhaps also atheistic) position, which should have been more reflective. In my view, Livneh is too loyal to his Jewish heritage and not enough to the secular one.
The second time, he sins from the standpoint of faith (and perhaps also religion), since I would expect him to grapple with the principled theological problems in Judaism itself (the authentic Judaism of the Torah, not the one he invents for himself) in favor of a more rational religiosity.
And I have another conclusion: Livneh's failure—that he is not sufficiently "secular" and not sufficiently "religious"—was created, among other things, also by his excessive attachment to the conceptual structure bequeathed to him by authentic Judaism. In other words: even if his words are detached from concrete Jewish identity (and he is unaware of that), at the same time he is a faithful heir to the basic failure at the heart of that identity. I would not go so far as to determine that only his Jewish identity confused him and caused him to adopt so bizarre a view. But certainly an important part of his confusion comes from there.
It's hard to argue because of how foreign it all is. I mixed arguments into declarations, and this response came out.
A. The redhead left a great legacy on the central question that occupied Jewish society in Israel in that he strove for and reached an agreement with the Palestinians. The grief over his death also stemmed from the loss of a practical leader of stature (in the opinion of those grieving), whose ideological successors fell short of him on the level of execution.
B. After all, you hold that morality is a matter entirely separate from religion and does not require any revelation from God (but only His very existence). If so, on the philosophical level, secularism from religion does not lead to any moral vacuum; morality stands as it stands. You criticize secularism from God on the basis of your claim that without God morality has no validity, but that is not a significant issue. The God required for morality—that is, a God who does not reveal Himself and know and reward—is not the God over whom the dispute between religious and secular people is waged. And in the article too he deals with secularism from religion and not necessarily secularism from God.
C1. Indeed there are no secular Jewish values, but tradition still has influence. Not influence in determining values, but educational influence and in instilling desire for things that a person thinks are right. For a person is influenced by living examples set up by those close to him. Just as soldiers are educated with films of heroism of their own army and not of the enemy army, even though the heroism and self-sacrifice are identical. So one can take from Jewish tradition the importance of wisdom, and it will seep into the secular Jew and influence him, even though in the tradition it was specifically Torah wisdom that was valued.
C2. Continuation of a tradition means receiving deep influences from the tradition as positive examples (and not as negative examples). For receiving influence from the positive model means that they preserved (midrashic conservatism, in your terminology) something from the tradition itself. And since secular Jews too can absorb influences from the heritage, as several good examples were given in the article, then this is continuation par excellence, and not on a technical level at all but on an even more essential level than the plain conservatism of the religious. Psychologically, secular Tanzanians will not be influenced to the same degree by Jewish tradition because they will feel no closeness at all to the figures and the people. This is an explanation for the factual-evaluative assumption that secular people too can continue Jewish tradition. The value (a pale one) in continuity is similar to the value in any remembrance of someone or something, that it not sink into the abyss of oblivion, in addition to the advantage that one can receive good educational influence from the tradition if one filters it carefully.
The factual assumption that in the long run the secular are the ones who will continue it, which did not appear in the column but only in the title as you noted, probably stems from a view common among secular people in the world that religion's time is limited and in just a little while these religious people will come to their senses; therefore he thinks that if the secular do not take anything at all from Jewish tradition, then in the long run it will disappear entirely.
D. On the matter of secular Jewish identity you have elaborated in a series of columns, so this is not the place to write about it, and I do not have the strength, so I will make do with the declaration that with the critical parts I really do not agree.
The claim at the end of the article, and also throughout it, is that halakhah is the only value-laden aspect of Judaism. But what is that value of which halakhah is the expression?
If it is "to obey the voice of the Holy One, blessed be He, and fulfill His commandments"—then this is where the failure lies in the secular person's eyes. The grandfather sitting in heaven is an invention of the religious, and all of halakhah is utter fiction in his eyes. It follows that the "value" presented here is based on a logical loop. The religious person invents someone, invents something that this someone said, and then builds a value around listening to that something (halakhah).
