User:Slrubenstein/Judaism

Historians

Yehezkel Kauffman

The Fall of Judah brought to a close an era full of splendor, creativeness, and courage. One might say that the history of Israel as a nation came to an end, and the history of Judaism began. To be sure, the people of Israel lived on and were as productive after the fall as before, but the conditions of their existence were radically altered. Israel ceased being a "normal" nation

The Fall shattered the national and territorial bases of Israel's culture and religion. It was not only the people that went into exile, but their religion as well; the Exile was no less an "Exile of the Shekinah (the Divine Presence). Israel and its faith were now confronted by a great test. Although Israelite religion was universal in essence, it had evolved in national forms. The land of Israel was its territorial sphere, the life of Israel was the sphere of its historic expression; its holy land was Palestine, its festivals, temples, priests, and prophets were exclusively Israelite. Until the Fall it existed as a national religion, like the religions of Egypt, Canaan, Moab and other nations of antiquity. It was an organic part of the national culture, like the language, poetry, literature, and social forms. The Fall put an end to this state of affairs. Israel was uprooted from its land and scattered among the nations; the national culture in which the religion had been historically rooted collapsed. The crucial question was, could Israelite religion survive the collapse of its national foundations? Could it subsist on foreign soil, or would it go the way of other national religions?

By the end of the Babylonian Exile it had become clear that the people and the religion stood the test. Israelite religions began revealing its universal significance. In the first place it demonstrated its capacity for keeping Israel an identifiable national-religious unit even in foreign lands. Although its national and territorial basis had been destroyed, its inner strength remained undiminished .... the passage from paganism to monotheist occurred at the time of the Exodus, and Israel never retraced its steps to return to its former religious stage .... The religious revolution of the age of Moses established forever a gap between Israel and its neighbors. The test of the exile proved that not even national dissolution could eliminate the gap and restore Israel to the religious community of nations.

Ralph Marcus

Accordingly, we turn to our main topic, which is the religious or cultural life of the Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman diaspora. We say religious or cultural because the two were practically synonymous in ancient Judaism.

...the great majority of Diaspora Jews, no matter how Hellenized they were in externals such as language, housing, institutional forms and the like, remained believing and observant Jews and continued to regard Jerusalem as their holy city and Palestine as their holy land, even after the destruction of the Temple.

Shaye J.D. Cohen

But Ioudaismos, the ancestor of our English word Judaism, means more than just religion.

...in this first ocurence of the term, Ioudaismos has not yet be reduced to designation of a religion. It means rather "the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish)." Among these characteristics, to be sure, are practices and beliefs that we would today call "religious" but these practices and beliefs are not the sole content of the term.

Menahem Stern

Of all the institutions developed by Judaism in the Second Temple era, the synagogue is perhaps the one that exercised the greatest influence on later generations. It has been rightly said that, in establishing the synagogue, Judaism created one of the greatest revolutions in the history of religion and society, for the synagogue was an entirely new environment for divine service, of a type unknown anywhere before, and it did not entail the ceremonial restrictions and financial sacrifices that were required for the maintenance of temples. Whether it originated in Palestine or in the Diaspora, the synagogue became the centre of religious and social life among the Jews .... The synagogue was the instrument that kept Jewish tradition and the Jewish faith alive and that made them accessible to the rank and file of the Jewish people. its functions extended to many areas: it was a house of Torah study and of prayer, but also a focus of social and cultural life.

The faithfulness of the Jew to his religion reached its supreme expression in a willingness to sacrifice his life rather than transgress the commandments of the Torah. This readiness became a historical factor of the greatest importance - not least in that it determined the attitude of the Roman authorities towards Jewish believers.

It is quite impossible to understand the development of Judaism or to describe the development of political events in Judea at the end of the Second Temple era without considering the form that the messianic idea and the vision of the End of Days assumed in those times. Eschatological and messianic hopes had formed part of the heritage even of biblical prophecy. With the passing of time, the apocalypse was envisaged in many and varied forms. In Jewish eschatology at the end of the Second Temple era, national hopes mingled with a more universal vision. The End of Days was not only the time when Israel would be purified and its enemies punished but also the day when all men and all nations would be judged. Even in the physical sphere there would be a great change: this world would pass away and a new, wonderful one would arise in its place. Concurrent with the universalism there was also a development in the direction of individualism: the vision of the End of Days was not only an answer to the hope for national redemption but also to the suffering of the individual The fullest expression of this was a belief in the resurrection of the dead.

