and indeed should be pursued. Not everything is appropriate for educators; it is impossible to teach every­ thing. What should be taught is only what is likely to render a student wiser; in other words, only what contributes to the maximum development of a learner's abilities. The view that attributes to education a role of transmitting knowledge from one generation to another was perhaps inevitable in the past, but modern technology allows human beings and educators to fulfill a more elevated role. Libraries, museums, computers, films, etc., will preserve knowledge, and put it at the disposal of individuals who by virtue of their abilities will know how to use it when needed,, Those who claim that the aim of education is to develop a person's potential maintain that it is unimportant what we teach but how we teach it. , like any other culture, can be taught in such a. way that pupils will identify with it, admire it, and therefore wish to live by it. However, it can also be taught as raw material for developing spiritual and mental capacities, through which young people will try to understand the world and themselves. The first approach orients students to the predetermined goal of their teachers; the second attitude endeavors to equip them with skills required for self-direction — the principal one being critical thinking. If something cannot be taught as a means to foster critical thought, it should not be included in education. Ultimately, the issue is whether a non-religious educational framework that includes (Jewish) religious studies in its curriculum (largely because of ideological pressures from without) can organize them as a means of shaping the awareness and feelings of students, and of fostering their autonomous stance toward Jewish study, as toward all other studies. •

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A Critique of Israeli Secularism Hertzel Fishman

The religious crises affecting the Jewish people began with the Enlightenment-Emancipation periods, some two hundred years ago. Until then, the organized disciplined Jewish communities, with their autonomous status during the lengthy feudal era, succeeded in keeping the Jewish religion in an ongoing dialectical relationship with (pre-modern) Jewish nationalism. Since Sinai, nationhood (goy) and religion (kadosh) were integrated

49 into a single Jewish mindset. But once civil and legal rights were given to Jews as individuals, and the autonomy of the kehillot broke down, the Jews were free to disassociate themselves both from their age-long religion, as well as from their historic nation. While subsequently restored Jewish nationalism to a minority of Jews who wanted it, the Jewish religion became voluntary and, selective, including the option of abandoning it. This pattern, augmented by new philosophical and political doctrines, the spread of individualism, democracy, and human rights, as well as a growing ignorance of Jewish sources and a lack of progressive development of halakhah in keeping both with modernity, and later with the sovereignty of a Jewish state — readily superseded Jewish notions of God, sanctity of life, faith and messianism, not to speak of Shabbat, kashrut, prayer, Torah study, or religious ritual. Many Jews replaced their belief in the Jewish collective understanding of the Divine with an absolute faith in man — in his discoveries and inventions, sense of social justice and fair play, intellect and integrity, peace and fellowship. The era of human bliss and fulfillment was just around the corner for everyone. Why impose the parochial Jewish national religion on this triumphal universal scenario?

REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM

The secularization of Israeli society began long before the establishment of the Jewish state. Its main thrust was directed by young socialists who came to Pales• tine from the Russian Empire, beginning with the Second Aliyah (1904-1914), and who, along with those of subsequent waves of immigration, became the governing elite in both the yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community) and the State of Israel. Inspired largely by Marx's contention that religion was "the opiate of the masses", and having wished to destroy the reactionary and anti- semitic political instruments of the Czar that were allied with the church, one of the first targets in their war against the inferior status of Jews was the Jewish religion. Some of them took to their anti-religious activities with a vengeance. In 1903, the young Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) — later President of the World Zionist Organization and first President of the State of Israel — wrote from Russia to the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, that the Jewish student population in Russia had joined the revolutionary camp.

When I visited Minsk, two hundred young Social-Democratic Jews, none of them above seventeen years of age, were arrested.... Young people fight their parents who are chained to the tradition and the rigidity of Orthodoxy. They seek to rid themselves... of anything concerning Judaism. For example, in a small town near Pinsk, young Jews tore to pieces scrolls of the Torah.

The writer Yosef Hayyim Brenner identified the Jewish religion with primi- tivism, triviality, and decadence. When he arrived in Palestine in 1910, he sharply

50 attacked the Zionist sage, Ahad Ha'Am, for respecting the Jewish tradition and its national concept of God. He poked fun at the legends about a Messiah riding on a donkey, at the kabbalists who spend time studying the mystic "foolishness" of the Zohar, at rabbinic literature, and at such mitzvot as donning phylacteries and observing the Sabbath:

The Jewish past was one of humiliation, of non-productivity, of lack of vitality, of non-return to Zion.... Even if one reiterates the God idea promoted by rabbis with silly metaphysical and philosophical arguments, we will contemptuously view it with eternal hatred.... We wish to be vital individuals without the yoke of Torah and mitzvot, and without the pleasant lies of faith and religion....

Another leader of Socialist Zionism was Nahman Syrkin (1868-1924). He viewed the "talmudic religion" — the Oral Law — as symbolizing the negative features of the Diaspora; "biblical religion" served him adequately as a source for social ideals of justice and morality. In 1901 he proclaimed that "practical Judaism was not a religion but a tragedy"; religion was the main obstacle obstructing the entry of the Jewish people into the world of Western culture, science and opportunity. One of the goals of Socialist Zionism, Syrkin taught, was "to wage war against the existing Jewish religion and to replace it with the notion of national socialism". Still another teacher of Socialist Zionism, Dov Ber Borochov (1881-1917), who sought to fuse Zionism and Marxism, wrote that the value of the First of May, the workers' holiday, lay in its liberation of the individual from the fetters of religion. This holiday "is not mentioned in any sacred books, [it has] no need for religious worship, [and is] without priests and religious functionaries.... This is the first secular holiday...the first attempt to eliminate religion totally...." Socialist Zionism was the foremost political factor in the life of pre-state Palestine and, until 1977, in sovereign Israel. The ambivalent or negative attitude to the Jewish religion expressed by this ideological camp deeply influenced the nature of the national society. The young socialists who came to the country — particularly those who arrived beginning with the second massive wave of immigrants in 1904, the Second Aliyah — brought with them not only an aversion to the Diaspora with its pogroms, religious narrow-mindedness, and unproductive Jewish economy, but a determination to create a new type of Jew, freed from the religious traditions of the past. Some of them were far more extreme in their anti-religious fervor than was the earlier generation of teachers of the First Aliyah who had set the stage for the secularization of the new Jewish community in Palestine through its schools. In growing numbers the young idealists intensified the secularization process of the new Zionist society. Many of the halutzim (idealistic pioneers), teachers, and Zionist leaders in Eretz Yisrael were products of homes where the had served as a source for their Judaism and, particularly, for their Jewish nationalism. Nonetheless, their

