The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy (Routledge Philosophy Companions) [1 ed.] 1032693800, 9781032693804

Table of contents :
Cover
Endorsement
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Editors’ Introduction
Part I God
1 The Existence of God
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Challenges
1.3 Potential Supports
1.4 Combining Pieces
1.5 A Bigger Picture
1.6 Personal Reflection
References
Further Reading
2 Negative Theology: On Apophaticism, Analytic Jewish Philosophy and Wittgensteinian Themes
2.1 Divine Ineffability and Its Troubles
2.2 Sam Lebens and Divine Ineffability
2.2.1 Lebens’ Wrestle With Divine Ineffability
2.2.2 Overcoming [1]. and [2]
2.2.3 Some Problems for Lebens
2.3 Nehama Verbin and Divine Ineffability
2.3.1 Verbin’s Wrestle With Divine Ineffability
2.3.2 Overcoming [1]. and [2]
2.3.3 Some Problems for Verbin
2.4 Silvia Jonas and Divine Ineffability
2.4.1 Jonas’ Wrestle With Divine Ineffability
2.4.2 Overcoming [1]. and [2]
2.4.3 Some Problems for Jonas
2.5 A Concluding Remark
Notes
References
Further Reading
3 God and Infinity
3.1 Historical Background
3.2 Finitism
3.3 God
3.4 Infinity and God’s Omniscience
3.5 Infinity and God’s Omnipotence
3.6 Infinity and God’s Moral Perfection3
Notes
References
Further Reading
Part II Humanity
4 Body and Soul
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Terms and Definitions
4.3 What Are We?
4.4 A Range of Answers
4.4.1 The Bible
4.4.2 Philo
4.4.3 Rabbinic Literature
4.5 I Have a Soul, But I’m Essentially a Body
4.5.1 Liturgy, Homily and Halakhah
4.5.2 Two Versions
4.5.3 Idiosyncratic Dualism Motivated
Notes
References
Further Reading
5 Afterlife and Eschatology
5.1 Biblical Sources
5.2 Early Rabbinic Sources
5.3 Who/In Virtue of What
5.4 What/Where
5.5 Why
5.6 In Conclusion––Joseph Soloveitchik
Notes
References
Further Reading
Part III From God to Us
6 The Problem of Evil
6.1 Outline Survey of the Historical Debate
6.1.1 The Hebrew Bible
6.1.2 Rabbinic Literature
6.1.3 Philo
6.1.4 Saadia Gaon
6.1.5 Maimonides
6.1.6 Post-Holocaust Theodicy and Anti-Theodicy
6.1.7 Theodicy Versus Skeptical Theism
6.2 Contemporary Relevance of the Historical Debate
Note
References
Further Reading
7 Free Will and Providence
7.1 The Puzzle of Freedom and Foreknowledge
7.2 Maimonides’ Apophatic Solution
7.3 The Boethian Solution
7.4 The Ockhamist Solution
7.5 The Freedom–Foreknowledge–Providence Problem
7.6 Interlude: Distinctively Jewish Views Concerning the Scope of Divine Providence
7.7 Middle Knowledge Solutions
7.8 Dependence Solutions
7.9 Deterministic Solutions
7.10 Open Theist Solutions
7.11 General Knowledge Solutions
7.12 Idealist Solutions
7.13 Conclusion
Notes
References
Further Reading
8 Revelation
8.1 Introduction: Revelation in the Tanakh
8.2 Revelation in the Talmud
8.3 Revelation in Medieval Jewish Philosophy
8.4 Revelation in Modern Jewish Philosophy
8.5 Revelation In Contemporary Jewish Thought
8.6 Revelation Going Forward—A Proposal
Notes
References
Further Readings
9 Prophecy
9.1 Prophecy
9.2 Prophetic Knowledge
9.3 Prophetic Normativity
9.4 Prophetic Politics
9.5 Prophetic Ethics
9.6 Prophetic Language
9.7 Prophetic Hermeneutics
References
Further Reading
Part IV From Us to God
10 Sacrifice
10.1 The Term ‘Sacrifice’
10.2 The Function of Sacrifice in Jewish Tradition
10.3 Debates Over Sacrifice
10.4 Does God Actually Enjoy the Pleasing Smell of Sacrifices?
10.5 How Does Sacrifice Yield Atonement?
10.6 Why Sacrifice?/Seeking Sacrifice’s Fundamental Purpose
10.7 Future Prospects of Sacrifice
References
Further Reading
11 Repentance
11.1 Repentance: Some Questions
11.2 Repentance as Atonement: The Approach of R. Jonah Gerondi
11.3 Repentance as Atonement: A Critical Analysis
11.4 Repentance as Purification: R. Joseph Soloveitchik
11.5 Purification and Punishment
11.6 Purification, Forgiveness and God’s Role in Repentance
11.7 Conclusion
Notes
References
Further Reading
12 Liturgical Truth: Proclamation, Confirmation, Testimony
12.1 Plato and Aristotelian Metaphysics
12.2 The Limits of Theological Language
12.3 Liturgical Speech-Acts
12.4 The Truths of Divine Subjectivity
12.5 Liturgical Truth and the Truth of Biblical Testimonies
12.6 Buber and Historical Narrative as Saga
12.7 Witness and Testimony to Divine Truth
Notes
References
Further Reading
Part V Jewish Mysticism
13 Mysticism and Rationalism
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Kabbalah and Jewish Rationalism
13.3 Mysticism and Rationalism
Note
References
Further Reading
14 Tzimtzum: The (Meta-)Metaphysics of Divine Contraction
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Tzimtzum Lo Ke-Peshuto: A Grounding Approach
14.3 Tzimtzum Ke-Peshuto: The Created World as Fundamental?
14.4 Tzimtzum as Hiddenness
14.5 Back to Ground: An Alternative Picture
Note
References
Further Reading
15 Sefirot and Philosophy
15.1 Sefirot: A ‘Backbone’ of Kabbalistic Mysticism
15.2 Sefirot: Kabbalah Versus Or and Philosophy?
15.3 Interface Between Sefirot and Philosophy
15.4 Sefirot as Attributes: Paradoxical Interlacing of Negation and Assertion
15.5 The Case of Evil: Forging an Alliance Between Kabbalah and Philosophy
References
Further Reading
16 Hassidism and Philosophy: The Return to Nothingness
16.1 Introduction
16.2 The Hassidic Reception of the Guide of the Perplexed
16.3 Acosmism
16.4 Conclusion
Note
References
Further Reading
Part VI Faith and Reason
17 Miracles
17.1 Cosmological Theory of Miracles
17.2 Anthropological Theory of Miracles
17.3 Acceleration Theory of Miracles
17.4 Imaginative Theory of Miracles
17.5 The Contemporary Debate: Are There Miracles Today?
References
Further Reading
18 Doctrines and Dogmas
18.1 Solomon Schechter’s ‘The Dogmas of Judaism’
18.2 Biblical and Rabbinic Doctrine
18.3 Medieval Doctrines and Dogma Before Maimonides
18.4 The Doctrines and Dogmas of Maimonides
18.5 Jewish Dogma Since Maimonides
18.6 The Danger of Anachronism
References
Further Reading
19 Judaism and Science
19.1 Introduction
19.2 Ancient Jewish Thought and ‘Science’
19.3 Medieval Confluence: Maimonides and the Rationalists
19.3.1 The Synthetic Creativity of Maimonides
19.3.2 Clashes With Maimonides
19.4 Modern Challenges and Responses: The Age of Enlightenment and Beyond
19.4.1 Cosmological Shifts
19.4.2 The Jewish Enlightenment
19.5 Contemporary Challenges
19.6 Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
References
Further Reading
20 Reason and the Ritual Commandments
20.1 Two Kinds of Laws: Mishpatim and Hukkim
20.2 Questions About .ukkim
20.3 Medieval Understandings: Choosing and Picking
20.4 Skepticism and ‘Authorial Intent’
20.5 Mitzvot and Contemporary Life
20.6 Summation
Notes
References
Further Reading
Part VII Judaism and Normativity
21 Character and Musar
21.1 How Virtuous Can People Be?
21.2 How Can People Grow in Virtue?
References
Further Reading
22 God and Morality
References
Further Reading
23 Halakhah and Morality
23.1 Contemporary Debate and Core Questions
23.2 Conceptions and Concepts
23.3 The Insights and Limitations of Legal Theory
23.4 Metaethics: Sources of Normativity
23.5 Moral Constraints On Halakhic Norms
23.6 Diagnosis: Modernity, Value Spheres and Reason
Notes
References
Further Reading
24 The Metaphysics of Halakhah: Halakhic Naturalism Vs. Halakhic Non-Naturalism
24.1 Introduction and Some Clarifications
24.2 Why Halakhic Naturalism?
24.3 What Exactly Is Halakhic Naturalism? Evaluating the Arguments
24.4 Why Halakhic Non-Naturalism?
24.5 What Exactly Is Halakhic Non-Naturalism? Evaluating the Argument
Note
References
Further Reading
Part VIII Judaism and Politics
25 Antisemitism, Jewish Philosophy and Philosophy
25.1 Introduction
25.2 The Neglect of Antisemitism
25.3 Philosophical Antisemitism
25.4 Apologetic Philosophy and Apologetic Jewish Philosophy
25.5 Antisemitism and Jewish Identity
25.6 Antisemitism, Zionism and Anti-Zionism
25.7 In the Interests of Jewish Philosophy
References
Further Reading
26 The Philosophy of Anti-Semitism: Metaphysics, Epistemology and Theology
26.1 Metaphysics
26.2 Essentialism
26.3 Deconflationism
26.4 Virology and Family-Resemblance
26.5 Epistemology
26.5.1 Double Standards, Epistemic Injustice and Gaslighting
26.5.2 An Epistemic Blindspot
26.6 Theology
26.6.1 Christianity
26.6.2 Islam
26.6.3 Judaism
Notes
References
Further Reading
27 Philosophy of Zionism
27.1 The Zionist Philosophy
27.2 Justifying Zionism
27.3 Conclusion
References
Further Reading
Part IX Judaism and Other Faiths
28 Exclusivism and Pluralism
28.1 Exclusivism
28.1.1 Definition 1. Soteriological Exclusivism
28.1.2 Definition 2. Revelation Exclusivism
28.1.3 Definition 3. Alethic Exclusivism
28.1.4 Conclusion
28.2 Exhaustivism
28.2.1 Definition 1. Radical Exhaustivism
28.2.2 Definition 2. Moderate Exhaustivism
28.2.3 Definition 3. Non-Exhaustive Exclusivism
28.2.4 Conclusion
28.3 Pluralism
28.3.1 Introduction
28.3.2 Race and Brill On Religious Pluralism
28.3.3 Jonathan Sacks as a Religious Pluralist
28.3.3.1 Rabbi Sacks’ Epistemological Pluralism—Brill and Lebens
28.3.3.2 Brill and Rabbi Sacks’ Ethical Pluralism
28.3.3.3 Feldman-Kaye’s Postmodern Pluralism
28.3.3.4 Lebens’ Critique of Feldmann-Kaye
28.3.3.5 Lebens’ Non-Propositional Pluralism
28.4 Rabbi Sacks and the Thought of John Hick
28.4.1 Hick’s Religious Pluralism
28.4.2 Noumena and Phenomena
28.4.3 Mythological Truth
28.4.4 Summary of Hick’s Position
28.5 Conclusion
References
Further Reading
29 Jews, Non-Jews, Converts
29.1 Converts in Judaism
29.2 Nominalism Vs. Realism
29.3 Judah Halevi
29.4 Maimonides
29.5 Halevi Vs. Maimonides
29.6 Zohar and Kabbalah
29.7 Rabbi Yizhak Ginsburgh
29.8 Conclusion
References
Further Reading
Part X Times and Trends
30 Philosophical Themes in the Tanakh: The Idea of Encounter
30.1 Introduction
30.2 Experiential and Dialogical Philosophical Approaches to the Tanakh
30.3 Illustrations of the Dialogical Approach
30.4 Encounter With the Tanakh
30.5 Encounter and the Role of the Interpreter
30.6 Translation as Encounter
30.7 Otherness in the Encounter With Tanakh
30.8 Conclusions and Implications
Notes
References
Further Reading
31 Jewish Philosophy in Antiquity: Philo of Alexandria Among His Philosophical Peers
31.1 Was Philo a Philosopher? The Short History of a Scholarly Dispute
31.2 The Identity of the Philosophical Aspect of Philo’s Writings
31.3 To Be Or Not To Be a Philosopher: The Problem of the Combination Model
31.4 Philo and the Philosophical Discussions of His Time
31.5 Philo’s Moral Theory
31.6 Philo’s Natural Philosophy
31.6.1 The Creation of the World
31.6.2 An Imperishable World
31.7 Philo’s Epistemology
Note
References
Further Reading
32 Medieval Jewish Philosophy
32.1 The ‘Jewish Kalam’ of Saadia Gaon
32.2 The ‘Jewish Neoplatonism’ of Ibn Gabirol
32.3 The ‘Jewish Aristotelianism’ of Maimonides
Notes
References
Further Reading
33 Early Modern Jewish Philosophy
33.1 Spinoza and Early Modern Jewish Philosophy
33.2 Modern Jewish Thought: Between History and Tradition
33.3 Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment
33.4 Jewish Philosophical Engagement With Kant and Hegel
33.5 Wissenschaft Des Judentums
33.6 Conclusion
Notes
References
Further Reading
34 Continental Jewish Philosophy
34.1 Introduction
34.2 Franz Rosenzweig
34.3 Martin Buber
34.4 Emmanuel Levinas
References
Further Reading
35 Analytic Jewish Philosophy
35.1 Introduction
35.2 The Kuzari Argument
35.3 The Nature of the Torah
35.4 Faith
References
Further Reading
36 Post-Holocaust Theology and Its Critical Reception
Notes
References
Further Reading
37 Jewish Feminist Philosophy: Universal Reasoning in a Doubly Parochial Mode
37.1 The Feminist Contribution to a Postmodern View of Knowledge
37.2 The Nexus Between Feminism, Western Philosophy and Parochial Jewish Interests
37.3 A Brief History of Responses to the Feminist Critique From a Jewish Perspective
37.4 Divine Revelation as the Ultimate Challenge: A Personal Account
37.5 The Virtues of Cumulativism as an Internal Jewish Response
37.6 The Contribution of Non-Propositional Theology and Universal Reasoning
References
Further Reading
Index

Citation preview

‘This excellent volume is a most welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on Jewish philosophy. It is notable for the breadth of the subjects it covers and for the outstanding contributors who write on them. The anthology ranges from standard topics such as the problem of evil to newer topics such as feminist Jewish philosophy. It also covers specifically Jewish topics such as tzimtzum and halakhah. The volume therefore serves as an exceptionally good introduction to the great Jewish tradition of philosophy and also contributes to the on-​going development of that tradition by those expert in it.’ —​Eleonore Stump, Saint Louis University, USA ‘The impressive size of this volume is yet outmatched by the masterful comprehensiveness of topics and variety of methodological approaches. There has never been anything like this in the field of Jewish Philosophy, with chapters ranging from excellent to brilliant, authored by the best of the best in their fields. With praise to the Editors of this volume for putting contemporary Jewish philosophy solidly on the map for philosophy today.’ —​Jerome Yehuda Gellman, Ben-​Gurion University, Israel

THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy is a deep and broad reference that brings diverse perspectives to bear on the key topics, problems and debates in Jewish philosophy and philosophical theology. The 37 chapters were written by an international team of experts from different traditions in philosophy and beyond, and appear in print for the first time in this Companion. The chapters are divided into ten major parts: I. God II. Humanity III. From God to Us IV. From Us to God V. Jewish Mysticism VI. Faith and Reason VII. Judaism and Normativity VIII. Judaism and Politics IX. Judaism and Other Faiths X. Times and Trends A list of Related Topics at the end of each chapter and a comprehensive index at the back of the volume help readers navigate the Companion, and Further Reading sections at the end of each chapter identify the best avenues for future research. The volume is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Jewish philosophy, theology, religious studies and related subjects. Daniel Rynhold is currently Dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University, where he has been Professor of Jewish Philosophy since 2007. Prior to this, he spent six years at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College, London. He has published many articles and books in Jewish philosophy, including Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy (2018) (coauthored with Michael J. Harris) and An Introduction to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (2009).

Tyron Goldschmidt is a Lecturer at the University of Lucerne, and was previously a Philosophy Professor at the University of Rochester and Wake Forest University. He has published many academic articles and books in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics and the history of philosophy, including Berkeley’s Principles: Expanded and Explained (Routledge, 2017, with Scott Stapleford). He has a more practical day job as a software engineer, and most of his work is in TypeScript, Python, oil and acrylic.

ROUTLEDGE PHILOSOPHY COMPANIONS

Routledge Philosophy Companions offer thorough, high-​quality surveys and assessments of the major topics and periods in philosophy. Covering key problems, themes and thinkers, all entries are specially commissioned for each volume and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and carefully edited and organised, Routledge Philosophy Companions are indispensable for anyone coming to a major topic or period in philosophy, as well as for the more advanced reader. ALSO AVAILABLE: THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY Edited by Richard Cross and JT Paasch THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS Edited by Eleanor Knox and Alastair Wilson THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Edited by Benjamin Hale, Andrew Light, and Lydia A. Lawhon THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE Edited by Noël Carroll and Jonathan Gilmore THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO PRAGMATISM Edited by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO JEWISH PHILOSOPHY Edited by Daniel Rynhold and Tyron Goldschmidt

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routle​dge.com/​Routle​dge-​ Phi​loso​phy-​Com​pani​ons/​book-​ser​ies/​PHILC​OMP

THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

Edited by Daniel Rynhold and Tyron Goldschmidt

Designed cover image: Getty Images /​Luke_​Franzen First published 2025 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Daniel Rynhold and Tyron Goldschmidt; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Daniel Rynhold and Tyron Goldschmidt to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Rynhold, Daniel, editor. | Goldschmidt, Tyron, 1982– editor. Title: The Routledge companion to Jewish philosophy / [edited by] Daniel Rynhold and Tyron Goldschmidt. Description: New York, NY ; Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2025. | Series: Routledge philosophy companions | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2024053864 (print) | LCCN 2024053865 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032693804 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032693835 (paperback) | ISBN 9781032693859 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Jewish philosophy. | Philosophical theology. Classification: LCC B755 .R697 2025 (print) | LCC B755 (ebook) | DDC 181/.06–dc23/eng/20250106 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024053864 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024053865 ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​69380-​4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​69383-​5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​69385-​9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781032693859 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

CONTENTS

List of Contributors

xiii

Editors’ Introduction

1

PART I

God

5

1 The Existence of God Joshua Rasmussen

7

2 Negative Theology: On Apophaticism, Analytic Jewish Philosophy and Wittgensteinian Themes Filippo Casati 3 God and Infinity Gary Rosenkrantz

18 31

PART II

Humanity

43

4 Body and Soul Aaron Segal

45

5 Afterlife and Eschatology Cole Aronson

57

ix

Contents PART III

From God to Us

67

6 The Problem of Evil Michael J. Harris

69

7 Free Will and Providence Kenneth Boyce

81

8 Revelation Sam Fleischacker

94

9 Prophecy Benjamin Pollock

106

PART IV

From Us to God

121

10 Sacrifice Shlomo Zuckier

123

11 Repentance Daniel Rynhold

133

12 Liturgical Truth: Proclamation, Confirmation, Testimony Steven Kepnes

147

PART V

Jewish Mysticism

159

13 Mysticism and Rationalism Jonathan Dauber

161

14 Tzimtzum: The (Meta-​)Metaphysics of Divine Contraction Olla Solomyak

173

15 Sefirot and Philosophy James A. Diamond

184

16 Hassidism and Philosophy: The Return to Nothingness Yitzhak Y. Melamed

200

x

Contents PART VI

Faith and Reason

211

17 Miracles Alexander Green

213

18 Doctrines and Dogmas Seth (Avi) Kadish

223

19 Judaism and Science Shoaib Ahmed Malik

235

20 Reason and the Ritual Commandments David Shatz

251

PART VII

Judaism and Normativity

267

21 Character and Musar Geoffrey D. Claussen and Christian B. Miller

269

22 God and Morality Alex Ozar

280

23 Halakhah and Morality Yonatan Y. Brafman

290

24 The Metaphysics of Halakhah: Halakhic Naturalism vs. Halakhic Non-​Naturalism Israel J. Cohen

303

PART VIII

Judaism and Politics

317

25 Antisemitism, Jewish Philosophy and Philosophy Sol Goldberg

319

26 The Philosophy of Anti-​Semitism: Metaphysics, Epistemology and Theology Samuel Lebens 27 Philosophy of Zionism Yitzhak Benbaji and Daniel Statman

332 347

xi

Contents PART IX

Judaism and Other Faiths

359

28 Exclusivism and Pluralism Barry Kleinberg

361

29 Jews, Non-​Jews, Converts Mordechai Miller and Menachem Kellner

375

PART X

Times and Trends

387

30 Philosophical Themes in the Tanakh: The Idea of Encounter Miriam Feldmann-​Kaye

389

31 Jewish Philosophy in Antiquity: Philo of Alexandria among his Philosophical Peers Sharon Weisser

403

32 Medieval Jewish Philosophy Peter Adamson and Sarah Pessin

414

33 Early Modern Jewish Philosophy Daniel Frank

425

34 Continental Jewish Philosophy Tamra Wright

437

35 Analytic Jewish Philosophy Dustin Crummett

449

36 Post-​Holocaust Theology and Its Critical Reception Michael L. Morgan

459

37 Jewish Feminist Philosophy: Universal Reasoning in a Doubly Parochial Mode Tamar Ross Index

472

485

xii

CONTRIBUTORS

Peter Adamson is a Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. His research focuses on late ancient philosophy and Arabic philosophy, and his publications include Al Kindi (2006). Cole Aronson is a journalist in Jerusalem. His research has focused on Jewish philosophy and theology, and he has published articles in popular, Jewish and academic journals. Yitzhak Benbaji is a Professor of Philosophy at Tel-​Aviv University Law Faculty. His research focuses on ethics, political philosophy, jurisprudence and philosophy of language, and his publications include War By Agreement (2019; with Daniel Statman). Kenneth Boyce is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri. His research focuses on epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion and philosophy of science, and he is the author of many articles in academic journals. Yonatan Brafman is Assistant Professor of Modern Judaism in the Department of Religion at Tufts University, and his research focuses on Jewish thought and law, and moral, legal and political philosophy. His publications include Critique of Halakhic Reason: Divine Commandments and Social Normativity (2024). Filippo Casati is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Lehigh University. His research focuses on modern and contemporary philosophy, metaphysics and logic, and his publications include Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being (2022). Geoffrey Claussen is the Lori and Eric Sklut Professor in Jewish Studies and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Elon University. His research focuses on Jewish ethics and theology, and his publications include Jewish Ethics: The Basics (2025). Israel Cohen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on metaphysics, metaethics, philosophy of halakhah and the connections between these fields. His publications include ‘A prohibition does not apply to a prohibition: a philosophical study of the nature of halakhic laws,’ Dine Israel (2023) [Hebrew]. xiii

List of Contributors

Dustin Crummett is an Affiliate Instructor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma, and the Executive Director of the Insect Institute. He is the author of very many publications in academic journals, and is coauthor of Applied Ethics: An Impartial Introduction (2021). Jonathan Dauber is Associate Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University. His research focuses on Kabbalah and Hasidism, and his publications include Secrecy and Esoteric Writing in Kabbalistic Literature (2022). James Diamond is the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on biblical hermeneutics, medieval Jewish philosophy, Maimonides and rabbinics, and his publications include Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (2014). Miriam Feldmann-​Kaye is Senior Lecturer in the Department for Jewish Philosophy at Bar-​Ilan University and Academic Editor of Judaism for the St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Her research focuses on modern Continental philosophy of religion and Jewish theology, and her publications include Jewish Theology for a Postmodern Age (2019). Samuel Fleischacker is LAS Distinguished Professor in Philosophy at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research focuses on moral and political philosophy, the history of moral and philosophy, and the philosophy of religion, and his publications include The Good and the Good Book (2015). Daniel Frank is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. His research focuses on ancient philosophy, medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, and the history of philosophy and ethics, and his publications include Jewish Philosophy Past and Present (Routledge, 2017; edited with Aaron Segal). Sol Goldberg is an Associate Professor (Teaching Stream) at the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. His areas of research include modern Jewish philosophy, antisemitism and continental philosophy, and he has published on interpretation in Kantian and Jewish traditions, among other topics. Tyron Goldschmidt is a lecturer at the University of Lucerne. His areas of research include metaphysics, philosophy of religion, early modern philosophy and ethics, and his publications include Berkeley’s Principles: Expanded and Explained (Routledge, 2017; with Scott Stapleford). Alexander Green is an Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He taught previously at SUNY, University at Buffalo in the Department of Jewish Thought. His research is on medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy, ethics and the history of biblical interpretation. His publications include The Virtue Ethics of Levi Gersonides (2016).

xiv

List of Contributors

Michael J. Harris is Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies. His research focuses on contemporary Jewish philosophy, and his publications include Divine Command Ethics: Jewish and Christian Perspectives (Routledge, 2003). Seth Kadish is a lecturer at Oranim Teacher’s College and in the Overseas School at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on medieval Jewish philosophy, history and exegesis, and he is author of Kavvana: Directing the Heart in Jewish Prayer (Jason Aronson, 1997). Menachem Kellner was the Chair of the Philosophy and Jewish Thought Department at Shalem College in Jerusalem. His research focuses on medieval Jewish philosophy and modern Jewish thought, and his publications include We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other (2022). Steven Kepnes is Professor of the Study of World Religions at Colgate University. His research focuses on Jewish theology, philosophy and ethics, and his publications include Jewish Liturgical Reasoning (2007). Barry Kleinberg is a Teaching Fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies and PhD candidate at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on universalism in Orthodox Jewish thought and the thought of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Samuel Lebens is Associate Professor at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on metaphysics, philosophy of language and the philosophy of Judaism, and his publications include The Principles of Judaism (2020). Shoaib Ahmed Malik is Lecturer in Science and Religion at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on Islam and science, theological anthropology and miracles, and his publications include New Frontiers in Islam and Evolution: Scriptures, Scholars, and Societies (Routledge, 2024) . Yitzhak Y. Melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on early modern philosophy, metaphysics, German idealism and political philosophy, and his publications include Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (2015). Christian Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. His research focuses on contemporary ethics and philosophy of religion, and his publications include The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (2017). Mordechai (Mordy) Miller is a lecturer in the Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and in the Israel Studies Program at Ben-Gurion University in Eilat. He is also a research fellow at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. Miller is the founder of the Singapore Geniza Project and is currently working on books exploring the political theologies of Rabbi Menachem Froman and of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh in contemporary Israel. Michael Morgan is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the Indiana University of Bloomington. His research has focused on ancient philosophy, modern Jewish philosophy,

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List of Contributors

religious thought and political theory in the 20th century, and his publications include Discovering Levinas (2007). Alex Ozar serves as a rabbi with OU-​JLIC and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University. His research focuses on Jewish philosophy and theology, and he has published academic articles on Jewish mysticism, political philosophy and ethics, among other topics. Sarah Pessin is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at the University of Denver. Her research focuses on phenomenology, existentialism, interfaith civics, philosophy of religion and ethics, and her publications include Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism (2013). Benjamin Pollock is the Sol Rosenbloom Associate Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on Jewish philosophy, political philosophy and philosophy of language, and his publications include Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy (2009). Joshua Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. His research focuses on metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind, and his publications include How Reason Can Lead to God (2020). Gary Rosenkrantz is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. His research focuses on metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of religion, and his publications include The Divine Attributes (2002; with Joshua Hoffman). Tamar Ross is Professor Emerita of the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Bar-​ Ilan University. Her research focuses on Jewish philosophy and theology, and her publications include Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (2021). Daniel Rynhold is Dean and Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. His research focuses on medieval and modern Jewish philosophy and theology, and his publications include Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy (2018; with Michael J. Harris). David Shatz is the Ronald P. Stanton University Professor of Philosophy, Ethics, and Religious Thought at Yeshiva University. His research focuses on philosophy of religion, Jewish philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, and his publications include Jewish Thought in Dialogue: Essays on Thinkers, Theologies, and Moral Theories (2009). Aaron Segal is the Associate Professor and John and Golda Cohen Chair in Jewish Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on metaphysics, philosophy of religion and Jewish philosophy, and his publications include Do We Have a Soul? A Debate (Routledge, 2023; with Eric Olson). Olla Solomyak is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at Shalem College. Her research focuses on metaphysics, philosophy of mind and Jewish philosophy, and she has many publications in academic journals.

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List of Contributors

Daniel Statman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on ethics and political philosophy, and his publications include State and Religion in Israel (2019; with Gideon Sapir). Sharon Weisser is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on ancient philosophy, and she has many publications in academic journals on Stoic philosophy and Philo of Alexandria, among other topics. Tamra Wright is Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies. Her research focuses on 20th century Jewish philosophy, and her publications include Face to Face With Animals: Levinas and the Animal Question (2020; with Peter Atterton). Shlomo Zuckier is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His research focuses on Talmud, Second Temple Judaism and Jewish Philosophy, and his publications include Theologies of Sacrifice and Atonement in Ancient Judaism (forthcoming).

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EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

This is a big book on Jewish philosophy. But we won't try to define Jewish philosophy up front. Doing so is not straightforward. You might have thought that Jewish philosophy is simply philosophy composed by Jews or philosophy with Jewish themes. But such definitions won't work. After all, Saul Kripke was a Jew, but his Naming and Necessity is not Jewish philosophy. Anselm’s Proslogion covers central Jewish themes (for example, the existence and nature of God) but isn't Jewish philosophy. Of course, that's not to say that Kripke and Anselm could not have composed Jewish philosophy. We take the (for us) easy route: we let the volume convey what Jewish philosophy is by example. There are a few excellent and recent books on Jewish philosophy, including edited volumes. But there’s something special about this volume. It’s unusual in its diversity in three ways: First, the volume is very diverse in topics. There are ten parts and thirty-​seven chapters, on theological, moral, mystical, historical and other topics. Doubtless there are topics that we’ve missed. But we think the volume covers more than any similar volume—​or even not similar volume—​on Jewish philosophy. Secondly, the volume is very diverse in perspectives. There are chapters from authors in different intellectual traditions and different faiths. Some are philosophers, while others are not. Some are Jewish, while others are not. Some are familiar scholars on the topics they cover, while others are writing on the topics for the first time. We think the volume showcases better than any similar volume—​or even not similar volume—​how Jewish philosophy can contribute to and draw from alternative perspectives. Thirdly, the volume is very diverse in styles. Some of the chapters are more dispassionate, while others are more argumentative. Some are more historical, while others are more contemporary. Some are more accessible, while others are more advanced. We’ve asked the authors to strike a bit of a balance between these aspects. Inevitably, some contributions are more balanced than others. We think the volume—​more than any similar volume, you know the drill—​has something for everyone. Just to give you some sense of this with examples from the beginning, middle and end of the volume: the first essay in the volume is on the existence of God, and is by Joshua Rasmussen; the middle essay is on Judaism and science, and is by Shoaib Malik; the last essay is on feminist Jewish philosophy, and is by Tamar Ross.

DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-1

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Editors’ Introduction

Rasmussen is a prolific author in analytic philosophy of religion. Malik is a prolific author on dialogues between science and religion. Each has contributed especially from the perspective of their religious tradition—​Christian and Muslim respectively—​and until now have not contributed directly on the topic of Jewish philosophy. In contrast, Ross is already a preeminent author on Jewish feminist philosophy, and writing from a particular Jewish perspective. Rasmussen’s essay is a sympathetic summary of arguments for the existence of God, focusing on contemporary formulations but pointing toward historical Jewish sources. Malik’s essay is a wide-​ranging survey of different responses to apparent conflicts between science and religion, focusing on historical and contemporary Jewish options. Ross’s essay surveys the history of internal Jewish responses to the feminist critique of Jewish thought and practice before focusing on more personal reflections on modern-​Orthodox feminist reshapings of the notion of divine revelation. These differences in perspectives and styles bring a combination of novel, broad and deep insights to the volume. Other chapters are no less novel, broad or deep, and, since no philosophical topic is uncontroversial, doubtless their differences convey that the authors often hold opposite views from each other. We hope that they nevertheless come together synergistically to convey the mosaic that is Jewish philosophy. Whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim or something else, whether you’re a philosopher, theologian, historian or something else, whether you’re a scholar, student, clergy or something else, we think you’ll find something in this volume—​we hope you’ll find a lot!—​that is useful, thought-​provoking or otherwise interesting for you. The sheer size of this volume gives us reason enough for keeping this introduction short. There’s much to read, and summarizing everything would make this introduction too long. Besides, the section and chapter titles are more or less self-​explanatory. No section or chapter depends on any other, though many illuminate each other. You can pick the volume up at any section or chapter you like. The size of this volume also means that it has taken a long time to organize. Many of the authors have waited very patiently—​and none have waited impatiently—​for their essays to see the light of day. The publisher has waited patiently too. We thank them for that, and for all their help in putting this volume together. Each chapter includes guidelines for further reading. We’ll close our introductory remarks similarly with a list of readers in Jewish philosophy that can be paired well with this volume: Frank, D. and Segal. A (2017) Jewish Philosophy Past and Present: Contemporary Responses to Classical Sources. London & New York: Routledge. Lebens. S., Rabinowitz. D., Segal. A (2019) Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frank, D.H., Leaman, O. and Manekin, C.H. (2000) The Jewish Philosophy Reader. London & New York: Routledge. Frank, D.H, and Leaman, O. (2003) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, M.L., and Gordon, P.E. (2007) The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Finally, a note on the sometimes fraught issue of transliterations and Hebrew sources. This book focuses on guiding a broad audience through Jewish philosophy. Many—​or most, or virtually all!—​will not be concerned with the niceties of transliteration that would be important in works where the precise language of original texts is key. As a result, we are less concerned with mirroring the precise spellings or structures of the original Hebrew than with facilitating the reader’s ability to recognize the words. So we generally won’t distinguish between different 2

Editors’ Introduction

letters that sound the same or use diacritical marks to indicate the use of a dagesh and the like (other than in cases where it obviously affects pronunciation). We have, however, maintained the distinction between a ḥet and a khaf—​for which we use ḥ and kh respectively—​generally use tz to indicate a tzadi, and h to indicate a final heh, though even here there are exceptions, such as when ‘Saadia’ is used to refer to the medieval Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon, despite his name in Hebrew having a final heh (our reasoning being that ‘Saadia’ is the spelling used in the translation cited, and it would look strange to quote ‘Saadiah’ only to then see ‘Saadia’ in the reference). In general, we have been guided more by common usage than technical precision. We might sometimes use an apostrophe to indicate an aleph or an ayin, or an e to indicate a sheva na if not doing so would lead to mispronunciation, but we have not done so for many more familiar terms. And with certain ubiquitous words, such as ‘halakhah,’ ‘Tanakh,’ and other common names, we have even foregone italicization. In sum, we have played fast and loose with our own general rules and trust that our readers will be able to work it all out. Regarding Hebrew sources, we have used the prefix m followed by tractate name to refer to sources in the Mishnah, and b followed by tractate name (and when relevant folio number and page [a or b]) in references to the Babylonian Talmud. Other sources are spelled out in full, and when not referring to a specific translation, classical rabbinic sources are referenced according to standard editions and conventions.

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PART I

God

1 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD Joshua Rasmussen

1.1 Introduction This volume centers on Jewish philosophy. A big idea in traditional Judaism is that God exists. A big question in philosophy is whether we can show that God exists—​or the opposite, that God does not exist. Unsurprisingly then, many Jewish philosophers have tried to show that God exists, and they have tried to fend off arguments for the conclusion that God does not exist. For example, Saadia, Maimonides and Crescas (among others) each set out arguments for the existence of God, and try to fend off the problem of evil (for an overview of the arguments among these medieval philosophers, see Rynhold 2009). Many of their arguments are similar to arguments from Muslim philosophers (such as Avicenna, Ibn Sina and Al-​ Ghazali) and Christian philosophers (such as Aquinas, Leibniz and Clark). These Jewish, Muslim and Christian philosophers have many similar ideas about God, and they influence each other in significant ways. Of course, there are some less familiar moves within each tradition, but this essay will cover some of the more familiar and common territory. I will sketch a landscape that, I hope, the great medieval Jewish philosophers—​as well as the great medieval Muslim and Christian philosophers—​would be happy enough with. So, does God exist? The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of how one might attempt to answer the question of God’s existence via arguments. I will begin by orienting us to a certain classic definition of ‘God.’ Then I will outline the general types of arguments that have been offered for and against the existence of a being satisfying the classic definition. Rather than take sides on whether any of these arguments are ultimately conclusive, I will offer a theory of reality that incorporates insights from arguments on both sides. At the end of this assessment, I will share a reflection on whether God’s existence (or non-​existence) can be known by means of an argument. Start with definitions. I will work with a classic concept of ‘God’ in the core of Jewish philosophy and consistent with many of the major monotheistic traditions. This is the concept of a supreme, personal being, which was certainly the prevalent view within Judaism (medieval rationalists, most prominently Moses Maimonides and Levi Gersonides aside). To set a high bar, I shall interpret ‘supreme being’ in terms of the highest kind of being there could be thought to be. This concept of God is consistent with Jewish and Muslim thinking DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-3

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about God, but is especially in the spirit of the Christian scholastic philosopher, Anselm of Canterbury (a concept I like to call, ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Anselm’): a supreme being is something, such that no greater being could be conceived. Such a being would have a combination of great qualities, such as knowledge, power and goodness, where no conceivable being could have a greater combination of great qualities. In this sense, we could call such a being, ‘maximally great.’ A contemporary Jewish philosopher who also uses something like this Anselmian concept of God (as a perfect being) is Yehuda Gellman (1997). To further clarify this concept, let us say that an attribute is ‘great’ if that attribute entails some value or positive aspect. An attribute will count as entailing value (or a positive aspect), in this sense, so long as it can be liked or desired for what it is, rather than merely as a means for something else. For example, if one can like or desire wisdom for its own sake, then wisdom counts as a great attribute. My impression is that attributes, like power, wisdom and virtue, are intuitively recognizable as great qualities. In case there are doubts about whether certain attributes count as ‘great’ in this sense, we may stipulate a few attributes for the sake of definition: let us say a supreme being would at least include knowledge, power and goodness in a maximal combination, for these are the attributes classically associated with the highest kind of being. Our task, then, is to consider whether there is a highest kind of being—​a supreme being. The value of this task can hardly be overestimated. The concept of a supreme being is not merely a high, philosophical concept. A key idea in the monotheistic traditions is that the most ultimate reality is a supreme, personal reality. If this view of reality were true, it would have practical ramifications for who we are, why we are here and the future of all our lives. Many have argued that a supreme personal reality provides us assurance that our lives have great meaning and significance—​which, they argue, would be absent if instead we are merely accidental products of uncaring forces of nature. If they are right, the ramifications for our lives extend without measure. Despite the high stakes, the truth is not decided by our desires. Maybe the truth is not what we want. So, to see the truth, it will not suffice to merely look at our own hearts. In this chapter, we will consider whether we can see the truth about God through the lens of rational argumentation.

1.2 Challenges We can divide all arguments against the existence of God into two types. The first type includes arguments against the coherence of the concept of God. The second includes arguments against the application of the concept of God to actual reality. Let us look closer at both types. Why think the concept of God (as a supreme being) is incoherent? One type of reason focuses on individual divine attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience or moral perfection, to derive a contradiction. Take, for example, omnipotence. As a first pass, this is the property of having all powers to do all things. A supreme being would have all powers, one might argue, for otherwise we could conceive of a greater being that includes greater powers. But now we can argue against the possibility of a supreme being as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

A supreme being would have all powers. Therefore, a supreme being would have the power to turn a number into a napkin. No possible being has the power to turn a number into a napkin. Therefore, a supreme being is not a possible being.

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Historically, perhaps the most common response to this sort of argument is to challenge (2) on the grounds that the power to turn a number into a napkin is not a genuine power. It is not a genuine power because it is not a possible power. According to this response, a supreme being would only have all possible powers. As Maimonides writes: ‘For we do not call a human individual weak because he cannot move one thousand hundred-​weights, and we do not attribute to God, may He be exalted, incapacity because He is unable to corporify His essence or to create someone like Him or to create a square whose diagonal is equal to its side’ (Maimonides 1963: 226). However, the story is not over. Some have challenged the coherence of the ‘no impossible powers’ response with an argument like this: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Assume a supreme being would have all possible powers. The power to gain powers (e.g., to learn how to walk) is a possible power. Therefore, a supreme being would have the power to gain powers. A being with all possible powers cannot have a power to gain powers (because it already has them all). 5. Therefore, a supreme being is contradictory: it would both have and not have a power to gain powers. The key idea behind this argument is that there are some possible powers that you and I may have, but that a supreme being could not have. The reason a supreme being cannot have these possible powers is that these powers entail certain limitations. For example, a being with the power to gain new powers is limited in its current powers; it does not already possess all possible powers. Hence, a being that can gain new powers is not omnipotent, and hence not supreme. Therefore, the very concept of a being that has all possible powers, including powers that entail not having all possible powers, is incoherent. In response, there have been attempts to further restrict the concept of omnipotence so that this concept does not entail a contradiction (e.g., Flint and Freddoso 1983; Pruss and Pearce 2012). However, these restrictions are tacit admissions that the unrestricted concept of omnipotence is incoherent. Does this not imply that the highest concept of God, as a being with the greatest power, knowledge and goodness, is incoherent? One might wonder whether restrictions on the highest concept of omnipotence point us away from the highest concept of God. The puzzle of omnipotence has received a lot of attention. One famous and humorous response to it is from Harry Frankfurt (1964). Gary Hoffman and Joshua Rosenkrantz (2022) also have well-​known and technical work on the topic. See Goldschmidt and Lebens (2017) for a treatment of a different puzzle about divine attributes from a Jewish perspective. In addition to arguments against the coherence of omnipotence, there are also arguments against the coherence of other divine attributes, individually and collectively. Let us consider one more example here: omniscience. This attribute is classically thought to entail knowledge of all there is. However, advances in set theory have brought to light a paradox with unrestricted knowledge. Here is a recent formulation of this paradox (which I developed in Rasmussen 2021): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Suppose God knows all. Then some of God’s knowledge includes itself (e.g., God knows that God knows all). Nothing can include itself. Therefore, God cannot know all.

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A key step in this argument is (3), that nothing can include itself. Why think that? Well, if we allow for self-​inclusion, then we open a door to a famous paradox discovered by Bertrand Russell. The paradox is this. Suppose we allow any items to be packaged together, whether into a set or into a truth about what God knows. Then we can form self-​including packages, like the set of all sets, or the knowledge of all items of knowledge. In this way, we can also form a package P that includes all and only the non-​self-​including packages. Package P is paradoxical because P turns out to be self-​including if and only if P is not self-​including. This result is worse than paradoxical, actually—​it is flatly contradictory. We can avoid this contradiction if we close the door to the formation of self-​including packages. Indeed, this was precisely the response by set theorists; they closed the door to self-​ including sets. However, while restricting set formation closes the door to the set-​theoretic paradox, it does not close the door to the omniscience paradox. For even if there is no self-​ including sets, omniscience implies that there is the knowledge of all knowledge. This implication takes us back to the contradiction: the knowledge of all non-​self-​including knowledge is self-​including if and only if it is not. Set theorists have wisdom for us here. We can follow their lead and avoid the omniscience contradiction by restricting knowledge, just as we avoided the set-​theoretic contradiction by restricting sets. In other words, just as wisdom taught us that there is no set of all sets, wisdom teaches us that there is no knowledge of all things. There can’t be. Therefore, there is no omniscient being. To respond, one might try to restrict the concept of omniscience (just as one might try to restrict the concept of omnipotence). For example, one might suppose that an omniscient being knows all that is possible to know. Then, even if there are things unknown to God, God could still count as omniscient in this restricted sense. Gersonides, the most notorious representative of such a view in Jewish thought, believed that God had no knowledge of particulars, but writes, for example, with respect to His cognition of free human action that the fact that God does not have the knowledge of which possible outcome will be realized does not imply any defect in God (may He be blessed). For perfect knowledge of something is the knowledge of what that thing is in reality; ... Hence, God knows these things in the best manner possible, for He knows them insofar as they are ordered in a determinate and certain way, and He knows in addition that these events are contingent, insofar as they fall within the domain of human choice, [and as such knows them] truly as contingent”. (Gersonides 1987: 118) However, this response has drawbacks. First, it doesn’t actually close the door to the paradox. For this restriction still leads to self-​inclusion, since the knowledge of all possible knowledge will still include God’s own knowledge. The problem here is like the problem with restricting omnipotence to possible powers. In both cases, the restriction is not enough to free us from the paradox. Second, and more fundamentally, any restriction on omniscience is a tacit admission that the greater, unrestricted concept of omniscience is incoherent. In other words, the concept of the most supreme being with the most supreme knowledge entails incoherence. Enough about coherence. The arguments that have been even more influential are from observations about the actual world. The most prominent of these observations include observations of negative states, such as suffering, death, diseases, natural disasters and unfulfilled desires (including the unfulfilled desire to know that God exists). Negative states are not

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The Existence of God

desirable. We might expect, then, that a supreme being would not desire all the negative states we see, but would instead have prevented some, if not all, the negative states. We can capture all these arguments together in the form of a general argument from negative states: 1. There are negative states. 2. If there were a supreme being, that being would have prevented at least some of these negative states. 3. Therefore, there is no supreme being. Those who develop this type of argument support (2) in one of two ways. Either they argue that at least certain negative events would be impossible were there a supreme being, or they argue that those events would be less probable. In either case, it is more plausible, according to these arguments, that reality unfolds by indifferent, mindless causes than by a supreme being. After all, a supreme being would have both the means (the power) and desire to prevent bad events (torture, death, tragedy, etc.), and there do not appear to be any good reasons to allow them. This general ‘problem of evil’ has received quite a lot of attention from the Jewish perspective, tracing all the way back to Job’s protestations in the book that bears his name in the Tanakh. Some of the themes in Jewish responses to the problem of evil are quite similar to Muslim and Christian responses. But there are also some unusual Jewish responses (e.g., Goldschmidt and Seacord 2013; Lebens and Goldschmidt 2017). Most radical of all, we find Richard Rubenstein offering a Jewish take on ‘death of God’ theology in response to the holocaust, though even he insists that his view does not amount to atheism but rather ‘emphasize[s]‌ the immanence rather than the radical transcendence of God’ (Rubenstein 1992: xiii). The discussion of all these arguments is vast, but I think it is helpful to stand back to see the bigger picture. It is easy to get lost in the details of specific versions of specific arguments, but from a bird’s eye perspective, we can see that all these arguments against God’s existence have something in common. They all seek to show that the extreme greatness of God leads to problems. For example, God’s great power would be too great to be possibly real (per the omnipotence paradox). God’s great knowledge would be too great to be possibly real (per omniscience paradox). Problems with combining God’s attributes display the same pattern. For example, God’s great power cannot be combined with God’s great goodness, for the greatest power would include the power to be evil, which is incompatible with the greatest goodness. Finally, the arguments from negative states all press against God’s greatness. If a supremely great being were real, then the world would be greater than it evidently is. In short, God is too great to be real.

1.3  Potential Supports Despite the challenges, there are also arguments on the other side to consider. Could the arguments against God be outweighed by even weightier arguments for God? As with the arguments against God, we can divide arguments for God into two types. First, there are arguments that attempt to show, by reasoning about the concept of God, that God must exist. Second, there are arguments that attempt to show that God best fits with observations of the actual world. Start with arguments from the concept of God. These are ontological arguments. Instead of supposing that God is too great to exist, ontological arguments attempt to show that God

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is too great not to exist. Anselm planted a seed idea: the greatest conceivable being must exist, for otherwise we could conceive of a greater being, which exists not merely a possibility in one’s mind but also in reality. This idea has sprouted into various forms. Each form involves teasing out the inference from the concept of greatness to its application to reality. (For a survey of developments in ontological arguments, see Goldschmidt 2020.) Most philosophers, however, have not considered ontological arguments to be the most persuasive—​one of the foremost scholars of Jewish thought writes that it is ‘entirely absent’ from Jewish philosophy (Wolfson 1924: 575). Even believers in God hardly ever say that their belief in God rests on an ontological argument. Part of the challenge has been to show how, if one does not already assume God is real (or could be real), the mere concept of God would entail its actual application to reality. While there have been attempts to meet the challenge, it is commonly thought that ontological arguments at best illuminate the necessity of a supreme being if there were one. In my estimate, while I am not completely convinced that all ontological-​type arguments (especially recent developments) must fail, I have found other arguments to be more useful in helping me personally to address the question of God’s existence. Another strategy is to argue for God based on observations of cause and effect. This strategy is commonly employed by Jewish philosophers. For example, the medieval philosophers, Saadia, Maimonides and Crescas each present a different version of the ‘cosmological argument’ (Rynhold 2009). Maimonides’s argument in particular seeks to show that there is a non-​corporeal, non-​finite Cause of finite, bodily motions (Pines 1963). The basic strategy in all these arguments is to show, from observations of cause and effect, that certain things (finite, contingent, temporary, etc.) depend ultimately on an uncaused, foundational portion of reality, which we can identify as God. I will say more about this strategy in the next section. Other arguments spring from other observations one might expect to see if there is a supreme being. Instead of focusing on negative states (per the observation-​based arguments against a supreme being), these arguments focus on various positive states, like order, beauty, complexities of various kinds, consciousness, moral experience and even existence itself. Each of these observations inspires long traditions of specific types of arguments for God. For example, there are design arguments for a supreme intelligence based on the observation of order and complexities of various kinds. There are moral arguments for a supreme moral foundation based on observations about our sense of right and wrong, good and bad. There are arguments for a supreme mind based on observations of consciousness in our own minds. And so on. All these arguments have this in common: they seek to identify something about the nature of ultimate reality from the effects we see. Do any of these arguments work? A common response to the arguments from observation is that none of them establish that there is a supreme being. For example, arguments from design point, at best, to evidence for a grand designer. But they do not even purport to establish that this designer is absolutely supreme. Same for arguments from morality, consciousness, beauty and all the rest. At best they provide evidence for something great (with intelligence, moral capacity, etc.) that might explain these things. But none of these arguments show, or even purport to show, that some reality is absolutely supreme.

1.4  Combining Pieces So far, this overview is not inspiring optimism about the prospect of knowing that a supreme being exists via arguments. On the contrary, we have seen weighty arguments against a supreme being. These arguments have moved many reflective people to doubt God’s existence, even contrary to their wishes. Moreover, when we look at the major arguments for a supreme 12

The Existence of God

being, we find that most of them do not even attempt to show that there is a supreme being. The looming exception is the ontological argument. But most theists do not say their belief in God rests on an ontological argument. From this vantage point, then, one might reasonably conclude that arguments are insufficient to give us knowledge of God. In that case, if anyone knows that God exists, that knowledge must have another source. However, we have not yet considered whether there could be a way to combine arguments to support a more substantial conclusion. In the remainder of this section, I will present what I take to be the most promising strategy for combining arguments. This strategy uses both reason and observation to try to provide a reason to think that there is a foundational reality that has a supreme nature. Following William Rowe (1975), we can divide this argument strategy into two parts. The first part attempts to provide a reason to think some reality is fundamental (not dependent on prior conditions or causes). The second part attempts to provide a reason to think that this fundamental reality would have a supreme nature. Let us consider each part in turn. First, arguments for a fundamental reality typically have a structure like this: 1. Principle of dependence: certain things (people, planets, particles, etc.) depend on other things. 2. Foundation: the dependent things, in total, depend on a non-​dependent foundation. 3. Therefore, there is a non-​dependent foundation (i.e., a fundamental reality). Call this type of argument, ‘the argument from dependence’. This structure is displayed by a range of cosmological arguments, including those developed by Jewish philosophers, Maimonides and Crescas, in particular (cf. Rynhold 2009). Different versions of the argument from dependence make use of different principles of dependence. For example, there is the principle that whatever begins depends on something prior. From here, the goal of the argument is to show that there is a beginningless foundation of the things that begin. A different version of the argument focuses on contingent things (i.e., things that could have not existed) to derive the conclusion that there is a non-​ contingent foundation of contingent things. Indeed, Maimonides is critiqued by Crescas for presenting a version of the former, and Crescas therefore offers in its place a version of the latter (see Maimonides 1963: 247–​8; and Crescas 2018: 100–​101). There are many other examples of such arguments. (For a deep dive into these types of arguments, see Pruss and Rasmussen 2018.) Consider, next, how we might support a principle of dependence. One strategy is to utilize a principle of explanation, like this: Principle of Explanation (PE): you can expect an explanation as far as you can. The idea here is that, in general, we expect things to have a further explanation, even if we aren’t sure what that explanation is. For example, if we see a large cubical object floating across the sky, we can expect that there is some explanation for that object. The cubical object probably didn’t snap into existence inexplicably. Rather, there are likely some prior events that contribute to an explanation of how and why this cubical object is flying across the sky. In general, unless you have reason to think the case is special (an exception to the general rule), you have at least some reason to expect an explanation. For the sake of neutrality and modesty, we can leave open the nature of the explanation. The explanation could be deterministic, such as when a prior event necessitates a subsequent event. Or it could be probabilistic, such as when a prior event makes a subsequent event more likely. So long as the explanation sheds at least some light on why the event in question happened, it can count as an explanation. 13

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With PE in hand, we can support a general argument for a fundamental reality. First, PE supports the premise that certain things are dependent, since we can expect an explanation for their existence. Consider that dependent things are dependent (by definition). So, there is nothing about the nature of a dependent thing that would preclude it from being explained in terms of something it depends on. Second, by PE, we can also expect an explanation of the existence of any collection of dependent things. Whether they are birds, particles or blue cubes, there is no contradiction in the hypothesis that they have some further explanation. Differences in size, shape or number do not appear to make a difference: even an infinite collection consisting of infinitely many turtles would not remove the expectation of some explanation; if anything, increasing the magnitude to infinity may increase the expectation of an explanation. Moreover, empirical science has a track record with explanations of things, individually and collectively. This track record reinforces the general expectation of an explanation of collections of dependent things. Putting these steps together, logic takes us to the conclusion: we can expect an explanation of the total of all dependent things in terms of something non-​dependent. The inference here is guided by the expectation of an external, non-​circular explanation. To avoid circularity, PE invites us to explain things in terms of other things. Dependent things are not externally explained in terms of those same dependent things. Therefore, if there is an external explanation of their existence (per the previous steps), then that explanation must at least partly be in terms of something that is not itself dependent. That’s the conclusion: there is a non-​ dependent, foundation of dependent things. Note that the expectation of an external explanation does not rule out the possibility of circular explanations. For even if there were a purely circular explanation of some chicken, say, that’s consistent with the general expectation of an external, non-​circular explanation. For example, if you see a chicken, and if you have no reason to think this is a chicken that gave birth to itself in a circular explanation, you can expect a non-​circular explanation of its existence. The point is this: the prospect of circular explanations does not by itself undermine the general expectation of an external explanation, other things being equal. Three quick clarifications are in order. First, this argument leaves open the number and age of dependent things. Perhaps dependent things form an infinite regress in an eternally old universe. An infinite chain, whether of chickens, dominoes or universes, could itself still have a deeper explanation. That’s not ruled out. Similarly, merely extending a chain out to infinity does not by itself reveal an exception to PE or preclude a deeper explanation in terms of a foundational reality. Second, the argument from dependence does not assume that the whole is dependent merely because its parts are dependent (per the fallacy of composition). Rather, the argument makes use of PE, which is a reason to expect an explanation of parts and wholes alike. Third, this argument leaves open the nature of the foundational reality. As far as we have seen so far, maybe fundamental reality is the universe as a whole or some fundamental energy. This third consideration is relevant to the next stage of the argument, which we will turn to next. Let us now consider what a fundamental reality might be if there is a fundamental reality. We can use PE again as a light. PE can now help us in two ways. First, PE can help us clear away from our theory of fundamental reality any description that would itself call for a further explanation. For example, by the light of PE, we have some reason to think that fundamental reality is not fundamentally the shape of a turtle, for we can expect a further explanation of any such shape. Second, PE invites us to fill in our theory with a description of a nature that

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The Existence of God

would call for no further explanation; this nature would give us a reason to break our general expectation of an explanation. So what nature could meet these conditions? The history of philosophy offers a candidate. This candidate, it has been argued, not only clears away attributes that would call for a further explanation, but it also fills in an attribute that calls for no further explanation. What nature is this? You guessed it: it is the nature of a supreme being. This nature would not include various qualities, limits or conditions that could be coherently thought to have some further, more fundamental explanation. Instead, a supreme being would be precisely the kind of thing that is too great to depend on anything else; its supreme nature would imply that it is the most ultimate, most fundamental reality. We can summarize this argument like so: 1. Whatever is not supreme is explicable in terms of something more fundamental. 2. Nothing is more fundamental than the most fundamental reality. 3. Therefore, the most fundamental reality is supreme (God). Call this ‘the identification argument.’ The identification argument builds upon previous arguments. To draw out how, consider first the arguments from positive observations, like design, beauty, moral sense and so on. Whatever you think of these arguments, they at least highlight some aspects of reality that are able, somehow, to emerge. If we add in the argument for a fundamental reality, we now have this result: fundamental reality is at least able to be a foundation for many interesting and positive things. Bracketing how negative things might fit, one could argue, at least, that fundamental reality has some great qualities in virtue of its ability to be a foundation of a range of positive states. The final step is to see why fundamental reality would be supremely great. PE provides a reason by inviting us to fill out our theory of fundamental reality without multiplying inexplicable mysteries beyond necessity. To see what I mean, suppose first we posit arbitrary quantities, qualities or limits in the base of reality. Then we multiply mysteries (beyond necessity). For example, if we suppose fundamental reality is fundamentally limited by the abilities of a turtle, then we leave unexplained why it has that particular limit. Why that limit? The limit is arbitrary if it has no explanation. But now suppose instead that the base of reality has no arbitrary limits. Then we can follow the light of PE by explaining limits as far as we can. When we do, we arrive at a fundamental reality whose basic nature is not arbitrarily limited in greatness, but is instead supreme (i.e., not arbitrarily limited) in greatness. Supreme greatness makes the difference. If fundamental reality is supremely great, then its greatness explains why it would be fundamental. It is great enough to exist on its own. Anything less, one might argue, would have an arbitrary limit in greatness (e.g., of power, knowledge or goodness) that would itself call for further explanation. Supreme greatness also entails other great qualities, like supreme knowledge, power and goodness. So, by combining arguments in this way, we arrive at the target conclusion: there is a supreme being.

1.5  A Bigger Picture This overview of arguments for and against God presents a certain tension. On the one hand, we have seen arguments that challenge the possibility and probability of a supreme being. On the other hand, we have also just seen an argument for the opposite conclusion. Something must give.

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I would like to suggest a way to reconcile the arguments. I begin with an observation about the challenges to God’s coherency. Such challenges do not actually directly target the root concept of a supreme being. Rather, they challenge attributes associated with that root, such as omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection. It is a further question, however, what attributes a supreme being must have. The question about what attributes God might have animated many debates among Jewish philosophers. Indeed, one of the big medieval debates among Jewish philosophers is over whether God has attributes at all. Maimonides argues not. If Maimonides is correct, then the assessment of the coherency of the concept of God requires some translation (if it is not in terms of the coherency of certain divine attributes). But there are alternative views on divine attributes in the Jewish philosophical tradition. See, for example, one interesting study on Maimonides and Gersonides by the great 20th-​century philosopher Hilary Putnam (1997). Rather than attempt to overturn the arguments against the attributes, we could instead view the arguments as helping to clarify a core concept of a supreme being. Consider, for example, the attribute of having all possible powers. Suppose this attribute entails the power to fail to be great. Then one might doubt that a supreme being would have this property. After all, one might think that the nature of a supreme being does not, in virtue of its greatness, appear to entail a lack of greatness. On the contrary, one might suppose instead that a supreme being would only have attributes that entail positive attributes, not attributes that entail departures from greatness. The idea here is that a supreme being would actually be too great to have attributes that detract from greatness. In that case, a supreme being would not have combinations of powers and knowledge that entail departures from greatness. This idea suggests a minimal concept of a supreme being. This concept trims off attributes that would intuitively entail some negativity. For example, it trims off the power to cease to be God. It also trims off any impossible attributes that trivially entail limitation. This minimal concept is still robust enough to entail great qualities, like knowledge, power and goodness, so long as it does not also entail any negative determinates of these. This minimal concept of a supreme being also fits well with the argument we saw for a supreme fundamental reality. For that argument also has a minimal conclusion: fundamental reality is purely great without arbitrary fundamental limits. We could say it is ‘supreme.’ But this result is compatible with a range of options for how we might fill in other attributes of a supreme foundation. Consider, for example, this model of reality: 1. Foundation: reality has a fundamental layer, per the dependency argument. 2. Consistency: the fundamental layer is consistent with both positive and negative observations. 3. Priority of the positive: the fundamental nature of fundamental reality is great without arbitrary limits, per the identification argument. This model highlights how a minimal concept of a supreme being may help synthesize certain arguments against God’s existence with the explanation-​based argument for a supreme foundation.

1.6  Personal Reflection In closing, I will offer my current assessment of the state of the arguments. First, the arguments against various attributes of God have helped me to clarify my own concept of a supreme being. Rather than see these arguments as being in competition with belief in God, I see all the arguments as working together to paint a larger picture. 16

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In my case, the arguments have helped illuminate a working model of reality. So if my analysis is not misleading me (which is always possible), then I think it is appropriate to at least take myself to have some reason to believe that God exists on the basis of arguments. From this standpoint, it appears to me, then, that it is possible for an argument to support a belief in the existence of God. That said, I also think there can be reasonable debate over where the arguments lead. Others may reasonably take themselves to not know that God exists, or even to know that God does not exist. Rather than attempt to resolve that debate by the force of an argument, I see value in seeking a collaborative approach. Every argument provides some light. As people from diverse viewpoints come together to bring many lights, perhaps we can continue to uncover a greater vision of fundamental reality together. Related Topics: The Problem of Evil; Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Analytic Jewish Philosophy

References Crescas, H. (2018) [1410] Or Hashem (Light of the Lord). Translated with introduction and notes by Roslyn Weiss. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Frankfurt, H. (1964) ‘The Logic of Omnipotence,’ Philosophical Review 73 (2): 262–​3. Flint, T.P. and Freddoso, A.J. (1983) ‘Maximal Power’ in Alfred J. Freddoso (ed.), The Existence and Nature of God. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 81–​113. Gellman, J. (1997) Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief. New York: Cornell University Press. Gersonides, L. (1987) [1329] The Wars of the Lord, Vol. 2. Translated by Seymour Feldman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Goldschmidt, T. (2020) Ontological Arguments. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Goldschmidt, Tyron and Seacord, Beth (2013) ‘Judaism, Reincarnation, and Theodicy,’ Faith and Philosophy 30 (4): 393–​417. Lebens, S. and Goldschmidt, T. (2017) ‘The Promise of a New Past,’ Philosophers’ Imprint 17: 1–​25. Hoffman, J. and Rosenkrantz, G. (2022) ‘Omnipotence,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Maimonides, M (1963) [1190] The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.. Pearce, K. and Pruss, A. (2012) ‘Understanding Omnipotence,’ Religious Studies 48 (3): 403–​14. Pruss, A. and Rasmussen, J. (2018) Necessary Existence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Putnam, Hilary (1997) ‘On Negative Theology,’ Faith and Philosophy 14 (4):407–​422. Rasmussen, J. (2021) ‘How to Expand God’s Sight’ in Tom Oord (ed.), Partnering with God. Grasmere, Idaho: SacraSage Press. Rowe, W.L. (1975) The Cosmological Argument. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rubenstein, R. (1992) After Auschwitz; History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism, 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rynhold, D. (2009) An Introduction to Medieval Jewish Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Wolfson, H. A. (1924) ‘Notes on Proofs of the Existence of God in Jewish Philosophy,’ Hebrew Union College Annual 1: 575–​96.

