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Karl E. Grözinger
Opening a conference in Kazimierz-Cracow, close to the synagogue and burial place of the famous Remu, cannot be done without remembering him. This all the more, as the Cracow legends and the writings of Remu show that the famous rabbi is closely linked to the subject of this conference dealing with the relations between Jewish and non-Jewish thought. When Moses Isserles, who at the time was only eighteen years old, was elected the chief rabbi of the capital of the Polish kings, the bishop, so we are told by the legend, who had to consent to the appointment, wanted to test the young rabbi in all the “seven sciences,” including philosophy. And as the legend goes, in a disputation in the Bishop’s palace, Isserles was victorious over all the priests, philosophers, and wise men of Poland.1 And indeed, the major theological opus written by Isserles shows his skill to integrate philosophy and kabbalah into rabbinic theology, maintaining all these are propounding the same truth albeit in different languages.2 It is clear that Isserles was aware of the existence of different trends of thought within Judaism, which should be integrated, as otherwise there would be a split within the Jewish thought itself. Thus, Isserles found his own formula for playing down a difference which was expressed in his days and is still so today by the common opposition of Athens versus Jerusalem.
Since the time of the Church Father Tertullian everybody helped himself to mark the difference of Jewish and non-Jewish thought by this common view of opposition between “Athens and Jerusalem.” This opposition of Athens and Jerusalem served traditionally in Europe as a criterion for discerning Judaism on the one and Hellenism on the other side. According to this formula, the Jews are the prophets and the Greeks the philosophers, the one side founding its knowledge on revelation the other on human reason. But today, every student of Jewish thought knows that things are not that easy as this formula tries to suggest. For, apart from the massive focus on and preference for revelation and even mysticism by many Jews, there exists Jewish philosophy which openly declared to be depending on reason in the first place. If so, when both Jews and Greeks alike may depend on reason and revelation – how can we find other criteria for a clear differentiation between Jewish and non-Jewish thought?
In order to find a way towards the clarification of this question, I would like to consider three probable solutions to this problem and then try to give an answer to it. The three solutions I shall discuss are:
1. The first way to define Jewishness in Jewish thought would be the answer by Jewish dogma, or dogmatic self-definition.
2. The second way to find an answer to this question would be consulting the history of thought or ideas, the intellectual history.
3. And finally, the third solution would be to point out typical Jewish forms of discourse and hermeneutics instead of particular Jewish doctrines.
The Dogmatic Solution
In this part I would like to ask whether we can find any dogma or any basic philosophical idea which could be conducive for defining a doctrine as “typically” Jewish. And in order to find our way through the jungle of Jewish thought I propose to consult three Jewish teachers from different periods as to what they consider to be the doctrinal essence of Judaism. In case we would get one single answer from all of them we could confidently accept this particular view as the very essential for defining Jewish thought.
The first Jewish teacher to ask what deems him to be the essence of Judaism will be Rabbi Hillel the Elder who lived at the beginning Christian Era. In the Babylonian Talmud we are taught that when one day a non-Jew came before Hillel and asked him to teach him in short the whole of the Torah, Hillel gave the famous answer: “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”3 Accordingly, for Hillel the Elder it was an ethical rule which he declared to be the essence of the Torah or the core of Judaism. It is the famous golden rule we also know in a somewhat different version from the New Testament.4 Nearly two thousand years later, the well known Berlin Rabbi Leo Baeck in his classic book The Essence of Judaism expressed a similar ethical maxim as the basis of Judaism saying: “There is no way to God but through the deeds of man.”5
When we now turn to another classical definition of the essence of Judaism, the poetical restatement of which is found in every Jewish prayer book, we will be confronted with a totally different view. I refer to the thirteen Ikkarim, the Thirteen Principles of Faith, by the medieval philosopher Maimonides (1135–1205). The most important statements defining the essence of Judaism we find immediately at the beginning of the articles. They say, following the wording in Maimonides commentary to the Mishnah: “You should believe in the existence of the Creator, [and further] He is the cause of all existence. [And] He is one … He is not a body … and He has no … relationship to a body or parts thereof”6 What a difference! The great medieval philosopher sees the essence of Judaism not in an ethical maxim like Hillel but in purely philosophical doctrines taken from medieval Aristotelians. According to this definition, the core of Judaism are not the deeds of man, this centre is rather man’s philosophy, his philosophical thoughts. The real essence of Judaism is, therefore, according to Maimonides, the true recognition of God. The way to God is not a foremost ethical path, but an intellectual achievement.