Gerson Cohen

Innovation for the sake of the spirit of the Law brings us face to face with the Rabbinic definition of the spirit of Judaism. No matter how concerned the Rabbis were with ritual performance, the choice of alternatives compelled them to formulate some kind of abstract principle by which the followers of the Torah should be guided. It is here that the Prophetic and hagiographic books played a crucial role in the definition of Judaism. The spirit of the cult and its ritual was clearly undefinable, except in relative and conjectural terms. So God has ordained, and so it was to be done. But what had God intended by the injunctions and precepts which He had revealed> to the Rabbinic mind Micah had stated in a nutshell what the prophets had been declaring from the days of Abraham and Moses to the close of the Biblical age: "It hath been told thee, O Man, what is good, and what the lord doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to have mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." Where Micah and other prophets had protested against Israelite cultism, later Judaism explained, it had only been to deny the automatic efficacy of ritual. Ritual could achieve nothing of itself. The personal intention behind it was the crucial factor. The Torah and its rituals were a discipline reminding one at every step of the imperative for justice and humility reminding one at every step of the imperative for justice and humility of behavior, which lead in turn to deeds of mercy and lovingkindness.

Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson

At the Tortosa Disputation [1413-1414, between Jewish leaders and a representative of the Pope, over whether or not Jesus was the messiah of Biblical prophecy] the Jews were under strong social pressure; and this pressure, coupled with fresh memories of [the forced conversions and massacres of Spanish Jews in] 1391, encouraged the Jews to view the disputation as a potential source of serious physical harm to their communities. Under these difficult circumstances, the Jewish representatives behaved with considerable acumen and courage. R. Zerahiah Halevi Ferrer was particularly outstanding. The Christians preferred to begin with the biblical and aggadic passages proving that, with Jesus, the messiah had already come, but R. Zerahiah demanded a consideration of the 'conditions' for authenticating the Messiah. In the course of the prolonged debate on the subject of the Messiah, the Jewish representatives insisted again and again that the essential difference between Judaism and Christianity did not lie in the question of the actualization of the Messiah. Judaism prescribes a set of definite characteristics for its awaited savior. he is to be a royal man and not an incarnated God; with regard to atonement for 'original sin', there is no connection between the coming of the messiah and the atonement of mankind for the 'original sin'. The simple meaning of Bible verses should be the spirit of their letter and not any allegorical interpretation; the messiah will come as king to restored earthly Jerusalem, denying messianic import to the image of a 'celestial Jerusalem' .... The Jews concluded their argument with a methodological and moral consideration of the attitude to interpretation: a fragment may not be taken out of context and certainly is not to be interpreted against the pervading spirit and immanent principles of its context. Hence no one may take isolated Talmudic sayings and interpret them in any authoritative sense without believing in the Talmud as a whole and submitting to its authority.

In Italy, on the one hand, and in the Netherlands, on the other, there were jewish thinkers who were induced by the changes and crises in Jewish history to challenge the very foundation of Judaism, as they had been shaped during the Middle Ages ... In Italy this attitude was the fruit of the later renaissance, with its affirmation of life and the abandonment of barriers. In the Netherlands, however, parallel ideas arose largely because of the vacillation between Christianity and Judaism experienced by the Marranos. There were converts, particularly among the later generations after the expulsion from Spain, who had imagined the Judaism for which they secretly longed while under Christian domination as something very different from what they found when they actually returned to it. In their minds Judaism was identical with freedom of thought and criticism, with a breaking of the ecclesiastical yoke. They had become accustomed to offering criticism, either secretly or openly, of the Catholic Church as well as of its legends and laws, its clergy and ways of life. When Marranos of this kind reached the Spanish and Portuguese communities of the Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam, they found a Jewish society that had learnt by bitter experience what contact with non-Jewish culture in Spain had done to their forefathers; it was now conducting its own affairs in a Calvanist environment and had accordingly introduced a system of stern supervision of the individual, his way of life and opinions.