Further Reading H.A, Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). William Lane Craig, “Maimonides’ Proofs for the Existence of God.” in J. Bujis (ed.), Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). Joshua Rasmussen, How Reason Can Lead to God (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2019). Warren Zev Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1998), Ch. 3.

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2 NEGATIVE THEOLOGY On Apophaticism, Analytic Jewish Philosophy and Wittgensteinian Themes Filippo Casati

2.1 

D IVIN E INE F FABIL I T Y

and Its Troubles

According to many of the founding fathers of Judaism, God is ineffable, God is not describable. We cannot grasp God by means of our words. Our language, it turns out, is inadequate for comprehending our Lord in His absolute transcendence. In the first draft of his Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem puts it thus: ‘[God] is’ Scholem writes ‘the barrier confronting the human intellectual faculty when it reaches the limits of its capacity’ (Scholem 1974: 94). According to Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, the Jewish mystical tradition, Hassidism and, more recently, Franz Rosenzweig, God lies beyond such limits as well. In the rest of the present chapter, I refer to the idea that God defies any description as DIVINE I NEFFABI LI TY . In order to have a better grasp on DIVINE I NEFFABI LI TY and its philosophical troubles, it is useful to note that DIVINE INEFFABILITY is supported in two main ways. First, Jewish philosophers have delivered sophisticated arguments justifying DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY: G iven certain premises, it is possible to conclude that God is, indeed, ineffable. Second, Jewish mystics have often defended DIVINE INEFFABILITY by relying on religious experience: It is not uncommon for people to have mystical raptures in which God is experienced as being beyond description. In their ‘ecstatic confessions,’ many of them report that God is, indeed, ineffable. For a more detailed example of these two ways of supporting DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY , let’s briefly consider The Guide of the Perplexed. Much ink has been spilled in showing that, first, Maimonides is in the business of constructing philosophical arguments and second, that such arguments are meant to support the idea that God is ineffable. In one of his most famous and influential arguments, Maimonides begins by taking God to be absolutely simple, concluding that, since simple things do not have properties and our descriptions ascribe properties, God cannot be described. God is, thus, ineffable. That said, the universe of Jewish scholars is rich and complicated, and there is a small but, nonetheless, hardened number of interpreters who argue that Maimonides is not ultimately concerned with philosophical arguments. They argue that Maimonides’ Guide should be understood as an attempt to show the importance of what he calls continuous contemplation—​a particular kind of mystical experience by means of which we discover the ineffable nature of the Divine. Given the purpose of the present chapter, I am not concerned to establish which reading of Maimonides is exegetically correct. What matters, though, is that these two ways of supporting 18

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might be helpful in highlighting some of the philosophical troubles which afflict it. Now, recall that DIVINE INEFFAB I LI TY is the claim that God is ineffable. If so, D I V INE INEFFA BIL ITY seems prima facie contradictory, for as soon as we claim that God is not describable by means of our words, we describe God by means of our words. In particular, we describe Him as being what is not describable at all. On the one hand, God is not describable by means of our words, but on the other, God is describable by means of our words, for we describe Him as something that cannot be described at all. At this point, it should be easy to see that this contradiction afflicts both DI VI NE I NEFFABILITY and the two main ways of supporting it. If we decide to support DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY by means of philosophical arguments, these philosophical arguments must establish that God is ineffable. The conclusion of these arguments would be contradictory for the reasons discussed above. There is an additional problem we well. Pace DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY, these arguments must have premises which are about God—​ premises which are somehow committed to describing Him. Consider Maimonides and his attempt to infer that God is not describable from God’s simplicity. Not only does Maimonides find himself committed to a conclusion which is self-​contradictory—​God is not describable—​he also finds himself committed to an argument in which the conclusion contradicts one of its premises; its conclusion claims that God is not describable, while one of its premises describes God as simple. Unfortunately, the situation does not look promising for the mystics either. When they attempt to share their overwhelming encounter with God and they claim that His greatness can be captured by no description, what are they doing if not describing God? And, when they attempt to support DIVINE INEFFABILITY by relying on such overwhelming encounters with God and they claim that, according to such encounters, God shatters any description, what are they doing if not describing Him? Since mystics claim that their raptures reveal God as indescribable, they appear to be committed to the same contradiction discussed above. As soon as they claim that God is not describable, they describe Him as being not describable. In light of the foregoing discussion, DIVINE I NEFFABI LI TY seems to entail two kinds of contradiction: D I V INE INEFFA BI LITY

[1]‌

appears to be self-​contradictory, for any attempt to claim that God is not describable describes Him as not being describable. As we have already shown, this first problem afflicts both the conclusions of the arguments in favor of DI VI NE I NEFFABILITY and attempts to support DIVINE INE FFABI LI TY by appeal to mystical experience. [2]‌ D IV INE INEFFABILITY appears to contradict some other theological claims, that is, claims which describe God for what He is taken to be. This second problem afflicts the arguments in favor of DIVINE INEFFABILITY, as they infer that God is not describable by appealing to a description of God. D IV INE INEFFABILITY

Countless philosophers have argued that DIVI NE I NEFFABI LI TY is somehow inconsistent. Lebens, however, is one of the few thinkers who clearly identifies both [1]‌and [2] as the loci of inconsistency. He claims that ‘apophatic-​claims [i.e. claims about God’s ineffability] seem to be internally incoherent (how can God be beyond description if he satisfies the description “beyond description”?)’ (Lebens 2020: 11). Here, Lebens presents [1]. He also writes that ‘apophatic-​claims seem to contradict cataphatic-​claims [i.e. claims which describe God for what He is taken to be], yet religious people often feel compelled to make both sorts of claim (how can God be beyond description if we also say he is, [let’s say, simple]?)’ (Lebens 2020: 11). Here, Lebens presents [2]. Countless philosophers have also used [1]‌and [2] to argue that DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY should be abandoned, that is, God does not defy any description. Instead, since DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY 19

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forces us to face all sorts of contradictions, we should just conclude that God is not ineffable (see, for instance, Plantinga 2020). In recent years, however, some Jewish philosophers have tried to defend DIVINE INEFFABILITY by employing some of the ideas which have (pre)occupied many influential interpreters of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-​Philosophicus. In what follows, I focus my attention on how Sam Lebens, Nehama Verbin and Silvia Jonas account for D IV INE INEFFABILITY.

2.2  Sam Lebens and D I V I N E

I N EFFA B I LI T Y

2.2.1  Lebens’ Wrestle with D I V I N E

I N E F FA B I L I T Y

The main locus of Lebens’ discussion of DIVINE I NEFFABI LI TY is the first chapter of his The Principles of Judaism (2020). Some more thoughts can be found in Section 5.3 of Chapter 5, and a cluster of other essays as well (2014, 2017, 2022, forthcoming). There is a substantial continuity in Lebens’ attempt to develop a tenable account of apophaticism, and such a continuity is guaranteed by his relentless commitment to grounding his apophatic theology on the following two moves: F IRST M OV E .

Many important claims about God are false: ‘Apophatic claims are falsehoods’ (Lebens 2017: 104. See, also, Lebens 2020: 20; Lebens 2014: 268).1 S ECOND M OV E . Such false claims about God are illuminating and/​ or therapeutic: ‘You can have your apophaticism’ he claims ‘as an illuminating and/​or therapeutic falsehood’ (Lebens 2017: 105. See, also, Lebens 2020: 27). According to the FIRST MOVE, Lebens believes that many claims about God fail in delivering any truth whatsoever, for they are simply false. For Lebens, ‘my considered position is that only some of the claims that a systematic theology makes are likely to be false’ (Lebens 2022: 4; italic mine). Lebens then concludes that, even though ‘some theological claims are straightforwardly true’ (Lebens 2022: 4; italic mine), ‘some [other] facts about God cannot be captured by true propositions’ (Lebens 2022: 6).2 According to the SECOND MOVE, Lebens believes that, even though our claims about God are false, they are nonetheless important. In order to show that this is the case, he takes inspiration from the two main readings of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. On the one hand, he echoes the traditional interpretation, and he argues that, even though our claims about God are false, such claims can be illuminating (because their falsity shows what cannot be said). In particular, he argues that our claims about God can be understood as working like metaphors. Even though they are false, they can ‘point to’ features of the Divine, features which would be otherwise unsayable. He writes: [Theological claims] are here functioning as metaphors… ostending toward properties that have no literal name in the language (as of yet). We point to ineffable divine properties using apophatic figures of speech. In the case of apophaticism, it is the very way in which the utterance sometimes collapses in on itself that helps to point to the ineffable properties it targets. (Lebens 2020: 20) On the other hand, Lebens echoes the resolute interpretation, arguing that, even though our claims about God are false, such claims can be therapeutic (because their falsity cures us of

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the temptation to engage in arrogant and hopeless theological enterprises). In particular, he argues that the therapeutic nature of such claims can be best understood by appealing to the concept of verisimilitude (for discussion of this set of ideas, see Popper [1962, 1973, 1983] and Oddie [2014]). Many philosophers have argued that some propositions are more truthlike than others. Such propositions are closer to the truth, and thus have a higher degree of verisimilitude. Imagine a box which contains five balls. Since there are five balls in the box, the proposition there are four balls in the box is not true. It is false. It is still intuitive to think, though, that such a proposition is more truthlike than the proposition there are no balls in the box. The proposition there are four balls in the box is closer to the truth; it has a higher degree of verisimilitude. According to Lebens, our theological claims might be understood in a similar fashion. Just as the proposition there are four balls in the box is not true, our claims about God are not true either. As the proposition there are four balls in the box is more truthlike than the proposition there are no balls in the box, some of our claims about God might be more truthlike too. In other words, some of these claims might have a higher degree of verisimilitude. Moreover, if apophatic theology is properly understood, it has a therapeutic effect, for it helps us to acknowledge our ‘human fallibility’ and cures us from the temptation to exchange theological verisimilitudes with theological truths. Apophatic theology fosters our humility by reminding us that we should aim at nothing more than the highest possible degree of verisimilitude. Lebens writes: [Theological claims] may ultimately entail that what I say, in this book, is unsayable. To the extent that these [claims] therefore contradict themselves, I will –​at least –​have helped you to recognize our human fallibility, and helped you to exchange truth for verisimilitude as your ultimate goal for theological inquiry. Notwithstanding, I can still say, and plausibly hope, that these [ideas] achieve –​at least –​a high degree of verisimilitude. (Lebens 2020: 27; italic mine)

2.2.2  Overcoming [1]‌and [2] In light of what we have discussed so far, it should be easy to see that Lebens’ account of D I V INE INEFFA BIL ITY can overcome both [1]‌and [2]. In order to see why this is the case, let’s begin by considering [1]—​D IVINE INEFFABILITY appears to be self-​contradictory. Note that D I V INE INEFFA BIL ITY is self-​contradictory if and only if we are committed to the truth of the idea that God is not describable. If it is true that God is not describable, it must be false that God is not describable, for we describe Him in claiming that He is not describable. Now, Lebens’ account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY does not appear to be self-​contradictory exactly because, according to Lebens himself, it is false that God is not describable. We need to be careful, though. Even though it is false that God is not describable, such falsity does not commit Lebens to jettisoning DIVINE INEFFABI LI TY . Its falsity is, in fact, illuminating as it shows us otherwise unsayable features of the Divine. Lebens’ account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY seems to be able to overcome [2]‌as well. Recall that, according to [2], DIVINE INEFFABILITY appears to contradict some other theological claims, claims which describe God for what God is. Lebens does not succumb to this problem because his FIRST MOVE welcomes the idea that some claims about God can be true. In light of this ‘narrow’ understanding of DIVINE INEFFABI LI TY, Lebens can coherently accept the idea that we can also describe God for what God is.

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2.2.3  Some Problems for Lebens Even though Lebens’ account of D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y appears to be successful, a closer examination reveals that the situation is more complicated. Let’s being by considering the idea that, even though some of our claims about God are false, they can be illuminating because they function like metaphors. Prima facie, this approach looks promising, for metaphors are well known to be, first, literally false and, second, able to convey some insights. Even though it is literally false that Juliet is Romeo’s sun, there is no doubt that this metaphor gives us a good insight in the romantic relation between the two. In a similar way, Lebens could argue that, even though some of our claims about God are literally false, such claims behave as metaphors casting light on those facts about God which cannot be captured by any true propositions. Unfortunately, this strategy is unsuccessful; and the troubles begin as soon as we start wondering how metaphors and, therewith, some of our false claims about God deliver these insights. It is possible to uncover the insights of metaphors if and only if we can claim something true about their subject matters. But this, recall, is exactly what Lebens’ apophaticism does not allow. Even though I believe this is true for any account of metaphor, I focus on Lebens’ preferred account of metaphorical language, Elizabeth Camp’s (Camp 2006). According to Camp, metaphors can be insightful because they ‘set an implicit analogy between two object-​property pairs, where the hearer presumably has had experience with both the object and the property in one pair but only with the object of the second’ (Camp 2006: 11). Grasping the insight of a metaphor is, thus, solving this ‘analogical equation’ by applying our ‘imaginative skills’ (Camp 2006: 11). At this point, it is important to notice that Camp’s account of metaphors presupposes the possibility of claiming something true about their subject matters, for we can apply our imaginative skills and solve an analogical equation if and only if we can make some true claims about such subject matters. The necessary condition for solving an analogical equation is represented by our ability to truthfully claim that such an analogical equation is about objects (e.g. Juliet, Romeo and the sun), their properties (e.g. being nourishing) and their relation. And this is exactly what represents an insurmountable problem for Lebens. Recall that, according to Lebens, some facts about God cannot be captured by any true propositions. Now, if I am right in thinking that Camp’s account of metaphors must presuppose the possibility of claiming something true about their subject matters, it follows that such facts about God cannot be the subject matter of any metaphor as understood by Camp. Pace Lebens, Camp’s framework seems to be incompatible with his account of D IV INE INEFFABILITY .3 What about the idea that, even though some of our claims about God are false, they can nonetheless be therapeutic? Once again, such an idea does not seem particularly promising. In order to see this, let’s recall that Lebens characterizes the therapeutic nature of our claims about God by appeal to the concept of verisimilitude—​a false proposition can be closer to the truth than another false proposition. Moreover, a specific fact about the world, a false proposition (say, there are four balls in the box) is closer to the truth than another false proposition (say, there are no balls in the box) if and only if we are willing to take a third proposition as claiming something true about that fact (let’s say, there are five balls in the box). This third proposition serves as the yardstick by which we measure the ‘proximity’ to the truth of the other two propositions. Now, since Lebens remains committed to the idea that, regarding some facts about God, such facts cannot be captured by any true proposition, Lebens appears to deny the possibility of there being such a yardstick. For this reason, pace Lebens, the concept of verisimilitude remains incompatible with his account of D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y . 22

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2.3  Nehama Verbin and DIVINE INEFFABILITY 2.3.1  Verbin’s Wrestle with DIVINE INEFFABILITY Let’s continue by discussing Nehama Verbin’s struggle with DIVINE INEFFABILITY. As with Lebens, Verbin is inspired by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and, in particular, the Wittgensteinian notion of a riddle. According to some interpreters, Wittgensteinian riddles are riddles that cannot be solved, for they have no solution whatsoever.4 According to Verbin, our wrestling with DIVINE INEFFABILITY forces us to face just these kinds of riddles. When our speculations about DIVINE INEFFABILITY stumble upon certain theological issues, we can do nothing more than learn how to live with them. Our having faith in God finds its deepest roots in our ability to tolerate these insurmountable hurdles. In order to have a better grasp on this set of ideas, it is important to note that, according to Verbin, any attempt to take DIVINE INEFFABILITY seriously must force us to face two kinds of contradiction, that is, [1]‌and [2]. Far from denying that DIVINE INEFFABILITY commits us to [1] and [2], Verbin believes that, first, these two kinds of contradictions are necessarily entailed by any endorsement of DIVINE INEFFABILITY and, second, it is not possible to overcome them. She thinks that God is absolutely transcendent and, for this reason, nothing can be said about Him. At the same time, she also thinks that God is immanent, for we say something about God when we spell out His absolute transcendence and praise His greatness. These contradictions, Verbin claims, are unavoidable. The inconsistent oscillations between our inability to speak about God (‘God’s absolute transcendence’) and our ability to speak about God (‘God’s immanence’) are not solvable and, as such, they represent Wittgensteinian riddles. Now, the key element of Verbin’s attempt to account for DIVINE INEFFABILITY is that, not only are [1]‌and [2] unavoidable, they are also desirable. According to Verbin, we should not try to overcome these problems, for it is simply impossible. On the contrary, such contradictions must be guarded, for they represent the hallmark of our faith in God. The very idea of DIVINE INEFFABILITY plays an important role in our religious life exactly because it forces us to face [1] and [2] and realize that the problems are inescapable. For these reasons, Verbin concludes that ‘we are obliged to stop with these paradoxes’ (Verbin 2020: 14). ‘These unsolvable paradoxes’ she writes ‘emphasize the greatness of the leap of faith, the greatness of the passion of subjectivity, the greatness of the riddle of our life with God’ (Verbin 2020: 14).

2.3.2  Overcoming [1]‌and [2] Given our understanding of Verbin’s approach to DIVINE INEFFABILITY, it should be clear that [1]‌ and [2] do not constitute a problem anymore, rather, these two contradictions are a feature without which DIVINE INEFFABILITY would not be able to play the important role it performs in our religious lives. Consistently with the most orthodox Wittgensteinian spirit, Verbin does not present a solution to [1] and [2], and instead dissolves the very idea that they stand in need of a solution in the first place.

2.3.3  Some Problems for Verbin As with Lebens, Verbin’s account of DIVINE INEFFABI LI TY seems promising. A closer look, however, reveals some of its shortcomings. In order to see this, let’s begin by noting that Verbin is very explicit in taking our claims about God to be ‘meaningless’ (2011, 2020). Given the Wittgensteinian framework in which she works, this appears to be ambiguous, for meaninglessness can be understood in terms of senselessness or nonsense. According to Wittgenstein, senseless propositions are necessarily true (e.g. tautologies) or necessarily false 23

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(e.g. contradictions). Since DIVINE INEFFABILITY and, therewith, our claims about God appear to be contradictory and contradictions are necessarily false, DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY (and our claims about God) are necessarily false as well. Alternatively, we can understand the meaninglessness of our claims about God in terms of nonsense. According to Wittgenstein, some of our claims about God have no sense whatsoever. They are unintelligible and, as such, they are not truth-​evaluable, that is, they are neither true nor false. According to what Verbin claims in many of her works, it is clear that she endorses the second way of understanding the meaninglessness of our claims about God. Contrary to what has been suggested by Lebens, Verbin writes that ‘forcing God and our human predications together in a single utterance is not merely false; it is incoherent nonsense’ (Verbin 2011: 337). However, if this is the case, Verbin’s account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY appears to face two problems. First problem. As we have already discussed, Verbin claims that, when we engage with DIVINE INEFFABILITY and our claims about God, we face some ‘contradictions,’ some ‘unsolvable paradoxes.’ Now, a contradiction, a paradox is nothing more than a conjunction of a claim and its negation. Given classical logic, such a conjunction is false, for no contradiction, no paradox, is true.5 If so, Verbin’s account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY appears to be incon­ sistent. On the one hand, she claims that DIVINE INEFFABILITY and, therewith, our claims about God are nonsense. As such, they are not truth evaluable. On the other hand, she claims that DIVINE INEFFABILITY and, therewith, our claims about God are contradictory and paradoxical. As such, they are false and truth evaluable. Someone might think that this is just a terminological remark, a remark which bears no consequences for Verbin’s account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY. If her appealing to contradictions and paradoxes is problematic, let’s then describe DIVINE INEFFABILITY and our claims about God in a way that does not commit them to being false. Let’s say that DIVINE INEFFABILITY and our claims about God are pseudo-​propositions—​linguistical constructions which are nonsense. Would this move make Verbin’s position more palatable? Unfortunately, this is not the case. The issues faced by Verbin run deeper than it seems, for her account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY faces a second problem. As we have already discussed, Verbin argues that even though DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY and, therewith, our claims about God are nonsense, both of them play an essential role in our religious life. For instance, Verbin claims that DIV I NE I NEFFABI LI TY and our claims about God ‘emphasize the greatness of the riddle of our life with God.’ Unfortunately, it is unclear how a specific piece of nonsense can accomplish such a task for (at least) two reasons. Let’s start with the first reason, that is, it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand why something is emphasized by this piece of nonsense rather than that piece of nonsense. If nonsense is utterly unintelligible and it has no understandable content whatsoever, how is it possible that a specific piece of nonsense (e.g. DIVINE INEFFABILIT Y rather than ‘green numbers sleep furiously’) is successful in emphasizing the greatness of the riddle of our life with God? Ultimately, a nonsensical linguistic construction lacks any meaning whatsoever. Moreover, how can one nonsensical linguistic construction be better than another in emphasizing something? Aren’t both linguistic constructions nothing more than nonsense? Aren’t both equally unintelligible? Verbin does not help us to answer these questions, and it seems that they cannot easily be addressed either—​it is a problem that seems to afflict all resolute readers of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (though Moore [2000] is one of the few interpreters who tries to tackle the issue—​ unsatisfactorily, in my opinion). What about the second reason, then? Well, Verbin claims that DIVINE INEFFABILITY and our claims about God are important because they emphasize something, namely, the greatness of the riddle of our life with God. In other words, God and the relation between Him and our

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life appears to present an unsolvable riddle in virtue of the nonsensicality of DIVINE INEFFABILITY and our claims about God. However, it is important to note that, given Verbin’s characterization of DIVINE INEFFABILITY and our talk of God, Verbin herself should not be able to meaningfully articulate this very idea. Since our claims about God are nonsense and what is emphasized by the nonsensicality of DIVINE INEFFABILITY is, in turn, a claim about God, what is emphasized by the nonsensicality of DIVINE INEFFABILITY has to be nonsense as well. If this is correct, Verbin’s attempt to show the important role which is played by DIVINE INEFFABILITY and its nonsensicality seems to be reduced to nonsense too. Once again, Verbin seems to be in trouble.6

2.4  Silvia Jonas and D I V I N E

I N EFFA B I LI T Y

2.4.1  Jonas’ Wrestle with DIVINE INEFFABILITY In this final section, we consider a third and last attempt to present a defensible account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY. This attempt tries to overcome both [1]‌and [2] by merging (a) negative theology with (b) non-​propositional knowledge. Given the topic of the present chapter, it is important to note that such an account of non-​propositional knowledge is originally motivated by a certain reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In what follows, I will focus my attention on Silvia Jonas, for she is interested in Jewish philosophy and, in particular, Maimonides’ wrangle with DIVINE INEFFABILITY. Let’s begin with (a). Jonas (2021) believes that Maimonides is committed to developing a philosophical argument in favor of DIVINE INEFFABILITY. According to Maimonides, God is absolutely simple. Since simple things do not have properties and our descriptions ascribe properties to things, Maimonides concludes that we cannot ascribe properties to God. Thus, God cannot be described; God is ineffable. Such a conclusion, Jonas notes, claims that we cannot say what God is, for this would require us to ascribe properties to Him. However, such a conclusion does not prohibit us from claiming what God is not, for this requires denying rather than ascribing properties. According to this reading, Maimonides appears to be a negative theologian because he believes that, even though we cannot provide any description of what God is, we can nonetheless say what God is not. At this point, someone might worry about all the descriptions of God which can be found in the Hebrew Bible. What about statements like ‘God is omniscient’? Someone might also worry about all those ways we praise God. What about statements like ‘God is merciful’? Pace Lebens and Verbin, Jonas believes that the Biblical descriptions and our praise are neither false nor nonsense. On the contrary, she thinks that Maimonides gives us two ways we can interpret them. On the one hand, she argues that some of our attempts to ascribe properties to God must be read as containing a ‘disguised negation’: ‘God is omniscient’ must be read as ‘It is not the case that God is ignorant.’ On the other hand, Maimonides argues that some of our attempts to ascribe properties to God must be read as ascribing properties to God’s actions: ‘God is merciful’ must be read as ‘The world created by God exhibits merciful characteristics.’ What about (b), then? Jonas begins by noting that knowledge is commonly defined as follows: A knows X if and only if (i) A holds the belief that S is true, (ii) S is true, (iii) S is a proposition about X and (iv) A came to believe S in a way that is justification-​conferring and not vulnerable to Gettier-​undermining (as per his classic challenge to this well-​spread definition of knowledge in Gettier 1963). If we work with this definition of knowledge, it should be clear that (a) entails that we can have no knowledge about what God is. According

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to Maimonides’ negative theology, we cannot say what God is. We can have no description of God, that is, no proposition S can describe what God is and, at the same time, be true. If so, Maimonides’ negative theology does not satisfy the second requirement of knowledge, forcing us to accept that we can have no knowledge of what God is. This means that, not only does Maimonides’ negative theology appear to put some very severe constraints on what we can claim about God; it also puts some very severe constraints on what we can know about Him. Now, Jonas tries to resist the idea that Maimonides’ negative theology renders God epistemically inaccessible by arguing that knowledge is not necessarily propositional. ‘Not all knowledge’ she writes ‘can be brought into propositional form’ (Jonas 2021: 132). If this is the case, it is possible to maintain that Maimonides’ negative theology does not rule out the possibility of knowing what God is, for such knowledge does not require any true proposition about Him. It can be non-​propositional. In so doing, Jonas presents an interesting way of accounting for D I VINE INEFFABILITY without jettisoning the idea that, even though we cannot say what God is, we can nonetheless know something about Him.

2.4.2  Overcoming [1]‌and [2] In light of the discussion so far, can Jonas’ reading of Maimonides be employed to develop a way of accounting for DIVINE INEFFABILITY which does not fall prey to [1]‌and [2]? I believe we can answer in the affirmative. To see why, let’s begin by considering [1], that is, that DI VI NE INEFFA BILITY appears to be self-​contradictory. Recall that DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY tells us that God is not describable and, in so doing, it tells us what God is not. If this is correct, DI VI NE INEFFA BILITY does not attribute any property to God; on the contrary, it denies a specific property to Him, that is, the property of being describable. As we have already discussed, D I V INE INEFFA BIL ITY appears to be self-​contradictory because it seems to describe God while claiming that God is not describable. However, if we follow Jonas’ reading of Maimonides and we understand the impossibility of describing God as the impossibility of claiming what God is, D IV INE INEFFABILITY ceases to be self-​contradictory, for DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY tells us what God is not, rather than what God is. Let’s continue by considering the second problem which we identified in the first section of the present chapter. Recall that, according to [2]‌, D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y appears to contradict some other theological claims, that is, claims which describe God for what God is. This might appear to be true for two reasons. On the one hand, we often use some descriptions of God as premises for our arguments in support of D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y . For instance, it seems that Maimonides concludes that God is not describable by appealing to a description of God, that is, God is absolutely simple. Needless to say, these descriptions contradict D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y , for D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y claims that we can have no description of God. On the other hand, we often resort to some descriptions of God because such descriptions are an important part of both Holy Scriptures and daily prayers. Once again, such descriptions contradict D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y , for D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y claims that we can have no description of God. Now, given Jonas’ reading of Maimonides, it seems possible to avoid this second problem. According to Jonas’s reading of Maimonides, either the aforementioned descriptions of God contain a disguised negation (when Maimonides claims that ‘God is absolutely simple,’ such a claim should be read as ‘It is not the case that God is composite’) or they are about God’s action rather than God Himself (when claim that ‘God is loving,’ such a claim should be read as ‘The world created by God exhibits loving characteristics’). In both cases, such claims do not attribute properties to God and, thus, do not contradict D I V I N E I N E F FA B I L I T Y.

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2.4.3  Some Problems for Jonas As already mentioned, the idea that we might have some non-​propositional knowledge is inspired by a certain reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (see Kremer 2001, Moore 2003, and Morris and Dodd 2007). However, the application of this specific Wittgensteinian move to D I V INE INEFFA BILITY looks problematic. Here I discuss what I take to be the most pressing issue of all—​the so-​called problem of identification. Recall that, according to Jonas’ reading of Maimonides, we cannot say what God is. This means that we can have no description of God—​no proposition S can describe what God is and, at the same time, be true. For this reason, Jonas concludes, our knowledge of God cannot be propositional and must be non-​ propositional. But how we can know that our non-​propositional knowledge is about God rather than something else? From the fact that our knowledge of God is non-​propositional—​ because we cannot say what God is—​the impossibility of identifying the subject matter of our non-​propositional knowledge would seem to follow, for such an identification would require us to employ propositions which are about what God is. Jonas is well-​aware of the problem and writes: ‘how do we know that the knowledge in question [i.e. the non-​propositional knowledge about God] amounts to knowledge of God (rather than, say, knowledge of the ethically optimal way to relate to the world)? After all, non-​propositional knowledge does not involve belief in a proposition…’ (Jonas 2021: 137). At this point, Jonas admits that this objection cuts deep. It seems hard, if not impossible, to overcome it in a satisfactory manner (cf. Jonas 2021: 137). Jonas, however, claims that, even though her reading of Maimonides is not able to overcome this objection, it is unclear if her philosophical and exegetical position is worse than the standard position—​the position according to which it is possible to have true propositions about God and, therewith, propositional knowledge of Him as well. As surprising as it might look, Jonas argues that her position can be seen as less problematic than the standard one because, contrary to the former, whoever endorses the latter is immediately committed to explaining how we can know that a particular proposition about a God is true. ‘It is not clear’ Jonas writes ‘that [the problem of identification] puts Maimonides in a worse position than defenders of “standard” propositional accounts…This is because defenders of such accounts face the closely related question of how we can know that a particular proposition about God is true’ (Jonas 2021: 137). Unfortunately, far from defending Jonas’ reading of Maimonides, this train of thought seems to highlight all its difficulties. To begin with, it is unclear why a philosophical position which commits us to explaining how some propositions about God are true is more problematic than a philosophical position which has no true propositions about God whatsoever. Perhaps, Jonas is appealing to theoretical virtues. Maybe, she thinks that her reading of Maimonides’ account of DIVINE INEFFABILITY is simpler than the standard view. The former view does not need any epistemological justification which grounds our true propositions about God, for there are none. But the latter view needs such epistemological justifications, for it is committed to the idea that there are such true propositions. At this point, it is important to remind ourselves that a single theoretical virtue cannot be taken as the only parameter for evaluating a philosophical position. Any appeal to a specific theoretical virtue must always be discussed in conjunction with other theoretical virtues and mitigated by other kinds of considerations. But, as soon as we engage with more than one theoretical virtue, and we expand our horizons to other kinds of considerations, a philosophical position might begin to show problems which would have otherwise been hidden. Now, consider the idea according to which a philosophical position is more appealing than another philosophical position if the former is more explanatory than the latter. Given what 27

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we have discussed above, it should be clear that Jonas’ reading of Maimonides’ account of D I V INE INEFFA BILITY cannot have any explanatory power, for explanations require us to state true propositions about God—​which is exactly what the account does not yield. Despite the simplicity of her approach, then, its lack of explanatory power makes Jonas’ position less appealing than the standard position because a philosophical position which is explanatory and complex (i.e. the standard position) is more promising than a philosophical position which is neither explanatory nor complex (i.e. Jonas’ reading). Have I unfairly criticized Jonas’ reading? Well, someone might think that, since this reading of Maimonides tries to make sense of the idea that we cannot say what God is, a lack of explanatory power seems to be nothing more than a logical consequence of Jonas’ position. If so, someone might argue that, far from being a problem, this explanatory lack is just what D I V INE INEFFA BIL ITY entails. Fair enough. Jonas’ defense of her reading, however, relies on another problematic idea—​that wondering about how we know that God is the subject matter of our non-​propositional knowledge is ‘closely related’ to wondering about how we know that a particular proposition about God is true. If this is the case, both positions face an epistemic demand, and Jonas seems to suggest that, since her position and the standard position are troubled in a similar way, neither is the better. This way of reasoning is problematic because it seems to obliterate a fundamental difference between Jonas’ position and the standard one. While Jonas’ reading of Maimonides appears to be incompatible with the very possibility of satisfying the epistemic demand which presses upon it, the standard position does not. On the one hand, Jonas’ reading of Maimonides seems to force us to admit that we cannot know that God is the subject matter of our non-​ propositional knowledge, for this would require us to claim what God is and, according to her reading of Maimonides, this is not possible. On the other hand, the standard position requires us to explain how we know that a certain proposition about God is true; however, the standard position does not preclude the possibility of attempting to develop such an explanation. This becomes clear as soon as we note all the many different ways in which philosophers have tried to explain how we know that some propositions about God are true. While some of them have developed sophisticated accounts of divine revelation (see Swinburne 1992), some other philosophers have given a specific epistemological status to our knowledge of God (see Plantinga 2020, Alston 1993). Of course, Jonas might be skeptical about all these ways of explaining how we know that some propositions about God are true. She might even think that all these different ways are destined to fail. Now, if we assume that this is the case, the problem is not represented by the epistemic demand which troubles the standard position; the problem is represented by how philosophers have tried to address such an epistemic demand. Jonas’ defense of her reading of Maimonides, thus, fails, for it relies on the idea that both her position and the standard one are troubled in a similar way. This is not the case because her position appears to be burdened by an epistemic demand which cannot be met while the standard position appears to be burdened by an epistemic demand which has already been met, albeit in an allegedly unsatisfactory way.

2.5  A Concluding Remark Let me conclude with a quick clarification. In this chapter, I have critically discussed how some contemporary philosophers have tried to defend DI VI NE I NEFFABI LI TY by merging the Jewish philosophical tradition and some Wittgensteinian themes. I have also tried to show that all these attempts face noteworthy shortcomings. Now, if this chapter is a success, it certainly follows that these attempts to support DIVINE I NEFFABI LI TY are in need of some revision. 28

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However, it is also important to note that, even if my chapter is a success, it does not follow that any attempt to defend DIVINE INEFFABILITY by means of Wittgensteinian ideas is destined to fail. Merging these two traditions remains a philosophically fruitful path which needs further exploration.

Notes 1 See my ‘The God of falsehoods (or nonsense)’ (draft) for a discussion of how Lebens oscillates between two positions. 2 Does Lebens have any criterion by means of which he can demarcate these two kinds of claim? Lebens does not explicitly present any criterion of demarcation and, during a private conversation, he claimed that he does not need it either. 3 In his (2020), Gäb also suggests that Lebens’ apophaticism faces some troubles. I agree with Gäb, however, Gäb and I disagree on the kind of troubles. 4 For a rich and careful treatment of the Wittgensteinian notion of a riddle, see Diamond (1995) and Mulhall (2018). One quick note. Wittgensteinians do not think that all riddles are unsolvable riddles; the unsolvable riddles are ‘great riddles.’ When Verbin talks about theological riddles, she clearly refers to these. 5 It is interesting to note that this idea has been challenged by Graham Priest (forthcoming 1, forth­ coming 2). Often, Jewish philosophers have rejected outright a dialetheic approach to D I V I N E I N E F FAB I L I T Y . I believe that, from a logical and philosophical point of view, such rejections have been rushed. 6 I strongly believe that this second worry might be addressed by appealing to other philosophical concepts which have been developed by resolute Wittgensteinians. For example: (1) Moore’s very particular understanding of ‘showing’ (2000) and (2) Diamond’s understanding of what she calls ‘a difficulty of reality’ (2009).

Related Topics: God and Infinity; Mysticism and Rationalism; Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Analytic Jewish Philosophy

References Alston, W.P. (1993) Perceiving God. The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Camp, E. (2006) ‘Metaphor and That Certain Je ne Sais Quoi,’ Philosophical Studies 129: 1–​25. Diamond, C. (1995) The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Diamond, C. (2000) Philosophy and Animal Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Gäb, S. (2020) ‘Languages of Ineffability: The Rediscovery of Apophaticism in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy of Religion’ in S. Hüsch (ed.) Negative Knowledge. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. Gettier, E. L. (1963) ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?,’ Analysis 23: 121–​123. Jonas, S. (2021) ‘Whereof one cannot speak’ in D. & A. Segal (eds.) Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kremer, M. (2001) ‘The Purpose of Tractarian Nonsense,’ Nous 35: 39–​73. Lebens, S. (2014) ‘Why so Negative about Negative Theology? The Search for a Plantinga-​ Proof Apophaticism,’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76: 259–​75. Lebens, S. (2017) ‘Negative Theology as Illuminating and/​or Therapeutic Falsehoods’ in M. Fagenblat (ed.) Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lebens, S. (2020) The Principles of Judaism. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Lebens, S. (2022) ‘Replies to Critics,’ Association for the Philosophy of Judaism, www.the​apj.com/​wp-​ cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2022/​09/​Respon​ses.pdf Lebens, S. (forthcoming) ‘Replies to Critics,’ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Moore, A. W. (2000) Points of View. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, A. W. (2003) ‘Ineffability and Nonsense,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77: 169–​93. Morris, M. and Dodd, J. (2007) ‘Mysticism and Nonsense in the Tractatus,’ European Journal of Philosophy 17: 247–​76.

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The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy Mulhall, S. (2018) The Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense, Philosophy and Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oddie, G. ‘Truthlikeness’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​truthl​ iken​ess/​ Plantinga, A. (2020) Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Popper, K.R. (1962) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge. Popper, K.R. (1972) Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Popper, K.R. (1983) Realism and the Aim of Science. London: Routledge. Priest, P. (forthcoming). The Incredible Ineffability of Being. Scholem, G. (1974) Kabbalah. New York: New American Library. Swinburne, R. (1992) Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Verbin, N. (2011) ‘Wittegenstein and Maimonides on God and the Limits of Language,’ European Journal of Philosophy of Religion 3: 323–​45. Verbin, N. (2020) ‘Embracing paradox: Maimonides, Kierkegaard and on divine transcendence and immanence,’ European Journal of Philosophy of Religion 12: 149–​79.

Further Reading Concerning other examples of analytic philosophers who discuss apophaticism, see (1) Chung, J. N. (2020) ‘Apophatic Language, the Aesthetic and the Sensus Divinitatis,’ Journal of Analytic Theology 8: 100–​ 119; (2) Hewitt, S. (2020) Negative Theology and Philosophical Analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan; (3) Jacobs, J. D. (2015) ‘The Ineffable, Inconceivable, and Incomprehensible God: Fundamentality and Apophatic Theology,’ Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 6: 158–​176; (4) Keller, L. J. (2019) ‘Divine Ineffability and Franciscan Knowledge,’ Res Philosophica 95: 347–​70; (5) Priest, P. (forthcoming 1) God and the Paradox of Ineffability. Concerning other examples of Wittgensteinian philosophers discussing apophaticism, see (1) Kerr, T. (1907) Theology after Wittgenstein. London: Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge; (2) Malcom, N. (1993) Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View. New York: Cornell University Press; (3) Phillips, D.Z. (1993) Wittgenstein and Religion. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Putnam is a prominent example of a philosopher who merges apophaticism, Jewish philosophy and Wittgensteinian themes. In particular, see Putnam, H. (2008) Jewish Philosophy as Guide to Life. Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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3 GOD AND INFINITY Gary Rosenkrantz

Rabbi–​ philosopher Hasdai Crescas (1340–​ 1410) and mathematician–​ philosopher Georg Cantor (1845–​1918) illuminate the relationship between God and infinity. Crescas argues that God has infinitely many positive, infinitely strong, necessary attributes, and defends the possibility of infinite space, time and matter. I use Cantor’s transformative ideas to argue that God knows an absolute infinity of mathematical truths, defending in tandem the possibility of absolute infinities of meters, seconds, grams/​joules and newtons. Further philosophically interesting implications concerning God’s power and goodness are explored.

3.1  Historical Background Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610–​c. 546 BCE) conjectures the cosmos is from an eternally moving, inexhaustible Unbounded, hinting the Unbounded has infinite spatiotemporal extension. Zeno of Elea (5th c. BCE) presumes every segment has a midpoint, entailing no segment is shortest. Hence, motion involves traversing infinitely many segments. Zeno famously argues that because such a traversal is impossible, motion is illusory/​unreal. (Given prevailing theories of space-​time, every motion involves completing infinitely many segment-​traversals.) Aristotle (384–​322 BCE) denies the possibility of an infinite aggregation, an infinitely voluminous body and an infinite space. Such actual infinities would have infinitely many coexisting parts. But Aristotle accepts possibilities of infinite division or expansion over time, so-​called potential infinities. E.g. he believes matter is infinitely divisible. He also accepts a posterior eternity, a never-​completed string of events which has infinite temporal extension, a beginning event but no ending event. Yet, Aristotle accepts an anterior eternity, a completed string of events which has infinite temporal extension, an ending event but no beginning event. (Their completeness leads some philosophers to classify anterior eternities as actual infinities.) Per medieval Aristotelians, e.g., Avicenna (980–​1037), Maimonides (1138–​1204), Aquinas (1225–​1274), space is finite. According to Crescas (1410), space is infinite and metaphysically grounded in God. Crescas defends the possibility of one or more infinitely voluminous bodies against Aristotelian objections, and allows the addition of infinite magnitudes (Rabinovitch 1970: 226–​30). Per Roslyn Weiss, Crescas does not preclude contiguous anterior and pos­ terior eternities throughout which God creates intrinsic good (Crescas 2018: 3–​4).

DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-5

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Crescas finds the contemplation of spatiotemporal enormities edifying. Though, famously, Pascal’s awareness of his minuteness/​evanescence relative to infinite space and time fills him with existential dread (1670). British empiricists are overtly hostile to actual infinities, e.g., Hobbes (1651), Locke (1689), Berkeley (1734) and Hume (1748). Continental rationalists are much friendlier. Descartes, for one, categorizes God as an infinite thinking substance (1641), influencing Spinoza (1677). Spinoza is also influenced by Crescas. Spinoza—​according to many commentators—​asserts that God’s essence involves infinitely many infinite attributes, including infinite extension and thought. However, Spinoza identifies his one substance (his one God) with the universe, departing from Crescas, Descartes and traditional Western theism. But Leibniz, who posits a plurality of simple substances or monads, contends ‘the slightest particle must be seen as a world full of an infinity of different creatures’ (1693: 713). Kant rejects actual infinities of spatiotemporal phenomena (1781). Yet, Bolzano accepts actual infinities of propositions, sets and numbers (1837). Dedekind shows how an irrational number can be represented as an infinite set of rational numbers via a Dedekind cut (1872). Based on Cantor’s ground-​breaking transfinite arithmetic (1883), transfinite numbers enjoy wide acceptance today. Given the infinite progression of natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, …, wherein any natural number, n, has a successor n+​1, Cantor boldly postulates ℵ0 (aleph-​null) as the cardinal number of the infinite set of natural numbers (ℕ). That is, if asked ‘How many members does ℕ have?,’ the answer is ‘ℵO.’ ℵO > n, for any natural number n. Cantor argues that ℵO is the first (and smallest) transfinite cardinal in an infinite series of larger and larger transfinite magnitudes, ℵO, ℵ1, ℵ2, … ℵn, … The indexes 0, 1, 2, … 𝑛, … are ordinal numbers, i.e., first, second, third, … 𝑛-​th, … In laying the foundations of set theory, Cantor explicates addition, multiplication and exponentiation for transfinite cardinals and ordinals. These foundations include his criterion of sameness in cardinality of two sets, namely, the existence of a one-​to-​one correspondence between their respective members. This criterion is intuitive, perspicuous and mathematically fruitful. But consider ℕ, i.e., {1, 2, 3, …}, and {1, 4, 9, …} (𝕊), where 𝕊’s elements are the squares of ℕ’s elements. Cantor’s criterion entails that ℕ and 𝕊 have the same cardinality, surprisingly to many. Galileo employs essentially the same criterion, but finds such entailments troubling, worrying that ℕ’s cardinality is greater than 𝕊’s cardinality because 𝕊 is a proper subset or part of ℕ (1638). Galileo concludes cardinality comparisons can only be made between finite sets. Crescas develops similar views earlier (Rabinovitch 1970: 228). Responding to such worries, Cantor persuasively argues that although a finite set must have greater cardinality than any of its proper parts or subsets, this is not true of an infinite set. Moreover, Cantor demonstrates via his diagonalization argument—​building on Dedekind’s work—​that there are too few natural numbers to pair them one-​to-​one with the real numbers. Therefore, the cardinality of the set of real numbers, ℝ, is greater than ℵO. A set whose cardinality is less than or equal to ℕ’s cardinality is countable; otherwise that set is uncountable. Hence, ℝ is uncountably infinite. Demonstrably, ℝ has the same cardinality as the power set (the set of all subsets) of ℕ, namely, 2ℵ𝟎 . 2ℵ𝟎 ≥ ℵ1. (The controversial Continuum Hypothesis asserts 2ℵ𝟎 =​ℵ1.) According to Cantor, there is no largest transfinite cardinal, and although there are infinitely many such cardinals, there is no cardinal number of them. The early Cantor believes this multiplicity is an absolute infinity in a sui generis non-​arithmetical sense (see Welch and Horsten 2016). Per Cantor, the multiplicity of transfinite cardinal numbers is so large that no larger multiplicity is possible.

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Similarly, Zermelo-​Fraenkel set theory (ZF), and ZFC (ZF +​the axiom of choice), disallow a set containing all transfinite cardinals. It would be too large, its existence paradoxical. ZF allows a proper class of all transfinite cardinals. Proper classes, unlike sets, cannot be proper subsets, and as such belong to a new irreducible ontic category. Within forms of axiomatic set theory attracting significant support, no proper class is demonstrably larger than another. Further, it seems mathematically gratuitous to posit larger ultra-​classes containing proper classes as parts, larger ultra-​ultra-​classes containing ultra-​classes as parts, … Each such collective category categorially differs from its predecessor, much as a proper class categorically differs from a set. Positing such an infinity of collective entities multiplies basic ontic categories beyond all reason. However, philosophers inclined toward positivism or naturalism may argue that we should countenance only those transfinite cardinals needed for prevailing scientific theories. Theories of the space-​time continuum are ontologically committed to sets which have the cardinality of the set of space-​time points in such a continuum (≥ ℵ1). These theories are also ontologically committed to the power set of that latter set—​needed to accommodate continuous and discontinuous linear paths. This power set has the cardinality of the set of mathematical functions from reals to reals. But these scientific theories do not appear to require the existence of any set larger than that power set. So, a positivist or naturalist might conclude that the cardinal number of this power set (≥ ℵ2) is the largest cardinal. Similarly, Quine dismisses magnitudes which exceed the theoretical demands of empirical science, e.g., ‘ℶω and inaccessible numbers,’ as diversions of ‘recreational mathematics’ bereft of ontological import (1986: 400; cf. 1960: 233–​76). Readers unfamiliar with Quine’s examples of scientifically superfluous magnitudes should note that ℶO=​ℵ0, ω is the smallest transfinite ordinal, i.e., ℵO is the ω-​th cardinal, and ℶω is the ω-​th iteration of ℶO’s power set; inaccessible numbers are, roughly, uncountable large cardinals not derivable from smaller cardinals via summation or power set operations. Quine judges that magnitudes exceed the theoretical demands of empirical science if admitting them does not contribute to the simplification of scientific computations and generalizations. Still, he seems (reluctantly) willing to accept an infinite set-​theoretical hierarchy of infinities in which all non-​elementary sets are constructible from more elementary sets in a sense defined by Kurt Gödel (1906–​1978). Quine’s position is more conservative than necessary to avoid known set-​theoretical paradoxes. He sees this position as providing a ‘convenient cut-​off’ limiting the extent of the cumulative set-​theoretical universe. However, when exploring the relationship between God and infinity a more expansive criterion of ontological commitment is appropriate. After all, God—​ as omnipotent and omniscient—​has the knowledge and power to create any number of possible worlds governed by different laws of nature. So, God’s knowledge and power would not be limited by theoretical scientific laws governing the actual world. Thus, the foregoing attempts to restrict the cumulative set-​theoretical hierarchy fail in this context; ℶω and larger magnitudes should not be excluded based on the positivistic or naturalistic arguments described earlier. On natural readings, Crescas, Spinoza and Cantor intimate that we can better understand the character of the Deity by positing an infinity of infinities. Hilbert alludes to Cantor’s theological ideas in his striking declaration supporting set theory against its critics: ‘No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us’ (1926: 170).

3.2 Finitism Crescas defends the possibility of spatiotemporal entities infinite in one dimension or direction and finite or limited in another. Examples include an infinitely long rectilinear object of finite 33

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width and height, a rod extending infinitely westwards and finitely eastwards (or infinitely eastwards and finitely westwards), a temporal series of events extending infinitely backwards and finitely forwards (or infinitely forwards and finitely backwards). But some empiricists forcefully argue that no human conceives of anything infinite. E.g., Hobbes writes: Whatsoever we imagine is finite. Therefore there is no idea or conception of anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive of infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. (1952: 54) An obvious corollary is that none of us conceives of infinite space. These Hobbesian conclusions seem to be based on the following syllogism. (i) Everything we image or perceive is finite. (ii) We conceive of only what we image or perceive. (iii) We conceive of only what is finite. However, in Auguries of Innocence, poet and mystic William Blake (1757–​1827) famously describes perceptions of infinities, contra premise (i). Blake rhapsodizes about seeing a world in a grain of sand, a heaven in a wild flower, about holding infinity in the palm of one’s hand, and experiencing eternity in an hour. Blake’s ecstatic perceptions are reminiscent of Leibnizian monadism described earlier. Blake elaborates in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell—​alluding to Plato (c. 427 BCE–​c. 347 BCE): If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. (1982) However, alleged visions of infinity are unusual and fantastic. Thus, a supporter of premise (i) whose perceptions are normal may rationally doubt premise (i) is disconfirmed by reports of such visions. Still, familiar Cartesian considerations refute premise (ii) of the Hobbesian syllogism. E.g., I conceive of Shape without perceiving or imaging all shapes, and I conceive of a googolplex-​sided regular polygon without perceiving or imaging this colossal number of sides (cf. Descartes on conceiving of the essence of a piece of wax, Descartes on conceiving of a chiliagon, 1641: Meditations 2, 6). The appeal of Hobbesian finitism was also weakened by Torricelli’s discovery of so-​called Gabriel’s horn (1644), a non-​rectilinear infinitely long object of finite width and height. The infinitely long ‘lead-​pipe’ of this horn-​shaped geometrical object asymptotically tapers, entailing that Gabriel’s horn would have finite volume yet infinite surface area. However, some finitists reject the possibility of such a horn, claiming it entails the absurdity that a finite volume of paint can entirely fill Gabriel’s horn without covering its entire inner surface. However, this purported paradox disappears once it is understood that the horn could be entirely filled with paint only if infinitely thinning paint is used. Otherwise the paint-​ flow would stop when it reaches a location in the ever-​tapering ‘lead-​pipe’ too narrow for the paint to pass. So, entirely filling this horn with a finite volume of paint entails covering its entire inner surface. And note that even if infinitely thinning paint were used, it would take an infinite amount of time to entirely fill the horn unless the paint flows with infinite velocity. 34

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Finitists have argued that infinite magnitude is a negative term, not positively definable, and as such, is vacuous. The argument seems unsound: it appears an infinite magnitude is positively definable as a magnitude ≥ 2ℵ0. Relatedly, an infinite set is positively definable as a set such that for every natural number, n, it has a subset of cardinality n. Among those who postulate the existence of more than ℵ0 sets and space-​time positions, some reject the possibility of ℵ0 bodies, arguing that such an actual infinity has paradoxical consequences, usually illustrated with Hilbert’s hypothetical infinite hotel. Hilbert’s Hotel has ℵO single-​occupancy guest rooms. Even when every guest room is currently occupied, a group of ℵO new arrivals can be accommodated without adding rooms, e.g., by assigning the current occupants to the even-​numbered rooms, and the new arrivals to the odd-​numbered rooms. Such housing-​schemes conflict with commonsense expectations. Yet, from Cantor’s perspective, they do not appear to involve a contradiction. From that perspective, a set of rooms of cardinality ℵO evidently has many proper subsets of cardinality ℵO, e.g., the set of even-​numbered rooms, the set of odd-​numbered rooms. Thus, from the vantage of Cantor’s Paradise, the possibility of housing ℵO guests in such ways is only to be expected. Scientific advances predicated on novel concepts often conflict with commonsense intuitions. Cantor’s mathematical breakthroughs are a good example. But the prima facie intrinsic credibility accorded to commonsense intuitions may be defeated by scientific advances. Thus, oddity does not reliably indicate impossibility. The hypothetical occurrences at Hilbert’s Hotel are ‘no odder than the people at the antipodes who used to be thought impossible because they would find it so inconvenient to stand on their heads’ (Russell 1917: 91). Similarly, many are surprised to learn that every finite region of a spatial continuum contains exactly 2O point-​ positions. But this is not an indication such a continuum is impossible. Another consequence of transfinite arithmetic is that for any ordinal β, and any positive integer n, ℵβ × n=​ℵβ. Thus, finite measures of quantities are swamped when quantified by a transfinite magnitude. E.g., ℵO milligrams=​ℵO grams, ℵO nanoseconds=​ℵO millennia, ℵO planck lengths=​ℵO light years. Howsoever surprising, these consequences are innocuous. Crescas, Cantor and Russell powerfully rebut conceptual objections to infinite magnitudes (1410: 30–​92; 1883; 1917: 74–​96).

3.3 God In accord with traditional Judaism, Crescas conceives of God as the greatest being possible. Such a maximally great being is flawless and maximally worthy of worship and reverence. According to the traditional view, God has various awesome great-​making attributes or perfections, including the highest possible moral stature. Notably, only a personal or reflective being can have that moral stature. Some of God’s attributes, e.g., omnipotence, transcend the physical world, i.e., the realm of space-​time entities governed by natural laws. Consistent with these ideas, God is conceived to be simple, spiritual,1 substantial (see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz 2002: 23–​38), and the ultimate creator of all created things. Seemingly, a substance’s attributes are not parts of it, e.g., a car’s color and shape are not parts of it, unlike its tires and steering wheel. So, apparently, there is no bar to God’s exemplifying simplicity and multiple attributes—​as Crescas maintains. It is thought God’s great-​making attributes centrally include necessary existence, eternity, omniscience (or maximal knowledge), omnipotence (or maximal power), moral perfection and incorruptibility. God’s incorruptibility is the impossibility of God’s lacking a great-​making attribute God exemplifies. Maximal power and knowledge are power and knowledge than which none greater is possible. While some conceive of God’s eternity—​God’s lack of temporal limits—​as everlastingness, others conceive of God’s eternity as atemporality. 35

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The characterization of God as a personal being implies God is a concrete entity, not an abstract object. After all, necessarily, a personal being has a mental life and an abstract object does not. Because the concrete/​abstract division is necessarily exclusive and exhaustive, it follows that personal beings—​whether embodied selves or spirits—​are concreta. Hence, God is a concretum, i.e., a spiritual substance (see Rosenkrantz 2009 for an explication of the con­ crete/​abstract division consistent with this conclusion). A spiritual substance is non-​spatial (hence, incorporeal), and capable of consciousness. Nor is it possible that an abstract object acts as an efficient cause. Yet, God, as the creator, acts as an efficient cause. For this reason, too, God should be classified as a concrete individual thing.

3.4  Infinity and God’s Omniscience If God exists outside of time and knows infinitely many truths, God timelessly knows that many truths. If God exists in time and knows infinitely many truths, at every time God knows that many truths. In either case, God has infinitely many coexisting pieces of knowledge. Joshua Hoffman and I argue that God is temporal (2002: 97–​110). I still find those arguments extremely plausible. What is the extent of God’s mathematical knowledge? As Crescas observes, mathematical ignorance on God’s part cannot arise due to God’s weariness, inattentiveness, etc. (Rabinovitch 1970: 228). Given God’s great-​making attributes, God cannot have such defi­ ciencies. Therefore, it is impossible that there is a cardinal number unknown to God, unless it is impossible that there is knowledge of cardinal numbers beyond some upper limit, a specific 𝑛-​th cardinal. Yet, as Crescas suggests, there is no reason to believe that such an upper limit exists (Rabinovitch 1970: 228). Opening the door to transfinite cardinals, including inaccess­ ible numbers, e.g., Mahlo cardinals, ineffable cardinals, Ramsey cardinals, tall cardinals, Woodin cardinals, does not change this assessment. I conclude that God is acquainted with every finite and transfinite cardinal number, that God knows every knowable mathematical truth about each such number—​comprising an actual infinity of coexisting pieces of mathematical knowledge. Because knowledge requires belief, God has an actual infinity of coexisting mathematical beliefs, e.g., God believes 2 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, … ad infinitum. These beliefs are intrinsic (mental) states of God, meaning they would inhere in God even if no other substantial individual existed. For current purposes, I follow Chisholm (1996) in understanding a state of a thing, x, as x’s exemplifying a positive attribute, e.g., God’s state of believing 7 is prime =​God’s exemplifying the attribute of believing 7 is prime. Thus, God’s having infinitely many intrinsic mathematical belief-​states entails that God has infinitely many corresponding positive intrinsic attributes. (Aligning me with Crescas.) States of concrete individual substances are best understood as concreta. After all, such states typically cause other states and abstracta are causally impotent. Since God is a concrete individual substance, I conclude that God’s belief-​states are concreta. Chisholm’s ontology includes individual substances, abstract (sharable) attributes and states. According to other ontologies, (sharable) attributes are eliminable in favor of concrete non-​sharable qualities or tropes. If so, states, which involve abstract attributes, would be eliminated too, and an actual infinity of God’s belief-​states would be eliminable in favor of an actual infinity of God’s belief-​tropes. Accordingly, conclusions about God’s existence entailing the existence of an actual infinity of concrete states would be paraphrased into parallel conclusions about God’s existence entailing the existence of an actual infinity of concrete 36

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tropes. In that eventuality, I would be content to defend those parallel conclusions. Analogous remarks apply if states are eliminable in favor of facts or events. Moreover, as Cantor shows, there are more transfinite cardinals than can be quantified by any transfinite cardinal. Because God’s knowledge of transfinite cardinals must encompass all of them, God knows more mathematical truths about transfinite cardinals—​and therefore has more positive necessary attributes—​than can be quantified by any transfinite cardinal. It follows that God has more beliefs than can be quantified by any transfinite cardinal. Because beliefs are concrete states, the existence of God entails that there are more concrete states than can be quantified by any transfinite cardinal. This multiplicity of God’s belief-​states is an absolute infinity consisting of more concreta than any transfinite cardinal can quantify. Such a multiplicity may be represented as a concrete aggregate composed of concreta (cf. Welch and Horsten 2016), or as an impure proper class (a proper class containing concrete ur-​elements). Finally, knowledge of infinitely many truths does not suffice for omniscience. E.g., a being who knows infinitely many mathematical or set-​theoretical truths, or even all such truths, but is ignorant of the existence of the material world, is not omniscient.

3.5  Infinity and God’s Omnipotence According to Locke: ‘It is Infinity, which joined to our ideas of Existence, Power, Knowledge, & c. makes that complex Idea, whereby we represent to ourselves the best we can, the Supreme Being’. (1689: Bk. II, Ch. 23, ¶ 35) This quotation suggests our idea of God is the conjunction of our ideas of infinite power, infinite knowledge, etc. It further suggests omniscience is definable as infinite knowledge, omnipotence as infinite power, etc. Locke dismisses infinite magnitudes as absurd. He appears to conceive of infinite power negatively as unlimited power. Strictly speaking, such power includes power to bring about or undo necessities, e.g., necessities of logic, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics. Nevertheless, Locke seems not to ascribe this power to God, although Descartes appears to do so.2 Regardless, can Cantor’s ideas help to elucidate the notion of God’s infinite power? A key initial observation is that transfinite cardinals may be used to quantify numbers of powers, e.g., ℵ2 powers, or quantities of energy or force, e.g., ℵO joules or newtons. Accordingly, one way to interpret ‘infinite power’ is as infinitely many powers to bring about states of affairs. There are three options. First, a specific transfinite number of powers. Second, any transfinite number of powers. Third, an absolute infinity of powers. Another way of interpreting ‘infinite power’ is as power to produce an infinite amount of energy or force. Again, there are three options, paralleling the three options just described. First, power to produce a specific transfinite magnitude of joules or newtons. Second, power to produce any transfinite magnitude of joules or newtons. Third, power to produce an absolute infinity of joules or newtons. How large, though, can an infinity of newtons, joules, grams, meters or seconds be? Below I defend the metaphysical possibility of even absolute infinities of these measures. Consider these dual Crescasian spatial/​temporal hypotheticals. (i) Two strings of events exist, one begins now and extends ℵO seconds forwards, the other ends now and extends ℵO seconds backwards. (ii) Two rods abut end-​to-​end, one extends ℵO meters eastwards, the other extends ℵO meters westwards. (Note that ℵO +​ ℵO = ​ℵO.) Because these hypotheticals 37

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appear self-​consistent and mutually coherent, on the face of it they are individually and jointly possible. Thus, a space, 𝔖O, of spatial extension ℵO meters3—​containing mass/​energy of ℵO grams/​ joules—​seems possible. Ditto with respect to a correlated one-​dimensional time 𝒯O of temporal extension ℵO seconds—​also containing that mass/​energy. An infinite amount of energy can cause a commensurate infinite amount of force. For any positive integer n, 𝔖O (𝒯O) contains two points n meters (seconds) apart. But no two points (instants) in 𝔖O (𝒯O) are ≥ ℵO meters (seconds) apart. E.g., 𝒯O cannot accommodate a process, 𝒫, which has beginning and ending times ℵO seconds apart. Similarly, 𝔖O cannot house a rod, ℛ, which has ends ℵO meters apart. Below I defend the neglected idea that ℛ (𝒫) can be accommodated in possible spaces (times) greater than 𝔖O (𝒯O). The actual extent of space and time is a mystery, e.g., time might be finite, time might be infinite. Ditto with respect to space. Per General Relativity, these epistemic possibilities include various spaces of variable local curvature—​depending on mass distributions—​globally approximating infinite Euclidean space, a finite elliptic space or an infinite hyperbolic space. Consistent with these epistemic possibilities, no recognized scientific law limits physically possible amounts of spatial or temporal extension, mass/​energy and force. It may be inferred that no positivistic or naturalistic argument justifies a ‘cut-​off’ capping metaphysically possible numerical magnitudes of meters, seconds, grams/​joules or newtons. Thus, given ℵO can quantify amounts of meters, seconds, grams/​joules or newtons, it seems ℵ1, ℵ2, ℵ3, … ℵn, … can as well. Seemingly, then, there is a progression of greater and richer possible spaces (times) 𝔖O, 𝔖1, 𝔖2, … 𝔖n, … (𝒯O, 𝒯1, 𝒯2, … 𝒯n, …) such that: For any ordinal β, (i) 𝔖β’s (𝒯β’s) extension is ℵβ meters3 (seconds), and (ii) 𝔖β’s (𝒯β’s) mass/​ energy content is ℵβ grams/​joules.