51 secular inclinations led them to turn to the Bible not for its religious import, but to justify and validate their national return to the . The Bible became the standard text from which nationalist slogans were culled to propagandize the Zionist message throughout the Jewish world. In their zeal, however, the secular Zionist camp distorted the teachings of the Bible. Zionist propaganda took biblical verses out of context and projected only their nationalist message. It quoted the beginning of verses, but cut off their end if the latter related to God. Many Jews who were affected by this indoctrination were not even aware that the slogans originated in a religious context. For instance, the first group of young idealists who came to Eretz Yisrael in 1882 were called "BILU", a Hebrew acronym based on the verse "The House of Jacob, let us ascend" (Isaiah 2:5); but the slogan omitted the last two Hebrew words of the verse, "in the light of God". When the Socialist Zionists stressed the equality of all people by quoting "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (Lev. 19:18), they deliberately left out the rest of the sentence, "for I am the Lord". When Palestinian Jewry in the early 1930s was faced with the challenge of large numbers of new immigrants bringing their native languages into the country, thereby threatening the predominance of Hebrew, the Zionist slogan was "I am a Hebrew" (Jonah 1:9); it excised the rest of the verse, "and I fear God, the Lord of the heavens". For educational purposes, the land-redeeming institution of Zionism, the Jewish National Fund, used the biblical verse "...the land must not be sold beyond reclaim" — ignoring the end of the phrase, "for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me" (Lev. 25:23). In our own day the Zionist slogan which demanded the release of Jews from the Soviet Union was "Let My people go" (Ex. 7:21,9:1,13). But the reason for this demand was absent — "so that they may worship Me". Few Zionists are aware that the name of the Jewish underground organization in Palestine which operated against the Turks during World War I, "NILI", is the Hebrew acronym of "the Eternal of Israel will not deceive" (I Sam. 15:29); this verse concludes with "for He is not a human who revokes His word". Nor are many Israelis conscious of the origin of their state's name: "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel — for you have battled (v'sarita) with beings divine and human and have prevailed" (Gen. 32:28). The hero of the Bible, God, does not play a major role in the national Jewish consciousness of most Israelis. The Bible is taught selectively, as a book of Jewish history, geography, philology, and folklore, not as a spiritual document for grappling with the meaning of God, faith, and the divine demand for individual and societal sanctity. Very few pedagogues relate to the possible relevance of these concepts for contemporary life. To most teachers in Israel, the Bible is a document of general humanism, and to some it is a source-text for narrow and chauvinistic nationalism. It is not a fount of religious-national inspiration nor an authoritative guide to the practice of a compelling morality which stresses the

52 sanctity of individuals and the forging of a holy people. In 1958, a group of young people from HaShomer ha-Tza'ir, an idealis­ tic, secular, left-wing Socialist Zionist movement, was invited by the Russian government to participate in an international folkdance festival in Moscow. Word spread quickly throughout the Jewish community there of the arrival of Israeli Jews who, like most visiting Jews, planned to go on the Sabbath to the synagogue — the one place of public Jewish assembly then sanctioned by the to meet their Russian brethren. The Moscow synagogue was ־— Soviet authorities filled that morning. The Israelis were given prayerbooks (with whose contents they were unacquainted), and the males were honored by being called to the Torah. The young visitors were highly embarrassed because they were not familiar with universal synagogue rituals and prayers, and did not know what to do or say within the context of the Sabbath morning service. Upon returning to Israel, some of them met with the Minister of Education and Culture, himself an avowed secularist, and expressed their resentment at being so unaware of basic Jewish rituals. Religious — they were not; but they were not proud of being ignorant.

FAILURE OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY

The Ministry of Education and Culture then decided to incorporate a novel program in its curriculum of studies — "Jewish Consciousness". A special unit at the Ministry created materials dealing with religious rituals, holidays, and symbols, and conducted crash workshops for teachers. All of these activities were aimed at giving teachers and pupils alike some elementary information about the Jewish religion. The "Jewish Consciousness" program was conducted in government schools for several years, but was discontinued for lack of effectiveness. Teachers conveyed the lessons prepared by the Ministry in a perfunctory fashion, not out of conviction but because they were obliged to do so. Pupils readily sensed the insincerity of their teachers in promoting Jewish consciousness, and reacted to the program accordingly. The exercise demonstrated the futility of teaching secular youngsters about Judaism without genuine motivation on the part of teachers. When ffie Jewish Consciousness program was announced by the Ministry of Education, secular teachers took the latter to task for attempting to bring "galut (Diaspora) religion" into the schools through the back door. They presented theories which posited that the task of education was primarily "to understand" knowledge, not "to accept" it, and definitely not "...to imbue a pupil with an awareness that he is a Jew, but rather to build his personality with the assistance of the national heritage". Such gobbledegook language ignores the fact that every person is a composite of feelings, attitudes, commitments, priorities — all of which direct one to action, and not only to understanding. To "understand" is not necessarily to be educated. Understanding is essentially cognitive in nature;