Cecil Roth

What is the lesson of Jewish survival, not only to the Jews themselves, but to the world at large?

The question is n a way preposterous for a Jew. For Jews must know that the great achievement of our ancestors was that, by their persistence, they preserved Judaism. But from a nonsectarian or even a rationalistic point of view, the persistence of the Jewish tradition has also had far-reaching importance. Throughout the ages, the Jew has influenced mankind by remaining always what may be called an Eternal Protestant. Confident in the validity of his own faith, he has consistently refused to believe as other men believed, however much opinion was against him. Led by the Maccabees, the Jews refused to succumb to the attempt at Hellenization in the second century B.C.E., and thus made possible not only the survival of Judaism, but also the emergence of Christianity and Islam. Their implacable stubbornness secured them exemption from the general compulsion to conform to the state religion of the Roman Empire. And in the Middle Ages, in Europe, they and they alone stood out against the attempt of church and state to impose uniformity and belief everywhere.

This nonconformity served to keep alive some degree of freedom of thought in the world. It made people of intelligence realize the possibility that there might be another point of view, and so prevented their own thought from becoming wholly canalized. The mere existence of Judaism kept Christianity continually on the que vive; the constant Christian polemic directed against Judaism and aimed at converting its adherents, stimulated the argumentative faculty of Christians and made it necessary for them to find a philosophical justification of their faith. But above all, the presence of the Jew compelled people of every faith to think for themselves. It may be said that during the Middle Ages, Judaism was in a way the conscience of Europe: an uncomfortable companion, always questioning, always doubting, always compelling thinkers to reexamine and to justify the bases of belief, always reminding the majority that its conclusions might not be beyond question or argument.

Shmuel Ettinger

Despite the rapid dissolution of historical Jewish frameworks, this period witnessed an intensification of the anti-Semitic propaganda that claimed that all Jews everywhere maintained strong clandestine ties in order to gain control over Christian nations .... Only against this background can one comprehend the strange phenomenon in many European countries at the end of the nineteenth century i voices being raised in defense of the hapless European against the all-powerful Jew. This renewed hostility towards the Jews, which advanced almost simultaneously with their legal emancipation, placed many Jews in a most difficult predicament; their increasing desire to be accepted by the society around them roused apprehension within that society, and their hand outstretched in friendship often encountered curt rejection.

As a result, Jewry stood at the crossroads. There were those Jews who thought the only way to persuade other nations that they were true Germans, Frenchmen or Poles was to renounce their origins, their historic traditions, their national culture and religion. For them, assimilation and conversion were the sole cure for that hereditary disease - their Jewish origin. Others tried to differentiate between the national elements of their Jewish affiliation and its religious or spiritual aspects. They claimed that in the light of legal emancipation they belonged not only to the body politic of their country of residence but also to its national framework, while from the religious and moral point of view they remained Jews. And lest their Jewish loyalties be regarded as a stubborn unreasonable adherence to a meaningless past, they stressed the universal message in Judaism for mankind as a whole, its pure monotheism and consistent moral principles. They believed that these offered a solution to the problems of European society, embroiled as it was in contradictions and struggles, an answer that Christianity had failed to provide after nearly 2,000 years of rule. Another, more radical school of thought maintained that neither adjustment to European society nor altercation with it would help solve the problems of the Jews; what was needed was a fundamental reform of the existing order. Among these people were some who advocated social radicalism and believed that in the new society that would rise in Europe after the purifying revolution, racial or community affiliations would no longer be of any importance and each individual would be judged on his own intrinsic value. There were yet others who chose the path of nationalistic radicalism out of the belief that the a change in the existing situation could only be brought about through the systematic and organized exodus of the Jews from European society to a country of their own, whee they would become a 'nation like all other nation'