If the value is, like the parable of the shoes, this: what really was (Abraham's shoe size) is not interesting, but what does it say to me? How do I perceive it?
Then whichever way you look at it, everyone perceives it according to his own understanding, and the only value is to pass the story on. Let each generation decide what it understands from it, and "To your tents, O Israel."
In short, the secular wagon, in its own view, cleaned off the dry hay that was on the religious wagon, which weighed the wagon-driver down considerably… and it invites everyone (the importance of transmitting the tradition) to load his wares onto the wagon.
The trilogy too tries to clean off a substantial part of the dry hay—and some would say that with so much cleanliness and order, no hay at all remains…
But what is someone to do who thinks that all values are the fruit of human invention? And despite the previous column—that a person needs a rationalization of values in order to decide their order of priority?
BS"D, 27 Cheshvan 5782
An ’empty wagon' is a wonderful thing. On the one hand, a wagon has solidity and stability, and on the other hand it also has the quality of dynamism, for the wagon can carry its passengers quickly and safely to their desired destination.
The 'wagon' of Judaism is indeed full and overflowing with faith, wisdom, and values, lovingly cultivated and developed by many generations of 'passengers,' but surprisingly there is always still empty and available space in it for new 'passengers' and new 'loads.' New ideas join the 'journey' and find in the treasures and depths of 'the Jewish bookshelf' new-old discussions of those same ideas from an original angle.
Therefore even one who defines himself as 'secular,' who does not see himself as committed to 'every jot and tittle'—will find in the Torah and in its 'bookshelf' directions of thought he had not considered, which can shed a new light—enriching, fruitful, or challenging—on his intellectual and value world.
The fuller Judaism's wagon is—the ’emptier' it is, and the more open it is to new people and new ideas.
Regards, Feyvish Lipa Sosnovitsky-Dhahari
I think one of the reasons that in the Jewish-secular context this story sometimes seems especially pathetic is that in the Haskalah and secularization movements among the Jewish people, the leaders of those movements always had a tone, and a sense of pretentiousness, that was accompanied by all kinds of scenarios that failed.
The men of the Haskalah of the second and third generation, who cast off the yoke of the commandments because they did not believe in the revelation at Mount Sinai, or because they thought there had been such a revelation but that it was no longer binding, and converted Judaism into a reform version of deism—and even if they preserved certain Jewish cultural markers and took care not to assimilate genetically into the local population—expected that any minute now the world would change, the great light of the Enlightenment would conquer the whole world, and in any case all the Jews would be able to integrate as an undistinguished minority into the general populations. Of course, in their eyes, preserving a primitive religion, with separatist and primitive laws, was a disaster.
The prophecy did not come true; pogroms, murders, and persecutions continued. And then the Holocaust as well.
After that came the Zionist movement (and I am speaking about its very anti-religious parts, such as that of Yosef Haim Brenner and the like, not about other factions that were pro-religion or neutral). They saw the survival and preservation of the Jewish people as the supreme value, since if the gentiles can never be trusted, what remains more important than uniting all under the banner of survival and nationalism? Of course, among them too there were all kinds of prophets who foresaw that religion among the Jews was just about to collapse, since it was an old and primitive remnant that would disappear with time. And also that the desire of Jews to assimilate among the gentiles would collapse and disappear, because who the hell is stupid enough to place trust in the nations of the world?
Well, after a little over 70 years since the establishment of the state, the world goes on as usual. There are still Jews who prefer to assimilate among the gentiles—whether genetically, culturally, or religiously—whether by conversion, intermarriage, or strong adoption of the culture of their country of residence. Some Jews are also born and raised in Israel, yet still choose of their own initiative to emigrate and assimilate. Religion did not collapse into pieces. Haredim and religious people continue in the stupid primitiveness (stupidity and primitiveness according to their view, of course) of observing commandments.
Secular ideologies such as early Labor Zionism, and enlightened Jewishness in its beginnings, a huge part of whose essence is based on prophecy—their end is to collapse, crash, and arrive at various versions that base life on a feeling of self-fulfillment through different psychological experiences. That is part of the story here, in my opinion.
