•”Lift lift your eyes on high, and see: Who hath created these? He that bringeth on their host by number, He calleth them all by name (Isaiah 40:26)

Rabbi Leonard M. Kaplan
Adas Israel Synagogue
7th N.W. & Adams

From the day that man first appeared on this planet, he has looked on high at the stars and the world around him, and he has stood in awe before the great mystery of creation. He would try to reach up to the stars, and he would climb the highest mountain peaks, but still they would appear far away, blinking steadily in their continued silence, mocking the puny man who would presume to fathom their origin, their nature, and their destiny. But man was not easily discouraged. He continued to climb and probe the mystery of the stars, the riddle of the atom, and even the secret of life itself. Today, mankind finds himself on the threshold of creating life. By duplicating conditions of a primeval earth, scientists have already succeeded in bringing forth the most primitive form of pre – life. This has lead many psuedo-scientists of narrow mental gauge to proclaim that man no longer needs to believe in God, and that science has done away with all mystery and miracle.

But the true thinking scientist knows that the exact opposite is true — that science has enormously increased man’s sense of mystery, and that all of nature is nothing but a huge miracle.

When astronomers explore galaxies billions of light years away, they find that they are made of the same matter as the stuff beneath our feet. Only one kind of matter is found to exi st throughout the entire universe. Yet, this unique material has one exceptional property — it can support life, and under proper conditions, it can even give rise to life. The fact that inert matter carries the potential of life cannot be considered a mere random accident. It can be nothing less than the work of a purposeful Creator. How then can we imagine something as simple as the electron carrying within itself the potential of the human brain, had not humanity been anticipated by the Designer of all creation? Even the Bible does not tell us that God created life, but rather that He said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures.” (Genesis 1:24). God created matter — the dust of the earth — with the potential of al! life. If scientists are successful in creating true life, our belief in God should be all the stronger, for who else but an omniscient- God could have created the elementary particles of matter with all the inherent potentialities of the human spirit? The handwriting of God is clear — not on the wall — but in the very heart of nature.
RABBI LEONARD M. KAPLAN

Here we have a JTA bulitein about Kaplan in his role as rabbi of Ohav Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Albany where he also serves as as Jewish student adviser at SUNY at Albany. He is working to provide kosher food and is involved in outreach. Notice in the language of the announcement the language of the 1960’s “free university” and “eschews formal leadership.” Aryeh Kaplan’s describes his classes as follows: “Many college students turn to drugs and the Eastern religions searching for a mystic and deeply spiritual experience,” the prospectus said. “Most of these are not at all aware of Judaism’s great mystic and spiritual tradition. Especially relevant to this quest is Hassidism, which stands unique as the world’s only popular mystic movement.” Three years later, he starts publishing his Hasidism as popular mysticism and having everything that Eastern mysticism contains.

Project to Rediscover Jewish Values Launched by Students at State University of N.Y.
ALBANY, N.Y., Jul. 6 (JTA) –
A group of students at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA) is planning to launch a “Jewish Rediscovery Project” on the campus next fall. Its motivation is “a common desire to rediscover Jewish values relevant to current problems and to act upon such problems as a Jewish group,” according to a prospectus released here. The youngsters are working with Rabbi Leonard M. Kaplan of Congregation Obav Sholom, the Jewish religious advisor at SUNYA. They estimate the Jewish student population at 2,370 or 19.5 percent of the 12,125 total, and the Jewish faculty at 200 members, 9.2 percent of the total. According to Rabbi Kaplan, Jewish student activists are already largely responsible for the creation of the first full Judaica department in the entire New York State University system, which will open in September under the chairmanship of Prof. Jerome Eckstein. They are also responsible for a Free University of Judaica, offering courses that would not normally come under the Judaica Department; a kosher food plan provided by the University, and a special Passover food plan administered by the University, Rabbi Kaplan reported.

“The Jewish Rediscovery Project” is the tentative name for a series of programs expected to attract large numbers of students who find traditional Jewish organizational hierarchies and programs repellant and irrelevant to their interests and their intellectual and spiritual needs. The series eschews formal leadership structure in favor of what the students call sub-cooperatives without chairman and officers, in which leadership is expected to rise spontaneously according to the project’s needs. The student most responsible for the program, according to Rabbi Kaplan, is Tobi Goldstein a sophomore. The prospectus calls for four sub-cooperatives–a Study Cooperative, an Information Cooperative, an Action Cooperative and a Religion Cooperative. In the latter, students will explore Hassidism as an avenue to mystical experience. “Many college students turn to drugs and the Eastern religions searching for a mystic and deeply spiritual experience,” the prospectus said. “Most of these are not at all aware of Judaism’s great mystic and spiritual tradition. Especially relevant to this quest is Hassidism, which stands unique as the world’s only popular mystic movement.”

To be Continued in the next post

On the list was one public discourse that I had not heard or read called “5122 KNESSETH TISROEL – DIALOGUE 04/25/78.” It was a real winner. It was a discussion with Orthodox mental health professionals and it discussed several hot topics including the meaning of Lonely Man of Faith, Israeli politics, abortion, homosexuality, Chabad, BT’s, and the role of the social worker.

More importantly, it shows how people related to Rav Soloveitchik and his replies to inquiries. Especially in the last 15 minutes of the tape one can see (1) how Rav Soloveitchik gave his students great latitude to solve problems themselves, (2) how he trusted professionals, (3) how did not think that everything needed halakhic or rabbinic answers (4) and how he took his answers to be his own personal formulation, not some binding or definitive understanding. The tape also show Rav Soloveitchik in several moods from impatient to jovial and it especially showed how Rav Soloveitchik dealt with ideas and not with the bottom line.

If you have never heard a full shiur from Rav Soloveitchik or have not heard one in many years or even if you have forgotten why people where once upset about the current revisionism of the Rav, then please listen to this lecture (or at least the last 15 minutes). It has good audio quality. This lecture will remind you why people were attracted to Rav Soloveitchik. I do not intend to mediate your direct encounter with his shiur, and that is why this one is such a good choice.

The setting is 1978, Annie is the wholesome smash hit on Broadway and Billy Joel’s The Stranger is on the pop radio stations. Picture the younger professionals wearing big tortoise-shell eyeglass frames and long side-burns. Deeply colored sweaters and sports jackets were in style that year, colors like wine, cranberry, and olive- on the tape you will hear people referred to by their clothes color. The Rav himself tended to wear light colored sports jackets to events like this.

It was a decade after his Lonely Man of Faith lecture done originally as a mental health lecture and less than a year after a follow-up lecture in Boston 1977 covering much of the same material. The setting this time is NY and the gathering is of Orthodox mental health professionals, mainly MSW’s and psychologists including Paul Kahn, Rivka Danzig, Lester Kaufman, Carmi Schwartz, and Rabbi Avrach, the Director of Community Services Division. In the 1970’s, psychology, therapy, and existential therapy reigned supreme. The Yeshivish answer was still to ban majoring in psychology. It also produced books like Avraham Amsel’s Rational Irational Man – Torah Psychology (1976), which denigrated psychology as not the Torah’s way since the emotions need to be suppressed into a rational and volitional life. Several people in the room whom I did not mention, were graduates of Chaim Berlin or Torah ve Daas who a few years earlier switched from suits to turtlenecks and under the influence of the early 1970’s discovered the humanistic path of psychology based on not repressing emotions; gestalt, transaction, and existential therapies replaced repression. People were reading Erik Erikson, Irwin Yalom, R. D. Laing, and Fritz Perls. The Bob Newhart show about therapy had just ended its six year run that month. In the 1960’s and 1970’s the seeming only Rosh Yeshiva to field the new questions was Rav Soloveitchik. At the same time notice how philosophic and abstract were his answers.

