NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE THEOLOGY OF JUDAISM NEW PERSPECTIVES IN THE THEOLOGY OF JUDAISM by Shubert Spero Boston 2013 Copyright © 2013 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-61811-267-5 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61811-268-2 (electronic) Cover design by Ivan Grave Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Effective April 7th 2021, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law. Contents Note From the Publisher The Chair, the Incumbent, and the Donors ...................7 Introduction ................................................9 PART I Viewing Judaism as a Whole Chapter 1 Is There an Indigenous Jewish Theology? ...................24 Chapter 2 Toward a Philosophy of Modern Orthodoxy .................41 Chapter 3 Is Judaism an Optimistic Religion? ........................55 Chapter 4 The Meaning of Existentialism for Orthodoxy ...............69 PART II Torah in Depth Chapter 5 The Biblical Stories of Creation, the Garden of Eden, and the Flood: History or Metaphor? ......................82 Chapter 6 Paradise Lost or Outgrown? ..............................98 Chapter 7 Multiplicity of Meaning as a Device in Biblical Narrative .... 118 Chapter 8 Torat Hashem/Torat Moshe: Exploring their Respective Roles ........................ 133 PART III Reaching for the Heights Chapter 9 Is God Truly Unknowable? ............................. 166 Chapter 10 Love of God .......................................... 182 Chapter 11 Selfhood and Godhood in Jewish Thought and Modern Philosophy ............................... 194 Chapter 12 Unity of God as Dynamic of Redemption ................. 208 PART IV The Analytic in Action Chapter 13 Toward an Ethical Theory of Judaism .................... 220 Chapter 14 What is Self-theory, and Does Judaism Need One? ......... 244 Chapter 15 Judaism and the Aesthetic ............................. 275 Chapter 16 Providential History and the Anthropic Principle .......... 299 Chapter 17 The Role of Reason in Jewish Religious Belief ............. 316 PART V History Come to Life Chapter 18 The Religious Meaning of the State of Israel .............. 338 Chapter 19 Religious Zionism: What is It? .......................... 357 Chapter 20 Does Messianism Imply Inevitability? ................... 368 Acknowledgements ........................................ 385 Index ................................................... 386 Note From the Publisher The Chair, the Incumbent, and the Donors In January 1983, Bar-llan University in Israel, under the presidency of Professor Emanuel Rackman, announced the estab- lishment of the Irving I. Stone Chair in Basic Jewish Thought, with Professor Shubert Spero as its inaugural incumbent. The Chair was chartered to undertake the academic examination of the implications of Judaism, especially Jewish morality and history, for contemporary so- ciety, and was designed to serve as a vehicle for teaching, research, and publication in this area. In establishing the Chair’s Endowment Fund, Irving Stone (1909-2000) wrote in the charter document: ...the main reason for our family’s establishment of the Chair was to make it possible for Shubert Spero, who was then retir- ing after 33 years as our spiritual leader in Cleveland, to bring his important centrist views of Judaism to the attention of the Israeli public. Each term of his subsequent 29-year academic career at Bar Ilan, the incumbent taught two sections of his signature year-long course entitled Dat u’Musar, “Religion and Morality,” in which he expounded on the special nature and role of morality in Judaism to the more than 3,000 students who took his course over the years. Under the aegis of the Chair, Spero published innumerable articles in academic journals as well as for the local press, lectured widely in Israel and abroad, and for ten years delivered the annual Irving I. Stone Lecture at the College of Jewish Studies in Cleveland, Ohio. His research during this period resulted in the publication of two works: Holocaust and Return to Zion: A Study in Jewish Philosophy of History (2000) and Aspects of Rabbi Joseph Dov Solovetchick’s Philosophy of Judaism (2009). 7 Preface. The Chair, the Incumbent, and the Donors The link to the Stone funding has an additional dimension, beyond the academic. This dimension comes through in the warm words of a personal note written by Mr. Morry Weiss, chairman of the Stone Foundation: Shubert Spero and his wife Iris have been dear friends for well over 50 years. As my wife and I celebrate our 50 years of marriage, I recall that when I was courting Judy, it was Iris who volunteered to be my character witness. She assured my future in-laws (Irving and Beatrice Stone) that their daughter was choosing her mate wisely. For Iris taking that leap of faith on my behalf, and in honor of our golden anniversary, I am delighted to have the opportunity to show our deep appreciation for two individuals we so greatly admire by making possible the publication of this current volume of the rabbi’s most insightful essays. Introduction The words “new” and “theology” in the title of this volume may sound ominous to traditionalists. Let me therefore at the very outset set forth the meaning of these terms according to their pri- mary current use and outline the general thrust of this work. The term “theology” has come to mean simply a rational analysis of religious be- liefs, or a “philosophy of religion.” The reason I use the word “theology” instead of “philosophy” is because it is considered the more appropriate term to use when the analysis is being done by one who stands within the religion being analyzed, in short a believer. The term “philosophy” is best understood as describing an activity in which certain types of questions are directed at almost any subject matter. These are inquiries into the overriding purpose or underlying principles of any discipline or enterprise. That is, they are questions which are the most general in nature, seeking a picture of the whole, or alternatively the most basic, seeking to uncover the ultimate nature of things. In pursuit of these philosophical questions one is expected to use a method of thinking which is at once analytic and critical, rather than speculative, giving pri- ority to the search for meaning before looking for the truth, a method which requires justification for any truth-claims. In this view, which sees philosophy primarily as a method of inquiry, the goal is not, as it has been in the past, to wed or reconcile Judaism with some “outside” existing philosophic system but rather to develop a rational understand- ing (theology) which is indigenous in the sense that it grows out of the primary sources of Judaism. It is safe to say that philosophical questions in the sense just de- scribed are generally not dealt with in Judaism’s primary sources, i.e., the Tanach, or Written Torah. Except perhaps for the Book of Job and some isolated verses elsewhere, Tanach in its three divisions is essentially a library of “first order” statements about history, law, morality, poetry, 9 Introduction exhortations, promises, and visions of the future.1 It is not reflective. It does not ask questions of itself. It is in rabbinic literature that we first begin to find short excursions into what we might call philosophical inquiry. Chapter 1 discusses in greater detail the role of philosophy in Judaism. Beginning, however, with Saadia Gaon (882-942) and continuing up to the present, elements of the beliefs and practices of Judaism have been subjected to systematic rational analysis, with the results consti- tuting aspects of the theology of Judaism. Now this is where the term “perspective” becomes relevant. While anyone claiming to be doing philosophy must abide by the accepted methods, i.e., must be critical, coherent, consistent, and comprehen- sive, there is an individual subjective element, usually overlooked, that is often present from the very beginning of the process. We may call this the individual’s “perspective,” that is, certain unexpressed presup- positions or attitudes with which the individual views reality and by which he evaluates the relative importance of things. This explains why different individuals examining the same facts can arrive at different, sometimes mutually exclusive, conclusions. Thus, for example, it is clear that one of the presuppositions of Maimonides, a doctrine that in his day was considered self-evident, was that human reason was capable of attaining knowledge of the metaphysical realm. Today, however, having shown this belief to be largely incorrect, we no longer put any credence in logical proofs for the existence of God, as Maimonides did. Another illustration of “perspective” in Jewish theology is the view that different thinkers had of the importance of the principle of the Creation of the universe “out of nothing” (creatio ex nihilo). While Saadia thought it to be a pillar of Jewish belief, in the sense that the very fact of the existence of the world (ourselves included), is clear evidence of the reality and moral nature of God, Maimonides was ready to relinquish the concept 1 Thus in Habakkuk 1:2, 3 and Jeremiah 12:1, the prophets in