Thus the European Enlightenment absorbed into its philosophy of respect for all men, including those born Jewish, and of respect for freedom of conscience and opinion, certain reservations, as regards Judaism. They saw it as the false creation of priests and rabbis and, in regard to the Jews themselves, as a group claiming the right to a separatist existence. Even those intellectuals who were opposed to attacks on Judaism and to religious polemics believed the reforms they were proposing for the Jews - in their appearance, way of life, and occupations - would lead the Jews themselves to abandon their old superstitions. And to the extent that these remained, they would be the personal affair of the individual. The right of the Jews to exist as a group was still accepted only by millenerians, who hoped for universal mystical salvation and who claimed that the return of Israel in body, whether to Christianity, to their own country or even to both together, was the precondition for the universal salvation promised in Christianity. In any case, in the political polemics regarding the status of Jews at the time of the French Revolution, when the principle of separation of church and state was generally accepted, their opponents claimed that the Jews were a separate nation and no only a religious entity and, therefore, unable to claim any political rights. Their supporters, on the other hand, agreed to accept them into society as individuals who would be expected, to a greater or lesser extent, to disavow their heritage.

When the Assembly of Jewish Notables and the Sanhedrin were convened in France and the authorities demanded that they define the attitude of the Jewish religion toward the state, the maskilim began to speak out in support of reform of the Jewish religion. The Sanhedrin, out of a desire to conciliate the authorities, but also under the pressure of the maskilim, passed several resolutions according to which, any time there was a conflict between the demands of the state and of religion, he former should prevail; in any case Jewish law would not apply during military service. The Sanhedrin also decided that 'the law of God includes both religious and politicl injunctions ... an the latter have not been valid since Israel with all its tribes ceased to be a nation dwelling apart,' that is, since it ceased to exist as an independent state. Although the resolutions did not state which were the political injunctions, these remarks served to remove religion from the sphere of human relations and from the connections between the individual Jew and his community.

Immediately after the Congress of Vienna, pamphlets and books began to appear that, for various reasons, refuted the Jewish demand for citizenship in the German states and pointed to the danger facing Germany and the Germans from the assimilation of the Jews. These and similar claims were actually a continuation of attacks in polemical literature from the beginning of the century .... The most prominent opponent of the Jews was Friedrich Ruehs, professor of history at Berlin University, and the Kantian philosopher from Heidelerg, Jakob Fries. The former claimed that those Jews who were loyal to their political religion constituted a 'state within a state' and were therefore incapable of being loyal citizens of a German state. This implied that only by rejecting their Judaism would Jews qualify for German citizenship, and that only the destruction of Judaism as a religion could reform the Jews. Judaism was a relic of an ancient barbaric period, 'a proliferating sickness of peoples, whose force increases through the power of money'; Judaism was a danger to the nations of Europe from the political, economic, and even moral point of view - Jews were the leaders of gangs of robbers and dealers in stolen property. Fried concluded: 'If the Jews do not leave Judaism, they will be obliged to remain irrevocably in their miserable condition. It would be an immeasurably important deed to liberate our people from this plague.' This was the style employed by notable public personalities.

There can be no doubt that the great majority of Jewish converts in the nineteenth century acted because of the legal and social conditions in which the Jews lived in the various European countries. Some converted in order to obtain a government position or in order to marry a Christian; others took this step in order to enter into political life. As the Jews obtained legal equality for Jews, there was still concealed discrimination and there were still those who oped to escape it by becoming Christians. They regarded conversion - as Heine put it - as a ticket of admission to European society. To them, Judaism was 'a historical error', and insignificant relic of an ancient period. They could not believe in the continued existence of Jewish society and despaired of reforming it; as they could not adjust to it, they strove to escape it. As for the ancient heritage of Judaism, which had left its mark on every one of them, they regarded it as a shameful hereditary disease ('Judaism is not a religion, it is a catastrophe'), and sought to remedy it in conversion. Several of the converts tried to neutralize the gravity of the step they had taken by endeavoring to dismiss the religious significance of Christianity, regarding it, in the words of the great German historian Theodor Mommsen, ad 'the only word expressing the character of today's international civilization in which numerous millions all over the many-nationed globe feel themselves united'.

Cultural assimilation and the adoption of the concepts and values of Christian European society led many Jews to re-evaluate the significance of their affiliation to Judaism and to increase their identification with the state and nations among whom they lived. What was new in this approach was not the loyalty of the Jews toward their gentile countries and rulers - this had existed in earlier periods - but of the contradiction that many of then suddenly felt between their loyalty and their affiliation to Judaism.

