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For Torah and Culture

Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Aharon Lichtenstein is a leading figure in modern Orthodox circles. Indeed, his standing in the modern Orthodox camp goes beyond mere respect. For some, in both the United States and Israel, he has become a full-fledged cultural hero.

Born in 1933, Lichtenstein first attained star status as a young Talmudist at New York’s Yeshiva University in the 1950s, and his reputation has flourished ever since. (He graduated from Yeshiva College in 1953 and received his rabbinic ordination in 1959.) To begin with, there was Lichtenstein’s combination of brilliance and moral rectitude. Everyone at Yeshiva was aware that Lichtenstein was a genius, with an astonishing grasp of the Talmud. Students flocked to his Talmudic discourses, and consulted with him at all hours of the day and night about fine points of Jewish law. But Lichtenstein was more than a brain; he was also a person of the most exacting moral standards, who spoke out on issues of the day and led a student march to protest the starving of children in Biafra.

Lichtenstein also enjoyed star status as the son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the undisputed leader of modern Orthodoxy in the United States. Both men centered their activity on the Yeshiva campus. Lichtenstein attended all of Soloveitchik’s Talmud classes, afterward reviewing the material with senior rabbinic students. When Soloveitchik gave public lectures on religious themes, Lichtenstein was always present in the front row. The close bond between the two men was apparent to everyone, and Soloveitchik’s extraordinary stock of charisma began to rub off on his son-in-law.

One more fact needs to be mentioned: Lichtenstein has a doctorate in English literature from Harvard, mirroring the doctorate in philosophy his father-in-law obtained at the University of Berlin. For students attending Yeshiva, these advanced degrees were more than credentials; they were also passports to a form of Orthodoxy that legitimated involvement with Western culture. They demonstrated that it was possible to be Orthodox and modern at the same time”which was, above all else, what people at Yeshiva yearned for.

Lichtenstein’s standing in the modern Orthodox community is certain to receive a further boost now that KTAV Publishing House has released a hefty two-volume collection of his English-language essays. The pieces gathered in Leaves of Faith: The World of Jewish Learning and Leaves of Faith: The World of Jewish Living range from the early 1960s until today.

At a time when modern Orthodoxy is in retreat on a broad front, Lichtenstein’s vigorous championing of the modern Orthodox cause will gladden the hearts of the faithful. But with the publication of Leaves of Faith , the time has come for a more considered approach to Lichtenstein’s religious enterprise. The alignment of forces in today’s Orthodox society is radically different from what it was when Lichtenstein was a student and teacher at Yeshiva University. Prior to the 1970s, modern Orthodoxy was the dominant trend in Orthodox life. Now traditionalists rule the roost, and the influence of Yeshiva University, the leading modernist institution, has declined. Its proclaimed ideal of “Torah and culture” has been called into question by a large part of the Orthodox community.

Orthodox traditionalism, in both its hasidic and yeshiva versions, is strongly isolationist, seeking to limit the interaction of Orthodox Jews with the larger surrounding culture”as well as with their non-Orthodox brethren. From the traditionalist standpoint, Yeshiva University is an educational catastrophe, since it brings the forbidden general culture into the very precincts of Torah.

“Torah and culture” is clearly a key element in modern Orthodoxy, and Lichtenstein has addressed the issue in systematic fashion. The single longest piece he has written”a monster of an essay appearing in Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures ”carries the title “Torah and General Culture: Confluence and Conflict.” The identical theme is taken up in two substantial essays reproduced in Leaves of Faith : “A Consideration of Synthesis from a Torah Point of View” and “The End of Learning.” In all three pieces, Lichtenstein mounts a powerful argument for what he terms the “Jewish value of humanistic culture” and the “spiritual value of a general education.” If this sounds like religious humanism, it is. In Lichtenstein’s scheme, “humanistic learning” leads directly to a “fuller manifestation of the spirituality of man.”

Lichtenstein’s commitment to “Torah and culture” has proved unwavering, even as the focus of his educational activity has shifted from the United States to Israel. In 1971, he became one of the heads of Yeshiva Har Etzion, a school combining advanced Talmud study with service in the Israeli army. While Har Etzion does not offer secular studies as part of its formal curriculum, Lichtenstein functions within the institution as an “apostle of culture.” He explained his position in a 1986 lecture: “I do not believe that my principled position concerning the value of culture has changed drastically over the last twenty years”although, at the level of educational implementation, contextual circumstances must obviously be taken into account. I held then, and hold ever more firmly now, that Torah is the heart of our personal and collective spiritual existence . . . .I held then, and hold now, that this existence can be enhanced by the enriching and energizing force of general culture.”