A mere decade later Rabbi Twerski will make the liberalism of self-esteem humanistic psychology and twelve step as a seminal start of the new Yeshivish self-help books and in contrast some of YU’s graduates will start reading the more conservative works by authors like Dobson. There is a switch to asking what causes the individual to be deviant, rather than creating a role for the individual.Now, thirty years later every Rosh Yeshiva and pulpit rabbi is an expert on psychology and social work without the need for professional trained guidance. But in 1978, the burning question is how do we balance the individualism and lack of repression in therapy with commitment to the group, the halakhah community. In the discussion, notice the lack of a role for evil inclination, or any mussar advice to restrain or repress oneself.

When you listen to the tape notice how often Rav Soloveitchik says “ I created” “personal experience” and “my formulation.” Also notice his joke that he took tranquilizers and they didn’t help him as much as Talmud study helped him.

He discusses the Jewish commitment to the Israel. His politics is old time Likkud. We did indeed dislocate the Arabs but that does not matter. We were the ones who started the trouble in Hebron- why did we did it? Because Israel and our connection to it is our insanity. We are willing to go against the whole world. We are willing to defy common sense because of our connection. Defiance and redemptive go together.

In this discussion, he uses the word mesorah to refer to the continuity of the Jewish people and to the chain of scholars of the mesorah. He does not use it as a body of knowledge or a specific teaching. The Mesorah community extends from Avraham to messiah and offers a sense of calming sense of eternity that transcends the individual. Being part of the mesorah offers a deeper reality that unites past and future. We are joined as part of a covenantal community of every Jew who was in the past and those who have yet to appear. Respect for the elders and our antecendents and a commitment for educating future generations.(similar to LMF)

The Rav says that only when his parents died did he find the malakh hamaves confronting him “My Cartesian awareness included a sense of my parents.”

Can we help a homosexual alleviate guilt? “I am not a social worker.” But the goal is not to tell him “sin and be happy.” People have freedom and people can change. There is no need to reject any case. We believe people have the ability to do teshuvah. Don’t encourage sin but there is always hope. But, you may not encourage homosexual practices. (Notice what the discussion looked like before the culture wars- neither condemnation not acceptance, just what is the social worker’s responsibility? Notice how Rav Soloveithcik is mainly concerned with what the observant therapist should do and does not make big statements about society or public policy.)

Can one go against respecting one’s parents kibud av ve am as part of the process of therapy. He answers that the goal is to follow the right way but process may be far from it. So temporary violation is OK as part of a bigger process.

What about college women who are sexually active but not using birth control, therapist cannot pasken birth control questions but it may lead to an abortion? Answer- You are not responsible for events in the future.
What about people having an abortion- it is forbidden but what you should do? Answer- Abortion is completely prohibited as murder, we just do not consider it libel for punishment… What to do? I don’t know.

How do we apply these guidelines when the social worker is orthodox and client is not religious.
Rav Soloveitchik- “It is up to the social worker – I cannot advice – it is hard.” This is the Rav Soloveitchik that many remember who left applications in the hands of professionals.

He praises Chabad and its success because they temporarily display tolerance. They show understanding and lend a helping hand.
One cannot condemn client right away. And to earn respect means professional respect as a skilled and understanding professional. (not respect for sticking to one’s opinions.)

He tells the story of certain girl who became a BT but was not ready for taryag mizvot, all the mizvot. First she went to a known gadol –rosh yeshiva, who said it was an all or nothing package either keep Shabbos or else. She wet to another rabbi who said accept one mizvah with the complete letter of the law. She did and eventually became completely observant. (What lesson do you think his listeners drew from the story?)

In the last five minutes, the Rav was asked “is that [the Rav’s approach in LMF] the only method or the [definitive] halakhic method? Is this the necessary approach toward Keneset Yisrael or is there another method?

The Rav answers that his loneliness is his creative experience and his binding himself to the group cures his loneliness. Being part of the group of keneset yisrael is not his creative time. Rather, his individual loneliness which is an “Awareness of self- not mere introversion or introspection.” But, “Community man is not creative. We have a dialectic back and forth. (Notice he did not consider his approach definitive.)

Certain times I don’t want to give or teach. They say I am a good teacher. A good teacher forms a community in his class. Not technical teaching but to discuss and debate problems – and sometimes they are right and I admit it. One needs to be sincere and consistent. Sometimes the students know as much as I do and I have nothing to teach so I retreat. The need to give is called hesed- to teach is a very volatile activity. (Notice that he defines his teaching an shiur not as offering fixed answers but as discussion and debate. Also notice how impatient Rav Solovetichik was in giving over his prepared précis of LMF, and how relaxed he is in fielding questions.)

Final words on being a social worker. “There is no difference between a social worker or a rabbi concerning their duties as a Jew In fact, a social worker can accomplish more. A social worker is perceived as neutral and objective- and can be more effective.

As a closing comment, the moderator said “Rav Soloveitchik does fancy footwork- he wants idea and we want to drag him down.” (Notice they did not see the Rav as practical guidance or halakhah, rather as ideas and big guidelines. This led to each listener interpreting it for themselves. Unless someone violated the guideline in a major way, they were not reigned in).

[I only listened to the tape once, so if I made any mistakes they were inadvertent, and I will be glad to change what I wrote.] If you cannot find time to listen to the entire tape then just listen to the last 15 minutes to get a taste of his personality.

I ran across a couple of articles on Søren Kierkegaard from the beginning of the 1940s while doing research for a book about a Danish nurse in the German Red Cross during the Second World War. To stumble on article on Kierkegaard was in itself not surprising. What was surprising was that they were in National Socialisten [the National Socialist] and Jul i Norden [Jul in the North], two strongly anti-Semitic publications associated with the Nazi party in Scandinavia.

“Søren Kierkegaard is without question the greatest genius the Danish nation has produced” began one of the articles. Moreover, continues the author, “his writings contain the best instructions for the liberation of the Danish people from the spirit of Judaism which has come increasingly to dominate Denmark and which he saw himself as called by providence to fight. One could thus to this extent be justified in asserting that Søren Kierkegaard was the first Danish National Socialist.”

The author would not have been able to support such a claim, even if he had done extensive research, given that Kierkegaard was vehemently opposed to every form of both nationalism and socialism. On the other hand, there is something to the claim that Kierkegaard wanted to free the Danish people–or preferably all of Christendom–from “the Jewish spirit” which he, like the Nazis, viewed as materialistic, and which he increasingly portrayed as essentially in opposition to Christianity.

I realized to my own shame, after reading these two articles, that I had also been all too willing to ignore, or to explain away, Kierkegaard’s anti-Semitism. I thus wrote an article on this topic for the magazine of Jewish culture, Guldberg. I cited Kierkegaard’s references, just as had Geill, to a Jewish editor as a “Jøde Dreng” [Jew-boy] and to “en trællesindet Jøde øvende Herskermagt” [a servile Jew exercising power] as well as his observation concerning this same editor and the distribution of his paper that “only a Jew could be fitted for this most equivocal of all tyrannies, even more equivocal than that of a usurer (to which the Jew, however, is best suited).”
He says first that ‘Kierkegaard’s references to the Jews were much harsher than those of other intellectuals of the period, but then that it is believed that he identified himself with Jews whom he thought were fundamentally unhappy.” He observes later that Kierkegaard emphasized “Judaism was the enemy of Christianity, but most of what he objected to in Judaism was precisely what he criticized contemporary Christianity for.”