An extension greater than ℵO meters3 (seconds) has every corresponding smaller transfinite extension as a non-​detachable spatial (temporal) part. 𝔖O’s (𝒯O’s) necessary exclusion of two points (instants) ≥ ℵO meters (seconds) apart is paralleled in 𝔖1, 𝔖2, 𝔖3 … 𝔖n, … (𝒯1, 𝒯2, 𝒯3 … 𝒯n, …), viz., no two points (instants) in 𝔖β (𝒯β) are ≥ ℵβ meters (seconds) apart. But there are two points (instants) in 𝔖β+​1 (𝒯β + ​1) which are ℵβ meters (seconds) apart. E.g., there are two points (instants) in 𝔖1(𝒯1) which are ℵO meters (seconds) apart. Accordingly, 𝔖 β + ​1 (𝒯β + ​1) can house a circumscribed ℵβ-​sized figure (process), e.g., 𝔖1(𝒯1) can house ℵO-​sized ℛ (𝒫) described earlier. In 𝔖β + ​1 (𝒯β + ​1), transfinite increments of distance, time, mass/​energy or force between amounts quantified by successive transfinite cardinals ℵβ and ℵβ+​1 are metrically enumerated by the appropriate transfinite ordinals. E.g., in 𝔖1, the incremental distances in meters between ℵ0 and ℵ1 meters are ω + ​1, ω + ​2, ω + ​3, …ω × 2, ω × 2 + ​1, ω × 2 + ​2, …ω × 3, ω × 3 +​1, …ω2, ω2+​1, …ω3, ω3 + ​1, …ωω, ωω + ​1, … (ωω)ω, (ωω)ω + ​1, … ((ωω)ω)ω, …n, … (last viewed 11/​03/​2022). Leibowitz, Aryeh (2009) Hashgachah Pratis: An Exploration of Divine Providence and Free Will. Jerusalem: Targum Press. Lerner, Berel Dov (2009) ‘RaMBaM and Middle Knowledge: A Puzzle in the Lehem Mishneh,’ BBD Journal of Torah and Scholarship 21: 75–​86. Maimonides, Moses (1912) The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics edited, annotated, and translated by Joseph I. Gorfinkle. NY: Columbia University Press. Maimonides, Moses (1919) The Guide for the Perplexed 2nd Edition, translated by M. Friedländer. London: George Routledge & Sons. Maimonides, Moses (1965) Mishneh Torah: The Book of Knowledge, translated by Moses Hyamson. Jerusalem, Israel: Boys Town Jerusalem Publishers. Pike, Nelson (1965) ‘Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action,’ The Philosophical Review 74: 27–​46. Rudavsky, Tamar (1983) ‘Divine Omniscience and Future Contingents in Gersonides,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 21: 513–​36. Sacks, Jonothan (1982) The Meaning of Freedom. London: Jewish Youth Study Groups. Segal, Aaron (2022) ‘Crescas, Hard Determinism, and the Need for a Torah,’ unpublished manuscript. Swenson, Philip (2016) ‘Ability, Foreknowledge, and Explanatory Dependence,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94: 658–​71. Todd, Patrick (2021) The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Tuggy, Dale (2007) ‘Three Roads to Open Theism,’ Faith and Philosophy 24: 28–​51. Zimmerman, Dean (2012) ‘The Providential Usefulness of “Simple Foreknowledge”,’ Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind: New Essays on the Philosophy of Alvin Plantinga, pp. 174–​202. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Further Reading A useful collection, containing a number of articles pertaining to the issues discussed here from the perspective of Jewish philosophy is M. Kellner and C. Manekin (eds.), Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives (College Park: University Press of Maryland, 1997). For analysis and later development of a number of views discussed in this chapter, see William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), and Linda Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). For a contemporary development of the Boethian view, see Stump and Kretzmann (1981) ‘Eternity,’ The Journal of Philosophy 78: 429–​58. For a defense of open theism (as well as critiques of some of the other views in this chapter), see Peter Van Inwagen ‘What Does an Omniscient Being Know about the Future?’ in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Volume 1, edited by Jonathan L. Kvanvig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 216–​30.

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Free Will and Providence A helpful overview of Molinism can be found in Freddoso’s introduction to his edition of Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the “Concordia” translated by Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). For more detailed discussion of Molinism, see Thomas P. Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

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8 REVELATION Sam Fleischacker

8.1  Introduction: Revelation in the Tanakh Revelation encompasses every way by which God makes Godself known to human beings. From its very inception, the Jewish tradition has maintained different views over how that encounter might occur, dividing especially sharply over whether it should be understood as a sensory or an intellectual process. James Kugel identifies two ways to understand ‘encountering God’ already in the Bible. The sensory one he calls, following Johannes Lindblom, ‘the revelatory state of mind.’ ‘Typical of the revelatory state of mind,’ writes Lindblom, ‘is the feeling of being under an influence external to the self, a … consciousness of hearing words and seeing visions which do not come from the self, but from the invisible divine world, into which, in the moment of revelation, an entrance has been granted’ (as quoted in Kugel 2017: 18, 127). Kugel notes that Biblical passages in which such a state is said to occur characteristically feature sounds or sights that initially confuse the person experiencing them (a weirdly burning bush, angels who vanish before Gideon’s and Manoah’s eyes), followed by a specific divine charge, followed in turn by a ‘relatively mild surprise’ once the protagonist realizes that he or she has been spoken to by God. He adds that much the same pattern can be found in Homer and Virgil: some sort of odd and initially confusing sensory experience turns out to be a vehicle by which ‘the invisible divine world’ makes contact with us (Kugel 2017: 16–​18). And while, in both the Bible and other Mediterranean literature, such encounters were thought to occur even to ordinary people, they are especially associated with charismatic figures like the prophets, whose personality, or arresting manner, seemed to render them especially well-​suited for channeling God’s voice. But God was also thought to appear via wisdom: an understanding of the course of history as guided by God even if no event suggests that an ‘invisible world’ has broken into our visible, quotidian one. The description of various events in the Joseph story as having been carried out by God, even though there is nothing supernatural about them (e.g., Genesis 45:8), are paradigm examples of this sort of thing, says Kugel, as are the repeated claims in Psalms and Proverbs to the effect that God has a plan for human history that supersedes all our plans and ‘will stand forever’ (e.g., Psalms 33:11, Proverbs 19:21) (see Kugel 2017: Ch. 2). Scholars speak also of a ‘wisdom edition’ of Deuteronomy (see Van der Toorn 2007: 162–​6), which added to earlier versions of the text passages such as the one that describes the laws 94

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of the Torah as evidence of Israel’s wisdom and discernment (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:6–​8). In the Joseph story especially, context suggests that ‘wisdom’ involves a marriage of intellectual and moral virtues, as it does for Plato and Aristotle. For this strand of Biblical literature, one who bends a virtue-​attuned intellect to the universe will see that virtue is rewarded and vice punished in it, at least over the long term, and that it is therefore run by a rational and benevolent Being. And parallels to this view can also be found across the ancient Mediterranean. Many scholars see a struggle between these two notions of revelation within the Torah’s account of what took place at Sinai (see, for instance, Sommer 2015: 65), and perhaps for that reason, much of the later Jewish tradition consists in a debate between the two. Let’s call the first of them ‘sensory’ or ‘embodied’ revelation. It involves contact with a divine world through our senses, even if that world is thought to be invisible, and implies that the God (god?) so revealed is somehow embodied, at least in the sense of being more present in some locations in space and time than in others. We may call the second ‘rational’ or ‘intellectual’ revelation. It is accessed through our intellect or reason, not our senses, and it can do without the hypothesis that God is in any way embodied—​may indeed push toward the thought that God must not be embodied, nor present in or to any one place or thing more than to other places or things, since He/​She/​It equally controls all things. It’s worth noting that revelation by way of the Torah stands somewhat outside both categories. On the one hand, Deuteronomy severely circumscribes the degree to which one should take ecstatic visions, or the charismatic people who purport to have such visions, as speaking for God, ruling out in particular seeming visions from God that contradict the Torah (Deuteronomy 13). On the other hand, the Torah presents itself implicitly, at least, as having authority over the dictates of reason alone; certainly Jews are not supposed to dismiss its laws in the name of reason. So revelation by way of a text, the revelation that Jews have made central to their lives by understanding God’s word to be encapsulated in the Torah, clips the wings of both the oracular forms of religious practice that proliferated among pre-​exilic Israelites—​ that may indeed have been one purpose of the canonization of the Torah—​and the nascent wisdom traditions of ancient Israel, which might otherwise have bloomed into philosophical communities like those of the Stoics, Epicureans or neo-​Platonists. This, I shall suggest here, is all to the good. For both the sensory and the intellectual conceptions of revelation have grave problems, from the perspective of Jewish theology. The first can be and often has been accused of bordering on idolatry: presupposing a god who is not different in kind from pagan gods, located within the universe rather than beyond it, and making Him-​or Herself known, somewhat capriciously, to special individuals at special places and times, rather than to every human being (every virtuous human being who uses their reason appropriately, at least) at all places and times. The second can be and has been accused of verging on deism or even atheism: presupposing a God who is so distant from us, so removed from having any personal relationship with us, that it is hard to see how He/​ She/​It could possibly intervene in history, why He/​She/​It could possibly want us to fulfill any commands other than the moral ones that may be built into reason, and how or why we could possibly love Him/​Her/​It.

8.2  Revelation in the Talmud Perhaps for these reasons, perhaps for other reasons—​they don’t say—​the rabbis of the Talmud tend largely to steer clear of both the sensory and the intellectual conception of revelation. On the one hand, they are wary of charismatic figures (see, for instance, the stories about Honi ha-​Me’agel, at bTa’anit 19a, or R. Eliezer at bBabaMetzia 59a-​b), and derive their conclusions

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about how Jews should live largely via interpretation of the Torah. On the other hand, they are wary of ‘Greek wisdom’ (bSotah 49b, bBabaKamma 82b and bMenaḥot 64b, 99b), and eschew philosophical methods that purport to rely on reason without adverting to verses from the Torah. We might say that they give hermeneutics priority over both religious experience and philosophy—​following, in this, the implicit mandate of the Torah itself—​and give the Torah to which their hermeneutics is devoted priority, as a source of revelation, over both prophets and the wise. In any case, they start from the presupposition that the Torah is God’s word to the Jewish people, without trying to give that presupposition empirical or rational grounding. They do not, that is, provide a philosophical foundation even for their inclination to eschew philosophy, but work out from a basic, ungrounded commitment to the revelatory status of the Torah: a faith that the Torah is God’s word. This represents an important third alternative to both the sensory and the intellectual notions of revelation; we will return to it in the conclusion of this chapter.

8.3  Revelation in Medieval Jewish Philosophy The rabbis of the Talmudic period precede the rise of Jewish philosophy, in any strict sense of that word (Philo was mostly unknown to other Jews). Once a Jewish philosophical tradition did get going, one of its central goals was to find grounds for regarding the Torah as the word of God. And like the Bible and the early rabbis, it has for centuries been sharply divided over whether to favor the sensory or the intellectual account of revelation. The intellectual approach can be found in Saadia Gaon, and is developed rigorously by Maimonides. Maimonides is popularly known for saying, in his Mishneh Torah and Epistle to Yemen, that the entire Jewish people ‘saw with our own eyes, and heard with our own ears’ what happened at Sinai (Maimonides [1981]: VIII.1; Maimonides [1985]: 104, 113). That he cannot possibly mean these words literally is however perfectly clear as soon as one glances back at earlier portions even of the Mishneh Torah, where the notion that God might be seen or heard is rejected as idolatry, and the austere conception of God that Maimonides develops in the Guide, as a Being Who does not undergo change (Guide Book I, ­chapters 11 and 52)—​ does not, therefore, enter into history—​rules out such a view entirely. Instead, by saying that the Jewish people perceived what happened at Sinai, Maimonides must mean that they intellectually perceived the truth of Moses’ prophecy. Which fits nicely with Maimonides’ account of what prophecy is. Prophecy requires a fully developed reason, for Maimonides—​trained in the abstract speculative thinking (philosophy) that enables one to distinguish the true God from corporeal, idolatrous simulacra of God—​conjoined with virtues that ensure that the person uses his intellectual skills only to serve others, not to satisfy his material desires, or his lust for fame or power (Guide Book II, ­chapter 36). If these two conditions are met, then the person becomes capable of perceiving images, in a vision or dream, that can be used to guide his own or other people’s lives toward the better service of God. In the case of Moses, the greatest of all prophets for Maimonides, images were not even necessary, and the guidance he provided was for the entire Jewish people, in his own time and ever after: a set of laws that, unlike every other legal system, in Maimonides’ opinion, looks out fully for the security and well-​being of the Israelite community while at the same time urging every member of that community toward as much of a proper understanding of God as he or she is capable of achieving. It follows that the proof that Moses provided us with the fullest revelation of what God wants of us must lie in showing that the law he gave us is indeed supremely good: which is precisely what Maimonides goes on to argue in the ‘reasons for the commandments’ chapters of Part III of his Guide. And it is in intellectually perceiving the goodness of these aspects of

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the Torah—​whether by way of Part III of the Guide or simply by studying the Torah and its commentaries and reflecting on them philosophically—​that, for Maimonides, we ‘see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears’ that Moses’ prophecy is true. Of course, the danger of this approach is that the claim that the Torah represents divine law becomes unstable (compare Rynhold 2005: 37–​47). Especially if we are not persuaded by the reasons that Maimonides gives for the Torah’s laws—​and readers often find this section of the Guide unconvincing—​why not suppose that a better legal code than the one in the Torah is possible? Once the divinity of the Torah becomes a function of its content rather than its provenance, the way seems all too readily open toward replacing it with a different moral and spiritual system. In part for reasons of this sort, many Jewish thinkers have shied away from Maimonides’ intellectualism and opted for a version of the ‘sensory’ or ‘embodied’ conception of revelation. That conception is particularly well represented in Yehudah Halevi, and the many figures he influenced, from Nahmanides through the Zoharic kabbalists to Hasdai Crescas. Halevi wrote a century before Maimonides but he reads as though his purpose was to combat Maimonides’ rationalism; he was certainly writing against the rationalism of Maimonides’ predecessor Saadia. For Halevi, philosophy breeds arrogance, excessive abstraction and an amoral, loveless religion (see Gottlieb 2009: 126–​31), and the attempt to approach God through it is misguided; he turns to revelation as an alternative to philosophy. Defying, then, the objections that philosophers may raise to such a view, he sees revelation as consisting of precisely the sensory event described in the Torah as happening at Sinai. ‘We do not know how the [divine] intention became corporealized and the speech evolved which struck our ear,’ he says (Halevi 1964: I.89), but we do know that this happened, and that it signified the appearance of God’s word to us. And in accordance with this sensory, embodied conception of revelation, Halevi posits a far more personal, human-​like God than the God of Maimonides: a God Who intervenes frequently in history, gives the gift of prophecy to whom He wishes, and happens to love the people of Israel more than other peoples. The danger that this conception of God may border on idolatry, let alone its potential ethical problems, seem not to bother Halevi: or else he sets these issues aside in the name of his broader campaign to replace the entire approach to God that begins from philosophy with more personal ways of thinking. In addition, he believes that anyone who adopts a purely intellectual approach to God runs the risk of projecting his own beliefs or fantasies onto what he takes God to have said. A sensory event, coming to us from outside our minds, is necessary to assure us that we are truly hearing from God (see Kreisel 2001:112).

8.4  Revelation in Modern Jewish Philosophy In modern Jewish philosophy, we find the intellectualist and sensory poles of revelation nicely represented by Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig. For Cohen, God is revealed in our reason—​indeed our reason is itself a revelation of God. The ‘most general sense of revelation,’ Cohen points out, is ‘that God comes into relation with man’ (Cohen 1995: 71). But since reason ‘constitutes God’s own divine essence,’ our capacity for reasoning is precisely what establishes a relation between God and us—​what enables us to be the image of God (Cohen 1971: 132–​3), and to become aware of God. Cohen understands ‘creation’ to be the fact that God, as pure being, grounds the universe of becoming: of things that pass from non-​being into being and back into non-​being again. Revelation is then just one aspect of that creation: the aspect by which our reasoning, inept or inadequate as it often is, is grounded in the absolute, perfect reasoning of God.

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Cohen is also a consummate Kantian who believes that morality is grounded in reason. So he sees revelation as the ‘wellspring’ of human morality (Cohen 1971: 99) as well as of our theoretical reasoning. Indeed, he sees it as centrally a matter of morality. It makes sense for him, therefore, that the Ten Commandments should be a paradigm of revelation, and that Shabbat—​which Cohen understands as signifying the ‘liberation of slave and hireling from uninterrupted labour’ (Cohen’s socialist sympathies should be borne in mind here)—​should ‘occup[y]‌the very center of this quintessence of moral precepts.’ (Cohen 1971: 99). At the same time, it is important to Cohen that the story of Sinai not be regarded as the only revelation. ‘Is not the whole Torah a revelation?’ he asks (Cohen 1995: 73), and goes on to argue that Deuteronomy, with its less sensory conception of God’s appearance at Sinai, its account of Moses as a flawed and temporary leader (Cohen 1995: 76–​7) and its movement away from the historical fact of Sinai toward a notion that all Jews, even in later generations, are part of a covenant with God (Deuteronomy 5:3), improves on the Sinai story as it appears in Exodus. More generally, Cohen sees the entire Hebrew Bible, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as developing the moral elements of the Torah. In the book of Ezekiel, he thinks, the Bible indeed adds a moral element that Kant never grasped: the notion of the ‘fellow human being’ (Mitmensch) as opposed to the mere ‘next human being’ (Nebenmensch; Cohen 1995: 137)—​ someone with whom I share a social world, and for whom I should therefore care, rather than simply living ‘next to’ him or her. Cohen thought this idea was particularly important if we are to recognize the humanity of the poor. He also saw later Jewish writings, from the Talmud to Jewish philosophy and liturgy, as further developing the moral insights of the Bible. There is thus a Hegelian dimension to his conception of reason: reason unveils its full contents only over time, by way of how we react to historical events, or how one period looks back on, and preserves but also corrects, the ideas of an earlier period. Revelation then consists in the entire historical unfolding of reason, although Cohen thinks that a moral core to this process can be discerned throughout, and used to sift out what truly belongs to reason from the errors and contingent beliefs that our tradition has also accumulated. There are strong affinities between Cohen’s and Maimonides’ accounts of revelation. Like Maimonides, Cohen is concerned to fend off ‘the danger of a material conception of God’ that he sees as lurking in the story of Sinai; like Maimonides, he insists therefore that the ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ attributed to the Israelites there must be understood as a rational and moral understanding of what God wants of us (see Cohen 1995: 73–​4, 77). Like Maimonides, Cohen sees what is divine in the Torah as the goodness of (some of) its laws. And like Maimonides, Cohen is open to the challenge that the Torah, as he understands it, may not be the only or best source of revelation. Rosenzweig bears much the same relationship to Cohen that Halevi bears to Saadia. (Rosenzweig was a great admirer of Halevi, publishing a volume of translations and commentary on the latter’s poetry.) He is said to have been profoundly influenced by Cohen’s Religion of Reason, a draft of which he fished from the wastebasket when visiting Cohen one day (see Franks and Morgan 2000: 84–​5; or Moses 1992: 47 for a more dignified account of how Rosenzweig came to acquire this manuscript), and his articulation of Judaism in his Star of Redemption follows the structure of Cohen’s book: giving a philosophical reconstruction of creation, revelation and redemption and then trying to fit that reconstruction together with passages from the Bible and rabbinic sources. Moreover, for Rosenzweig as for Cohen revelation is a continuation of creation—​both are modes of God’s coming into relation with God’s creatures, although revelation is more explicitly that than creation (Rosenzweig 2005: 171–​2, 174). But there the resemblance ends, as far as revelation is concerned.1 Revelation for Rosenzweig is an expression of God’s love for humanity, not of God’s reason, and occurs by way of a 98

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personal, I–​Thou encounter with God, not by way of rational insight. As he does throughout the Star, Rosenzweig asserts these points rather than arguing for them, but he also weaves them into a tapestry of allusions by which they become a plausible interpretation of Jewish teachings. The Star begins, as Halevi does, from a critique of the very methods of philosophy—​ construed, mostly, as the methods of Kant and Hegel—​and presents some sort of experience as instead the medium in which God must appear to us, if God appears to us at all. Rosenzweig says in ‘The New Thinking,’ a later essay which he describes as a belated ‘foreword’ to the Star, that when we try directly to comprehend God, ‘God conceals Himself, the human, our self, closes itself up, and the world becomes a visible riddle. Only in their relations—​only as creation, revelation and redemption—​do they open themselves up.’ (Franks and Morgan 2000: 125; the claim that this essay is a foreword to the Star appears at 109). Only when we turn away from philosophical attempts to grasp God, and instead allow our experience to appear to us as a relationship among God, ourselves and the world, can we encounter God. So revelation emphatically does not consist in Kantian reasoning, whether morally informed or not. Rather, it consists in an experienced moment of connection between us and God. As Rosenzweig puts it in his comments on Halevi’s poetry: ‘God reveals in revelation only just this—​revelation. In other words: he reveals always only Himself to the human … Whatever does not follow immediately from this bond established here between God and human, whatever cannot verify its unmediatedness to this bond, does not belong in it’ (Galli 1995: 187–​8; compare Rosenzweig 2005: 174). Or again, in a letter to Martin Buber: ‘[R]‌evelation is cer­ tainly not law-​giving. It is only this: Revelation. The primary content of revelation is revelation itself. “He came down” [on Sinai]—​this already concludes the revelation; “He spoke” is the beginning of interpretation, and certainly “I am.” ’ (Rosenzweig 1955: 118). But what does this wordless experience of God have to do with what the Jewish tradition calls ‘revelation’? What does it have to do with the giving of the Torah? I noted earlier that Rosenzweig places his philosophical reconstructions of religious concepts within a tapestry of textual allusions. Part II, Book II of the Star, which deals with revelation, begins with references to the Song of Songs (Rosenzweig 2005: 169), moves from there to an invocation of midrashim according to which the most important word of the Ten Commandments is the ‘I’ (anokhi) with which they open (187, 192, 216; compare the Yalkut Shimoni on Exodus 20:2 and b. Shabbat 105a), and ties these things together (Rosenzweig 2005: 190, 192) with the claim that the one command that the ‘I’ of God can give us, in silently appearing to us as a Being who loves us, is ‘Love me’: the command, in Deuteronomy 6, that immediately follows the Shema. This is a marvelously apt set of prooftexts. There is an old and well-​known midrash according to which the Song of Songs was written as a key to the comprehension of the rest of the Torah (Song of Songs Rabbah 1:8)—​a teaching that suggests, given rabbinic readings of the Song, that the Torah is a love song between God and Israel; the midrash about anokhi being crucial to Sinai fits nicely with Rosenzweig’s claim that revelation consists simply in an experience of God’s personal presence; and the idea that the one command that follows from this experience is a call to love God not only follows nicely from the previous two points, but is enshrined in the one text from the Torah that Jews have made a required part of their daily liturgy. Far-​fetched as Rosenzweig’s existentialist reading of revelation at first appears, therefore, it is integrated with core elements of the Jewish tradition. That said, it is very unclear what constitutes an experiential encounter with God, for Rosenzweig. If the experience Rosenzweig is talking about has nothing to do with what is supposed to have happened at Sinai but instead can occur at any and every moment (every ‘today’: Star 191–​2), then what marks it as an experience of God at all? Rosenzweig was expansive in what he allowed to be a revelation. Famously, the Yom Kippur experience that led him to re-​embrace his Judaism instead of converting to Christianity seems for him to 99

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have been a revelation—​precisely the encounter with God, presumably, that inspired the idea of encounter that he uses in the Star—​but he also at one point calls the First World War ‘a revealing experience for mankind’: indeed an experience ‘no different from the Revelation at Sinai’ (Galli 1995: 188). But how can that horrific, pointless bloodbath have revealed to us a God who loves us and calls on us to love Him? Or does everything that leads us to feel either joyous or terrified count as revelation, for Rosenzweig? Perhaps even this is too limited: perhaps all experience, every moment of our lives, can be counted as revelation, if we only see it in the right way. But then revelation would seem unable to play any distinctive role in our lives. Certainly it would be odd to attribute any distinctive religious content to it, to interpret it as teaching us anything specific about God: including that God commands us to love Him.

8.5  Revelation In Contemporary Jewish Thought When we come to the present day, we find on the one hand an affirmation of quite a literal account of Sinai, with God appearing in a great voice before the whole Israelite people, in most of the Orthodox world, while progressive Jewish communities are divided between those who reject the notion of revelation altogether, seeing the Torah instead as a purely human product, and those who endorse a version of the Cohenian or Rosenzweigian conception of revelation. By far the majority of the latter follow Rosenzweig rather than Cohen. Eugene Borowitz’s (1968) remark that ‘there are no [thoroughgoing] rationalists among liberal Jewish theologians today’ (Borowitz 1968: 5) was correct for his own time and has remained true ever since. Accordingly, instead of construing revelation as instantiated in our moral reasoning, a view by which some sort of wordless encounter between the Jewish people and God gave rise to the sacred literature of the Jews—​which amounts to an earnest but flawed and incomplete attempt to interpret that experience—​has been the dominant way by which progressive Jews understand revelation. (In addition to Rosenzweig, the main figure invoked in support of such a view is Abraham Joshua Heschel, who famously maintained that revelation itself was an ineffable experience and that the Bible, construed ‘as a report about revelation,’ is entirely a ‘midrash’ (Heschel 1955: 184–​5). This approach has been useful to Jews who want to argue for halakhic change, or indeed a wholesale replacement of traditional Jewish practices with new ones better suited to the modern day. If the true revelation is a silent encounter with God, while the rest of our tradition is a human interpretation of that encounter, why should modern human beings not interpret that encounter in new ways? As the Reform rabbi Gunther Plaut says, after explicitly invoking Rosenzweig on revelation, ‘what I, listening for [God’s] voice [in Jewish law], can hear as being addressed to me … today is not always what I heard yesterday, and tomorrow may demand new mitzvot, for I may be capable of new insights, a wider reach’ (Plaut 2004: 167). This approach has been developed in particularly rich ways by fem­ inist theologians, seeking to overhaul the thoroughly sexist system that they see in traditional halakhah (see Plaskow 1991; and Adler 1998). But there are deep problems with the Rosenzweigian view, as regards both its cogency and its suitedness to the Jewish tradition. In the first place, why suppose that it makes any more sense for God to ‘encounter’ human beings than for God to speak? It is certainly true that, on the perfect Being theology that Maimonides and other rationalists employ, God cannot speak. That is not just because God has no bodily organs, however, but because God cannot change—​a point that Maimonides emphasizes. But if God cannot change, then God cannot appear here at one time, there at another time—​cannot be ‘encountered’ at specific historical moments at all. Rather, if we 100

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want to speak of ‘encountering’ God (Maimonides probably would not want to do that), we will need to say that God can be encountered at every time and place. So we can be pantheists, maintaining that God is present in every moment and place in the universe, or rationalists of a Maimonidean or Cohenian variety, believing that we can have some sort of access to an eternal, transcendent God by way of our reason. But we will be unable to make sense of a God Who enters into history in any way, including via the mystical or existentialist encounters beloved of Rosenzweig and such fore-​runners of his as Halevi. And if, like Halevi and Rosenzweig, we want for that reason to reject the philosophical stance that demands that we stick to perfect Being theology—​positing perhaps, like Kierkegaard (another of Rosenzweig’s fore-​runners), that God must appear to us personally, historically, if we are to love God, and that the impossibility of a perfect Being entering history is simply a ‘paradox’ from which a faith in God can begin—​then we might as well also reject the dogma of a God Who cannot speak. For a God Who can appear to us in history is a God Who can appear to us via a voice, or other means of communication. Nor need this voice be anything supernatural. It is part of a traditional Jewish faith that God has created our voices, after all, and the voices of all other human beings—​including the voices, or pen, of J, E, P and D. Why should God not speak to us through one or more of these people? The doctrine that it is impossible for God to speak, on which progressive Jews insist nowadays, is overwrought, and Rosenzweigian progressivists, who want God to be able to encounter us in history, cannot afford to insist on it without undermining their own views. Relatedly, we might ask: what exactly is supposed to count as the ‘encounter’ that the Rosenzweigians posit? And what criteria are supposed to distinguish it from an illusion, a fantasy, that God is present, including the sorts of dangerous illusions and fantasies that inspire destructive or self-​destructive behavior? Cohen could at least use Kantian moral principles to distinguish between genuine and illusory revelation—​but Rosenzweig and his followers are concerned precisely to jettison this rationalistic aspect of Cohen’s thought. And Rosenzweig can be disturbingly amoral in what he counts as revelation: as we saw earlier, at one point he describes the First World War that way (Galli 1995: 188). Perhaps he meant that God is present in all events that severely shake up our lives, whether in a joyous or horrifying way, but even then: why should God not also be present in the banal? Can the Creator of the entire universe possibly be absent from that? Surely such a Being, if present at all, must be present in all events … In any case, Rosenzweig did not explain what would render certain events, or our responses to them, especially conducive to an awareness of God’s presence. This is an issue that becomes acute once we apply the Rosenzweigian framework to ancient Israelite history as modern scholars have reconstructed it. Once we strip away the story of a mass exodus of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and with it the likelihood that anything much like Sinai ever occurred, once we accept in addition that before the Babylonian exile, ancient Israelites were mostly polytheists, or at best henotheists, what is left to suggest a transformative encounter with God? The civil wars that presumably lie behind the stories of Judges and Samuel and Kings? The fact that Israel was vanquished by Assyria and Judea by Babylonia in the 8th and 6th centuries? (If the First World War was a ‘revelation,’ maybe these military losses were as well?) The return of a trickle of exiles to Judea under the Persians? None of these events seems especially wondrous—​certainly not more so than the highlights of the history of Persia and Greece and Rome, which few Jewish thinkers want to regard as an encounter with God. And if there is any aspect of Jewish history that might be wondrous, awe-​inspiring—​ numinous—​enough to suggest an extraordinary appearance of God, it is the canonization of the Torah, and the stunningly creative hermeneutic tradition, and beautiful set of practices, that resulted from that canonization. If Jews have encountered God at all, in the Rosenzweigian 101

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sense that is supposed to amount to revelation, it is in and through the Torah: in the sacralizing of a text that has more than anything else come to define who Jews are and what they believe. But then we are back to a revelation that is thoroughly verbal, not silent. That should be a welcome conclusion. Silent (wordless) encounter theology is deeply unsuited to a religion, like Judaism, that is focused on narrative and law. If one were looking for a religious tradition that valorizes silence, and views reality, or the most significant elements of reality, as transcending language, one might turn to the Tao te Ching, the very opening of which runs: ‘A way that can be walked is not The Way [tao]/​A name than can be named is not The Name/​Tao is both Named and Nameless/​As Nameless, it is the origin of all things/​ As Named, it is the mother of all things’ (as translated in Star 2001). Madhyamika Buddhism is also suited to such a skeptical view of language, as is much Christian mysticism. But the Torah betrays no hint of the idea that we must transcend language to appreciate God—​on the contrary, its God creates the world with language—​and the tradition that comes out of it has rarely gone in that direction either.2 One reason for that is the centrality of law to Judaism. Law is a thoroughly linguistic phenomenon: without language, there could be no commands or commanders, nor any principles to uphold or violate. Rosenzweig himself had trouble making sense of how law arises from revelation. (He introduced a distinction between ‘command,’ which supposedly follows from revelation, and ‘law,’ which does not. But that does not help: commands too depend upon language.) And his followers have done no better.

8.6  Revelation Going Forward—​A Proposal Which brings us back to a re-​construal of the Rosenzweigian project that would enable it to fit a quite traditional conception of Judaism. Suppose we drop the idea that God must be encountered in silence. Since the starting point of religion is for the Rosenzweigian supposed to be a matter of faith rather than philosophical argument, and since it is supposed to be something that arises from an experience that Jews have of a personal God, why not say that the origin or fulcrum of the Jewish tradition is a faith that the Torah is divine, that God speaks to us in and through it? We need not add that the Torah was written by Moses or given at Sinai, let alone try to provide historical evidence for such a claim; we need simply to affirm the divinity of the Torah regardless of how it was produced. Perhaps God spoke through J, E, P and D. Perhaps we should instead regard all such sources as purely secular until they were canonized as ‘the Torah’: when God entered into them. How God can communicate with human beings is a mystery in any case—​that God can communicate with human beings is a paradox, as Kierkegaard taught us—​so we should not expect any good explanation of the ‘mechanics’ of this process. All we need to say is that Jews experience God’s presence primarily when they study Torah, and hear it read in synagogue, and carry out the practices it entails. It is a mistake to look for an encounter of Jews with God that lies behind the Torah and that the Torah imperfectly captures. Rather, for most Jews over the past two and a half thousand years, and for the Jewish people as a whole, the Torah itself is the prime site for such an encounter. It defines, indeed, what Jews count as an encounter with God at all. If we construe revelation in this way, moreover, we can connect ourselves up with the approach to the Torah that I attributed earlier to the rabbis of the Talmud. For what I am recommending amounts to nothing more than a willingness to start our religious commitment from a belief that the Torah is God’s word, without trying to look behind that claim for empirical evidence or rational arguments that would ground it. Given the problems we have seen with both empirical (sensory) and rationalist conceptions of revelation, this approach has obvious attractions. In addition, the idea that our various ways of knowing begin from beliefs that we cannot fully defend has a great deal of currency among present-​day epistemologists. 102

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The hunt for ‘self-​evident’ rational principles, or a basic level of sense-​data, to which all our theories can be accountable, has been largely given up as hopeless, even unintelligible, since the mid-​20th century, and it is now widely believed that we not only do but must carry out our modes of justification from beliefs that are not fully justified, even if we can at other times investigate these latter beliefs in turn. (For one defense of such a position, see Wittgenstein 1969.) In this context, while we need to find some reasons for our trust in the Torah as God’s word—​ethical reasons, for instance, showing how a belief in God may be reasonable at all, and where and why it might reasonably be accompanied by a ‘leap of faith’ that a particular event or person or text manifests God’s presence—​we need not expect to find an argument or body of evidence that is more firmly grounded than our trust in the Torah itself, as a basis for that trust. Indeed, a model for the approach I am recommending can be found in the work of the prominent epistemologist, and devoutly Christian philosopher, William Alston, who argues that knowledge in general proceeds via a variety of ‘doxastic practices’—​sense perception, memory, introspection, deductive and inductive reasoning—​none of which can be further grounded without circularity, and submits that what he calls ‘Christian mystical perception’ (‘CMP’) is in no worse shape than these other modes of knowing. Alston does think that doxastic practices need to meet certain conditions for us reasonably to rely on them: they must for instance (a) contain criteria for distinguishing between veridical and non-​veridical experiences or inferences, (b) be taught in and sustained by a community, (c) help shape the actions of the people in that community and (d) be integrated with sense perception, inference and our other modes of knowing. But many Christian mystics submit their visions to correction by others, recognize that their content must fit in with the tradition of other such visions and may be re-​interpreted by others in their community in light of that tradition, employ their visions to inform their own actions and those of others, draw reasonable inferences from their visions, and integrate their visions with what they know by way of sense-​perception, inference, introspection, etc. So Christian mystics who do all of these things—​who participate in an established practice of mystical perception—​have every reason, Alston says, to regard their mystical practice as a form of knowledge (see Alston 1995: Chs. 4–​6; and for a use of Alston in a Jewish context, Fisher 2012: Ch. 2). I propose that what we might call ‘Jewish Torah-​based interpretation’ (JTI)—​the midrashic practices on which Jewish interpretations of the Torah, for both homiletic and halakhic purposes, rely—​can be defended in a similar way. JTI is a doxastic practice rooted in a community; it contains within itself standards for sifting out good from bad interpretations (although the strictness of these standards varies, depending upon whether an interpretation is offered within a halakhic or a purely homiletic context); it profoundly shapes the actions of members of the communities that engage in it; and it is—​often, anyway, and always should be—​integrated with the secular sensory, rational, evaluative and other epistemic practices in which Jews engage. Alston notes that every doxastic practice has distinctive presuppositions (Alston 1995: 164, 167–​8)—​that is one reason why there is no practice-​independent kind of knowledge on which they can all be grounded—​and the distinctive presupposition of JTI is that the Torah comes, wholly, from God: that it is God’s revelation to us. I stress: this is a presupposition of the Jewish doxastic practice I have been describing, not something to be further defended with empirical evidence or ethical reasoning. But this very cutting off of further defense for the presupposition also entails that it need not be undermined by the historical and moral arguments that modern critics, treating the Torah as a largely or purely human product, have brought against it. To be sure, those criticisms need a response, and one that allows JTI to cohere with modern science and liberal morality: we need to integrate Torah-​based interpretation with our other doxastic practices. But at the end of the day a leap of faith to the divinity of the Torah will suffice to 103

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ground the rest of Jewish practice. Revelation does not need philosophical grounding: it can instead be the starting point for whatever else we regard as Jewish philosophy.

Notes 1 I say ‘as far as revelation is concerned’ because Rosenzweig is said to have been impressed by Cohen’s distinction between the ‘individual’ and the ‘I,’ and of how Jewish conceptions of suffering, repentance and the Day of Atonement get us from the former to the latter (see Franks and Morgan 2000: 84–​5). The idea of an I–​Thou encounter also appears first in Cohen (see Cohen 1995: 178). 2 Maimonides represents something of an exception to this claim, but even for him, the recognition that God lies beyond language can be reached only via the thoroughly linguistic process of philosophical argument. And Maimonides certainly does not think that we can have any sort of non-​ linguistic ‘encounter’ with God: the limits of language, for him, are also the limits of our access to God.

Related Topics: Prophecy; Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Early Modern Jewish Philosophy; Continental Jewish Philosophy

References Adler, R. (1998) Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics, Philadelphia: JPS. Alston, W. (1995) Perceiving God . Ithaca: Cornell University Press Borowitz, E. (1968) ‘Faith and Method in Modern Jewish Theology,’ in B. Martin (ed.), Contemporary Reform Jewish Thought . Chicago: Quadrangle Books. Cohen, H. (1995) Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. S. Kaplan. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Cohen, H. (1971) Reason and Hope, ed. E. Jospe. Cincinnati: HUC Press. Fisher, C. (2012) Contemplative Nation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fleischacker, S. (2011) Divine Teaching and the Way of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fleischacker, S. (2015) The Good and the Good Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Franks, P. and Morgan, M. (2000) Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett. Galli, B. (ed & trans) (1995) Franz Rosenzweig and Jehudah Halevi. Montreal: McGill-​Queen’s Press. Gottlieb, M. (2009) ‘Mysticism and Philosophy,’ in S. Nadler and T. Rudavsky (eds.), The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy, volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halevi, J. (1964) The Kuzari, trans. H. Hirschfeld. New York: Schocken. Heschel, A.J. (1955) God in Search of Man. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Kreisel, H. (2001) Prophecy: The History of An Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kugel, J. (2017) The Great Shift. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Maimonides, M. (1981) Mishneh Torah, M. Hyamson (trans). Jerusalem: Feldheim. Maimonides, M. (1985). ‘Epistle to Yemen,’ in A. Halkin (trans.), Epistles of Maimonides: Crisis and Leadership. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Moses, S. (1992) System and Revelation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, trans. C. Tihanyi. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Plaskow, J. (1991) Standing Again at Sinai. San Francisco: HarperCollins. Plaut, G. (2004) In The Condition of Jewish Belief. Editors of Commentary Magazine (eds.). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Rosenzweig, F. (2005) The Star of Redemption, trans. B. Galli. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Rosenzweig, F. (1955) On Jewish Learning, ed. N. Glatzer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Rynhold, D. (2005) Two Models of Jewish Philosophy: Justifying One’s Practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sommer, B. (2015) Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Star J. (2001) Tao te Ching: The Definitive Edition. New York: Penguin.

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Revelation van der Toorn, K. (2007) Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1969) On Certainty, D. Paul and GEM Anscombe (trans.). New York: Harper & Row.

Further Readings For an extended critique of Rosenzweig’s view, see S. Fleischacker, ‘A Defense of Verbal Revelation,’ in S. Kepnes (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). For further elaboration of the claim any revelation must cohere with scientific and moral beliefs that we hold independently of that revelation, see S. Fleischacker, Divine Teaching and the Way of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), Parts I and II and S. Fleischacker, The Good and the Good Book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), ­chapters 1 and 2. For similar models of revelation, see Daniel Rynhold, Two Models of Jewish Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Norman Solomon, Torah from Heaven (Oxford: Littman Library, 2012), Jerome Gellman, This Was From God (Academic Studies Press, 2016), Paul Franks, ‘Reason, Faith and the Overcoming of Shame’ in J. Bloom, A. Goldstein and G. Student (eds.), Strauss, Spinoza and Sinai (New York: Kodesh Press, 2022) and Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2011).

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9 PROPHECY Benjamin Pollock

9.1 Prophecy The Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:8) The biblical prophet conveys divine words, messages, images and truths, and communicates divine promises, commands and admonitions, to the Israelites and their neighbors, in rhetorical forms at once compelling and equivocal. No surprise that the phenomenon of prophecy has raised such a broad range of questions for Jewish philosophers throughout the ages, questions that pull together myriad domains of philosophical inquiry itself. This essay will survey themes, questions and doctrines in the history of Jewish philosophy that pertain to prophetic knowledge; prophetic normativity (in turn divided into prophetic politics and prophetic ethics); prophetic language; and prophetic hermeneutics. Along the way, the essay will draw connections to contemporary philosophical approaches and questions, and suggest some directions for future philosophical studies of prophecy. Questions of translation cut across these different domains of inquiry. The prophet mediates between the divine realm and the worldly and this entails translation, alternatively, from divine speech to human speech; from universal metaphysical truths into particularized knowledge about concrete persons and situations in the present and future; from universal standards or values into directives for life and action within particular communities; from pure, sublime truths accessible to the perfect intellect alone into a figurative discourse capable of moving an audience, but requiring interpretation. In all such cases, we may ask, how does the prophet translate a content taken to be divine and thus otherwise beyond our ken, hidden from and closed to human beings, into a form—​be it a discourse, an image, a theoretical cognition or a form of life—​which orients human beings in the here and now? And what happens, or what must happen, to such divine content in order for that content to be accessible to human beings (and if a lot has to happen, does it remain divine content)?

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9.2  Prophetic Knowledge Then said David, “Will the men of Qe’ila deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the Lord said, “They will deliver thee up.” (I Samuel 23: 11) The biblical prophets are often depicted as having experiences of the divine that entail seeing, or coming to know things, that are beyond the purview of what human beings can typically see or know. But what exactly do prophets know? And if what they come to grasp in prophecy truly is beyond the scope of human knowledge, how is such prophetic knowledge possible? In what relation does such prophetic knowledge stand, moreover, to the objects of everyday human knowledge? On the Aristotelian model of the trifold intellect accepted by so many medieval Jewish philosophers, the divine knowledge to which the prophet is said to be privy is divine self-​ knowledge. But this divine self-​knowledge may entail knowledge of the effects of divine intellectual activity, i.e., the circular motions of the spheres whose separate supernal intellects strive by way of motion to emulate divine unity, and thereby bring about the things and events of the world. According to the Farabian tradition, prophecy involves the reception of the emanation of divine knowledge that results from the conjunction of the prophet’s intellect with the Active Intellect—​the separate intellect positioned at the lowest sphere above the world—​and the overflow of that emanation to the prophet’s imagination (Kreisel 2001: 598–​ 9; Shatz 1998: 768–​9). The metaphysical knowledge which the prophet attains by virtue of the conjunction of his or her intellect with the Active Intellect might then entail knowledge of Godself as well as knowledge of the divine foundations of the physical world. Medieval thinkers like ibn Ezra and Maimonides held that insofar as the divine knowledge acquired by the prophet’s intellect entailed the latter, the objects of such knowledge amount to the essences or universal forms of all things, and their ordered, systematic interrelation in the world—​a systematic order which reflects the unity of all such forms in the divine Intellect itself (Ivry 1984: 149, citing Guide III: 18–​20). Some medievals depict the prophet’s grasp of the universal forms in the divine Intellect as an act of intellectual intuition or vision (Wolfson 1994: 160–​1, citing ibn Ezra on Ps. 17:15 ad locum). But according to many in this tradition, translating metaphysical knowledge in such a way as to make it applicable or assimilable to the particular worldly situation in which the prophet lives is the work of the imagination, which articulates such metaphysical truths in sensible images (Kreisel 2001: 599; Shatz 1998: 768). Gersonides explains the particularization of the prophet’s knowledge, alternatively, as occurring when the prophet, having attained metaphysical knowledge through conjunction with the Active Intellect, concentrates her thought upon the particular natural and social context in which she finds herself and about which she has (prior) empirical knowledge, thereby bringing metaphysical knowledge to bear on her own situation, and the situation of her community (Kreisel 2001: 367–​8; Feldman 2015: 155–​6). This manner in which prophets are understood as translating the metaphysical knowledge of essences into the particularized terms of worldly events made the subject of prophecy a magnet for medieval philosophical questions concerning the divine knowledge of particulars, of contingency and of human freedom. Divine knowledge of particulars in all their contingency would appear to undermine divine unity and immutability; but the alternative appears to assert limits to what the omniscient God knows. Divine knowledge of the human actions which are so often the object of prophecy likewise raises a dilemma: if God knows what we do, he knows so eternally, and this would appear to undermine human freedom; but

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if God doesn’t, this would again entail that there are limits to what God knows, and precisely in the domain of human action about which the Torah has so much to say (Rudavsky 2000: 98–​100). An especially interesting context for such philosophical questions concerning divine knowledge of particulars is to be found in the rich medieval Jewish literature on prophetic statements about future contingents. For divine knowledge of the future conveyed by the prophet would appear either to be incontrovertible, in which case there is no future contingency and human beings are not free to determine their own actions; or, alternatively, the future contingency of human actions and worldly events entails the possibility that God will turn out to have spoken falsely to a prophet. Within medieval Jewish discussions of prophecy, a number of intriguing solutions to this quandary were proposed. Saadia Gaon claimed that divine omniscience and human freedom are in fact reconcilable, arguing that God knowing p—​just like a human being knowing p—​is not the same as God causing p (Feldman 1984: 108–​9). On this model, we might ask, couldn’t a human being freely act contrary to divine prophecy, and thereby cause God to have been wrong about what God knows eternally? Regarding a case in which God knew a person would speak but that person remained silent, Saadia claims: ‘we answer quite simply that if that person was to keep silent instead of speaking we should have said in our original statement that God knew that this man would be silent, and we were not entitled to state that God knew this person would speak’ (Rudavsky 2000: citing Saadya Gaon 2002: 123). Saadia thereby foreshadows a scholastic strategy for dealing with prophetic statements regarding future contingents, to wit: to assess the prophetic status and the meaning of a would-​be prophetic statement made at T1 based on whether or not it is fulfilled at T2 (Edidin and Normore 1982: 183). In response to the same quandary, ibn Daud articulated a provocative position which, as we will see, was to resonate throughout the medieval Jewish philosophical tradition. According to ibn Daud, God’s knowledge does not in fact extend to future contingents. God creates some things with the potential to bear ‘one or the other of two contrary attributes.’ While God knows the possible attributes of such things, God does not know which of the possible attributes will be actualized. ibn Daud argues that this amounts to no limit to divine omniscience, because in the case of possibilities, there is nothing determinate to be known (Rudavsky 2000: 125, citing Sefer HaEmunah HaRamah 1967: 96). Scholars are predictably divided over Maimonides’ view of future contingents. Those who take Maimonides at his word when he claims that God knows particulars, suggest he shares Saadia’s position that God knows through immediate intuition (i.e., not through inference or prediction) what a human being will choose in any given case, but that God’s knowledge does not determine that choice (e.g., Rudavsky 2000: 119–​22). Those who take Maimonides to hold, instead, that God knows particulars solely through their respective forms or species, claim, to the contrary, that Maimonides views contingency to be a property of matter which God created precisely as beyond God’s direct knowledge. The very contingent eventualities thereby foreseen by the prophet thanks to his translation of intellectual forms into the sensible images of the imagination, might then be said to transcend divine knowledge (e.g., Ivry 1984: 149, 154–​5). Gersonides’ response to the problem of future contingents is central to his especially innovative account of prophecy. As noted, Gersonides holds that through conjunction with the Active Intellect, the prophet receives general knowledge about, e.g., how the astral spheres determine the particulars under their respective domains, and then particularizes that general knowledge by concentrating upon the particular context in which she finds herself (Kreisel 2001: 360–​8; Rudavsky 2000: 126–​8). At the same time, Gersonides holds, human beings have the cap­ acity to override such determination through free choice. As a result, God cannot be said to 108

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know what will happen ahead of time in all its contingency. Gersonides consequently suggests we should understand prophetic statements as containing disguised conditionals—​allowing for the possibility that human beings will act contrary to prophetic forecast without thereby making God’s past statements false (Rudavsky 2000: 134–​40, citing Gersonides 1923: 93–​4, 148, 461–​2). On the matter of future contingents, Crescas insists on divine omniscience. God knows all particulars in all their contingency. But qua eternal, God’s knowledge is outside of time: God’s knowledge of the future is no different than God’s knowledge of the present. Divine knowledge is indeed determinative, according to Crescas, who seeks to preserve contingency nonetheless by claiming that the human actions which are so often the objects of prophecy are contingent insofar as they are by nature such acts as could have been otherwise—​despite being causally determined by divine knowledge (they are ‘contingent per se but necessary per causam’) (Feldman 1984: 120–​1, citing Crescas 2018: 141; Rudavsky 2000: 144–​5). Some modern Jewish philosophers have argued that what characterizes prophetic knowledge of the future is not a set of future facts that may or may not come to be. Rather, thinkers like Hermann Cohen view prophetic comportment to the messianic future as orienting human beings in their present actions according to an idea, and as framing the way in which they understand world history as a whole. Only when history is considered as directed toward the ideal horizon of the ultimate future unity of humanity, Cohen claims, does there arise the notion of world history. ‘The prophets are the idealists of history,’ Cohen writes. ‘They turn their gaze away from the actuality of their own people, indeed of all peoples, in order to direct their view to the future alone. It is thus that their new concept of history comes into being, i.e., that of world history’ (Cohen 1972: 262). Worth consideration for contemporary Jewish philosophers is the way Wittgenstein similarly highlights the difference between belief in prophetic statements about a future Judgment Day and predictions about future events. In the former case, our entire experience is framed, and our way of life is dictated, by a religious picture. Wittgenstein notes that ‘here, an enormous difference would be between those people for whom the picture is constantly in the foreground, and the others who just didn’t use it at all’ (Wittgenstein 1967: 52–​6).

9.3  Prophetic Normativity Know therefore this day, and consider it in thy heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth below: there is no other. Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee …. (Deuteronomy 4:39–​40) These insights of Cohen and Wittgenstein reflect an influential view of prophecy, which spans the Jewish philosophical tradition, according to which prophecy should be understood first and foremost as a form of normative communication. On this view, prophets are not primarily in the business of predicting the future and transmitting theoretical knowledge. Rather, prophets admonish, command, promise, exhort, warn and threaten. Prophecies of defeat, exile and destruction announce what will happen if the Israelites do not change their ways, i.e., they depict the future in such a way as to encourage a change in action and behavior. Prophecies of the ultimate victory of justice over injustice, or of a final age of prosperity with no more war or poverty depict the future in such a way as to encourage commitment to the divine way of life. 109

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It was Spinoza who most famously and influentially rejected the attribution of theoretical knowledge to prophets which had been so prevalent among medieval Jewish philosophers, arguing that it was rather a highly developed imagination alone—​and not the imagination in tandem with a perfected intellect—​which allowed the prophet to convey moral values to the masses (Spinoza 2016: 93–​6). Spinoza may have intended his account of prophets as preachers of universal morality rather than as philosophers to open up a free space for scientific inquiry beyond the auspices of religious authority. But the dramatic influence of his interpretation of prophecy, the fact that Jewish philosophers from Mendelssohn through Heschel regularly emphasize the normative side of prophecy rather than the theoretical, suggests that Spinoza’s account tapped into something vital regarding prophecy itself. Indeed, even medieval philosophers who attributed theoretical knowledge to the prophets often understood such knowledge as conditioned upon or as serving moral or political ends. ‘A person does not arrive at divine matters [al-​amr al-​ilahi], except by way of divine command,’ Judah HaLevi has the King of his Kuzari recognize (Kogan 2009: 496, referencing Kuzari I:98). In the Guide of the Perplexed I:54, Maimonides, for his part, understands Moses’ great revelation from God of ‘all existing things … their nature and the way they are mutually connected,’ as serving Moses’ aim of learning to govern the Israelites on the model of the divine governance of nature (Maimonides 1963: 124). Philosophers who stress the normative character of prophecy often bring evidence from biblical descriptions of the experience of prophecy—​both that of the prophets themselves and of their audiences (Walzer, Lorberbaum and Zohar 2000: 202–​3, 205–​9). The divine call to prophecy is depicted as an inescapable summons for the prophet (consider the cases of Jonah or Bilaam, for example), and often demands a change of heart or action on the part of prophetic audiences. Medievals in the Farabian tradition understood the prophetic experience of being summoned to summon others on the very model of divine emanation according to which they explained prophetic knowledge. Just as God’s perfection results in an overflow of that perfection emanating to the separate intellects and, ultimately, to the intellect and imagination of the prophet, so the perfection of the intellect and imagination of the prophet results in an overflow to others, experienced by the prophet as an internal urge and compulsion to perfect those around him. The prophet consequently teaches beliefs and right conduct, dictates laws, and constructs such political institutions as allow members of his or her community to arrive at the degree of perfection attainable to them (Kreisel 2001: 252–​3). In the modern period, Abraham Joshua Heschel depicts the prophet’s experience of being called by God as that of becoming the object of divine subjectivity. ‘Prophetic revelation was not merely an act of experience but an act of being experienced, of being exposed to, called upon, overwhelmed and taken over by Him who seeks out those whom He sends to mankind. It is not God who is an experience of man; it is man who is an experience of God’ (Heschel 1955: 230). Martin Buber offers a poignant formulation of the crucially normative character of prophetic speech to others. Buber contrasts prophecy with apocalypticism, seeing in this contrast a prototype of his own advocacy of anarchistic socialism against Marxism. Whereas apocalyptics calculate and depict the ultimate end-​time paying little attention to their own time and place, Buber claims, prophets address particular people at their particular time and place in order to set before them ‘the stern alternatives of the hour,’ so that they ‘recognize their situation’s demand for decision and … act accordingly.’ The apocalyptic, Buber writes, ‘has no audience turned towards him. … He writes a book’ (Buber 1957: 200). The fundamentally normative character of prophecy is crucial to the force of commitment entailed by Jewish tradition. Contemporary Jewish philosophy has noted the very different relationship in which believers stand to the content of traditional belief from the relationship 110

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in which individuals stand to the content of science. Meir Buzaglo has pointed out that the ‘transmission’ of traditional Jewish narratives which originate in prophetic texts from one generation to another is a distinctly different speech-​act than a scientific ‘report’ of a discovery, and conveys with it a very different kind of call for commitment than the latter (Buzaglo 2008: 34–​7). The normative character of prophecy is responsible for the oft-​noted inability or unwillingness of the prophet to compromise her ideals in the face of the socio-​political reality in which she finds herself. Ahad Ha’am writes regarding the prophet that ‘a certain moral idea fills his whole being, masters his every feeling and sensation, engrosses his whole attention. He can only see the world through the mirror of his idea’ (Ha’am 1912: 130). The tension between the prophet’s vision and contemporary reality comes dramatically to the fore in cases ‘when prophecy fails’ (Festinger 1956), i.e., when reality does not unfold as prophets have announced, but believers nevertheless maintain their commitment to a prophetic picture despite the facts that belie that picture. It is in this vein that Gershom Scholem describes the sensibility of Sabbatians after Sabbatai Zevi’s apostasy: ‘Every believer saw before him the momentous question of where to hear God’s voice: in the cruel verdict of history which, to say the least, unmasked the messianic experience as mere illusion, or in the reality of the faith that had established itself in the depths of his soul’ (Scholem 1973: 690). The following sections will look in greater detail at two sides of the philosophical understanding of prophetic normativity, the political and the ethical.

9.4  Prophetic Politics Thus says the Lord: since you have not hearkened to me, in proclaiming liberty, everyone to his brother, and everyone to his neighbor: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, says the Lord, to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. (Jeremiah 34:17) Prophets like Moses, Samuel and David govern the Israelites on the basis of the prophecies they’ve received. It was Leo Strauss, in the 20th century, who insisted on the fundamentally political nature of prophecy in the Jewish philosophical tradition, as against the ethical bent of 19th-​century accounts of prophecy (see Section 9.5 below), which he took to be the result of an assessment of Jewish thought according to the doctrines and commitments it shares with Christianity. Strauss insisted, to the contrary, that medieval Jewish philosophers shared more in common in their views of prophecy with some of their Muslim contemporaries and, as a result, understood prophetic leaders—​Moses foremost among them—​on the model of the Platonic philosopher-​king (Strauss 1952: 8–​15). Medieval Jewish philosophers took the prophet’s political leadership, legislation and pedagogy to be the consequence of the divine emanation that compelled him to perfect others. Indeed, they understood prophets as having internalized the ideal of natural order grasped through their perfected intellects, and then as having utilized their perfected imaginations in order to translate that intellectual order into images, doctrines, laws and structures with the capacity to shape the convictions, values and actions of their communities in its likeness. We’ve seen how, on the medieval view, the imagination served a crucial function in particularizing the essential truths prophets received through the conjunction with the Active Intellect, allowing them to foretell the future occurrence of particular events that were to impact their communities. In the political context, the imagination likewise serves a crucial particularizing function in both legislation and pedagogy. It is the prophet’s imagination that permits her to dictate laws which, while serving the ultimate 111

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aim of ordering the community according to the model of divine governance, are suited to the capacities and limitations of the members of the particular community to which they are directed (Kreisel 2001: 262; Shatz 1998: 768). It is likewise the imagination that permits the prophet to articulate the truths of the intellect in sensible images that can reach and teach the community at large, and develop a pedagogical path on which each member of the community can attain the intellectual perfection possible for him or her (Kreisel 2001: 599). As liberator, legislator and teacher, Moses is the paradigmatic prophet of the Jewish philosophical tradition. But Jewish philosophers have well noted that the political role of the prophet is not exhausted in governance. To the contrary, during the period of Israelite kingship and temple worship, prophets served as radical critics of the political establishment, exposing the corruption and hypocrisy of king and priest alike, and casting judgment upon them based on either universal standards of moral behavior or traditional commitments (Walzer, Lorberbaum and Zohar 2000: 202). Contemporary political theorist Michael Walzer has presented the pro­ phetic discourse formative for normative Judaism as having laid the groundwork for social criticism. On his view, prophets critique their communities and rulers not on the basis of universal or external criteria, but rather on the basis of their shared commitments to a particular tradition and history (Walzer 1987: 67–​94). To the extent to which biblical prophecy articulates divine teachings and universal standards or recalls communal traditions and narratives from a perspective outside the seat of power, it is a relatively egalitarian phenomenon. Indeed, scholars have noted with interest that while biblical women rarely legislate, they do prophesy and divine, and in doing so they open up avenues of critique of patriarchal conventions (Hamori 2015; Schwartzmann 2017: 57–​8). What may be said to hold together these two sides of prophetic politics—​governance and criticism—​is the relationship in which the prophet stands to the ideal form of community. Moses founds the Israelite community by translating the model of divine governance over the world into laws and structures suited to the Israelites in their time and place; when later prophets like Nathan or Isaiah or Jeremiah criticize kings and priests in power, they blame them for deviating from or for undermining that very model. Put otherwise, we might say that Jewish prophetic politics is ultimately theocratic—​it views God as the ultimate ruler and legislator; it views Israelite rule as legitimate when it actualizes such divine rule and as deserving of critique or revolt or replacement when it does not. One finds claims regarding the theocratic character of Israelite politics, in this sense of taking direct divine rule as the ideal model of governance, across the modern Jewish philosophical tradition (e.g., Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Maimon, Cohen, Buber) (Harvey 1983, 1998, 2009; Pollock 2015, 2018, 2023). Buber interprets the Israelite failure to actualize the ideal form of theocratic anarchistic socialism—​a failure epitomized in the Israelites’ request of Samuel that he appoint them a king to rule over them like ‘all the other nations’ (I Samuel 8:5)—​as the source of and motivation for the prophetic projection of the dream of ideal community into the messianic future (Buber 1967: 118–​20). Given the resonance of prophesies of ‘the gathering of the exiles’ (e.g., Isaiah 11:12) in Jewish liturgy and literature over the centuries, it is no surprise to find that the Zionist project of Jewish national renewal in Palestine/​Israel found inspiration in the prophets, and cited prophetic models in the attempts to conceptualize the ‘return to Zion.’ Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook anticipated a revival of prophecy in the Jewish return to the land of Israel, suggesting that the land itself possessed an imagination that was ‘lucid and clear, clean and pure, with the capacity for the appearance of divine truth, … ready for the proliferation of prophecy and its lights’ (Kook 1961: 10–​11). David Ben Gurion attributed to prophets like Jeremiah, Hosea and Micah the ‘first expression, original and bold, of the principle of

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Jewish self-​reliance’ (Ben Gurion 1997: 611–​12). When Buber criticized what he viewed as the short-​sightedness of Ben Gurion’s dominant formulation of the Zionist project, he himself contrasted the ‘quasi-​Zionism, which strives merely to have a state,’ with the ‘true Zionism’ epitomized in Isaiah’s vision of the ultimate rule of ‘the King YHWH of Hosts’ (Isaiah: 5:6) (Buber 1997: 262).