53 Jewish education, in particular, is primarily the process of building character and forming attitudes based both on critical knowledge and on specific ideals and values. It deals with the whole person, not with the mind alone; it is a gestalt. Learning about Chinese culture does not educate or motivate one to be Chinese! Similarly, learning about Judaism doesn't necessarily make one Jewish. It would seem only logical for the Jewish state to help its Jewish citizens, who comprise a minority people, a minority culture, and a minority religion in the context of world civilizations, to forge their collective national character based on revered principles and values of historic Judaism. A national system of education in a Jewish state has the obligation to excite pupils with the desirability and worthwhileness of being Jewish, and to nurture an ideological commitment to the preservation of Jewish peoplehood. It doesn't do so. Instead, it seeks to integrate Jewish studies into a universal context, which, within the existential reality of Jewishly untutored teachers, invariably diminishes the unique Jewish input. Before Jewish pupils (in Israel and in the Diaspora) can find their place in universal cultures, they must first be rooted in their own culture. But it is virtually impossible to cultivate an authentic Jewish personality without a cultural-religious component. Identity with a "glorious historic past" cannot be based solely on information and learning; it must also be psychological-attitudinal. Identity is anchored not only in knowledge, but also in a people's historic faith and pride in the unique collective Jewish achievements of earlier generations. Such faith and pride, however, cannot be taken for granted; they must be infused pedagogically, deliberately, and systematically. However, secular teachers in Israel obstruct this process. As Zvi Adar, a prominent Israeli professor of education wrote:

The claim that "it is inconceivable for an Israeli youngster not to be acquainted with Jewish sources [most of which are religious]" is basically sentimental, and a sentimental attitude toward a cultural heritage clashes with the humanistic approach [to life] and disturbs it. In the general education of Israel from its beginning until today, the sentimental attitude toward the Jewish heritage and the Jewish tradition is one of the foremost factors interfering with a meaningful Jewish education....

But what is "meaningful Jewish education"? Since when*do healthy Jewish sentiments clash with humanistic principles? As in every religion, in Judaism too there are negative, narrow, parochial sentiments ostensibly anchored in religious commandments devoid of moral sanctity and modern relevance; but why must a teacher choose these anachronisms and thus prevent youngsters from appreciating and identifying with the historic mainstream of a humane Judaism whose cardinal doctrine is man's creation in God's image? Why do secular teachers in Israel not recognize the validity of Judaism as a progressive, dynamic, religious culture relating to the evolving conditions of the Jewish people

54 in each generation, including our own? It is inevitable that without a deliberate national educational ideology of distinctive Jewish historic-religious purpose, young Israelis will reflect the Zionist teachings of Max Nordau's "muscular Zionism", or of the hero in Haim Hazaz's story, "The Sermon", written in the early 1940s, who proclaims: "When a person can no longer remain a Jew, he becomes a Zionist....Zionism begins with the destruction of Judaism." The new type of Israeli Jew is reflected, consciously or subconsciously, in the philosophy of "Canaanism" which began to emerge in Eretz Yisrael in the early 1940s. While the Canaanite outlook is not represented by an organized movement, Israeli ,secularism indisputably contains several of its ingredients. The term "Canaanism" connotes the formation of a new Hebrew (not Jewish) nation in the land of Israel, without any historical connection to the Jewish people in the Diaspora; contemporary Israel is not part of Jewish peoplehood, but a new secular nation whose two major ingredients are land (Eretz Yisrael) and language (Hebrew). This nativistic social philosophy is wholly secular in nature in contrast to Diaspora Judaism which reflects a religious community. Judaism is a religion which developed after the return from the Babylonian exile, with the editing of the Bible, whereas Hebraism is the culture of the original pre-biblical inhabitants of the region, claim the Canaanites. A small group of writers, poets, and artists expressed these Canaanite views in Israeli publications between 1943 and 1953, and again from 1958 until 1976. These Jews were admittedly and decidedly not Zionists, because Zionism absorbs many religious symbols of Judaism, includes a distinct Orthodox political party as well as representatives of other religious streams in Judaism, and relies heavily on Diaspora Jewry for the development of Eretz Yisrael, both monetarily and demographically. Canaanism seeks to sever all relationships between the Jewish past and present; its quest for a new identity led some of its leaders to recognize the Holocaust merely as a human tragedy, not a specifically Jewish catastrophe. Canaanism continues to exist as a latent force in Israeli consciousness. Ele• ments of this philosopy, often expressed unknowingly, are found in the views of many leaders of Israeli society, including some of the country's founders. A little noticed expression of this differentiation between historic Jewry and the new national society emerging in Israel is even found in the original Hebrew text of the state's Declaration of Independence. Whereas most of the document speaks about the connection of the "Jewish people" (ha-am ha-yehudi) with Eretz Israel, toward the end of the Declaration, the term "Hebrew people" (ha-am ha-ivri) is used, to differentiate the new nation emerging in Israel from Jewish communities elsewhere. The English translation of the Hebrew text is not sensitive to this subtle change, and continues to use the term "Jewish people" throughout the document. The fact that many Jews in Israel recognize themselves primarily as Israelis and only secondarily as Jews (as some recent surveys indicate), demonstrates that while Canaanism is not expressed through a formal organization, it constitutes

55 an intellectual component of Israel's national character. The antagonism between Judaism and Canaanism remains irreconcilable.

