The Atheist Rabbi
I am happy to present below the second letter from Rabbi Fred Klein in our continuing dialogue. It is very challenging and I think it’s going to take me a few days to frame an adequate response.
I hope you’re all enjoying this as much as I am! And I want to again publicly express my gratitude to Rabbi Klein for making this possible.
Exchange #2, Rabbi Klein to Rabbi Falick
Shalom Jeffrey,
First I want to answer two specific questions directly.
Just to get this out of the way….you asked me this in the context of the authorship of the Zohar. For the record, I believe it was composed by Moshe de Leon in the 13th century, and I am not only quoting critical scholars. Rabbi Yaakov Emden (1697-1776) already noted the historical anachronisms of the work, and he was one of the greatest halakhists of Central Europe in the 18th century. (He was also influenced by the beginning of critical historiography, but that was not his motivations on attacking the Zohar. Rather it was his anti-Sabbatian polemics.) I only mentioned this story to state how an Orthodox Jew could live with tension.
Holocaust theology is developing, some written by survivors themselves (Eliezer Bekovitz, David Weiss HaLivni). I would challenge you however. Could there ever be a compelling theology? While there are some emerging theologies, most theologies develop well after the fact, sometimes a century after. Our generation is not the generation to theologize, but the generation to mourn.
Jeremiah upon mourning the great catastrophe of the first exile and the destruction of the Temple did not compose a full theology, but lamentations. We have an halakhic principle that you do not give comfort when a dead body is before you. If you do not give comfort, you certainly do not give an accounting! ( I refer you to the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah journal [online] Millin Havivin from 2006, where Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein has a very insightful essay on this topic, explaining why he objects to ‘holocaust theology’) Three hundred years from now when we are all gone it may be different. The nature of memorialization is bound to change over time, especially when the survivors are gone. Today the destruction of the Temple is academic for most, although it was the end of Jewish self-determination. It was the most catastrophic event to happen to the Jewish people until that time. Many of the Jews were killed and forcibly exiled.
However, if you want to know how sacred memory has appropriated the victims of the shoah (Holocaust) you need look no further than their status as kedoshim, dying al Kiddush Hashem, martyring themselves as Jews. If you are a secular Jew, you better not call these people Holy. Why is a murder victim necessarily Holy?
Technically, a person who martyrs oneself has to knowingly do this to sanctify the name of God. My guess is many of the victims of the shoah had no intention of sanctifying the Divine name; many of them were secular. They were victims of genocide- murder victims. Nonetheless, in every public commemoration we speak of their kedoshim status — they died because they were Jews and shared in the lot of the Jewish people. That is enough. (And it is enough for me too. I was in Auschwitz last year with survivors. The ability for them to say I am a Jew is nothing short of heroic.) This conferral of the status of kedoshim is a classic way to integrate Jewish persecution into a theological model. They were heroes who gave their lives because they were Jews. (And again, I believe it.)
Before I address your specific concerns, I would like to elaborate a little more on some of my theology, and the forces which inform it.
Many people were confused as to how I could do what in their mind is “straddle the fence” between belief and doubt, and how I could be of two mindsets at the same time.
With your permission, I would like to explore a little more about “the modern condition.” Again, I am not trying to defend an Orthodox ritual or belief right now, but I am trying to justify why religious belief is important.
In the last reactions to my posts, one of the responders called me out in a challenging matter. “What would the Rav say?” he wrote. I cannot tell the readers what he would say today, but I can tell you what he said.
I would assume most of the readers here do not know who the Rav is, so let me introduce him to you. The Rav, for those of you who do not know, was Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik, who for decades was a seminal teacher at Yeshiva University. He was a unique individual, bridging the worlds of tradition and modernity. He came from a very prominent rabbinical line in Eastern Europe and was considered a Talmudic prodigy from a very young age. As a young adult, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Berlin — highly unusual as most branches of this rabbinic family until today eschew a university education, and then came to the U.S. before the war. He not only served as a Rosh Yeshiva — a Talmud teacher — at Yeshiva University, but for most of his life was a communal rabbi in Boston. As an Orthodox Jew, a great Talmudic scholar, a legal scholar of Jewish law, and a religious philosopher steeped in secular knowledge, he was always a bit of an anomaly among some of his more traditionalist peers. Nonetheless, he was such a compelling presence, that his thousands of talmidim (students) until this day, just refer to him as “The Rav” (the rabbi). When I went to Yeshiva University the Rav’s thought on Talmud was pervasive, his religious lectures were published in Hebrew and read. At the same time, the Rav wrote some seminal Jewish philosophical works; this material was very different than his more traditional Torah lectures. Few have his depth and breadth, and following his death there were many who tried to “claim” the Rav for their own.