Once again, the reader is instructed to appreciate that despite Kierkegaard’s apparent anti-Semitism, he was not anti-Semitic in that his overarching purpose was an attack on the Christianity of his day rather an attack on Judaism, and it is in this light that one must understand his possible identification of himself with Jews as an unhappy people.

So far as I know, no one until now has answered these questions, despite the fact that a Danish scholar touched on aspects of the reciprocal relationship between Judaism and Christianity in Kierkegaard’s authorship in 1999. Read the Rest Here.

I took a few moments to look at several of the pages and the introduction by Chief Rabbi Hertz caught my eye. He treats the Talmud as a record of the discussions fo the Rabbis that captured everything they said, good and bad, learned and unlearned, noble and degrading. He is willing to say about parts of the Talmud: “some of the customs depicted or obiter dicta reported, are repugnant to Western taste need not be denied. “ And he concludes that the legends, discussions, science, and folkways “consists of mere individual utterances that possess no general and binding authority.”

Hertz’s approach to the Talmud is similar to that of Shadal who in his letters deals with difficult Talmudic texts by declaring that they are just person opinion. WE lack an article on Western European Orthodox rabbinical attitudes to the Talmud. From Shadal to Steinsaltz; they tended to share Hertz view. In contrast, in Eastern Europe every line of the Talmud was sacrosanct. The Mahara”tz Chayes dealt with the folklore, demons, and unwisdom by declaring that it was not to be taken literally, rather it contained hidden didactic messages. It had to be allegory or hyperbole. But Hertz does not look for allegory and treats these texts in a straight forward manner as objectionable personal opinion and therefore rejects them

But the Gemara is more than a mere commentary. In it are sedulously gathered, without any reference to their connection with the Mishnah, whatever utterances had for centuries dropped from the lips of the Masters; whatever Tradition preserved concerning them or their actions; whatever bears directly, or even distantly, upon the great subjects of religion, life, and conduct. In addition, therefore, to legal discussions and enactments on every aspect of Jewish duty, whether it be ceremonial, civic, or moral, it contains homiletical exegesis of Scripture; moral maxims, popular proverbs, prayers, parables, fables, tales; accounts of manners and customs, Jewish and non-Jewish; facts and fancies of science by the learned; Jewish and heathen folklore, and all the wisdom and unwisdom of the unlearned. This vast and complex material occurs throughout the Gemara, as the name of an author, a casual quotation from Scripture, or some other accident in thought or style started a new association in ideas.

HALACHAH AND HAGGADAH
The Talmud itself classifies its component elements either as Halachah or Haggadah. Emanuel Deutsch describes the one as emanating from the brain, the other from the heart; the one prose, the other poetry; the one carrying with it all those mental faculties that manifest themselves in arguing, investigating, comparing, developing: the other springing from the realms of fancy, of imagination, feeling, humour:

Beautiful old stories,
Tales of angels, fairy legends,
Stilly histories of martyrs,
Festal songs and words of wisdom;
Hyperboles, most quaint it may be,
Yet replete with strength and fire
And faith-how they gleam,
And glow and glitter!
as Heine has it.

We have dogmatical Haggadah, treating of God’s attributes and providence, creation, revelation, Messianic times, and the Hereafter. The historical Haggadah brings traditions and legends concerning the heroes and events in national or universal history, from Adam to Alexander of Macedon, Titus and Hadrian. It is legend pure and simple. Its aim is not so much to give the facts concerning the righteous and unrighteous makers of history, as the moral that may be pointed from the tales that adorn their honour or dishonour.

That some of the folklore element in the Haggadah, some of the customs depicted or obiter dicta reported, are repugnant to Western taste need not be denied. ‘The greatest fault to be found with those who wrote down such passages. says Schechter, ‘is that they did not observe the wise rule of Dr Johnson who said to Boswell on a certain occasion, “Let us get serious, for there conies a fool”. And the fools unfortunately did come, in the shape of certain Jewish commentators and Christian controversialists, who took as serious things which were only the expression of a momentary impulse. or represented the opinion of sonic isolated individual, or were meant simply as a piece of humorous by-play, calculated to enliven the interest of a languid audience.’ In spite of the fact that the Haggadah contains parables of infinite beauty and enshrines sayings of eternal worth, it must be remembered that the Haggadah consists of mere individual utterances that possess no general and binding authority.
2 December 1934
Read the Rest Here.

The first post was a speculative review essay on Jacob Gotlieb’s recent Rationalism In Hasidic Attire Habad`s Harmonistic Approach to Maimonides [Hebrew] Bar Ilan University Press. The reviewer Rubin cites Gotlieb that Chabad engages in harmonization because they believe in progressive revelation. To which Eli Rubin adds that own theological fancy that since Torah, Israel, and God are one and above time, then Torah is above any temporality. And then we get the known Chabad author Tzvi Freeman chiming in that it is post-modern.

Gotlieb cites the treatment of Maimonides by Chabad thinkers as an example of what he considers to be their view of “the developmental nature of Jewish Belief, which is continuously revealed from generation to generation… According to this view… [the doctrine of Jewish] Belief is continuously clarified and revealed over the centuries by the famed Sages of Israelwhose teachings become the inheritance of the community… Major currents in Jewish thought such as rational philosophy, the Kabbalah of theZohar, the Kabbalah of the Arizal, and Chassidic teaching, do not reflect different views of the Jewish faith, but a [single] developing view… The “revelation” of Chassidic teaching does not require the rejection of Maimonides, but its inclusion within the [Chasidic] framework… The interpretive approach… of Chabad thinkers is therefore characterized by harmonistic interpretation, based on a developmental approach.”
The very boundaries that define the Jewish People, the Torah and G d as three distinct identities standing in relation to one another, collapse into the essential core of ineffable Divinity… With the opening of each new window, the quintessence of Torah further unfolds and emerges, and all past applications are further illuminated by the broadening view.
Having reframed the very nature of the Torah’s relationship with time, the difficulties posed by the harmonistic interpretive approach earlier described, simply dissolve. The entire corpus of Jewish thought with all the conceptual, geographic and temporal diversity of its specific applications can indeed be seen as variant facets of the singular, eternally unchanging Torah, whose transcendent essence unfolds in a fragmented sequence of developmental interpretation.

Is Chabad post-modern?
This view of the unfolding or unpacking of Torah within time has strong support from midreshei chazal, and yet stands in sharp contrast with the standard presentations. We generally speak about Torah as something of the past that we are trying to preserve. Or we are told that the Torah is “ever-evolving.”.. I get the feeling that Jacques Derrida would feel at home with such a concept. For one thing, he would see in it a deconstruction of text and meaning. Posted By Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

The second blog post was on the Discourses of the Rebeb Rashab from 1911-1912, called “Ayin Beis” one of the basic year-long series of discourses of the Rebeb Reshab. (It assumes that one has already mastered the 1905-6 smaakh vav series and his other works). The blog covers a lecture by Rabbi Yoel Kahn in Anticipation of Upcoming Centennial of Epic “Ayin Beis” Discourses. These works are basics for twentieth century Chabad theology and if they invited me to give a lecture on it, I would gladly do it. The discourse is on the nature of reality as an undifferentiated light that is divided by creation into limited views. Differentiated reality becomes a revelation of God’s reality. This creates a theology focused on the physical world and the performance of mitzvot int he physical world.