AHAD HA'AM

A major non-socialist, klal yisrael figure in the forging of Zionist nationalist culture was Asher Ginsberg (1856-1927), who wrote under the name of Ahad Ha'am. Raised in an Orthodox background in Russia, and steeped in classical Jewish religious literature, he displayed during his early adulthood a sharp, though respectful, ambivalence toward the Jewish religion. In his last years in Palestine he actually prayed every day with tallit and tefillin — a fact that most Zionists are unaware of — having earlier admitted to a modified pantheism, while expressing a strong commitment to Jewish morality and behavior. Ahad Ha'am left his impact primarily on former pupils of yeshivot and traditional religious schools (hadarim) who had abandoned the halakhic details of the Jewish religious legacy, but continued to feel loyal to the distinctive national-religious spirit of historic Jewish culture. He offered them the eternal "national spirit" which, in his view, permeated the Jewish people from time immemorial. For many Zionists, this ill-defined, but effective psychological impetus was meant to replace rabbinic authority which young Jewish nationalists tended to repudiate. Ahad Ha'am viewed the teachings of the prophets — moral lessons taught in Eretz Yisrael to the collective Jewish people — as reflecting the permanent core of this national spirit, whereas products of Jewish culture created in the far-flung Diaspora were mutable. However, as against those Zionists who denigrated the Diaspora, he argued that Jewish culture created outside of Eretz Yisrael was integral to the authenticity of historic Judaism. With the lessening impact of religion on contemporary Jews, he insisted that it was all the more vital to renew and strengthen the "national will to live" through an inspiring and meaningful link to past generations. Such a relationship would restore a strong national feeling to replace the weakened religion, and this new response could become the focus for Jewish unity, fellowship, and continuity. One should not ignore the distinctive national elements in the Jewish religion and should respect them, but these did not commit anyone to believe in a theistic God as a condition for loyal membership in Jewish peoplehood. It is clear that Ahad Ha'am hedged on the subject of religion. Though not Orthodox, he recognized the vital importance of the Jewish religion, and especially its national God-concept, as vital to Jewish authenticity. The Jewish people understood God as representing the epitome of their religious civilization, and as reflecting the highest values and ideals of Jewish culture. On the other hand, Ahad Ha'am rejected the notion that Jews must believe in God in terms of a single, fixed, formula of faith, as Orthodoxy insists; the historic experience

56 of Jewish culture expressed a variety of beliefs. Each school of thought within classical Judaism stressed a different understanding of the Divine, but no school ignored the concept. Ahad Ha'am chose to understand God primarily in national- historic terms. In a sharp attack on one of Hebrew literature's foremost writers, Yosef Hayyim Brenner (of the 1904-1914 Second Aliyah), who suggested that it was possible to be a loyal Jew while believing in the divinity of Jesus, Ahad Ha'am responded:

Even one who does not believe in the actual existence of a divine being, cannot deny this presence as a realistic, historic-national factor in Jewish history. Even a heretic cannot say: I do not share in the "God of Israel" concept — that historic power which has kept our people alive, and influenced its spirit and way of life for thousands of years. He who truly has no share in this God of Israel, who has no close feeling for this higher dimension in which our forefathers vested their hearts and minds, and from which they derived their moral strength — such a person can be a decent individual; but even if he resides in Eretz Yisrael and speaks Hebrew, he is not a national Jew.

What Ahad Ha'am intimated is that individual Jews are free to view them• selves as Jews even if they don't believe in God — more specifically, in Elohei Yisrael, the Jewish national Deity — but the historic Jewish nation cannot do so. Ahad Ha'am was careful not to drive the small Orthodox element that had joined the Zionist ranks out of the fledgling movement; he refrained from joining those who claimed that Jewish nationalism was to be understood as a total break with the Jewish religious past. He merely elevated the legitimacy of "free• thinkers" in the movement to a level at least equal to, if not surpassing, that of the Mizrachi Orthodox camp in Zionism. Refusing to denigrate the Jewish religion, he viewed it as one dimension of Judaism, rather than as the totality of the Jewish "national spirit". In his words, the non-Orthodox nationalist Jew "felt" his Jewishness, while the religious Jew "believed" in it. However, he did not explain when feeling becomes faith; neither did he note that feelings lack the lasting power of faith. Ahad Ha'am hoped that Zionism would unite the Orthodox and non-Orthodox factions, with the former grasping Jewish nationalism in terms of religion and the settlement of Eretz Yisrael, and the latter understanding it in terms of the revival of the and literature, the study of Jewish history, and colonization of the Jewish homeland. As a result of this sharply dichotomous interpretation of Zionism, religion increasingly became the monopoly of the Orthodox, while non-Orthodox Zionists fell into the "secular" mold. No ideological camp in classical Zionism sought to grapple with religion in non-Orthodox terms; one was either "religious", i.e., Orthodox, or "secular". The latter group has, in effect, ignored the religious component in historic Judaism, and in so doing has contributed to the inadequate development of the Jewish religion in the Land of Israel.

57 The formative years of modern Jewish nationalism were marked by the cultural war between these two camps in Zionism, with the battle won by the secularists. Their victory blocked the restoration of the historic dialectical balance between nationalism and religion in Judaism; religion was essentially demoted from a level of national identity and commitment to a private, voluntary concern of individuals and groups.