This sense of contradiction was created during the era that centralizing trends were being intensified in Europe. Educated Jews, who yearned for equal rights in the countries of Europe, took these theories very seriously, since they implied that individuals formed the state, not members of a group or corporation (thought this was still strongly entrenched). Under the conditions prevailing in the first half of the nineteenth century, the educated Jew was pushed back into his own social framework even in those countries in which he had, in theory, been granted civil rights. This came as a shock to those accustomed to regard themselves as equals to those educated Christians who shared their views. These maskilim had often declared that their Judaism was of absolutely no political or national significance. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, they increasingly claimed that no separate political or national loyalty could be attributed to Judaism, that the people among whom they lived were their brethren and the state was their only homeland to which they were loyal 'till death'. As an expression of the sincerity of their beliefs they proposed that all mention of the messiah and the of the Return to Zion be removed from the prayer book.

The Jews began to sense the force of their rejection by European society, but refused to renounce their ideals of equality and the dream of a rational and reformed society. They could not return to activity within the precarious framework of the Jewish community and they therefore began to seek out a new justification for their desire of equality and integration. One of the most characteristic expressions was the ideal of the universal 'Jewish mission' - namely the special message that the Jews and Judaism bore to the nations of the world.

At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, individuals began to offer a universal interpretation of Jewish messianic faith, claiming that the messianic era would. be an epoch of peace, liberty and fraternity among men, whatever their origin or religion. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century several of the maskilim began to accentuate the importance of the Jews as a culture-bearing nation in the past (like the Greeks or the Romans), the debt Europe owed them in this respect, and the significance of the scientific, rational "Jewish idea' - the outstanding proponent of which was Spinoza's philosophy. This was both a justification and an explication of separate Jewish existence throughout the centuries (since some of those Enlightened European circles that had been influenced by English deists and French materialists never tired of stating that Jewish allegiance to a separate group existence was pointless obstinacy. This great historical and spiritual heritage also substantiated the demand or integration into the upper, rather than the lower, echelons of European society.

The next stage in the development of the Jewish self-awareness within these circles was the claim that only pure Jewish monotheism and the moral principles that had evolved in Jewish society from its beginnings could save Europe from its spiritual morass and from the maze of social contradictions and struggles. This entailed emphasizing the importance of the Jews and Judaism to European society, and the significance of the Jewish contribution to its development and welfare in both past and present. But this argument also constituted a veiled - or, sometimes, an explicit - criticism of the dogmatic foundations of Christianity and its mysteries, especially in its failure to solve the vital problems of man and society after 2,000 years. It is worth noting that even among Jewish converts to Christianity there were many who supported this view.

The idea of a 'mission' was widely accepted in Jewish circles in Western and Central Europe. But this method of expressing loyalty to European culture and the advancement of society elicited a spirited reaction from both clerical and radical circles, which regarded it as a manifestation of 'Jewish arrogance' and of the Jews' desire to maintain their own separate existence. To no small extent it also strengthened suspicions of the existence of secret 'Jewish aims' and prepared the ground for the intensification of anti-Semitic trends. The process of Jewish integration into European life was, therefore, a complex dialectic of acceptance and rejection of desire to assimilate and consolidation of Jewish self-awareness at the same time.

The Hamburg temple continued to exist, but very few similar institutions were established until the second half of the 1830s, when a new generation of university-educated rabbis arose in Germany, and may community members, particularly the leaders, displayed a readiness to appoint them to rabbinical posts. from then onwards the number of German rabbis ready to contemplate some degree of rabbinical reform grew from year to year. The most important of these was Abraham Geiger (1810-74), who may be denoted the Spiritual father for the reform movement. Geiger was opposed to arbitrary amendments introduced by the young rabbis of his generation on their own initiative. His aim was to find general principles for differentiation between fundamental and marginal principles in Judaism. He therefore called for a scientific approach to the general question of Jewish tradition. In his view, the essence of Judaism was the religious-universal element. All the remainder was the fruit of historical conditions particularly those that had influenced the Jews during their exile. Those injunctions and customs that were not an essential part of Mosaic, law, but the product of late product of later periods and, therefore, unsuited to modern society, would be abolished.

