Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham – Is Religious Postmodernism Possible – Yaron Shane

Hello everyone. So Yossi has already cast me in the role of the opposition, and I’m happy to go along with that. I want to begin with three prefatory remarks. One of them is that it’s not for me to speak about Rabbi Shagar’s importance, depth, and greatness. I think he was a wise man, a Torah scholar, and worthy of a great deal of appreciation. I’m saying this up front because later on I’m obviously going to say some sharp things against what he writes and says, and I’m not saying this as an apology. I really think so, and I’ll also explain where I place that. Second — and I’m already putting this into the introduction — Rabbi Shagar makes things a little too easy for himself when he addresses criticism. I wrote a critique of the book Broken Vessels while he was still alive, so I can only assume that this also applies to my critique. I don’t know — he doesn’t really mention names — but my feeling is that he made life a little too easy for himself by presenting the criticisms as coming from a place of fear. In other words, people are afraid of what his innovations will say and where they will lead, and therefore they entrench themselves in some position that, at least in his opinion, has already become obsolete. It seems to me that this is making things much too easy. So I hereby publicly announce: I’m not afraid of anything. Not on the street — there I’m actually quite a coward — but on the intellectual plane I’m not afraid of anything. If it’s true, it’s true; if it’s not true, it’s not true; and whatever the consequences may be, so be it. I’m not coming from that place at all. I’m not discussing this in those terms at all. I’ll say more broadly: I’m simply unwilling to discuss a philosophical doctrine through consequential or teleological concepts. I don’t think it’s right to deal with such a doctrine through the question of where it leads — whether I say it opens exciting possibilities, as he repeatedly writes, which doesn’t interest me in the slightest, or whether I say it’s frightening or liable to lead to difficult results — that doesn’t frighten me either. Because if it’s true, then it’s true, and if it’s not true, then it’s not true. So my criticism doesn’t come from a place of fear. I’m putting that on the table here: don’t place me in that niche. I’m not afraid of it. Third — sorry — there’s the shortness of time, which requires an apology from me. For the moment I’m not looking at the clock, and I’m counting on the fact that there’s no moderator, but even so, limited time really doesn’t allow me to spread out the full map, so I’ll really do this telegraphically. I’m sure that the things I say, at least some of them, will raise points worth discussing — let’s put it mildly — points worth a much longer discussion, but that’s for the organizers to decide.

All right. I’ll begin with the definition of postmodernity. But first I want to say, perhaps joining the two previous speakers, that I too will not answer the question that stood in the title of this study evening. I will answer it, but in a broader way, and in that respect it seems to me that I actually do not join them. I think the question whether religious postmodernism is possible is too narrow. I would stop at postmodernism. In other words, the question is whether postmodernism is possible at all. If it is possible, then maybe one could also examine whether there is an option of being religious within it or not. But since my answer to that is negative, I’m exempt from the second question.

I’ll start from the definition — or the lack of definition — that Rabbi Shagar brings. Simple things, but let’s take it in his own words: “Postmodernism has no single definition, and many pens have already been broken over this.” I think it does have one definition. “Many postmodernists themselves recoil from giving a definition of their view, just as they recoil from defining many other things, since they oppose definitions as such. For the purposes of our discussion, I will say that postmodernism may be characterized as a position claiming that there is no truth, because what we call truth is created only through human cultural construction. Postmodernism may also be characterized by a radical aspiration to freedom — the freedom of the individual to constitute himself and his ways.” A simple translation of the matter.

It really seems to me that the definition of postmodernism — and I’m speaking now on the philosophical plane, not on the cultural, psychological, and other planes that I’ll touch on a bit later — is precisely this: there is no truth in the classical, traditional sense of the term. And as a result comes the second assumption, that everyone who speaks in terms of truth, including the postmodernist himself I assume, has to be understood in terms of some kind of artificial construction, not some correspondence to the world itself. Truth ceases to be the result of a comparison between my claim and what it signifies — the signifier and the signified — and instead it is judged, I don’t know, by some impression it leaves on the listener, or by internal coherence; you can propose all kinds of criteria of that sort. From here, of course, all the strange trends in the postmodern world follow, where the most common and popular words are discourse, narrative, all kinds of things like that, because every group — or maybe even every person — constructs some discourse for itself, and only within that can one judge the truths or claims they make. On the other side of the same matter are plots and paternalism. Everyone else except the postmodernists is always supposedly nourished by plots, always acting out of plots. I mentioned earlier the issue of fear; that too is a certain shade of plot. And the reason is very simple: because if truth or arguments are really the result of construction and not of truth in the classical sense, then where does it come from? They must be trying to achieve something. So what are they trying to achieve? These people with their plots, and those people with their plots. And constructions, of course, are the word that maybe includes all of this. Here it can be positive, yes? If plots are something negative, discourse is something wonderful, and construction just depends on whose it is. If the construction is ours, it’s positive; if the construction is against us, it’s negative.