9.5  Prophetic Ethics With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? … He has told thee, O man, what is good; and what the Lord requires of thee: to do justly, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with thy God. (Micah 6: 6–​8) When Strauss insisted on a return to what he saw as the premodern conception of prophecy as fundamentally political, he was pushing against a view of prophecy that Jewish philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries nevertheless found convincing, to wit: that the essential teachings of biblical prophecy convey universal human values which address each individual as a member of humanity, and not merely as members of a particular political community. The biblical prophets preach justice. They advocate protection for the underprivileged—​the poor, the orphan and widow, the stranger. They criticize materialism and promise a day of the Lord in which all people will be united in the acknowledgment of the one God. If medieval Jewish philosophers viewed the prophet as translating the universal truths of the intellect into terms compelling to and constructive of the particular frameworks of Israelite and Jewish collective life, modern Jewish thinkers like Hermann Cohen and Abraham Joshua Heschel present the prophet as translating universal moral values into the particular Israelite context. Cohen views the monotheism of the prophets as first and foremost an ethical doctrine. In their notion of the singular God, Cohen argues, the prophets project the unity of humanity as a messianic ideal of reason governing human sentiment and action: ‘From the beginning, the unity of God means nothing but the unity of humanity’ (Cohen 1907: 214). It is pre­ cisely the commitment to the unity of humanity as messianic goal, on Cohen’s account, that leads the prophets to advocate equality for the stranger, an equality whose quintessentially monotheistic ground is highlighted in the biblical command that there be ‘one law for you, for stranger and native, in the land, for I am the Lord your God’ (Leviticus 24:22). Heschel understood social justice and civil rights—​for which he advocated personally both within and well beyond the American Jewish community—​as rooted in the prophet’s internalization of the divine perspective and, as part of that perspective, of divine concern for all human beings. ‘The primary content of the prophet’s consciousness is a divine attentiveness and concern.’ Heschel writes. ‘Equality of man is due to God’s love and commitment to all men.’ (Heschel 1971: 263; Heschel 1966: 94). Just as questions arose, in the context of prophetic knowledge, regarding how the prophet is able to translate the universal truths of the intellect into a prediction about the particular context in which she finds herself, so claims regarding the universal message of prophecy have raised questions as to how such universal teachings are possibly applicable to individual human beings. Cohen viewed the concept and practice of repentance, which developed among the prophets and reached a highpoint, according to Cohen, in Ezekiel, as grounding the possibility of particular moral agency. For in the call to the individual to repent, the biblical sources recognize the individual as responsible for her own sin, and as capable of freely taking hold of

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her own path toward selfhood. ‘Repentance from the path of sin is possible; the human being can become a new human being.’ Cohen writes. ‘This possibility of self-​transformation makes the individual into an I’ (Cohen 1972: 193).

9.6  Prophetic Language And I have put my words in thy mouth… . (Isaiah 51:16) In the discussion of prophetic normativity above, we noted how prophets are called by God and how they admonish others, and we considered the view that the content of prophetic statements cannot be divorced from the speech-​acts in which they are expressed without losing what is essentially prophetic about them. That discussion points to what is perhaps an even more basic observation about prophecy. Biblical prophecy very often occurs, most immediately, when someone is authorized by God to speak in God’s name. Sometimes the prophetic address to an audience in God’s name is depicted as framed by or as following a separate divine address to the prophet. But sometimes the relation between divine address and prophetic address is more immediate: the prophet simply opens his mouth and divine word comes out (Rosenzweig 2005: 192). At this basic level, prophecy is thus very often a linguistic phe­ nomenon, and as such raises significant philosophical questions regarding how it may be understood as a form of language. What exactly is asserted in prophecy about the relationship between divine speech and human speech? What kind of translation is involved in speech that traverses the divine–​human divide? A contemporary American Christian philosophical discussion of such questions would be highly relevant for contemporary Jewish philosophers to consider. Nicholas Wolterstorff suggests understanding divine speech communicated by a prophet on the model of deputized speech. We often deputize others to speak in our name: I might ask you to send my regards to a mutual friend; a boss might dictate a letter to an administrative assistant to type, or might ask that assistant to write a letter and then sign it with the boss’ name; a president or prime minister might send an ambassador to negotiate on her behalf. In all these cases, one speaker is deputized to speak in the name of another: words come out of the mouth of the one deputized, but they are rightly attributed to the deputizer. Wolterstorff directs us to think about prophetic speech in much the same way. Prophetic utterances are spoken by human beings; but these human beings have been deputized to speak in the name of God. Thus those who hear such prophetic utterances spoken by deputized human beings hear what properly counts as God speaking. Particularly fascinating cases of such deputized speech occur when the prophet alternates between speaking in the name of God by virtue of having been deputized to do so and speaking in his own voice, offering a reflection or caveat or question regarding what God has just said through him (e.g., Hosea 9:12–​14: ‘Woe to them, when I depart from them… . Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the slayer. Give them, O Lord—​what wilt thou give?’). On such a view of the prophetic speech-​act, a false prophet would be one who claims to speak in God’s name but has not in fact been deputized to do so (Wolterstorff 1995: 37–​57). Prophetic language may also be fruitfully studied as a special genre of discourse. Hermann Cohen identified in prophetic discourse a way of speaking that bridges philosophy and poetry, articulating ethical truth in poetic form. Prophetic style brings a whole range of human feelings to bear on the human being’s struggle for ethics in the world: a tragic pathos over human failure and demise and divorce from God; lyrical expressions of love for God and for messianic peace; horror in the face of war among nations which should rather actualize the

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ideal of a unified humanity; articulations of social compassion; voices of hope for justice and consolation. The uniqueness of religion as an expression of reason at the border between art and science is rooted, according to Cohen, in this original form of prophetic discourse (Cohen 1924: 262–​83).

9.7  Prophetic Hermeneutics And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, “It is not me: God shall give Pharaoh a favorable answer.” (Genesis 41:15–​16) In cases where the prophet opens his or her mouth and divine words are spoken without further ado, we’ve seen, questions arise regarding where God as speaker ends and the human prophet begins. But prophecies don’t only take the form of direct speech. They are also, and often, communicated through dreams and visions, in sensible images, and by way of equivocal speech. Philo distinguishes between ecstatic prophecy, in which the prophet is taken over by, and serves as mouthpiece for the divine spirit, and hermeneutic or noetic prophecy, in which the prophet is stirred to active interpretation of divine signs which grants him a grasp of the realm of incorporeal forms as a whole (Winston 1989). It is indeed the case that the biblical prophet is often best described as a decipherer and a producer of signs, signs whose life-​fostering power for the Israelites is itself at times depicted by way of metaphors of birth and parentage (Hamori 2015: 84–​6, 142–​6, 160–​6). But what are the criteria according to which the prophet is to interpret the signs given to her, or according to which an audience is to interpret the prophet’s signs? What makes an interpretation of prophetic signs legitimate or illegitimate? In the context of Jewish philosophy, such questions are vital not only for prophets and their immediate audiences. The Torah is considered the prophetic book par excellence. As such, the very meaning of the Torah itself is at stake in questions surrounding prophetic interpretation. Medieval Jewish philosophers approached these questions of prophetic hermeneutics on the background of their basic understanding of prophecy as involving the respective perfections of, and the interaction between, the prophet’s intellect and imagination. The need for interpretation follows from the way prophets were understood to translate the truths of the intellect into the sensible images of the imagination; and this very way in which prophets translate truths into such sensible images was understood as allowing the prophets to serve as exemplary teachers, guiding others to intellectual perfection through interpretation. Since, as we’ve seen, the medievals understood both the receiving of prophecy and prophetic address to others as extensions of the same overflow of divine emanation, what appear as ostensibly two distinct acts of the prophet—​interpreting images and equivocal speech given by God, and authoring a discourse that itself requires interpretation—​are really of a piece. For the sake of clarity, this discussion of prophetic hermeneutics will begin with the prophet as interpreter and then turn to the interpretation of prophetic discourse; but it will also highlight the way the link between the two is itself a key part of the story. In order to glean knowledge, insight and direction from out of a dream, vision or equivocal divine communication, the prophet must engage in interpretation. In the Guide II: 43, Maimonides sets out a range of such interpretive scenarios: e.g., parabolic images which appear to the prophet in dreams and visions and are then either interpreted in those very

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dreams and visions (sometimes by way of an angel), or only become clear to the prophet after she awakes; parabolic images which refer directly to a matter for prophetic consideration, and those which only do so indirectly, requiring the prophet first identify the term designating an image, and then move between equivocal meanings of that term—​and sometimes even engage in the rearranging of the term’s letters—​to arrive at its proper interpretation (Maimonides 1963: 391–​3, cited in Kreisel 2001: 268). Gersonides’ view that human beings are free to act even in ways unforeseen by the divine leads him to a rather dramatic account of prophetic interpretation in his reading of Abraham’s binding of Isaac. According to Gersonides, God’s command to Abraham—​‘raise him [Isaac] up for an offering’—​was deliberately ambiguous, and thus the test God imposed upon Abraham was in fact nothing less than a test in interpretation: will Abraham interpret God’s command in innocuous but non-​committal fashion, as simply asking him to bring Isaac up to Moriah to carry out a sacrifice there, or will he understand God’s command as calling for the ultimate sacrifice, an opportunity to choose freely to actualize his love for God? (Feldman 1984: 112–​16, citing Gersonides, Commentary on Genesis Chapter 22). The prophet who receives her prophecy in the form of sensible images interprets those images through the use of and according to the standards of the intellect, and discovers therein fundamental metaphysical truths; but in turning to prophesy to others, she is tasked with articulating such intellectual truths once again in the form of images and equivocal speech. Already, Isaac Israeli saw such translation of intellectual truths into sensible imagery as crucial for the pedagogical mission of the prophet, for only through such sensible imagery could the prophet hope to reach the masses steeped in the corporeal, and lead them gradually toward union with God (Altmann and Stern 1958: 216). Israeli likewise understood the prophet who translated the truths of the intellect into sensible forms accessible to the masses as imitating the very Active Intellect who transmitted these truths to the prophet herself: ‘when the Creator wishes to reveal to the soul what He intends to innovate in this world, He makes Intellect the intermediary between Himself and the soul, even as the prophet is an intermediary between the Creator, blessed be He, and the rest of His creatures.’ (Kogan 2008: 485, citing Altmann and Stern 1958: 124). But it is Maimonides, once again, who, in the Introduction to the Guide, offers the classic Jewish philosophical account of prophetic hermeneutics. As embodied intellects, human beings receive metaphysical truths in flashes which are glimpsed and then concealed, according to the degree of their intellectual perfection. When a person who has attained such truths tries to teach them to others, Maimonides explains, he is unable to do so directly and clearly, but rather ‘there will befall him when teaching another that which he had undergone when learning himself. … The subject matter will appear, flash, and then be hidden again, as though this were the nature of this subject matter.’ This is the reason, according to Maimonides, that those who attain divine knowledge communicate that knowledge ‘only in parables and riddles’ (Maimonides 1963: 8). It is because metaphysical truths are transmitted both to and by the prophets in forms that reveal and conceal that truth, that access to prophetic truth depends so crucially on proper interpretation. ‘Know that the key to the understanding of all that the prophets, peace be on them, have said, and to the knowledge of its truth, is an understanding of the parables, of their import, and of the meaning of the words occurring in them’ (Maimonides 1963: 10), Maimonides writes. Prophetic literature, in Maimonides’ view, is quintessentially polyvalent, at the level of the words and images it uses, in the content of its narratives, and in the meaning of the practices it demands. In the multiple levels of meaning prophetic speech articulates by way of parables, it thus teaches truth in a way that mirrors the revealed-​hidden form in which these truths were grasped by the prophets themselves. 116

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To say that prophetic teaching is quintessentially polyvalent and in need of interpretation is, of course, to say that it is liable to be misinterpreted. Misinterpretation of the equivocal terms of prophetic literature, and ignorance regarding the proper ways to interpret prophetic parables, are the sources of the very perplexity which gives Maimonides’ Guide its name. Indeed, those readers who come to the conclusion that the Torah’s teachings are in conflict with the demonstrated truths of scientific knowledge do so, Maimonides claims, precisely because they have not been trained properly in prophetic interpretation (Maimonides 1963: 5–​6). We might identify three Maimonidean grounds for the parabolic, riddling discourse of the prophets. Prophets speak and write in such ways as require interpretation because it is the nature of metaphysical truths to be transcendent to the realm of worldly things we describe in direct language, and thus to be present only in concealed form within that realm; because it is politically prudent to hide such truths from the majority of people who, untrained in philosophy, would mistake such truths as justification for abandoning the laws and values of society; because it is pedagogically effective to teach by way of signs that require interpretation according to the intellect, fostering the free philosophical development of the precocious reader. On Maimonides’ view, the Torah is the supreme expression of prophetic pedagogy. Thus learning Torah requires learning the proper methods of interpretation that allow for grasping the different levels of meaning the Torah contains. Of course, it is only on the assumption that prophetic literature is polyvalent and requires interpretation, that one can view the Torah as containing metaphysical truths and thus as a worthy object of philosophical study. Related Topics: Freewill and Providence; Revelation; Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Early Modern Jewish Philosophy

References Altmann, A. and S. Stern. (1958) Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early 10th Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ben Gurion (1997) ‘The Imperatives of Jewish Revolution,’ in The Zionist Idea, ed., A. Hertzberg, pp. 606–​19. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Buber, M. (1957) ‘Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour,’ in Pointing the Way, tr., M. Friedman, pp. 192–​207. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. —​—​—​. (1967) ‘The Holy Way: A Word to the Jews and to the Nations,’ in N. Glatzer, ed., On Judaism, pp. 108–​48. New York: Schocken. —​—​—​. (1997) ‘Israel’s Mission and Zion,’ in Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis, pp. 258–​63. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Buzaglo, M. (2008) Language for the Faithful: Reflection on Tradition [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Mandel. Cohen, H. (1907) Ethik des reinen Willens. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. —​—​—​. (1924) ‘Der Stil der Propheten’ in Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, vol. 1, pp. 262–​83. Berlin: Schwetschke & Sohn. —​—​—​. (1972) Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, tr., S. Kaplan. New York: Frederick Ungar. Crescas, H. (2018) Light of the Lord (Or Hashem), tr., R. Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edidin, A. and C. Normore (1982) ‘Oackham on Prophecy,’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13(3): 179–​89. Feldman, S. (1984) ‘The Binding of Isaac: A Test-​Case of Divine Foreknowledge,’ in T. Rudavsky, ed., Divine Omniscience, and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives, pp. 105–​33. Dordrecht: Springer. —​—​—​. (2015) Gersonides: Judaism within the Limits of Reason. Oxford/​Portland: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Festinger, L., H. Riecken and S. Schachter (1956) When Prophecy Fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy Gersonides, L. (1923) Milhamot Hashem. Berlin: Louis Lamm Verlag. Ha’am, A. (1912) Selected Essays, tr., L. Simon. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Hamori, E. (2015). Women’s Divination in Biblical Literature: Prophecy, Necromancy, and Other Arts of Knowledge. New Haven: Yale University Press. Harvey (1983) ‘Buber’s Social Theory as Political Philosophy,’ in A. Casher and M. Halamish, eds., Israeli Philosophy. Tel Aviv: Papyrus. —​—​—​. (1998) ‘Mendelssohn’s Heavenly Politics,’ in A. Ivry, E. Wolfson, and A. Arkush, eds., Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, pp. 403–​12. London and New York: Routledge. —​—​—​. (2009) ‘Kingdom of God,’ in A. Cohen and P. Mendes-​Flohr eds., 20th Century Jewish Religious Thought, pp. 521–​5. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Heschel, A. (1955) God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. —​—​—​. (1966) The Insecurity of Freedom. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. —​—​—​. (1971) The Prophets, vol 2. New York: Harper Torchbooks. ibn Daud, A. (1967) HaEmunah HaRamah [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Sifriat Mahshevet Yisrael. Ivry, A. (1984) ‘Providence, Divine Omniscience, and Possibility: The Case of Maimonides,’ in T. Rudavsky, ed., Divine Omniscience, and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives, pp. 143–​60. Dordrecht: Springer. Kogan, Barry. (2009) ‘Understanding Prophecy: Four Traditions,’ in S. Nadler and T. Rudavsky, eds., The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, pp. 481–​523. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kook, A.I. (1961) Orot [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook. Kreisel, H. (2001) Prophecy: The History of an Ideal in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer. Maimonides, M. (1963) The Guide of the Perplexed, tr., S. Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pollock, B. (2015) ‘The Political Perfection of Original Judaism: Pedagogical Governance and Ecclesiastical Power in Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem,’ Harvard Theological Review 108(2): 167–​96. —​—​—​. (2018) ‘Every State Becomes a Theocracy: Hermann Cohen on the Israelites under Divine Rule,’ Jewish Quarterly Review 25(2): 181–​99. —​—​—​. (2023) ‘“Not to Any Mortal”: Freedom, Harmony, and Religious Imagination in Spinozan Theocracy,’ Journal of Religion 103(4): 482–​511. Rosenzweig, F. (2005) The Star of Redemption, tr., B. Galli. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Rudavsky, T. (2000). Time Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press. Saadya Gaon (2002) The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, tr., A. Altmann. Indianapolis: Hackett. Scholem, G. (1973) Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (1626–​ 1676). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schwartzmann, J. (2017) ‘The Attitude of Medieval Jewish Philosophers to the Phenomenon of Female Prophecy,’ Shofar 35(3): 57–​72. Shatz, D. (1998) ‘Prophecy,’ in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7: 767–​771, ed., E. Craig. London/​New York: Routledge. Spinoza, B. (2016) The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, trans. E. Curley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Strauss, L. (1952) Persecution and the Art of Writing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Walzer, M. (1987) Interpretation and Social Criticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Walzer, M., Lorberbaum, M., Zohar, N., eds. (2000) The Jewish Political Tradition. Vol. 1: Authority. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Winston, D. (1989) ‘Two Types of Mosaic Prophecy according to Philo,’ Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 2(4): 49–​67. Wittgenstein, L. (1967) Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. C Barrett. Berkeley/​Los Angeles: University of California Press. Wolfson, E. (1994) Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wolterstorff, N. (1995) Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Further Reading Heschel’s theological account of the biblical prophets remains a worthwhile read: A. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971). For a detailed philosophical account of the views of some of the most influential thinkers from medieval times through to Spinoza, see H. Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Ideal in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2001). For more contemporary discussion of the nature and possibility of divine–​human communication, see N. Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). An interesting contemporary Jewish perspective on the same can be found in Samuel Fleischacker, ‘A Defense of Verbal Revelation,’ in S. Kepnes (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

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PART IV

From Us to God

10 SACRIFICE Shlomo Zuckier

Sacrifice is a central aspect of classical Jewish practice and theology, although its inapplicability since 70 CE has meant that it has received less attention in some circles, including contemporary philosophical contexts. This chapter therefore works mostly with primary sources, gathering the relevant classical views in Talmudic and medieval Jewish tradition on a series of important debates regarding sacrifice as it relates to Jewish philosophy.

10.1  The Term ‘Sacrifice’ The term ‘sacrifice’ is multivalent. As used in contemporary English (and as ‘korban’ is used in contemporary Hebrew), the term can refer either to the process of presenting animals or other food or substances to a divine being, or to the object presented. Over time, that latter sense has extended to include cases of anyone who gives up their life for religious purposes (e.g., a martyr), or even to anyone who gives anything up for any purpose. This chapter will set aside the extended object-​focused, broader meaning of ‘sacrifice’ and focus particularly on the original meaning of sacrifice as something presented to a Deity. It will also focus on proper worship of the God of Israel, rather than idolatrous sacrifice, which is a topic in its own right. In this context, it is also worth noting which terms in Hebrew overlap in the semantic field with the topic of this chapter, the English word ‘sacrifice.’ In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, two alternate terms exist for food items given up and offered to the Divine—​‘korban’ and ‘kodashim.’ The first of these, which draws from the root k.r.b., relating to closeness, might be best translated as ‘offering,’ i.e., that which one brings close to God; ‘kodashim,’ drawing from the root k.d.sh, meaning ‘holiness,’ is best translated as ‘sacrifice,’ the English term that draws from the Latin sacrer, ‘to make holy.’ This chapter will use ‘offering’ and ‘sacrifice’ more or less interchangeably.

10.2  The Function of Sacrifice in Jewish Tradition Sacrifice can serve several distinct roles, as is delineated fairly consistently in texts from the Hebrew Bible through Qumran to rabbinic literature, both classical and later. The operative categories of sacrifice, including many of the details and laws of the relevant rituals, are

DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-15

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largely consistent throughout the various biblical, Second Temple, rabbinic, and medieval formulations of sacrifice in Jewish tradition (see Meshel 2014). The primary functions are those of presenting a gift to the Divine, sharing a meal with the Divine, and earning atonement for Israel (Robertson Smith 1914: Lectures VI–​IX). To a large extent, these roles map onto different types of offerings within these traditions. The olah (‘burnt offering’), fully burnt on the altar, represents a sacrifice that is primarily (if not exclusively; see below) a gift to the Divine. The shelamim (‘peace offering’ or ‘wellbeing offering’) is also brought not in response to any particular sin, and does not atone, but it is distinctive in that the offeror (along with friends and family) consumes a significant portion of the offering, in addition to parts that are burned on the altar and shared with priests. There were periods when it was deemed inappropriate to eat any meat other than that shared with the Divine (Deuteronomy 12, bHullin 16b). Finally, both the hattat (‘purification offering’ or ‘sin offering’) and asham (‘guilt offering’ or ‘reparation offering’) serve a function of purification and/​or atonement, where sacrifices are brought on occasion of sin or impurity and with the primary goal of resolving this unsalutary state. Although sacrifice can play each of these roles, different approaches to sacrifice may see one or the other as more central. Sacrifices can be brought by individuals or by the community of Israel as a whole, with communal offerings brought on a calendrical basis, including both more olah-​gift offerings as well as specific offerings that are meant to atone and/​or purify, especially to rectify the violation of the Temple’s sanctity. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, has multiple sacrifices purveying atonement on behalf of the Nation of Israel, including both a special hattat offering with its blood sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, and a scapegoat sent into the wilderness.

10.3  Debates Over Sacrifice There are thousands of debates over sacrifice in Jewish tradition, most of which relate to details of procedure. To give one innocuous example, the Talmud questions whether a non-​ priest (zar) who walks the blood of a slaughtered animal from the site of its slaughter and blood collection to the altar (holakhah) invalidates the offering or not, given that (at least theoretically) one can dispense with walking altogether (see bZevaḥim 14b). As with Talmudic tradition in general, the rabbis spill much ink working out the particular details of the rituals of sacrifice. While some of these may relate in some way to philosophical analysis, most would presumably skirt those issues. Still, some questions regarding sacrifice touch on larger issues in the philosophy of religion. The primary cluster of philosophical questions that has been raised around sacrifice in Jewish tradition is relatively straightforward: Why sacrifice? What is the purpose or goal of sacrifice? Does it serve God in some way? Does it serve human needs? How can a physical process involving animals and plants mediate the human–​Divine relationship? To what extent is sacrifice necessary or accidental to the Jewish project? We will explore here several facets of this question, which, while interrelated, can nonetheless be seen as distinct questions that have larger implications in the realm of (Jewish) philosophy. The four specific debates to be explored below are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Does God enjoy the pleasing smell of sacrifices? How does sacrifice yield atonement? What is the fundamental purpose of sacrifice? What are the prospects of sacrifice going forward?

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The first two of these relate to two of sacrifice’s major functions—​serving God (through food gifts) and serving people (through atonement). The third debate presumes that these functions are insufficient explanation for sacrifice, and seeks some deeper meaning. The fourth moves from the realm of theory into practice, both contemporary and looking toward a messianic future. Again, these categories all relate to one another, but there are still four distinctive debates, some of which emerge primarily from the ancient context, others from the medieval context, but all of which remain relevant in the literature until today.

10.4  Does God Actually Enjoy the Pleasing Smell of Sacrifices? One significant debate over sacrifice in Jewish tradition relates to the question of whether God enjoys the ‘pleasing smell’ of sacrifices, pitting the implication of biblical verses against philosophical concerns in the realms of divine neediness and anthropomorphism. The Torah in multiple places describes offerings—​and especially those that are brought voluntarily and not for the purposes of atonement (see Leviticus 1–​3) as being brought ‫לריח ניחוח‬, ‘for a pleasing smell.’ Generally, this phrase appears after the meat or flour offering is placed on the fire, and would appear to refer to the literal, physical, pleasing smell of an offering. While the verse generally avoids explicitly stating what God does with that smell, it does say that when Noah offers sacrifices following the deluge, ‘The Lord smelled the pleasing smell’ (Genesis 8:21) and commits not to curse the earth. While this is less anthropomorphic and reflective of divine neediness than other ancient Near Eastern accounts of sacrifice, such as the Gilgamesh story (Tablet XI), in which ‘the gods smelled the sweet smell of the sacrifice and gathered like flies,’ this verse strongly implies that God was affected by the physical smoke of the sacrifice. Many Jewish interpreters of the Bible took steps to distance themselves from this straightforward understanding. Philo and Josephus, when paraphrasing the Torah, consistently cut out the pleasing smell of an offering. Targum Onqelos always reframes ‫ריח ניחוח‬, lit., ‘pleasing smell,’ as ‫מתקבל לרעוא‬, ‘acceptable with goodwill,’ characteristically distancing God from any physical interaction with the world. In similar fashion, the term ‫ ריח ניחוח‬is largely missing in rabbinic literature, appearing only a handful of times in the Mishnah, and usually in contexts that emphasize not the size of the offering but the intentions of the offeror (mMenaḥot 13:11); at times rabbinic texts even split it into two separate intentional requirements, of ‘smell’ (reaḥ) and as ‘pleasing’ (niḥoaḥ), in place of a physical process directed at God (mZevaḥim 4:6). Another interpretive move is to re-​formulate reaḥ niḥoaḥ (pleasing smell) as naḥat ruaḥ, or divine happiness that God’s will is fulfilled, which shifts the focus from the smell the offering produces to the fact of Israel’s adherence to God’s (sacrificial) commands (Sifrei Numbers 107, 118, 143). There are, however, competing voices in ancient Judaism on this point. The Temple Scroll (among other Dead Sea Scroll texts) appears happy to retain the formulation that offerings produce a reaḥ niḥoaḥ. Within rabbinic literature, some passages seem focused on determining which particular parts of the animal produce a pleasing smell (Sifrei Zuta, Numbers 18:17, 28:6). Some passages take the literal approach to reaḥ niḥoaḥ a step further and celebrate God’s actual inhalation of the sacrificial fumes, e.g., by contrasting idols that cannot smell and the God of Israel, who smells the reaḥ niḥoaḥ (Mekhilta de-​Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai 15:11). It is clear that debates over the meaning of reaḥ niḥoaḥ are proxies for discussions about divine neediness and anthropomorphism. The rabbis raise the issue in this context—​Sifrei Numbers 143 connects Psalms 50:12–​13 and its denial of divine neediness regarding sacrifice to the reinterpretation of reaḥ niḥoaḥ as meaning that God wants sacrifices because they fulfill the divine will.

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Medieval commentaries address this question as well, raising issues of anthropomorphism and divine neediness. Nahmanides in his commentary to Leviticus 1:9 cites this same verse and the rabbinic statement surrounding it, rejecting the idea that God physically benefits from a sacrifice. Maimonides (1963: 581–​97) explains that the smell is, so to speak, pleasing when it is a gift offered to God (as opposed to a ḥattat offering to repair sin) because it serves to distance Jews from idolatry (see below). Kuzari 2:25–​26 writes that, despite sacrifices being called God’s bread and pleasing smell (Numbers 28:2), they should not be understood to be consumed by God, only that these offerings are attributable to God. All of these approaches are unwilling to say that God benefits from the smell of the offering, following their general opposition to divine anthropomorphism. Even today, traditional scholarship is being produced on this question. A recently published Talmud commentary argued, in light of the straightforward reading of the biblical text and against the grain of classical rabbinic literature, that the pleasing smell of a sacrifice should be seen as an essential part of sacrifice (Pinkus 2008), and this author has written on the history of this question (Zuckier 2020, 2022).

10.5  How Does Sacrifice Yield Atonement? Prevalent within discussions of sacrifice is its relationship to atonement. As noted, both the ḥattat and asham offerings are motivated by sin and the need for atonement. Additionally, the voluntary olah offering, while not occasioned by sin per se, may very well provide atonement, too (see Zuckier, 2025). There are a variety of accounts as to how sacrifices yield atonement, ranging across different generations. 1. Jacob Milgrom (Milgrom 1971, 1976, 1983; see also Tosefta, Yoma 2:1) has presented a compelling account of the biblical metaphysics of sin, impurity, sacrifice and atonement based on the book of Leviticus and other biblical priestly materials. On this view, sin defiles the sancta—​the Land, Temple, altar and Holy of Holies. The more severe the sin, the deeper into the concentric circles of holiness this miasma penetrates. If sufficient impurity accumulates deep enough among the sancta, God leaves the Temple and Israel. But the impurity caused by sin can be cleansed through atonement rituals, whereby ritually prepared blood is placed on the sancta (altar and/​or curtain of the Holy of Holies), purging the impurity. That is the basis of the ḥattat offering and its blood rituals. Although it has generally been presented in historical rather than philosophical contexts, this account contains a detailed metaphysics of how sacrifice works to resolve sin, with important implications for the nature of sin and its results. Beyond the understandings of how sin and blood work, it is also notably a sancta-​ centric account of sin and atonement, one in which the sinner/​atoner is at a remove from the metaphysical work causing both the impurity of sin and its resolution. 2. One might alternatively take a ransom theory of sacrificial atonement, as Ibn Ezra notes in his commentary to Leviticus 1:1 that the term for atonement, kapparah, relates to the word kofer, ransom, where the sacrificial animal stands in for the sinner. On this view, sin resides primarily in the individual sinner, and the crucial step of sacrifice is moving that sin from the sinner to some object (e.g., the sacrificial animal) that will be punished or otherwise manipulated such that the sin is resolved, yielding atonement. Thus, one places one’s hands on the animal and confesses (e.g., Leviticus 16:21), a process which causes the sins and/​or guilt to transfer to the ḥattat offering, which is subsequently killed. In other cases, such as the scapegoat, the sins of all of Israel are transferred (through the laying of the

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High Priest’s hands) onto the goat, and the goat is then sent into the wilderness (and killed as well, on many accounts; see mYoma 6:5–​6), with an emphasis on banishing the sins. This view is also focused on the metaphysical plane, with an eye to ensuring that the guilt of sin is removed from the sinner and imputed to a being that is then either appropriately punished/​destroyed or else is sent away. There are a variety of sub-​accounts within this larger account of ransom, including one that combines this with Milgrom’s metaphysical cleansing of the altar (see Sklar 2010). An analysis, disambiguation and evaluation of these various sub-​accounts remains a desideratum, and can profitably be put into conversation with recent work in Christian analytic theology. 3. Another approach is focused not on the metaphysics of guilt but on the psychology of the sinner. On this account, sacrifice’s primary expiatory function relates to the experience of the offeror. a. The most famous formulation of this account is cited by Nahmanides at Leviticus 1:9: When a sinner offers a sacrifice, he leans his hands on it, corresponding to [sinful] action, confesses with his mouth corresponding to [sinful] speech, burns with fire the innards and kidneys which are the loci of [sinful] thought and desire, and the legs corresponding to the arms and legs of a person that do his [sometimes sinful] work, and throws the blood on the altar corresponding to his [own] life force of blood, in order that, in doing all of this, the person realizes that he has sinned against God with his body and soul, and he deserves that his blood be spilled and body burned were it not for the Creator’s grace that he accepts from him a ransom in his place, and allows the sacrifice to atone, that its blood be in place of his blood, its life in place of his, its limbs in place of his limbs. Nahmanides’ psychological approach to atonement is combined with a ransom theory and presumably accepts the metaphysics necessary for that account to work. b. An alternative version of the psychological theory might reject any such metaphysical grounding. On this version of the psychological approach, all of atonement through sacrifice is simply a function of one’s repentance. Sacrifices provide the inspiration for a person to repent, with more serious offerings (such as the scapegoat) providing greater inspiration and thus yielding greater repentance and hence atonement. As Meiri formulates this approach, the sacrifice ‘is the cause of the atonement, and the repentance itself is the atonement.’ (See Meiri, Ḥibbur ha-​Teshuvah—​Meshiv Nefesh 2:13 and Meiri’s commentary to mYoma 85b.) There are indications that Maimonides accepted at least a moderated version of this strong psychological account, as well, as his presentation of the effectiveness of sacrifice in atonement features repentance in a central role (Rambam, ‘Laws of Repentance,’ 1:2–​4). Some of these theories work better for particular categories of sacrifice over others. And, as above, these need not be mutually exclusive theories. One might understand that, e.g., the ḥattat offering works through purging impurity in the altar but the scapegoat carries away sin. It is worth noting that some of these approaches are more essentialist than others regarding the need for sacrifice in order to achieve the goal of atonement. For example, the repentance-​ centered psychology theory of sacrifice is the least essentialist of them all—​sacrifice is a mere prod toward repentance, which is the true cause of atonement. On the opposite extreme, theories that relate to the physical placing of blood on the altar, e.g., might be unattainable in a scenario where blood rituals are no longer practiced, and especially if defilement and restoration of the holy locus of the Temple will not really translate in a world without a Temple.

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In fact, accounting for how atonement could be attained in the absence of a Temple was an important topic for the rabbis. Four categories of atonement—​repentance, suffering, death and the Day of Atonement—​are presented in the Mishnah (mYoma 8:7), and they fill the gaps left by sacrifice. The role of repentance in this context raises the question of the extent to which one must earn atonement rather than to receive it more or less passively, a Jewish version of the question of ‘works versus grace’ in philosophy of religion. This question comes up most pointedly in the context of the Day of Atonement, both in Temple times and today. Rabbinic literature presents parallel debates over whether or not the scapegoat—​in the time of the Temple—​or the expiatory power of the Day of Atonement itself—​in a post-​Temple world—​is effective in the absence of atonement (bYoma 85, bShevuot 12b–​13a). While these sources have important resonance for the repentance-​focused approach to atonement, they also raise the question of whether atonement is some sort of automatic process stemming from sacrifice (or its stand-​in) or whether human initiative, most especially repentance, is required. The question of whether human initiative is necessary in addition to sacrifice relates back to different perspectives within the Hebrew Bible, as well. While Leviticus and other Pentateuchal accounts present atonement as a direct result of sacrifice, not mentioning other factors, much of the Bible’s prophetic and wisdom literature talk about the importance of the righteousness of the offeror (Psalms 51:19, I Samuel 15:22), or their repentance (Hosea 14:2–​3), in order to achieve atonement. Other passages decry an understanding of sacrifice that is seen as automatically effective even in the absence of social justice (Isaiah 1). The question of whether ritual acts alone can yield true atonement thus has a long pedigree.

10.6  Why Sacrifice?/​Seeking Sacrifice’s Fundamental Purpose The Torah and Talmud do not explicitly ask the question of why sacrifices are necessary. Presumably the various functions that they serve are reason enough. One could simply see either offering to God or receiving atonement as sufficient reason for the establishment of sacrifice. But in the medieval period, some Jewish philosophers seeking a more fundamental purpose for sacrifice, began to question whether such a justification for sacrifice might exist, and if so what it could be. Maimonides (1963: 525–​31) famously presents the sacrifices as a sort of concession for the Israelites who had previously been so buffeted by idolatrous sacrifice in Egypt that they would not have been able to leave sacrifice behind entirely. The Torah thus allows for sacrifice—​to the true God, of course—​but does not see it as particularly significant on a theological level. Maimonides adds (1963: 581–​92) that some sacrifices are precisely of animals that are seen as deities in other religions, thus further emphasizing the role of sacrifice as a mode of distancing the Israelites from idolatrous worship and the false opinions associated with it. In the Mishneh Torah, at the very end of his treatment of sacrifice (Me’ilah 8:8, the end of Sefer Avodah), Maimonides reflects on the need for sacrifices, asserting that ‘all sacrifices are of the category of ḥukkim,’ laws without reason. Here Maimonides is adding sacrifice to the list of ḥukkim in rabbinic literature (Sifra, Aḥarei Mot 8:10=​bYoma 67b), revealing that this is his personal view. Maimonides appears to have been the first to see sacrifice as a ḥok or unexplained law (see Stern 1986: 111), although several classical rabbinic commentators followed in his wake (Derashot ha-​Ran 9, 11; Malbim to Deuteronomy 6:20, Isaiah 32:17, and Psalms 50:16; Meshekh Ḥokhmah Leviticus 21:17–​18). While these two Maimonidean works have somewhat different formulations of the reason for sacrifice—​as a concession and as a ḥok—​both fit with a reading that fails to see intrinsic value in the practice. Due to God’s self-​sufficiency and Maimonides’ anti-​anthropomorphism, 128

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there can be no justifying function whatsoever for sacrifice, rendering it a concession and/​or an unexplained law. Nahmanides (commentary to Leviticus 1:9) strongly takes issue with Maimonides’ view that sacrifices are merely meant to kill the gods of other religions. He asserts that such a view renders God’s table disgusting, as it sees the function of the altar as merely one of avoiding idolatry rather than having a purpose inherently worthy of qualifying it as offering a ‘pleasing smell’ to God. It also fails to account for the sacrifices of Abel and Noah, or anyone else not tied to Israel’s experiences as it left Egypt. In terms of a positive account of what sacrifice is, Nahmanides notes that sacrifice serves to create an exclusive closeness between God and Israel; they are to sacrifice only to God, and God will reciprocate within that exclusive relationship by resting the divine spirit upon Israel. Some might see this as a sufficient inherent reason for sacrifice, focusing on the relational aspect implicit in the term korban, which stems from the root k.r.b., meaning closeness. Nahmanides also refers, fairly cryptically, to the purpose of sacrifice as being a ‘great secret,’ referencing a Kabbalistic account shrouded in secrecy. Sacrifice on his view has been understood as an act intended to set the proper balance in the world of sefirot (a ‘need of the Most High’), attracting divine emanation, and, consequently, allowing the divine presence to properly inhabit the world and offer ideal divine influence for the offeror. The students of Nahmanides debated the precise contours of this approach, whether it should be seen primarily as theurgical (attracting emanation to the sefirot) or magical-​astral (drawing emanation from the supernal world to earth, see Schwartz 2001). In the modern period, as well, various Hasidic and Kabbalistic groups have continued this strand of thought, seeing sacrifice as a form of theurgy or of bringing God down to earth.

10.7  Future Prospects of Sacrifice Since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, the practice of sacrifice has been dormant. As noted above, rabbinic literature is replete with statements about possible alternatives to sacrifice in the absence of a Temple—​these include things like Torah study, good deeds, fasting and submission, repentance and prayer. (There is a significant literature on these alternatives to sacrifice, which have arguably attracted more attention than the topic of sacrifice in rabbinic literature itself. See Zuckier 2020, ch. 6 and the citations appearing at p.364 n553.) Different statements offer these with different valences—​in some cases these alternatives are presented (implicitly or explicitly) as inferior, equal or superior to sacrifice (Bokser 1983). If rabbinic literature provides for a modus vivendi without a Temple, that at least theoretically leaves open the question of whether sacrifice is desirable as a future goal, in a world where the Temple might be restored. To some extent, this depends on how one understands sacrifice in the three debates discussed above; at the very least for those who lack a strong justification for sacrifice, the question can indeed be asked: is sacrifice and/​or the Temple’s reconstruction actually desirable or not? What are the present and future prospects of sacrifice? The primary thrust of rabbinic Judaism would certainly answer these questions in the affirmative. Tracing back to the first millennium, the authoritative prayerbook includes the thrice-​daily hope that ‘May you accept with goodwill the burnt offerings of Israel… may our eyes see Your merciful return to Zion,’ supplemented on holidays with the exhortation of God ‘rebuild Your House… and there we shall offer before You our obligatory sacrifices.’ Daily prayers have historically included the recitation of korbanot, namely various verses and rabbinic passages about sacrifices, following the rabbinic dictum that ‘we pay [instead of sacrificial] bulls with our lips’ (Hosea 14:3), meaning that prayer about sacrifice can count as a 129

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sacrifice itself (bYoma 86b). Following the recitation of these verses is a prayer that God return the Temple service. Similarly, starting with Tannaitic literature, composed in the years immediately following the Temple’s destruction, rabbinic literature has been heavily focused on matters of sacrifice, with about a quarter of it (and significant parts of later rabbinic literature as well) dealing with matters of sacrifice and Temple service. Both prayer and study about sacrifice are effective as a sort of stand-​in for sacrifice itself and as a way of maintaining communal memory of the past Temple and hope for its restoration (Leviticus Rabbah 7:3). Thus, the standard view of classical rabbinic Judaism has been to hope for a future restoration of the Temple and sacrifice, but not to directly pursue that project in practice, leaving the restoration up to God. However, there are divergences from the standard, ‘alternatives now, sacrifice later’ view, in both directions. First, some have tried to perform sacrifices in the current reality. In a more attenuated version, we find the emergence of some pseudo-​sacrificial rituals, especially around Yom Kippur—​the ritual practice of Tashlikh, sending away sins into the water (see Micah 7:19), patterned after the scapegoat’s taking away the sins (Leviticus 16:22), and the practice of kapparot, literally ‘atonements,’ where one transfers one’s sins onto a chicken, which is waved around one’s head, and then slaughtered and offered to the poor, patterned after the ransom of a sin-​offering, although these attracted controversy (Lauterbach 1951, 1970). These could be called attempts to perform sacrifice (or its closest equivalent) without a Temple. In yet a further step toward sacrifice, starting in the 19th century in earnest but tracing back earlier, and continuing to the present day, there has been interest in offering certain sacrifices (for ritual reasons, the Passover lamb is easiest to accommodate) on the Temple Mount. Many rabbinic letters were written around this issue, especially to and from Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, who was its greatest proponent, although this project has not been successful to date. (See Myers 1987 and Hershkowitz 2022.) In the opposite direction, there have been various voices (in both more and less traditional communities) that have expressed skepticism, to one degree or another, about the desirability of sacrifice even once the Temple is rebuilt, or who are not interested in it being rebuilt in the first place. The Maimonidean view (noted above) that sacrifice originally was a concession to human weakness and something akin to a historical accident has been invoked as yielding this perspective. While he certainly can be understood to view sacrifice as less than ideal, it would be difficult to see Maimonides himself supporting the abrogation of sacrifice, given his views about the unchanging nature of the law. Moreover, he explicitly asserts that sacrifice will continue in the messianic era at ‘Laws of Kings,’ 11:1. (Note, however, the letter by R. Joseph Messas interpreting Maimonides as supporting the abrogation of sacrifice; see Shapiro, 2010.) Maimonides’ views, however, were drawn upon in the 19th century, when much of the nascent Reform movement and some adjacent thinkers rejected the tenets of messiah, rebuilding the Temple and reestablishing sacrifice (Kohler 2012). In 1818, the (Reform) Hamburg Temple prayerbook removed the requests for the renewal of sacrifice on this basis. One of the Resolutions at the conference that yielded the 1869 Philadelphia Platform of the Reform movement similarly asserted that the ‘Mosaic sacrificial cult [is]… consigned to the past, once for all, with the destruction of the Second Temple.’ Even among those who recite traditional prayers, some have expressed discomfort with a full sacrificial regime. (See, e.g., Weinberg 2003: 255.) Strikingly, Rav A.I. Kook wrote (Kook 1962: 292) that in the messianic era sacrifice may change, emphasizing the verse ‘and the minḥah offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be sweet to the Lord’ (Mal. 3:4) as indicating that only the minḥah, or flour offering, will be brought, but not animal offerings. 130

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The impetus for moving away from sacrifice could be one of multiple things. Rabbi Kook’s approach emphasizes a discomfiture with harming animals. Others may see sacrificial ritual as a vestige of the barbaric past, one they are happy is behind them; they would prefer the less ritual parts of religion to the more cultic aspects. Some of the Maimonidean concerns about the efficacy of sacrifice or its necessity may be relevant as well. From this perspective, the question of what role ritual should play in enlightened religion, a major topic of discussion in philosophy of religion, rears its head here. One modern thinker who has explicitly defended the value of animal sacrifice in a philosophical vein (beyond a mere traditionalist stance) is Michael Wyschogrod (1996: 17–​21). He emphasizes the vivid, corporeal, mortality of an animal being killed, and the power in the mind of the offeror as they associate that with a sin they may have committed. The killing of animals raises the stakes of religion in a manner that is not present in non-​sacrificial approaches; ‘sacrificial Judaism brings the truth of human existence into the Temple.’ Related Topics: Repentance; Reason and the Ritual Commandments

References Bokser, Baruch M. (1983) ‘Rabbinic responses to catastrophe: from continuity to discontinuity, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 50: 37–​61. Hershkowitz, Isaac. (2022) ‘Early Religious Zionism and Erudition Concerning the Temple and Sacrifices,’ Religions 13(4): 310–​24. Kohler, G. Y. (2012). Reading Maimonides’ philosophy in 19th century Germany: the guide to religious reform (Vol. 15). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer Science & Business Media. Kook, Abraham Isaac. (1962) Olat Reiy”ah. volume 2. Jerusalem, Israel: Mosad ha-​Rav Kook. Lauterbach, J. (1951) ‘Tashlik: A Study in Jewish Ceremonies,’ in Rabbinic Essays, pp. 299–​433. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press. Lauterbach, J. (1970) ‘The Ritual for the Kapparot Ceremony,’ in Studies in Jewish Law, Custom, and Folklore, pp. 133–​42. New York: Ktav. Maimonides, Moses. (1963) The Guide of the Perplexed. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Meshel, Naphtali. (2014) The ‘Grammar’ of Sacrifice: A Generativist Study of the Israelite Sacrificial System in the Priestly Writings with A ‘Grammar’ of Σ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Milgrom, Jacob. (1971) ‘A prolegomenon to Leviticus 17: 11,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 90(2): 149–​56. Milgrom, Jacob. (1976) ‘Israel’s Sanctuary: The Priestly “Picture of Dorian Gray”,’ Revue Biblique 83(3): 390–​9. Milgrom, Jacob. (1983) ‘The Graduated Hattat of Leviticus 5: 1–​13,’ JAOS 103(1): 249–​54. Myers, Jody. (1987) ’Attitudes Towards a Resumption of Sacrificial Worship in the Nineteenth Century,’ Modern Judaism 7(1): 29–​49. Pinkus, R. Moshe Aharon. (2008) ‘Be-​Inyan Ritzuy ha-​Korban be-​Dam u-​ve-​vasar,’ in Shalmei Yosef: Massekhet Zevahim, second edition, pp. 44–​6. E. Israel: Kollel Ponevezh. Schwartz, Dov. (2001) ‘From Theurgy to Magic: The Evolution of the Magical-​Talismanic Justification of Sacrifice in the Circle of Nahmanides and his Interpreters,’ Aleph 1: 165–​213. Shapiro, Marc. (2010) ‘R. Kook on Sacrifices and Other Assorted Comments,’ The Seforim Blog, . Sklar, Jay. (2010) Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement: The Priestly Conceptions. Vol. 2. Sheffield, UK: Phoenix Press. Smith, William Robertson. (1914) Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series; The Fundamental Institutions. London: A. and C. Black. Stern, Josef. (1986) ‘The Idea of a Hoq in Maimonides’ Explanation of the Law.’ In Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May 1985, pp. 92–​ 130. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Weinberg, Yehiel Yaakov. (2003) Kitvei ha-​Gaon Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, ztz”l, vol. 2. Scranton, PA: M. Shapiro.

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Further Reading Balberg, Mira. (2017) Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. (A recent study of sacrifice in rabbinic literature.) Halbertal, Moshe. (2012) On Sacrifice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (A philosophical account of aspects of sacrifice and their replacement within Jewish tradition.) Anderson, Gary. (2009) Sin: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale University. (An account of the shifting metaphysics of sin in ancient Judaism.) Milgrom, Jacob. (1991–​2000) Leviticus. 3 vols. New York: Anchor Bible. (A monumental commen­ tary on Leviticus, including its sacrificial matters, in its historical context and in light of its reception history.)

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11 REPENTANCE Daniel Rynhold

From a Jewish perspective, the fact that human beings are imperfect is almost true by definition. One need not appeal to Christian doctrines of original sin, notoriously problematic in a Jewish context (see Cohon 1987; also Cooper 2004 for an alternative view), in order to establish this. As the author of Kohelet—​rabbinic tradition assigns it to King Solomon—​ wrote, ‘there is no wholly righteous person on earth who does only good and does not sin’ (Ecclesiastes 7:20). Even setting aside the fact that human imperfection is as clearly verifiable as any universal generalization can be, for Judaism the only perfect being is God. Jewish people, not being God—​whatever their mothers may think—​are thus imperfect and sin.1 Repentance offers us the opportunity to address this situation. As the focal point of the High Holy Days—​the most significant period in the liturgical calendar running from Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) to Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement)—​it allows people to ‘turn from their evil ways’ (Jonah 3:10) and restore the relationship with God that sin has rent asunder. While biblical in concept, with the book of Jonah devoted to the topic, the Hebrew term for repentance—​teshuvah—​is rabbinic, deriving from the root shuv meaning ‘to return.’ The rabbis exalt repentance to the point that it takes on cosmic significance—​‘R. Yonatan said: Great is repentance, because it brings about redemption’ (bYoma 86a–​b; see Kook 1978 for a modern cosmic approach)—​but our focus here will be on penitent individuals, who, the rabbis state, stand where even the perfectly righteous cannot (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, 7:4, based on bBerakhot 34b). Rabbinic Judaism inevitably translates the process of repentance into a set of rituals that express or help motivate it, such as confession, or vidui (a central feature of the Yom Kippur liturgy), prayer and fasting. But these are generally mere external manifestations of repentance, which as a process takes some variation of the following form: (1) recognition that one has sinned; (2) regret and remorse for the act; and (3) the resolution not to repeat the sin, which, if successful, yields complete repentance, described by Maimonides (in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, 2:1) as when ‘an opportunity presents itself for repeating an offence once committed, and the offender, while able to commit the offence, nevertheless refrains from doing so, because he is penitent, and not out of fear or failure of vigour’ (Maimonides 1981: 82b). Law and ritual were very much the rabbinic métier of course; systematic theology, less so. Thus, it is not until medieval times that we find the first forays into methodical

DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-16

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philosophical-​theological accounts of repentance, in works that include Saadia Gaon’s Emunot ve-​Deot (Book of Beliefs and Opinions), Baḥya Ibn Pakuda’s Hovot ha-​Levavot (Duties of the Heart), and most influentially (as we will see) Rabbeinu Yonah’s Sha’arei Teshuvah (Gates of Repentance) and Maimonides’ code of law, Mishneh Torah. One final preliminary. From a Jewish perspective, the mitzvot (commandments) create the context for sin. These commandments can concern our relationship with other human beings—​mitzvot bein adam le-​ḥaveiro—​or exclusively concern our relationship with God—​ mitzvot bein adam le-​makom. Sins from the latter category clearly require God’s forgiveness. For sins committed against another person however, our first concern must be the human victim—​as the rabbis note, God does not forgive sins committed against another human being until forgiveness is requested from the person themselves (see mBabaKama 8:7 and bYoma 87a). Nonetheless, these sins also distance the perpetrator from God, since an ethical infraction is simultaneously the transgression of a divine imperative. This means that in analyzing repentance, where we have to consider the roles of the sinner and the offended party, the latter will sometimes include another person but will always include God. In what follows we mainly focus on sin as an infraction against God, since that sets up the uniquely religious aspects of repentance. Repentance for acts against our fellow human beings appear, but take a backseat, being more a topic for discussions of forgiveness. We will, however, begin there, since issues surrounding forgiveness (which we leave undefined for now, relying on our intuitive notion) raise important philosophical questions for repentance.

11.1  Repentance: Some Questions If someone has knowingly sinned, they may or may not try to make amends through repentance. If they do not, and God forgives them, such unconditional forgiveness is at best unjustified, at worst a morally problematic thing to do, since God seems to be condoning the wrong committed. As Aurel Kolnai puts it, if ‘the wrong is still flourishing, the offence still subsisting... then by forgiving you accept it and thus confirm it and make it worse’ (Kolnai 1974: 98). Relatedly, as Jeffrie Murphy notes, to forgive a wrong perpetrated against one­ self too easily shows a lack of self-​respect (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 17). Setting aside for now how questions of self-​respect apply to God, we can at least say that forgiving too quickly exhibits a lack of respect for the values that God represents and wants us to realize, so to speak. If one does sincerely repent though, it seems as if God ought to forgive—​repentance is the prime candidate for justifying forgiveness since in repenting we separate ourselves from the sinful act and make it clear that we should no longer be identified with the sort of person who would do such a thing. But does this leave God anything to forgive? Does God’s task not now become ‘the mere registering of moral value in the place of previous disvalue’ (Kolnai 1974: 98)? In other words, if repentance really works, then one is no longer blameworthy and there is no need for forgiveness. So, in Kolnai’s summation: ‘Briefly, forgiveness is either unjustified or pointless’ (Kolnai 1974: 99). This alleged paradox raises related questions concerning the role God plays in repentance, for if repentance merits forgiveness, is God’s role here redundant since there is now no need to forgive? Does it at best reduce God’s role to that of ‘rubber stamping’ something that is now our due? If, on the other hand, repentance does not merit forgiveness, is God’s forgiveness at best unjustifiable, at worst morally problematic? Of course, one might argue that it need not matter if it is unjustifiable—​God can forgive someone who does not merit it. But this just pushes our questions back a step. If repentance is not a sufficient condition for forgiveness, we would generally expect that it is nonetheless 134

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a necessary condition that ‘motivates’ forgiveness by the offended party. We can then ask—​ what determines whether or not God goes the extra step and (unjustifiably) forgives? Is there a ‘repentance threshold’ that we must meet to merit forgiveness? If so, is God not again placed in a position where ‘to “forgive” the no longer guilty is no longer to forgive’? (Zaibert 2009: 369). If not, then once more God is unjustifiably forgiving us. Hopefully, you begin to see how philosophical questions can arise for repentance, and in what follows, we will look at two different models from the history of Jewish thought to see how they navigate these issues.

11.2  Repentance as Atonement: The Approach of R. Jonah Gerondi One key aspect of repentance is atonement. Joseph Soloveitchik (1903–​ 93) speaks of atonement, or kapparah, as the aspect of repentance engendered by the ‘fundamental’ Jewish belief that ‘No sin goes without its retribution, whether it be meted out by a terrestrial or a celestial court.’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 1). In the religious realm, sin incurs punishment, and repentance is a means to atonement such that despite one’s guilt, the punishment can be reduced or cancelled. Our first view of repentance places these ideas front and center. It is found in the first systematic theological monograph dedicated to repentance, Sha’arei Teshuvah (The Gates of Repentance), a 13th-​century work composed by R. Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi, often known as Rabbeinu Yonah (c. 1180–​1263), a leading figure in Barcelonan Jewry. He portrays repentance as motivated primarily by fear of punishment, and consequently as centered upon one’s past guilt and the need to solicit divine mercy. Within his 20 principles of repentance enumerated in the ‘First Gate,’ Gerondi includes as separate principles: regret, forsaking sin, sorrow, suffering, shame, humbling oneself to the point of self-​abasement, the breaking of physical desire, investigation of the punishment for one’s transgressions, and having one’s sin constantly before one’s mind. Focusing on a handful of these will illustrate the general tenor of his view. Regarding sorrow, Gerondi states that its magnitude and intensity determine ‘the levels and degrees of repentance’ (Gerondi 1967: 21), which would be unremarkable were it not supplemented by the principle of worry, yielding the following picture: Sorrow pertains to the past and worry to the future. [The penitent] must worry, too, lest he has fallen short in repentance; in suffering, bitterness, fasting and weeping. And although he may have suffered and wept much, he must tremble and fear that he may have sinned over and against this and that with all of his suffering, weeping and fasting, he has not paid his debt. (Gerondi 1967: 23–​5) For Gerondi, we actively express sorrow over our sins, helped on by various prescribed practices. But never being assured that we have been sufficiently sorrowful, we must worry about this, setting off another round of sorrow, about which we similarly worry, and so on and so forth in a never-​ending cycle of psychological torment. While the mental anguish is intended to serve ‘lofty purposes’ (Gerondi 1967: 77), this bleak approach is compounded throughout the work. There is, for example, the constant need to reflect on the punishments that one has incurred ‘so that [one] may be aware of the greatness of his sin’ (Gerondi 1967: 51), and continual emphasis on the final judgment awaiting on the day we die. He even compares to ‘beasts’ those ‘who are not impelled by the thought of death to lay up provisions for the way or to correct their deeds, and into whose hearts the thought of their day of death does not enter until its arrival’ (Gerondi 1967: 99). 135

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Moreover, this is all couched in terms that devalue the significance of life in this world relative to that of the afterlife: [O]‌ne who wishes his day of death to lead to eternal life will resolve within himself that since he is destined to leave the earth and his bodily desires and, in the end, to despise and abjure them, he will abandon them in his lifetime and make use of the earth only in the service of the exalted God. Then, his day of death will lead to life without end. (Gerondi 1967: 103) For Gerondi then, the emphasis is on the sinner’s guilt and the fear of punishment it ought to engender, yielding an excessive form of mental (and more moderate form of physical) self-​ flagellation. The human role in repentance becomes one of throwing oneself at God’s mercy in the hope that God will wipe the slate clean as far as punishment is concerned. Such a view, Soloveitchik writes, renders repentance ‘a wholly miraculous phenomenon made possible by the endless grace of the Almighty’ (Soloveitchik 1983: 113), who is positioned to make deter­ minations concerning this miraculous remission of punishment.

11.3  Repentance as Atonement: A Critical Analysis Before asking how Gerondi’s view of repentance deals with some of the questions raised earlier, we need to do some further conceptual groundwork. First, if we are discussing repentance in terms of removing punishment, many philosophers would speak of mercy rather than forgiveness. To clarify the distinction, take the example of a human judge in a legal case. It is surely not for the judge to forgive what a criminal has done—​that is a matter for the victim, for forgiveness cannot ordinarily be granted by a third party (though see Warmke 2017 for some examples to the contrary). Mercy, in contrast, is something that a judge—​a third party—​can dispense. Mercy, therefore, is more a legal concept where someone with the authority and right to punish decides not to do so, at least not to the full extent to which they have a right. Mercy, however, need not—​very often does not—​ involve forgiveness, which is neither necessary nor sufficient for mercy to be shown. A judge may show mercy regardless of whether the victim forgives, and a victim may forgive yet think that punishment of some sort is important for all manner of reasons (and of course, legally speaking, the victim is usually powerless to grant mercy anyway). This distinction is important when discussing repentance as atonement. In Judaism, sin incurs punishment, and in the modern era, only God has the right (and authority) to punish sinners—​Jewish religious courts with the authority to adjudge such matters ceased to exist long ago. Mercy is therefore required because punishment is deserved, and mercy allows it to be commuted, presumably out of compassion (biblically, repentance is bound up with divine compassion—​see for example Jonah 3:9 and 4:2). For atonement then, God acts as an impartial judge with the proper standing and knowledge to ascertain whether and when to exercise mercy. Whether it is mercy or forgiveness, however, God, in Judaism, does not have independent power to grant either in cases where a person has been wronged. As noted previously, concerning interhuman sin, human forgiveness is generally a necessary condition of divine forgiveness (however we understand it), which would presumably follow. (We note parenthetically that there could be exceptions to this. The Talmud famously insists that a victim who does not forgive is cruel [bBabaKama 92a], so in the absence of the requisite human forgiveness, one might argue that, where appropriate, God could forgive

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the transgression of a commandment even when the human victim has not forgiven the personal infraction.) The forgoing discussion is further complicated, however, by thinkers such as Leo Zaibert who argues that ‘to forgive is to deliberately refuse to punish’ (Zaibert 2009: 368). In other words, forgiveness just is showing mercy. Zaibert bites the paradoxical bullet insisting that since punishment is merited by wrongdoing, forgiving it is unjustified. But that is precisely why removing punishment constitutes genuine forgiveness, which becomes a substantive act required of the victim when sinned against. Though it remains a minority opinion, on Zaibert’s view, Gerondi’s would be the only form of repentance that allows for genuine ‘forgiveness’ by God (and for Gerondi, presumably the necessity for repentance removes concerns that this will be mere condonation). Having sinned, we are blameworthy and have rightfully incurred a punishment. There is nothing that can be done to change this fact, so as Soloveitchik puts it, the ‘erasure of man’s sins is, from the rational standpoint, incomprehensible’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 27). The erasing of sin can only be an act of miraculous and unjustifiable grace. This is also why the human role in repentance is so tortuous—​a person is ‘to mortify himself, to practice castigation, to cry and implore for divine mercy’ (ibid.) in the hope that though unjustified, it will nonetheless be granted. Soloveitchik believes that such an approach is actually more Christian than Jewish: ‘The traditional view is that the t’shuva idea is penitence. For the Christian theologian, t’shuva is a transcendent act dependent upon the grace of God’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 27). Thus, while Gerondi’s approach may reflect a view with some theological and philosophical merit—​ keeping man and God gainfully employed while, at least according to Zaibert, also avoiding the paradox of forgiveness—​it could be problematic from a Jewish perspective to see God’s role as that of dispensing pure unmerited grace. Though there is limited textual support for totally unmerited divine mercy (for example bBerakhot 7a), Judaism certainly places importance on divine compassion—​David Berger tells me that Michael Wyschogrod once put the point to him in the form of the question ‘Did you ever hear of a Jew who went into shul [synagogue] on Yom Kippur and said, “God, give me exactly what I deserve” ’? Still, the expression of mercy is generally counterbalanced in Judaism by the need for justice. Indeed, the rabbinic insistence of maintaining the attributes of both mercy and justice within the one God was in part, perhaps, precisely to counter Christianity’s more exclusive focus on grace (see Urbach 1995: 452–​4). Along such lines, the response to Soloveitchik on Gerondi’s behalf would be that God’s mercy is not entirely gratuitous here since it is precipitated by the act of repentance. But we are then forced to ask when God would (or should) show mercy on account of repentance, and are confronted with the following alternatives: (1) Repentance justifies divine mercy, rendering God’s role at worst redundant, at best formal, in merely registering the deserved remission of punishment, and thus not really dispensing mercy at all. (2) Repentance, while a necessary condition for remitting punishment, is not a sufficient condition such that remission is justified. Thus, we need God to grant us mercy. The nature of Gerondi’s repentance as we have described it lends itself much more towards (2), though the ‘Fourth Gate’ does speak of expiation through ‘afflictions’ (yissurin) and the possibility of warding off pain through good deeds (Gerondi 1967: 355). Still, at the very least, we cannot know when we have suffered enough to justify mercy. But even leaving aside the best way to interpret Gerondi on this matter, if we are to deal with the different conceptual

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possibilities, (2) raises the question of what determines when God shows unjustified mercy, the alternatives being: (2a) God always shows unjustified mercy in response to repentance; (2b) God sometimes shows unjustified mercy in response to repentance. If God sometimes shows mercy, however, the question becomes—​when? And then it seems we once more have two possibilities: (2bi) Unjustified mercy is disbursed randomly; (2bii) Unjustified mercy is disbursed when it is merited. (2bi) is clearly unattractive, portraying God as capricious, arbitrarily deciding when and when not to show mercy. (2bii) seems to need some unpacking—​what would it mean for mercy to be unjustified but merited? One could try to argue that while mercy is never justified such that it is our due, we can repent to a point that nonetheless triggers divine mercy, which would give us: (2’) Repentance, while a necessary condition for remitting punishment, is not a sufficient condition such that remission is justified. There is nonetheless a non-​arbitrary repentance-​ threshold that must be reached for God to grant unjustified mercy. But this lands us in a position that seems functionally equivalent to option (1)—​mercy being justified, and thus not mercy at all—​since in both (1) and (2’) there is a non-​arbitrary threshold that we need to reach to trigger divine mercy. It is true that in (2’) God still needs to show mercy, while in (1) God would decide you have justified the removal of punishment—​ at least for those comfortable making such fine-​grained distinctions in divine ‘mental space’ (more on this later). Nonetheless, this seems like a distinction without a difference. In both cases there is a point at which mercy becomes our due. (1) and (2’) seem to end up being too similar for comfort. What of option (2a)—​that God always shows mercy following repentance? Here we can surely ask whether Jewish thinkers would equate the person who simply turns up to synagogue and mumbles some words thoughtlessly on Yom Kippur with one who goes through the painstaking self-​examination that repentance requires. It seems extremely difficult to reconcile that with the account Gerondi gives and with Jewish law more generally—​Maimonides rejects insincere individual confession in ‘Laws of Repentance’ 2:3, though as noted earlier, there is limited textual support for God granting unmerited mercy. It seems far more likely that God always shows mercy to one who repents properly. But that leads us back once more to (2’)—​a non-​arbitrary threshold at which those who have suffered sufficiently gain divine mercy. Summarizing our discussion, the best sense we can make of Gerondi’s account has God as a ‘merciful forgiver,’ for reasons that may or may not justify that mercy, which leaves us either with a God who disburses mercy randomly, or a God who has to grant mercy once repentance reaches a certain threshold, which seems like mercy in a highly attenuated sense, if it is mercy at all. Regardless, since our epistemological limitations mean that we can never know which of these is the case, we end up with Gerondi’s ‘better safe than sorry’ approach. Whether one’s repentance has been effective in securing mercy can presumably only be verified eschatologically, but in the meantime, we are condemned here to a cycle of psychological distress—​which brings us to the human role in Gerondi’s repentance. Even if we accept that deep retributive suffering is appropriate for a sinner, as Jean Hampton writes, ‘the offender’s own well-​being … must always be respected in the construction of a

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genuinely retributive, rather than vengeful, response.’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 160). Whether Gerondi’s view respects the offender’s well-​being is open to question. It could easily fall victim to modern psychological critiques of repentance, as leveled most forcefully by Friedrich Nietzsche, albeit more with Christianity than Judaism in mind, when he wrote that ‘a methodical application of penitential torments, contritions, and cramps of redemption’ lead to a ‘shattered nervous system,’ such that thanks to ‘penitence and redemption training we find enormous epileptic epidemics … terrible paralyses and chronic depressions.’ (Nietzsche 1998: 103); repentance is the apotheosis of the religious method an individual uses ‘to drive his self-​torture to its most gruesome severity and sharpness’ (Nietzsche 1998: 63). While one might expect religious thinkers to dismiss Nietzsche’s critique as the bitter recriminations of a lapsed believer, it finds echoes in Soloveitchik, who deems atonement only a ‘peripheral aspect’ of repentance (Soloveitchik 1983: 112) and criticizes religious types who ‘[view] repentance only from the perspective of atonement, only as a guard against punishment, as an empty regret which does not create anything, does not bring into being anything new’ (Soloveitchik 1983: 113). Soloveitchik goes so far as to explicitly state that ‘Spinoza … and Nietzsche … from this perspective—​did well to deride the idea of repentance’ (Soloveitchik 1983: 114, emphasis added). There are those for whom the Nietzsche–​Soloveitchik critique strikes a chord, deterred as they are by Gerondi’s picture of us as embroiled in a constant fight against our physical natures, and his encouraging the rejection of our this-​worldly desires (though this is no great loss for Gerondi since in his estimation the value of life in this world pales into insignificance as compared to life in the next). In general, his view of repentance is bound up with a robust view of the afterlife as a place where one will suffer in the extreme or be rewarded if one’s repentance is effective, with these post hoc rewards presumably compensating one for the suffering endured, not least while repenting in the here and now. To cap it all off, the nature of a God who would require such depths of suffering is no less contentious. While Hampton agrees that ‘mercy is a gift to which the wrongdoer never has a right,’ she continues that nonetheless ‘the punisher may be monstrous not to bestow [it]’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 159). While we may not have a right to mercy, we might at least make the negative claim that there should be limits to the suffering God expects of a sinner. As Hampton continues, ‘a judge isn’t being merciful if he refrains from torturing a torturer’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 160). While God might not be the torturer here, if repentance is a divine requirement or command (whether it is one of the 613 biblical mitzvot is debated), God would still, for Gerondi, bear ultimate responsibility for imposing this tortuous process upon us. The liturgy of Yom Kippur and the surrounding days includes the prayer Avinu Malkeinu—​ ‘Our Father, Our King’—​once again perhaps striking a balance between mercy and justice. Hampton writes that God is ‘merciful not because it is just to be so … but because his love of the wrongdoer makes it appropriate for him to be so’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 161), and it might be that this more personal turn problematizes any attempt at an abstract analytic approach to divine mercy. Either way, there seems to be little fatherly love in Gerondi’s picture. So, for all that Gerondi might sidestep the paradox of forgiveness and maintain an important role for God as the ‘forgiver in chief’ to undeserving humans (a view that is itself not without problems as we have seen), the psychological and theological price to pay for his view is not insignificant. Indeed, much as one’s theory of creation was seen as symptomatic of an entire philosophical-​theological worldview in medieval times, one might argue that repentance occupies a similar space for modern Jewish thinkers.