THE SECULARISM OF AHAD HA'AM

While Ahad Ha'am did not grapple with the relevance of the Jewish religion to modern Jews, his secularism differed substantially from that of contemporary Israelis. First, he did not reject the God concept. If, indeed, he was a heretic with respect to the Orthodox understanding of the Divine, he was not at all heretical regarding the Jewish national-cultural appreciation of God — as he interpreted it. Indeed, he bitterly disputed those Zionists who ridiculed the historical significance of the Deity in Jewish life. In sharp criticism of Brenner, who was contemptuous of the religious beliefs and practices of Judaism, Ahad Ha'am lashed out at the arrogance displayed in deriding the Jewish national spirit reflected in acts of martyrdom by previous generations of Jews who faithfully upheld the purity of . The Jewish God symbolizes the highest ideals of the historic Jewish people, and to vilify Him is to insult the Jewish people, he claimed. However, in contrast to the Orthodox position that the authoritative source of religious practices is God, Ahad Ha'am dared to state that such divine authority is vested in the Jewish people itself: "He who creates — does so in his own image"; the voice of the people is the voice of God. A second major difference between Ahad Ha'am and contemporary secular Israelis is his admission to being a "nationalist pantheist", not an agnostic or atheist. While pantheism, indeed, clashes with normative religious theism, it is a legitimate intellectual-religious grasp of divinity. Whereas normative religion acknowledges nature to be only one dimension of God, pantheism sees God and nature as one, and maintains that the Deity is neutral in the realm of morality. But Ahad Ha'am radically altered this neutral nature of the pantheist's grasp of the Divine by adding the adjective "nationalist". In the national culture of historic Judaism, God is not morally neutral, but morally committed. He is not indifferent to the reality of nature, especially human nature, and relates to norms of right and wrong, virtue and sin, justice and injustice. The "national spirit" of Judaism reflects this ethical and creative spirit of the Divine. In contrast to the Orthodox understanding of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood as derived solely from a metaphysical source, Ahad Ha'am saw his religiosity anchored in the historic Jewish civilization. Orthodox Zionism holds that the national ethos of Jewish peoplehood is imposed by God; Ahad Ha'am understood the national ethos to be created and developed by the Jewish people in the name of, and

58 inspired by, the Divine model, as mirrored in Judaism's continuously developing civilization. In keeping with this thesis, Ahad Ha'am considered aspects of halakhah to be essential to Jewish nationalism. He upheld the validity of the Shulhan Arukh as a necessary link in the development of Judaism; and because that code of Jewish jurisprudence is a vital factor in the evolving Jewish culture, Jews are duty-bound to honor those of its laws which contribute to contemporary Jewish national survival. While this consciously selective approach to religious laws is contrary to both secularism and Orthodoxy, Ahad Ha'am argued that it was indispensable to continued Jewish existence. He did not agree to change the Shulhan Arukh for the sake of personal convenience, insisting that it represents the disciplined codex of a nation, not an arbitrary guideline for individuals. Only the disciplined collective consensus of the Jewish people can amend the halakhah. Such a consensus is achieved slowly, naturally, almost without conscious effort, as a result of changed circumstances and mores of life. As an example of this natural cultural evolution of halakhah, Ahad Ha'am cites the biblical law 'an eye for an eye' (Ex. 21:25; Lev. 24:20). As early as the First Jewish Commonwealth, he maintained, this law was observed only in the breach; it was indeed permissible to apply it, but society preferred to dissuade the affected party from putting it into practice, and to seek monetary damages instead. During the Second Commonwealth, the rabbis explicitly interpreted the law solely in monetary terms, society having developed to the point of viewing the law's literal implementation as cruel and barbaric. The literal biblical law was amended as a result of new social and cultural norms. This was not a challenge to the Jewish religion, but rather an indication of greater faith in the sanctity of the Torah and its God. Ahad Ha'am acknowledged the necessity and validity of amendments to the halakhah when they promote the interests of society. He felt that such amendments, instigated by an evolving civilization, reflect the genuine meaning of Torah. Ahad Ha'am claimed that the essence of Judaism is morality which is grounded in a viable, earthly Jewish culture, not solely in a transcendental faith. But what is Jewish morality? How does it differ from non-Jewish morality? Ahad Ha'am chose to highlight the difference by emphasizing what Jewish morality is not. He cited stories written by two of the early leading political Zionists — Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau. Both of them came to Zionism from assimilationist backgrounds and were only superficially acquainted with Jewish culture. Ahad Ha'am pointed out that their works expressed "normal" Jewish nationalism by having their heroes uphold Jewish honor through duels with opponents who cast slurs on Jews. Herzl's Dr. Samuel (in "The New Ghetto") and Nordau's "Dr. Kohn" were prepared to be killed by their antagonists in order to prove that Jews are not cowards. Ahad Ha'am refused to call these fictional characters "national Jews", because they expressed a non-Jewish morality of

59 the German environment in which they resided. Jews don't duel, don't shed blood, don't get killed merely for the sake of personal honor, he concluded. They are prepared to die only for the honor of sanctifying God (kiddush haShem), he claimed. Because Ahad Ha'am was steeped in classical Jewish culture, he felt intellec• tually comfortable in breaking with Orthodoxy while acknowledging selective religious laws and symbols on grounds of national survival and moral purpose. The Jewish secularists in Palestine and later in Israel did not adopt this eclectic but respectful approach. Free-thinking teachers taught their pupils a smattering of Judaism's religious culture, but did not expect them to be committed to it. As a result of such an ambivalent educational policy, most pupils in Palestinian and Israeli schools studied some parts of the Bible, but did not necessarily identify with the contents either religiously or morally. In many cases, their knowledge of biblical text was superficial, and by and large they were ignorant of post-biblical. Jewish classics, especially those written outside of Eretz Yisrael. In 1902, Ahad Ha'am observed:

Due to the strenuous effort to refine the child's spirit from Diaspora influences, and to bring him closer to the ancient [biblical] source, [subjects affecting his Jewish identity become] so confusing that he cannot know his place in the world...[and] the relationship between himslf and the rest of his people who are still affected by the "Diaspora spirit"....