Central to the philosophical framework of Rabbi Shneur Zalman is the Kabbalistic concept of ohrot and keilim. Ohr (ohrot in plural) means light, and represents the formless simplicity of the divine essence. White light, or colourless light, actually contains all the colors of the visible spectrum, but combines them in a singular manifestation of uncolored unity. Kli (Keilim in plural) means receptacle; when the undefined ray of pure light is shone through a colored glass, the glass filters out all colors in the spectrum accept for its own color, which shines through. When shone through a prism, all the colors of the spectrum, are manifest as distinct colors. This paradigm reflects the dualism of reality; in the act of creation the essential simplicity of infinite divinity is made manifest in the finite forms of physical reality. Just as the colored light is a limited revelation of its source, so each created form is a limited view onto divinity.
Physicality is made transparent to the ultimate reality that must transcend both disclosure and concealment, which can be neither and must be both.
Similarly, the created realm, complete with its multiplicity of forms, which apparently conceals the manifestation of the singular simplicity of divinity, is actually itself a mode of divine revelation.
Having cast the concealed disclosure of divinity embodied in physical reality as a fuller expression of G‑d’s non-contingent being, the divergent forms experienced in the created realm are understood to be, not a fallacy or misrepresentation, but a disclosure of G‑d’s ultimate reality.

And the third post was announcement of a new index of the Rebeb’s writings.

Sefer Ha-Maftechot Le-Sichot KodeshSefer Ha-Maftechot Le-Sichot Kodesh (5695-5752) A Comprehensive Index to the Spoken Word of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe (Hebrew) By Rabbi Michael A. Seligson 1600 pp.

Blog is here

I still have many un-posted pieces since July. The Oliver Roy post took me half a year to get to it.

Those academics and clergy that want an interview about your books or a guest post, then please let me know. I would be glad to oblige qualified people. Please don’t be shy. Everyone has enjoyed the process.

From the analytics available:
My readership is in the places that one would expect: Boston, Baltimore, Evanston, SF, D.C., LA, Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego, Cleveland, Hartford and Atlanta. I have a strong and consistent readership with an IP # in Council Bluffs, IA. If you are from that area and a regular reader, then can you please tell me what Jewish or Christian groups are my readers in IA? I have regular readers in Dallas-Plano, a town that I have not visited the Jewish community and don’t have any personal friends there. Also a solid contingent in Omaha.

I have more readers with Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan IP addresses than Jerusalem.

According to the analytics, my readership for the first two years was mainly people with graduate degrees and good incomes. In the late Fall, I have gained a demographic without degrees. Hmm.

I gained many new readers with the Carr interview. Welcome.

I just got this week a Samsung Tablet- if anyone knows any good apps to download tell me.

I lost the most readers, feed readers, and subscribers with my review of two works of scholarship on Hasidic Tales. I am surprised that about that. Of all the things that I covered, that Hasidic Tales are not real was a breaking point!?

If you are planning on buying my next book Judaism and World Religions , it will be printed in about 4-5 weeks and officially published mid-March. The price will drop greatly for the pre-publication version, but you have price-guarantee from Amazon.

David M. Carr Ph.D. is professor at Union Theological Seminary in NY. He received his degree in Religion from Claremont Graduate University in 1988. Before coming to Union in August 1999, Dr. Carr served as full professor of Old Testament at Methodist Theological School in Ohio from 1988-1999.

Professor Carr’s book-length publications include From D to Q: A Study of Early Jewish Interpretations of Solomon’s Dream at Gibeon (Scholars Press, 1991); Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Westminster, 1996); The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality and the Bible (Oxford, 2003); Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Western Scripture and Literature (Oxford, 2005); In October 2011 his most recent book appeared: The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2011).

The reason for this interview is because if the religious community wants to respond to Biblical criticism, then it should know what it is talking about. It has to stop create homiletics about repetitions and thinking that it answers anything at all. Part of the importance of Prof. Carr is that he thinks we don’t know enough to say much with certainty about the original Mesopotamian origins of the Torah. We cannot separate it into documents and we cannot do etymological origins of texts. Carr uncovers specific evidence that the Hebrew Bible contains texts dating across Israelite history, even the early pre-exilic period (10th-9th centuries).His method is to use parallel documents, many of them works edited only in the last 40 years such as the Ugaritic texts at Ebla & Ras Shamra. Please create a religious response that includes Sinai and can work with the principles of faith, but first know the field.

As a believer, liberal Protestants only need a revelation from heaven or a Divine source, but they don’t need it to be from Sinai or Sinai as the defining moment.

David Carr’s prior book Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) stressed that the ancient world did not think of authors and readers the way most of us do. Instead of reading a text silently, one memorized and placed on the heart the classic scriptures. Scribal authors then drew on this memorized knowledge in creating new texts. Carr compares the Bible and its transmission to scribal guilds and writing in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ugarit, and Greece. Of his many significant observations, the following appear to encapsulate his thought: (1) Students copied texts not only to learn scribal skills but also to become educated and inculturated with the values of the society. (2) Orality and writing were not in tension, but were complementary ways of teaching the culture and recalling the literary traditions. Written texts were shaped for the goal of oral performance, if only by reflex. (3) Literacy was not the ability to read or write, but the ability to master core literature, and that made one part of the social elite. (4) Students sometimes learned texts so archaic that they seemed nonsensical, but that process taught them obedience to their society. (5) Scribes might copy a text before them, but often they generated texts by memory and hence with creativity, like a musician performing a well-known work. Thus, there was no one “original text” for literary works because minor memory variations always existed. (6) Because the Gilgamesh Epic and the Enuma Elish were used to educate students early in the curriculum, they came to be known throughout the ancient world. Thus, biblical narratives reflect the influence of these works because Israelite scribes learned to write with them. (7) In the postexilic era, scribal training increasingly became part of the priestly domain, so that selected texts reflected priestly values. These texts would evolve into the Hebrew Scriptures. (8) The Bible ultimately is an educational-inculturation corpus, not a library of texts.

Here is some praise for his works here.

For my readers looking for a reading list or summary of the state of the field, the blog Hesed we ‘Emet posted his doctoral comprehensive reading list and also posted his summaries of the reading in long and short versions. From his notes you can see the importance of Carr’s work. (One can also see how Kugel and his approach does not play a role- see prior blog post.)

1) What is the innovation of your new book on the Bible? Why is memory important?

A starting point would be that I look to documented examples of scribal revision for models of how scribes preserved or revised texts. And one main thing I find is that even scribes reproducing a virtually identical copy of a given section of text would make the kinds of changes to texts– I call them “memory variants”– that people who have memorized texts do: they would substitute a synonym of a word for another, add or subtract minor grammatical particles, switch from one phrase to a syntactic equivalent. Apparently such scribes often did not visually copy texts they were citing or reproducing, but had memorized them and wrote them out from memory.

This fluid transmission of texts means that many criteria that scholars thought they could use for linguistic dating of texts or source identification are not as firm as we once thought.

Other things these documented examples of transmission teach us are the tendency of scribes to pollute the evidence through harmonizing texts with each other, their tendency to make small additions to texts that would be undetectable without manuscript documentation of different stages, and the way scribe/authors would only preserve parts of texts that they were otherwise appropriating large portions of. Observations like this don’t mean that we can’t continue to make plausible hypotheses about the growth of biblical texts, but it means that we now need to evaluate the evidence in biblical texts differently than we once did.

2) What is the role of historical dating of texts in your approach? And what tools do you use to date a Biblical text (parallels to other texts, Hebrew philology, and archeology)?

My main approach is to start by looking at the characteristics or “profile” of texts that we have good reason to think come from a given period. For example, can we build a profile of texts that seem to date from the Persian period as a way of potentially dating yet more texts to that period. To some extent, that may include linguistic criteria (“philological”) that scholars have used for dating texts to the Persian period before, such as significantly Aramaized Hebrew. But we must remember that the presence of Aramaic characteristics is not necessarily a sufficient criterion for dating a text to the Persian period since scribes easily could accidentally add Aramaic elements to older texts in the process of transmitting them fluidly, often by way of memory. Other important characteristics of many Persian period texts (especially later in the Persian period) are links to Priestly traditions/the temple and the project of rebuilding Jerusalem in general.