In recent years, Lichtenstein has intensified his advocacy of “Torah and culture.” He refers to a “disequilibrium” resulting from Orthodox traditionalism’s growing assertiveness. He explains: “In the 1960s, there was no doubt but that the cause of Torah had to be pressed, massively and constantly. Today, we have, thank God, witnessed a resurgence of talmud Torah [Torah study] in all segments of the Orthodox world. Unfortunately . . . that has often been accompanied by what I would regard as an excessive decline of the cultural component. Hence the need to emphasize its importance in order to strive to restore an optimal balance.” Still, for Lichtenstein no less than for the opponents of “Torah and culture,” Talmud study in the classical mode is the touchstone of authentic Judaism. He champions culture for Orthodox Jews only as a supplement to a talmudic education; the absolute primacy of the latter is never questioned: “Torah,” he writes, is “primary and central, and all else ancillary.”

Lichtenstein’s passion for Talmud is as much intellectual as it is religious. This emerges clearly in “Why Learn Gemara ?””another essay in Leaves of Faith . On every page of the Talmud, Lichtenstein tells us, “one feels the freshness of virgin birth, the angular edge of rough terrain plowed and yet unplowed, the beck of meandering paths charted and uncharted. There is nothing distilled, nothing lacquered. The sense of challenge and concomitant invigoration is pervasive.”

Lichtenstein’s reliance on a conceptual mode of analysis in his talmudic discourses further contributes to his sense of Talmud study as an intellectual enterprise. Family loyalty is an element here, since the conceptual approach was pioneered by Rabbi Soloveitchik’s grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Brisker. The Brisker style of reading talmudic sources, Lichtenstein observes, is characterized by “incisive analysis, exact definition, precise classification, and critical independence.” Opponents of the conceptual method in the yeshiva world”and they are a minority today”argue that it reduces religious texts to a set of scientific notations. Lichtenstein argues instead that “the conceptual approach finds expression in the cutting of new keys . . . .These, in turn, enter the world of learning and enrich its vocabulary, providing fresh implements and fresh impetus for those engaged in the perpetual quest lehavin u-lehaskil [to discern and understand].”

Since Lichtenstein stresses the primacy of a talmudic education and underscores the intellectual pleasures attendant upon it, readers may wonder why he does not go all the way and embrace the “Torah only” position. Why does he insist that cultural involvement is necessary for Orthodox Jews?

It is here that Lichtenstein’s religious humanism enters the picture, with an argument stressing the link between exposure to culture and the honing of a religious sensibility. Lichtenstein alludes to this when he observes that culture “can inform and irradiate our spiritual being by rounding out its cardinal Torah component.” In the essay “Torah and General Culture,” Lichtenstein spells out in specific terms how various disciplines contribute to the nurturing of a religious sensibility. The natural sciences “manifestly decipher and describe a divinely ordained order whose knowledge both inspires praise and thanksgiving to the Ribbono shel Olam [God] and stimulates our reverential response to Him.” Historical study enters the picture as a record of the “drama of conjunction and confrontation between providential direction and creaturely freedom.” As for the social sciences and humanities, they take the measure of man, who is the pinnacle of God’s creation.

Finally, there is great literature: “In reading [great writers] we . . . confront the human spirit doubly, as creation and as creator; Clytemnestra or Hamlet on the one hand, Aeschylus and Shakespeare on the other. As regards enriching our understanding of ruah memalela [man as a speaking spirit], imaginative artists have been more illuminating than theoreticians, not only because they have described more powerfully but because they have also probed more deeply. For sheer insight, can Locke or James compare with Dickens or Dostoevsky?” Lichtenstein concludes: “Far from constituting mere straying in alien fields, culture can become a vehicle for enhancing our Torah existence.”

And yet, even if we grant that general culture can promote what Lichtenstein calls “lofty ends,” why should a Jew turn to it? Or, as he himself puts the question: “Having been chosen as a covenantal community and uniquely endowed with the truest and richest of spiritual treasures in the form of Torah need we”nay, may we”mine alternative nodes?”