If Ahad Ha'am became increasingly "secular" as a result of his critique of a narrow and atrophied Orthodoxy, he still admired and respected Jewish tradition; the pupil in Israel, however, is secular without any real appreciation of historic Jewish culture. He knows "something" of his people's past by virtue of having to take a few circumscribed matriculation exams in Jewish subjects, but this does not necessarily establish a deep psychological link with his unique historic-religious civilization. Thus, Israeli secularism is based largely on Jewish ignorance and apathy, not on conscious choice or intellectual conviction. Secular educators in the country generally do not instill in their pupils a deliberate distaste for religion, and may even express "respect" or "appreciation" for its role in Jewish history — but they emphasize that the practice of religion is valid primarily for the Diaspora; in Israel it has been replaced by secular Zionist nationalism. Secularists argue that individuals, of course, are free to be "religious", but that the soverign Jewish state has no national responsibility to cultivate an appreciation for the Jewish religion which remains a personal matter, not a collective one. Furthermore, the laws of the state pertaining to the Jewish religion are tantamount to "religious coercion", and smack of "theocratic" influences. Religious laws enacted by the Knesset — e.g., restrictions on raising pigs and marketing their meat — violate the doctrine of human rights and freedom of conscience. On analysis, the cry by secularists of a theocratic danger to Israel is a red

60 herring. All laws in the country, halakhic or other, are enforceable only when legislated or approved by the secular, democratically-elected Knesset. While Israeli governments may have to periodically accommodate religious elements in Parliament in order to achieve and sustain a ruling coalition, parliamentary democracy cannot be practiced without their votes. When arguing against religious coercion, one must differentiate between private and public rights. Coercion takes place in every society — primarily in the public domain and in the interests of national solidarity and stability. By definition, every law is coercive, and limits the freedom of individuals in the context of communal or societal considerations. Without such democratically legislated (coercive) laws, no organized society could exist. What a person does privately, in the confines of his home, is normally not the business of the legislature (except when one's actions clash with other state laws, e.g., abusing family members). No law in Israel coerces an individual to place a mezuzah on his doorpost, pray, observe the laws of kashrut, fast on Yom Kippur, or celebrate Shabbat and holidays. These are all private prerogatives. On the other hand, there are Knesset laws pertaining to religion as it affects the collective Jewish society, such as regulating marital status and public Shabbat transportation. The rationale for such laws is to uphold the national dimension of Jewish peoplehood — even at the expense of individual rights. The Jewish state protects the Jewish public domain, cultivates the uniqueness of Jewish communal historic culture, and safeguards the sovereignty of the Jewish nation in Israel; it does not seek to duplicate the subjective, voluntary, individual religious patterns of Jews in the Diaspora. Furthermore, it is simply not true that religion may be relevant to the Diaspora but not to a Jewish state. Besides the philosophical and theological universal dimensions of religion, the latter was a significant factor in the life of the Jewish community during the First and Second Commonwealths in Eretz Yisrael; it was expressed in a healthy dialectic with nationalism. If Zionism seeks to restore Jewish authenticity, it cannot claim that religion is valid only for the Diaspora but taboo in a sovereign Jewish state. The Zionist revolution means not only a change in the national status of Jews, but also a return to Judaism's point of origin — the meaning of the term "revolution" in physics — when, beginning with the Sinai Covenant, nationalism and religion were intertwined. Finally, the terms "respect" and "appreciation" occasionally used by secular teachers regarding the Jewish religion have little educational impact upon pupils. It is not possible to instill lasting positive attitudes toward Jewish religious tradi• tion based on cliches and ignorance. Respect does not occur in a vacuum; it must be based on knowledge and admiration. It has to be cultivated and internalized, albeit critically. In the context of Judaism it must include identification with or practice of aspects of Jewish observance; otherwise, it merely means a passive toleration of the tradition. This hardly signifies respect or appreciation.

61 SECULAR HUMANISTIC JUDAISM

Yehuda Bauer, professor of history at the Hebrew University and founding chairman of the Israel Association of Secular Humanistic Judaism, admits that religion kept the Jewish people alive in past generations, but rejects the possibility that "religion, especially the Jewish Orthodoxy of our time, is a true solution to the contemporary problems of the individual Jew". He recommends the establishment of "a secular cultural and spiritual way of life, traditionally Jewish, [in which] the foremost achievements of other cultures are merged". But what is "traditionally Jewish" if not religion? And who decided that the "Orthodoxy of our time" is the sole desirable mold for modern Jewish religion? Instead of grappling with religion and God, as would become intellectuals, most Israeli academicians prefer to ignore these concepts, and seek new ap• proaches that have no relationship to the mainstream of historic Jewish culture. One such approach is "Secular Humanistic Judaism" which argues that the source of the life-force in humanity is not transcendental, but exclusively immanent; not beyond man, but within him. It pits the authority of man against that of the Divine; the former is the sole source for human sanctity and hope. There is no need to relate to a metaphysical factor which will influence one's ideals, values, and norms. God is merely a myth. This view is unconvincing for two reasons: First, when faith is anchored in a value-oriented myth which motivates individuals or groups to thought and action, the myth becomes as powerful a reality in human life as any scientific truth. Myths enable poets and artists to reach new heights of imagination and inspiration; they allow human beings to identify with noble ideals which uplift them psychologically and spiritually. They provide people with hope for a better tomorrow. On the basis of myths, societies flourished, ideologies were formed, religions created, wars fought, new states established. One who ignores meaningful myths, ignores reality. Even if God is only a myth, as skeptics claim, collective Jewish consciousness has recognized Him as the dominant factor in Jewish history. This Jewish understanding of God has motivated, guided, and sustained the Jewish people throughout its long, national existence. Humanism itself is tied to the myth of the Divine. Even if it is argued that human values are the product of man's fertile mind, one must recognize that the ideals of a person were not created by him or her alone. They represent the particular culture into which an individual was born and raised, and which was handed down from one generation to the next. Invariably, every culture includes religious principles and moral precepts whose origins, even if ostensibly mythical, are anchored in a transcendental source. The raising of the divine concept to a universal, ethical level is Judaism's unique contribution to humanity. Western morality was not created ex nihilo; it evolved and developed, inter alia, from basic Jewish religious doctrines. The notion of Western humanism is similarly