I want to address these two levels of the definition of postmodernity — and again I apologize for the schematic presentation, but those are the time constraints, and I think overall I’m not doing too much violence to the truth; it’s really not much more complicated than this. There are two claims: there is no truth in the classical, traditional sense — correspondence between signifier and signified and so on — and as a result there is some alternative concept of truth: construction, plots, and the like. I claim that the first one is false. A claim is definitely true in that same traditional sense in which it was always understood. Of course one can argue semantically about the meaning of the concept “truth,” but I have no interest in semantic discussions, and in any case I also do not accept the supposedly required conclusion that all truth is the result of construction, plot, discourse, or whatever else of that kind.

So that is the general introduction and definition of roughly what I want to do in the time available. Now I want to move a little more toward characterizing postmodern writings, and I think this work is definitely a postmodern work. I wrote this after Broken Vessels, when it was still kind of at the beginning, and people wondered whether it was a book about postmodernity or a postmodern book. The second answer is probably the correct one, at least in my discourse. But it seems to me that in a postmodern work one can distinguish between two components. One component is arguments — including this book. One component is a collection of arguments that use the philosophical wrapper, the postmodern discourse, but in fact they can be formulated in modernist discourse with no problem at all. There is no problem doing that in that discourse too; I even gave one or two examples in that critique, if I remember correctly. And the second part is nonsense. In other words, everything that isn’t that is nonsense. That’s the claim. Now, nonsense doesn’t mean false. Nonsense means it says nothing. Even something false says something. But when I say nonsense, I mean something that says nothing. The difference between postmodern works lies in the question of dosage: how much of them consists of arguments that can be translated into modernist language and examined as true or false, and how significant the component of nonsense is within them. The proportions differ.

Now it’s somewhat difficult to distinguish between these two components because both use the same language. When this discourse is used to describe an argument that could also have been formulated in simple modernist language, that’s simply the result of intellectual laziness. In other words, people don’t want to do the analysis, define the concepts, and clarify how they solve the difficulty, so they prefer not to define the difficulty and not to need solutions, but instead to make a leap into empty space and talk about some upper radiance. And the second component in postmodern works is a component where there is no possibility of translating it into modernist language because it’s nonsense. So what people do is simply play with words, define concepts, one refers to another, and of course there are also lots of cross-references, each one pointing to the next so there’ll be some “meat” in the topic, but in fact it says nothing apart from words.

It seems to me that this more or less exhausts postmodern literature. And so if I go back now to this book, I’ll tell you what I appreciate in Rabbi Shagar, and why I think he made a very important contribution and I too learned quite a bit from him, insofar as I read him — I didn’t know him personally. It’s in those arguments that can be formulated in modernist language. He has many arguments that I completely agree with. There are some arguments I don’t agree with, but they still say something; I just don’t agree with them. And in that sense I think this is a very important contribution. But the wrapper, the void, what Smadar called earlier something he created — in my humble opinion, that’s nonsense. I also think he didn’t create it; it had already been created in the postmodern world. There’s nothing new here in my view, and just as over there it is nonsense, in my humble opinion so too here. With all due respect, I really mean that. I didn’t introduce that introduction for nothing, but I’m short on time so I need to be a little sharp.