A. It's hard to discuss declarations. That Rabin tried to make a move with the Palestinians is true. But there too the engine was Peres, and there was nothing Rabin could do for which there was no substitute. On the contrary, he was driven into that process almost against his will. To create a legacy out of this is a joke.
B. I was definitely talking about secularism from God and not secularism from religion.
C1–hundreds. Influences can be received from all sorts of places. Even from telephone poles. That doesn't make them Judaism, especially when the products are universal values.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. What I say does not have the slightest connection to the question whether the belief is correct and whether there is a God. According to the religious there is, and that is enough for them themselves to see value in it. That is consistent, even if in your opinion it is not correct. By contrast, the secular conception is nonsense even on its own terms.
If I understood correctly, what follows from your words is that:
Premise A: Judaism is halakhah
Premise B: Secular people do not accept halakhah
Conclusion: the secularists' "Jewish wagon" is empty.
A marvelous innovation.
And inspired by the previous post about 'disconnecting the life-support machines,' one should say that as long as a Jew's connection to his Judaism and its sources is preserved—there still beats within it a spark of Jewish life-spirit. Even if the connection does not come from faith and commitment, but from seeing Judaism as culture, as an interesting worldview, as solidarity and national or familial brotherhood, or even as charming folklore—there is still a thread that preserves the living soul, with a chance of leading to a deeper and more inward closeness, in the sense that 'the light within it brings them back to the good path.'
Regards, Pilesod
If that's what you understood, your reading-comprehension wagon needs a quick refill.
Jewish identity, like any other national identity, is an invention, a mental construction meant to distinguish between groups of human beings (on the basis of shared narratives, language, and culture). Such an identity can combine within it both Jewish values and universal values—it can be eclectic.
One of the central purposes of the Jewish religion (embodied in halakhah) is to distinguish between the chosen people and the gentiles—to create a distinct identity for a group of human beings (perhaps the most important concept that creates this distinction is the concept of holiness).
The group of those with Jewish identity includes both the religious and the secular—why does it bother the rabbi that someone tries, with one argument or another, to affiliate himself with that same group? Can Jewish identity not contain both groups together?
What makes the secular person someone with a Jewish identity is his self-definition—the inner feeling that he belongs to this identity—and any justification he gives himself in this matter is legitimate in my eyes.
The preoccupation with identity and transmitting it to future generations is intended for self-preservation—to ensure that my children too will feel the connection that I feel to that identity, tradition, values, culture, historical story. That is the value inherent in preserving this identity, and it is shared by both the secular and the religious—in fact, the religious person has a supreme interest in preserving this broad Jewish identity, because without it Judaism will have no political existence (the majority of the Jewish people today is secular). History proves that the Jewish people without a national home and a state is doomed to persecution and destruction.
Avishai
And really one must ask: why should a secular person feel 'distress' when he adopts only parts of the cultural heritage of his people? Does a Frenchman or an American have any distress when he is proud of his heritage and draws inspiration from it, but without any commitment to accept all of it?
It may be that the Jew has an instinctive feeling that loyalty to his Judaism is a value. That his Judaism is not merely a 'fate' but also contains a 'moral mission,' and accordingly the Jew seeks what moral mission his Judaism imposes upon him, a value worth struggling and risking and being persecuted and hated by 'the whole world and his wife' for.
This instinct was imprinted in the Jew not for nothing, for the Jew's mission is to be the 'elder brother' of all humanity, the continuation of Abraham, father of a multitude of nations, who calls humanity to faith in the One and to the values of justice, law, and kindness. By virtue of this mission the Jew's soul demands clarification of its great mission, without being satisfied with mediocre life 'like all the nations.'
Regards, Ami'oz Yaron Schnitzler
That wagon you're talking about is full of holograms.
The goal was to preserve the Torah in the hope that perhaps a day would come when it would also be observed.
Today, thanks to print and digital media, the role of being a guardian of the Torah has lost its meaning.
Admittedly, it's better than nothing, but it is still only a hologram.
So now I have a basic misunderstanding of your claim… if you're not claiming objective truth—then what are you claiming?
