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Menachem Kellner: an Intellectual Portrait MENACHEM KELLNER: AN INTELLECTUAL PORTRAIT James A. Diamond Biography and Career There is no more appropriate opening for any introduction to the life and thought of Menachem Kellner (b. 1946) than with Maimonides in general, and the following singular citation from his written legacy in particular. Moses Maimonides (1138–1205), the seminal jurist, halakhist, and philoso- pher, who, since medieval times, set the agenda across the entire spectrum of Jewish thought in jurisprudence, philosophy, rabbinics, and biblical exegesis, “codifies” various nonlegal principles in the Mishneh Torah, his pioneering legal code. Among those is an ethically and spiritually edify- ing sentiment capping off highly technical laws related to the regulation of agricultural productivity during the sabbatical and jubilee years. Members of the tribe of Levi must be free to lead all-consuming spiritual lives and are therefore excluded from virtually every form of political and communal life, exempted from military service, and barred from ownership of land. Once this exceptional Levite mode of participation in the Israelite polis is stipulated as a normative category of Jewish national life, Maimonides, as is often his wont, then inserts his own creative addendum to it. Maimonides holds out the Levites as a model for the kind of life he considers spiritually and intellectually ideal, the summum bonum, for all human beings, and I stress, all, to pursue: also each and every individual of those who came into the world, whose spirit generously moves him and whose knowledge gives him understanding to set himself apart in order to serve before the Lord, to serve Him, to wor- ship him, and to know Him, who walks upright as God has made him, and releases his neck from the yoke of the many calculations that human beings are wont to pursue—such an individual is consecrated to the Holy of Holies and his portion and inheritance shall be in the lord forever and evermore. The Lord will grant him in this world whatsoever is sufficient for him, the same as He had granted to the priests and the Levites.1 1 Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee Years 13:13 (emphasis mine). 2 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait Any glance at Kellner’s prodigious scholarly output during his career as an academic launched at the University of Virginia (1972–1973; 1975–1980), followed by a stint at the College of William and Mary (1973–1975), and subsequently, for the majority of his career over three decades, in Israel at the University of Haifa, and now at Shalem College in Jerusalem, reveals an uninterrupted fascination with a myriad of dimensions of Maimonides’ thought, even when Maimonides isn’t the central focus of a particular study. For example his numerous studies on dogma and of Gersonides’ (1288–1344) and Isaac Abravanel’s (1437–1508) thought are all conducted in the shadow of, and contrapuntally to, Maimonides. Although he has deeply probed many facets of Maimonidean thought, this excerpt from Maimonides’ legal code exemplifies that critical one, involving concepts to which Kellner returns again and again, in ever fresh and creative ways— universalism, holiness, chosenness, and an authentic Jewish notion of the good life that transcends the strict confines of Judaism, accessible to all of humanity. In other words his Jewish scholarship and popular writings are not driven solely by the question “Is it good for the Jews?” Kellner’s Jewish and ethical passions stem from a combination of the general social upheaval in North America, especially on its university cam- puses while Kellner was in their attendance, and the influences of family and teachers of his formative years in rabbinical colleges, or yeshivot, in Chicago and Jerusalem as well as of the secular environment of the university. A self- professed “child of the sixties,” Kellner’s academic studies were conducted when revolution was in the air revolving around the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, fierce opposition to the Vietnam war, and the pervasive protest music of folk singers such as Bob Dylan (née Zimmerman) and Phil Ochs. There is no doubt then, that the heady events of those years, suffused by endless demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, flag burning, draft dodging, and student occupation of administrative offices, informed his choice of dissertation topic on “Civil Disobedience in Democracy: A Philosophical Justification,” completed in 1973 at Washington University under the super- vision of Steven Schwarzschild. As the title suggests, Kellner’s academic life is grounded in the marshal- ing of his intellectual talents and acumen in the cause of bettering the ethi- cal fabric of his country, namely, in the search for a philosophical rationale that would underpin, in the way he felt best equipped to do, radical change in the ethics of social and political life in America. His graduate studies led him to the conclusion that he would never abandon. One must never allow noble ideals such as democracy to be obscured, perverted, or thwarted by technicality and thus:.
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