I’ll bring an example to make things clearer. Until now I’ve spoken very generally. A completely banal example. I’ll try to illustrate the matter through it — which is almost exactly what you won’t see in postmodern texts. Because the moment you enter into an example, you can immediately see either that I’m translating this into a simple logical argument, or that it’s nonsense. It’s one of the two. So let’s ask the question whether it’s advisable to eat chocolate. A fateful question, at least for some of us, as I know from close acquaintance. The world can split into two groups regarding this important question. The first faction claims that it’s advisable to eat it because it tastes good. Fine, an interesting argument. Reuven is its leader. Shimon and his faction claim that it’s not advisable because it makes you fat. And here we have a multiplicity of truths; the vacant space begins to form before our eyes. And the question is whether we need postmodern discourse in order to present this picture — that chocolate is unhealthy but tasty. It seems to me this is a pretty simple sentence. You could have said it in the tenth century too without needing Derrida or Lacan.

Then we can continue. It’s like a fractal, okay? So let’s say Shimon says it makes you fat. Now the question is whether making you fat is good or bad. Some will say that making you fat is terrific, because it helps you work on your character traits. You won’t be so handsome and gorgeous anymore, so now you’ll work on your character. There are lots of advantages to being fat; there are arguments like that even in evolution. And others will say that making you fat is bad because it’s unhealthy. By the way, even within that there can be further division: why is it unhealthy, and is it really unhealthy? There may be certain aspects in which it actually is healthy. For example, eating chocolate gives glucose to the brain. I once heard that; I don’t know. So from that standpoint it’s actually good for brain function. But in other aspects of life it’s probably less healthy. So we have an enormous range of possibilities in relation to this question. Even those who say it’s tasty can try to describe in what way it’s tasty: tasty in one respect, not tasty in another. In other words, the truth can be very complex and have multiple perspectives. Is there anything in this picture that is postmodern? Not at all. It’s simply looking at a thing from different angles and understanding that different angles lead to different answers. That’s all. There’s nothing more sophisticated here than that.

So now I can go on and ask myself whether one can say that it is worthwhile to eat chocolate and also not worthwhile to eat chocolate, to make the leap into the vacant space, to say that it is possible to eat chocolate and also not eat chocolate. My answer is: if you mean that it’s possible from perspective A and impossible from perspective B, there’s no problem at all, but there’s no need to leap anywhere. You can say that in a yeshiva. If you mean that it is both possible and impossible to eat the chocolate simultaneously and from exactly the same standpoint, then that is nonsense. And therefore it seems to me that this question has no meaning, and it’s a shame to play with it, because postmodern texts very often move back and forth between those two kinds of interpretation of contradictory statements. In other words, to say that there is a multiplicity of perspectives yielding different answers is not a postmodern statement. It’s a statement that any person with slightly complex thinking can make. There’s no need to change the logic, no need to leap anywhere, no need for anything. From there to saying: there is a contradiction here, so I leap into the vacant space and hold onto both sides of it and hope not to crash and also to crash simultaneously, because after all we are not bound by logic — it seems to me the distance is enormous. So these examples are of no help whatsoever in understanding — I won’t even say agreeing, because I don’t understand what the second claim is saying. I simply can’t understand what it means. So if the first meaning is intended, then it has a very simple meaning that can be translated into plain modernist language. If the second meaning is intended, it’s nonsense.

So where, all the same, can the concept of postmodernity enter? I don’t think the concept is empty. I said in advance that I’m dealing with it on the philosophical plane, and immediately they’ll tell me of course that we’re retreating from philosophy, philosophy is not the issue, and so on. Fine — then we don’t even have an argument. On the philosophical plane, that really is the picture I’ve described; there’s nothing beyond it. There’s no need to go looking for definitions. I gave the definition here. There is no reason to continue these discussions. Everything else is really just stories for children. So where is postmodernity found, yes? And it is found. We live in a postmodern period, and I think it’s impossible to deny that. It has various characteristics. Those characteristics can be described in many ways — in art, in culture, maybe in relation to values — but they are characteristics, and in a moment I’ll explain what I mean by that. But these are characteristics that do not open up a new philosophy. There is nothing new in them. It doesn’t open an option, exciting or unexciting, for anything.