That Judaism is only halakhah?
The secular person claims that he is the "faithful" Jew and the continuer of his fathers' tradition, and that is enough for them themselves to see value in it, and it is consistent even if in your opinion it isn't correct.
By contrast, the religious view, according to them (and also according to some of the "commentators" on the trilogy), is nonsense.
Secularism is the sacrifice secular people make in order to preserve Judaism in the modern world, where there is no longer any place for Jews. The modern world is antisemitic by nature, and therefore any attempt by Jews to function as a minority as in the past will end in expulsion, if not physical destruction. Since the religious are not capable of maintaining a state (the Haredim certainly are not), the secular sacrifice themselves in order to maintain here the state within which Judaism, with its historic commandments, can continue to exist. Truly a transgression for its own sake. Fortunate are they.
It really doesn't bother me. I'm only saying that even if there is such a definition of identity, it is a fact and not a value.
I wrote an entire column about what I am claiming. One only has to read it.
Correct.
And in short:
The somewhat fuller wagons do not complain about the emptiness of the empty wagon—but rather help fill it with intellectual, faith-based, and moral content from the sources of Judaism, generously, kindly, and patiently.
Regards, Pilesod
Without secularism we would be eating black bread and herring in the shtetl.
BS"D, 27 Cheshvan 5782
The view that holiness is merely a survival need, building a 'common denominator' that will preserve the existence of the people, is problematic in several respects.
Why choose the hardest common denominator? The 613 commandments and their details, which besides the constant difficulty of observing them—also lead to alienation from the nations of the world and to hatred and persecution on their part?
Moreover, why should we not be like the other nations, whose existence comes through political independence and social, economic, and cultural success? These, on the face of it, can be achieved also as secular 'Israelis,' and if 'it doesn't work out for us'—we can always try our luck and move to another country that offers us political, economic, and cultural freedom.
In any case, from the 'introductory chapters' to the covenant by which we became the people of God, it appears that the mission intended for us is far beyond 'survival.' We are meant to be 'a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' Priests who spread the knowledge of God and faith in the Torah and its values to all humanity, continuing the path of the 'father of a multitude of nations.'
Our mission is to spread to all humanity the basic values contained in the 'Seven Noahide Commandments': faith in the One, maintaining a proper society in which people do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, and do not worship idols. And for that purpose we are building a 'holy nation,' a society distinguished by conduct of holiness 'above and beyond' the minimum requirement. Not only refraining from idolatry and harming others, but cleaving to God and practicing kindness and going 'beyond the letter of the law'… For this purpose we received the Torah with its 613 commandments, to make us a 'model society' that will be 'a light unto the nations.'
And indeed, throughout history we have 'drummed' our beliefs into humanity and achieved great, though still partial, success. Idolatry has 'gone out of fashion'; the idea of 'a weekly day of rest' has become the possession of all humanity; the ordinance of Joshua ben Gamla of compulsory education for all—some eighteen hundred years later became the possession of all humanity, and so on and so forth.
But there is still much work to do before we merit the realization of the mission, that all the nations shall stream to 'the mountain of the House of the Lord' to learn His ways. And when that happens—the burden placed upon us will grow, for every Jew will have to be a guide and mentor to dozens and hundreds of Noahides, who will seek his guidance in the ways of God.
Regards, Ami'oz Yaron Schnitzler
I shuddered at the "depth of the shallowness" ??
BS"D, 28 Cheshvan 5782
To Y.D.—greetings,
There are quite a few 'secular' people who still 'sacrifice themselves' for the state by serving in elite units, but the Zionist fervor of the 'pioneers' of the past is in steady decline among the secular. Devotion to elite military service and settlement has in recent decades passed to the religious-Zionist public, in whom Torah and faith breathe fervor.
Among the Haredim there is still great reluctance toward the army out of fear of secularization, but in areas of volunteering, kindness, and help to the sick and needy—they occupy a central place, as the heritage of the shtetl, saturated with charity and kindness, greatly increases their motivation to volunteer.