I never had the merit to study Torah from him, and by the time I was in rabbinical school he was very ill and died right before Passover in 1993. Yet when I was an undergraduate student, I began to read his philosophical essays, and wrote a B.A. thesis on his existential thought for the religious studies department at Brown University. Reading these books at that time were a major force in my motivation to pursue rabbinics and learn in yeshiva after college.
The Rav was a complex religious personality, deep in his faith but struggling for place in a secular world. Probably his most famous essay is “The Lonely Man of Faith,” a classic twentieth century existentialist essay of faith, which has not only marked the Rav as a seminal Jewish thinker, but a seminal twentieth century theologian. You might want to ask, why did he say he was lonely? He writes the following:
Let me spell out this passional experience of the contemporary man of faith. He looks upon himself as a stranger in a modern society, which is technically-minded, self-centered, and self-loving, almost in a sickly narcissistic fashion, scoring honor upon honor, piling up victory upon victory, reaching for the distant galaxies and seeing in the here-and-now sensible world the only manifestation of being. What can a man of faith like myself, living by a doctrine that has no technical potential, by a law which cannot be tested in the laboratory… what can such a man say to a functional utilitarian society which is saeculum-oriented [i.e. secular] and whose practical reasons of the mind have long ago supplanted the sensitive reasons of the heart?
What follows is one of the greatest sustained theological reflections I know. However, what I want to call your attention to is how cognizant the Rav was of how “out of place” the religious person was in a scientific age. I hope you see how self-reflective he was, and how he actually saw how another person might see his entire life as absurd!
In our scientific age, in our victory-minded quest there is no room for the simple gesture of faith. What does the Rav do? Far from denying the role of science, in this essay the Rav affirms the scientific quest as not only legitimate, but holy and noble. It was part of God’s mandate to man. (“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the land and master it.”) However, he also develops the legitimate quest for connection, redemption, and transcendence. There are times when a person feels alone. Like Adam in the Garden, the human being experiences the fact that they are only dust of the earth, and yearn for connection. They are not only in ‘the image of God’ but they simultaneously experience ‘being dust of the earth’. Eve is created from the side (not rib!) of Adam in the second chapter of Genesis because people find their self-realization in relationship. This interpersonal I-thou relationship however reaches its full fruition only in a fellowship with the ground of Being itself, i.e. God.
In other words, the Rav creates a complex dialectical personality who is both creator and creature, master and servant, victory-minded and humble. In fact, this dialectic of personality as explained by the Rav is never overcome, because in his view it part and parcel of the human personality. The “religious” quest for connection, transcendence and ultimate meaning is part of the human personality.
This is where I begin when I think about the nature of my own religious faith.
As I mentioned in my last post, the metaphysical world has been shattered. In an earlier age I knew the planets and sun and stars went around the earth. Of course they had to, as the architecture of the universe had to reflect the Divine purpose of the world which put me in the center. I am oriented. My sacred narratives affirm this as well. However, we live in a Copernican world. The earth is a small planet, that revolves around a small star, which is on the edge of a galaxy, which we now assume is forever expanding. In other words, I have no idea where I am. I am just thrown into this cosmic soup. Existentialists begin with this proposition — how to make meaning in your life. At least in this essay, the Rav firmly places himself in this existentialist tradition. Both the ideas in text and the philosophers he quotes proves this.
I believe for you and others, science and clear-minded rationalism provides the new model. There is only what we see, what we can test, what we can know. Subjective experiences are exactly that- subjective and therefore have no real value. (Of course, the irony is that the majority of decisions we make on a daily basis are based upon subjective feelings.) The faster we “wake up,” the faster we stop looking for ultimate meaning, the better we’ll be.
In all honesty, I am convinced that for you this means a focus on humanitarian values and our relationships with one another. Your last few paragraphs express that. I do not know however why it would not lead others to some form of destructive nihilism, or a life based upon pure self-interest. As the classic Jewish heretic Elisha ben Avuyah said after seeing the lack of moral coherence in his universe, leit din v’leit dayan — there is no law and is no judgment.
You look to reason to provide the answer. “By placing ourselves firmly in nature as creatures who evolved to be socially interdependent, we will continue our moral development. We will also expand our mutually agreed upon obligation to help others, too, live meaningful lives of their choosing.” Mutual recognition of ones essential humanity? Just look at our last century! Freud was not religious, nor was he particularly optimistic about the human condition. Aggression is very innate in our species as well, a force that needs to be controlled. We can and do exterminate each other. The Enlightenment of reason did not prevent a Holocaust. So, even as a construct of control, a MORAL God as an enforcer of a moral order would get us there faster than some sort of rational enlightened system which is totally divorced of the culture, symbols, and webs of meaning which inform most people in the 21st century with the exception of Western Europe. In other words, as a “social engineer” creative use of religion would still get you where you want to go faster.