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11.4  Repentance as Purification: R. Joseph Soloveitchik To this point, we have focused on repentance motivated by fear of punishment. But as we’ve already seen, the 20th century Jewish thinker Joseph Soloveitchik, for whom repentance ‘does not depend upon depression or a sense of despair’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 28), is wary of priori­ tizing this approach. Soloveitchik is more focused on repentance as purification, triggered by a ‘negative aesthetic reaction’ and feelings of nausea at the defilement that sin causes (Soloveitchik 2017: 121). This form of repentance—​‘far superior to absolution’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 30)—​aims to remove this defilement through self-​improvement. When successful, it results in the ‘termination of a negative personality, the sinner’s divesting himself of his status as a rasha [wicked person]’ (Soloveitchik 1983: 112). Removal of punishment is neither a motivating factor nor an explicit aim here, though we should not mistake this for Soloveitchik dismissing the role of punishment and suffering. On the contrary, he believes that suffering is ‘an integral part of the process of repentance’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 179), though throughout his oeuvre he emphasizes the constructive value of suffering, which can ‘form and shape … character’ and enable one to ‘reach a level of exaltedness not possible in a world bereft of suffering’ (Soloveitchik 2000: 11). Sticking with the atonement and punishment discussion for the moment, we note that Soloveitchik generally situates these ideas within a drier legal framework. Citing the medieval commentator Rashi and his observation that ‘the words “kapparah” (acquittal) and “kofer” (indemnity payment) are derived from the same Hebrew root [“kfr”] and have a common signification,’ Soloveitchik notes that kapparah is [A]‌legal concept, borrowed from the laws of property. Just as one may release his fellow man of a debt owed to him, so may God absolve one of penalty to which he is liable due to sin. Kapparah removes the need for punishment… (Soloveitchik 2017: 2) Soloveitchik agrees that ‘an indemnity must be offered and paid in order to withdraw the liability claim’ (ibid.). But even allowing that Soloveitchik at times invokes divine grace in relation to remission of punishment, we find in stark contrast to Gerondi, that: ‘The moment acquittal is granted and punishment is wiped from the books, man’s liability is terminated’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 3). For Soloveitchik it would be ‘monstrous’ for us to be tormented by sin for the rest of our mortal lives. Indeed, fasting, praying and the Day of Atonement itself can all qualify to pay one’s ‘debt’ and reduce punishment, and Soloveitchik even cites R. Judah HaNasi’s Talmudic view that ‘Kapparah is possible even when an individual has not repented’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 4, though he confines this view to communal rather than individual acquittal, a problematic distinction that we will pass over). Still, merely contemplating the possibility that Yom Kippur itself—​itzumo shel yom (the very essence of the day)—​might procure atonement in mechanical fashion rather downgrades the significance of the atonement aspect of repentance, and what Yom Kippur certainly cannot do is effect purification. It is a prime opportunity for purification since it is the time at which one feels closest to God, and one ‘feels unable to sin when … conscious of the proximity of the Almighty’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 210). But there are no mechanical shortcuts to purification. In order to explain purification, Soloveitchik relies on Henri Bergson’s distinction between quantitative and qualitative time. In brief, on the quantitative approach—​that incidentally lurks in the background of Gerondi’s view—​time is viewed from an objective scientific perspective as ‘measured by the clock and the calendar’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 15). What’s done is done such that one can only therefore ‘regret an irretrievably lost past’ (Soloveitchik 1983: 113) and 140

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castigate oneself in the hope that God will miraculously show mercy. The deed is irretrievably cast such that erasing it together with its punishment is, as noted earlier ‘from the rational standpoint, incomprehensible’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 27; see also Lebens 2020, Chapter 8, for a bizarre, entertaining, yet rigorous presentation of an alternative metaphysic of time that allows God to erase the sins of the penitent). In contrast, qualitative time is time as experienced by human subjects, which Soloveitchik writes, allows us ‘the vicarious experience, while in the present, of the past and the future’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 17). Here, the past is ‘still in existence… [and] interpenetrates with the present and the future’ (Soloveitchik 1983: 113), allowing for the self-​creation that is central to purification, wherein one reinterprets past sin through its present and future effects. As Max Scheler (another key influence on Soloveitchik) notes, there is no claim of time-​travel here, but we celebrate the wonderful fact that –​perhaps not the material reality –​but the sense and worth of the whole of our life still come, at every moment of our life, within the scope of our freedom of action… . [N]‌o part of our past life … might not still be genuinely altered in its meaning and worth, through entering our life’s total significance as a constituent of the self-​revision which is always possible. (Scheler 2010: 39–​40) We should pause briefly to note Scheler’s mention of ‘freedom of action,’ the necessity of which for repentance is noted by many thinkers, not least Maimonides who devotes two chapters of his ‘Laws of Repentance’ to the topic. Indeed, on Soloveitchik’s interpretation, it is precisely repentance motivated by the desire for self-​improvement that Maimonides writes of following his discussion of freewill, since freewill founds the ability to actively choose a different path and change, culminating in the creation of a new self. Repentance motivated by fear, in contrast, is discussed prior to the freewill discussion since from a phenomenological perspective fear is more ‘coercive.’ Soloveitchik’s creative and life-​affirming version of repentance, focused on a future pregnant with possibilities rather than a past that can never be overcome, is clearly light years from Gerondi’s approach. Moreover, in repentance of purification the self changes and improves because of sin, not despite it. While for Gerondi the sinner ‘is duty-​bound to rid himself of the attributes that bring about sin’ (Gerondi 1967: 36), Soloveitchik believes that removing the drives that lead to sin ‘severs part of [one’s] being’ such that one’s ‘personality is dwarfed’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 166). Purification involves instead harnessing the drives behind the sin to serve as ‘the generating force, the springboard that pushes [the repentant person] higher and higher’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 174). It is ‘the memory of sin that releases the power within the inner depths of the soul of the penitent to do greater things than ever before’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 169). What matters then (once more in highly Nietzschean fashion), is how we judge the person rather than the act—​the alternative of seeing oneself ‘always as the doer of one deed’ is nothing short of ‘madness’ (Nietzsche 1976: 150) and assumes a particular ontology of the person, as a substance indelibly marked by its sins. On a more Humean ontology of the self as an aggregate of mental states (see Campbell 2006) one can argue that the act as understood at the time, torn from the context the penitent person’s life now offers ‘does not provide good evidence of the condition of the wrongdoer’s soul’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 86). Repentance of purification can even be seen as a practice of self-​improvement related to the human condition in general rather than to sin specifically. As the notorious 20th-​century Israeli thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz puts it, Judaism is concerned with the ‘realities of human existence’ (Leibowitz, 1995: 15) from which no religion can extricate us. And that is precisely 141

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why, for Leibowitz, when Yom Kippur concludes, those in the synagogue immediately begin the weekday evening prayer as they do every other day, with the words ‘And he is merciful and forgiving of sin,’ despite being cleansed of sin, having quite literally not moved since Yom Kippur ended mere seconds earlier. But for Leibowitz, that’s precisely the point: ‘the basic situation of repentant man at the close of the Day of Atonement is exactly what it was the evening before… Immediately after he must begin his preparations toward the next Yom Kippur.’ (Leibowitz 1995: 15). Repentance can be seen, as indicated by Maimonides’ aforementioned discussion in ­chapter 7 of ‘Laws of Repentance’ as a response to the constant human drive for self-​improvement rather than to specific sins. The most extreme version of this idea, albeit set against a mystical background, is found in the work of Rav Kook, who sees repentance quite literally as a pulse beating throughout all of existence—​‘the world must inevitably come to full penitence’ (Kook 1978: 54)—​such that repentance is ‘always present in the heart’ (Kook 1978: 57, emphasis added).

11.5  Purification and Punishment While the explicit aim of purification is self-​improvement, Soloveitchik maintains the traditional view that no sin goes without its retribution. With purification though, ‘sin is its own true punishment’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 13). Based on a discussion of various halakhic principles, Soloveitchik writes of punishment that is both reduced and altered, causing ‘physical punishment to be replaced by the deep and heartfelt spiritual anguish and pangs of conscience suffered by the penitent, by the travail of discomfort and lack of tranquility’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 197). Soloveitchik’s purification account is thus, by his own admission, ‘not super­ natural but psychological’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 28), admitting, therefore, of a naturalistic approach to punishment and atonement through ‘redemptive suffering.’ To be precise then, rather than the sin itself being the punishment, psychological suffering can serve as a form of self-​imposed retributive justice. We should note here that Menachem HaMeiri (1249–​1315) similarly regards biblical sacrifice not as atoning for sin through some metaphysical mechanism, but as an instrument for inspiring psychological repentance, which itself constitutes the atonement (for more on this see Shlomo Zuckier’s chapter ‘Sacrifice’ in this volume). Purification can be understood then as justifying forgiveness through the idea of having ‘suffered enough’ to pay one’s debt. But unlike for Gerondi, where continual psychological torment ensues from ignorance as to whether we have reached the threshold for divine mercy, the naturalistic reading made possible by Soloveitchik’s purification allows for a resolution of the torment by turning the punitive element into part and parcel of the psychological suffering of rigorous self-​examination. Moreover, one need not appeal to an afterlife here to deal with punishment. Indeed, in marked contrast to Gerondi and much of Jewish tradition, punishment and the afterlife play little to no motivational role in Soloveitchik’s penitential picture. Even if there were an externally imposed divine punishment, purification would automatically remove it since the new ‘I’ is no longer the ‘I’ that deserved the punishment in the first place. Purification then achieves not only the intended self-​improvement but also, as a natural by-​product, the removal of punishment. Whether Gerondi’s repentance, intended to remove punishment, can also achieve self-​improvement is less clear—​many would argue that the self-​ abasement such repentance requires achieves the precise opposite. We should note incidentally that while some might see retribution as a vengeful justification for punishment that is unworthy of God, Hampton writes of retribution serving as a ‘defeat of the wrongdoer at the hands of the victim … that symbolizes the correct relative value of wrongdoer and victim’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 125). Punishment therefore reflects the value of the victim, and on the view of repentance we are discussing, the victim might be God, 142

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but it could also be the wrongdoers themselves in their experience of the defilement of sin. Repentance here serves as a humbling ritual that allows wrongdoers to effectively defeat themselves, bringing them to correct themselves and their relationship with God through a form of psychological self-​victimization, in what might be deemed an example of the dialectic that Soloveitchik believes to be central to the halakhic life, which ‘wants man to be defeated by himself, to take defeat at his own hands, and then reverse the course and start surging forward again’ (Soloveitchik 2003:114). With all of this said, we might still ask where ‘forgiveness’ fits into the picture. Purification is where one might expect it to find a place, for while it is for the sinner to repent, it is for God to forgive in order to complete the reconciliation that is key to repentance for Soloveitchik. Yet it seems from Soloveitchik’s view that we have either already paid our debt or have changed to a point that the new ‘I’ has no debt to pay, leaving little if anything for God to do in what seems to be a purely rational process. Remarkably, while this is not the whole story, Soloveitchik does indeed state that ‘there is nothing transcendent, miraculous, or nonrational about tahara [purification]’ (Soloveitchik 1974: 30). But if that is the case, what role, if any, does this picture of repentance leave for divine forgiveness?

11.6  Purification, Forgiveness and God’s Role in Repentance Soloveitchik’s discussions of purification focus less on divine forgiveness than the psychological journey of the sinner, but we can maybe begin to understand this ‘omission’ by turning to the question that we have been constantly deferring—​what is forgiveness? Without getting mired in the minutiae of the philosophy of forgiveness, most thinkers at least converge on the idea that it involves overcoming some form of negative feeling related to resentment—​and philosophers naturally disagree over the nature of resentment. There is more to forgiveness than the mere overcoming of resentment, which can be accomplished by therapy, for example, while the overcoming of resentment that constitutes forgiveness must be ‘done for a moral reason’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 24). Moreover, the victim overcoming their negative feelings seems too one-​sided to reflect the interpersonal and directed nature of forgiveness. Leaving such considerations aside, however, the centrality of resentment to many accounts forces us to ask how God could forgive at all. Can we speak of God harboring resentment that needs to be overcome? This appears to cross an anthropopathic line that would trouble even the believers in a personal God (see Minas [1975] for this and other issues for divine resentment). What, then, becomes of forgiveness in the repentance process for those who find such a view problematic? One could of course raise the same question with respect to mercy (not least since a God who foreknows that a person will repent would presumably not have assigned a punishment that needs removing). There is, however, a clear Maimonidean route for avoiding gross anthropopathism when speaking of divine mercy, for Maimonides directly suggests that we see talk of mercy and compassion as shorthand for punishment being commuted. Despite being described as an act of divine compassion, Maimonides writes that ‘the attribute from which this action proceeds is predicated of Him’ simply as shorthand for the lack of punishment, and ought not imply that God ‘is affected and has compassion’ (Maimonides 1963: 125). And for those who wish to go the extra impersonal mile, one might even bake a mysterious mechanism into the ‘natural’ metaphysical laws of the religious world such that repentance can trigger the removal of punishment without requiring any direct divine intervention. Divine forgiveness, however, seems far more problematic. Even for personalists, resentment hardly seems to be a Godlike emotion, implying as it does a very personal sense of hurt whereby one feels demeaned by the deliberate actions of another. Hampton gives the 143

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example of a parent telling off a child for lying, pointing out that while a parent would ‘protest’ against such behavior, personal resentment would reflect an inappropriate insecurity and lack of self-​esteem on the part of the parent, and be a deeply problematic response (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 55). How much more so for God, who we assume has no such self-​ esteem issues. God could, however, be concerned with the ‘defense of the value which this action violated’ (Murphy and Hampton 1998: 59), as could the parent. A sense of moral or religious indignation might, therefore, be justified as an expression of one’s concern to defend the moral (or in our case religious) values being attacked by sin. In extreme cases, in relation to the Nazis, for example, this might even be accompanied by a concomitant form of ‘moral hatred.’ For a personalist, seeing divine forgiveness as the overcoming of such indignation would be less egregious than God having to overcome resentment, though in cases of heinous sin and where forgiveness cannot be sought from the victims, it might be that contra Christianity, divine forgiveness cannot always be granted. We see this reflected in the limits the rabbis placed on the human ability to atone, which in some cases might even limit God’s capacity to forgive punishment, so to speak. For one thing, atonement remains pending in cases where we cannot seek forgiveness from the victim who may, for example, be out of contact or deceased (though there are cases where one can ritually seek forgiveness from someone who is deceased—​see bYoma 87a). But rabbinic tradition further recognizes that atonement results from repentance alone only for the lightest of transgressions. For all other sins there is a sliding scale where full atonement must await the Day of Atonement, suffering or even death, depending on the severity of the sin (see bYoma 86a, and Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 1:4). On Soloveitchik’s account though, when forgiveness is appropriate, appeal to God overcoming resentment need not feature since the psychological process can accomplish the goals of forgiveness. First, the sincere psychological process of purification reasserts our commitment to the values that our sin had demeaned. Second, the process of repentance can be seen as a rabbinic attempt to reassert the esteem in which one ought to hold God, allowing us to reaffirm the reverence toward God that was diminished when we sinned. And lest one think we are overstating the naturalistic case, Soloveitchik states regarding repentance of redemption: ‘The sinner who repents in this manner becomes his own redeemer and releases himself from the captivity in the pit of sin’ (Soloveitchik 2017: 97). Effectively, on Soloveitchik’s view, once you have engaged in the process of self-​creation in a genuine and non-​self-​deceptive manner, the redemptive suffering and psychological transformation involved serve to recommit you to the values that your sin had challenged. We must be wary here since the ‘tendency to self-​exculpation is operative and needs careful watching’ (Kolnai 1974: 106). One cannot just summarily decide that one has achieved this end—​if psy­ chotherapy has taught us anything, it’s that if we do not do the hard work this requires, our ‘defilement’ will eventually come back to bite us. But if we take it seriously, there is a redemptive psychological process involved in repentance that can achieve its ends without requiring us to explain how God forgives. Self-​transformation alone attained through rigorous psychological self-​examination might deliver us from sin it seems, and we note that Maimonides in his Guide of the Perplexed does not speak of divine forgiveness in relation to repentance, instead emphasizing only the importance of belief in a remedy for our imperfections—​if a sinner ‘believes in repentance, he can correct himself and return to a better and more perfect state’ (Maimonides 1963: 540). It goes without saying that just as there are limits to what God can forgive there are limits to what this process of self-​transformation can achieve. As Soloveitchik himself notes, some sins ‘leave no choice but for the annihilation of evil and for completely uprooting it’ (Soloveitchik

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2017: 167). This is the truth contained in the aforementioned rabbinic view that some sins can only be fully atoned for by death, which could be taken to express the truth that there are sins with which we can never rest comfortably for as long as we remain alive and conscious of them. Clearly, some sins are too grave to be overcome in this way. Nonetheless, Soloveitchik’s account makes possible a general account of repentance that can allow for overcoming self-​ resentment that permits us to reconcile with ourselves and thus with God.

11.7 Conclusion We have seen two starkly different views of repentance. According to both, it is a difficult process of soul-​searching, though to very different degrees and at times even different ends. Moreover, the views commit you to radically different conceptions of God, the self, time, punishment and the afterlife. Yet whether your view commits you to a God who literally forgives, or to the values of forgiveness being taken care of without God having to get emotionally involved, on all accounts it is ultimately love and reverence for God that drives the process.2

Notes 1 Shlomo Zuckier reminded me that bShabbat 55b lists four counterexamples, but that seems like an acceptable margin of error for my claim. 2 I am grateful to Sam Fleischacker, Neti Penstein, David Shatz and Shlomo Zuckier for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Related Topics: Negative Theology; Afterlife and Eschatology; The Problem of Evil; Sacrifice

References Campbell, S. (2006) ‘The Conception of a Person as a Series of Mental Events,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73: 339–​58. Cohon, S.S. (1987) ‘Original Sin,’ in Essays in Jewish Theology, pp. 219–​72. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College. Cooper, A. (2004) ‘A Medieval Jewish Version of Original Sin: Ephraim of Luntshits on Leviticus 12,’ Harvard Theological Review 97: 445–​59. Gerondi, J. (1967) The Gates of Repentance, trans. S. Silverstein. New York: Feldheim. Kolnai, A. (1974) ‘Forgiveness,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74: 91–​106. Kook, A.I. (1978) Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, Lights of Holiness, The Moral Principles, Essays, Letters and Poems, ed. Ben Zion Bokser. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Lambert, D. A. (2016) How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lebens, S. (2020) The Principles of Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leibowitz, Y. (1995) Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, ed. E. Goldman, trans E. Goldman, Y. Navon, et al., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Maimonides, M. (1963) The Guide of the Perplexed, vol. 1, trans. Shlomo Pines, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. —​—​—​ (1981) Mishneh Torah: The Book of Knowledge, trans. Moses Hyamson. New York: Feldheim. Minas, A. C. (1975) ‘God and forgiveness,’ The Philosophical Quarterly 25: 138–​50. Murphy J.G. and Hampton J. (1998) Forgiveness and Mercy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1976) ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra,’ in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. and ed. W. Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books. —​—​—​ (1998) On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. M. Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Indianapolis/​ Cambridge: Hackett. Ibn Pakuda, B. (1973) The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, trans. M. Mansoor. London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul.

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Further Reading David A. Lambert, How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) is a fascinating account of how the biblical concept of repentance differs from modern conceptions. Though not directly philosophical, it contains plenty of fascinating conceptual material. For more on repentance and the associated worldviews in Gerondi and Soloveitchik, with particular reference to the latter’s Nietzscheanism, see Daniel Rynhold and Michael Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), ­chapter 5. Soloveitchik’s view is also analyzed and helpfully compared to that of Hermann Cohen in Lawrence Kaplan, ‘Hermann Cohen and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on Repentance,’ Journal of Jewish Thought 13 (2004). For in-​depth analysis and discussion of forgiveness, see the still exceptional Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), often cited above. Finally, for an excellent recent philosophical discussion of forgiveness in halakhic sources that includes relevant discussions of repentance and complements this chapter nicely, see Neti Penstein, ‘Forgiveness: A Philosophical Analysis of the Halakhic Sources,’ Tradition 56 (2024).

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12 LITURGICAL TRUTH Proclamation, Confirmation, Testimony Steven Kepnes

There are a number of instances in Jewish liturgy in which proclamations of God’s nature and powers are made. The prime example is the Shema: Hear O Israel, The Lord Our God, The Lord is One, which occurs multiple times in all liturgical services. But there are many other instances when Jews proclaim the greatness of God or praise Him for His mercy or His holiness or righteousness. Furthermore, there are the very interesting series of proclamations of the truth about God said after the full three-​paragraph Shema, starting with the Emet ve-​yatziv prayer in the morning or the Emet ve-​emunah prayer in the evening. Often the congregation is called upon to confirm the truth status of these proclamations and truth-​claims in joining the prayer leader in an utterance, repeating the utterance, or simply saying Amen. Because the liturgy includes proclamations of God’s powers in propositional form and uses the language of truth, which we associate with philosophy, it calls out for philosophical analysis. We are accustomed to making propositional statements in the simple statements of fact in everyday speech—​‘it is raining,’ ‘my house is the white one,’ ‘that is an oak tree.’ And there is a whole area of epistemology in philosophy where these types of statements are analyzed. Perhaps the most sophisticated discussions are found in the area of philosophy of science beginning with Hempel’s analyses of the confirmation of scientific hypotheses (Hempel 1945). A famous application of the analysis of the truth-​claims of religion is found in the mid-​ century verification–​falsification debates. Here A.J. Ayer declares most religious truth-​claims ‘meaningless’ since they neither can be verified nor falsified (Ayer 1946). And well before this, Kant pushed religious claims out of the realm of knowledge since they deal in the area of ‘the noumenal,’ and Kant argued that the only area where epistemological claims can rightly be made is the phenomenal world of space/​time. However, one does not need to be a modern philosopher or scientist to see that when Jews or Christians or Muslims make propositional claims for God, they are not doing the same thing that epistemologists and scientists do. Indeed, monotheists are the first to say that God is unseen and transcends the physical world and therefore proclamations about God’s nature are of a different sort than propositions about the physical world. What makes the issue interesting and complicated however, is that religions still use the language of propositions and truth. And they particularly like to do this in liturgy, so this calls out for comment and analysis, and we will do this now in this chapter.

DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-17

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We will begin with the resources of philosophy in its classical form in Plato and Aristotle and move up to contemporary philosophies of language in the analytic and continental traditions. This takes us to speech-​act theory. After this we consider liturgical truth-​claims as assertions about the person of God. Finally, however, we will turn to the Bible itself and to its mode of establishing truths about God. This brings us to the language of testimony and witness. So that liturgical truths function through repetition of testimonies by Israel as witness to saving events in which the truth of the glory, power, laws and wisdom of God is revealed.

12.1  Plato and Aristotelian Metaphysics One important source of liturgical assertions that God is one and good and eternal is Platonic philosophy and Neo-​Platonic theology. With Plato we have the attempt to establish that the physical world, the world brought to us by the senses, the world which we today are accustomed to calling the ‘real world,’ is actually a world of illusions. In the famous ‘Allegory of the Cave’ from The Republic, Plato presents a picture of humans enchained in a dark cave and only able to see false or shadow images of real things projected on a wall in front of them. These humans require philosophy to awaken them to the existence of the ideal forms in an upper world of light and the Good from which all things take their form. The ideal world is then the really ‘real world’ and the physical world is a dimmer less perfect and gross physical version of that world. The ideal world is not only perfect and good, but also eternal and lasting. The physical world is fleeting, transitory, subject to wearing away and death and therefore lesser in the scheme of reality and value. Plato’s student, Aristotle, refused to accept the notion of ideal forms but Aristotle has his own notion of a metaphysical non-​material force in the concept of a First Cause, the ‘unmoved mover,’ which sets the universe in motion. With Neo-​Platonism the Platonic Good is also called ‘The One.’ And when Neo-​Platonism is applied to monotheism by Philo and the Church Fathers, the Platonic forms for beauty, justice, power and wisdom become attributes or virtues of God. And monotheists were also quick to associate Aristotle’s First Cause with God. Medieval Muslim, Jewish and Christian philosophers then each develop traditions of philosophical theology which incorporate the metaphysics of Aristotle into a complex mix of Neo-​Platonism and scripture to produce classic monotheistic theism. This gives us God as one, good, omnipotent, omniscient and eternal. Certainly, there is a nascent metaphysical sense in the Bible where a need for a creator of the world is established and an unseen reality above the physical realm is imagined. In addition, the Bible speaks of things in this world as fleeting and transitory such that something that transcends time is desired. And there is a keen ethical sense in the Bible and a yearning for justice. Given these nascent metaphysical intuitions and ethical sensibilities, Hebrew writers yearn for the transcendent, the eternal, the good and the just. And they come to concentrate these ideas in the notion of a transcendent, unseen and one and good God. So, when Jewish liturgy calls worshippers to proclaim, affirm and confirm the reality of ‘the one God of truth whose teachings are true’ it is not basing itself on Greek philosophy but on the already existent traditions of a transcendent, eternal and good God in the Bible. Here, I think we can say that repeating the words of the Shema, ‘The Lord YHVH is One’ confirms a truth about God that Jews and their ancestors have sensed, proclaimed and affirmed throughout history. And we can certainly look to the medieval philosophical tradition of metaphysics for a series of philosophical arguments and warrants for the use of the language of truth and reality to talk about God in the liturgy. That Jewish liturgy respects medieval philosophy as a source of its theology is seen in the presence of two philosophical

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poems or piyyutim, the Adon Olam, ‘Eternal God’ and Yidgal, ‘He is Great,’ that are placed in the beginning and end of religious services.

12.2  The Limits of Theological Language However, if we want to use medieval philosophy to shore up the truth-​claims of liturgical theology there is a problem that must be faced. Especially if we focus in the Jewish case on the leading figure, Moses Maimonides. For even as Maimonides recognized a world beyond the physical and spoke of the one and eternal God, he also seriously challenged propositional truths about God such that God is all-​powerful, all-​wise, compassionate and just. Indeed, for Maimonides, the subject-​predicate form of theology is inappropriate and even sinful when applied to God. God is simply not a subject that can take a predicate in the manner of human beings. Human subjects have multiple possible predicates, tall, short, kind, intelligent, arrogant, etc. In Aristotelian terms, humans may be considered to have an abiding essence together with accidental attributes of their existence. However, God is essence only, without attributes. Actually, in these terms God is essence without existence or as Maimonides suggests God is essence and existence in one (Maimonides 1963, Guide I: 57). This can also be put in terms of God’s oneness. Where God’s oneness is simple and pure, all other things and beings are composed of multiple parts forged into a unity. In short, God’s oneness means that He is unique. God is so different from all that is physical that He cannot be compared to anything physical, and we therefore cannot use the same language to refer to God that we use to refer to physical things and beings. So, for Maimonides the common ways of referring to God in propositional form are false and give a false impression about who and what God really is. This means that beyond the assertion of God’s oneness in the Shema and His eternity in other places,1 most of the proclamations of God’s nature and powers in Jewish liturgy are erroneous. Now there are other Jewish philosophers in the medieval period like Judah Halevi, Gersonides and Hasdai Crescas who are more forgiving about theistic assertions of God’s attributes and powers. They then develop complex analyses to deliver a God who is both one and eternal and also possesses attributes of life, power, justice, etc. And we could review them to find important philosophical justifications for the full array of God’s attributes as asserted in the liturgy. But we will not take this route since we would rather remain closer to the language and tools of liturgy itself instead of moving to complex Greek philosophical terminology. Therefore, we will begin with an analysis of liturgical language as a series of what J.L. Austin calls ‘speech-​acts.’ And we will attempt to analyze the truth-​claims of liturgy as a series of speech-​acts by worshippers.

12.3 

Liturgical Speech-​Acts

One of the lasting contributions of analytic philosophy to our understanding of the nature and power of ordinary language has to be J.L. Austin’s notion of a ‘speech-​act’ (Austin 1962: 90 ff). Austin argues that language has two fundamental purposes, constative and performative. The constative element refers to making statements of fact and establishing what is true or false. And the performative dimension involves ‘what we bring about or achieve by saying something’ (Austin 1962: 108). Examples of the latter are saying ‘I do’ in a marriage cere­ mony, swearing someone into office, and a variety of legal acts in which the utterance of words changes a state of affairs for people and for the social world. Since liturgy involves a public performance of a group of people some want to suggest that language is used more in

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its performative than constative dimension in liturgy. This suggests that we are not making truth-​claims about God in liturgy but attempting to do something like change a state of mind, persuade or confirm what is already known. If we follow this line of reasoning, that liturgy works with the performative dimension of language, Austin is also helpful since he suggests that the performative aspect of utterances in language functions in three stages. First, there is the locutionary dimension where an utterance communicates a meaning or a referent. Second, there is an illocutionary dimension where the utterance ‘does’ things like informing, convincing, requesting. And finally, the utterance has a perlocutionary effect, it completes an action on the part of the hearer. Although Austin did not much comment on religion, the sphere of ritual and liturgical utterances has been a particularly ripe area for the analysis of ‘speech-​acts’ (Aad De Jong 2007; Marmur 2016). This is especially true in Judaism where almost every ritual act is preceded by a blessing, an utterance of words, that aims to lift a relatively common and profane act into the domain of the holy. The beginning of every blessing has a locutionary utterance with an illocutionary force. ‘Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-​olam, asher kideshanu be-​ mitzvotav ve-​tzivanu… Blessed are You, Lord our God who makes us holy by commanding us to’ …for example, ‘light shabbat candles,’ or ‘lift up [wash] our hands’ before eating or ‘put on phylacteries [Tefillin],’ etc. And the sense of holiness achieved by the blessing is the perlocutionary dimension of the utterance. Therefore, in fulfilling the command to, for instance, wash hands and bless food before eating, we make the act of eating holy. Therefore, words of blessing change our attitude and demeanor toward an action to transform it into a sacred religious act. And the action in itself is not made holy unless it is preceded or accompanied by a formulaic series of words. So, in a blessing, we actually ‘do something with words.’ In my book, The Future of Jewish Theology (2013), I have analyzed how, in Judaism, blessings uttered upon encountering natural occurrences like lightning, seeing an ocean or rainbow, wearing new clothes, smelling fragrant shrubs or fruit, transform the natural event into a holy one. I also argue that in the Kedushah prayer in all public communal recitations of the Amidah, worshippers mimic the act of angels who rise up on their toes three times as they utter the words: Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, Holy, Holy, Holy. Here, I suggest that worshippers become, for a moment, like the holy angels through their liturgical utterance and act. Applying speech-​act theory to the words we say about God in Jewish liturgy—​that He is One, Great, Mighty and Merciful King—​could we say that our utterances about God and His attributes make God so? I don’t think we want to say that since that would suggest that God’s existence and nature is dependent upon human language. There is a famous rabbinic saying that ‘if Jews do not give witness to God, it is as if, kivyakhol, He does not exist’ (Pesikta de-​ Rav Kahana 12 on Isaiah 43:12). But here the kivyakhol, is very important. It is only ‘as if’ He doesn’t exist, since the rabbis are what is called today ‘theological realists’ and believe that God exists independently of human ideation, imagination and language. However, what can be said, I think, is that liturgical utterances about the nature and powers of God make God real for the people who utter the words at the moment of liturgy when they say the words. Perhaps, here we can say that God, who exists as one, merciful and just, is by nature unseen and hidden, and collective public liturgical utterances serve to make God’s reality present. Here, I think that the accoutrements of liturgy, the melodies of the prayers, the architecture of the synagogue, the solemn attitude of fellow worshippers and the integrity and voice of the prayer leader can enhance the ‘bringing-​into-​presence’ of God that happens in liturgy. Here, notions like affirmation or confirmation make sense since we are not making God exist through liturgy, but we are affirming and confirming that God exists with such and such powers.

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I would further suggest that the task of much of theology is precisely this—​to make what is somewhat unclear, unnoticed and hidden about God, clearer and more obvious. Thus, philosophical theology uses argument, concepts and logic to make God’s nature more clear, narrative and poetic language supplies descriptions and metaphors to make God’s nature more obvious, and liturgy with its multiple speech-​acts merits a place as a form of expression that renders God present. But to return to our problem. How are we to understand the truth-​claims of liturgical propositions? As we said, for Austin, the performative dimension of his speech-​act theory is meant to move away from the ‘constative’ or truth character of utterances to the performative dimension of utterances. The performative dimension of speech, in a sense, comes after its constative dimension to make use of language for practical purposes—​marrying someone, persuading someone, resigning from a job. So here perhaps we can say that in liturgy when we make propositional statements about God, such that He is one, eternal, good, we are not making Him so, but we are merely stating a series of assumptions about who God is. In propositional statements about God, we are setting the conditions and terms of liturgy as in a Wittgensteinian ‘language game.’ Then in liturgical blessings like Baruch atah Adonai, Blessed are You, God, we are not establishing that God is bless-​ed, but we are praising God who is already blessed. God is bless-​ed then not because we say He is, but in His nature, He is bless-​ ed, and we acknowledge Him, affirm Him, confirm Him, as such. Having uttered his praises, we then go on to implore God to perform the speech-​act upon us of making us blessed, holy, healthy, wise, etc. That we implore God to perform these speech-​acts is not really strange since the very beginning of the Bible tells us that God created the world through a speech-​act. God said, ‘Let there Be light!’ And there was light! So, it is God, after all, who is the original speech-​act theorist who established well before J.L. Austin that one can do ‘something with words.’ And to take this one step forward, given that humans are created in the image of God and in recognition of the fact that humans are the only beings in God’s creation that have complex language that exhibits both verbal and written forms, perhaps we can say that it is our linguistic ability that constitutes the image of God in us. Here, we could point to a number of places in Jewish liturgy where humans, often rabbis, ‘do things with words’ in blessing the congregation and children, in assisting in circumcision and marriage ceremonies, blessing public gatherings, etc., etc. This may be referred to as the ‘priestly function’ of liturgy and Christianity is, in general, more priestly than Judaism; but certainly Judaism also displays this function. However, I would like now to leave the helpful theory of Austin and the ways it illuminates the use of language in liturgy, and return to the issue of the truth-​status of liturgical claims. For we do not want to use Austin’s notion of the performative dimension language to avoid further addressing the issue of liturgical truth with which we started this chapter. Indeed, we want to explore the extent to which the liturgy itself, using the strategies of establishing divine truths in the Bible, addresses our problem.

12.4  The Truths of Divine Subjectivity If we return to our initial formulation of the problem of liturgical truth-​claims about God, on the one hand, propositional statements of God’s nature and power cannot be verified by empirical criteria since God is a non-​material entity. And on the other hand, in the view of Maimonides, human language and concepts do not apply to God because God is radically other than humans. However, from a Biblical point of view part of God’s uniqueness is that God is both transcendent and immanent. In the Bible, God appears as beyond the highest

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height of the heavens and as close as dew on morning grass. God may be transcendent and distant, but He is also close enough to see our every action and hear our very thoughts. God is beyond time and eternal, but God enters into human history in redemptive events and reveals His word on earth. Most importantly, the Bible presents God as a person, as a complex subjectivity with thoughts, intentions and will. The personal God of the Bible is often referred to as the God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob, and we can add God of the matriarchs, Moses and the prophets. The notion that God is ‘God of…’ suggests not only that God is a relational being but also that each person can have a unique relationship with Him. So that the God of Abraham might be slightly different than that of Sarah, or Miriam, or Jeremiah. Certainly, it is the same God; but there is a different quality of the relationship for different people and as one Midrash suggests, every person has a unique perspective on God depending upon their powers of thought and imagination.2 Another common way to refer to God as person is God as father. And again, even as a father has a different sort of relationship with a first son than a daughter or second son, we see that the children of Israel see God in slightly different ways. We might also say that the personal God of Israel appears differently than the God of the universe, King of Kings. This is God who is called Elohim, from El, a common semitic word for God that can be considered a generic name for God. Whereas the personal God of Abraham and the God of Moses gives Israel a personal name, YHVH, which He allows them to call Him. We have already mentioned the central declaration of the Shema—​that God is one. But the Shema follows this with the demand ve-​ahavta ’you, [in the singular] shall love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.’ The Shema in Jewish liturgy is also preceded by the Ahava Rabbah prayer in which God declares, ‘With a great love I have loved you.’ Therefore, what we have, in Jewish liturgy, is a display of the love relationship between the person of God with both the collectivity of Israel and every single Jew. This is often spoken of as the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. This is portrayed in the metaphor of marital intimacy by the prophet Hosea. And in the Song of Songs, we have the most extensive portrait of the relationship between God and Israel as a love relationship. The philosopher Martin Buber has attempted to sum this up with his notion of the I–​Thou relationship, a deeply personal and intimate relationship in which openness to the depths of the personhood is demanded. What the notions of God as person and God’s relationship to Israel as a personal relationship do is cast the truth-​claims of liturgy in a different light than that of empirical truth-​claims. If we want to return to the notion of liturgical utterances as speech-​acts of confirmation of truths about God, this notion of confirmation however is very different than Hempel’s notion of confirming a scientific hypothesis as true. Confirmation of the truth of God’s oneness, or goodness in liturgy, is an act of belief and conviction of persons. It is an act of will and intentionality built upon human free will and not the result of scientific experiment and empirical verification. Buber (1951) once wrote about ‘two types of faith’ and he suggested that the Biblical notion of ‘Emunah’ offers a form of faith that is better understood as ‘trust’ or ‘trusting in’ (Buber 1951: 29) than giving assent to a series of cognitive beliefs. When God is viewed as person, attributes of strength and mercy, goodness and righteousness, trustworthiness and faithfulness become virtues or perfections of character. Here, judgments of the truth-​status of these attributes are assessed as we assess the character of wives and husbands, parents and children, brothers, sisters and friends. Here, life-​experience is crucial and here time matters. So that trust is built over time; in events and meetings trust is built or lost. And memory saves and holds this trust. 152

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We spoke of the difficulty in verifying the truth-​claims of propositional claims in liturgy about the powers and attributes of God because God is unseen. However, when the propositional claims about God in liturgy are understood as attributes of a person rather than empirical truths, the problem can be recast into a domain where we all recognize that different tools and standards are required to make our judgments. Here, as with friends and spouses, we rely upon intuitions and hunches when we make commitments to them. And here too, we often have to make judgments when all the facts we might want are simply not present to us. Here, we often turn to the judgments of others, of relatives and friends. ‘What do you think about the quality of the character of this person?’ ‘Is she or he reliable in your view?’ ‘Can you vouch for her integrity and goodness?’ Here, too, time is a factor. Thus, one may require more time to decide whether or not to marry this person. And here, often ‘acts speak louder than words’; so, we come to judge a person on their acts over time, rather than on their words alone. Virtues of character lie in the realm of values and morals rather than facts and numbers. Aristotle tells us in his ethics of character that judgments about character are more a matter of art than science or ‘techne’. Aristotle also argues that virtue is a matter of a mean between vices, something that cannot be determined with exactness and certitude and may even differ for each person depending upon their personality. Thus, we should not be surprised if empirical science cannot measure the virtues of the personhood of God. Recasting the truth-​claims about God in liturgy as truths of personhood allows us to see the unseen nature of God more as a matter of the unseen nature of all attributes and virtues of persons. Since we cannot ‘see’ goodness, trustworthiness, generosity, in a friend, we should not expect to see it in God either. However, just as we intuitively sense or ‘know’ that a person is trustworthy through their acts rather than just their words, we can know this about God through His acts and not just His words. And as we often take recommendations from friends about the trustworthiness of new friends, we can do the same thing with God. Here, we can return to liturgy and to the issue of liturgical truth and here I would remind us that Jewish liturgy is essentially a selection or anthology of Biblical verses chosen by the rabbis with added linking blessings and liturgical poems. This means that liturgical truth is a species of Biblical truth about the relationship between God and Israel. As Buber has suggested, ‘the theme of the Bible is the encounter between a group of people and the Lord of the world’ (Buber 2000: 1). Another way of putting this is to say the Bible is a series of ‘testimonies’ to encounters with God in which the nature of God is perceived. And since, liturgy is built upon the Bible—​its narratives, its Psalms, its prophetic utterances and its Chronicles—​liturgy can be considered a concentrated testimony or series of ‘character witnesses’ for the goodness, powers and virtues of the person of God.

12.5  Liturgical Truth and the Truth of Biblical Testimonies Let us now return to some of the texts of liturgy that are taken from the Bible. We can look, for example, to the Ashrei that is recited three times a day, twice in the morning liturgy and once at the beginning of the Minḥa or afternoon service. This prayer is basically Psalm 145, with two preceding verses and another added at the end. I will exalt you my God and bless your Name for ever and all time… God is great, and greatly to be praised, His greatness is unfathomable, One generation will praise your works to the next, and tell of your mighty deeds... They shall recite the record of your great goodness, and sing with joy of your  righteousness. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in 153

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Lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all. Ps 145:1–​9. Here, we have a wonderful character witness to the virtues and perfections of the person of God that is repeated ‘one generation to the next.’ The Ashrei is an acrostic poem that aims to employ every letter of the Hebrew alphabet in an attempt to describe and praise the many attributes of the person of God. The overall theme of the Ashrei is that it is good to praise God for His goodness which comes to all daily and is so good that it is impossible to give full expression to. If we want to hear more about the great acts of God as a way to understand God’s character, there are countless examples in liturgy to choose from. We will choose somewhat at random, I Chronicles 16, which is found in the introductory Pesukei de-​Zimra of the daily morning liturgy. Thank the Lord, Call on His Name, make his acts known among the peoples. Sing to Him, make music to Him, tell of all His wonders…Remember the wonders He has done. ...Descendants of Israel His servant, sons of Jacob His chosen ones… Remember His covenant forever, that He made to Abraham and His vow to Isaac…You were then strangers then, small in numbers… But He let no man oppress you, and for your sake He rebuked Kings. …Sing to the Lord all the earth, proclaim His salvation daily. These verses taken from Chronicles recall God’s great deeds, His promises and His steadfastness in caring for Abraham, His covenant with the small and vulnerable people, whom He protected. The attempt to know God through God’s actions is a favored way of knowing God since we cannot look directly at God, but we can see the effects of His actions. This indeed, is one of the positive theological strategies suggested by Maimonides. If we cannot know God directly, we can know something indirectly about God in observing his actions. The paradigmatic action of God which all of Israel saw, was the redemption from Egypt. This is pointed to often in liturgy and one important place is found toward the end of the Pesukei de-​Zimra, when the ‘Song of the Sea’ (Exodus 15) is sung collectively. Az yashir Moshe, Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: ‘I will sing to the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and rider He has hurled into the sea, The Lord is my strength and song; He has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will beautify Him, My father’s God and I will exalt Him.’    “Your right-​hand Lord is majestic in power    Your right-​hand Lord shatters the enemy… Here, Moses and the people of Israel sing of the foundational event of the Exodus in poetic verse that bears witness and forms an everlasting testimony to God’s liberating power and strength. In the liturgical utterances of 1 Chronicles and the Song of the Sea the community repeats Biblical verses that relate something of the personhood of God. The language is elevated and poetic and the verses have a long history having been sung from ‘generation to generation’ beginning in Biblical times but then entering public Jewish utterance and song and achieving a long temporal extension, even a kind of immortality, through being included in daily worship. The very fact of the repetition of the same words over long periods of time, the 154

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repetition by father and son, mother and daughter, itself gives the words a kind of warrant of truth.

12.6  Buber and Historical Narrative as Saga In his book Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (1958), Buber introduces concepts of ‘inner history’ and ‘saga’ (14) to describe the form of narrative that the Bible uses. With regard to inner history, Buber says: ‘What is decisive with respect to the inner history…is that the children of Israel understood this as an act of their God, as a “miracle,” which does not mean that they interpreted it as a [supernatural] miracle…but as such, they perceived it’ (75). Buber says that what inner history and saga aim to communicate is ‘historical wonder’ (76). Buber also employs the notion of ‘miracle’ here, but describes it as ‘as an abiding astonishment.’ Abiding astonishment turns to poetry to give the experience of the great temporal moment an extension in time, so that, as Buber says, nothing ‘can weaken that astonishment’ (77). Buber also tells us that what Biblical saga communicates is a revelation of God as a ‘sole power not restricted by any other’ (77). Buber argues that most ‘great turning-​points in religious history’ (75) like the Exodus, Christian origins and Islam, begin as historical events that are ‘fully included in the objective scientific nexus of nature and history’ (76). In other words, they are neither dreams, nor fantasies, and the people know this. But they equally know that something unique has happened in their historical experience. ‘The real miracle means that in the astonishing experience of the event the current system of cause and effect becomes, as it were, transparent and permits a glance of the sphere in which a sole power not restricted by any other, is at work’ (77). So that historical poetry as saga is one of the languages of God.

12.7  Witness and Testimony to Divine Truth Where Buber uses the terms inner history, saga and abiding astonishment to discuss Biblical narrative about great acts of God, the philosopher and theologian Paul Ricoeur uses the terms ‘witness’ and ‘testimony.’ And these terms, I will argue, which are rooted in the Bible, present us with the most compelling access to the meaning of liturgical truth. Ricoeur suggests that religious testimony seeks to relate an encounter with what he calls ‘the Absolute’ (Ricoeur 1980: 110). Another way he puts this is that in religious testimony we see ‘a moment of history invested with absolute character’ (112). Here, in Biblical testimony we are talking of special events ‘in which each instance confers the sanction of reality upon ideas, ideals, and ways of being’ (111). He furthermore describes these events as a combination of ‘event and meaning.’ ‘For Hebraic confession of faith, the event and its meaning immediately coincide’ (112). This combination is crucial for our understanding of Biblical testimony because it overcomes the dichotomy between a non-​verbal or supra-​verbal revelation of God as ‘encounter’ in Buber’s terms, or the ineffable experience of ‘the mysterium tremendum’ in Rudolf Otto’s terms. What Ricoeur makes clear, and this is closest to the Biblical record and rabbinic theology, is that in events in history in which God appears there is both a manifestation of God’s powerful presence and a revelation of Torah, a guidance, a command, a word. In Ricoeur’s terms we have both a ‘manifestation,’ divine power, but we also have a revelation of specific, ‘proclamations’ or teachings. And it is precisely to these two dimensions of God’s appearance that Israel’s testimony in the Bible refers. Ricoeur makes the theological element in testimony explicit. When Ricoeur speaks of manifestation and proclamation as coming together, the best example is from Sinai. Here, we see both a manifestation of God’s power in the thunder and 155

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lightning, and the proclamation of a series of words in the giving of the Torah. It is interesting, too, that the book of Exodus refers to the record of the event of Sinai, the two tablets, as the ‘Edut,’ literally, the ‘testimonies’ (Exodus 25:16). So the two tablets become the concrete sign of the revelation first of the Aseret ha-​Dibrot, the 10 words or commandments and then all of Torah, the Chumash or Pentateuch itself. Paul Ricoeur does not discuss the Edut or tablet as testimony to God’s revelation. Instead, he refers us to another place in scripture to Second Isaiah where we see an interesting transformation of the tablets as Edut to the Jewish people themselves as Edut when God says to Israel atem eidai, ‘You are my witnesses.’ Isaiah 43:10. Let us examine this interesting text. ‘Bring my sons from afar, And my daughters from the end of the earth. All who are linked to my Name. Whom I have created, Formed and made for my glory—​ Setting free that people, Blind though it has eyes, And deaf though it has ears. ... Let them produce their witnesses and be vindicated, That men hearing them, may say, “It is true!” “You are my witnesses! Atem eidai,” declares the Lord. My servant who I have chosen, to the end that you may take thought. And believe in me, And understand that I am He; Before me no god was formed, And after Me none shall exist… “I alone foretold the triumph, And I brought it to pass. So you are my witnesses, declares the Lord, I am your Holy one, the Lord, Your King, the creator of Israel. … Your redeemer … Who made a road through The sea, a path through the mighty waters, who destroyed chariots and horses’ (Isaiah 43:7–​17) Isaiah articulates well the meaning of the truth of God as the true and only God before whom ‘no god was formed,’ and after whom, ‘none shall exist.’ In other words, God is truly God while all others are false non-​existent Gods. Furthermore, this one God is also the true redeemer and savior, and Israel gives witness to this truth because even as the children of Israel, like all humans, are naturally ‘blind’ and ‘deaf’ to seeing and hearing God, Israel actually saw ‘the road through the sea, a path through the mighty waters.’ Israel experienced the redemption from Egypt so Israel can and must give witness to and proclaim the truths of God. Here, we see Biblical and also the liturgical assertion of the truth-​character of God as true God, as powerful God, as caring God and trustworthy God in the sense of a truth seen and experienced as true by witnesses who experienced it as such. This explains why liturgy uses the language of truth and falsehood and refers to God in simple propositions of fact. Liturgy does this like the Bible does it because it has witnesses who can vouch for them as truths. Thus, on the basis of the foundational event of the Exodus, Second Isaiah, addressing the exiles in Babylon, can give them hope in the new Exodus and return to Jerusalem, so that the witness of the ancestors of the exiles in Babylonia who provided testimony to God’s redemptive power can know that there will be a redemption for them too. Thus, God says to them. 156

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‘Do not [only] recall what happened of old, or ponder what happened of yore. I am about to do something new; Even now it shall come to pass. Suddenly you shall perceive it. I will make a road through the wilderness, And rivers in the desert. ... To give drink to my chosen people, The people I formed for myself, So, they might declare my praise.’ (Isaiah 43:18–​22) I would suggest now that the key to Jewish liturgical theology is here in Second Isaiah. The redemptive event of the Exodus from enslavement in Egypt reveals God’s nature and power to Israel, his people. God formed Israel and revealed Himself as the one true God and redeemer precisely so that Israel could be His witness and give testimony in praises in liturgies in public ceremonies and rituals. Since God is the true God and redeemer, the Exodus is not a onetime event in the past, but a harbinger and sign for future redemptions whenever God’s people are in trouble. So that they can know that God’s redemption power is eternal. And because of this Israel is obligated to have faith in this power and to continue to praise and bless God in liturgy forever and ever. As it is said in the liturgy ‘va-​anachnu ne-​varekh yah me-​atah ve-​ad olam, Halelluyah.’ Liturgical truths about the nature, attributes, power and acts of God are then, finally, warranted by the witness of the people to public events in the past; events like the Exodus, Sinai, the return from Babylonian exile and the persistence of the living community of Israel through its history of suffering and persecution, joys and celebrations. As God says to Israel, ‘I am the true God’ and ‘you are my witnesses’ to this truth. You, ‘saw the path through the mighty waters’ and you have given testimony to that path throughout your generations. That testimony which is sung in liturgies in synagogues throughout time is the final witness to the truth of God’s existence, love, power, goodness and Torah. That testimony, finally, is philosophical warrant as historical warrant made public in Jewish liturgy.

Notes 1 Here, too, there is a problem if God’s eternity is understood as everlasting in time. God is eternal in the sense that He is outside of time. The category of time then again can be misleading if it is misused. 2 ‘God appeared to them like a mirror, in which many faces are reflected… . The word of God spoke to each man according to his power’ Pesikta de-​Rav Kahana (109b).

Related Topics: Negative Theology; Philosophical Themes in the Tanakh; Continental Jewish Philosophy.

References Aad De, Jong. (2007) ‘Liturgical Actions From a Language Perspective,’ Discourse in Ritual Studies, Empirical Studies in Theology 14 (January): 111–​45. Austin, J.L. (1962) How To Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ayer, A. J. (1946) Language, Truth and Logic. London: V. Gallancz. Buber, Martin. (1951) Two Types of Faith, N. Goldhawk (trans.). NY: Harper and Row. —​—​—​ (1958) Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant. NY: Harper and Row. —​—​—​(2000) ‘The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible,’ On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, N. Glatzer (9ed.). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Hempel, C. G. (1945) ‘Studies in the Logic of Confirmation,’ Mind 54: 1–​26.

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Further Reading The Koren Siddur (2006) with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary by Jonathan Sachs. Jerusalem: Koren. Steven Kepnes (2007) Jewish Liturgical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University. Norman Lamb (2000) The Shema: Spirituality and Law in Judaism. New York: JPS. Franz Rosenzweig (2005) The Star of Redemption Part III. Translated by B. Galli. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin. Joseph Soloveitchik (2003) Worship of the Heart, Edited by S. Carmy, New York: KTAV.