3) What historical documents and parallels need to be mastered to date Biblical texts?

I hear you asking about primary text resources, and the first thing I’d urge is immersing oneself in documented examples of scribal revision of ancient texts. I sometimes think that it would be very productive for an advanced graduate student to spend a solid year doing nothing but precisely comparing and analyzing the parallel sections of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, also looking at the major divergences between the 4QSama manuscript and MT/Chronicles/LXX, comparing the Septuagint edition of Jeremiah with Masoretic Jeremiah, looking at the different versions of the Qumran community rule, analyzing the relationship between 3 Esdras and Ezra-Nehemiah, etc. And that’s only looking at Hebrew and Greek resources! Adding non-biblical resources, especially different editions of Mesopotamian materials adds a whole additional and often informative dimension. The more one does this, the more one gets a gut-level sense of how texts grew. And you get a lot more humility about what we do if you constantly ask the question, “would I have been able to reconstruct this growth if I didn’t have these manuscripts in front of me?”

As for non-biblical, Ancient Near Eastern “parallels,” I’d recommend the helpful overview in Kenton Sparks’ book, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Bible: A Guide to the Background Literature (Hendrickson, 2005). It gives a survey of many of the most important texts, brief discussion of them, and some good bibliography.

It takes a lot more than such primary text work, of course, to make sense of all this information. I do believe that hundreds of years of academic, historical research on the Bible has much to teach us. For example, scholars have come up with some interesting and important ideas about how to date some texts to the time of Babylonian exile even though we know very little specific about that period. The challenge is to sort the more helpful ideas from the less helpful ones. I’ve tried to do that some in my recent book on The Formation of the Hebrew Bible, but I’ll be the first to admit that my synthesis has its own strengths and weaknesses.

4) How does your new book lay to rest the older hypothesis?

I don’t think it possible to lay any hypothesis permanently to rest, since hypotheses raised so far all link to different sorts of evidence in the text. That said, some of the terminological criteria most beloved by traditional source critics, e.g. variation in divine designation (YHWH versus Elohim) or terms for maidservant (‘amah versus shiphah) vary a significant amount in manuscripts that we have, let alone the centuries of textual transmission before our existing manuscripts. I still think there is strong enough evidence for distinguishing Priestly and non-Priestly traditions from one another. And I think there likely are very early chunks of material in the Bible, including parts of the Pentateuch. But the case for early, intertwined “J” and “E” sources (within the non-Priestly strand of the Pentateuch) is largely built on sand rather than rock. It pales in comparison to the case for the distinction between Priestly and non-Priestly strands in the Pentateuch.

5) What are your thoughts on American Jewish scholars or scholars in Israel? Why do the Jewish scholars seem to defend the documentary hypothesis more than non-Jewish scholars?

I don’t put a lot of stock in judging the motivations of scholars. We all have reasons, whether conscious or unconscious, for advocating certain hypotheses. That said, I sometimes wonder whether the revival of the source hypothesis among some scholars has been a scientific way of responding to a perceived drift toward widespread late dating of virtually the entire Pentateuch. And I actually share reservations about a push to see virtually the whole Pentateuch as Persian period or later. I think there are very early chunks of material in the Pentateuch, including legal and Priestly texts. I just have a lot more skepticism about being able to identify extended “J” and “E” sources and believe ever more profoundly in the need for what I call “methodological modesty” as we attempt to identify the earliest portions of the Bible (including the Pentateuch).

6) (Questions 6 from Joshua Berman) In a text with multiple layers of editing and redaction – so that there will be a so-called Deuteronomistic core to a text with, say, a priestly level of editing. The inconsistencies are resolved, according to this theory, by attributing the discordant elements to different levels of redaction. It is often asked, why then does the editor of the later level retain the material that does not square with his agenda? The standard answer that is given is that old material attains a certain status, and can only be tampered with but not removed. Do you have another approach?

I do think we need to think through our models for textual growth, especially when we are positing multiple layers which often conflict with another. How often, I wonder, could scribal groups pass a given authoritative text back and forth, each adding to a version of the text previously revised by an opposing group? I don’t know. But I do know that many (not all!) of our documented cases of scribal revision of texts involve only one or a few layers of revision, and often these layers seem to have been done by scribes with the same or a similar theological/ideological orientation.

7) (Questions 7 from Joshua Berman) To what degree can we speak of “authors” in the ancient world? More pointedly, when we see “fractures” (a Carr term) in a text could it be that we need to give more credence to the agent responsible for piecing things together as a creative agent, much as we see with the Gilgamesh epic?

I do think that ancient scribes were highly creative, even as they drew on and somewhat precisely preserved (with memory variants) earlier traditions. In this sense we can think of scribes as “authors,” albeit authors who constantly built on older oral and oral-written traditions. It was only toward the later ends of the transmission process, as scribes increasingly copied certain texts more precisely (such as the Pentateuch within the proto-Masoretic tradition) that at least some scribes just conserved and did not innovate.

8) You write that we can’t theorize from the armchair anymore about how biblical texts came to be. We need to have empirical models about how literary traditions grew in the ancient Near East. How does that inform your work and how does that contrast with prior scholars?

To some extent we still need to theorize from armchairs. I just think that we should learn as much as we can from documented (“empirical”) examples before we do so. And the more we learn from such documented examples, the more we realize the limits of our armchair theorization. We still can do it, but we will only achieve repeatable results that have some plausibility for others outside our ‘school’ if we gather a lot more data for our models than many of us are in the habit of doing.

9) [question from a frum skeptic] How is JED + P different from JEPD? What’s the practical difference? Is the work scholars do on the basis of this theory going to be more productive than the work currently done using the older theory? How?

The main debate, as I see it, is between two models for the development of non-P materials: one that distinguishes between D, J and E, and one that distinguishes between D and other non-P materials but does not recognize early J and E sources. Usually the latter model (the one without J and E) invokes other models to explain the features used by older source critics to argue for J and E. In my view, these alternative models do a better job of explaining the evidence. But we all need a bit more humility in our claims of certainty for our hypotheses, especially hypotheses about the earliest stages of the development of the Pentateuch. In that sense, maybe the ultimate result of adopting such additional “methodological modesty” might feel frustratingly less productive!

10 ) [question from a frum skeptic] How should the average person know who to trust if the field changes so often? What would you tell the simple reader who with their uneducated eyes thinks that scholars are just stating their personal opinions? How is it a scientific field?

This is a fair question. My first answer to stress those aspects of biblical scholarship that have proven to have a long shelf-life because they are built on such strong evidence, such as the distinction between exilic/post-exilic material in the book of Isaiah from a core of pre-exilic material in that book or the previously mentioned distinction between Priestly and non-Priestly strands of the Pentateuch (along with a fair amount of harmonization of each with the other). Though these distinctions have shifted some, they have held in their basic form for around two hundred years. That’s good! My hope is that the kinds of cautions and considerations I raise in my book would help us develop other broad theories about the growth of the Bible that would approach that kind of repeatability/longevity.

11) Do you have any thoughts on revelation? or the separation of history from theology?

One of the many things I appreciate about the Hebrew Bible is the way it depicts God as working through all kinds of human characters (e.g. Jacob, Joseph, King David, etc.), even some characters with base or even evil motives. As Joseph tells his brothers when they are cowering before him in Egypt afraid of his revenge for selling him into slavery, “what you planned as evil toward me, God planned as good” (Gen 50:20; see also 45:7-8). Scribes and the interpreters who shaped and sanctified the Bible may have had all kinds of motives and procedures, but God could–and I believe did–work through them in any case. And in my tradition (Christian-Quaker, originally brought up Methodist), we just pray that God likewise will work through us now as we continue to try to interpret the biblical tradition in a life-giving way. There are no textual guarantees, whether in the origination or ancient revision of the sacred text or in contemporary interpretation. We always are dependent on God making the best of our often mixed motives.