Here Lichtenstein’s argument takes a radical turn: He contends that culture holds riches unavailable through the Jewish tradition. It is, he writes, “preposterous to pretend to find in our own tradition that which, at a given level and with a certain range, simply is not there.” Lichtenstein continues in this vein:

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The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Heresy Hunter

Thu, 01 May 2003 00:00:00 -0400

David Berger would seem an unlikely candidate for the role of heresy hunter. A mild-mannered professor of Jewish history at Brooklyn College and Yeshiva University, he has been a liberal advocate of tolerant pluralism within the ranks of Orthodox Judaism and a willing participant in theological dialogue with Christians. But in his recent book The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (2001), he has emerged as a would-be Torquemada on the Orthodox scene, demanding a policy of “intolerance” and “exclusion” toward those he deems to be heretical to Orthodoxy.

What has driven Berger to outrage”and what commends the interest even of those outside the world of Orthodox Judaism”are the messianic claims emanating from sectors of the Lubavitcher (also called “Chabad”) movement of hasidic Jews. In a public campaign, groups of Lubavitcher hasidim have declared that their leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson”affectionately known as “the Rebbe””is the long-awaited messiah of the Jewish people”and this despite the fact that Rabbi Schneerson died in June 1994. Some of the messianists allow that Rabbi Schneerson died, but insist that he will return from the grave to complete his messianic mission; others go further, claiming that the Rebbe is in fact alive; while still others contend that Rabbi Schneerson is not only the messiah, but a divine being. In all of this, the Christian motifs are obvious”and that is precisely what enrages Berger. He excoriates the Lubavitcher messianists as vile heretics, accusing them of undermining classic Jewish teaching about the messiah and facilitating Christian missionizing of the Jews. Berger simply refuses to accept hasidim who champion what he bitterly terms a “kosher-style Second Coming.”

The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference is Berger’s report from the front lines of his war against the Lubavitcher messianists. The tone of the book is one of barely controlled hysteria, reflecting Berger’s sense that he is all alone, fighting a rear-guard action against a large and powerful enemy. Berger retains a “slender thread of hope that it is not too late,” but he clearly expects the worst in his struggle with the messianists. Indeed, much of the book reads as if the struggle has already been lost. It is no accident that the last page of the book carries the title “Epitaph,” and begins with the sentence: “The classical messianic faith of Judaism is dying.” In his introduction, Berger states categorically that for “much of Orthodox Jewry, the classic boundaries of the messianic faith of Israel are no more”; still further, he observes that “virtually all Orthodox Jews [today] belong to a profoundly different religion from the one they adhered to in 1993.”

Presented with such sweeping assertions about a group normally categorized as “ultra-Orthodox,” we must raise a series of pointed questions: Are a majority of Lubavitcher hasidim in the messianist camp? Have the Lubavitcher messianists dramatically altered perspectives in the larger Orthodox community? Does the evidence truly point to a “scandal of Orthodox indifference?” And, most importantly, do the Lubavitcher messianists really have nothing worthwhile to teach Jews today?

As a trained historian, Berger could be expected to open up broad vistas on the Lubavitcher movement. In fact, however, his analysis is narrow in the extreme. The Lubavitcher messianists do not just occupy center stage in The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, they occupy the whole stage. Reading Berger’s book, one would hardly know that the Lubavitcher brand of hasidism has a rich and fascinating history spanning more than two centuries. Berger does not mention the Tanya, a masterwork of Jewish mysticism written by Shneur Zalman of Lyady, the founder of the Lubavitcher movement. Moreover, he passes over the role of dynastic succession in Lubavitch, which produced six outstanding leaders prior to the Rebbe. Even the hallmark missionary zeal of the Lubavitchers, which has made them familiar figures in far-flung Jewish communities, receives only passing reference. All in all, Berger’s relentless focus on the messianist doings of the last several years produces a cartoon version of Lubavitcher history.

To gain an overview of the Lubavitcher movement we must look elsewhere. Menachem Friedman’s brilliant essay “Chabad as Messianic Fundamentalism” is quite useful in this regard. (The essay can be found in Accounting for Fundamentalism [1994], University of Chicago Press, Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds.) The essay was written when Rabbi Schneerson was still alive but had suffered a stroke (this occurred in March 1993; the Rebbe died fifteen months later) that left him partially paralyzed and incapable of speech. For the Lubavitcher hasidim, this was a terrible time of testing, but for Friedman, as a sociologist of religion, it was an ideal moment to take the measure of Lubavitch. Friedman understood that, with Rabbi Schneerson near death, the Lubavitcher movement had reached a decisive turning point in its history. Friedman went so far as to express doubt that the Lubavitcher movement could “continue to exist without the bonding cement of the Rebbe.” If Lubavitch did survive, Friedman confidently asserted, it would be as an “entirely different sect.”