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PART V

Jewish Mysticism

13 MYSTICISM AND RATIONALISM Jonathan Dauber

13.1 Introduction The manner in which we understand the relationship between Jewish rationalism and Jewish mysticism is dependent on what we mean by these terms. Rationalism, at its base, is the view that human reason is: (1) a reliable source of truth and (2) a chief source of truth—​that is, a source of truth that needs to be given central consideration when formulating a point of view. While most figures who are commonly described as Jewish rationalists accept this view of reason, they nevertheless have to contend with another source of truth, the Bible and its authoritative rabbinic interpretation, such that their rationalism is not pure but is tempered, to a greater or lesser extent, by the claims of revelation. Mysticism is a more problematic term because the manner it is employed by general scholars of mysticism and by scholars of Judaism differs. For the former, mysticism refers to an experience of an ultimate reality—​usually God—​that goes beyond normal human consciousness in which the mystic experiences a unique proximity to or identity with this reality. For the latter, mysticism tends to be identified with Kabbalah, an esoteric Jewish tradition that had its literary beginnings in the 13th century but had antecedents in earlier periods of Jewish history. Identified as such, mysticism takes on a much broader meaning. It denotes a theosophic system according to which God is constituted by ten aspects, known as sefirot, which are symbolically depicted in anthropomorphic terms. Mysticism, strictly defined, is not central for all Kabbalists. In fact, some scholars argue that this term should not be employed in scholarly analyses of Kabbalah (Huss 2020). Even if this scholarly position is rejected, it remains the case that while many Kabbalists were interested in mystical experience and had experiences of the sefirot, the system stands on its own, without such experiences, as a traditional body of wisdom. Kabbalists believed that Kabbalah was transmitted to Moses at the revelation at Sinai and subsequently transmitted orally, through the generations, until it was finally recorded in the 13th century. Indeed, the term ‘kabbalah,’ which means ‘received tradition,’ refers to this process of transmission rather than to any sort of mystical experience. In my discussion, I will consider the relationship between Jewish rationalism and both understandings of Jewish mysticism. As will becomes clear, while in many instances the dichotomy between rationalism and mysticism—​in both of its senses—​is fundamental and unbridgeable, in other instances it falls away. My focus will be on the Middle Ages, the formative period of each of these types of thought. DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-19

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13.2  Kabbalah and Jewish Rationalism The tension between Jewish mysticism, understood as Kabbalah, and Jewish rationalism rests on the relationship between two presumed sources of true knowledge, received tradition and human reason. Rather, therefore, than rehearsing doctrinal differences between Kabbalists and rationalists, I will focus my discussion on the tension between tradition and reason. (For an account of some of these doctrinal differences, see Scholem 1995: 10–​18, 22–​37). This is not a tension unique to the debate between Kabbalists and rationalists but one that rationalists had to contend with even independently of Kabbalah. Historically speaking, Jewish rationalists can be identified with those thinkers commonly referred to as Jewish philosophers. Jewish philosophers had to work out the relationship between truth claims based on established rules of logic and those grounded in Jewish tradition, understood as the Bible and its authoritative rabbinic interpretation, as found in the Talmud and midrashic literature. As rationalists, they held, to quote the early Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon (882–​942), that ‘every conception formed in our mind which is free from defects is undoubtedly true knowledge, provided we know how to reason’ (Lewy et al. 1969: 38). As Jews, they believed that tradition was div­ inely inspired and hence true. In apparent cases of conflict between these two sources of knowledge, they, therefore, had no choice but to find a way to reconcile them. This typically involved reading traditional sources allegorically to make them conform to the findings of human reason. As we will see, even some Kabbalists believed that reason could lead to reliable information, but, unlike Jewish rationalists, they did not regard reason as a chief source of knowledge but instead accorded their own received traditions far more significance. Despite the fact that these traditions were not part of biblical or rabbinic literature, Kabbalists regarded them as equally authoritative. Most Jewish rationalists, in contrast, did not accord kabbalistic material an authoritative status and could thus neglect it in their project of reconciling reason and tradition. Yet those rationalists who, for whatever reason, were persuaded by the authoritative status of kabbalistic material, treated it like they treated any other traditional material by attempting to align it with philosophical views. Just as rationalists rejected the authority of kabbalistic tradition, Kabbalists, to various degrees, challenged the authority of human reason. Either Kabbalists fundamentally rejected the very notion that reason is a reliable source of knowledge, or they saw its usefulness as limited. In either case, most felt no need to reconcile their traditions with reason. Since the first kabbalistic texts were not composed until the 13th century, Jewish rationalists writing before this time were unfamiliar with kabbalistic tradition. Nevertheless, we can well imagine that a figure like the great rationalist philosopher Moses Maimonides (1138–​1204) would have rejected Kabbalists’ claims that they preserved a reliable ancient tradition. For one, while, in his writings, he labored to reconcile philosophical views with reliable traditional ones, he rejected the authority of ‘proto-​kabbalistic’ works and themes (Kellner 2006). For example, he rejected Shi’ur Komah (‘Measure of the Divine Stature’) an ostensibly tannaitic text, deemed pseudepigraphic by modern scholars, providing measurements of the divine body, which foreshadows some kabbalistic themes (Jospe 1994; Kellner 2006: 5–​15). There is no reason to think he would have accorded any more reliability to properly kabbalistic works that describe the ten sefirot, had he known them. For two, Maimonides (Guide, introduction; 1963: 6) contended that the ‘account of the chariot’—​the esoteric rabbinic interpret­ ation of Ezekiel 1, whose study the tannaitic Rabbis severely curtailed (m ḥagigah 2:1) such that its true content was a subject of dispute in the Middle Ages—​needed to be understood in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics. Indeed, Maimonides argued that the authentic ‘account of the chariot’ was lost, and that he had to reconstruct it himself by reading biblical and 162

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rabbinic material in light of Aristotelian philosophy (Guide 3: introduction; 1963: 415–​16). When Kabbalists, writing after Maimonides’ death, claimed (often as part of a polemic against Maimonides’ followers) that their traditions represented the true ‘account of the chariot,’ they directly contravened Maimonides’ view (Idel 1990). It is safe to assume, therefore, that Maimonides would not have accorded these traditions any authority that would have compelled him to interpret them in consonance with rational thought. Later Jewish rationalists, who were familiar with Kabbalah, stated this rejection forthrightly. Consider, for example, the criticism of Kabbalah by the Spanish philosopher Isaac Polgar (first half of the 14th century). According to him, Kabbalists contend that ‘the human intellect, through [rational] speculation, lacks the ability to apprehend anything hidden—​that is, through arriving at a conclusion on the basis of known premises.’ Instead, they foolishly believe that metaphysical matters can only be known ‘by way of a tradition derived from a prophet.’ Moreover, ‘They believe and truly think that the tradition that is in their hands today is the one that was heard from the mouths of the prophets.’ Yet, it never occurs to them ‘to express doubt and say that it is possible that these opinions were not ones heard from the mouths of the prophets, for they were forgotten as a result of the long course of time, the vicissitudes of change, and the hardships of suffering that befell our congregation’ (1984: 156). Polgar both highlights Kabbalists’ rejection of reason—​a point I will turn to be below—​and denies any claim that Kabbalists might make to the authority of their traditions. He, therefore, feels no need to say of this tradition what he says of rabbinic aggadot that might seem irrational unless subjected to creative interpretation: They ‘were stated in a proper and correct fashion to teach us and direct our intellects. Blessed is He who chose those sages and their teachings’ (67). (For further on Polgar’s attitude to Kabbalah, see Rebiger 2018.) Similar dismissals of the authority of kabbalistic tradition are a refrain in the works of other rationalists who were active both before and after Polgar, such as Isaac Albalag (second half of the 13th century) (Sirat 1985: 240), Levi ben Abraham (second half of the 13th cen­ tury) (Kreisel 2015: 258–​9), Solomon Alconstantin (mid-​14th century) (Schwartz 1993: 40) and Jacob bar Menahem Shalem (first half of the 15th century) (Kupfer 1972: 122; Visi 2011: 227). (On the reaction of some these figures to Kabbalah, see also the useful discussion in Rebiger 2016.) However, other Jewish philosophers, of a distinctly rationalistic bent, assumed that at least some kabbalistic traditions should be deemed trustworthy. As such, they sought to reconcile them with philosophic views as they did with biblical or canonical rabbinic materials. I will illustrate this point with two examples, which concern Sefer ha-​Bahir, and highlight the complex calculations that rationalists had to make when considering whether to grant authority to kabbalistic material. Sefer ha-​Bahir is ostensibly an ancient rabbinic midrash that contains some of the basic teachings of Kabbalah, and it was regarded as such by medieval Kabbalists for whom it was a central kabbalistic work. Already, however, in the first half of the 13th century its veracity was challenged by a leading rabbinic scholar Meir b. Simeon of Narbonne, who regarded it as a forgery (Scholem 1987: 42–​3), a view that modern scholars have also espoused (Dauber 2012: 191–​5). Indeed, while scholars have debated whether the Bahir precisely conforms to kabbalistic theology, no one would question that it is deeply aligned with this theology rather than with a standard rabbinic one. It is precisely this fact that makes it an interesting test case. Whereas it might have been easy for rationalist philosophers to reject ideas that Kabbalists claimed to have received as part of an oral tradition, it was more of a challenge to decide how to respond to a kabbalistic text that ostensibly records the teachings of Talmudic sages. 163

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The aforementioned rationalist, Levi ben Abraham, chose not to follow Meir’s approach of rejecting the authority of the Bahir. He, rather, regarded the Bahir as an authentic rabbinic text, which, accordingly, should be read along philosophic lines just like any other authoritative rabbinic text. In one passage in his work, Levi is highly critical of Kabbalah: ‘All their words are based on conjectures and imaginings, with no logical proofs… . They maintain that they received these notions by way of tradition, and they bring proofs from verses and midrashim and from Sefer HaBahir’ (Kreisel 2015: 258–​9). In terms we are by now familiar with, he rejects Kabbalists’ claims of possessing an authentic tradition, but this does not mean that he also rejects the authenticity and authority of the Bahir. His intention, here, is not to criticize the Bahir. Rather, his criticism is of Kabbalists for misreading the Bahir as a kabbalistic work. In his view, the Bahir must be interpreted in a philosophic key. Thus, in several instances in his writing, he subjects the Bahir to the type of philosophic analysis that he applies to other midrashic works (see, e.g., Ben Avraham 2004: 235; 2013: 123; 2014: 212–​13). A somewhat different approach to the Bahir can be seen in Commentary on Sefer ha-​Bahir by the rationalist philosopher Elijah ben Eliezer of Jerusalem (d. 1401). Early in his commentary, Elijah denies the authority of kabbalistic tradition in standard terms: ‘They call themselves Kabbalists and masters of Kabbalah because they do not base the opinions that they state and believe on philosophical evidence and certainly not on philosophical demonstration… . Rather, they attribute them to a tradition (kabbalah), and they say, “So we have received, and one should not have doubts or musings about them” ’ (Vat. ebr. 431, 2a). In a manner that foreshadows modern scholarship, he goes on to question the authenticity of the Bahir as a work of the Talmudic sages because ‘it is not well known in the nation’ (2b) and because ‘it lacks order’ (3a)—​that is, it has no apparent literary structure. Yet, he goes on to say, ‘Nevertheless, since it is attributed to the great sages of Israel, even though some of them are otherwise unknown to us, we will study it and attempt to explain that which can be explained of its statements in a manner that aligns with the roots of faith’ (3a). He thus offers a commentary that attempts to reconcile the Bahir’s teachings with rationally defensible principles. Why exactly he does so despite his doubts about the text is unclear. Perhaps, as the previous citation might imply, it is because some possibility remains that these teachings are authentic. Alternatively, since the teachings are cited in the names of trustworthy authorities, unsuspecting readers might not accept that they are forgeries and may be tempted to take them at face value. Accordingly, he may have found it more effective to appropriate the text for philosophical purposes than to try to dissuade readers of its authenticity. In either case, for our purposes it is important to stress that the real or perceived authority of a text widely regarded as a kabbalistic one leads Elijah to treat it as a work that must be reconciled with rational thought. (For a fuller discussion, see Gershowitz 2013.) Turning now to the kabbalistic perspective on human reason, we observe that some Kabbalists were hostile to the very notion that reason is a reliable source of truth. As an example of this approach, consider the following comments by the Castilian Kabbalist Moses de Leon (d. 1293 or 1305): There are people among the followers of our Torah who always adhere to the words of the philosophers… . They say that this path (i.e. the path of the philosophers) is the actual true path, and they think that all the words of our Torah actually follow this path… . But the Torah, whose veracity all human beings accept, says, “Like the height of the heaven over the earth, so are My words higher than your words and My thoughts than your thoughts” (based on Isaiah 55:9). How can our knowledge and thoughts apprehend something that is outside of them? [I refer] to the thought of the Creator,

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blessed be He, and His perfect knowledge… . There is certainly no person who can apprehend His thought and knowledge, may He be blessed. Therefore, it was necessary for Moses to thereafter (after receiving the Torah) receive, in a tradition (kabbalah), the words of the explanation of the Torah. (Wijnhoven 1964: 48) Here de Leon challenges philosophical attempts to read the Torah along rational lines. If the Torah reflects the perfect thought of God, how can philosophers possibly hope to understand it through finite human reason? The only way to truly achieve understanding of the Torah is by means of a God-​given tradition, by which de Leon means Kabbalah. In a sense, de Leon takes a basic principle of medieval rationalists—​that God is unknowable to human reason—​ and uses it against them: If God is beyond human reason, then so must be the Torah, which is the product of His wisdom. Human reason, therefore, is useless as a tool for understanding the Torah. Other Kabbalists, however, were less dismissive of rationalism but, nevertheless, believed that it is limited in the truth it can yield. In their view, while rational philosophy can provide accurate information, Kabbalah provides access to truths beyond the reach of reason (see also Huss 2001: 130–​2). This viewpoint was put succinctly in a statement attributed to the Castilian Kabbalist Moses of Burgos (13th century). When Moses would hear people giving ‘praise of the sages of philosophy, he would berate them and say to them, “With regard to the philosophers whose wisdom you are praising, you should know, in truth, that the place where their heads are is the place where our feet stand” ’ (Scholem 1934: 318). Presumably, Moses had in mind rationalist philosophers of the Maimonidean school. As Gershom Scholem points out, ‘Though R. Moses may not have intended to say this, they stand on the shoulders of the philosophers and it is easier for them to see a little farther than their rivals’ (1995: 24). Whether or not this was Moses’s intention, it was cer­ tainly the intention of R. Micahel Balbo (1411–​after 1484), a Kabbalist from Crete, who paraphrased Moses’s words, without the same scorn toward philosophers: ‘The Masters of Truth (i.e., the Kabbalists) say that their feet stand upon the place of the heads of the Masters of Inquiry (i.e. the philosophers). This is not said by way of exaggeration and overstatement, nor by way of superciliousness and haughtiness, but with paramount precision’ (Ogren 2009: 53, parentheses added; see also Ravitzky 1989: 461). For Balbo, therefore, it is a simple fact that Kabbalists had access to knowledge of God that was unavailable to rationalist philosophers. This position was also expressed by the Kabbalist R. Moses Cordovero (1522–​1570) of Safed. He notes that ‘regarding many matters concerning God, you will find that the masters of the true Kabbalah agree with the philosophers. Nevertheless, their ways are not our ways, and our ways are not their ways’ (1881: 12). To illustrate this point, he offers the parable of Simon, Levi and Judah, who are speculating about the contents of the load Ruben is carrying. Simon notes that Ruben appears to be struggling with it, despite his strength. The load, he reasons, must, therefore, contain something heavy like iron, tin, lead, silver or gold. Levi reasons that if it were a cheaper metal, such as some of those suggested by Simon, it would not be kept in fancy bags like those Ruben is carrying. It must, therefore, be something at least as valuable as silver. Judah adds that if it were merely a precious metal, Ruben would not have hired 1000 guards to protect it. It must, rather, be a very precious stone. Cordovero notes that each reasoned observation gets the onlookers closer to identifying the contents of the load, but only Ruben really knows the precise type of stone he is carrying. Analogously, Cordovero explains, rationalist philosophers may be able to reach some basic conception of God through

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reasoned arguments, but detailed knowledge can only come from God Himself who revealed it to Moses as part of the revelation that eventually became kabbalistic tradition (12). According to this position, it is not merely that rational inquiry and kabbalistic tradition are parallel types of knowledge that arrive at similar conclusions. Rather, Kabbalah provides detailed information about the nature of God that is unavailable to reason alone. To understand the manner in which this point of view stands in sharp tension with Jewish rationalism, it is necessary to realize that, as already mentioned, most Jewish rationalists argued that God’s nature is fundamentally beyond knowledge. Indeed, if anything, Cordovero’s parable, in which the onlookers determine that Ruben’s package contains a precious stone, assumes that human reason is able to gain more detailed information about God than many rationalists themselves would allow. The most influential expression of the rationalist position is that of Maimonides. At the risk of oversimplification, Maimonides’ argument begins with what he takes to be the demonstrative premise—​that is, a premise shown to be certain based on logical analysis—​that God’s unity is defined by simplicity or absence of composition. Predicating any kind of attribute of God would challenge this premise. This is because any sort of predication introduces multiplicity by suggesting that there is a substratum onto which the attribute is added. Since we can predicate nothing of God, God lies beyond human knowledge (Maimonides 1963: 1:50–​60, 111–​47). Kabbalistic literature offers a dramatically different point of view. Kabbalists believed that their traditions provide detailed knowledge of the nature of God. In standard kabbalistic theology, God is presented as constituted by ten aspects or sefirot, which are the subject of elaborate anthropomorphic and gendered symbolism. It is true that a few Kabbalists were more receptive to the rationalist attempt to limit this knowledge, at times even following Maimonidean strategies to explain away biblical passages that ostensibly provide knowledge of God (Dauber 2009). In general, though, kabbalistic literature is replete with details about the nature of God that violate the rationalist sensibility that God is beyond knowledge. The Southern French and Catalonian philosopher and grammarian Profiat Duran (d. c. 1414) expresses this point well in his summary of what he identifies as the three major types of medieval Jewish thought: talmudic, philosophic and kabbalistic. According to Duran, the Kabbalists believe that Kabbalah is a wisdom received by the patriarchs, Moses, all the prophets, and the sages of Israel, who followed them, one after another. It is a wisdom that includes the secrets of God and the angels and wonderful matters regarding metaphysics and natural sciences whose apprehension is impossible by means of rational investigation… . And the philosophers, despite all of their rational investigations, cannot apprehend it, for Aristotle and his faction have no portion in the God of Israel… . This wisdom is too great to be apprehended by human rational investigation but is known to them by means of Kabbalah alone. (1865: 9) While Duran goes on to express certain reservations about the kabbalistic point of view, it is an accurate presentation of Kabbalists’ position that their tradition provides information about God that is inaccessible to rational speculation. (For further analysis, see Kozodoy 2015: 173–​4.)

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13.3  Mysticism and Rationalism We have described the tense relationship between Jewish mysticism, defined as Kabbalah, and Jewish rationalism. What is the nature of this relationship when we define mysticism in terms of an experience of proximity or union with God accompanied by an altered state of consciousness? Here we must move beyond the relationship between Kabbalists and Jewish philosophers, which was primary in the previous section, because the terms ‘mysticism’ and ‘rationalism’ do not necessarily overlap with the historical phenomena known as Kabbalah and Jewish philosophy. We have seen that Kabbalists tend not to be rationalists, but it is also the case that Kabbalists need not be mystics, and, as we will see, even some philosophers had mystical experiences. Mystics and rationalists have ostensibly contrasting ideas about the type of relationship that is possible between human beings and God. Rationalists are usually presented as believing that God is only accessible through the activity of the intellect. Since, as we have seen (at least among medieval Jewish rationalists), knowledge of God’s nature is unattainable, such activity is usually oriented toward using reason to gain indirect knowledge or knowledge that reveals nothing of God’s essence. It, for example, might involve studying the laws of nature to appreciate the wisdom with which God created the world, or it might involve an attempt to prove the existence of God while leaving aside the question of what God is. In contrast, mystics are thought to reject the need for intellectual inquiry of God. Rather, for them, God is directly experienceable in a mystical state. This experience may yield a gnosis—​particular information about God’s nature, inaccessible to reason, that might even contravene basic laws of logic, such as the principle of non-​contradiction. Even, however, if it does not lead to a gnosis, it leads to a feeling of closeness and, at times, even identity with God that is not reachable through rational inquiry. Indeed, scholars of mysticism often define their area of study by contrasting it to rationalism. Consider, for example, the famous depiction of mysticism by the philosopher William James (1842–​1910), who notes that ‘mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect’ and that ‘they are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect’ (1902: 380). Or again the remarks of the philosopher of mysticism Walter Stace (1886–​1967): ‘That their experience is beyond reason means simply that it is beyond logic. And we cannot reject this testimony unless we reject the whole of mysticism as a fraud’ (1961: 265). This dichotomy between mysticism and rationalism is certainly accurate for various figures in the history of Jewish thought. Consider, for example, the anonymous mystical authors of the hekhalot literature, pseudepigraphic literature ascribed to great rabbis of the Mishnaic period such as Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael. Scholars have debated the precise dating of this corpus, with some arguing that, at least in its kernel, it goes back to the second century CE and others arguing that it should be dated to the sixth or seventh centuries. (For an overview of this literature, see Davila 2013: 1–​18.) Whatever its provenance, this literature was influential throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. It describes mystical ascents in which the mystic travels through seven heavenly palaces. In the seventh, he sees God sitting upon His throne in all His splendor. This type of mystical experience does not depend upon the use of the human intellect in two senses. First, it is not achieved through rational thought but by reciting magical formulas. Second, in contrast to other forms of Jewish mysticism, it is not the human intellect or soul, as apart from the physical aspects of the human being, that undergoes the experience but the human being as a whole.

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Yet, there are also cases that subvert the dichotomy between rationalism and mysticism. Among figures generally considered Kabbalists, Abraham Abulafia (1240–​after 1291) is the preeminent example of one who combined a commitment to both the rationalist canons of Maimonides’ thought and to mystical experience (Idel 2020: 46–​106). Among rationalists, it is around Maimonides, himself, that the scholarly discussion of the relationship between rationalism and mysticism has swirled. Accordingly, in the remainder of this discussion, I will focus on Maimonides as a way of exemplifying the various questions raised by an examination of this relationship. Was the paragon of medieval Jewish rationalism also a mystic, and, if so, what is the relationship between his commitment to rationalism and his embrace of mystical experience? To set the stage for my discussion, let me first briefly consider mystical experience in the philosophic tradition of Neoplatonism, a tradition that challenges the sharp split between rationalism and mysticism. For Plotinus (204/​5–​270), the founder of Neoplatonism, reason is instrumental in achieving mystical experience of the One but only as a preparatory stage for an experience that moves beyond reason. As Dominic J O’Meara puts the matter, for Plotinus, ‘The reasoning that brings us to self-​knowledge as souls and points the way to becoming intellect can play no role in the ultimate step of union with the One. Reasoning can even get in the way of reaching a life beyond reasoning’ (1995: 105). Jewish neopla­ tonist philosophers, like Isaac Israeli (ca. 855–955) (Altmann and Stern 2009: 185–​94) and Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021/​2–​1057/​8) (Manekin 2007: 49–​50) similarly considered reason as a necessary condition for mystical experience even as the mystical experience transcended human reason. In contrast to a view that would see rationalism and mysticism as competing with one another, in this conceptualization, there is no inherent conflict between them. Yet, they are not identical. Mysticism begins where reason leaves off. Moses of Burgos’s statement that Kabbalists stand on the heads of philosophers may not have been concerned with mystical experience per se, but it can be adopted for this purpose. In the neoplatonic school, mysticism stands on the head of reason. Is there, however, a type of mystical experience that does not transcend reason but is part and parcel of reason? In the study of Jewish philosophy, this question has revolved around the work of Maimonides. My goal, here, is not to decide the question but to give an indication of the various scholarly approaches to the matter. In Maimonides’ scholarship, ‘mysticism’ is a word that is seldom encountered. When it is encountered, it is often in the context of rejecting the possibility that Maimonides was a mystic. Josef Stern, for example, states forthrightly that ‘unlike Plotinus, however, Maimonides allows for no ascent beyond the limitations of the intellect or beyond being, no mystical union or presence with the deity’ (Stern 2001: 80).1 Yet, David Blumenthal (2006) has argued that Maimonides should be viewed as a mystic. Despite the differences between Maimonides’ neo-​ Aristotelian philosophy and the philosophy of Plotinus, in a key way Blumenthal’s characterization of Maimonides’ mysticism makes it akin to the mysticism of the neoplatonic tradition: for both, mystical experience follows human reason. In his reading of Guide of the Perplexed 3:51, a key chapter that has dominated discussions of Maimonides’ mysticism, the first stage in Maimonides’ conception of the ideal spiritual life involves intellectual apprehension of God, which Maimonides identifies with love of God. This is achieved by studying the laws of nature created by God as well as by understanding the limits of what can be said of God. Accordingly, this stage involves engaging in rational philosophic investigation. There is, however, a further mystical stage that moves beyond reason, which Blumenthal describes as ‘the moment when thought fades into

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mystical experience’ (133). He argues that this stage is described by Maimonides in passages such as the following from Guide 3:51: If, however, you have apprehended God and His acts in accordance with what is required by the intellect, you should afterwards engage in totally devoting yourself to Him, endeavor to come closer to Him, and strengthen the bond between you and Him –​that is, the intellect. (1963: 620) After love comes this worship to which attention has also been drawn by [the Sages], may their memory be blessed, who said: “This is the worship in the heart.” In my opinion it consists in setting thought to work on the first intelligible and in devoting oneself exclusively to this as far as this is within one’s capacity. (621) You know the difference between the terms “one who loves [oheb]” and “one who loves passionately [ḥosheq]”; an excess of love [mahabbah], so that no thought remains that is directed toward a thing other than the Beloved, is passionate love [‘ishq]. (627) Commenting on these passages, Blumenthal writes that Maimonides differentiates between ‘love and worship, indicating clearly that love of God is intellectual, rational, analytic, and philosophic while worship of God is spiritual, meditative, experiential, and mystical’ (2006: 122), and that he distinguishes between ‘intellectual and post-​intellectual love’ using ‘experiential, mystical language’ (124) for the latter. Elsewhere, Blumenthal (128–​51) offers a more complex typology, which differentiates between different types of mystical experience. For our purposes, however, it is important to note that for Blumenthal, as in neoplatonic thought, rational and mystical thought may not be at odds, but they do not coincide. Rather, the former sets the stage for the latter, which transcends it. In contrast, other scholars argue that even this subsequent stage does not transcend human reason but remains fully grounded in the intellect. Hannah Kasher, for example, suggests that the stages that Blumenthal describes should not be seen as successive stages, such that one falls away and is replaced by the other, but as accumulated stages where the earlier stage—​the rational one—​remains operational even when the next stage begins (2009: 41). Indeed, note that in the above citations, rational thought does not fall away when the so-​called mystical stage begins. Rather, as Maimonides’ puts it, this stage ‘consists in setting thought to work on the first intelligible.’ Kasher adds that it makes little sense for Maimonides to imagine a stage that transcends reason since God himself is described by Maimonides as an intellect whose object of apprehension is Itself (Guide 1:68). How, she asks, could there be a level of human spiritual attainment that transcends God’s own behavior (42). In her view, therefore, Maimonides’ mysticism is, as the title of her study puts it, ‘within the confines of reason alone.’ (For Blumenthal’s response, see 2006: 39–​41. For another attempt to describe Maimonides’ mysticism as fully rational, see Freudenthal 2009 and Blumenthal’s response: 2006: 36–​9.) Yet we must wonder whether such a purely rational connection to God should be deemed mystical at all. Earlier we defined mystical experience as an experience of God that involves an altered state of consciousness. Is there evidence that one who has achieved ‘passionate love,’ which Maimonides defines as a state in which ‘no thought remains that is directed toward a thing other than the Beloved,’ has undergone a fundamental change in his consciousness?

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Is what Maimonides describes not more akin to deep philosophical speculation about an abstract concept than to a mystical experience of God? Steven Harvey (1996) shows that, in the Middle Ages, there were two different approaches to interpreting Maimonides. According to Maimonides in Guide 3:51, ‘passionate love’ (Arabic: ‘ishq; Hebrew: hesheq) moves beyond intellectual apprehension, which he identifies with standard love. This point undergirds Blumenthal’s version of Maimonides’ mysticism. Harvey (1996: 189–​93) notes that interpreters in the East, including Maimonides’ own descendants, who were influenced by Sufi interpretations of the term ‘ishq as referring to mystical experience, tended to give a mystical reading of Guide 3:51 that effectively anticipates Blumenthal’s position. In contrast, he shows (188–​9) that scholars in the west, who were unfamiliar with Sufi literature and read the Guide in its Hebrew translation, such as Shem-​ Tov ibn Joseph or Joseph ibn Kaspi, saw nothing mystical about this term. For them, the term merely ‘represents the highest form of the love of God, which love (ahabah) is itself an intellectual activity’ (189). That is to say, for them ‘passionate love’ of God merely means a single-​ minded intellectual focus on God that does not involve a mystical state. In Harvey’s view (1996: 195; cf. Harvey 2013: 96–​7), it is the western interpreters who more accurately reflect Maimonides’ position. The upshot of Harvey’s analysis, therefore, is that what Kasher sees as a mystical experience fully within the confines of reason is not a mystical experience at all. No matter how the debate about Maimonides’ embrace of mysticism is resolved, it, together with the neoplatonic varieties of mysticism described earlier, opens the possibility that the split between mysticism and rationalism need not be so sharply drawn. Taken as a whole, we have seen that, in the Jewish context, the analysis of the relationship between mysticism and rationalism hinges on what we mean by ‘mysticism.’ If we are describing the relationship between mysticism—​understood as Kabbalah—​and rationalism, the central question is how to balance two sources of authority: received tradition and rational argumentation. If we are describing the relationship between mysticism, understood as a mode of religious experience, and rationalism, the question becomes whether God is accessible only through reasoned argumentation or if a mystical bond to God is possible. According to either meaning, a simple dichotomy between mysticism and rationalism cannot always be maintained.

Note 1 One important aspect of the question of whether Maimonides was a mystic will not be treated here due to its technical nature. I refer to the fact Maimonides allows for the conjunction of the human intellect to the Active Intellect, the tenth of the ten intellects of medieval philosophic metaphysics, which, according to him, were produced by a divine overflow. This intellect is the repository of divine ideas or forms, such that in conjoining with this intellect a person can, in an indirect sense, be said to conjoin with divine thought. This is a topic that is also relevant to the passages from Guide 3:51 that I discuss below. Most scholars, however, would not view conjunction with the Active Intellect as a mystical experience. See the analysis in Afterman 2016: 102–​120.

Related Topics: Negative Theology; Revelation; Prophecy; Hassidism and Philosophy; Sefirot and Philosophy.

References Afterman, A. (2016) And They Shall Be One Flesh: On the Language of Mystical Union in Judaism. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Altmann, A. and Stern, S.M. (2009) Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century, 1958. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Mysticism and Rationalism Ben Avraham, L. (2014) Livyat Ḥen: The Secrets of the Faith; The Gate of the Haggadah, Kreisel, H. (ed.), Hebrew. Be’er Sheva, Israel: Ben Gurion University. —​—​—​ (2004) Livyat Ḥen: The Work of Creation, H. Kreisel (ed.), Hebrew. Jerusalem, Israel: World Union of Jewish Studies. —​—​—​ (2013) Livyat Ḥen: The Work of the Chariot, H. Kreisel (ed.), Hebrew. Jerusalem, Israel: World Union of Jewish Studies. Blumenthal, D.R. (2006) Philosophic Mysticism: Studies in Rational Religion. Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-​Ilan University. Cordovero, M. (1881) Elima rabbati. Lvov, Poland: Yaʻakov Ehrenprayz. Dauber, J. (2009) ‘Competing Approaches to Maimonides in Early Kabbalah,’ in J. T. Robinson (ed.), The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought, pp. 57–​88. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. —​—​—​ (2012). Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Davila, J.R. (ed.) (2013) Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Duran, P. (1865) Maʻaseh efod, J. Friedländer and J. Kohn (eds.). Vienna, Austria: Holzwarth. Freudenthal, G. (2009) ‘The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon,’ in I. Dobbs-​ Weinstein, L.E. Goodman, and J.A. Grady (eds.), Maimonides and His Heritage, pp. 113–​52. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Gershowitz, U. (2013) ‘Fourteenth Century Philosophical Commentary on the Sefer Ha-​Bahir,’ Judaica Petropolitana 1: 20–​40 (Hebrew). Harvey, S. (2013) ‘Avicenna and Maimonides on Prayer and Intellectual Worship,’ in H. Ben-​Shammai, et al. (eds.), Exchange and Transmission across Cultural Boundaries: Philosophy, Mysticism and Science in the Mediterranean World, pp. 82–​105. Jerusalem, Israel: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. —​—​—​(1996) ‘The Meaning of Terms Designating Love in Judaeo-​Arabic Thought and Some Remarks on the Judaeo-​Arabic Interpretation of Maimonides,’ in N. Golb (ed.), Studies in Muslim–​Jewish Relations, pp.175–​196. Reading, UK: Harwood Academic Publishers. Huss, B. (2001) ‘Mysticism versus Philosophy in Kabbalistic Literature,’ Micrologus 11: 125–​35. —​—​—​ (2020) Mystifying Kabbalah: Academic Scholarship, National Theology, and New Age Spirituality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Idel, M. (2020) Abraham Abulafia’s Esotericism: Secrets and Doubts. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter. —​—​—​(1990) ‘Maimonides and Kabbalah,’ in I. Twersky (ed.), Studies in Maimonides, pp. 31–​81. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. James, W. (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, London, UK: Longmans, Green, and Co. Jospe, R. (1994) ‘Ha-​Rambam ve-​shi‘ur komah,’ in M. Idel, D. Dimant, and D. S. Rosenberg (eds.) Tribute to Sara: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah, Hebrew; pp. 195–​209. Jerusalem, Israel: Magnes Press. Kasher, H. (2009) Mysticism within the Confines of Reason Alone, Daat 64/​66: 37–​43 (Hebrew). Kellner, M. (2006) Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism. Oxford and Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Kozodoy, M. (2015) The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus: Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kreisel, H.T. (2015) Judaism as Philosophy: Studies in Maimonides and the Medieval Jewish Philosophers of Provence. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press. Kupfer, E. (1972). ‘Concerning the Cultural Image of German Jewry and its Rabbis in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,’ Tarbiz, 42: 113–​47 (Hebrew). Lewy, H., Altmann, A., and Heinemann, I. (1969) Three Jewish Philosophers. New York: Atheneum. Maimonides, M. (1963) The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Manekin, C. (2007) Medieval Jewish Philosophical Writings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ogren, B. (2009) Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian Kabbalah. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. O’Meara, D. J. (1995) Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Polgar, I. (1984) Ezer Hadat, J. S. Levinger (ed.). Tel-​Aviv, Israel: Tel-​Aviv University. Ravitzky, A. (1989) ‘A Kabbalist Confutation of Philosophy: The Fifteenth-​Century Debate in Candia,’ Tarbiz 58: 453–​82 (Hebrew).

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Further Reading B. Huss, ‘Mysticism versus Philosophy in Kabbalistic Literature,’ Micrologus 11 (2001): 125–​35 is a helpful analysis of kabbalistic attitudes towards philosophy. H. Tirosh-​Samuelson ‘Philosophy and Kabbalah: 1200–​1600,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by D. H. Frank and O. Leaman (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 218–​57, is a thorough historical survey of the relationship between Kabbalah and philosophy. B. Rebiger ‘The Early Opponents of the Kabbalah and the Role of Sceptical Argumentations: An Outline,’ in Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, ed. G. Veltri (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 39–​58, offers a discussion of philosophic critiques of Kabbalah. D. R. Blumenthal, Philosophic Mysticism: Studies in Rational Religion (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-​Ilan University, 2006) is a series of articles by Blumenthal, with a focus on Maimonides, that argue for the category of philosophical mysticism. A. Afterman, And They Shall Be One Flesh: On the Language of Mystical Union in Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2016) analyzes varieties of mystical union in Judaism with an attunement to the relationship between mysticism and rationalism.

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14 TZIMTZUM The (Meta-​)Metaphysics of Divine Contraction Olla Solomyak

14.1 Introduction The kabbalistic doctrine of tzimtzum comes as the solution to an apparent puzzle: If God is all-​encompassing, how can there be ‘space’ for anything else to exist? God’s infinite light fills the entirety of reality, and the creation of anything else in that same space appears to be impossible. Tzimtzum (lit. contraction) is supposed to be the solution: God contracted himself so as to make room for the world. The doctrine of tzimtzum is traced back to R. Isaac Luria (the Arizal, 1534–​72), with the first written account presented by his disciple R. Haim Vital: Before creation ‘a most supreme, simple light filled the whole of existence,’ and there was no ‘empty space or void.’ God then ‘contracted’ this infinite light away from a ‘mid-​point,’ after which an ‘empty space remained.’ Finally, a ‘straight line’ of the infinite light was sent back into the empty space, and God created the world(s) there (Vital 1999: 11–​15). Many questions arise as to how this particular description of the tzimtzum process might be understood. More generally, however, the doctrine of tzimtzum raises two foundational questions: first, what exactly is it that makes creation initially impossible—​how should the ‘all-​encompassing-​ness’ of God (or God’s light) be understood, and why does it rule out the existence of a created world? Second, what exactly does tzimtzum entail—​what does it mean to say that God contracted himself, and how does this contraction allow for the existence of a world after all? Though these questions are inter-​dependent, this chapter will focus on the latter: what exactly does tzimtzum entail? A clearer understanding of what tzimtzum amounts to might then shed light on the former question as well. There are two camps regarding the nature of tzimtzum. According to one, tzimtzum is to be understood ke-​peshuto—​literally. On the interpretation known as tzimtzum ke-​peshuto, God literally contracted himself (or his light) in order to make space for the world. On the alternative interpretation, known as tzimtzum lo ke-​peshuto (lit. non-​literal contraction), God didn’t really contract himself at all. Rather, God created an illusion of contraction. In reality, there is nothing but God; but the illusion of Divine contraction allows for the apparently separate existence of a created world. Each of these views comes with certain difficulties. On the doctrine of tzimtzum ke-​peshuto (henceforth TKP), the question arises as to what it could mean for God to literally contract DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-20

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himself. Given some basic principles about God’s unity and perfection, many have taken the notion of God’s literal contraction to be theologically problematic: God cannot undergo change, or cause himself to lose any perfection (see, e.g., Goldschmidt and Lebens 2020). On the doctrine of tzimtzum lo ke-​peshuto (henceforth TLKP), on the other hand, it’s not clear how the world can be said to really exist—​if the contraction necessary for creation is only an illusion, mustn’t the existence of the created world be illusory as well? (See, e.g., Lebens 2020 for a discussion.) Some have concluded that one view or the other is simply not viable: either TKP is theologically problematic, in that the kind of contraction it requires God to have undergone is not possible, or TLKP falls into acosmism—​not allowing for the existence of a world after all. Others have, for similar reasons, collapsed the disagreement between the two views—​claiming that the difference between them is merely verbal or a matter of emphasis (see Fraenkel 2015). This chapter is an attempt to clarify the metaphysical commitments that might be attributed to each view and make precise the disagreement between them. How should each conception of tzimtzum be understood? My aim here will be to examine this question utilizing the concepts of ground and fundamentality: might these notions help us explicate the metaphysical commitments of each camp as well as their differences? The chapter proceeds as follows: in Section 14.2, I present the doctrine of TLKP and suggest a way of conceptualizing its metaphysical commitments. In Section 14.3, I present the doctrine of TKP and begin to explore how its metaphysical commitments might be understood. After considering a seemingly straightforward proposal and finding it to be problematic, I turn back, in Section 14.4, to a clarification of the concept of tzimtzum itself. In Section 14.5, I suggest an alternative model for conceptualizing TKP—​one that can help clarify what is at stake in the debate as well as illuminate a core notion of Divine contraction which can be shared by all parties to a substantive disagreement about its reality.

14.2  Tzimtzum lo ke-​peshuto: A Grounding Approach Though we have not yet understood what literal tzimtzum would amount to, we’ll start by examining tzimtzum lo ke-​peshuto—​the non-​literal conception of tzimtzum. The central claim of TLKP is that the all-​encompassing-​ness of God which doesn’t leave ‘space’ for a created world is never really removed: Divine contraction is a kind of illusion. In reality, God is all there is. But the illusion of Divine contraction allows for the apparently-​separate existence of a created world. This interpretation of tzimtzum, typically found in Hasidic streams of kabbalistic thought, is described by R. Shneur Zalman Borukhovich (1745–​1812) as follows: Know that ‘In the heavens above and on the earth below, there is nothing else [besides God].’ This means that even the material earth, which appears to the eyes of all to be actually existing, is naught and complete nothingness in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He… [Through] gevurah (restraint) and tzimtzum, [He conceals] the life-​force which flows into them, so that heaven and earth and all their hosts should appear as if they were independently existing entities. However, the tzimtzum and concealment is only for the lower [worlds], but in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘everything before Him is considered as actually naught,’ just as the light of the sun in the sun. (Borukhovich 2008 II:6) Before we examine what TLKP entails more precisely, two points are in order. First, a terminological point: Tzimtzum—​understood to mean Divine contraction—​is something that didn’t

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really happen on this view. There is no real tzimtzum, only an illusion. At the same time, the term ‘tzimtzum,’ in the context of TLKP, is sometimes used to mean the apparent Divine contraction which the view does countenance. In this sense of the term, tzimtzum is something real—​it is the illusion of Divine contraction which allows for the apparently-​separate existence of a created world. Second, if we ask what problem the doctrine of tzimtzum is meant to solve, i.e., why and in what sense the all-​encompassing-​ness of God rules out the existence of a world, we can see that TLKP stands independently of any particular answer to this question. Whatever the problem is with the creation of a world given God’s all-​encompassing-​ness, tzimtzum-​as-​ only-​apparent solves it. That is, whatever the reason that nothing can exist beyond God, the response of TLKP is: nothing does. This raises a potential worry: Does TLKP entail that the world doesn’t really exist after all? If so, the position appears to be at odds with our basic experience and the simple conviction that we are real! But there are more subtle ways of interpretating TLKP. In particular, it’s important to attend to R. Borukhovich’s appeal to two distinct points of reference in the passage above: How things are in relation to God is different from how things are ‘for the lower worlds.’ From the Divine perspective, God is all there is. But from the point of view of the world, there is a ‘heaven and earth,’ as well as ‘tzimtzum and concealment.’ Samuel Lebens (2015, 2017, 2019, 2020, as well as Goldschmidt and Lebens 2020) has suggested interpreting this picture as a kind of idealism, on which we and the created world are merely fictional—​objects of God’s imagination. From our perspective, then, we are as real as can be, just as Harry Potter is a real boy from the perspective of the fiction of Harry Potter. But more fundamentally speaking, we are merely ideas in God’s mind and don’t exist beyond it. This is one way of interpretating TLKP. But here I’d like to suggest (what might be seen as) an alternative, appealing primarily to the notion of ground. Ground, as I understand it here, is a metaphysical dependence relation which obtains between facts, or objects, at different levels of a hierarchically structured reality. To say that a fact [A]‌is grounded in another fact [B] is to say that A obtains in virtue of B, in the way that a table might be said to exist in virtue of an arrangement of particles. In some sense, the obtaining of A just is the obtaining of B; a grounded fact is often said to be nothing over and above its grounds. Nevertheless, the reality described here has a hierarchical structure, and the relation between A and B is not identity (see, e.g., Schaffer 2009 and Fine 2012). I’ve argued elsewhere that a hierarchical reality structured by the relation of ground might be thought of as involving two different perspectives (Solomyak 2022). From one perspective, there are just the fundamental facts, given that what is grounded is ultimately nothing over and above the fundamental. At the same time, the grounding picture sees reality as hierarchical; from another perspective, then, there are non-​fundamental facts as well. With this notion of ground and the associated hierarchical picture of reality in hand, we can interpret the TLKP picture as follows: fundamentally speaking, there is only God. All else is grounded in God’s existence or will. The created world and its objects thus exist non-​ fundamentally—​being grounded in God, anything (else) that exists or obtains does so fully in virtue of (some fact about) God. Given the two perspectives that are implicit in the grounding picture, we might say that from a fundamental perspective, only God exists, while from a broader ‘hierarchical’ perspective, there is a created world as well. Tzimtzum, qua apparent Divine contraction, consists in the fact that from the non-​ fundamental perspective of the created world, there is a plurality of objects which seem to exist independently of God. Fundamentally speaking, however, these objects are, somehow, nothing

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over and above God himself. Tzimtzum, qua actual Divine contraction, is not real: there is, fundamentally, nothing other than God, and God’s all-​encompassing-​ness is maintained. But the existence of the created world is nevertheless secured: the world and its objects exist as non-​fundamental, grounded entities. On some level, the present proposal is not at odds with Lebens’ preferred picture, in that fictional entities are also grounded in (the decisions of) their creators. The idealist picture is thus one particular way in which the created world might be seen as grounded in God, with God alone existing fundamentally. But I think there are significant advantages to the grounding picture as opposed to the more specific idealism. One might worry about the idealist interpretation of TLKP from two different directions. First, it’s not obvious that the idealist picture truly validates our conviction that we are real. While fictional characters are real from the perspective of their respective fictions, they are not real, full stop. The claim that we are ultimately fictional appears to be, at the end of the day, at odds with our conviction that we exist, despite the validity of attributing reality to fictional characters from the perspective of an imagined fiction. The grounding picture, on the other hand, which is not committed to any particular way in which the world is to be grounded in God, allows for the possibility that we really exist, just not fundamentally, just as tables and cities might be said to really exist despite being grounded in more fundamental particulars. Unlike (mere-​)fictionality, grounded-​ness does not, on its own, imply non-​reality (see Solomyak 2020). Of course, the ideas of fictional objects are real ideas, and can be said to really exist as abstracta, or in the minds of their creators. And Tyron Goldschmidt and Samuel Lebens (2020) argue that being an idea in God’s mind is the only viable way in which we might be said to be grounded in God—​how else could it be that all of our features are fully dependent on God’s will? But this leads us to a second worry, namely, that the suggestion that we are particular ideas in God’s mind appears to challenge some basic theological principles about God’s unity. If God is completely unified—​as classic Jewish sources maintain (see, e.g., Maimonides, Mishneh Torah 1:7)—​he cannot have parts or aspects which are distinct from one another. Lebens (2015) makes clear that ideas need not be thought of as parts of their bearers, but they do seem to be, at least in some sense, distinct from their bearers, as well as from one another. Given God’s unity, together with TLKP’s commitment to there (ultimately) being nothing beyond God, what could it mean for God to have a plurality of ideas in his mind, or even for the whole created world to be an object of God’s imagination? It’s not clear that we truly have a grasp of what this might entail. Of course, it may be that these formulations must be understood as non-​fundamental descriptions of a situation which we cannot, ultimately, fully grasp. But if we aren’t fundamentally fictional objects of God’s imagination after all—​and don’t really understand what it would mean for this to be the case—​it’s not clear that this formulation is more helpful than a more general formulation in terms of ground. The essential point seems to be that we are somehow grounded in God, with only God existing fundamentally. Perhaps more can be said about how we are grounded and perhaps not; even if more can be said, it may be that the more general grounding formulation is, paradoxically, more informative—​given God’s unity, any description of the nature of the relationship between God and the (not ultimately separate) grounded world would need to be a non-​fundamental one, not fully capturing how things are. Most importantly for our purposes, it is the more general grounding claim that captures what is essential to the TLKP picture: that fundamentally speaking, there is only God, but that, from another perspective, the created world exists as well. More specifically, the grounding 176

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picture helps clarify the sense in which the world exists, on the one hand, but is nevertheless nothing over and above God at the same time. Finally, if we conceptualize TLKP in terms of ground in this way, perhaps it can open the door to a better understanding of TKP as a viable alternative. What would it mean for God to have literally contracted himself if non-​literal contraction is understood on the model I’ve suggested above? I turn to this question in the next section.

14.3  Tzimtzum ke-​peshuto: The Created World as Fundamental? According to proponents of tzimtzum ke-​peshuto, the doctrine of tzimtzum is to be understood literally: God literally contracted himself (or his light) to make space for the creation of the world. Though it’s not clear precisely what literal Divine contraction might amount to, it’s clear that proponents of TKP take tzimtzum to be real, not an illusion. The real contraction of God’s all-​encompassing-​ness is what allows for the real existence of a created world. Proponents of TKP have historically been thought to include R. Immanuel Chai Ricci (the Yosher Levav, 1688–​1743), R. Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (the Vilna Gaon, 1720–​97) and R. Shlomo Elyashiv (the Leshem, 1841–​1926), and the view is typically associated with Mitnagdism—​the opposition to Hasidism. However, there are some interpretative difficulties surrounding the debate, and it’s not obvious just how literal the supposed proponents of TKP actually took tzimtzum to be. Some have argued that correctly interpreting their works entails understanding their positions as more closely aligned with variants of TLKP, or simply that there is no substantive disagreement between the two positions (Fraenkel 2015). For our purposes here, we will set these exegetical questions aside, as my primary aim is to understand how a commitment to TKP could be understood. Reasons for interpreting the doctrine of tzimtzum literally—​or, at least, as having literally occurred—​have historically included the theological, the philosophical and the textual. R. Ricci writes that one ‘must view the tzimtzum process literally, so that there should be no insult to [God’s] honor by thinking that his essence is found in lowly and dishonorable physicality… as without the tzimtzum process there would be no space empty of his essence’ (Fraenkel 2015: 250). And R. Elyashiv rejects as deeply problematic any conception of tzimtzum which would entail that the created world doesn’t really exist, as well as arguing that the language of R. Luria in describing tzimtzum (as recorded by R. Vital) is meant to be interpreted literally (Fraenkel 2015). On the other hand, the idea that God literally contracted himself in the process of tzimtzum has been challenged on several theological fronts. R. Yosef Irgas (the Shomer Emunim, 1685–​ 1730) argues that the doctrine of tzimtzum cannot be interpreted literally for ten different reasons, including that God has no form or spatial characteristics, and that God cannot undergo change (Fraenkel 2015: 230). Goldschmidt and Lebens (2020) have argued that even a non-​spatial yet literal interpretation of tzimtzum would entail the removal of one of God’s perfections—​the all-​encompassing-​ness which rules out the existence of the world might be understood as omnipresence, omnipotence or another perfection, but whatever it is, the possibility of its removal would then be theologically problematic (unless, as they suggest, the removal of a perfection needn’t amount to an imperfection—​a route I won’t pursue here). Reasons along these lines have been behind rejections of TKP as being definitively theologically problematic, as well as interpretations of the debate which collapse TKP and TLKP into variants of the same metaphysical picture (see Fraenkel 2015). My interest here is in whether there might be a viable alternative—​i.e., an understanding of TKP which doesn’t collapse it into a form of TLKP on the one hand, but which is not subject to the theological objections mentioned above on the other. Perhaps modeling the metaphysical commitments of 177

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TKP as standing in contrast to the grounding picture of TLKP presented above can help pave the way to such an interpretation. Assuming TLKP is understood on the grounding model above, then, how might TKP be understood? One might consider the possibility that the created world exists fundamentally on the TKP picture. Unlike TLKP—​which sees the created world as ultimately nothing over and above God himself—​TKP takes the world to exist in addition to God in some significant sense. That is, the world has a kind of existence which is incompatible with God’s all-​encompassing-​ness (be it not for tzimtzum); perhaps, then, literal tzimtzum allows both God and the world to exist fundamentally, or in the same fundamental sense. While this proposal may initially seem plausible, the suggestion that the created world exists fundamentally as God does is likely to be seen as problematic by proponents of TKP and TLKP alike. Jewish sources generally agree that God sustains everything that exists; there is a kind of metaphysical dependence between the world and God, such that the world could not continue to exist were it not for God’s continuous support (see, e.g., Maimonides, Mishneh Torah ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah,’ 1:2–​3). If the created world exists fundamentally, how can this metaphysical dependence be understood? One might explore the possibility that there is a kind of metaphysical dependence relation other than ground which can obtain between distinct fundamentally existing entities: perhaps while the created world isn’t grounded in God, it depends on God in some other way. Along similar lines, one might consider a picture on which grounding and non-​fundamentality can come apart: on a positive conception of fundamentality (i.e., on which fundamentality is not understood to be equivalent to un-​grounded-​ness, such as on Fine’s 2001 picture), the created world might be fundamental and nevertheless grounded in God after all. Working out these possibilities in detail would require a deeper investigation of the notions of ground and fundamentality. But while this might open the door to a model of TKP along the lines suggested above, there are a number of drawbacks to such an approach. First, it’s not at all clear what the relevant notions of metaphysical dependence and fundamentality might be here; much more would need to be filled in for the model to be helpful or explanatory. Second, it’s not obvious that the picture would end up being significantly different from the TLKP picture once formulated more precisely—​i.e., that there is room for a meaningful distinction between the relevant notion of metaphysical dependence on the one hand and grounded-​ness or non-​fundamentality on the other. Finally, the proposal is not explanatory with respect to tzimtzum. The suggestion that tzimtzum consists in the ‘allowance of something other than God to exist fundamentally’ is not particularly helpful in clarifying what exactly tzimtzum entails, or why there would have been a problem with the existence of the world to begin with. In what follows, I’ll suggest an alternative model of TKP in the context of ground and fundamentality—​one that avoids the worries raised here and can more deeply illuminate the debate between TKP and TLKP. Before the alternative model can be spelled out, however, we’ll need to revisit the concept of tzimtzum itself.

14.4  Tzimtzum as Hiddenness As we’ve seen, ‘tzimtzum’ is typically translated as Divine contraction, where this is thought to entail the removal of something—​whether it be God’s essence, God’s presence or (another) one of God’s perfections. R. Vital’s initial description of tzimtzum as bringing about an empty space within which the world could be created appears to be in line with this conception of tzimtzum: God (or his light) is removed in order to make space for the world.

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On the other hand, ‘tzimtzum’ is sometimes—​ particularly in the context of TLKP—​ translated to mean hiddenness, where this is understood as being in contrast to removal. TLKP takes it that God did not genuinely remove himself after all; he simply concealed his presence from the perspective of the seemingly-​separate created world. It turns out, then, that the debate between TKP and TLKP can be formulated in two different ways: as a debate about whether tzimtzum is real or apparent, or as a debate about whether tzimtzum itself entails the removal or the hiddenness of God(’s light). Mixing these two formulations gives rise to ambiguity and potential misunderstanding—​understanding TLKP to be at once both rejecting the reality of literal tzimtzum and taking tzimtzum to involve hiddenness rather than removal conflates the two different senses of the term ‘tzimtzum.’ TLKP does not claim that tzimtzum qua hiddenness is illusory, only that tzimtzum qua removal is. Or so it seems. In what follows, I want to propose an alternative conception of tzimtzum, together with a corresponding understanding of the debate between TKP and TLKP—​one on which the two translations of the term ‘tzimtzum’ are compatible rather than contrasting, and on which the two formulations of the disagreement between the two camps can both be adopted at once. To see how this can be, I want to suggest that we pay closer attention to two facets of the terminology that has been used in presentations of the concept of tzimtzum. First, consider what it means for an object, such as a muscle, to contract. When a muscle contracts, it becomes tighter and seemingly shorter or smaller without the removal of any parts. Upon release of its contraction, it becomes clear that the whole muscle (or other such object) was present in full all along; While contracted, it was simply partially hidden ‘inside’ or ‘behind’ itself—​i.e., hidden without being concealed by any further external object. Second, what is removed in R. Vital’s initial description of the tzimtzum process is God’s infinite light, not God himself. While this might be understood to mean God’s essence, presence or perfection, we might also attend more closely to the notion of light and its typical associations. Light, by nature, is connected to visibility or revelation—​light is what allows something to be visible or revealed. The removal of light can thus also be understood as a kind of concealment: what was revealed when the light was there is hidden upon its removal. Putting these observations together, we might understand tzimtzum as hiddenness and, at once, as the removal of revealed-​ness—​as a kind of contraction whereby one ‘hides behind one’s self,’ being less visible, or seemingly smaller, from the outside, without actually losing any elements of one’s being. How might this conception of tzimtzum help us model the disagreement between TKP and TLKP? TKP, I suggest, might be understood as committed to real tzimtzum in the above sense—​i.e., the real hiddenness of God from the created world. For proponents of TKP, God’s infinite light—​or infinitely extended revealed-​ness—​is genuinely hidden from the world. For proponents of TLKP, on the other hand, it is tzimtzum in this sense that is only apparent. God is not genuinely hidden, but only appears to be. On this conception of the debate, the two understandings of the term ‘tzimtzum’ and the two formulations of the debate between TKP and TLKP (respectively) come together: tzimtzum is understood to mean both hiddenness and removal (of light/​revealed-​ness), and TLKP is seen as conceiving of tzimtzum in terms of hiddenness and conceiving of it as an illusion. That is, there is a single conception of what tzimtzum is (or would be), such that TKP takes this tzimtzum to be real, and TLKP takes tzimtzum (in the very same sense) to be apparent; at the same time, tzimtzum is understood (by both parties to the debate) in terms of hiddenness. The two positions presented here are two of the four possible conceptions of tzimtzum laid out by R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson: real removal of God himself, real removal of God’s

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infinite light, apparent removal of God himself and apparent removal of God’s infinite light (Fraenkel 2015: 318). On the conception of the debate proposed here, the second and third of these positions are understood to be one and the same, and are attributed to (a kind of) TKP, while the fourth is attributed to TLKP (with infinite light understood as all-​encompassing revealed-​ness). With this understanding of tzimtzum on the table, we can now return to the question of how TKP and TLKP might be modeled in terms of ground and fundamentality. There are two remaining questions that this will help us address: first, what are the metaphysical commitments being attributed to TKP here—​i.e., what is it to take God as having genuinely hid himself (or as having removed his light) from the world? Second, what is the difference between taking God’s hiddenness to be real and taking it to be merely apparent? One might object from the start that hiddenness and apparent hiddenness are one and the same, given that hiddenness is, already, a matter of how things appear. As we’ll see below, however, modeling the debate in terms of ground and fundamentality can help illuminate this distinction and clarify what is at stake in the disagreement after all.

14.5  Back to Ground: An Alternative Picture In Section 14.3, we briefly considered a potential model of TKP on which both God and the created world are seen as existing fundamentally. We saw that while this poses as a natural contrast to TLKP (as understood on the grounding model), it neither captures nor clarifies the commitments of TKP. Here I’ll propose an alternative way of modeling TKP—​one that I think succeeds in clarifying what is at stake in the debate, and further illuminates the conception of tzimtzum I presented above. In introducing the concepts of ground and fundamentality, it is common to use the following metaphor: consider what God would need to create in order for everything else in reality to arise. What God would need to create is the fundamental, and what ‘automatically arises’ from the fundamental is the grounded. For example, Jonathan Schaffer introduces the concept of ground as follows: [T]‌he neo-​Aristotelian will begin from a hierarchical view of reality ordered by priority in nature. The primary entities form the sparse structure of being, while the grounding relations generate an abundant superstructure of posterior entities. The primary is (as it were) all God would need to create. The posterior is grounded in, dependent on, and derivative from it. (Schaffer 2009: 351) The metaphor of ‘what God would need to create’ is often used to clarify the sense in which the grounded is nothing over and above its grounds. But I think taking this picture literally can help us better understand the commitments of TKP. What would this mean? On the proposed understanding of TKP, the fundamental is what God creates, while the non-​ fundamental (or the grounded) is what automatically arises from the fundamental, given its nature or essence (and/​or the laws of metaphysics). God himself is seen as being ‘outside of the picture,’ transcending the reality that he creates. When we ask how things are grounded—​i.e., what the fundamental building blocks of reality are, and how the non-​fundamental layers of reality arise from these fundamental building blocks—​we are asking about the fundamental constituents of things within a created reality. The answers to these questions—​questions such 180

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as what exists fundamentally and what grounds the visible reality that we encounter—​are intra-​world statements, describing the nature of the created world from within. Questions of this sort do not ‘reach’ the relationship between God and the created world, or God himself—​ these being transcendent matters which our concepts (ground, fundamentality or otherwise) are not capable of capturing. This, I suggest, is the (meta-​)metaphysical picture which best models the commitments of TKP as standing in contrast to (the grounding model of) TLKP. Understood in combination with the conception of tzimtzum as hiddenness presented above, this picture can help us gain a better understanding of TKP and the crux of its disagreement with TLKP. To see how the debate can be better understood in these terms we will again begin with a focus on TLKP. According to TLKP, as we’ve understood it here, God is only apparently hidden from the world. The grounding model presented earlier can help us understand what this means. When a state of affairs A is grounded in a state of affairs B, A ultimately just is B. In encountering A we are thus also, at least in some sense, encountering B. In seeing a table, for example, it is not obvious to us that we are seeing particles in motion. But if the table is grounded in the arrangement of such particles, then the table is nothing over and above the particles themselves, and we are, in some sense, seeing the particles in seeing the table after all. Of course, in one sense, the particles are phenomenologically inaccessible to us—​as what appears to be hidden is hidden. But in another sense, they are what we are encountering phenomenologically all along, just without realizing or acknowledging it. On TLKP, this is the reality of our encounter with God as the ground of all being. It seems to us that we are encountering a plurality of material objects, and that God is inaccessible to us. In reality, however, what we are truly encountering in encountering the objects and phenomena of the created world is none other than (a manifestation of) God himself. The grounding model of TLKP helps us understand more clearly what it means for this to be so. TKP as an alternative to this picture can now be better understood as well. Unlike TLKP on which God is only seemingly hidden, TKP takes it that God is genuinely hidden from reality. The model presented above—​on which the fundamental is understood to be what God (fundamentally) creates, with God being ‘outside of the picture’—​can help us better understand what this means. God is, in a certain sense, genuinely inaccessible on the TKP picture. What we encounter in encountering the created world is just the created world. In attempting to grasp or experientially access the core of the reality we encounter, we still—​even if successful—​ encounter only a created reality, not God himself. In this sense, God is genuinely hidden from the world. Literal tzimtzum, on this picture, is the real inaccessibility, and apparent removal, of God from the logical ‘space’ of this world. The picture that many grounding theorists take to be a metaphor helpful for understanding the notion of ground is, taken literally, helpful for understanding precisely what this means. On this conception of TKP, the theological challenges that are typically raised against the view do not arise. God is not taken to have undergone any change or as having lost any perfection, at least in any obvious sense. (All-​encompassing revealed-​ness is not obviously a kind of perfection.) God remains as he is; He simply creates a world of beings for whom he is ultimately inaccessible. The picture also allows the proponent of TKP to maintain that the world continues to be metaphysically dependent on God in some sense—​the way in which this is so is simply taken to be conceptually inaccessible. More generally, the proposed model of TKP predicts that there are certain questions about God and his tzimtzum that we will be unable to answer. What exactly is the process of tzimtzum? And what is the initial problem that tzimtzum is meant to solve? On the proposed picture of TKP, these matters are beyond our grasp; God himself, as well as his real relationship to the world, transcends our conceptual reach. This fits with R. Ricci’s understanding of tzimtzum 181

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as literal and yet not understandable to the human mind (Fraenkel 2015: 250), and with R. Elyashiv’s claim regarding tzimtzum and related concepts that, though they describe real phenomena, ‘there is no possibility for any creation to perceive [or grasp] them’ (ibid.: 212). The proposed model of TKP captures exactly this—​a commitment to God’s genuine tzimtzum, resulting in a created world from which God and the nature of this tzimtzum are conceptually and experientially inaccessible. The proposed picture also helps clarify how the disagreement between TKP and TLKP can be understood. On the model of the debate I’ve proposed, there is a genuine disagreement between TKP and TLKP after all, though it must be couched (at least partly) in meta-​ metaphysical terms. It is not primarily a disagreement about what exists fundamentally or about how things are grounded; rather, it is a debate about how a theist is to frame the hierarchical picture of reality to begin with. Is God to be seen as ‘inside the picture,’ and thus as a fundamental being grounding the rest of reality, or as transcending the created world, including the fundamental? Implicit in each of these pictures is a corresponding understanding of what Divine contraction entails: the genuine hiddenness of God from the world and its conceptual space on the one hand, or the merely apparent hiddenness of God as the ground of all being on the other. One final note: the proposed model of the debate between TKP and TLKP in terms of ground and fundamentality can be adopted independently of the proposed understanding of tzimtzum in terms of hiddenness. For example, one might take TKP to involve genuine removal of God himself and still find the grounding-​based model of the debate to be helpful for conceptualizing the resulting metaphysical commitments. But the strength of the grounding-​ based model is particularly apparent in its ability to clarify how tzimtzum can be understood in terms of hiddenness by all parties to a substantive disagreement—​ultimately allowing for a philosophically viable interpretation of both TKP and TLKP, and illuminating the differences between them.1

Note 1 Many thanks to Sam Lebens and Aviv Luban for comments on an earlier draft.

Related Topics: God and Infinity, Mysticism and Rationalism, Analytic Jewish Philosophy

References Borukhovich, S. Z. (2008) Likutei Amarim (Tanya). New York: Kehot Publication Society. Fine, K. (2001) ‘The Question of Realism,’ Philosopher’s Imprint 1: 1–​30. —​—​—​(2012) ‘Guide to Ground.’ In Correia, F. and Schnieder, B. (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fraenkel, A. (2015) Nefesh HaTzimtzum, Vol. 2. Jerusalem, Israel: Urim Publications. Goldschmidt, T. and Lebens, S. (2020) ‘Divine Contractions: Theism gives birth to idealism,’ Religious Studies 56: 509–​24. Lebens, S. (2015) ‘God and His Imaginary Friends: A Hassidic Metaphysics,’ Religious Studies 51(2): 183–​204. —​—​—​(2017) ‘Hassidic Idealism: Kurt Vonnegut and the Creator of the Universe.’ In Goldschmidt, T. and Pearce, K. L. (eds.), Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press. —​—​—​ (2019) ‘Nothing Else,’ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11(2): 91–​110. —​—​—​ (2020) ‘Revelation Through Concealment: Kabbalistic Responses to God’s Hiddenness,’ European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12(2): 89–​108. Schaffer, J. (2009) ‘On What Grounds What.’ In Chalmers, D., Manley, D., and Wasserman, R. (eds.), Metametaphysics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Further Reading T. Goldschmidt and S. Lebens, ‘Divine Contractions: Theism gives birth to idealism’ (Religious Studies 56: 509–​24, 2020) provides another analytic reading of the doctrine of tzimtzum. A. Fraenkel, Nefesh HaTzimtzum, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2015) contains an incredibly helpful collection of classic sources about tzimtzum with translations into English, along with commentary. J. Schaffer, ‘On What Grounds What’ (in Chalmers, D., Manley, D., and Wasserman, R. [eds.], Metametaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) provides a helpful introduction to the notion of ground and its role in contemporary metaphysics.