Finally let us turn to one of the founding fathers of Eastern European Hasidism, to Dov Ber of Mesritch (1704–72). When we would ask him to give us the quintessence of Judaism he would have answered: “God is one and unique. And this uniqueness of the Godhead reveals itself in the Divine Nought. By means of this Nought He has created the world and by this Nought He is present in His world. Therefore the aim of man must be to annihilate himself in his contemplation und thus become unified with the Divine Nought.” In this formulation of the essence of Judaism one will not find an appeal to ethical activity nor to philosophical ratiocination. The centre of this Judaism is the mystical act of self-annihilation and of unio mystica.
These are, so far, only a few examples of doctrinal and dogmatic definitions of the essence of Judaism. And the conclusion would be: There could be no more differences and even contradictions in defining the essence of Judaism. With Hillel it is the ethical maxim, with Maimonides the intellectual philosophical program, and, finally, the mystical path with Dov Ber of Mesritch.
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After this short survey of only three authoritative statements regarding the essence of Judaism the question arises whether this could be the successful way in order to find criteria for determining Jewishness of any doctrine. The answer would be obviously: No!
Of course, each of the three quoted masters would see in his teachings the ultimate criterion for the essence of Judaism. But nevertheless there remains the tremendous difference between these three. For the modern scholar who searches for an all-embracing definition of Jewishness in Jewish thought only one single conclusion should follow: All of these three positions are highly individual or group-specific confessions but never definitions representing all of Judaism. Thus, these definitions could serve us only as references to specific teachers or particular groups within Judaism, as definitions from a certain period of time, from a special geographical area or a separate group within Judaism, but they never can serve as definitions or criteria of Judaism in general as opposed to non-Jewish thought.
The first conclusion, therefore, would be, so far: The dogmatic or pure philosophical approach cannot help to find criteria for Jewishness as a whole, for a doctrine which is specific for Judaism and which would be different from non-Jewish thought or philosophy. The next conclusion would be: Instead of a dogmatic approach to searching for the specifics of Jewish thought we should try an approach via the history of thought. This will be the next try.
The Solution Based on Intellectual History
In order to test the approach by means of intellectual history I shall choose a central topic of Jewish thought which is found in all doctrinal systems of Judaism known to us: in theology, in philosophy or in the kabbalah. This topic will be the question “What is man?” Again I shall choose some examples from different times and different spiritual milieus.
The View of the Bible
In the Bible man is conceived as a being of flesh and blood created by God. This man is just a living body and has no additional soul, no different spiritual element besides his flesh and blood. The life of this man is, therefore, bound to this physical world where man is living only once without having the chance of attaining a second life beyond this terrestrial existence. Therefore, the good life of man, his felicity, could be defined as follows: Man should enjoy the blessings of his life here on earth, the climax of which will be reached when man dies in old age, being satisfied with life and leaving many children behind him.
In addition, man has a special power on this earth for he was created in the image of God, as we read in the Bible: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”7 It is true, according to these words man has an elevated position on this earth, but this position will be lost after his death since he has only this single life on earth and no other.
The View of the Sages
Man is, in the view of early Talmudic rabbinical literature and in opposition to the Bible, a composite of body and soul. In addition, for the rabbis human life in this world alone cannot be deemed to be the full realization of the good life. Therefore, the rabbis taught that the good life will be accomplished only when it is supplemented by a second life in the aftermath of this terrestrial life. This is the life in the world to come. Only taken together, the life in this world and the life in the afterward, human life may be the good life. Only in the life to come, the shortcomings of this world will get their reward. This world is therefore no longer the place of fulfillment of human life but it is merely the corridor to the life following in the world to come. Terrestrial life has no intrinsic value of its own, its value is estimated only in the light of the world to come.
Moreover, another serious switch is expressed by the sages: Whereas in the Bible the honor of being the image of God would mean for man to rule over all other beings in this world, the rabbis teach on the contrary that man achieves the goal of becoming the image of God only by humility and righteousness which is achieved by ethical pursuit, not by domination over others.
Finally, the accomplished human life, according to the sages, will be attained only in the resurrection of the dead, when both parts of man, body and soul, which for some time become separated after death, will again be un...