As the cultural influence of the West increases, especially in its postmodern form—the placing of the individual at the center increases, and the national arena is greatly weakened. The Western person today is more a 'citizen of the wider world' than an ardent patriot. The 'pioneers' of old still grew up in homes saturated with Judaism, which transformed the fervor of Hasidim and diligent Torah scholars into a fervor of action for the return to Zion, for which their forefathers had longed.
One who grew up in a heder to the melody of longing in 'And as for me, when I came from Paddan…'; one who saw and heard his father lamenting at the 'midnight prayer,' and his mother shedding tears when contributing to the charity box of Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes; one who learned in the Humash about Moses our teacher's pleas to enter the Land of Israel; and one who learned in the Gemara about 'the amoraim who kissed the stones of the land and rolled in its dust'—absorbed the longing for Zion with his mother's milk, even if he rebelled against religion. But one to whom the sources of Judaism are foreign will not understand this longing.
'Secularity' in the sense of aspiring to live ordinary worldly life contributes to Judaism by realizing the aspiration to inherit the land. After all, one who is not a priest is called in the Targum Onkelos a 'secular one' (hiloni), in that he deals with ordinary life, whereas the priest focuses on developing holiness and giving Torah guidance to his working brethren.
But 'secularism' in the sense of distancing oneself from Jewish heritage leads, in the end, to a weakening of national fervor. And therefore people like Rami Livneh and many others try to create a secularism that will not be alienated from the sources of Judaism, but will draw from them national and moral inspiration without commitment to faith and observance of commandments. The question is: how long can that hold up in the long run?
Regards, Yaron Fish"l Ordner
Incidentally, the majority of those who immigrated to the Land were religious Jews, except during the Mandate period, when a numerus clausus was imposed, which gave the religious no more than 15% in the immigration quotas. The heads of secular Zionism discriminated against and harassed the religious Zionists, both by preventing settlement and by discrimination in educational funding and job placement. The Zionist Organization gladly accepted the shekels and donations of the Mizrachi members, but in immigration, settlement, labor, and education the religious Zionists were discriminated against. Someone decided that in this country a new generation had to arise, free also from religion, and religious people, even if they were devoted Zionists, were not wanted here.
And when the state was established and the gates of immigration were opened without party screening, the authorities labored to 're-educate' the immigrants, the vast majority of whom were observant or traditional. They divided the settlements according to a party key, and thus most of the youth received a secular education that taught them that religion had been good for exile, but here a generation free of religion had to arise.
Blessed be God they did not succeed in this. Religious and Haredi Judaism did not disappear, but multiplied itself many times over, proud of its faith and heritage, without any impairment at all to its vigorous efforts to materially develop the life of the state.
N
Paragraph 3, line 2
…the national attachment is greatly weakened. …
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…and transformed the fervor…
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Every time you write against the emptiness of secularism, I always wonder how you don't reflect on yourself.
Suppose there is a God and He gave the Torah—why should I obey?
Should I worship Him because of His "divinity" (Leibowitz)? That sentence has no logic at all.
At least if there is a God and He implanted morality in us, one can assume that He will also be moral toward us… but as for Torah and commandments, there is no logical justification at all. How one gets analytically from the existence of God to the obligation to obey Him—I do not understand.
There is a difference between the statement "I don't understand," with which you conclude, and the criticism about a lack of reflection with which you began. About the concluding statement I have nothing to say, since it concerns you and not me. But the opening statement seems strange to me. It seems to me that if there is one thing that characterizes me and my writing, it is reflection. I am constantly engaged in trying to examine and justify my doctrine (with greater or lesser success—each person will decide that). So to accuse me of lacking reflection sounds to me like a very detached statement, or one that stems from a total lack of even minimal familiarity. And it is hard for me to understand how someone who knows nothing can criticize so categorically.
But on the substance of the matter, I see no point in getting into all this here, since your two claims (including the one about yourself) are both fundamentally mistaken. I am not discussing here at all the question whether I (the religious Jew) am right and why. I am discussing each person on his own terms. For the religious person, on his own terms, his Judaism has value and meaning (whatever his reasons may be, whether or not you agree with them). By contrast, for the secular person, even on his own terms his Judaism has no moral meaning.