However, more fundamentally, I seriously believe it is naïve to think that this world view actually can address the concrete needs and concerns, dreams and aspirations of people. That is what I believe religion tries to address. It does not address the questions of science, but the questions of meaning, and by that I mean ultimate meaning.
In fact, why did the Rav write this long essay? After all, he knew he was living in a scientific age. Why not just opt to follow your example example. Why did he not just embrace your rational-man. I think he did not because subjectively, that is not the way he experienced life.
The only reason Rabbi Soloveitchik needed to write this work is because he experienced the holiness of the Divine in his life. It was not a construct any more than one’s love for one’s child is a construct. It was real. The study of Torah, the study of mitzvoth for the Rav created a transcendent dimension to his entire being. For him to express who he was as a human being, the vehicle of the sacred was so important. He wanted not to live only in the dimension of the ethical, he also wanted to live in the dimension of kedusha- the holy. “You shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Let’s put in now in more Jewish terms. Jews are about to read on Passover Shir HaShirim. It is a love song between a king and his beloved, a simple shepherd girl. It is full of pathos, love, and even erotic desire. The rabbis have always understood — and this is the reason why a presumably a secular love poem was canonized into the TaNaKH (Hebrew Bible) — that the work is an allegory for the love between Israel and God. If it is about God and Israel, why use this whole literary conceit? It is because for the faithful person, the love of the Divine is all consuming. The Exodus for the faithful Jew is the beginning of the rendezvous with the Divine. It is not only that God saves them, but that the Jews will follow their beloved into the desert. Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher and halakhist, wrote at the very end of his work, “the book of Knowledge”
…The love of God is not affixed in one’s heart until he meditates upon him constantly, and leaves all that is in this world except God. As it is commanded [in the Shema] “you shall love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul” (my translation).
For you this might seem absurd, but not for a religious believer. Maimonides begins this book and ends the book with Ahavat Hashem, loving God. This is the emotion that the Rav felt when he felt the need to write this work. He could no sooner deny his love for God than he could for his own wife or child. Without living a life of deep connection to God, his life would be incomplete. He desired connection and transcendence.
However, maybe you might challenge — yes, I understand this. However, his children and wife are real. God is not. To this I would answer God has no referent. You take one hundred people and each will have a different view of God. So what does love of God mean?
I believe we all have had overwhelmingly powerful experiences in our lives, which reflect that life is infinitely powerful, that life is more than the sum of its parts. Heschel discusses this as the beginning of religious faith. God is not the answer, but God is the great question. Wonder I believe is a dimension of this universe. If one wants to express the power of life, they do not break out in rational scientific theories, but in poetry. Poems emerge from the “sensitive reasons of the heart,” in the words of the Rav above. Poems only make sense when evaluated through the world of human emotions. It is absurd to evaluate the truth of a poem from a scientific standpoint.
I believe it is absurd to deny there is poetry in this world, and if indeed this world has no poetry at all, I prefer to continue in my delusion. I love God and I love Jewish living because it enables me to be to the best of my human ability in touch with my Creator, and enables me to celebrate with my creator every day through the performance of mitzvoth.
For many, religion is just a bunch of minutiae, religious radicals, and negative experiences, but it does not need to be that way at all. A traditional Jew living consciously can frame their life in such a way that like Maimonides states, they are in constant dialogue with the ultimate source of meaning, the Great Mystery. In the end of the Deuteronomy, the Torah is referred to as a Shira, a poem. I take that seriously.
In my next letter, I will need to respond to some of more of your objections, but I stand by my conviction that ‘religious forms’ of thinking I believe are innate.
So until now I have been asked questions. Now I would like to ask to questions to you. First, you have named this post “the atheist rabbi.” If you have rejected tradition entirely, what does it mean to be a rabbi? Secondly, you say religion has been responsible for some of the great evils of our society — no doubt. But what of the role faith played in the Civil rights movement and Martin Luther King. How do you explain the evils of Communism and Fascism — neither religious ideologies? One of the great evils of the 20th century, social Darwinism also invoked science. Why is religion responsible and not people?
In many lectures, I have said religion is only as good as the people who practice them. Religion is not some reified force, it is and embodied force in the life of people and society.
I look forward to your response.
I pray you are well (can I say this?)
Fred
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