The only thing I can define as postmodernity in the chocolate example — and again, it’s a bit banal, but I think it represents things fairly well — is if there is some social, cultural, spiritual atmosphere that is prepared to listen to voices describing different perspectives. You can call that postmodernity if you want; I have no problem with that. We won’t argue about words. There is something in postmodernity that does this, and in that sense I think yes. In other words, arguments about complexity can indeed be heard more easily on a postmodern substrate. Within a society, within a mode of relating — I’m careful not to say “thinking,” because there’s no such thing — but within a postmodern mode of relating, in that context I definitely agree. There are many places where there is some unwillingness to listen to another perspective. In other words, I think chocolate is unhealthy and I go out on a crusade against chocolate eaters. They tell you, friend, it tastes good; it’s even a little healthy for the soul. After all, something tasty is also good for the soul. And I’m not willing to listen. So in the sense of causing me to listen — fine, yes, I agree. A cultural atmosphere, a social atmosphere, a mode of relating can help people listen. But listen to what? The content they’re listening to will always be modernist, because there are no additional options beyond the options I described earlier. There are no additional options. All I can do is open the ears of people who perceive only one or two perspectives and are unwilling to hear the third. Friends, there are more angles. You don’t always see everything. A little modesty, a little humility. But not because everyone is right, and not because everyone has his own narrative, and not because there is no truth — rather because, friends, open your ears, listen before you shout. Sometimes the picture may be complex. That’s all. Rabbi Chaim’s two laws are certainly a complex picture; I don’t see any postmodernity in that. It seems to me that may be the exact opposite. So it seems to me the distance is great.

Two minutes — people need to go eat, and also don’t need to, never mind. I want to say, in this context, one more very important point. This discourse, this narrative, that postmodernity enables, opens options, presents possibilities that didn’t exist before — no, there is no such thing. I would be happy, more than happy, to hear from anyone who can bring me one thing on earth, whether in this book or outside it, that has meaning — yes, not that it can be defined, because then you’ll say that’s cheating — but something that has meaning and that I cannot formulate in modernist language, and that is not nonsense. I know of no such example.

Now, where does postmodernity enable something? I’ll maybe bring an example from the halakhic world. Very often there are descriptions of a halakhic decisor: this decisor is lenient, that one is stringent, this one is original — every halakhic decisor gets some label. I think it would be a serious mistake — both on the part of the decisor himself and on the part of a commentator, historian, or anyone describing the decisor’s work — to explain the decisor’s ruling in those terms. In other words, to say: he wanted to be lenient, therefore he ruled this way; he wanted to be stringent; he wanted to be original, therefore he ruled that way. That’s a mistake. Usually it doesn’t work like that. In our time it’s already beginning to, and therefore we’re getting into all kinds of troubles. But that’s not how it works. That language is used by those who study the halakhic decisor, not by the decisor himself. The decisor himself approaches the topic and sees what, in his opinion, should be the case there — including the implications of whether one needs to be lenient or stringent locally because it’s a situation that requires leniency or stringency. But a decisor who comes with some ideology and says, “I am lenient, and therefore now I will do such-and-such” — that’s not how it works. It shouldn’t work that way, and I think it is a mistake to drag that into the analysis of the halakhic argument.

The same thing is true of postmodernity. From that example I want to illustrate postmodernity. Postmodernity doesn’t open any option. Postmodernity will not add even one element to the language I described earlier with regard to chocolate, nor with regard to any other topic, as far as I understand. What it can do is this: if you see someone who opens himself to many perspectives, who is willing to listen, and who isn’t locked into the angle from which he came, then you can say that he lives or acts within a postmodern culture or within a postmodern discourse. As an outside observer, there are such characteristics of society — I agree. But there is no such philosophy. There is no such thing. Nothing new has emerged here except stretching a question mark into an exclamation point and turning nonsense into an ideology.

I want to add one more point before the chocolate. Smadar, and I think Yossi too, spoke earlier about reflection. It seems to me that there is no literature with more reflection than postmodern literature. More than that: in postmodern literature, all there is is reflection and nothing but reflection. The postmodern writer and thinker is constantly asking himself: am I coming from here or from there? Wait, they are coming from this perspective, but one shouldn’t come from that perspective; one should come from here. He doesn’t just say what seems right to him. That’s not how postmodern literature is built. Rather, he is constantly in crazy reflection, in my humble opinion, constantly looking with tremendous care at where exactly I am in this whole story. And of course anti-reflection is the result of that same reflection. In other words, he is constantly making sure, Heaven forbid, not to have reflection — and of course immediately falls back into that reflective pit all over again.