62 the product of thousands of years of moral development and refinement; its unmistakable origins lie mainly in the biblical religious roots of Judaism, along with a philosophical Greek influence. The term "Judeo-Christian tradition" recognizes the validity of this appraisal. A second reason why secular humanism cannot sever itself from a Divine source, is that it has not proven itself as a reliable philosophy of life which can assure individual self-discipline, social responsibility, and interpersonal harmony. Philosophic humanism is not sufficient to guarantee the peace and fulfillment of human beings; their religious traditions — despite deviations — have sought to teach the doctrine that man is created in the Divine image. (The critique against organized religions in this context must be weighed against the frightening prospect of man's moral condition without the guidelines of their systematic ethical teachings.) No humanistic value derived from the "natural", "rational", "immanent" goodwill of man has been practiced persistently and systematically. Who is "man"? Which man? Of what degree of sophistication? From which culture or civilization and from which value system? No "natural" virtue exists automatically in human beings; it must be cultivated and refined. The Declaration of Independence misled American citizens when it declared that "these truths are self-evident: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Such truths are far from self-evident! Nowhere in the world have they been achieved without continuous struggle. Furthermore, every national society interprets these truths differently — in accordance with its cultural, religious, and ideological values and principles. These manifold interpretations have not prevented human inequality and blatant misery. No society can base its existence solely on the subjective whims and incon• sistent motivations of individuals, without the intervention of a code of absolute moral values stemming from a commonly acknowledged transcendental source. History has shown that a society which deviates from such a universal code can readily be transformed from a humanistic community to a bestial one. The enlightened Germany of Hegel and Fichte at the beginning of the nineteenth century became the Germany of Hitler and Himmler. If man is the absolute measure of all things, and represents the highest moral sanction in any society, he can also become an animal — despite his education and scientific achievements. Even a humanistic morality may succumb to the amoral norms of society. Many decent Germans cooperated fully with the Nazis; only a minority fought the regime at great personal risk. One may assume that the latter did so because of their steadfast commitment to absolute and permanent moral values whose source of authority lies outside the social realm of existential reality. The Jewish secular humanist deceives himself. Human nature is not inherently good (Genesis 8:21) and, by itself, cannot bring harmony and fellowship to the human race. This is exactly what Judaism as a religion tries to do. Through its system of daily obligatory mitzvot between an individual and God, Judaism

63 seeks to condition its adherents to implement the mitzvot between one person and another — to refine and perfect man's character! Precisely because it does not rely on the caprices and fancies of human nature which is fickle, moody, and changeable, it gives transcendental meaning to these mitzvot. Wrote Professor Gershom Scholem: "...I believe that morality as a constructive force is not possible without religion, without a power beyond pure knowledge.... Without God, values or ethics that have real validity do not exist.... I don't believe in moral relativism...." A favorite claim of Israeli secular humanists is that Hitler did not differentiate between religious and secular Jews when he sent both groups to the gas chambers; the Nazi regime did not determine their cruel fate on the basis of religion. All of them were considered Jews — which "proves" that religion was not the primary criterion for their Jewishness. This secular humanist definition of a Jew is fallacious on several grounds: 1) Hitler's criteria for deciding who was and who was not a Jew were not based on religious as against secular considerations, but on warped, subjective, tendentious racial principles. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 established that even individuals who were only partly of Jewish descent — going back three generations — were considered to be Jews "by blood", and they too arbitrarily met the fate of normative Jews. 2) Why should self-respecting Jews, scions of a rich and historic religious culture, view themselves as Jews on the basis of irrelevant and perverse standards laid down by madmen? 3) The use of Hitler's inhumanity as a rationale for the secular humanistic basis of Jewishness is absurd. The secular Nazi society, spurning the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, loathed humanism as much as it abhorred Judaism. The term "secularism" entered the modern vocabulary when the religious establishment that ruled the lives of human beings was seriously challenged by the leaders of the Renaissance. Man had always been secular, as he is today, when he related to non-religious spheres of life — the bulk of his waking hours. But during the Renaissance period these autonomous secular areas were expanded at the expense of Church authority. The Renaissance also restored public interest in the Hebrew Bible where readers encountered the doctrine that every person is createdjn the Divine image. Renaissance humanism usurped the Church's authority over scientific truth, artistic beauty, and social justice. Educated man, anchored in biblical doctrine, was judged capable of grappling with these spheres of life by himself. However, while humanism made man more autonomous in relation to the Church, it did not make him sovereign! He did not replace God. The Renaissance humanists continued to acknowledge that moral sovereignty and spiritual perfection were lodged in the authority of a transcendental power beyond man. They did not abandon religion; the German Reuchlin (1455-1522), the Dutchman Erasmus (1461-1536), and the Englishman Thomas More (1478-1535), remained religious personalities. They continued to believe in God's sovereignty, even as they

64 advocated man's expanded autonomy. While man enjoyed greater personal freedom, God remained the source of his morality. (The doctrine of ancient Greece, "know thyself", reminded man to recognize his mortal limitations lest arrogance lead him to hubris.) Modern secular humanism has perverted this perspective. It has upset the dialectical balance between human autonomy and divine sovereignty. In its revolt against conservative and often reactionary religious establishments, it has mistakenly made man the supreme source of morality. It claims that man is wholly self-made, as proven by his impressive accomplishments — discover• ies, inventions, scientific and technological breakthroughs, industrial expansion, increased wealth and comfort. None of these achievements was dependent on religion or God; man alone produced them. Greater material benefits and a higher standard of living, along with belief in new secular ideologies — democracy, capitalism, socialism, communism, and fascism — were sufficiently powerful reasons to replace the primacy of religion in human consciousness. However, this claim for human sovereignty does not stand up to reality. At best, man may be sovereign in relation to himself alone, but once he encounters another person, not to speak of society at large, he is manifestly limited in his actions. His sovereignty is curtailed in relation to others. All political ideologies, even those of liberal regimes, limit man's freedom. People are able to coexist with mutual limited autonomy only because they are subject to a sovereign beyond themselves — the state in political-social affairs, and God in the moral-spiritual realm of life.