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15 SEFIROT AND PHILOSOPHY James A. Diamond

15.1  Sefirot: A ‘Backbone’ of Kabbalistic Mysticism Sefirot is the Hebrew term that refers to an essential doctrine underlying virtually the entire corpus of Jewish mystical literature known as kabbalah, constituting a bold schematization of a God that is enigmatically both known and unknown. It provides the basic nomenclature for assembling a complex portrait of an eternal creator God’s internal organismic interplay between its diverse components and its external relationship with the creation. Ubiquitously surfacing in original kabbalistic ruminations, explicitly or obliquely, as well as contemporary scholarly investigations of kabbalah, it dramatizes an emanative account of all reality that charts the transition from an impenetrably concealed realm known as Nothing or ‘no/​thing’ (Eyn Sof) toward the revealed ‘thingness’ of creation. Its mythic schema is succinctly captured as the desire of an infinite, transcendent and unknowable reservoir of divinity…toward self-​expression: a becoming manifest or a concretization that begins with the subtlest of steps, moves toward the emergence of “God” as divine persona manifests its spectrum of energies in the “fullness” of the ten sefirot, and then spills over with plenitude to create all the “lower” worlds including—​as its very lowest manifestation—​the material universe. (Green 2004: xlvi) The term sefirot, whose rich semantic range encompasses a myriad of senses relating to numbers, spheres, narrative, boundaries or sapphire, begins its journey throughout the history of kabbalistic literature with the late antiquity Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzirah). The following cryptic passage is but one emblematic of others in the work: 5. Ten sefirot are the basis... 6. And their measure is ten for they have no limit. Their end is fixed in their beginning and their beginning in their end as the fire is bound to the burning coal…7…dimension of beginning and dimension of end, dimension of good and dimension of evil, dimension of above and dimension of below, dimension of east and dimension of west, dimension of north, and dimension of south. And the unique Lord, a trustworthy divine king rules over them all from his holy abode for ever and ever. (Hayman 2018: 118) 184

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This pristine formulation which projects the Eyn-​sof as a source of the infinite expansion of creation in the sefirot already discloses a philosophical complexity that will become further developed, touching on notions of creation, infinity, unity, temporality, space, ethics and the dilemma of how multiplicity can emerge from oneness and absolute simplicity. As a result, ‘on the one hand, we have the sefirot as extensions and as such infinite, and on the other, God at the center of creation, which reaffirms again and again the diversity implied by the ten sefirot’ (Valabregue-​Perry 2012: 411–​12). Indeed, the very first known commentaries on the Sefer Yetzirah are philosophical, probing the implications of this perplexing relationship between Eyn Sof and the sefirot for the nature of infinity, the One, and multiplicity (Ibid, Bibliography: note 26). Subsequently, kabbalah advanced this nascent presentation of the term sefirot as an alternative to the philosophical creatio ex nihilo hypothesis. It conceives of creation as some discernible unfolding of God out of an essence which also preserves some sense of an unknowable, undifferentiated God posited by the medieval philosophers, who can only be described apophatically in the guise of Eyn Sof (without end). The sefirot externalize an internal divinity, emerging or emanating into an intricate network of dynamic interactive potencies. God is thus configured as a hybrid ground of all Being comprised of a ‘hidden being-​in-​itself, its immanence in the depths of its own being; and another, that of its creative and active nature, thrusting outward toward expression’ (Scholem 1991: 159). There is a vigorous debate regarding the nature of the sefirot as to whether they are hypostases, or intellectual abstractions, or even some blend of the two, analogous to philosophical distinctions between realist or nominalist views of universals that correlate to either ten divine essences or instruments (atzmut vs kelim) (Hallamish 1999: 160–​5). They are ordered more by circularity rather than strictly linear ascent or descent, hence their ‘end is fixed in their beginning and their beginning in their end.’ Their ‘outward expression’ manifests iconographically as an upper triad designated as Crown (keter), Wisdom (ḥokhma) and Understanding (binah), and a lower heptad as Compassion (ḥesed), Judgment (din) or Strength (gevurah), Beauty (tiferet), Majesty (hod), Eternity (netzaḥ), Foundation (yesod) and Kingdom (malkhut). Allusions to sefirot pervade the broad gamut of the kabbalistic tradition, to the extent that ‘Most if not all Kabbalistic speculation and doctrine is concerned with the realm of the divine emanations or sefiroth in which God’s creative power unfolds.’ (Scholem 1965: 35). The Zohar, the canonical foundation of kabbalah since its explosive appearance in the 13th century, itself never affords a comprehensive treatment of the sefirot, and indeed avoids the term, speaking instead in ornately fluid images of ‘lights, levels, links, roots, garments, crowns of the King’ (Matt 1983: 33–​9), among a host of others such as ‘powers, sides or areas, worlds, firmaments, pillars, days, and streams’ (Tishby 1991: 269). Its metaphoric sumptu­ ousness demands of the philosopher an acculturated poetic sensibility to decipher its referents (Seeman and Magid 2009) before even beginning to mine its philosophical implications. Prior to any examination of the intersection between this mystical ‘theory’ and philosophy however, it is paramount to raise questions about the very viability of any such interface. Though recent scholarship has demonstrated its diversely rich facets beyond the noetic (Idel 2004), this discussion’s focus will be restricted to the more theosophical cognitive conceptions of sefirot rather than its performative ones through theurgy, magic, rituals and ecstasy.

15.2  Sefirot: Kabbalah Versus or and Philosophy? Can the parochial discipline body of kabbalistic knowledge express itself as, contribute to, complement or supplement philosophy? Must the two remain at worst antagonists, or at best two solitudes in their respective, mutually exclusive, antithetical quests for the nature, meaning 185

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and value of existence? The very term kabbalah, based on the Hebrew root for ‘receive’, along with its sense of knowledge grounded in tradition (Scholem 1995: 20–​1), implies that its accessibility is granted via transmission to and acceptance by its adept recipients on the strength of authority and prophetic revelation. The fact that it is not acquired through the normal tools of independent human inquiry based on reason, appears to rule out any reciprocally enriching alliance between philosophy and kabbalah. The longue duree of what can be described as a tempestuous relationship between kabbalah and philosophy begins in earnest with Judah Halevi’s (d. 1141) systematic critique mounted against the epistemological premises of philosophers who dismiss passionate mystical cognition in favor of detached sense perception as the sole medium of cognitive reflection (Gottlieb 2013). The subsequent accounts of creation rendered by the sefirot however, plotting the transition from transcendent non-​being ultimately to the physical being of the world and humanity, accentuates this problem more than any other kabbalistic teaching since it is repeatedly presented as a ‘secret or incomprehensible process of emanation’ (Lachter 2014: 68). Furthermore, the obstacles to any benefi­ cial relationship between the two would appear to be insurmountable considering kabbalah’s identification with mysticism, albeit subject to some current reservations (Huss 2007), a term which resonates with its etymological origins in concealment, hiddenness and esotericism. These are all methodological warning signals that might send the philosopher heading in the opposite direction. Perhaps the most serious impediments to the philosopher’s endeavors investigating the truths disclosed by existence and existents simpliciter are kabbalah’s essentialist hierarchies. First is its reification of Hebrew as a linguistic singularity among languages, constituting the very building blocks of creation. The sefirotic entities map the evolution of language specifically in the form of Hebrew, a generative process along a path initiated first by certain sefirot identified with thought, followed by inarticulated speech identified with sefirot symbolizing the Written Torah, and arriving finally at its linguistically concrete destination of realized speech in the lowest sefirah identified with the Oral Torah (Idel 1992: 59). Maimonides, in contradis­ tinction, viewed Hebrew as conventional like all languages, (Maimonides 1963: 357–​8) with its only claim to the ‘holiness’ (kodesh) ascribed to it in the rabbinic tradition being its puritanical lack of explicit terms designating sexual activity and genitalia (Maimonides 1963: 435; Kellner 2006: 155–​78; Septimus 1994: 50). This alone would, I believe, sufficiently impel a decisive strike against the philosophical viability of the sefirot. Second, the case of the sefirotic structural alignment between God and human beings is furthermore exceptionally problematic for its ontological prioritization of Jews over others. It was virtually axiomatic for the pioneering kabbalists to conceive of it relating to Jews alone who bear the divine image (tzelem Elohim) corresponding to ‘the sefirotic potencies configured imaginally in the form of an anthropos’ (Wolfson 2006: 51). Third, compounding the eth­ ical repugnance of ontic ethnic distinctions is also what Elliot Wolfson has demonstrated in countless studies as the inscribed gender superiority of male over female, enveloping to the point of erasing the female on the way to achieving male perfection. Although the Godhead’s sefirotic composition apparently presents a ‘progressive’ image of a bigendered Being with each sefirah correlating to both male and female dimensions working toward an ultimate balanced unity that might appeal to the modern equalitarian sensibility, a deeper understanding yields ‘the idea [that] ultimate wholeness or oneness is predicated on a reconstituted male androgyne’ (Wolfson 1995: 80). These metaphysical gradations of humanity raise strikingly polarizing positions to which the two modes of thinking led their respective adherents. On the one hand, the Zoharic theosophy of sefirot translates explicitly into the following representative statement ‘there is no comparison between one who comes from a holy root, from a stock of truth, and one who 186

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comes from evil filth from a root of foul, fierce loathsomeness.’ (Zohar 3:14a) The non-​Jew’s ontological origins in a demonic side of the sefirotic array even prevent a convert from overcoming his genealogically determined congenital deficit, rendering him incapable of accessing sefirot that occupy higher rungs of divinity (Wijnhoven 1975: 133). On the other hand, the phil­ osopher Maimonides, though admittedly drawing juristic (halakhic) nominalist (Lorberbaum 2015: 36ff.) distinctions between Jews and non-​Jews, never draws ontological ones. He can therefore posit in his jurisprudential code the Mishneh Torah no less, the following spiritually and intellectually egalitarian principle: any one of the inhabitants of the world whose spirit generously motivates him and he understands with his wisdom to set himself aside and stand before God to serve Him and minister to Him and to know God, proceeding justly as God made him, removing from his neck the yoke of the many reckonings which people seek, he is sanctified as holy of holies. (Maimonides 1990: 565) As a result, the convert can in fact achieve an even higher perfection because of his self-​made efforts rather than beginning from the practical advantageous intellectual heritage of a naturally born Jew (Diamond 2007: 25–​31). Thus, for the philosopher there is only human holi­ ness, while for the kabbalist there are realist degrees of holiness determined by birth, with non-​Jews being caught by inescapable sefirotic limitations. Also problematic in the search for universals is kabbalah’s exclusive Jewish purview, anchored as it is in the revelatory text of the Hebrew Bible, layered, or better put smothered, by its quasi-​revelatory rabbinic interpretations. Rather than a jumping off point as it is for the Jewish philosopher, the Bible is for the Jewish mystic ‘the entire locus of his existential thinking’ (Altmann 1991: 72). Maimonides and Nahmanides (d. circa 1270), who can be considered founding fathers respectively of Jewish philosophy and kabbalah, illustrate these two distinct hermeneutical strategies vis-​à-​vis Judaism’s sacred texts that is instructive for this discussion of sefirot. Nahmanides considers God’s names as ciphers that form the algorithmic key to the Torah, since it can be read in its entirety as an elongated thread of divine names. As a result, the first three words in Genesis can be deconstructed to convey a parallel account of the creation of God himself through the sefirot at its originating point in the sefirah of ‘Wisdom’ (Ḥokhma) (Nahmanides 1999: 13–​14). Thus he comments: the word ‘In the Beginning’ (bereshith) alludes to the creation of the world by Ten Emanations, and hints in particular to the emanation called Wisdom, in which is the foundation of everything, even as it says, The Eternal hath founded the earth by wisdom (Prov. 3:19)… Scripture tells about the lower creations and alludes to the higher ones and that the word bereshith refers covertly to the Emanation called Wisdom, which is the head of all beginnings… (Nahmanides 1999: 21–​7) Maimonides, on the other hand, reads the Bible as philosophy filtered through popularly digestible parables or what he classifies as the ‘language of the common man’ (Maimonides 1963: I:33, 71). He dismisses any relationship resembling that which Nahmanides draws between the lower and higher creations, asserting categorically ‘there is no correlation between Him and the things created by Him…There is, in truth, no relation in any respect between Him and any of His creatures’ (Maimonides 1963: 117–​18). Instrumental for appreciating these schismatic modes of reading is Maimonides’ interpretation of ‘wisdom’ in Proverbs 3:19, the 187

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very same verse cited by Nahmanides, as regimented and purposeful, underpinning a world in which ‘natural acts are all well-​arranged and ordered and bound up with one another, all of them being causes and effects…as it says The Eternal hath founded the earth by wisdom’ (Maimonides 1963: III:25, 505). The wisdom that informs God’s creation is precisely that nat­ uralistic causal dimension which qualifies the world as a valid object of philosophical contemplation. Though God’s revealed word through scripture might aid the philosophical project it is not essential to it. Indeed, for Maimonides, the fulfillment of the very first three cardinal commandments to know, love and fear God, is realized via rigorous logic and empirical observation that discovers the wisdom intrinsic to the creation (Maimonides 2001: 34, 38). For Nahmanides the kabbalist on the other hand, that wisdom is buried in a concealed narrative that charts the life of God pulsating beneath the surface layer of mere historical events, human characters and law, in this instance alluding to one sefirotic component of that Life. Ironically, at the same time this sefirotic reading of the text can be viewed as an intense reverence for its sanctity, it also erases the text in its penetration of it for its hidden meaning. The mystic, it has been argued, drains the text of any meaning at all and ‘actually treats the text of the Torah as a huge, blank scroll, as far as meaning is concerned, on which any meaning can be written’ (Dan 1996: 241). Finally, the fact that kabbalah’s primary subject matter is God, its inner structures, and its relationship with the cosmos and human beings, apparently confines it to the realm of theology or theosophy rather than philosophy. Would a philosopher be enticed by the Zohar, kabbalah’s core canonical ‘scripture’, when greeted by this introduction of a renowned contemporary scholar to its content and in particular the world of the sefirot: ‘The Zohar is a work of sacred fantasy… .’ which, like all theological elaborations, ‘depict realities that have not been seen except by the inner eye of those who describe them or by their sacred sources’ (Green 2004: xxxi). Fantasy, sacred and inner eye, nuanced as they are by imagination, reli­ gion and subjectivity, do not normally find their way into a philosopher’s lexicon. The sefirot might particularly avert the philosopher’s gaze in light of Elliot Wolfson’s convincing shift from Scholem’s understanding of it primarily as a theosophical locus of intellectual contemplation, to an experiential visual one filtered through the imagination (Wolfson 1994: 270–​ 325). Additionally, if the sefirotic structure of God is conjured by the imagination and internal psyche which project the sefirot as ‘an unconscious archetype of Self’ (Altmann 1954: 143), then perhaps it is better situated within the discipline of psychology rather than philosophy. Graphically put, if Maimonides’ magnum opus, the Guide of the Perplexed, which according to scholarly consensus is a foundational work of Jewish rationalism, could be described by Leo Strauss as ‘not a philosophic book—​a book written by a philosopher for philosophers—​ but a Jewish book: a book written by a Jew for Jews...’ (Strauss 1963: xiv), then certainly the same even more emphatically could be said of the Zohar, the parallel scripture of kabbalistic/​ mystical thought. Strauss concludes with the following which would be apt for kabbalah as well, ‘Philosophers are men who try to give an account of the whole by starting from what is always accessible to man as man; Maimonides starts from the acceptance of the Torah.’ In sum, kabbalah’s fundamental assumptions, modes of epistemological investigation and language, would tend to repel rather than attract the philosopher to what kabbalah might offer toward the advancement of, or, at the very least an enhanced appreciation of, the general aims of philosophy in the search for universal truths that seek to transcend time, place and parochial belief. However, I will continue with this brief discussion of the sefirot in the spirit of Evelyn Underhill’s still pertinent stricture introducing her classic study of mysticism. She urges serious attention to mystics for grasping some sense of the Absolute or Being which grounds all existence that has so eluded traditional philosophical thinking. To be open to mystical discourse we 188

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must break with our inveterate habit of taking the “visible world” for granted; our lazy assumption that somehow science is real and metaphysics is not…and examine for ourselves the foundations of all human experience before we are in a position to criticize the visionaries, the poets, and the saints. (Underhill 1912: 5) Since the sefirot constitute the fundamental core of kabbalistic metaphysics, a notion that Gershom Scholem, the doyen of modern kabbalah scholarship, considered the ‘backbone… of that basic system of mystical symbolism which had such important repercussions on the kabbalist’s view of the meaning of Judaism’ (Scholem 1974: 99), formulated by figures who conform to all those types, there can be no better subject by which to test the relationship between kabbalah and philosophy.

15.3  Interface Between Sefirot and Philosophy From its very inception, the sefirotic construction embryonically bears within itself philosophical potential since it imbibes both Aristotelian notions of God as ‘thought thinking itself’ represented by Eyn Sof, as well as Neoplatonic hierarchical structures of graduated descent from a Godhead to the material realm as suggested by the emanated sefirot. Accordingly, ‘the fortunes of the sefirot are an index of the growth of Neoplatonism in the Kabbalah’ (Idel 1992: 325), where the sefirot resemble the world of Ideas, although the sefirot in gen­ eral distinguish themselves by their dynamic interplay from Plato’s static Ideas. Despite what would appear as an impenetrable barrier between Maimonides and kabbalah he looms monumentally over the development of kabbalistic thought (Idel 1990; Wolfson 2004). His radic­­ ally apophatic conception of God that apparently denudes that Being from every vestige of what could be termed personal, relational, historical and interventionist qualities, did not deter numerous attempts to harmonize it with a sefirotic one as will be discussed (for bibliography, see Dweck 2009: 214, note 17). One 14th-​century Spanish talmudist’s sentiment of this endeavor appearing in a halakhic responsum, cited numerous times by opponents, trenchantly expresses a revulsion with what philosophers considered a pagan fragmentation of divine Oneness: ‘The Christians believe in the trinity and they [the kabbalists] believe in the decad’ (Goshen-​Gottstein 2004:169; for a modern analytic solution see Lebens 2017). A further slice of that philosophical current runs for example from 13th-​century thinkers like Yaakov ben Sheshet’s and Isaac ibn Latif’s identifications of Plato’s God who, contemplates the intellectual world, evoking emanations that ultimately produce reality, respectively with classical rabbinic theology and the sefirotic Godhead (Heller-​Wilensky 1967: 188–​9); to the 15th-​century exegete Isaac Abarbanel’s view that the sefirotic depictions are ‘truly the idea of the separate, all-​encompassing forms that Plato set down’ (Ogren 2014: 592); and the 17th-​century Abraham Cohen Herrera’s harmonization of the post Zoharic Lurianic configuration of Eyn Sof and four descending sefirotic worlds with hypostases of the Neoplatonic One, Intellect and Soul (Altmann 1982: 327–​8). Indeed, it was argued that even Spinoza, Judaism’s arch-​heretic and arguably proto-​atheist, retrofitted the Eyn Sof and its spiritual sefirotic emanations into his materialist theory of substance and modes. The 19th-​century kabbalist philosopher Elijah Benamozegh correlated the sefirah of ‘Crown’ to unique substance, ‘Wisdom’ to res cogitans, ‘Understanding’ to res extensa and, in a pantheistic turn, ‘Kingship’ to material extension (Guetta 2009: 37–​8; see also Popkin 1992; Aanen 2016). Solomon Maimon (1753–​1800), whose life and thought were deeply and proficiently immersed in classical rabbinics, kabbalah and philosophy, went as far as to categorically declare, ‘The Kabbalah, is in fact nothing other than an extension of Spinozism…Yet when it comes to the 189

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infinite Beings, positive properties are attributed to Him; the Kabbalists have reduced these to ten, which they call the ten Sefirot’ (Maimon 2018: 58). Historically, the turbulent relationship between kabbalah and philosophy ranges from equals coupled in a marriage of identical truths articulated in two different syntaxes, to complementary hierarchical bodies of knowledge addressing respectively the superior divine and inferior sub-​divine realms, to outright antithetical antagonism (Huss 2001). Most pertinent to this discussion are the first two models, particularly with respect to the sefirot, which set the stage for contemporary dialogues between kabbalah and philosophy most profoundly pioneered by Elliot Wolfson. Emblematic of the first is the assertion by Azriel of Gerona, a seminal 13th-​century Spanish kabbalist, that ‘The words of the wisdom of the Torah [i.e. kabbalah] and the words of the masters of inquiry (ba’aleei meḥkar) [i.e. philosophers] are one and the same,’ distinguished only terminologically since the kabbalists used the correct terms of sefirot by way of received sacred traditions to describe the ‘various parts’ of existence (Tishby 1982:145). Bahya ben Asher (13th century), an exponent of the second model enumerates different levels of biblical exegesis identifying ‘by way of reason’ with philosophy, and ‘by way of truth’ with kabbalah. This mode of reading developed into the quadruplex interpretive hierarchy, signified acronymically by the term pardes (PRDS), where the second level of Remez designates philosophical allegory and the final Sod refers to kabbalistic esotericism (Talmage 1999: 114; Scholem 1965: 56–​9). One of the best illustrations of this conflicted relationship between philosophy and kabbalah that extends into the modern age exhibiting various aspects of these models is a debate in 15th-​century Candia (Crete) between R. Moses Ashkenazi, an Aristotelian opponent of kabbalah, and R. Michael Balbo in its defense. The latter’s philosophical erudition and kabbalistic proficiency enabled a harmonization of them into a complementary exposition of sefirot, albeit relegating philosophy to a subordinate handmaiden of kabbalistic secrets. As a result, he identifies Maimonides’ notion of the Tetragrammaton, God’s unique name (YHWH) which signifies pure Necessary Existence, with the kabbalistic sefirah of ‘Crown’ (Keter) which he understands as infinite existence. Another identification of Maimonides’ philosophical signification of God’s Name with the sefirotic one raises two critical dimensions of the ongoing encounter between them. First is a midrashic exegetical strategy common to both strands of Jewish thought which anchor novel ideas, often radical, or even subversive of traditionally held religious convictions, in the ancient sacred texts. Second is the paradoxical language that is so characteristic of attempts at consummating a marriage between philosophy and kabbalah. The root of the rabbinic phrasing, shem ha-​meforash, signifying the Tetragrammaton, rendered perplexingly as the unpronounceable ‘articulated’, ‘exegeted’ or ‘as it is written’ name (Ben-​Sasson and Halbertal 2012), bears also the semantic senses of ‘separation’ and ‘extension’ (prsh). Thus, that Name captures both the philosophical separateness, or absolute transcendence of God championed by rationalists like Maimonides, a being so utterly unique and incomparable to anything in the world as to defy any positive assertions, and the elaborately extensive God of the sefirot revealed to the kabbalists who emanates itself outwardly toward creation (Ravitzky 1998: 144–​6). Though Scholem binarily distinguished kabbalah from philosophy (Scholem 1995: 25–​ 37), his philosophical mindedness set the stage for contemporary philosophical engagements with the sefirot. He may have been drawn to a God that presents as a sefirotic compound of both what can be known and what is beyond knowledge, since it offered a dialectical model for synthesizing an apparent antinomy of absolute transcendence and immanence (Kaufman 2000). The revealed sefirotic attributes or components always point back to the concealed as Eyn Sof, articulated in the paradoxical language so endemic to kabbalistic literature and its

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imagery. In this light one need only read the opening lines of the Zohar depicting this sefirotic unfolding to be philosophically attuned to much of what is to come: ‘A spark of impenetrable darkness flashed within the concealed of the concealed, from the head of Infinity—​a cluster of vapor forming within formlessness, thrust in a ring…no color at all. As a cord surveyed it yielded radiant colors. Deep within the spark gushed a flow, splaying colors below concealed within the concealed of the mystery of Ein Sof. It split and did not split its aura…’ (The Zohar 2004: 107–​8).

15.4  Sefirot as Attributes: Paradoxical Interlacing of Negation and Assertion Despite subsequent refinements and challenges by scholars to a variety of his conclusions, Scholem managed to transform the seductively lush and enigmatic poetry, in which a ‘unique blend of myth, image, lyricism, and hermeneutical beauty fix the anchor of past-​time into the eternally contemporaneous time of reading and reverence’ (Fishbane 2018: 6), into philosophically provocative formulations. He penned passages that deliriously imagined eruptions of the sefirotic Godhead brimming with conceptions of creation, time and reality. Typical is the following illustration of how he distils the Zohar’s rhapsodically anthropomorphic portraiture of God’s autogenetic sefirotic flowering into philosophically accommodating terms: The primary start or wrench in which the introspective God is externalized and the light that shines inwardly made visible, this revolution of perspective, transforms En-​Sof, the inexpressible fullness, into nothingness. It is this mystical ‘nothingness’ from which all the other stages of God’s gradual unfolding in the Sefiroth emanate and which the Kabbalists call the highest Sefirah, or the ‘supreme crown’ of Divinity. To use another metaphor, it is the abyss which becomes visible in the gaps of existence. Some Kabbalists who have developed this idea, for instance Rabbi Joseph ben Shalom of Barcelona (1300), maintain that in every transformation of reality, in every change of form, or every time the status of a thing is altered, the abyss of nothingness is crossed and for a fleeting mystical moment becomes visible. (Scholem 1995: 217) First, this transformation of an ineffable Being, the Eyn Sof, into a ‘nothingness’ that describes a somethingness of the first sefirah, Keter, sends us in the direction of such questions as: what if anything can be said of God, whether God possesses attributes, and if he does whether they are identical with God’s essence. One of the pivotal thinkers who valiantly attempted to harmonize philosophy and kabbalah’s doctrine of sefirot is the Italian Renaissance philosopher, David Messer Leon (ca. 1460—​1535). He places the doctrine squarely within the Jewish philosophical tradition beginning with Maimonides’ theory of attributes of action, filtered through Gersonides’, Crescas’ and Albo’s versions, tinged by scholasticism, and equates the sefirot with divine attributes that are identical with God’s essence and thus do not disturb His unity. At the same time, they are attributes of action in the sense of analogical predicates which allow for religious God-​talk, all the while referencing a unified essence, asserting ‘the sefirot are united in the essence of the Creator, blessed be He, and the multiplicity and diversity signifies [sic] the diverse activities which proceed from the unity of the Creator, not that there is within Him diversity’ (Tirosh-​Rothschild 1982: 419–​25). Similarly, from within Judaism’s juristic halls, R. Moses Isserles (1530–​72), one of the most renowned halakhists of the 16th century, whose formative impact on Jewish law endures to the present day, exerted his kabbalistic and

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philosophical erudition to equate the sefirot with attributes of action. He thus transforms a passage in the Zohar alluding to the sefirot into the following philosophical propositions: there is no differentiation from the first sefirah to the last, not in past, present, or future, but all is one. The distinction is made from our side. The fact of their not being differentiated is only explicable if the sefirot are identified with the attributes of action… We also find many times in the Zohar that the sefirot are called Eyn Sof and the “cause of causes” which is the name by which the philosophers call the First Cause. (Levin 2008: 273–​4) Conversely, that same Italian intellectual milieu also spurred a spirited attack by Leon Modena (1571–​1648) who sharply polarized Maimonides’s theory of attributes of action from that of kabbalah’s sefirot, arguing, as others had, that the sefirot undermine God’s unity rather than reinforce it. What those like Messer Leon joined by integrating Maimonides’ rationalist conceptions of God with the sefirotic one, Modena tore asunder with barbs such as this: Which is simpler to visualize in the human mind and [which is] the greater expression of God’s unity, a greater safeguard against erring: thinking that He is one, singular and unique, by denying that there could be plurality in Him or imagining in one’s thoughts the proliferation of Sefirot, channels, and lights? For Modena, the sefirot promote precisely the kind of misconceived God Maimonides intended to thwart with his negative theology (Dweck 2009: 236). The question remains—​do the sefirot end in a radical negative theology that ineffable implies or, does the very fact that the Eyn sof is itself positioned in the sefirotic realm, temper what seems a consummate negation? Current scholarship led by Elliot Wolfson and Moshe Idel has challenged and complicated the strict bifurcation of Eyn Sof and the sefirot into an amalgam of apophatic infinitude and kataphatic finitude. Since there is no strict dualism between the Infinite and its germinated sefirotic chain, both residing on the same ontic plane, any positive attributions expressed by the sefirot must also relate to the seemingly attributeless Eyn Sof. The sefirotic assemblage does not proceed along a generative linear continuum, instead oscillating ‘the cause is in the effect as the effect is in the cause’ (Wolfson 1994b: xiv), following the directional pattern of the ‘living creatures running back and forth’ (1:14) in Ezekiel’s vision of the Chariot, (Scholem 1990: 27–​8). What this confounding notion also evokes is the mystifying language of its exposition, replete with negative and positive assertions that live side by side, both in its original kabbalistic formulations and in its philosophical expositions. Rather than conceptually annihilating each other they enrich each other in a confluence of coincidentia oppositorum, or unity of opposites, that has been incorporated into philosophical understandings of existence from Hegel to Heidegger. Wolfson’s studies have made substantial inroads into excavating recondite kabbalistic texts for their philosophical ramifications by placing philosophy and kabbalah in dialogue, their faces turned toward each other. This results in reciprocally illuminating encounters through what he considers correlations, affinities and constellations of thought entangling kabbalah and philosophy rather than conventional scholarly approaches investigating historical influence. For but one example, this perspective yields a correspondence between the natures of Heidegger’s ‘Being’ (Seyn) and the kabbalistic notion of the Tetragrammaton identified with the Eyn Sof that ‘concurrently reveals and conceals the true and hidden essence of the mystery of the being of nonbeing that is the nonbeing of being’ (Wolfson 2019: 275).

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15.5  The Case of Evil: Forging an Alliance Between Kabbalah and Philosophy Since it is not possible to engage the broad range of issues to which the doctrine of sefirot might contribute or on which it might impact philosophically in some way, in this final section I will focus on the case of evil. I present this as a paradigm for a constructive coalescence of kabbalah and philosophy toward advancing Jewish philosophical theology with respect to a host of core issues, in this particular case to evil and its most demonic fruition in the Holocaust. The inexorable dilemma posed by evil for both philosophy and religion is most instructive for our discussion firstly because it is a subject Gershom Scholem considered ‘one of the principal motivating forces behind kabbalistic speculation,’ which also formed ‘the main touchstone of the difference between the philosophic and kabbalistic outlook.’ Secondly, in the shadow of the Holocaust, this problem remains of compelling contemporary urgency for the future of any cross-​pollination between philosophy, kabbalah and Jewish theology in general (Scholem 1974: 583; 1995: 35). The Maimonidean philo­­ sophical view of evil as a ‘privation’ or an absence of good, and therefore not attributable to any positive act of a Creator God, is no longer tenable in the face of a million children systematically gassed and burned. Nor is Maimonides’ theory of divine providence which conditions God’s watchful eye on intellectual perfection, thereby shifting God’s responsibility to innocent victims who fell outside the ambit of providential concern because of some intellectual deficit. Kabbalah, Scholem claimed, confronted head on ‘the primitive side of life,’ while philosophy ‘turned its back’ on this dimension of existence by sweeping it under the rug as an absence or privation rather than something of ontological substance. Whether evil is related to the empowerment of the sefirah of ‘Judgment’ disrupting the harmony of the sefirot internal to the Godhead in Zoharic kabbalah, or some catastrophic primordial event that releases or purges independent forces of evil out of the sefirot in its later Lurianic version (Tishby 1984), Scholem valued kabbalah’s ‘strong sense of the reality of evil’ over philosophy’s ‘convenient formula’ to evade it (Scholem 1995: 36). The rationalist legacy of Maimonides’ emanative account of creation where the ten spheres are ‘gradations of being’ did not account for the substantive independent reality of evil and the demonic as did the sefirot which are ‘theosophical attributes’ (Altmann 1981: 213). Numerous studies have demonstrated how philosophy has fruitfully resorted to myth in various ways beginning with the ancient Greeks, including the incorporation of kabbalistic myths and symbols notably in German Idealism by Schelling and then funneled back into Jewish philosophy (Franks 2013; 2019). Franz Rosenzweig, one of the formative Jewish voices of modern religious existentialism, explicitly draws at times on the sefirotic paradigm of a transcendent hidden God and a revealed anthropomorphically depicted God which is a function of an encountered being (Idel 1988; Glatzer 1979). Indeed, despite protestation that his magnum opus The Star of Redemption is anti-​mystical, his own dramatic life-​changing event itself emerged from a religio/​mystical experience. What is striking for our purposes is that a number of the most seminal philosophical responses to the radical evil of the Holocaust feel constrained to turn to kabbalah to supply that mythic language philosophy lacked, precisely the reason Scholem valued for confronting the problem of evil. Ironically, even the chief advocate of a Jewish ‘death of God’ theology, appropriated kabbalistic symbolism in an atheistic key, proposing a ‘Holy Nothingness known to mystics of all ages out of which we come and to which we shall ultimately return,’ to replace the traditional omnipotent god of history who was no longer viable in the face of Auschwitz (Rubenstein 1966: 154). Yet it is Hans Jonas and Emil Fackenheim, two professional philosophers, who 193

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are models for how philosophy can adapt kabbalistic myth such as the sefirot to compensate for the inadequacy of philosophical discourse. Firstly, in order to render the possibility of communication between an infinite God and finite beings, an essential facet of any authentic relationship, human beings must resort to some form of God talk rather than the radical silence Maimonides calls for, mandated by the verse in Psalms ‘To You silence is praise’ (Maimonides 1963: I:59, 139–​40). Fackenheim suggests an alternative ‘truth’ to that Maimonidean silence: Man must speak, but speak symbolically; or (if we wish) anthropomorphically; for he speaks from his finite situation. But anthropomorphic language, not being absolute truth, is not therefore falsehood; it is the truth about the God–​man relation as it appears from the standpoint of man. How it appears from the standpoint of God man cannot fathom, nor is it his business to fathom it. (Fackenheim 1970: 106) Fackenheim considered the Holocaust’s evil so shattering as to have inflicted near philosophical paralysis, for ‘among things ruptured may be not just this or that way of philosophical or theological thinking, but thought itself’ (Fackenheim 1982: 194). Although he certainly did not embrace its ontological framework unreservedly, he was drawn to kabbalah’s bold acknowledgment of the brute reality of evil and drew on its wellspring of paradoxical language to comprehend what philosophy alone could not (Green 2020). Similarly, Hans Jonas lamented philosophy’s inadequacy to deal with the consummate evil posed by the Holocaust. His personal loss as a result was deepened by his own teacher’s (Heidegger) insidious participation in that evil and subsequent silence regarding his complicity (Lang 1996), not just as a betrayal of a discipleship but philosophically devastating as well. Heidegger’s choice was the very living embodiment of Fackenheim’s perceived philosophical ‘rupture’: ‘That the most profound thinker of our time fell in with the goose-​stepping brown-​ shirted battalions struck me as a catastrophic failure on the part of philosophy, as a disgraceful moment in world history, as the bankrupting of philosophical thought’ (Jonas 2008: 187). He thus turned away from his usual reservoir of philosophical investigation and toward kabbalah, resorting loosely to the Lurianic theory of the Eyn Sof contracting Itself to open up space for creation and what is other than Its infinite all-​encompassing self. Reinventing a mythic vision that posits a diminished God as a stage in the unfolding of the sefirot and the creation, he invented his own myth to confront the evil of the Holocaust. He thereby constructed a God, or ‘eternal ground,’ that voluntarily limits its own being and surrenders omnipotence to allow for the human freedom (Jonas 1987: 11–​12). It is thus humanity that is ultimately responsible for maintaining the world, either vindicating God’s forfeiture of power, or destroying the world thereby repudiating God’s aspirations for His creation. Surely Jonas would have considered resistance, as Fackenheim appraised it, a critical means of ensuring the sacrifice God made in ceding his power so that human beings could exercise theirs would not be in vain. Fackenheim elevated the phenomenon of active resistance during the Holocaust from a behavioristic to an ontological category. To appreciate what motivated resistance to a radical evil that exceeded the limits of both psychological/​historical and philosophical intelligibility entails affording it ‘epistemological ultimacy’ (Fackenheim 1982: 248). Transcending philosophy for what it cannot account on its own, he grafts the Lurianic notion of a catastrophic event within the Godhead itself onto the Holocaust. Its original formulation envisaged a ‘rupture, and fragmentation [that] results in the subsequent exile of God (Eyn Sof) from Himself (sefirot), creating disharmony, cacophony,…’ (Magid 2003: 124), a tear in the very fabric of Being which only human beings can mend. Thus, if the Holocaust inflicted

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a ‘rupture of cosmic dimensions that involves no less than the “life and action” of Divinity itself,’ (Ibid: 253) then resistance to it constitutes a mending of cosmic proportions. A supreme existential instance of this resistance that not only realizes it by the very act itself but also by being anchored in philosophic kabbalah and kabbalistic philosophy Fackenheim proposes is the sermons delivered and transcribed by the Hasidic master (Rebbe) R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira in the Warsaw Ghetto. Preparing, sermonizing, transcribing and editing these sermons in the very depths of the demonic maelstrom that engulfed him and his community, is one illustration of resistance that ‘unfolded in actual history through human action, [and] defeated Nazi Germany ontologically’ (Green 2020: 254). One such sermon delivered in October of 1941 draws on that nascent sefirotic locution in the Book of Creation that commenced our discussion, but this time embedding it in the textual embodiment of the divine sefirot. The entire Torah, he asserts, is deliberately framed in accord with the principle that ‘the Torah’s ending is fixed in its beginning and its beginning in its ending.’ In other words, like the sefirot, the Torah has no real beginning or end but can be read in a recurring loop where beginning and end succeed each other in a narrative continuum. Read this way, the very opening verse In the beginning (Genesis 1:1) semantically follows the concluding verse of Deuteronomy 34:12 and for all the great might and awesome power that Moses performed before the eyes of all of Israel. When read separately as a distinct beginning and unrelated end according to R. Shapira, they respectively refer to different facets of the sefirah Ḥesed, or divine compassion and kindness—​the end relates to a utopian revealed hesed that is historically conspicuous and the beginning relates to a hidden ḥesed, operative until messianic times. Only God is privy to the operative elements of the latter whose effect was then obscured by the harsh exigencies of the Holocaust’s concrete circumstances. That revealed ḥesed of the Torah’s ending is slated to materialize before the eyes of all Israel only at the culmination of history, held in reserve by God in the interim. However, R. Shapira protests that Israel cannot tolerate the hidden ḥesed available presently that does not measure up to remedying the harshly experienced evil that overwhelmed it, ‘for we do not have the strength to endure such hesed.’ In an act of scribal activism, R. Shapira, in the guise of Moses, resists the very ground of all being Itself by crafting the end of the Torah to be followed by its beginning (Diamond 2010: 314–​15). It thus forms one seamless sentence that presents a demand for the immediate, in the beginning, activation of that revealed messianic ḥesed that God holds in abeyance to halt the present unbearable historical suffering: Therefore, Moses actuated all the signs and portents [Deut. 34:11] and all the great might that Moses performed before the eyes of all of Israel in the beginning, that is even in the beginning and from its inception and immediately the hesed should be before the eyes of all of Israel, that is with good and clearly discernible kindnesses. (Shapira 2017) Any theoretical account of divine justice associated with the Genesis narrative must surrender to Moses’/​Shapira’s appeal for a justice that is grounded in the very origins of history rather than one that arrives at its end. God’s primordial design for the course of human history charted in the absence of human beings operates unjustly in their presence and requires adjusting in light of their experience. R. Shapira’s Moses is a prime example of resistance as an ontological category because its aim is to mend evil’s historical/​theological/​philosophical rupture whose roots can be traced to the very Source of all being itself by calling on It to conform to its own revelation as Moses reconstructed it. Jonas echoes the crisis which provoked Moses’ appeal in his own dilemma which impelled his myth of a God who must have divested

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his power to curtail evil for, ‘one would expect the good God at times to break his own, however stringent, rule of restraint and intervene with a saving miracle’ (Jonas 1987: 10). The profound yet fraught dialectical alliance Jonas and Fackenheim formed between philosophy and kabbalah, along with its manifestation in R. Shapira’s resistance, to contend with that which strained the limits of discursive thought and language poses a model for conducting Jewish philosophy. Kabbalah and its sefirotic paradigm for the ultimate Ground of all existence can be constructively absorbed into the datum of the foundational texts such as the Bible, the classical rabbinic corpus and Maimonides, that form the mainstay of any such exercise to qualify as Jewish. Jonas articulated best the benefits of any alliance between philosophy and repositories of mythic language such as that found in kabbalah, or even that such language might better confront the metaphysics of such problems as evil when he soberly advised: The final paradox is better protected by the symbols of myth than by the concepts of thought…To keep the manifest opaqueness of myth transparent for the ineffable is in a way easier than to keep the seeming transparency of the concept transparent for that to which it is in fact as opaque as any language must be. (Jonas 1964: 232) Related Topics: Negative Theology; Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Mysticism and Rationalism; Post-​Holocaust Theology and Its Critical Reception

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Further Reading Altmann, Alexander (1981) ‘Maimonides’ Attitude toward Jewish Mysticism,’ in Jospe, A. (ed.), Studies in Jewish Thought, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press (what the most central Jewish philosopher of all time thought of mysticism); Green, Arthur (2004) “Introduction,” in The Zohar, Pritzker edition, trans., Daniel Matt, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. xxxi–​lxxxi (an excellent introduction to sefirot and their significations); Ravitzky, Aviezer (1998) “The God of the Philosophers Versus the God of the Kabbalists –​A Controversy in 15th Century Crete,” in Joseph Dan and Klaus Hermann (eds.) Studies in Jewish Manuscripts: Texts and Studies in Medieval and early Modern Judaism, 14, Berlin: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 137–​68 (a fascinating historical episode pitting philosophy versus kabbalah on the nature of God); Gershom Scholem (1995) Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York: Schocken Books (a classic pioneering study of the various genres in and development of kabbalistic thought by the doyen of kabbalah scholarship); Wolfson, Elliot, (2019) Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis, Indiana: Indiana University Press (a deep meditation on a seminal modern non-​Jewish philosopher and kabbalah for advanced readers).

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16 HASSIDISM AND PHILOSOPHY The Return to Nothingness Yitzhak Y. Melamed

16.1 Introduction Hassidism [‫]חסידות‬, the Jewish religious movement which emerged in East Europe in the mid-​ 18th century, is still a vital force more than two and a half centuries later. During this period of time, Hassidism has exerted a decisive influence not only on the religious lives of millions of Jews, but also on the formation of modern Hebrew letters, culture and music. The historical circumstances around the activity of the two founders of the movement, R. Israel Baal Shem Tov (acronym: the Besht) of Międzybóż (1700?–​1760), and R. Dov Ber Friedman, the Great Maggid of Mezhrich (1710?–​1772), are still shrouded in fog, though recent scholarly literature has made important headway in establishing historical facts.1 Hassidism was strongly opposed to the competing Jewish Enlightenment movement, the Haskalah, accusing members of Haskalah of having developed shame about their Jewish identity and of internalizing anti-​ Jewish stereotypes and prejudices. For this reason, it has been quite common among intellectual historians to assume that ‘with the exclusion of only a small number of exceptions’ Hassidism was essentially opposed to the study of philosophy (Brown, forthcoming, 3). Arguably, the story is much more nuanced, and while most lay Hassidism usually avoided the study of philosophy, the intellectual leadership frequently engaged in this study and at times developed philosophical and theological positions that were far bolder than what one would find among the bourgeoisie of the German-​Jewish Haskalah. A proper and comprehensive study of the relationship between Hassidism and philosophy would require a volume of its own. In the limited space of this chapter, I shall focus on two crucial issues within the broader topic of Hassidism and philosophy. In Section 16.2, I will study the Hassidic reception of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, widely perceived as the greatest work of Jewish philosophy, a work that was equally admired and derided as heretical from its very early dissemination in the late 12th century. Against the common prejudice among scholars, I will show that throughout its history, numerous Hassidic leaders engaged in the study of the Guide, admired the book, and quoted it approvingly as an authoritative rabbinic source. In Section 16.3, I will move from the Hassidic reception of Maimonides’ phil­ osophy to what I would argue is perhaps the most significant Jewish contribution to modern Western philosophy: the notion of acosmism, according to which only God truly and fully exists. I will show that through the mediation of Salomon Maimon (1753–​1800) this bold notion was adopted from the school of the Maggid of Mezhrich and introduced into the 200

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systems of German Idealism. In my brief conclusion, I will attempt to provide a preliminary answer to the question of what allowed Hassidic masters to develop rather bold philosophical and theological views in spite of the conservative appearance of the movement.

16.2  The Hassidic Reception of the Guide of the Perplexed Yaʿakov Emden (1697–​1776) was one of the more extraordinary rabbinic figures of the mid-​18th century. A man of letters, versed in several European languages and having a keen interest in contemporary science, Emden is commonly considered as one of the harbingers of the Haskalah. One might thus be surprised to read Emden’s verdict on Maimonides’ magisterial work, the Guide of the Perplexed: I do not deny speaking ill of the Guide of Perplexed—​which I believe was never composed by the Maimonides, the author the Code of whom we so pride ourselves (or perhaps there were two people named ‘Maimonides’? though even the Book of Knowledge [in the Code] contains some of the erroneous opinions of the Guide of the Perplexed)… I cannot conceive how could such a misshape come out of the hands of this great Jewish man, great in Torah and deeds, as the famous Rabbi Moses. For this book is replete with smirch. It is truly opposed to Torah and faith, more than anyone could imagine. (Schacter 1984: 45) Emden does not mince words in his condemnation of the Guide, and indeed he was not unique. We have solid textual evidence of a significant body of medieval and early modern rabbinic authorities who deemed the book heretical and unworthy of inclusion in the rabbinic canon. Given this unequivocal rejection of the book by Emden—​the person whom Moses Mendelssohn, the leader of the Berlin Haskalah, considered as his own rabbi—​one would expect the leaders of the emerging Hassidic movement, a movement of deep religious piety, to adopt a similar stance toward the Guide. But nothing of this sort transpired. The first three Hassidic books to be printed—​Toldot Ya’akov Yoseph (1780), Ben Porat Yoseph (1781) and Tzofnat Pa’aneaḥ (1782)—​each contain several references to Maimonides’ Guide and Book of Science. All three refer to the Guide as an authoritative rabbinic text. The author of all three books—​R. Ya’akov Yoseph ha-​Kohen of Polnoye (1695?–​1781)—​was one of the closest disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov, and his references and discussions of passages from Guide contain no trace of criticism of the work. For all we can tell, for R. Ya’akov Yoseph ha-​Kohen of Polnoye, both the Guide and Sefer ha-​Madda are part and parcel of the rabbinic canon. Another prominent disciple of the Besht, R. Pinhas Shapiro of Koretz (1726–​91), is said to have told his son that the Guide instils in a person reverence toward God [‫( ]יראת ה׳‬Shapira 1930: 86). According to one source, Pinhas of Koretz argued that if one wonders whether the Guide might make a person a pious Jew [‫]גוטער יוד‬, he could point out himself as that person who became a pious Jew by virtue of the Guide (Shapira 1924: 13). A third source attests that Pinhas of Koritz studied the Guide ‘a thousand times’ (Shapira 1936: 48). R. Pinha’s contem­ porary, R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl (1730–​97), as well as later Hassidic masters, such as R. Yitzhak of Skvira (1812–​85), portrayed Pinhas of Koriz as a ‘divine philosopher [‫פילוסוף‬ ‫( ’]אלוקי‬Shapira 1936: 48 and Shapira 1924: 13). R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, who was himself a disciple of the Besht, addresses the Guide’s discussion of divine foreknowledge in his own writings, and on another occasion quotes approvingly a passage from Guide III 52 (Dienstag 1964: 313).

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As we turn our attention to the circle of the Maggid of Mezhrich, we encounter a source suggesting that when the time would come for the disciples of the Maggid to enter his study hall, ‘they [would] have been already thoroughly learned in the Guide’ (Shneorson 2019: 244). Though the source is relatively late, the existence of such a tradition is significant and attests that at least by the end of the 19th century, a major Hassidic leader—​R. Sholom Dubber Shneorson of Lubavich (1860–​1920)—​found it important to stress that the Maggid’s disciples were versed in the Guide. R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk (1730–​88), one of the senior disciples of the Maggid, discusses the Guide and even defends it from objections raised by Nahmanides (Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk 2007: 18, 40). Similarly, R. Boruch of Kossov (1720?–​81), another disciple of the Maggid and an important Kabbalist in his own right, frequently quoted the Guide (see, for example, Boruch of Kossov 1854: 12) and developed discourses on classical philosophical topics (such as the distinction between essence and existence [1854: 14]). Other Hassidic masters in the circle of the Maggid who cite the Guide as an authoritative rabbinic text include Shlomo of Lutsk (?–​1813), Shneor Zalman of Liadi (1745?–​1812), Avraham of Kalisk (1741–​ 1810) and Israel of Kozhnitz (1736–​1814) (see Dienstag 1964: 313–​20). The overall picture of the Hassidic reception of the Guide did not change much in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hassidic masters of a vast variety of schools and orientations studied the Guide, though they were fully aware of its religious audacity. The Guide was considered a challenging, indeed even dangerous text, but these features did not stop the Hassidic elite from studying the book. The Kotzker Rebbe, R. Menahem Mendel Morgenstern (1787–​ 1859), an unbending and demanding radical who secluded himself in a small room for the last 20 years of his life, is quoted as saying that the book is a ‘Guide for those who are learned and versed in rabbinic letters, and Perplexing for the unlearned’ (Morgenstern 1961: 100). The much more mainstream Hassidic leader, R. Israel Friedman of Ruzhin (1796–​1850), is reported to have regretted giving an approbation to the printing of one of the works of R. Ya’akov Emden once he learned of Emden’s harsh condemnation of the Guide (Horodetzky 1923: III 104). We also have an edifying tale about R. Hayim Halberstam of Sanz (1797–​1876), a notable scholar and the founder of the Sanz Hassidic community. After his marriage at the age of 13, R. Hayim was living at the house of his father-​in-​law—​himself an important rabbinic scholar—​who kept a copy of the Guide locked in a box. Once, when his father-​in-​law went to sleep, the young R. Hayim opened the box and began studying the Guide. Soon, his father-​ in-​law woke up, took the book from R. Hayim, locked the box, and hid the key. A few days later, just after his father-​in-​law had left on a trip, R. Hayim searched for the key, opened the box, and returned to his study of the Guide. As it happened, his father-​in-​law returned to pick up an item he had forgot. Having discovered R. Hayim bending over the copy of the Guide, the father-​in-​law smiled: ‘I see that you are truly keen on studying the Moreh. Wait a week till I return home, and we shall study it together from beginning to end.’ Locking up the book once again, the father-​in-​law went back on the road. A week later, they began studying the Guide cover to cover (Walden 1923: 6; Cf. Dienstag 1964: 325). To understand the Guide, you need the key—​but the key is not sufficient: you need a teacher. The study of the Guide was mostly restricted to the Hassidic elite. Sometimes we find Hassidic masters designating specific sacred times to study the Guide. Thus, we learn that both R. Tzadok ha-​Kohen of Lublin (1823–​1900) and R. Hayim of Sanz used to study the Guide on no other day than Yom Kippur (Dienstag 1964: 325). Similarly, we have the testimony of an old Karliner Hassid who was versed in the rabbinic writings of Maimonides and approached his rebbe, asking whether it would be proper for him learn the Guide. ‘It is proper’—​the Hassid was told—​‘but only on Shabbat, and only a page each time’ (Shor 2021: 128). 202

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R. Yoel Teitelbaum (1887–​1970), the leader of the Satmar Hassidic community and the stern gatekeeper of 20th-​century anti-​Zionist ultra-​Orthodoxy, discussed Maimonides’ philosophical works very frequently in his masterly Va-​yoel Moishe. R. Yoilish addresses the Guide no less than five times in this work (Teitelbaum 1981: 12, 43, 111, 341, 347), and his attitude toward the book is consistently reverential, expressing not even the slightest doubt about the authoritative rank of the Guide in his eyes. Let me stress again that for many Hassidic masters the study of the Guide was a challenge (due to its daring assertions), and some described themselves as physically trembling before they opened the book. But they studied it nonetheless and considered it ‘one of the foundational books of Jewish thought’ (Dienstag 1964: 308). Let me also stress that studying the Guide did not necessarily entail agreement with each view expressed in the book. In this sense, we can perhaps portray the attitude of many Hassidic masters toward the Guide as combining admiration, wonder and criticism, an attitude which is quite proper toward a serious philosophical work. The attitude of R. Nahman of Breslav (1772–​1810) toward the Guide is hardly an exception in this context. Although R. Nahman strongly advised his followers to stick to the path of innocent faith and prohibited them from studying the Guide, there is no doubt that he himself studied the book closely. This is evident not only from various teachings and expressions that seem to betray the influence of the Guide, but it is also explicitly confirmed by his semi-​ official hagiography, Hayey Muharan (Sternharz 2005: 232 [§412]). In Pe’ulat ha-​Tzadik, a collection of teachings and stories about R. Nahman, he is quoted as saying that the limit of a person’s legitimate inquiry is relative to the rank and strength of the person’s intellect. Those with a more restricted intellect should stick to simple faith, while those with a stronger intellect (in which group he clearly included himself) are allowed to ascend as high as befits their rank (Shik 2004: 651–​2 [§977]). The Hassidic restriction of the study of the Guide to a small elite was hardly an innovation. Indeed, in his introduction to the Guide, Maimonides stresses that his aim is to aid a ‘single virtuous man’ rather than ‘ten thousand ignoramuses’ (Maimonides 1963: I 16). Thus, the common Hassidic attitude toward the Guide fit the intentions of its author quite closely. There are two chapters in the Guide which attracted Hassidic masters the most. These are ­chapters 51 and 52 of part three of the Guide, which begin the climactic conclusion of the work. The chapters, known since medieval times under the title ‘The Regime of the Solitary [‫ ’]פרקי הנהגת המתבודד‬have strong Sufi undertones (see Harvey 1991). These are chapters which combine extreme religious devotion with extreme rationalism. Two of the stunning rationalist assertions in these chapters are Maimonides’ sharp criticism of those who ‘frequently mention God’ and claim to have faith in him, without having true intellectual apprehension of God (Guide III 51| Maimonides 1963: II 620), and the depiction of the intellect, at the beginning of ­chapter 52, in terms that were traditionally reserved only for God: ‘the great king who always accompanies man’ and in the presence of which one should be utterly submissive (Maimonides 1963: II 52). Many of the medieval rabbinic readers of the Guide were highly critical of these chapters, especially due to the famous Palace Parable which opens c­ hapter 51, in which Maimonides suggests that rabbinic scholars who have no knowledge of philosophy are inferior, in true divine worship, to the philosophers. Thus, Shem Tov ben Yoseph Ibn Shem Tov (?–​1493), in his canonical Guide commentary, quotes ‘many of the sages who said that this chapter was not written by the Master, and if he did write it, it should be shelved, or better: burned’ (Maimonides 1960: III 64). Unlike the medieval ‘sages,’ the Hassidic masters were highly enthusiastic about these chapters, and over the past two centuries there have been numerous Hassidic editions of the ‘The Regime of the Solitary,’ frequently bound together with Iggeret ha-​Kodesh (‘the Holy 203

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Epistle’) by R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, another highly esteemed Hassidic text (for some of these editions, see Liberman 1980: 60–​1). R. Avraham Weinberg (1804–​83), the founder of the Slonim Hassidic school, thought so highly of these chapters that in his major book, Yesod ha-​Avodah (Weinberg 1892: 58–​60), he includes a lengthy quote which contains the second half of Guide III 51, and the entirety of Guide III 52. What did the Hassidim find so exciting in Guide III 51–​2? Most probably it was the ideal of complete devotion to, and constant contemplation of, God, even when one is engaged, as one must be, in worldly affairs. But there was perhaps another, closely related, issue. In his 1792–​3 Autobiography, Salomon Maimon provides us with a lengthy and intriguing discussion of early Hassidism. Maimon’s portrayal of Hassidism is based on his own experience attending the court of the Maggid around 1770, when Maimon considered joining the movement (or, more probably, attempted to become one of the leaders of the movement). Another interesting feature of Maimon’s Autobiography is his decision to open the second part of the book with no less than ten chapters which systematically summarize the entire Guide of the Perplexed. In the Autobiography’s summary of Guide III 51, Maimon stresses Maimonides’ assertion that true religious worship consists of ‘directing one’s thought toward God alone’ and in ‘abstracting one’s thought from all things and directing them exclusively toward the Highest Being’ (Maimon 2018: 187–​8). Notably, Maimon’s portrayal of Hassidic worship, in the very same work, is highly reminiscent of his summary of Guide III 51: The Hassidic worship consisted of a self-​overcoming [Entkörperung]: withdrawing their thoughts from all things except God, even their own individual selves, and merging with God [und in vereinigung mit Gott]. This, they believed, produced a sort of self-​ suppression [Selbstverläugnung]. They would ascribe any actions they performed in that state to God, not to themselves. Their worship was made up, then, of a kind of speculative prayer, requiring no particular time or set of formulations… during these services they practiced the aforementioned self-​overcoming, immersing themselves so profoundly in the idea of divine perfection that they lost touch with all else, even their own bodies, to the point where, according to their own accounts, their bodies would be completely insensible. (Maimon 2018: 91–​2| Maimon 1792–​3: I 221–​2. Italics added) The Hassidic notion of self-​ annihilation in God intrigued Maimon immensely, and he considered it the single most important principle of Hassidism (Maimon 2018: 97, 107). Section 16.3 will be dedicated to this notion, and its transformation and introduction into German Idealism by Maimon.

16.3 Acosmism At the time of his visit to the Maggid’s court in Mezhrich, Maimon was about 17 years old. Many members of the Maggid’s circle were at roughly that age as well. This was a company of young and enthusiastic would-​be scholars. Notably, Maimon describes the Hassidim as Aufklärer (Enlighteners) (Maimon 2018: 91), thereby marking a clear gulf between his per­ ception of the Hassidim and that of the other maskilim (for whom the Hassidim would be clear-​cut forces of darkness). Maimon himself had an ambivalent attitude toward the movement.

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Maimon repeatedly stresses the centrality of the Hassidic principle of self-​annihilation in God. Thus, at the beginning of his discussion of Hassidism, he writes: [For the hassidim] true divine worship was a matter of performing devotional exercises with all one’s strength—​and of self-​annihilation before God. They maintained that man achieves his highest perfection only by regarding himself as an organ of God, rather than as a Being that exists and acts for itself. (Maimon 2018: 86| Maimon 1792–​3: I 208. Italics added) Maimon fully concurred with the Hassidim’s view of themselves as merely organs of God, having no independent being of themselves. However, he added, they are not entitled to such a noble philosophical view: They know nothing of natural science and have no knowledge of psychology yet are vain enough to regard themselves as an organ of the divinity—​which, of course, they are, but only to the degree they have achieved perfection. And so they indulge in the worst excesses, chalking them up to service to God. For them, every bizarre thought is a divine inspiration, every raw urge a divine call to action. (2018: 87| Maimon 1792–​3: I 210–​11. Italics added) To illustrate the impropriety of the Hassidim’s ambition to regard themselves as mere organs of God (despite the veracity of this claim), Maimon provides the following portrayal of their daily habits: Because members of the sect went around idly smoking their pipes all day, some rather simple ones were asked what they thought about the whole time. They answered, ‘about God!’ This answer would have been satisfying if, in fact, the men in question had been striving ceaselessly to extend their knowledge of the divine perfections through an adequate knowledge of nature. But this couldn’t possibly have been the case, since they had limited knowledge of natural science. And so, directing their actions toward an object that was fruitless (given their capacities) could only be unnatural. Moreover, they could only be justified in ascribing their actions to God if their actions followed from an accurate understanding of God. If their actions followed from an incomplete understanding, they would actually be engaging in excessive behavior performed in God’s name. Unfortunately, the latter has proven to be the case. (2018: 92–​3| Maimon 1792–​3: I 223–​4. Italics added) For Maimon, the Hassidic notion of self-​annihilation in God and of seeing oneself as a mere organ of the divinity, having no independent existence of oneself, was a deep philosophical discovery. As we shall shortly see, Maimon identified this view with Spinoza’s philosophy and its denial of the substantiality of the human mind. Still, Maimon protested: they cannot be Spinozists, since they have no proper scientific and philosophical knowledge. Maimon was highly impressed by the ingenuity of Hassidic teachings, especially those which addressed the need to break the boundaries of the self in order to submerge in God. Here is one of these teachings, a homily on 2 Kings 3:15: ‘As the player (musician) played, the spirit of God came to him’ (2 Kings 3:15). The Hassidic masters interpret this verse as follows: As long as a person considers himself as

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an independent agent, he will not be able to receive the effect of the Holy Spirit. For that end, he must act as merely an instrument. Thus, the meaning of the passage is: When the player [‫​—]המנגן‬that is, the servant of God—​becomes identical to the instrument [‫]כלי נגן‬, then God’s Spirit will come upon him. (Maimon 2018: 94–​5| Maimon 1792–​3: 228–​9) The condition for having God’s Spirit is the dissolution of the ego and its imaginary independence, so that a person recognizes that he is nothing but an organ of God. This teaching has both metaphysical and moral dimensions, and indeed immediately after the Player-​Instrument homily just cited, Maimon quotes another teaching by a Hassidic emissary, proving the vanity of honor and the fostering of the ego: “Now listen,” the stranger went on, “to the interpretation of this passage from the Mishna: ‘The honor of your neighbor should be as dear to you as your own.’ Our teachers explain the passage as follows: Clearly, no one enjoys honoring himself—​ that would be ridiculous. But it would be just as ridiculous to make too much of the honors that others confer upon us, since such honors do nothing to increase our inner worth. Thus, the passage says, in effect: The honor of your neighbor (the honor your neighbor shows you) should not be any dearer to you than your own (the honor you show yourself).” (Maimon 2018: 95| Maimon 1792–​3: 229–​30) The Hassidic practice of estrangement toward honor captivated Maimon, and despite his criticism of Hassidic excess, he still considered their ‘principle of self-​annihilation,’ if understood correctly, to be ‘the true foundation of self-​activity [Grundlage zur Selbsttätigkeit].’ This principle, claimed Maimon, ‘clears the way to a free mode of activity… and is the only way moral and aesthetic feeling can be achieved and perfected’ (Maimon 2018: 107| Maimon 1792–​3: 258). Over the past few decades, academic scholarship on Hassidism has been successful in documenting each and every Hassidic teaching cited by Maimon in the writings of the Maggid and his disciples (see Weiss 1947; Weiss 1956; Assaf 2006; and Melamed 2010: 80 n. 20). The Hassidic ‘principle of self-​annihilation’ or ‫( ביטול היש‬literally: the Cancellation of Being) has been meticulously documented in the writings of the Maggid and his disciples by Rivka Schatz-​Uffenheimer (1980: 26–​31). In these early Hassidic sources, ‘Ayin [‫ ’]אין‬was an abbre­ viation for the old Kabbalistic notion of Einsof [‫( ]אינסוף‬the infinite, the most sublime aspect of God in the Kabbalah), but it also carried the literal Hebrew meaning of Ayin as nothingness. Thus, within Hassidic thought, ‘Ayin’ (nothingness) came to denote the most sublime aspect of God, and achieving the madreiga (rank) of nothingness became the exalted ultimate end of Hassidic spiritual practice. Let me provide one illustration of these teachings which can be found in a collection of homiletic sayings ascribed to the Maggid. The following passage attempts to explain the intention one should have at the recitation of the Shema prayer (‘Hear O Israel, God is our Lord, God is One’): ‘The intention of “One” in the recitation of the Shema is that there is none but God whose glory fills the earth, and the chief intention is that a person should think of himself as nothingness and null [‫ …]אין ואפס‬so that nothing exists in the world but God, and the chief intention in “One” should be that God fills the earth, and there is nothing empty from Him, may He be blessed’ (Segal 1865: 12b. My translation). Similar statements can be found occasionally in some earlier kabalistic texts, but in Hassidism, acosmism—​as the view would be named by Maimon—​became the movement’s call to arms and its very foundational idea. 206

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The view of God as the only thing which truly exists also appears frequently in Maimon’s kabbalistic treatise Ma’aseh Livnat ha-​ Sapir [Hebrew: The Work of a Sapphire Stone], which is one of the sections of Maimon’s still unpublished manuscript, Ḥeshek Shelomo (Hebrew: Solomon’s Desire). In one of these passages in Livnat ha-​Sapir, Maimon argues that God is the cause of the world, according to all four Aristotelian causes (including the material cause, a view which Maimon would later identify with Spinozism. See Melamed 2004: 79–​ 87). He then writes: You have seen how God relates to the world according to the four aforementioned causes. From now on, we cannot imagine any existence other than His, may He be blessed [‫]אי אפשר שנדמה שום מציאות זולתו‬, neither essential nor accidental existence. And this is the secret of the true unity, i.e., that only God, may He be blessed exists, and nothing but him has any existence at all [‫ ואין לזולתו מציאות כלל‬,‫]שהשם יתברך לבדו נמצא‬. (Maimon [unpublished]: 139. My translation) Most of Ḥeshek Shelomo was written before Maimon left Lithuania for Germany around 1777, and thus the passage above likely dates from a few years after Maimon’s visit to the court of the Maggid. When Maimon finally arrived in Berlin and joined Moses Mendelsohn’s circle, he did not disguise his admiration of Spinoza’s philosophy. On one occasion, he tells us, he was struggling in his poor German to explain Spinoza’s system ‘and more specifically [the view] that objects are manifestations of a single substance’ to one of the local maskilim. ‘My God,’ his interlocutor interrupted, ‘You and I are different people, aren’t we? Don’t each of have his own existence?’ (Maimon 2018: 195–​6|Maimon 1792–​3; II 162). To the astonishment of his friend, Maimon’s answer was pointedly negative. In the first book of his Autobiography, Maimon addresses the accusation of atheism that was commonly aimed at Spinoza throughout the 18th century. It is on this occasion that Maimon coins the term ‘acosmism [Akosmismus]’ as a moniker for the assertion that nothing but God exists. In Spinoza’s system unity is real; variety, though, is merely ideal. In the atheistic system, precisely the opposite is the case. Variety is real, grounded in the nature of the things themselves, while the unity one sees in the order and laws of nature is merely accidental, according to this system… It is hard to fathom how Spinoza’s system could have been made out to be atheistic, since the two systems are diametrically opposed. The atheist system denies the existence of God; Spinoza’s denies the existence of the world. Thus, it should really be called acosmic. Leibniz’s system occupies the middle ground between these two. Here all specific phenomena are drawn into an immediate relation with specific causes. But the different effects are conceived of as belonging together within a single system, while the cause of the connections among the variety of things is sought in a Being that is outside the system. (Maimon 2018: 63–​4| Maimon 1792–​3: I 154–​5. Italics added) In the last paragraph, Maimon presents Leibniz’s philosophy as a certain unstable compromise between Spinozism and atheism (in other texts, Maimon would argue that when pressed for consistency the Leibnizian–​Wolffian view must resort to that of Spinoza [Maimon 2018: 197| Maimon 1792–​3: II 166. Cf. Melamed 2004]). Doubtless, Maimon’s friends in Berlin who 207

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were among the German-​Jewish Enlightenment bourgeoisie would not have been thrilled to find their hero Leibniz (and thus, by implication, Mendelssohn) described as more atheist than Spinoza. Maimon’s reading of Spinoza as a radical religious thinker initiated a significant change in the perception of Spinoza, the philosopher whose name was synonymous with atheism throughout the 18th century. By 1795, Novalis would refer to Spinoza as a ‘God intoxicated man’ (von Hardenberg 1960–​1988: III 651, n. 562), and a quarter of a century later, Hegel would adopt from Maimon the view not only of Spinoza as an acosmist but also of Spinoza’s philosophy as diametrically opposed to atheism and of the Leibnizian–​Wolffian popular view as a cheap compromise between the two poles. Compare the following passage from Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy with the last quote from Maimon’s Autobiography. The relationship between God and the finite, to which we belong, may be represented in three different ways: firstly, only the finite exists, and in this way we alone exist, but God does not exist—​this is atheism; the finite is here taken absolutely, and is accordingly the substantial. Or, in the second place, God alone exists; the finite has no reality, it is only phenomena, appearance. To say, in the third place, that God exists and we also exist is a false synthetic union, an amicable compromise. It is the popular view of the matter that the one has as much substantiality as the other; God is honored and supreme, but finite things also have Being to exactly the same extent. Reason cannot remain satisfied with this ‘also,’ with indifference like this [Die Vernunft kann bei solchem auch, solcher Gleichgültigkeit nicht stehenbleiben] … [According to Spinoza] There is therefore no such thing as finite reality, it has no truth whatever; according to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone. Therefore, the allegation of those who accuse Spinoza of atheism are the direct opposite of the truth; with him there is too much God [Das Gegenteil von alledem ist wahr, was die behaupten, die ihm Atheismus Schuld geben; bei ihm ist zu viel Gott]. (Hegel 1995: III 280–​1| Hegel 1986: 162–​3. Italics added) Hegel does not mention Maimon’s name here but, given the striking similarity between the two descriptions of the three philosophical positions (atheism, acosmism, and Leibnizianism) and the fact that Hegel had a copy of Maimon’s Lebensgeschite in his private library, it is hard to deny Maimon’s influence. Hegel’s view of Spinoza as an acosmist appears in several other central works of his as well (see, for example, Hegel 1991: 97 and 226 [§§ 50 and 151]). Fichte too would adopt the notion of acosmism from Maimon, ultimately attaching the title to his own system (Fichte 1964: I/​6 54). Thus, the German idealistic concept of ‘acosmism’ has its roots in Hasidism and its interpretation of the Guide. Before concluding, let me add two final notes. First, if we consider Maimon’s (and the Hassidic) understanding of acosmism alongside the recently introduced distinction between existence and priority monism (Schaffer 2018), it would seem that both Maimonian and Hassidic acosmism would be satisfied even by the weaker position, i.e., the assertion that there is only one fundamental being (i.e., priority monism). So, in this sense, acosmism seems slightly less radical than one would initially think. Second, the view that nothing but God truly exists might be seen by some as a cause for despondence if not despair. Against this, we should stress that for both Spinoza and the Hassidic masters, acosmism prompted and justified the affirmation of life, the experience of joy and the awareness of one’s thriving qua organ, or mode, of God.