It's hard to believe people are seriously discussing such a ridiculous and absurd claim. Small-mindedness and darkness of mind at their peak.
For secularism is the continuation of the path of the Hellenizers, who admire the body culture and materialism of Greece (America in our day) and scorn their humiliated and primitive heritage, then as now. What has changed today is the denial and lack of awareness (of some of them at least) of what the path represents, along with preening themselves with the name "Israel" and a few marginal Jewish symbols.
Whoever is for the Lord, to me… (where is Judah Maccabee when you need him? 🙂
Just saying…
BS"D, eve of Shabbat and abundant grain and wine, 5782
To Admor—greetings,
Every generation imitates the Greeks of its own generation. The Greeks in our generation sit in their land and speak their ancient language (more or less), and do not know and are not even interested in the philosophical teachings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and their other sages. Instead of tiring their minds with deep philosophical questions—they enjoy life: sit in a tavern, raise a glass of ouzo, dance to the sounds of the bouzouki, and rejoice in their lives without any distress of an empty wagon 🙂
So you too, come raise a glass in celebration, dance a mitzvah tantz to the sounds of the guitar or the clarinet, and 'you shall rejoice in your life and be only joyful' 🙂
With the blessing of 'a good month,' Otiphron Nepishtimos son of Piritos
How does one get analytically from the existence of God (+ the revelation at Mount Sinai + Torah from Heaven, etc.) as an axiom to the obligation to obey Him? You didn't answer.
I already explained why I didn't answer. As I explained, that is not the discussion here and has no connection whatsoever to your question about reflection. If you want an answer to that, I answered it in detail in the notebooks and in my book The First Existent, and in the article on philosophical gratitude, among others.
If you insist on an analytic answer (I don't know why. Maybe you happen to enjoy analytic answers), then I can answer briefly here as well. The analytic answer is that this obligation is derived from the definition of the concept of God. Whoever understands that the Lord is God, from that it follows analytically that there is an obligation to obey Him. God by definition is an authoritative factor (which is why judges are called elohim in the Bible). This is explained in several places, and reason too gives it support (or the intuitive grasp of the concept).
By way of analogy, someone might ask me for an analytic answer to the question: if X is the moral act, then why is there an obligation to do it? Or to the question: if my eyes show me that there is a wall in front of me, how do I derive analytically from that that there is a wall before me?
But as stated, this is not the place to discuss it.
The Nuremberg Laws by definition were authoritative factors. So should I obey them?
P.S. I'd be happy for a link to the article… thanks for the answer… ignore what I wrote about reflection; nonsense, and one who admits and forsakes is shown mercy.
No, because the fact that the authors of the laws think they have authority does not actually mean that they do. God truly does have authority. You asked for an analytic answer. Search here on the site for "philosophical gratitude."
A summary for those interested:
Secularism is a stream within Judaism because of Zionism.
Its content: establishing a national home for Jews.
Who are Jews? Those people for whom Jews aspire to establish a home.
Exercise:
Explain why non-engagement with mathematics is a mathematical stream.
Hint: there may be among the non-engaged laborers building the mathematics faculty in Zimbabwe.
Food for thought:
Is the empty set a set? Is it a subset of the set of Jews? And of Papuans?
And a concluding question:
How many logical fallacies can be found in the above summary? (Ignore reality-enhancing embellishments unrelated to the facts. This is a common phenomenon with Lapid, which also exists in the set of his speeches free of fallacies. How many elements are in that set?…)
Good luck,
And this clown is the one you support for prime minister of Israel……
And this clown is the one you support for prime minister of Israel….
There is an assumption in this article, and elsewhere in your writing, that one cannot characterize a religion by means of universal values.
Is that indeed so?
Suppose that on the planet Valuism-10 there are 10 common values among the planet's inhabitants. There are 10 religions there, and each religion adopts 9 out of the 10 values (with no two religions adopting the same 9 values). If we examine a particular religion, then each of its values is a universal value on that planet, since 90% of the planet's inhabitants adopt it, and therefore all the values of this religion are universal values. Would that lead to the claim that the religion is not characterized / does not exist?