12)One of the reviews of your previous book notes that you have little to say about the attribution of the text to Moses and its sanctity as a product of Sinai. Can you say anything about the topic?

As a scholar, I’m interested in investigating the history of these beliefs about the Pentateuch. For example, we first start seeing the idea that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch in the late Second Temple period, and that idea has its own background in the dynamics of that time. In this respect, I follow the great Jewish scholar Elias Bickerman, who suggests that Jews of that time countered Greek education centered on Homer and his epics with the idea that their Moses had written the whole Torah, a text which Hellenistic-period Jews argued was even earlier and better than the Greek classics.

I understand that others have other beliefs about these issues, but for me it is most important to recognize and stress to my students how the biblical text has come to be a medium of inspiration of Jewish and Christian communities over the centuries. I am constantly impressed and amazed at the ongoing power of these texts to speak to diverse contexts over millenia. That, for me, is what is profoundly powerful about them. In my opinion, attachment to specific authorial theories or assertions of historical accuracy often distracts from the task of seeing how one might responsibly interpret the text today.

13) If a religious scholar said that his goal was to date the core of the Pentateuch to the 13th century BCE to be contemporaneous with the Jewish dating of Moses, what advice would you give?

None of us comes to any such task without presuppositions, but I would have serious doubts about scholarship on dating that started out with the goal to date a biblical text to a particular period, whether the thirteen century BCE or the 2nd century BCE. By now in twenty + years of work, I have found myself changing my mind about dating and other issues based on the evidence before me, often in major ways. For me that is part of what distinguishes an evangelist for a particular perspective from a historian or “thinker” (which I aim to be). It is a curiosity about certain questions that powers a drive to find out more. Sometimes one is led by the evidence to conclusions that might seem odd or surprising to one’s colleagues. I’m ready at this point in my career to risk following such leads and seeing where they take me, and I learn much from the many others who do the same.

© Alan Brill 2012.

Daniel Boyarin is currently one of the most renowned academic Talmudists and sits in the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley.

Boyarin’s Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, (1990) opens with a contextualization as an Orthodox Jew and his Sparks of the Logos: Essays in Midrashic Hermeneutics, (2003) has on the back cover a claim of correcting modern Orthodox culture. I had not been able to figure out what he meant since then. I did not want to be in suspense any longer, so, I decided to ask him a few questions.

Boyarin’s Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) has changed the discourse in the scholarship of the first centuries of Jewish Christian divide and his forthcoming The Jewish Gospels (2012) will create waves of discussion. These works are part of a vast discussion in America, Europe, and Israel. I find myself discussion this aspect of his work wherever I go. The scholarship informs religious discourse.

Boyarin’s work in Border Lines has served the role of shaking up habitual ways of working and thinking in the Jewish-Christian default line. But his views on Orthodoxy and especially the role of gender and politics do not have the same effect. The end of his answer in question 2 reflects my hesitations about his influence from the periphery of Berkeley on the dominant Orthodox hegemonic discourse of NY and Jerusalem.

1) You wrote in Intertextuality “I believe in and am comfortable … with the discourse of Orthodox Judaism” Can you explain some of your belief? Is Orthodoxy just a discourse without rabbinic power?

For me, discourse means precisely speech with power, so the discourse of Orthodox Judaism means precisely rabbinic power. In matters of halakha, whenever a question arises, I consult our mara deatra.. I have never been attracted to notions of deliberate halakhic change but have always thought that the slow evolutionary processes by which certain social changes take place within the structure of halakha has maintained a richness, groundedness, and sense of deep connection between what we do and what we have been commanded to do. In this sense, I am most comfortable, as I have said, with the discourse of orthodoxy.

But, for us, discourse also means speech per se, language, the text and thus Talmud Torah I’m not sure I would have survived in a culture/religion for which study was not central. For me, study is the most significant aspect of my liturgical life, as well. Perhaps the most important thing I would want to say about myself in this context to express again my deep love for the Talmud (all of classical rabbinic literature, to be sure, but especially the Bavli). One of the things that moves me most about study of the past is speaking with the dead, as Stephen Greenblatt once put it. The Talmud affords such a rich opportunity to speak with the dead owing precisely to its jumble of halakha, aggada, and even more than that that it’s like stepping into an ancient bazaar and being present with the folks living then, but these are our folks, our fathers and mothers, with whom we are speaking.

2) In Sparks of the Logos you seek “a rabbinic Judaism that would not manifest some of the deleterious social ideologies and practices that modern Orthodox Judaism generally does” What are those ideologies and practices?

I’m trying (or rather I was; I’ve given up a bit) to imagine an orthodoxy that would be free of the ethnocentrism and even racism that characterizes so much of contemporary orthodox language and political practice and one that would be as radically committed to economic justice for all as the Rabbis themselves. I don’t want to get into a political discussion here but, for me, as hinted below, Zionism does not seem like a traditional or historically orthodox solution to the problems of the Jews (although I will grant that it may have been necessary in some sense as well). The vulgarization and chauvinism that are so characteristic of so much of orthodox speech and practice today are hardly “Torah true” לפי עניות דעתי, and I think most orthodox leaders before the war saw it that way too.

I don’t want to be critical of others so much as to represent what I would have hoped for in my life (much more than I achieved), namely to demonstrate a practice of Torah and of Mitsvos that would authentically enable my own radical political commitments to social, economic, and ethnic solidarity and equality without making me marginalize myself within the orthodox community to which I felt so committed at the time. I feel that I have failed in several ways to live out this, perhaps naïve, original commitment, that I am neither as radical, nor as orthodox, in the end, as I had hoped to be. On the other hand, I am less certain than you are that Carnal Israel, at least, has had as little effect on understandings of gender within the traditional Orthodox community as you think and, perhaps, Unheroic Conduct, as well.

3) In several places you have offered a radical orthodoxy by going back the roots. Could there be a yeshiva or seminary of your radical orthodoxy?

A yeshiva or rabbinical seminary would look just like any other one but, on my lights, we would be looking to redirect some of the conversations that take place between us and our Torah about justice, not picking and choosing (otherwise it wouldn’t be orthodox in any sense) but emphasizing perhaps elements that are less emphasized today and soft-pedaling others; this would be more in line, I feel, with the ethical practices of Hazal themselves. While I find that Hazal not infrequently reflect, naturally, their own times and political conditions, there is always a striving for the highest of ethical standards, not only the bounds of the halakha, to fairness to other people, that sometimes seems to get lost among some modern orthodox interpreters of Yiddishkayt. To me, the radicality, the rootedness would be in the constant attention to the question: What does G-d want from me, from us, right now?

4) You offer Bertha Pappenheim the committed Orthodox feminist as a model for an alternative Orthodoxy, but her writings and actions produced a vehement reaction from Orthodoxy. Isn’t she by definition the opposite side of the border since the rabbis rejected her? (Most historians treat her as Anna O. who became an outspoken feminist but treat her Orthodoxy as beside the point or despite her work.)

Rabbi Shlomo Nobel and the Alexanderer Rebbe both supported her enthusiastically. I rest my case. I have written explicitly on the ways that I find that her orthodoxy was neither beside the point or despite her work. Some rabbis of the time, most of them were (with good reason) terrified at the negative attention that her work might bring to “The Jews,” through her exposure of the practices of some Jews who were capturing Jewish girls for foreign brothels. These two great rabbis from very different walks of life understood that the elimination of this horrific practice and other gross injustices perpetrated in Jewish life of the time against girls and women was obligatory and could not wait for “permission” from the anti-Semites, ימח שמם.