A new controversy on the question of reform was sparked off when the orthodox rabbi of the Breslau community refused to cooperate with Geiger, who was elected his deputy in 1838, and particularly when the rabbi of Hamburg, Isaak Bernays, revived the prohibition against employing the prayerbook used in the reform temple. This time many reform rabbis supported Geiger and the temple prayerbook. Outstanding among the extreme reformists was Samuel Holdheim (1806-1860), who at that time published a book entitled On the Autonomy of Rabbis. He wrote that is was clear to him that the state should deal with problems of a political and social character, the authorities had the power to decide which problems were under their jurisdiction and which could be entrusted tot the Jewish community. He believed that the government should deal with matrimonial, sabbath, and festival laws and all problems arising between man and man. Only questions of religious worship would be left to the authority of the rabbis and Jewish religious institutions because synagogue worship was the most important part of Jewish religious life. Holdheim's proposals thus undermined the traditional structure of the Jewish community, rejecting most of its established fortunes.

The basic principles of reform were formulated and consolidated in this period. Israel's mission was not to remove itself from other nation and re-establish a separate kingdom, but rather to unite with all other earthly creatures on the basis of common faith in one God. Therefore, as it is written in the Talmud (Pesahim 87b), "God did mercy the children of Israel in scattering them among the nations.' he had sent them out among the nations to disseminate belief in one God and thus to serve as a 'nation of priests' for the entire world. the world had need of Israel's existence, and the pure belief of that nation, the universal religious and moral belief, which other nations had not yet attained. needless to say, they continued to adhere to the belief of the fist reformers that any custom, law or prayer that hindered Israel's mission should be changed or abolished.

The reactionary period that followed the Congress of Vienna and the appearance of anti-Jewish literature, which emanated from Enlightenment German circles, brought about a change of values among the maskilim. The dream of a rapid rapprochement between Jews and Christians on the basis of the spread of Enlightenment theories proved and idle hope. Young maskilim began to question why large sections of Christian society displayed hostility towards them, despite the fact that they had acquired extensive knowledge of European culture and had adopted its manners and behavior.

These maskilim tended to think that this continued hostility resulted from European society's ignorance of Judaism, its history, and its contributions to European culture. Thus these circles set themselves a dual aim: to adapt Jewish concepts and behavior to those of European society and to 'show the beauty of Shem in the tents of Japhet'; or, in other words, to present the treasures of Jewish creativity to the non-Jewish world. The way to achieve these aims was to reveal the sources of Jewish religious customs and literary works. It was mainly for this purpose that the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (association for Jewish Kulture and Science), which laid the foundation for modern research in Jewish studies, was founded in 1819.

Another opponent of religious reform was R. Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) the founder and leader of the new orthodoxy in Germany (the Frankfurt style 'neo-Orthodoxy' as it was later called). Despite their differences and th fierce struggle between them, there were certain elements common to both Hirsch and the reformists, as both emerged from the world of the Haskalah. Hirsch, like the reformers of his day, believed that the religious ideals of Judaism and of universal ethics were identical. He too favoured emancipation and cultural integration into Christian Europe. The difference between them lay in his view of the Torah and his definition of the mission of the Jew. According to Hirsch, Torah implied observance of all religious injunctions, however small, and the regulations and decisions of Talmudic sages should be treated as if they were part of the law given to Modes on Sinai. The Torah was the essence of Judaism, and it was the task of Judaism to maintain it in its traditional form. He who observed it was the ideal man carrying out the will of providence.

Although Hirsch recognized the election of Israel, the basis of his belief was not Israel as a ntion, but the individual Jew. He offered a solution to Jewish existence under he conditions of emancipation. By observing God's will, by fulfilling his special mission, the Jew would take pride of place in human society. Hirsch attributed spiritual essence not only to the 'Jewish nation' of his day, but he believed that in ancient times Jewish existence had also had only one meaning - its religious mission. Judaism, like the Torah, was not a historical phenomenon but an eternal metaphysical one - hence the clash between his view and the historical approach of the reformists.

Under the influence of the assimilatory tendency, the outlook and the activities of the reform movement, Jews in the West gradually began to believe that there was no longer a single Jewish nation. They reasoned that Jews in various countries were linked solely by origin and religion and that the importance of thee ties was waning. The accepted claim in these circles was that in order to adapt himself to the modern state and society the Jew ought to become a Frenchman or a Pole 'of the Mosaic Persuasion' .... But at the same time, as we have noted, there began to appear in Jewish society the first signs of the strengthening of communal awareness and of the crystallizing of solidarity between Jewish groups in different countries. The clearest expression of this consolidation was the awakening of European Jewry at the time of the Damascus blood libel [of 1840].