The Lubavitcher dynasty was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady in the second half of the eighteenth century. From the very outset Lubavitch was characterized by a powerful sense of mission, a feeling engendered by Zalman’s uphill struggle to advance the hasidic cause in his home base of White Russia. This region was a stronghold of the mitnagdim”rabbinic opponents of hasidism”and they actively conspired to have the Lubavitcher leader jailed by the Czarist police in 1798. Down to today, Lubavitcher hasidim tell and retell the story of the incarceration and release of Shneur Zalman, seeing in it proof positive of the need for constant struggle in spreading the message of Chabad. Thanks to Zalman’s pioneering efforts, Friedman observes, “the concept of mission [became] a permanent factor in Chabad consciousness and practice.”

Like other hasidic groups”Satmar, Belz, etc.”the Lubavitchers carry the name of the city”Lubavitch”that became the “capital” of their sect. But the Lubavitcher movement is also known by a second name”Chabad”that is derived from Shneur Zalman’s theological masterpiece, the Tanya. (Chabad is an acronym formed from the first letters of the Hebrew words for wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, the intellectual attributes of the Divine which, according to Zalman, are present in every Jew.) Within the ranks of Lubavitch, the Tanya is regarded as a sure guide to religious reality, a holy book in the fullest sense. As such, Friedman indicates, it generated a vast literature of commentary and super-commentary in which the teachings of Zalman were “explained, developed, and embellished.” Friedman describes the long-term consequences in the following terms: “Chabad hasidism is based not only on the personal affinity of the hasid and his rebbe, but also on intensive study of written religious literature. This dimension of identity and a sense of belonging places Chabad on an intellectual plane and underscores its unique universal . . . character among the various hasidic movements.”

Shneur Zalman, in dynastic fashion, was succeeded by his son Dov Baer, who was followed by his son-in-law Menachem Mendel and then, in turn, Mendel’s own son Samuel. These three leaders consolidated Lubavitch as a movement, firming up its theological and institutional foundations. This was all to the good, since the lengthy period that followed”from the 1880s through the end of World War II and beyond”was one of unrelieved crisis. It was left to Sholom Dov Baer (son of Samuel) and Joseph Isaac (son of Shalom) to find a path forward for Lubavitch in response to the breakdown of traditional Jewish society, the Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, and the creation of the State of Israel.

Sholom Dov Baer’s “presidency,” as the Lubavitchers call it, coincided with dramatic changes in East European Jewish life. The impact of modernization in its various forms shattered the foundations of traditional Jewish society. In response, Sholom Dov Baer went on the offensive, declaring war on all manifestations of the new in Jewish life. Zionism, Jewish socialism, Jewish enlightenment, religious reform”all of these were condemned in the strongest terms. Sholom Dov Baer was convinced that the appearance on the historical stage of Jewish “enemies of the Lord” pointed to the impending coming of the messiah. But for the messianic end to actually come about, he firmly believed, it was first necessary to spread the message of Chabad throughout the Jewish world. Hence the founding in 1897 of the Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch yeshiva, whose students, the “pure ones,” were trained to serve as movement emissaries. In sum, Sholom Dov Baer gave the Lubavitcher sense of mission a distinctly messianic cast.

For all his efforts, Sholom Dov Baer was unable to halt the erosion of religious observance and authority even in his home territory of White Russia. At the symbolic level, this failure was signaled by the Chabad leader’s departure from the town of Lubavitch in 1915. The Lubavitcher movement now entered an era of permanent “exile,” with Joseph Isaac assuming the mantle of leadership during the terrible years of the Bolshevik revolution and the Holocaust. Joseph Isaac experienced the lash of communism and Nazism firsthand: in 1927, he was expelled from the Soviet Union for organizing underground Jewish education; in 1940, he fled Nazi-occupied Warsaw for the United States, leaving behind part of his family. Joseph Isaac’s departure from Europe marks the nadir of the Lubavitcher movement, as Friedman indicates: “First, the Soviet revolution had totally undermined the status of Chabad in its birthplace and in the land where most of its hasidim lived. Then World War II had brought the annihilation of traditional religious Judaism throughout Eastern Europe. [Now] the rebbe had to flee to that ‘different’ America, modern and secular in character and nature.”