Pappenheim’s “orthodoxy” was, in large part, defined—and this is against the views of most other scholars who were hostile to it—by her understanding that these practices were absolutely against the Torah and not in cahoots with it חס ושלום. This insight on her part and the fact that it was supported by such eminences—and, of course, I am closer to Rabbi Nobel זצ”ל in my own style of life than to the Rebbe זצ”ל—provided me with a model of a commitment to radical social change while hewing closely, as close as my own יצר would let me, to learning and practicing the Torah. It gets harder and harder over the decades.

5) Do you have any favorite Orthodox thinker of the last 150 years?

The Satmerer Rebbe, זצ”ל. I am deeply resonant with the view of the Satmar Rav that the oath “not to arise as a wall” לא לעלות בחומה meant that Jews were not to seek temporal sovereignty until the Messiah comes.

6) You tell the story that in 1985 when you taught a summer course at YU’s BRGS you opened the first class announcing that “here you can mention that Torah is from Sinai.” What did this mean?

Without going into theology, I meant that we read the text both as a unity (which does not mean that it does not incorporate much tension) and also as written not only for its time but for all time in some profound and challenging sense. Some of the other teachers were so invested in being critical and scholarly that they were somehow (from my humble perspective) missing the point somewhat which is to learn Torah in a scholarly way and not to dismantle it for historicistic purposes. My teacher, Prof. Lieberman ז”ל said once that study in the university and study in the Yeshiva were the same thing.

7) Do you incorporate any Christian practice into your Judaism?

I don’t incorporate any Christian practice into my Judaism although I do study early Christian texts with a great deal of enthusiasm and pleasure at one direction that some Jews went in. And I don’t think the Gospels in themselves represent any departure from traditional Judaism, at any rate, no more than that of some Lubavitcher Hasidim. They represent one more historical grasp by some Jews at a Messiah. According to my interpretation of the Gospels, Jesus is never portrayed as abrogating the Torah, kashrut or the Sabbath at all.

Dr. Marvin Schick has collected and provided enrollment data for schools outside the yeshiva world and Chassidic sectors.

The second new data points come from The North American Jewish Data Bank has released their latest estimates of the U.S. Jewish population (6,588,000). The full report is here. One item that struck my eye is actual data on the economic downturn as it applies to Baltimore Jews. It does not sound good. A smaller note of the survey is that they found the least antisemitism in Palm Beach and Middlesex county, NJ.

Of respondents in Baltimore, 10% reported that, economically, they are well off; 10% have extra money; 47% are comfortable; 30% are just managing to make ends meet; and 3% cannot make ends meet. The 67% who are well off, have extra money, or are comfortable compares to 80% three  years ago. 12% of households earn an annual household income
below 200% of the Federal poverty levels, and 43% of respondents reported a negative
impact of the recent economic downturn

1. Einstein’s Worship
2. Faith and Physics
3. Religion without God

See the three lecture videos here.
Further information here.
For the Full text of the NYU talks as a pdf – here
Abstract:
“For most people religion means a belief in a god. But Albert Einstein said that he was both an atheist and a deeply religious man. Millions of ordinary people seem to have the same thought: they say that though they don’t believe in a god they do believe in something “bigger than us.” In these lectures I argue that these claims are not linguistic contradictions, as they are often taken to be, but fundamental insights into what a religion really is.

A religious attitude involves moral and cosmic convictions beyond simply a belief in god: that people have an innate, inescapable responsibility to make something valuable of their lives and that the natural universe is gloriously, mysteriously wonderful. Religious people accept such convictions as matters of faith rather than evidence and as personality-defining creeds that play a pervasive role in their lives.

In these lectures I argue that a belief in god is not only not essential to the religious attitude but is actually irrelevant to that attitude. The existence or non-existence of a god does not even bear on the question of people’s intrinsic ethical responsibility or their glorification of the universe. I do not argue either for or against the existence of a god, but only that a god’s existence can make no difference to the truth of religious values. If a god exists, perhaps he can send people to Heaven or Hell. But he cannot create right answers to moral questions or instill the universe with a glory it would not otherwise have.

How, then, can we defend a religious attitude if we cannot rely on a god? In the first lecture I offer a godless argument that moral and ethical values are objectively real: They do not depend on god, but neither are they just subjective or relative to cultures. They are objective and universal. In the second lecture I concentrate on Einstein’s own religion: his bewitchment by the universe. What kind of beauty might the vast universe be thought to hold – what analogy to more familiar sources of beauty is most suggestive? I propose that the beauty basic physicists really hope to find is the beauty of a powerful, profound mathematical proof. Godly religions insist that though god explains everything his own existence need not be explained because he necessarily exists. Religious atheists like Einstein have, I believe, a parallel faith: that when a unifying theory of everything is found it will be not only simple but, in the way of mathematics, inevitable. They dream of a new kind of necessity: cosmic necessity.

In the third lecture, I consider the moral and political consequences of fully recognizing godless religion. Constitutions and international treaties across the world declare a right to religious freedom. We must understand this to protect godless as well as godly religions, and this important extension requires complex adjustments in human rights practice. It requires a difficult but indispensible distinction between personal questions about the nature and value of human life, which people must be allowed to decide for themselves, and questions of justice that a community must answer collectively. I end the three lectures by examining, in that light, a variety of controversial topics: state-supported religion, harmful religious rituals, homosexuality, abortion, and the banning of crucifixes, headscarves, burkas or minarets in public places.”

The abstract and information was taken from  Political Theory – Habermas and Rawls

From Get Religion

Apparently the people of North Korea aren’t just starving, they’re subjected to racist and nationalistic propaganda and are confused about their relative position in the world. The food bags countries send them are said to be given to Kim Jong-il out of respect and terror.

I’m reminded of this old piece in The Guardian about the torture chambers Kim’s regime ran:

In the remote north-eastern corner of North Korea, close to the border of Russia and China, is Haengyong. Hidden away in the mountains, this remote town is home to Camp 22 – North Korea’s largest concentration camp, where thousands of men, women and children accused of political crimes are held.

Now, it is claimed, it is also where thousands die each year and where prison guards stamp on the necks of babies born to prisoners to kill them.

The piece goes through the first-hand testimonies from defectors about execution and torture, including gas chambers with chemical experiments run on humans. It tells of whole families put in glass chambers and gassed while scientists take notes.

This is difficult to read, but here are some anecdotes from a worker and prisoner:

He explains how he had believed this treatment was justified. ‘At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.

‘It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.’

His testimony is backed up by Soon Ok-lee, who was imprisoned for seven years. ‘An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners,’ she said. ‘One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream from those who had eaten them. They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes they were quite dead.’

No one knows how many prisoners were held in various centers but one camp alone held 50,000. And why?

Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.

Mervyn Thomas, chief executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said: ‘For too long the horrendous suffering of the people of North Korea, especially those imprisoned in unspeakably barbaric prison camps, has been met with silence … It is imperative that the international community does not continue to turn a blind eye to these atrocities which should weigh heavily on the world’s conscience.’

But the fact of North Korea’s existence and the horrific suffering its people have endured — psychologically, physically and spiritually — is staggering.

Oliver Roy relies on this literature, especially Religion as a Chain of Memory – Daniele Hervieu-Leger (French edition, 1993). Reading the book has been on my to do list for a while, so after my four posts about Roy, (here, here, here, and here) it was a good tie in.