Since I have to finish, I’ll make just two closing remarks. The chocolate will have to wait. First remark: all sorts of examples of the questions the book deals with — questions raised by biblical criticism, or questions that pose challenges to traditional faith. Rabbi Shagar tries to define what proposal he offers as against the other proposals. Here, in my humble opinion, he is deep in the realms of nonsense. In places where he deals with contradictions, he doesn’t offer any alternative. Whoever can read me such a paragraph and explain to me what it means — I’ll follow him with all my possessions. I mean, in my view there is no such thing. Really. It’s simply this discourse that may sound very deep, and very, I don’t know, elevated and so on, beyond reason and all kinds of things like that — in my eyes it simply belongs to that second category I spoke about earlier.

I’m not speaking about the therapeutic value of this literature, and I think we heard about that from both previous speakers. To each his own therapy: one takes a pill, one reads a book, one meditates. I don’t deal in therapies. But if we’re talking about a philosophical doctrine or a theological doctrine, if you will — and here again, we probably won’t even argue — there is no such thing. There’s no such creature. There is no such thing here. There simply isn’t. Not only isn’t there one here — there isn’t one at all. There is no such thing.

Now one final sentence, to translate the first part, the meaningful component — and there is a lot of it. This book is full of the first and important meaningful component, of arguments that can be translated without much difficulty into modernist language. And in my opinion the slipping into postmodern verbiage is simply intellectual laziness in many cases; in other cases it is genuinely an inability to define. But inability to define is not solved by saying: I’m postmodern, so I’m exempt. Everyone, even in modernist thinking, understands that basic concepts require some kind of definition. But the definition too uses words and basic concepts, and we have to assume some concepts that for us are self-evident and not themselves defined. I don’t see that as some great innovation. Everyone understands that. And everyone understands that behind a sentence there is some signified, and that signifier and signified are not always in perfect overlap. We try to bring them closer, but we don’t always succeed. Bialik once wrote that if he could have written it in prose, he wouldn’t have written a poem about it. That’s true. Sometimes we have difficulty expressing things. But I don’t think this verbiage solves anything. Rather, one should try to define it better, without being lazy and fleeing into the realms of mysticism and postmodernity.

And two final concepts, which I’ll mention in one sentence as the example — the example, that’s all within the same point, the example of the modernist translation I’m proposing. One is this conflation between tolerance and pluralism and containing everything, while also agreeing with what I fight for and struggling for what I think — that is complete nonsense. There are several very, very simple translations of this into modern language. That’s all there is; there is no other option except living in a movie — taking a pill and thinking that I’m both truth and not-truth and things of that sort. And the second point is that Rabbi Shagar often speaks about giving up certainty. But giving up certainty is not postmodernity. Giving up certainty is simply rationality. The foundations of science — any beginning scientist will tell you that obviously we cannot be certain of anything, not even of the finest and most delicate things, not even of the law of gravity. In my view there is here an inexcusable confusion between certainty and knowledge. They are not the same thing. When I say that I know something about the world, I am making a claim about the world. That doesn’t mean I am certain of it. So I’m not certain. I think it’s true. Maybe I’m mistaken. But that doesn’t mean there is no truth; it doesn’t mean I’m not making a claim about the world.

And many times throughout the book there is this move from certainty to knowledge, as if because there is no certainty then clearly this is not knowledge. That is simply not true. A little more intellectual exercise, a little more analysis, and one sees that knowledge and certainty are not synonyms. I can have pieces of knowledge — not can have, all knowledge is like this — including faith in God, even without being postmodern. There is no certain knowledge. For me, I’m not certain of anything. Nothing is certain for me. True, that’s simple enough; you don’t need postmodernity for that. But that doesn’t mean I give up what I think is true. I’m not convinced it’s true; maybe I’m mistaken. I’m also supposed to be a little modest. Maybe the other person is right; I need to listen to him. Maybe he’ll persuade me; maybe he won’t. Maybe I’ll still be wrong even after I listen. None of that requires postmodernity. All of that simply says: be a little modest, listen, maybe you’re not right. That’s all. A much less bombastic translation than the grand verbiage. And again I ask forgiveness for the sharpness. I’m saying it truly out of great appreciation for Rabbi Shagar — genuine appreciation, not superficial — because of the first component that exists in this book, and it is a substantial portion of it.