At this point, Chabad theology came to the rescue of Lubavitch by providing a compelling rationale for Joseph Isaac’s taking up residence in the United States: it was part of God’s plan for the coming of the messiah. America, the Lubavitchers explained, was the mystical “lower hemisphere,” a realm in which the Torah had not been given. But now Joseph Isaac had taken the audacious step of entering this realm, with the intention of promoting Chabad’s message of religious observance. This transformative act, when brought to completion, the Lubavitchers asserted, was certain to usher in the final redemption. Thus, in a flash, outreach to non-Orthodox Jews in the United States became a central component of Lubavitcher messianism.

It was left to Joseph Isaac’s son-in-law and successor Menachem Mendel Schneerson”the Rebbe”to fully operationalize Lubavitch outreach activities to non-Orthodox Jews. Friedman paints a fascinating picture of Rabbi Schneerson, who emerges as a figure of, indeed, messianic proportions. The Rebbe managed to combine exalted spirituality with the organizational skills of a Fortune 500 CEO. He achieved a complete mastery of Judaism’s sacred texts, even as he pursued a secular education at the University of Berlin and the Sorbonne. Moreover, he came to the fore as the Lubavitcher leader in 1951 in part because of his secular credentials, but even more so because he claimed the ability to “speak” with his deceased father-in-law. What Friedman terms the Rebbe’s “internal contradictions” gave him a larger-than-life aspect, adding greatly to his charisma.

As the head of the Lubavitcher movement, Rabbi Schneerson gave himself over entirely to a single cause: promoting religious observance among non-Orthodox Jews in the United States and, indeed, in the far reaches of the globe. Not surprisingly, these efforts aroused a strong sense of messianic expectation within the movement. This quickening of the messianic pulse was further strengthened by developments on the world stage, most especially the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and the Gulf War. For the Lubavitchers, events in Russia had particular meaning, since the Communists were the sworn enemy of Chabad and had forcibly separated Joseph Isaac from his hasidim. From this vantage point, the death of communism had the stamp of the messiah written all over it; as Friedman notes, “the matter [had] been rectified and the circle . . . closed, with victory ultimately belonging to Chabad.” As for the Gulf War, it was seen by the Lubavitchers as epitomizing the messianic era, since, to cite Friedman again, it was a conflict “in which Israel did not participate and in which Jews were not harmed.”

Friedman tellingly observes that “messianic dynamics, by their very nature, must become increasingly active.” Inevitably, then, the spiraling force of messianic expectation within Lubavitch became caught up with the question of the Rebbe’s own standing as the possible messiah. Already in the 1970s various Chabad publications hinted that Rabbi Schneerson was the long-awaited messiah of the Jewish people. By the time that Friedman came to write his essay in 1993, he could state as a matter of course: “Today, virtually all Chabad hasidim recognize the Rebbe as the messiah and no longer hesitate to express their views in public.” Rabbi Schneerson’s response to this was ambivalent; at times he expressed anger at such talk, while at other times he acquiesced in it. What was crystal clear, however, was the Rebbe’s own belief that the messianic dawn was at hand.

As Rabbi Schneerson entered his ninth decade and the final messianic breakthrough failed to occur, his followers increasingly found themselves walking a narrow bridge between hope and despair. The elements playing into this situation are well described by Friedman

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Rabbi Weinberg’s Agony

Fri, 01 Jun 2001 00:00:00 -0400

Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884–1966
By Marc B. Shapiro
Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. 288 pp. $49.50

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The Unmodern Jew

Sat, 01 Jun 1991 00:00:00 -0400

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The Orthodox Jew as Intellectual Crank

Wed, 01 Aug 1990 00:00:00 -0400

My subject is “The Orthodox Jew as Intellectual Crank,” and it would be best if I began with some definitions. My dictionary defines a crank as an “ill-tempered, grouchy person,” as an “eccentric person who is overzealous in his advocacy of a private cause.” By these standards, Baruch Kurzweil and Yeshayahu Leibowitz, two Israeli Orthodox thinkers, certainly merit the label “crank.” Both men—Kurzweil died a suicide at age 65 in 1972, while Leibowitz is still active at age 87—have well-deserved reputations as intellectual wild men, as ferocious polemicists, no-holds-barred critics, and fevered champions of the unconventional and the outrageous. Is there a reader even slightly familiar with the writings of Kurzweil and Leibowitz who would not recognize “ill-tempered,” “eccentric,” and “overzealous” as suitable descriptive terms for these men?

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