According to Hervieu-Leger, modern societies define religion by a chain of belief– a tradition, a chain of memory, an envisioned past. There is no longer a direct experience of God or the creation of hierophantic moments. In the modern era, many have trouble relating to the chain of tradition. When one is successful, then one has religion.

In the current era – belief has two elements: the personal experiential element which was called in 1990’s “the sacred”, and now is called the “spiritual” based on experience; and the “religious” element based on the tradition and memory. To say that one is spiritual but not religious or religious but not spiritual is to grasp only one pole of religion. Organized religion when it is successful is about constructing a sense of tradition and tie in with the past. This divide causes current forms of “religion” to be rationalized in the Weber sense of no longer having presence of the divine, now pastors, rabbis, and priest follow abstract rules.

The point of her reflections is that religion today means collective memory and the goal is that, when successful, it is mobilized and is the normative. The collective memory regulates and transcends the individual memory

This functions not just in the classic ritual such as the Passover seder but also in a variety of cultural, political and contemporary moments. For example, specific memories of the Holocaust, state of Israel, Eastern European Jewry, and the formation of one’s denomination is bound up with this collective memory called religion.

Hervieu-Leger points out the crumbling of former religious memory which was tied to the local and agricultural in modern societies. Some of it undergoes homogenization and for others there is a sense of fragmentation. Movement creates loss of memory and the need for new memory, rural to urban, country to country. Collective memory is tied to place- some of us are ruptured from Eastern European roots, but then also removed from earlier places of settlement. Movement of people to new enclaves creates a need for new collective memories.

Collective memories can be pre-existent the person, for example to be told by a follower of Rav Kook that one’s soul and memory is tied up in the land of Israel preexists actual memories. The collective memory transcends the individual- pre-exists even the visit to the land.

She thinks that there has been a gradual loss of the personal god and metaphorization or symbolization of all religious objects. In the chain of religion the links are horizontal through time and vertical toward metaphysics. This symbolization allows material objects to create memory and they can be most effective with sales and product tie-ins. There is a need for the objects to be emblems objects that bring that past to memory. Think of dancing Hasidim in living room paintings in secular Jewish homes or the huge amount of stuff that people bring back from Israel to create a new memory.

She quotes Dominique Schnapper, which was in turn used by Roy, that symbols are no longer meaning but a sign of belonging. In the most advanced societies, religious symbols are now entirely social and organizational demarcation.

Hervieu-Leger cites Certeau on how signs and practices are broken, signs can wander off or become scattered.

Those who enter in a religion as a convert or baal teshuvah show a different chain of memory and a greater purity that is outside of the prior social memory. The sectarian is modernizing by dissolving the actual tradition. This dissolving of society allows greater ecclesiasticism, transferring memory of the tradition to the clergy. Since one now wills oneself religious, this creates infinite possibilities for constructed memory. She discusses BT’s in 1970’s who sought not just a return but a new identity rejecting their past and assuming a counter cultural return to the tradition of an imagined Europe- a culture they felt that missed in their own up bring. The second wave of BT’s sought a way to change from life in the secular world and a change in their own lives.They constructed many alternate and personal memories of the past, hasidism, litvish, or even an imagined but inaccurate vision of modern Orthodoxy.

Notice how the memory of medieval Ashkenaz favored by many mid twentieth century thinkers, Baron, Katz, Finkelstein, Agus, Assaf, has faded. Current research by Robert Chazen is not making a cultural splash because Ashkenaz is not the focus of the current constructed chain of tradition. Neither is the constructed memory of the Shtetl used much anymore.

In modern Orthodox circles, some look for historical memory to Maimonides and Nahamnides, or a romanticized Volozhin, other to the religious Zionist project, others have as their memory the Hatam Sofer’s rejection of Reform and others their memory goes only as far back as their buying a Rinat Yisrael Siddur when they spent a few months in Israel in the 1970s’s. Some look back to eastern Europe and the power of the local rabbi other look at the same people and see the lack of power and need for accommodation. Rabbi Belkin used to invoke Philo of Alexandria, Maimonides, Spanish-Portuguese, and Mendelsohn/ Hirsch/Shadal.
Currently, Hasidism, Breslov, and the Besht are used by many for a bewildering variety of forms of chains of tradition. Art Green and others have created collective memories of Neo-Hasidism.
So what periods and figures does everyone use in their collective memory? Do they work? Why?
Didn’t Kurtzer win the Brandeis “Next Big Idea” with a plan for reworking Jewish cultural memory into something usable?

And I return to Certeau’s questions about signs that wander off or become scattered. What the criteria when these new collectives memories has swerved too far from a course?

The book opens with a variety of thoughts on holy ignorance that were used as a setting but were not developed. So I come back to them last. Roy points out the role of philology, history, and logic and how they have been jettisoned in the age of holy ignorance. He mentioned his exasperation that people would listen to people pontificating pre-Bacon ideas. What happened to the need for empiricism, method, and drawing logical inference?
(The historian of the Evangelical movements, George Marsden placed the use of Baconian method as the dividing line between Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, but noted that the latter stopped there without any further theory). Roy notes how event he use of Baconian method has slipped. One should note all the rabbis in recent years who question not just science, but political science, sociology, history, and economics. They say scholars are all just opinion without method (and not because they read Gadamer). They get up and give sermons on things of which they know little and create vague undefined ideas or they just assume that everything in the world is an ideological sermon. Another means of this is to turn everything into metaphor or religious symbol in which their “system” overrides method.

Roy finds a string desire in the new religion to kill the old man. He also discovers a greater sense that man is a tabula rasa and religious groups will fill in the child or convert with everything he needs to know. There is less of an acknowledgement of tradtion and upbringing.Religion proclaims itself above culture and cannot be touched by the historian or anthropologist.

How does this new religion relate to other symbolic systems? Iron wall? Can we interrupt table tennis with halleluiah- I have been saved? What should we make of it?
His point is that there has been no secular eradication of religion. Rather, religion has given up on culture and now appears as pure religion.

We used to have a Jewish atheist or intellectual believer as opposite forms of accommodation with culture.
New trend is to see secular culture as pagan not secular. Therefore the space of accommodation disappears. If one is an atheist then one is more likely to give up one’s Judaism and if one is religious there is less of a desire for synthesis.
Now religious purity based on a religious marker that can be tailored for the needs of the market.
Religion now focuses on same things as secular society- self-affirmation, lifestyle, fulfillment, and happiness.
This process of deculturation removes original context and original language leading to pop culture evangelical and pop culture orthodoxy.
Deculturation undoes Thomist and Maimonidean synthesis of religion and culture.

In Roy’s perspective, converts (and BT’s) are nomads without cultural pressures.

One of his big conclusions is that he thinks that Talal Asad is wrong- the market standardizes and that today the standard is a conversion to relgion.
For Roy, religion is only a religion when it disassociates from culture. Most Romans and medievals treated worship was an act of practice not of belief. This is also true for the Jewish communities.(28)

He give an interesting example of Halloween. In prior decades the candy giving was treated as “profane” as having no value and no redeemable holiness but also no unholiness. Now, he see a greater trend to considering it as “pagan” and needing to be shunned.

In sum, he sees a shift from light to the word and cultural mission to accomplish to a group sense of the purity of insiders and the infidelity and pagan outsiders.

As a side note, the modern Religious Zionist Rabbi Chaim Navon has an article in todays’ Haaretz claiming that the secular have also become more extreme. As I went to sleep last night, my FB feed was quickly becoming filled with dozens of responses showing that decades ago the Zionists were proudly working on Yom Kippur as atheists and there was soft-core European style on Israeli TV, yet the religious Zionists thought the goal was to have a synthesis.