BS"D, 7 Kislev 5782
To Moshe—greetings,
To reinforce your point, one should cite Judaism's 'founding document,' nine of whose clauses are 'universal values': I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods; you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; honor your father and your mother; you shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not bear false witness against your fellow; you shall not covet your fellow's house, etc.
The only value unique to the people of Israel is 'Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it,' and even that has become the 'universal value' of 'a weekly day of rest,' adopted in various strange and diverse ways by most of humanity.
The people of Israel are the 'vanguard corps' of humanity, whose mission is to bequeath to humanity the principles of the 'Ten Commandments,' in their proper interpretation and elaboration. As an 'elite unit,' the people of Israel are required to live a more holy life that includes the 613 commandments unique to it.
Regards, Ami'oz Yaron Schnitzler
Where did you see that in my words? I completely accept the possibility you presented, and I don't think I wrote otherwise anywhere.
It reminds me of a medical or psychological diagnosis that relies on the existence of a minimum number among several symptoms (for example, seven out of ten).
The very concept of 'universal values' is an innovation of the Torah and the Prophets; the pagan view had no problem at all accepting that each nation receives its own unique value system from its own private idol.
The Torah and the Prophets are what infused humanity with the belief that 'Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us all?' and with the hope that a day will come when the Torah of peace and unity will go forth from Zion to all humanity.
The division into nations is the punishment of humanity, which sought to unite without subordination to the will of God. This sin will be corrected at the end of days, when all the nations will stream to 'the mountain of the House of the Lord' to learn His ways, and to walk by His light toward a world in which 'nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.'
Unfortunately, in recent decades humanity began drawing closer to the destiny of world peace not out of recognition and desire, but out of the compulsion created by two terrible world wars and the development of nuclear weapons, which created a 'balance of terror.' What awareness did not bring about—trauma did.
Regards, see above
And here secular Jews continue to split hairs over the matter:
http://udimanor.blogspot.com/2021/11/blog-post_9.html?m=1
And of this it is said: if fools don't drive.
According to Occam's razor, it seems that an ’empty wagon' is preferable, since it contains fewer entities 🙂
Regards, Mesha'i Remington
Nietzsche writes that some think women are deep because they cannot see the bottom.
Mistaken, rules Nietzsche. They aren't even shallow.
A question out of curiosity: is Assaf here the same Assaf from the Technion in Haifa (the only one Michi addressed back then), from the commenters who used to comment on the rabbi's articles on Ynet?
BS"D, 6 Tevet 5782
And in fact, the correction will come when we understand that there are no separate wagons here, but rather a 'square wagon,' the wagon of Judaism, in whose prophets' vision religious, national, and universal values are all included together along with personal cultivation and self-realization.
The mistake lies in thinking that the different planes can be separated and that one can suffice with only some of them. The correction will come when we understand that all the circles must be cultivated in parallel: freedom together with closeness to God, love of the people together with love of humanity, and all of them will complement one another.
Regards, see above
At the margins I will place my remarks in their context. There is a well-known claim against graduates of the academy in the Jewish fields, such as Bible and Talmud, that the research deals with Abraham our father's shoe size and not with his character or his teachings. This is of course an amusing exaggeration, which, like amusing exaggerations generally, contains something true. When I read Rami Livneh's article I felt that despite some correct intuitions of his, it fits that above caricature of the shoes. An example is his remarks about the Musar movement (I deliberately did not say Hasidism; in any case, the host here is Rabbi Michi's): how did Musar contribute to communal formation? Come on. It's nice, interesting on a very specific level, and very scholarly, but why not ask yourself, Mr. Livneh, what the Musar movement actually said, and what it has to contribute to you as a person and as a secular Jew at this time? And likewise the Bible, and likewise everything else. Erase half of it and nullify the other half like the dust of the earth, but quite a few meaningful things were said there. You can't build anything out of shells.