Salo Baron

Until the era of emancipation no one doubted the existence of a Jewish nationality. In an era when religious disparity overshadowed all ethnic-cultural differences, Jews were generally considered a separate cultural entity. Under secular modern nationalism, on the other hand, the fiction arose that Jews were nothing but a religious group. The protagonists of this idea forgot that such divorcement of nationality from religion in the Christian world had been the result of a protracted evolution from the Reformation through the American and French Revolutions, the decisive factor being the deadlock of the Wars of Religion. Judaism, which had not gone through that process, would have had to undergo an even greater transformation, since the doctrine of the chosen people and the Jews' physical descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had always been an integral part of their faith.

Curiously, despite the fervor of theological debate the difference between Reform and traditionalism goes much less deep in the realm of religious fundamentals than in that of ritualistic practice. One obvious explanation is the fact that Judaism has always placed far less emphasis upon the dogmatic elements than upon the way of life.

Views of contemporary Jewish leaders

Mordecai Kaplan

To begin with, we have to analyze the very notion of difference To be different may mean to be both other and unlike, or to be other only. Otherness is difference in entity, unlikeness is difference in quality. Unlikeliness presupposes otherness, but otherness is compatible with either likeness or unlikeness. Otherness may therefore be considered primary, and unlikeness only secondary. hence, when Jewish life is endangered and we try to conserve it, we necessarily try to conserve that which differentiates it from non-Jewish life. but here a fallacy insinuates itself. We make the mistake of believing that what we chiefly try to conserve is that wherein Jewish life is unlike non-Jewish life, or what may be termed as differential. We concentrate on the religious aspect of Jewish life, because it is that aspect which is most conspicuously most unlike, and because we assume it to be the least troublesome to justify. But the truth of the matter is that what is at stake in our day is the very maintenance of Jewish life as a distinct society entity. Its very otherness is in jeopardy. .... The Jew's religion is but one element in his life that is challenged by the present environment. it is a mistake, therefore, to conceive the task of conserving Jewish life as essentially a task of saving the Jew's religion .... the task before the Jew is to save the otherness of Jewish life; the element of unlikeness will take care of itself .... Judaism as otherness is thus something far more comprehensive than Jewish religion. it contains the nexus of a history, literature, language, social organization, folk sanctions, standards of conduct, social and spiritual ideals, esthetic values, which in their totality form a civilization.

Joseph Soloveitchik

Halakhic man reflects two opposing selves; two disparate images are embodied within his soul and spirit. On the one hand he is as far removed from homo religiosus as east is from west and identical, in many respects, to prosaic, cognitive man; on the other hand he is a man of God, possessor of an ontological approach that is devoted to God and of a wold view saturated with the radiance of the Divine Presence. For this reason it is difficult to analyze halakhic man's religious consciousness by applying the terms and traits that descriptive psychology and modern philosophy of religion have used to characterize the religious personality ... The image that halakhic man presents is singular, even strange. He is of a type that is unfamiliar to students of religion .

Solomon Shechter

What is Judaism? Is it a religion? An ethnic entity? a culture? a civilization? Conservative Judaism has a good deal to say about this .... While Schechter conceded that a definition of Judaism is no less perplexing than a definition of God, he sharply criticized the effort of Geiger and the Reformers to reduce Judaism to the status of merely a religious sect,stripped of all national content.

Emmanual Rackman

"a legal order rather than a religion or faith" (56)

Milton Steinberg

The word "Judaism" has two distinct and equally legitimate meanings. Sometimes it denotes full civilization; the total actualities, past and present, of the historic group of human beings known as the Jewish people. In this significance, it embraces secular as well as sacred elements; for example, the love songs of medieval Hebrew poets., the folk music and dance of East European Jewries, social institutions of all sorts, and much else.

Just as properly, "Judaism" may stand for something more limited: the spiritual aspect of that civilization; in sum, for the Jewish religion.

References