IS ISRAELI SECULARISM BANKRUPT?

In reply to an invitation to endorse the newly established Israel Association for Secular Humanistic Judaism, the erudite and universally respected Abba Eban responded: The trend toward extremism in [the country's] religious camp created a myth about a confrontation between the faith of Israel and humanism. In actual fact, there is no basis to the doctrine that counterposes the two notions in an illusory contradiction.... The specter of a chasm between faith and humanism is a product of a selective attitude to religion.... While I sympathize with many of the activities of the International Institute for Secular Judaism, I do not honestly feel that I can give it my particular endorsement.... I cannot grasp what is meant by "secular Judaism" anymore than I would be able to tell you what is meant by "secular ", "secular ", or "secular Buddhism". While "Jewishness"...[is a] concept with a wider signification than is embraced by religion, it is impossible to deny that the concept of divinity lies at the very heart of what we call "Judaism", and that the ceremonies and traditions associated with religion form an inherent part of the term "Judaism".

65 I have recently been broadcasting to tens of millions of people throughout the world a portrayal of our legacy in which I state that the original and most revolutionary insight of the Jewish people's history was the concept of a single God, transcending nature and symbolizing the unity of the natural order. Would I not be intellectually inconsistent if I were suddenly to discover a Judaism that can honestly be described as predominantly or exclusively "secular"? While Abba Eban may have explained why many Israeli secularists are confused and unconvincing in defining their "Jewishness", there is no doubt that the mere existence of a soverign Jewish state inevitably projects and expands the secular dimension within Jewish existence. The State of Israel, like every other political sovereignty, is secular by nature; it has legal boundaries, govern• ment institutions, police and defense forces, tax authorities and administrative bureaucracies, regulations, and political parties — not to speak of hospitals, transportation systems, energy plants, etc. All of these frameworks are secular. However, the State of Israel is not an end unto itself; it was established to develop and protect a particular historic people. The uniqueness of the Jewish nation in Israel, as that of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, is not their universal secularism but their distinctive religious culture. When, at the turn of the century, Ahad Ha'am advocated the establishment of Eretz Yisrael as the Jewish people's spiritual center, whose national Jewish culture would inspire Diaspora Jews, offset the excessive negative impact of Western influences on them, and reduce the dangers of assimilation, he ignored the revival of the religious component in Judaism. To him, the national "secular" renaissance influenced by the "spirit" and "morality" of Judaism would meet the spiritual needs of modern Jews everywhere. Zionism's mundane national culture would take the place of Judaism's Orthodox religion. The faith which Ahad Ha'am espoused was a romantic belief in the collective will of the Jewish people to continue living as a historic entity. Ahad Ha'am's somewhat ambiguous characterization of Judaism in the pro• jected Eretz Yisrael cultural center was sharply criticized by another nationalist thinker, Yehezkel Kaufmann, pre-eminent professor of Jewish thought at the Hebrew University. Not only would such Hebraic culture, exported from Israel, have little effect on the daily lives of Diaspora Jews who are enmeshed in the cultures of their indigenous societies, Kaufmann claimed, but no secular culture can ever replace the religious component in Judaism! "Only the Jewish religious culture saved Diaspora Jews from assimilation", he asserted. ...Only this [religious factor] motivated our people to remain separate from its neighbors and surroundings.... Other ancient peoples also had "spiritual cultures"...some of them, (like Egypt), much richer than the Jews.... It is tragic that those who once had religious faith...do not recognize that our nationalism came about only because of the faith in which we no longer believe. Because of

66 this, we try to find an alternative basis for our nationalism, and invent [terms like] "natural nationalism", "spiritual nationalism", etc Can we avoid the evil decree by ignoring the truth? Yehezkel Kaufmann also took issue with Ahad Ha'am's secular Darwinian orientation which claimed that the secret of Jewish preservation throughout the centuries has been the natural collective "will to survive" — an instinct inherent in every organism. Kaufmann recognized certain innate instincts in human beings, such as an inclination towards sociability — but these did not include an inherently built-in drive for national survival. The will for national preservation must be constantly cultivated, he maintained, for nature does not implant in individuals an attachment to a particular country, nation, language, culture, or religion. Feelings of nationalism become valuable and relevant to people only as a result of deliberately nurtured social, historic, and cultural factors. There is often, however, a lack of clarity in distinguishing between a "normal" secular state and a national society bearing a distinctive cultural-historical, value-orientation. Only a society — its people, history, language, culture, ideals, values, and collective purpose (if any) — creates the essential difference between one state and another, and conveys a sense of singular identity to its members. Since the State of Israel is called a "Jewish state" as a result of the circumstances surrounding its creation, and because the majority of its citizens are Jews, most Israelis take for granted that the state has unique innate equalities of "Jewish- ness". While there are, indeed, many singular Jewish features in the laws and national ambience of the Jewish state, daily life overwhelmingly reflects universal, normal, "secular" dimensions of human and civic endeavor. Daily newspapers, radio and TV programs, schools and universities, businesses and professions, health and welfare services, army duties and tax payments, food purchases and entertainment — all of these absorb the bulk of the population's energies and activities. However, they are predominantly secular and not distinctively Jewish in character. The average Israeli inevitably grows up within a preponderantly secular ambience. Most individuals who call themselves "secular" use the word in opposition to the term "religious", but cannot point to any unique Jewish component of their "secularism" — a term which is common to all people everywhere. The secularist society in Israel is caught in a dilemma: It has not succeeded in defining its positive Jewish identity in a convincing manner. •

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