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16.4 Conclusion In the first half of this chapter, we studied the reception of Maimonides’ Guide in the writings of several Hassidic masters (for more examples of Hassidic leaders who engaged in the study of the Guide, see Dienstag 1964, and Sagiv, forthcoming). One can, of course, claim that each of the Hassidic authors we have studied is an ‘exception,’ but as these ‘exceptions’ proliferate we may begin doubting the adequacy of the generalization that Hassidism avoided, or banned, the Guide. A more nuanced and more precise verdict would be that in Hassidism the study of the Guide was restricted to the elite (in a manner that was not inconsistent with Maimonides’ own intention). Undoubtedly, the Hassidic masters thought that ‘Greek philosophy [‫ ’]חכמה יוונית‬should be subordinated to the Torah. To the extent that the Guide is a work of mainstream Aristotelean philosophy, they feared the book; yet they studied and admired it nonetheless. In the second half of this chapter, we studied the development of the notion of acosmism in early Hassidic thought and its implantation in German Idealism through the writings of Salomon Maimon. At this point, one may wonder what allowed the Hassidic masters to develop teachings, such as acosmism, which were far bolder and more original than anything one could find in the writings of proponents of the Haskalah, the contemporaneous Jewish Enlightenment movement? In a way, it seems that it is precisely the pious credentials, the strict adherence to the religious commandments, and the conservative appearance of Hassidism which allowed its leaders to experiment with rather bold religious and metaphysical ideas such as acosmism.

Note 1 For an important study of the propagation of the movement by the disciples of the Besht and the Maggid, see Rapoport-​Albert, ‘Hasidism After 1772.’ For a classical study of Hassidism and its relation to earlier stages of Kabbalistic thought, see Idel, Hasidism. I am deeply indebted to Zach Gatenberg and Warren Zev Harvey for their most helpful criticisms and comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

Related Topics: The Existence of God; Body and Soul; Medieval Jewish Philosophy.

References Assaf, D. (2006) ‘The Teachings of the Maggid R. Dov Ber of Mezhrich in the Memoirs of Salomon Maimon’ [Hebrew], Zion 71: 99–​101. Boruch of Kossov. (1781) Amud ha-​Avodah. Tchernovitz: Eliyahu Igel Press. Brown, B. (forthcoming) ‘The Attitude of Ashkenazi Rabbinic Culture to Philosophy, 1750–​1950’ in Y. Y. Melamed and P. Franks (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Dienstag, J.I. (1964) ‘The Guide of the Perplexed and the Book of Science in Hassidic Literature’ [Hebrew], in Abraham Weiss Jubilee Book, pp. 303–​30. New York: Brothers Schulzinger Press. Fichte: J. G. (1964–​) Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, R. Lauth, H. Jacobs, H. Gliwitzky, and E. Fuchs (eds.). Stuttgart-​Bad Cannstatt, Germany: Frommann. Harvey, S. (1991) ‘Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,’ in Joel L. Kraemer (ed.), Perspectives on Maimonides pp. 47–​75. Oxford, UK: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization and Oxford University Press. Hegel, G.W.F. (1986) Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (eds.). Frankfurt a.M., Germany: Suhrkamp. —​—​—​. (1991) Encyclopedia Logic. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchtig, and H.S. Harris (trans). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. —​—​—​. (1995) Lectures on the History of Philosophy. 3 Vols. E.S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson (trans.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Horodetzky, S.A. (1923) Hassidism and the Hassidim [Hebrew]. 4 vols. Berlin, Germany: Dvir. Idel. M. (1995) Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

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The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy Liberman, H. (1980) Ohel Raḥel. New York. Maimon, S. (1792–​3) Lebensgeschichte. Berlin, Germany: Friedrich Vieweg. —​—​—​. (2018) Autobiography. Translated by P. Reitter. Edited and introduced by Y. Y. Melamed and A. P. Socher. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —​—​—​. (Unpublished) Ḥeshek Shelomo [Hebrew, Salomon’s Desire]. Manuscript 806426 at the National Library in Jerusalem. Maimonides, M. (1960) Moreh Nevukhim im Shloshah Perushim. Jerusalem. —​—​—​. (1963) Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines, 2 vols. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Melamed, Y. Y. (2004) ‘Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 42: 67–​96. —​—​—​. (2010) ‘Acosmism or Weak Individuals? Hegel, Spinoza, and the Reality of the Finite,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 48: 77–​92. —​—​—​. (2018) ‘Spinozism, Acosmism and Hassidism: A Closed Circle,’ in A. Kravitz and J. Noller (eds.), The Concept of Judaism in German Idealism, pp. 75–​85. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck Verlag. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk. (2007) Pri Ha-​Aretz. Jerusalem, Israel: ha-​Mesorah. Morgenstern, M.-​M. (1961). Emet mi-​Kotzk Titzmaḥ. Bney Brak, Israel: Netzakh. Rapoport-​Albert, A. (1996)’“Hasidism after 1772: Structural Continuity and Change,’ in A. Rapoport-​ Albert (ed.), Hasidism Reappraised, pp. 76–​140. London, UK: Littman. Sagiv, G. (forthcoming) ‘Eastern European Hasidism and Philosophy,’ in Y. Y. Melamed and P. Franks (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Schacter, J.J. (1984) ‘Rabbi Jacob Emden’s Iggeret Purim,’ in I. Twersky (ed.), Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, vol. II, pp. 441–​6. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schaffer, J. (2018) ‘Monism,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =​https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​win2​018/​entr​ies/​mon​ism/​. Schatz-​Uffenheimer. (1980) Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought. Jerusalem, Israel: Magness Press. Segal, S. (1865) Likutei Yekarim. Lvov. Shapira, A.E. (1936) Ohaley Tzaddikim. Tschernovitz: Avraham Harnik Press. Shapira, P. (1924) Beth Pinḥas. Bilogrey: Brothers Weinberg Press. —​—​—​ (1930) Midrash Pinḥas. Bilogrey: Hasidei Breslaw. Shik, E.S. (2004) Pe’ulat ha-​Tzadik. Jerusalem. Shneorson, S.D. (2019) Toras Shalom. New York: Kehot. Shor, Y.Y. (2021) ‘The Customs of Our Holy Rabbis of Karlin-​Stolin regarding the Daily Schedule,’ [Hebrew] Kovetz Beis Aaron ve-​Yisroel 36: 125–​37. Sternharz, N. (2005) Ḥayey Muharan. Beit Shemesh, Israel: Nukudot Tovot. Teitelbaum, Y. (1981) Va-​yoel Moishe. New York: Yerushalyim Press. von Hardenberg, Georg Friedrich Philipp. (1960–​ 1988) Novalis Schriften. Richard Samuel, Hans Joachim Mähl, and Gertrud Schulz (eds.). Stuttgart, Germany: Kohlhammer. Walden, M. M. (1923). Yechabed Av. Pieterkov. Weinberg, A. (1892) Yesod ha-​Avodah. Warsaw: M.Y. Halter Press. Weiss, Y. (1947) ‘On One Hassidic Sermon by the Maggid of Mezhrich’ [Hebrew], Zion 12: 97. —​—​—​. (1956) ‘On One Hassidic Teaching of the Maggid of Mezhrich’ [Hebrew], Zion 20: 107–​8.

Further reading Dienstag, J.I. (1964) ‘The Guide of the Perplexed and the Book of Science in Hassidic Literature’ [Hebrew], in Abraham Weiss Jubilee Book, pp. 303–​30. New York: Brothers Schulzinger Press. Maimon, S. (2018) Autobiography. Translated by P. Reitter. Edited and introduced by Y. Y. Melamed and A. P. Socher. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Melamed, Y. Y. (2018) ‘Spinozism, Acosmism and Hassidism: A Closed Circle,’ in A. Kravitz and J. Noller (eds.), The Concept of Judaism in German Idealism, pp. 75–​85. Tübingen, Germany: Mohr SiebeckSuhrkapm Verlag.

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PART VI

Faith and Reason

17 MIRACLES Alexander Green

Miracles play a definitive role in the Jewish narrative as recorded in key moments of the biblical text. The Bible recounts many events in which God intervenes in the world in such a way that appears to alter the regular patterns of nature. Different terms have been used to describe the phenomenon of the miraculous such as nes, gedolot, nifla’ot, pele’, ot and mofet (Zakovitch 1992: 845–​6). Examples of events described in the Bible that could be identified as miraculous include the birth of a child to Sarah as an old woman (Genesis 18), the burning bush that is not consumed as witnessed by Moses (Exodus 3), the ten plagues unleashed upon the Egyptians (Exodus 7–​12), the splitting of the Red Sea as the Israelites flee the Egyptians (Exodus 14–​15), the manna that fell from heaven to feed the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16 and Numbers 11), the ground opening up to swallow Koraḥ and his followers (Numbers 16), the talking donkey of Balaam (Numbers 22), the sun standing still for Joshua during battle to allow him to fight longer during the daylight (Joshua 10) and the bringing of the dead back to life by the prophets Elijah and Elisha (I Kings 17 and II Kings 4). Rabbinic literature generally expands upon this trend of emphasizing the centrality of miracles in Jewish life by describing the Rabbinic sages as performers of miracles, who through their actions of prayer or Torah study, could bring about divine intervention (Kadushin 1972: 152–​67). One well-​known example is Honi the Circle Maker who drew a circle on the ground, stood inside it and swore to God that he would not move until it rained (bTa’anit 23a). At the same time, there are other statements of the rabbis that discourage the reliance upon miracles such as the declaration that ‘one should not rely on miracles’ (bTa’anit 20b and bPesaḥim 64b) and the story in which Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanos performed a series of miracles in support of his position in a legal debate and Rabbi Joshua famously professed that ‘The Torah is not in heaven.’ All of these suggest that miracles from God have no role in the legal process (bBaba Metzia 59b). However, some scholars have challenged the centrality of Rabbi Joshua’s position, stating that it is not particularly authoritative in Rabbinic literature (Baumgarten 1983: 238–​53). The Bible and Rabbinic literature do not philosophically examine the nature of the miracles that are described within the sacred scripture. The project to scientifically explain the miracles depicted in the Bible mainly arose due to the influence of Greek philosophy in the Middle Ages, particularly that of Aristotle, though conveyed through Islamic and Christian translations and

DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-24

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commentaries. Aristotle understood nature (physis) as having a set order with fixed forms whereby every living being can be studied according to four causes, its material, efficient, formal and final causes. Every material being has a structure or direction, its formal cause. It is brought into being by its efficient cause and its final cause is its ultimate purpose (Aristotle 1961: 16–​22, 28–​31). The Aristotelian definition of nature raises the problem of how to explain God’s miraculous intervention into the world to temporarily subvert its rules for specific people at specific times and places if science describes the laws of nature as unchanging. This led some thinkers in the Middle Ages to believe that they had to choose either the Bible or Aristotle, and to thus side with either miracles or nature as explanations for the way the world operates. To respond to this challenge, medieval Jewish philosophers took the existence of miracles seriously as a scientific possibility that needed to be articulated and explained according to the laws of nature (Kreisel 1984). This chapter will examine four philosophical theories of miracles that were dominant throughout the medieval period until Spinoza: (1) the cosmological, (2) the anthropological, (3) the accelerative and (4) the imaginative.

17.1  Cosmological Theory of Miracles One explanation for miracles that accords with the natural order is the argument that miracles were pre-​programmed into the order of nature by God during creation. According to this reading, such anomalies were inserted by God into the properties of natural beings which were preset to occur at various times in the course of history. Hence, the laws of nature are not arbitrarily changed by the will of God at specific moments in time. This allows for the constancy of the laws of nature to be maintained, without denying God’s providential involvement. The Rabbinic precedent for this interpretation is found in two sources, Genesis Rabbah 5:5 and Ethics of the Fathers 5:6. In one source, God delineates the changes he made to parts of nature in order to act for the benefit of certain chosen individuals: R. Johanan said: The Holy One, blessed be He, made a stipulation with the sea that it should divide before Israel; thus it is written, ‘And the sea returned (le-​ethano)’ E.V ‘to its strength’ (Ex. 14:27): i.e. in accordance with its agreement (li-​tenao). R. Jeremiah b. Eleazar said: Not with the sea alone did God make a stipulation, but with everything which was created in the six days of creation, as it is written, ‘I, even My hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded’ (Isa. 45:12). I commanded the sea to divide, and the heavens to be silent before Moses, as it says, ‘Give ear, ye heavens, and I will speak’ (Deut. 32:1); I commanded the sun and the moon to stand still before Joshua; I commanded the ravens to feed Elijah; I commanded the fire to do no hurt to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; I commanded the lions not to harm Daniel; the heavens to open before Ezekiel; the fish to vomit forth Jonah. (Midrash Rabbah 1939: 36–​7) In the other source, God lists ten miraculous items that were created after the end of the sixth day of creation, but before the sabbath began: Ten things were created on the eve of the Sabbath between the suns at nightfall: the mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, the mouth of the she-​ass, the rainbow, and the manna, and the rod [of Moses], and the Shamir, the letters, and the writing, and the

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Tables [of stone]. Some say also: The evil spirits, the sepulchre of Moses, and the ram of Abraham our father. Some say also: The tongs made with tongs. (The Mishnah 1933: 456) These sources were interpreted by Maimonides in his Commentary on the Mishnah to be examples of God preserving the laws of nature, while recognizing that He programmed certain miraculous events into the code of the natural world. He writes that ‘at that time the natures of those things were determined in such a way that what has taken place in them would take place’ (Maimonides, 1975: 87). In doing so, he is rejecting the view presented by the Islamic theologians that God’s will is constantly changing the laws of nature. Maimonides also notes that in listing these ten, the Mishnah is not suggesting that these are the only miracles that God produced, but that only these ten were set at the twilight of creation, while the rest were set into the natural order at the time of the creation of that property. For example, the miracle of the sea splitting for the Israelites upon leaving Egypt was set by God in the second day of creation during the division of the waters (Maimonides 1968: 101). However, it should be noted that later in life when writing the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides appears to have become more skeptical of this Rabbinic view of miracles. In Guide II 29, he introduces it by saying ‘The Sages … have made a very strange (gharība) statement about miracles’ (Maimonides 1963: 345) which appears to signify disapproval, though he does not present an explicit critique (Kasher 1998; Manekin 2008; Langermann 2004). The cosmological view of miracles was put under more explicit critical scrutiny in Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord 6.2.10. Gersonides argues that preordaining miracles in the natural order by God is philosophically problematic. God either sets the miracle in nature for a purpose or without a purpose. If He did so for a particular purpose, this removes human free will and contingency in the natural world. If God did not preset the miracle for a particular purpose and the miracle happened haphazardly, God would thus be acting in vain. Furthermore, Gersonides holds God to be the ‘law, order and equilibrium’ (nimus ve-​ha-​seder ve-​ha-​yosher) of the universe. If miracles require circumventing the laws of nature and God is the cause of miracles, this would be a fundamental contradiction in terms, since it would mean that God is the cause of the destruction of the rules which He upholds (Gersonides 1999: 479–​80).

17.2  Anthropological Theory of Miracles An alternative explanation for miracles is that they are caused by a superior individual, such as a philosopher, saint or a prophet, who rules over matter and fashions it at will. This explanation was coined by Aviezer Ravitzky, as the ‘anthropological theory of miracles’ (Ravitzky 1985: 231). In this reading, the power to effect miracles results from an individual’s superior knowledge of the highest principles of nature, such that they gain access to the secrets of how to manipulate these laws for human benefit. Ravitzky indicates that the first philosopher to formulate this model of miracles in a theoretical manner was the Islamic philosopher Avicenna, who described how a pure soul that is liberated from corporeal desires could imprint forms on matter, external to its body. The anthropological model of miracles was first adopted by Jewish thinkers from Avicenna in the 12th century in the writings of Abraham Ibn Ezra and Abraham Ibn Daud (Ibid.: 237–​40). Ibn Ezra uses this model to give Moses a more central role as the vehicle for the miraculous occurrences that happened to the Israelites in Egypt. In his Commentary on the Pentateuch, on Exodus 6:3, Ibn Ezra notes that ‘the patriarchs did not reach the level where they were able to cleave unto God as

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Moses, “whom the Lord knew face to face” did. Moses was therefore able to change the laws governing the lower world and produce signs and wonders that the patriarchs were incapable of’ (Ibn Ezra 1996: 134–​5). It occurs in a way that is similar to a neo-​Platonic journey of ascent, in that the ability of a prophet to work miracles is a result of the elevation of his soul to the highest realms of the cosmos, leading toward communion with the upper worlds and ultimately with God. A notable expansion of Ibn Ezra’s presentation of Moses as the source of biblical miracles in Egypt, was made by Joseph Ibn Kaspi in the 14th century. Ibn Kaspi describes Moses’s ability to manipulate nature as being due to his complete knowledge of how nature works, exemplified by his bringing about the ten plagues inflicted on Pharaoh and the Egyptians. In Ibn Kaspi’s view, this is a causal chain that was begun by Moses, stating that ‘his actions were done according to his will’ (Ibn Kaspi 1905: 3). Ibn Kaspi describes how this process moved from the lowest to the highest of the four elements in nature from water to earth to air to fire, unfolding in a natural meteorological progression. He further explains that Moses initiated this process when he took his rod and put it in the Nile, turning it from water to blood, which was the first plague. After that, the lack of clean water in the Nile led to the death of all the fish and forced the frogs to multiply on land, which accounts for the cause of the second plague. The transformation of the Nile water into blood also led to a lack of rain, drying up the land so that the earth became dry like sand on a beach, and the dryness and humidity were optimal for lice and fleas, which are the third plague. Furthermore, the dry condition caused a disease, the fifth plague, on the Egyptian livestock, such as the horses, cattle, sheep and camels, while encouraging the increase of wild animals, the fourth plague, such as snakes, scorpions, spiders, wasps and flies. He notes that the Bible purposefully refers to the fourth plague ambiguously as a ‘mixture’ or ‘swarm’ (‘arov) in order to hide the unlimited number of species grouped within this category. This disease eventually spread to the air and affected three species related to the element of air; this accounts for the next three plagues: boils, hail and locusts. Boils reflect the spread of the disease from livestock through the air to boils on other living beings (humans and animals). It also led to thunderstorms of hail and fire, bringing about the deaths of the good birds and the survival of destructive creatures, such as locusts. Finally, the last two plagues reflect the element of fire, since the causal effects of what happens to the element of air when it is combined with heat eventually causes it to become heat alone. In other words, the darkness of the ninth plague arises from the combination of the heat and dryness existing in the element of fire and the absence of the dryness of air and cold of water. This leads to the last plague, the death of the firstborn, as a symbol of the effects of one who is overtaken by intense heat without the existence of the other three elements (Ibn Kaspi 1906: 172–​6; Green 2019: 79–​81). The anthropological theory of miracles also has its critics. Gersonides in Wars 6.2.10 presents a list of challenges to this conception of miracles. He asserts that for the human will to cause miracles, human beings would have to have complete knowledge of the laws of nature (within the Agent Intellect), which he believes is impossible for any human being to attain. It is what distinguishes humans from God. He follows up with another critique that builds upon the previous one. Even if it was possible for human beings to attain complete knowledge of the laws of nature, he questions whether they would use that knowledge to create miracles that break those laws, which they had finally succeeded in understanding. In other words, the supernal knowledge of the laws of nature would not train them to create occurrences that go against those very laws. Lastly, he notes that if the human will can reshape the forms of nature, it can then reshape the form of a human being itself that is doing this transformative willing, thus nullifying the ability to will in the first place (Gersonides 1999: 480–​1). 216

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17.3  Acceleration Theory of Miracles The next theory to scientifically explain the existence of miracles is one that views miracles as events that are in accord with the possibility of natural development, but at a highly accelerated speed, making such transitions appear instantaneous. The miraculous element is the rapidity by which the process occurs. The first reference to this idea can be found in Incoherence of the Philosophers by the Islamic philosopher Al-​Ghazali. He raises the question of how one can scientifically explain the miracle of the dead coming back to life or a stick becoming a serpent. He writes that ‘matter can receive any form, and therefore earth and the other elements can be changed to a plant, and a plant when an animal eats it, can be changed into blood, then blood can be changed into sperm, and then sperm can be thrown into the womb and take the character of an animal’ (Van Der Berg 1978: 327). This process whereby dust or other forms of matter can be eaten by an animal and enter its bloodstream and form part of its sperm is within the realm of natural possibility but would generally take place over an extremely long period of time. However, for such an occurrence to take place in an instant whereby dust becomes an animal is a miracle. Although Maimonides briefly cites this theory of miracles as well in his Treatise on Galen (Kasher 1998: 48–​ 51), it is Gersonides who methodically advances this explanation of miracles, thereby incorporating it into the Jewish tradition. Gersonides points to a number of accelerated natural occurrences to explain several incidents in the Bible that appear to go against the natural order. In Wars 6.2.12, he develops the principle that ‘[It is evident that the sages believed that] whatever occurs miraculously must also be within the realm of natural possibility, [at least] over a long interval of time,’ tracing this back to the sages of Israel (Gersonides 1999: 496). The two examples that he cites is the staff that turns into a snake (Exodus 7; which is the example Al-​Ghazali utilizes), and the ground opening up to swallow Koraḥ and his followers (Numbers 16). Here Gersonides uses Aristotle’s discussion of earthquakes in the Meteorology to explain the rapidity by which the ground opened up to swallow Koraḥ, pointing out that earthquakes are caused by dry heat being trapped in the earth. The wind often tries to escape, shaking the earth, such that it sometimes breaks through the earth with a loud noise and much ash (Klein-​Braslavy 2010: 270–​81). The miraculous aspect of this opening of the ground during the time of Koraḥ was the fact that this natural transformation happened so quickly. Gersonides applies the acceleration theory to other miraculous occurrences throughout his biblical commentaries. The following are some examples he cites from Genesis. In Genesis 2:22, where God describes the creation of Eve from the side of Adam, Gersonides offers a scientific explanation for the process, noting that the biblical story deviates from science only in terms of the time that it took to complete the process: Eve was formed from a piece of flesh covered by a membrane, just as takes place during creation in the uterus; from that piece the Lord created the woman, in the same way that creation is accomplished in the uterus. … Except that this being was [created] in a moment, whereas the being in the uterus is completed only in a long time. (Gersonides 1993: 107; Klein-​Braslavy 2010: 279) Likewise, Gersonides describes God’s creation of clothing or ‘garments of skin’ (kutnot ‘or) for Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:21 as a similar type of writing about miracles in terms of being merely an astounding or highly unusual acceleration of a natural process: ‘And God created these garments for them through a miracle, like what he created during the six days of creation… If [God] would have waited until he explained the way of this art, time would have 217

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passed and they would have died either from the heat or the cold.’ Here Gersonides seems to suggest that the essence of the miracle is that Adam and Eve discovered the art of making clothing at an increased speed since they needed clothes to survive and so were spared the toil of experimentation, unlike Cain and Abel (Gersonides 1993: 102; Green 2016: 28–​9).

17.4  Imaginative Theory of Miracles The final theory of miracles, which arose at the dawn of the modern period, is the proposition that miracles are just inaccurate descriptions of natural phenomena that are falsely understood to be interventions of God into nature due to human ignorance about how the laws of nature operate. In other words, what the educated consider science, the ignorant consider miraculous. This is clearly articulated by Spinoza in the sixth chapter of the Theological-​Political Treatise, which is titled ‘On Miracles.’ The larger project of the TPT is to show how religion and philosophy (or science) are separate realms, where philosophy is rooted in the rational knowledge of natural science, while religion stems from ignorance and the imagination. In the first few chapters of the TPT, Spinoza lays the groundwork for his critique of the way the Bible presents miracles through his meticulous undermining of traditional notions of prophecy and election. He writes in the beginning of the second chapter that ‘the Prophets were not endowed with a more perfect mind, but rather with a power of imagining unusually vividly. … For those who have the most powerful imaginations are less able to grasp things by pure intellect’ (Spinoza 1985: 93–​4). In fact, he rejects the Maimonidean conception of prophecy, which combines both intellect and imagination; instead, he takes the position that the prophet is merely skilled at perfecting his imagination alone, in other words, he is scientifically ignorant. Indeed, Spinoza’s view of prophecy fundamentally undermined the traditional understanding of miracles. It implied that the prophets, who are the biblical authors, wrote about miracles without knowledge of the laws of the natural world. Furthermore, they described phenomena that were purely based on their own uneducated imaginative perceptions. For Spinoza, the ignorance of the ancient Hebrews was rooted in superstition, which caused them to fabricate a divine power that intervenes in nature. This enabled them to devise stories about how they desire the world to operate without basis in fact (Ibid.: 65–​6; Spinoza 2016: 441–​3). As Spinoza expounds in the Ethics, the laws of nature, which he refers to as God, are eternal and unchanging. This implies that God has no freedom or will outside of the laws of nature. In Spinoza’s third chapter of the TPT on miracles, he presents a definition of the imaginative theory of miracles. He states that ‘a miracle is something whose cause cannot be explained according to the principles of natural things known to the natural light’ (Spinoza 1985: 155). According to his definition, there is nothing extraordinary or divine about a miracle. A miracle is simply an unusual occurrence that cannot be explained according to our understanding of the laws of nature. Spinoza is not suggesting that there is not an explanation for this occurrence according to nature. On the contrary, there is a natural explanation, but we simply do not understand it yet. Since the ancient authors of the Bible were influenced by superstition, this required Spinoza to show how the events described in the Bible as miracles can be explained through natural means. Spinoza cites an example from the Bible of the sun standing still during battle at Joshua 10:5–​13, giving the army more hours of light to fight. Although the biblical text makes it appear as if the motions of the heavenly bodies simply stopped because of God’s will, Spinoza rejects this causal attribution, saying that ‘Joshua did not know the true cause of the greater duration of that light’ (Ibid.: 101). Since Joshua knew little about astronomy and optics, he could not understand the extended daylight. The true cause was not the cessation of the sun’s motion, but, according to Spinoza, it was likely hail in the air which increased the brightness 218

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in the sky, such that ‘refraction greater than usual could arise from the large amount of ice then in that part of the air’ (Ibid.). In a similar vein, Spinoza provides a naturalistic explanation for the rainbow that God displays for Noah after the flood as a sign of the covenant. He accounts for the rainbow’s appearance as a natural refraction of the rays of the sun through the drops of water (Ibid.: 161). Spinoza notes, however, that it is difficult to discern all the natural causes of such miracles since the biblical author does not give the reader sufficient clues to decipher what they may be (Ibid.: 163). He admits that there are limits to how much one can access about the natural causes of miracles from the imaginative portrayals of the biblical text.

17.5  The Contemporary Debate: Are There Miracles Today? Spinoza’s portrayal of miracles as irrational and rooted in the human imagination succeeded in casting a long shadow over modern Jewish thought. Miracles were seen as an outdated feature of pre-​modern thinking that had been refuted by modern science, thus making the earlier philosophical arguments for miracles appear to be of little practical value. However, in the early 20th century, the thinker Franz Rosenzweig expressed his misgivings about this blanket dismissal of miracles among modern thinkers. In his Introduction to the Second Part of The Star of Redemption, he describes miracles, through a clever analogy, as the favorite child of faith, which in neglecting its parental duties, allowed its child to be raised by a wet nurse (modern reason) that saw it as an embarrassment and thus sought its eventual elimination. Rosenzweig muses ‘it is difficult for us to believe that there was once such a time, and that it was only a while ago when miracle was not an embarrassment, but instead, theology’s strongest and surest companion’ (Rosenzweig 2005: 103). Rosenzweig’s attitude represents a kind of intellectual shift taking place in his time, a shift which likely resulted from both an increased skepticism toward modern scientific progress as well as a questioning of the claims of biblical criticism that reduced the Bible to its historical sources. With this shift, came the revival of the possibility of miracles among Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, which manifested itself in two distinctive realms: first, viewing the wonder and amazement of existence itself as miraculous, and second, regarding the historic events surrounding the creation of the State of Israel as miraculous. Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel are two of the most prominent Jewish thinkers belonging to the first camp. They both adhere to the view that the very fact that the world exists is a kind of miracle in itself, one that should fill human beings with awe and wonder. Buber develops this idea in his book Moses, particularly in the chapter ‘The Wonder of the Sea,’ where he interprets the story of the splitting of the sea in Exodus 14:21, while also using it as an opportunity to reflect upon the nature of miracles. He maintains that what is miraculous about this event is not that there had been a series of natural processes that made it possible for the Israelites to cross the parting sea to safety while the pursuing Egyptians drowned. The miracle was in the Israelites’ experience of this event—​as an astonishing and awe-​inspiring occurrence. As such, he defines a miracle as ‘an incident, an event which can be fully included in the objective, scientific nexus of nature and history; the vital meaning of which, however, for the person to whom it occurs, destroys the security of the whole nexus of knowledge for him, and explodes the fixity of the fields of experience named “Nature” and “History” ’ (Buber 1946: 76). Buber is suggesting that even if one can explain a phenomenon through natural or historical means, it is the amazement that it actually occurred at this specific time, in this specific place, to this specific person or people, which leads those experiencing it to conceive of it as a miracle. In a similar vein, Abraham Joshua Heschel expanded this notion of wonder, or what he termed ‘the perpetual awareness of the wonder of being’ (Heschel 1955: 48) in his book God in Search of Man, viewing it as the ultimate purpose 219

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of the daily practices of a Jewish life. Jewish rituals teach the worshipper to appreciate the miraculousness of daily actions, from the mundane to the sublime. He gives the example of ‘maintaining our sense of wonder by uttering a prayer before the enjoyment of food. Each time we are about to drink a glass of water, we remind ourselves of the eternal mystery of creation, “Blessed be Thou …by Whose word all things come into being.” A trivial act and a reference to the supreme miracle’ (Ibid.: 49). The second movement that affirmed the possibility of miracles in the 20th century was directly connected to the creation of the State of Israel and its military success in war by a largely untrained and underequipped military force fighting against tremendous odds. This new understanding of miracles was linked to the Jewish collective body through its historical and political achievements. On the surface, this may seem surprising since Zionism was essentially a secular movement, which largely severed its ties to the Jewish religious tradition of the past by not relying on the miraculous intervention of God and prioritizing human action. In Max Nordau’s 1902 essay ‘Zionism,’ he clearly states that political Zionism ‘disavows all mysticism, no longer identifies itself with messianism, and does not expect the return to Palestine to be brought about by a miracle, but desires to prepare the way by its own efforts’ (Hertzberg 1997: 242). A similar approach can even be found in the writings of earlier religious Zionists, such as Zvi Hirsch Kalischer who began his 1862 ‘Seeking Zion’ (Derishat Tziyon) with the statement ‘The redemption of Israel, for which we long, is not to be imagined as a sudden miracle’ (Ibid.: 111). However, it was Israel’s stunning victories in both the War of Independence in 1948 and the Six Day War in 1967, in which the fledgling country was attacked by multiple surrounding countries while also being outnumbered in manpower, airplanes and tanks, that led some to consider these triumphs as miracles. Of course, one can point to Israel’s superior intelligence collection as evidence of its mastery of military preparation. Nonetheless, David Ben-​Gurion’s offhand quip that ‘in Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles’ conveys a sentiment shared by many that even when one is fully in control of one’s worldly devices, there are still occurrences that cannot be explained. Indeed, it was not self-​evident that a nation that had just emerged from the Holocaust and had no collective military experience for almost 2000 years would be able to defend itself against the combined forces of surrounding armies. The religious Zionist movement was one of the main groups that viewed these historic events as signs of God’s intervention in history. The Israeli rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook declared explicitly that the establishment of the State of Israel is not only a miracle, but is a sign of God’s redemption (Kook 2001–​2002: vol. i: 265–​9). However, not all religious thinkers were in accord with his views. In the summer following the Six Day War, Tradition magazine held a symposium entitled ‘The Religious Meaning of the Six Day War’ in which an array of distinguished Orthodox rabbis and philosophers were asked whether the swift military triumph should be seen as a miracle in a way that cannot be accounted for through social, political, military or economic factors. They were also asked whether the events of the Six Day War can be compared to the miracles of Channukah and Purim. One respondent, Pinchas Peli, described miracles in a naturalistic way arguing that the miracle was not the military victory, but that Jews had divine help in acquiring the conditions to make it possible for Israel to win. Another respondent, Michael Wyschogrod, took a more skeptical stance, cautioning that there is a danger in attempting to read the divine into historical events when we have little knowledge of the mind of God. He warned that reading God into history sets Jews up for a false messianism, which could have catastrophic results (Cohen, Lamm, Peli, Wyschogrod and Wurzburger 1968: 10–​12).

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Although there have been varying approaches to the understanding of miracles in the Jewish tradition, no thinker has been able to prove the veracity of miracles with absolute certainty. Phenomena that some consider miracles will be explained by others in naturalistic terms. One person’s example of divine intervention is another person’s instance of human success. The fact that it is impossible to know the mind of God has led some to ask: How does one explain why God provided miracles at one point in history and not at another? Why at the time of Exodus but not during the Holocaust? The best solution for the present may be to suggest that we should appreciate how much human reason can explain mysterious phenomena in the world and not rely on miracles, while at the same time not be closed to the possibility of miracles as a central part of Jewish faith in explaining the unknown. Related Topics: Free Will and Providence; Philosophy of Zionism; Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Early Modern Jewish Philosophy

References Aristotle. (1961) Aristotle’s Physics, Richard Hope (trans.). Lincoln, NA: University of Nebraska Press. Baumgarten, Albert. (1983) ‘Miracles and Halakhah in Rabbinic Judaism,’ Jewish Quarterly Review 73(3): 238–​53. Buber, Martin. (1946) Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant. New York: Harper and Brothers. Cohen, Shear Yashuv, Norman Lamm, Pinchas Peli, Michael Wyschogrod and Walter S. Wurzburger. (1968) ‘The Religious Meaning of the Six Day War: A Symposium,’ Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 10(1): 5–​20. Gersonides, Levi. (1993) Commentary on the Torah: Genesis, Baruch Braner and Eli Freiman (eds.). Jerusalem, Israel: Maaliyot. Gersonides, Levi. (1984–​1999) The Wars of the Lord, vol. i–​iii, Seymour Feldman (trans.). Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society. Green, Alexander. (2019) Power and Progress: Joseph Ibn Kaspi and the Meaning of History. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Green, Alexander. (2016) The Virtue Ethics of Levi Gersonides. New York: Palgrave-​MacMillan. Hertzberg, Arthur. (1997) The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society. Heschel, Abraham Joshua. (1955) God in Search of Man. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Ibn Ezra, Abraham. (1996) Commentary on the Pentateuch: Exodus (Shemot), H. Norman Strickman and Arthur M. Silver (trans.). New York: Menorah Publishing Company, Inc. Ibn Kaspi, Joseph. (1906) Maṣref la-​Kesef, Isaac Last (ed.). Cracow: Fisher. Ibn Kaspi, Joseph. (1905) Tirat Kesef or Sefer ha-​Sod, Isaac Last (ed.). Presburg: Alkalay. Kadushin, Max. (1972) The Rabbinic Mind. New York: Bloch Publishing Company. Kasher, Hannah. (1998) ‘Biblical Miracles and the Universality of Natural Laws: Maimonides’ Three Methods of Harmonization,’ Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8: 25–​52. Klein-​Braslavy, Sara. (2010) ‘Gersonides’ Use of Aristotle’s Meteorology in his Accounts of some Biblical Miracles,’ Aleph 10(2): 241–​313. Kook, Zvi Yehuda (2001–​2002) Le-​Netivot Yisrael, Harel Cohen (ed.), vol. i–​ii. Israel: Beit El. Kreisel, Howard. (1984) ‘Miracles in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,’ Jewish Quarterly Review 75(2): 99–​133. Langermann, Tzvi. (2004) ‘Maimonides and Miracles: The Evolution of a (Dis)Belief,’ Jewish History 18: 147–​72. Maimonides, Moses. (1975) Ethical Writings of Maimonides, Raymond L. Weiss and Charles E. Butterworth (eds.). New York: Dover Publications Inc. Maimonides, Moses. (1968) The Commentary to Mishnah Aboth, Arthur David (trans.). New York: Bloch Publishing Company. Maimonides, Moses. (1963) The Guide of the Perplexed, Shlomo Pines (trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Manekin, Charles. (2008) ‘Divine Will in Maimonides’ Later Writings,’ Maimonidean Studies 5: 189–​222.

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The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy Midrash Rabbah. (1939) vol. i–​ x, Harry Freedman and Maurice Simon (trans.). London: The Soncino Press. Ravitzky, Aviezer. (1985) ‘The Anthropological Theory of Miracles in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,’ in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, vol. ii, Isadore Twersky (ed.), pp. 231–​72. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Rosenzweig, Franz. (2005) The Star of Redemption, Barbara E. Galli (trans.). Wisconsin, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Spinoza, Benedictus de. (1985, 2016) The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (ed. and trans.), vol. i–​ii. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. The Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (1933) Herbert Danby, (trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Van Der Berg, Simon. (1978) Averroes’ Tahafut al-​ Tahafut: The Incoherence of the Philosophers. London, UK: Gibb Memorial Trust. Zakovitch, Yair. (1992) ‘Miracle (OT),’ in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. iv, pp. 845–​5. 6 David Noel Freedman (ed.). New York: Doubleday.

Further Reading Harvey, Warren Zev. ‘Spinoza on Biblical Miracles,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 74, no. 4 (2013): 659–​ 75. Harvey explores Spinoza’s three different ways of interpretation of a biblical miracle—​literally, historically and philosophically—​and how that fits into his overall approach to reading the Bible. Klein-​Braslavy, Sara. ‘Gersonides’ Use of Aristotle’s Meteorology in his Accounts of some Biblical Miracles,’ Aleph 10, no. 2 (2010): 241–​313. Klein-​Braslavy shows how Gersonides preserves the miraculous descriptions in the Bible by bringing them very close to natural occurrences using the principles of Aristotle’s Meteorology. Kreisel, Howard. ‘Miracles in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,’ Jewish Quarterly Review 75, no. 2 (1984): 99–​133. Kreisel presents a historical overview of the different approaches to miracles in medieval Jewish philosophy including Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Abraham Ibn Daud, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Levi ben Avraham, Moses Narboni, Gersonides and Crescas. Seeskin, Kenneth. ‘Miracles in Jewish Philosophy,’ In The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, ed. Graham H. Twelftree. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011: 254–​70. Seeskin contrasts how medieval and modern Jewish philosophers interpreted miracles, comparing Maimonides and Gersonides to Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Buber, Rosenzweig and Levinas. Zakovitch, Yair. ‘Miracle (OT),’ in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. iv, ed. David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992: 845–​56. Zakovitch presents an overview of the different terms for miracles in the Bible and their relationship to history, myth, magic and their purposes according to biblical faith.

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18 DOCTRINES AND DOGMAS Seth (Avi) Kadish

18.1  Solomon Schechter’s ‘The Dogmas of Judaism’ Has the Jewish tradition transmitted a perpetual set of doctrines over the ages? Is it defined by an authoritative body of dogma? In 1888–​1889, Solomon Schechter published a two-​part article entitled ‘The Dogmas of Judaism’ in the very first volume of The Jewish Quarterly Review (Schechter 1889). Typical of Schechter’s writing, his essay provided a clear and useful survey of its topic, informed by its erudite author’s mastery of the traditional Jewish corpus along with the modern scholarship of his time. Schechter also used his survey to take to task certain popular and scholarly notions about the topic which he considered to be misconceptions, and did his best to dispel them. Like so much of Schechter’s work, this essay has withstood the test of time. Some aspects of it are dated of course, and certain parts have been superseded by subsequent scholarship, yet it remains an informative and useful survey of the topic for the contemporary reader. Most significant is that in one way or another, Schechter managed to touch upon nearly all of the dilemmas that scholars have grappled with since his day. Some of these issues were raised explicitly in his paper, others are hinted at in assumptions that Schechter made or in the terminology he chose to employ, while yet others are exposed by his silence: there are issues that he quietly declined to deal with, and central aspects of the topic that are conspicuously absent in his survey. Nevertheless, Schechter’s essay still appears toward the top of chronological listings of studies on Jewish dogma and crops up in scholarly footnotes. Looking at his informative survey with fresh eyes can help us understand where this field of study has gone since his day and reflect upon how and why it got there. Schechter began his essay with reflections on the place of Jewish dogma in the minds of the Jews of his time, and particularly on the common assertion that Judaism has no dogmas. This assertion offended Schechter both as a scholar and as a committed Jew: at the beginning of his article and at its end he indicated that his very decision to survey the history of Jewish dogma was motivated by a desire to show that Judaism has dogmas indeed, and rightfully so. For Schechter, to assert that Judaism has no dogmas is to assert that it insists upon no meaningful ideas or ideals at all. In response, he proposed that his survey of Jewish dogma would ‘suggest a connecting link between the teachings of Jewish antiquity and those of Maimonides and his successors,’ and thus show that Judaism has always had dogmas (Schechter 1889: 51–​2). As we shall see, such continuity has been strongly questioned by some of Schechter’s successors. DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-25

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In terms of its historical survey, Schechter’s article clearly divides its presentation of ‘The Dogmas of Judaism’ into four sequential chronological stages, namely: the ancient biblical and rabbinic traditions, the medieval predecessors of Maimonides, Maimonides’ 13 principles and the medieval critics of Maimonidean dogmatics. The latter are termed ‘anti-​Maimonists’ in Schechter’s essay, by which he means that they were anti-​Maimonidean in terms of their dogma: even an admirer of Maimonides or a devotee of his philosophy is an ‘anti-​Maimonist’ in this sense if the content of his creed or its organization differs from the 13 principles. Scholars since Schechter have often shared his sharp distinction between philosophy and dogma (and the consequent establishment of the latter as a separate field in its own right). But there have also been scholars who attempted to mitigate that distinction, and the attempt to do so is precisely what lies at the root of their contributions. For Schechter himself, however, the upshot of his historical survey was that all participants in the medieval debate about Jewish dogma agreed that there is indeed a distinct Jewish creed with roots in ancient times, and that all discussion of it until modern times describes the same basic set of doctrines. Disagreements on the topic are therefore peripheral. That conclusion has been accepted by some and questioned by others since his time. This survey of ‘Doctrines and Dogmas’ will take Schechter’s classic essay as its starting point for a survey of the same topics and issues with which he grappled in the late 19th century. The basic chronological scheme will be the same, as it has remained in scholarship since Schechter’s time (Kellner 1986; Gurfinkel 2011). But the survey will also take note of differing perspectives on fundamental points, and include reflections on the contemporary state of scholarship.

18.2  Biblical and Rabbinic Doctrine The Bible and rabbinic works constitute the central tradition that was inherited by the Jews of the Middle Ages. During the rabbinic era this dual tradition was called the ‘Written Torah’ and the ‘Oral Torah,’ and it seems to have been just that: a corpus comprising 24 biblical books written in scrolls (although the mode of their precise public recitation was transmitted orally) along with a vast range of rabbinic works that were typically transmitted in a completely oral fashion (Sussmann 2019). In the Middle Ages this huge rabbinic corpus was eventually reduced to writing (Sussmann 2019: 111–​23), but it was still referred to as an oral tradition. It is this dual tradition that most vividly distinguished the heritage of medieval Jews from that of the Muslims and Christians amongst whom they lived. The idea of the dual tradition also lies at the heart of the two great inner schisms within the medieval Jewish world: first, the dispute between Rabbanites and Karaites focused on the nature and authority—​or lack thereof—​of the Oral Torah. Second, even the Maimonidean controversies may be seen as an argument over the dual tradition: Maimonides proposed a comprehensive, coherent and largely consistent philosophical reinterpretation of the entire tradition—​the Written Torah and the Oral Torah—​in their totality. This monumental achievement was vehemently challenged by those who claimed that Maimonides’ enterprise was a distortion or falsification of the dual tradition, not a legitimate reinterpretation of it. The biblical and rabbinic traditions themselves, however, are far removed from the doctrinal disputes of the Middle Ages. They focus on experience, not concepts. Their God, for instance, is neither doctrine nor dogma. The God of the Hebrew Bible is a complex, developed personality characterized by an inner life and relationships which are full of passion (both positive and negative). This personality is most often presented as masculine, and the object of His most intense love or ire—​namely Israel—​as feminine. The God of rabbinic thought may be thought of in a similar way, as the rabbis built upon the basic biblical model by further 224

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developing and deepening the personality of God. The biblical and rabbinic attitudes toward God, for all of the differences between them, both see Him as relational, not conceptual. He is encountered, not believed in or proven (Wyschogrod 1996; Muffs 2005). As Schechter aptly puts it about the biblical God, ‘It is as absurd to say that the ancient world believed in God, as for a future historian to assert of the nineteenth century that it believed in the effects of electricity. We see them, and so antiquity saw God’ (Schechter 1889: 52–​3). The biblical and rabbinic traditions are neither systematic nor analytic. It is certainly possible to mine them for fundamental ideas or binding doctrines, such as the existence of God, and that is exactly what later generations did. But the results of any such effort depend upon interpretation, because the corpus itself does not speak in conceptual terms. It also does not speak in a single voice, which means that any attempt to clarify ‘correct’ positions regarding ideas that are fundamental to the tradition will need to emphasize some voices while softening or silencing others. This is because even in terms of their inner tensions and contradictions, discussions and disputes, the biblical and rabbinic traditions still tend to be relational. Various passages may remark upon or stress different aspects of the relationship with God, for instance, or the different ways in which it may be felt or viewed by its participants (Muffs 2005). It is still possible to derive doctrines and creeds from the corpus of the dual tradition, but this can only be accomplished through exegesis as was done in later ages. The ancient worlds of the Bible, Midrash and Talmud, of Aggadah and Halakhah, are not the worlds of doctrine and dogma. Modern scholarship, rather than trying to describe ancient ‘Judaism’ as a set of fixed ideas, has made an effort to present the rabbinic outlook in all of its nuance and variety, to let it speak in its own voice, and to understand it in its historical context. E. E. Urbach’s monumental tome The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs is the most comprehensive work of this kind, and the dozens of topics discussed in its chapters provide a useful list of the many and varied areas of rabbinic thought (Urbach 1975); in his introduction, Urbach designates Schechter’s Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (1909) as his only worthy predecessor. In his very first chapter on a rabbinic concept, namely chapter two on the existence of a single God, Urbach stresses that the Hebrew word for belief, namely emunah, is not so much about cognition or a declaration of faith, but rather an inner conviction of the active relationship of God to the world, and is therefore best understood as a personal attitude of loyalty and trust. That is true of the bible as well. It is therefore surprising that just after the remarks cited above, Schechter continued by writing that the principal danger in the eyes of the bible lay ‘in having a wrong belief.’ It makes better sense to describe the biblical concern in relational terms: betrayal of God, disloyalty to God, or perversion of the relationship out of a lack of love or fear of God. ‘Rabbinic faith is not a matter of conviction, but of loyalty; not assent, but consent’ (Kellner 1986: 4). Despite his initial remarks, Schechter’s about-​face reveals a strong motivation on his part to apply the term ‘belief’ to the biblical tradition nonetheless. Schechter similarly describes the rabbinic tradition as being highly concerned with denial versus belief: ‘The rabbis show a strong tendency to ascribe sin to a defect in, or a want of, belief on the part of the sinner’ (Schechter 1889: 54). Yet here, too, the rabbinic terms that Schechter translates as ‘belief’ or ‘faith’ are better understood in the interpersonal sense as trust, loyalty and devotion. The reason Schechter presents rabbinic passages as having a doctrinal sense lies in his fierce opposition to the assertion that Judaism has no dogmas: ‘The Rabbis could not conceive such a monstrosity as atheistic orthodoxy’ (Schechter 1889: 55). In Schechter’s view, when modern Jews deny that Judaism has any binding doctrines, they drain Jewish practice of any positive meaning. Thus, despite his awareness of the experiential and relational meaning found in the biblical and rabbinic sources, Schechter’s reply to such 225

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Jews is that the ancient dual tradition nevertheless asserts binding beliefs. ‘Belief’ is critical for Schechter in its modern religious sense, and he is unwilling to relinquish its use in that specific sense even when describing pre-​modern traditions. Schechter was highly cognizant of the unsystematic nature of rabbinic thought. And yet he still agreed with many medieval and modern scholars that one short passage in the Mishnah is indeed a statement of dogma: After having enumerated various kinds of capital punishment, the Mishnah adds the following words: ‘These are (the men) who are excluded from the life to come: He who says there is no resurrection from death; he who says there is no Torah given from heaven, and the Epikoros.’ This Mishnah was considered by the Rabbis of the Middle Ages, as well as by modern scholars, the locus classicus for the dogma question… The first two sentences of this Mishnah are clear enough. In modern language, and, positively speaking, they would represent articles of belief in Resurrection and Revelation. That this short rabbinic passage should indeed be understood as dogma was strongly questioned more than a century later by M. Kellner (2006: 33–​8). Schechter himself already argued in terms of the third element in the text, namely ‘the Epikoros,’ that it consists of ‘a frivolous treatment of the words of Scripture or Tradition’ rather than ‘one kind of heresy’ as some medieval scholars later understood it. ‘We may safely assert,’ he concluded, ‘that reverence for the teachers of Israel formed the third essential principle of Judaism.’ Thus, although ‘Epikoros’ denotes attitudes and behavior rather than doctrines in the Talmud, it was nevertheless described by Schechter in dogmatic language as an ‘essential principle.’

18.3  Medieval Doctrines and Dogma before Maimonides It is both intuitive and true that medieval Jews would find a need to formulate doctrine in the sense of ‘normative beliefs.’ This need suggests itself in their confrontation with Christianity and Islam, both of which developed creeds and obligatory exhortations of faith by which they defined themselves. It suggests itself too in the internal Jewish schism between Rabbanites and Karaites: each side needed to clarify how it differed from the other for the sake of its own adherents (Kellner 1986: 3). But the most powerful reason of all was rational inquiry, with its roots in Greek philosophy: some scholars consider Philo of Alexandria (1st century) to have composed the first Jewish creed, although it had no influence within rabbinic discourse (Kellner 1986: 1; Gurfinkel 2011: 5). In the Middle Ages, Muslims, Jews and Christians alike re-​examined the fundamentals of their respective traditions in the light of reason. To do so necessarily means thinking about fundamental ideas within those traditions in an analytical and conceptual way, as opposed to relational and experiential thinking. Although a great many Jews in the Middle Ages and beyond continued to conceive of God in relational terms, the very process of examining traditional Jewish concepts led others to discuss ‘beliefs’ in a way that is closer to the modern sense. Karaites in particular engaged early on in formulating lists or summaries of doctrine. Daniel al-​Kumisi (d. 946) composed such a list within a larger list of commandments, thus treating ‘belief’ in specified concepts as a Karaite obligation. Judah Hadassi (c. 1150) also composed a list of ten dogmas, in which the fifth is that the written Torah is divine and perfect and thus has no need to be supplemented by an Oral Torah (Schechter 1889: 58; Ben-​Shammai 2015: 93–​4).

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For rabbinic Jews in the Middle Ages, Kellner summarized the early process of creed formation as follows (Kellner 1986: 6): Once the circumstances had changed and there was a need to present Jewish belief in a systematic form, and, concomitantly, once Jewish authorities began to understand their religion in propositional terms, the development of formal creeds was only a matter of time. That it took so long (slightly more than 200 years elapsed between the publication of Saadia’s Emunot ve-​Deot and the publication of Maimonides’ creed) is probably a tribute to the conservative nature of religious traditions. Although we now know that Saadia Gaon (882/​892–​942) himself composed several lists of Jewish doctrine, he does not seem to have ascribed great importance to them, nor did they influence later Jewish discussion (Gurfinkel 2011: 5). These lists relate to the topics in The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, and indeed one of them is found within that book (Ben-​ Shammai 2015: 93–​109). What is nevertheless clear and important is that Saadia employs specific Arabic terms in order to distinguish between beliefs that are confirmed through reason versus beliefs that are accepted on the basis of tradition (Kellner 1986: 4–​5; Ben-​Shammai 2015: 104–​9). Schechter already suggested that the topics in Saadia’s philosophical work show traces that might ‘be considered as the essentials of the creed that the Gaon desired to present in pure and rational form’ (Schechter 1889: 59). He also pointed out a rudimentary list of four beliefs that are required to deserve eternal life by Rabbenu Hannanel of Kairouan, further suggested that the election of Israel appears to be the ‘cardinal dogma’ of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, and mentioned several rudiments of faith that were listed by Abraham Ibn Daud. Overall, his short survey of Jewish dogma before Maimonides gives a very similar impression to that of subsequent scholars to this day. He correctly concluded that until Maimonides, medieval rabbinic scholars isolated various traditional concepts in order to examine them or try to justify them in light of reason, but were less concerned about framing the tradition as a whole via certain obligatory concepts to be found at its core (Schechter 1889: 59–​60).

18.4  The Doctrines and Dogmas of Maimonides The first influential Jewish creed was formulated by Maimonides, early on in his literary career, as the conclusion to his philosophical introduction to the tenth chapter of tractate Sanhedrin within his Commentary on the Mishnah. That is the mishnaic passage cited above by Schechter, which he called ‘the locus classicus for the dogma question.’ Since then, no other formulation of Jewish dogma has rivaled that of Maimonides in terms of its eventual popularity, its influence on subsequent discussion and the claims that have been made regarding its authority. Substantive promotion of Jewish dogma, along with systematic analysis and criticism of it, all begin with Maimonides’ original formation. Unlike medieval Halakhah and Jewish philosophy, for which Maimonides may be said to have been a pivotal figure or even the central figure in fields that nevertheless preceded him, when it comes to Jewish dogma it may rather be said that he founded a brand new field of Jewish thought and study. In Schechter’s words, ‘The impulse given by the great philosopher and still greater Jew was eagerly followed by succeeding generations, and Judaism thus came into possession of a dogmatic literature such as it never knew before Maimonides’ (Schechter 1889: 61).

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Maimonides stressed the importance of his introduction to the tenth chapter of Sanhedrin, which culminates with his 13 foundations of the Torah, and exhorted his readers to study and review it with the utmost care (Schechter 1889: 60; Kellner 1986: 16–​17). The introduction provides its readers with a striking alternative to popular Jewish conceptions of divine reward and punishment, whose adherents derive them (according to Maimonides) from a simplistic understanding of the written and oral traditions. Maimonides describes the mature scholar as one who studies in order to know the truth, which is its own reward, rather than for childish or immature notions of recompense. He exhorts his readers to strive to understand the dual tradition in accordance with reason, and to interpret logically difficult passages as metaphors or riddles that convey philosophical truth. Finally, he concludes that the ‘World to Come’ itself is the ultimate reward, and that it is an intellectual reward for those who reach the truth. The undeveloped intellect fails to achieve the World to Come and thus ceases to exist, and that is the ultimate punishment. All other forms of reward and punishment to be found in the dual tradition are presented by Maimonides in as rational a sense as possible, and they are all of lesser importance than the ultimate goal of achieving the World to Come via the intellect. These include the Torah’s promises about physical reward and punishment in this life, the Garden of Eden, Gehinnom, the resurrection of the dead, and finally the messianic era. The latter is described by Maimonides at significant length as a naturalistic occurrence whose great importance lies not in itself, but rather in the opportunity that it will provide for intellectual development that leads to the World to Come (Kadish 2015: 204–​6). Following his discussion of the messianic era, Maimonides briefly clarified several terms mentioned at the end of the mishnaic passage, and then he turned directly to his creed: ‘What is appropriate for me to record now—​and this is the most appropriate place to record them—​ is that the principles of our pure Torah and its foundations are thirteen foundations’ (Kellner 2006: 142). The ‘most appropriate place’ is the end of his lengthy introduction to mishnaic passage about the World to Come (‘All Israelites have a share in the world to come… But the following have no share…’). This indicates that Maimonides intended his creed to be understood by its readers as an elucidation of the mishnah. In other words, Maimonides presents his creed not as an innovation, but as the correct way to understand a highly significant rabbinic statement (Kellner 1986: 10–​11). Each of Maimonides’ 13 principles begins with a designated topic, generally followed by elaboration. In addition, Maimonides provides biblical prooftexts for most of them, thereby suggesting that they are rooted in the tradition. The enumeration of their topics—​without Maimonides’ elaboration of them—​is as follows: 1. The existence of the Creator. 2. God’s unity. 3. God’s incorporeality. 4. God’s eternity. 5. Only God is rightfully worshiped. 6. The existence of prophecy. 7. The prophecy of Moses is unique and superior to that of all other prophets. 8. The Torah, both written and oral, was divinely revealed to Moses. 9. The Torah (i.e. the commandments) will not be abrogated. 10. God knows the actions of men. 11. There is divine reward and punishment. 12. The messianic era. 13. The resurrection of the dead.

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A simple enumeration of these 13 topics, as found in the list above, proved to be far more effective than Maimonides’ own elaboration of their content and meaning at the end of his introduction. As early as the 13th century, Maimonides’ list became the basis for numerous reformulations as poetry, and later as prose (Gurfinkel 2010: 51–​2; Kasher and Melamed 2016). It was eventually incorporated into the liturgy of Jews in most lands. Schechter is correct that among ‘the Maimonists’ (in terms of their dogma) ‘we may probably include the great majority of Jews, who accepted the Thirteen Articles without further question’ (Schechter 1889: 61). It is telling that Schechter too provided no more than a simple list like the one above in his survey, and felt no need to dwell upon Maimonides’ own formulation of his principles in their original context (Schechter 1889: 60). A focus on the list of topics, rather than on Maimonides’ specific elaboration of them, made it easier to bolster his contention that there is a ‘connecting link’ between the teachings of Jewish antiquity and Maimonides, and that Maimonides dogmatics ‘filled up a great gap in Jewish theology’ which the masses of Jews found lacking (Schechter 1889: 60). Yet any restatement of Maimonides’ principles or listing of their topics leaves them entirely bereft of their intellectual core. As Kellner has remarked, ‘Not only were Maimonides’ principles accepted without the theological substrate which gave them coherence and which made of them something more than an elegant literary device for teaching Jewish ideas; they were not even accepted in the form in which Maimonides presented them, but, rather, in a simplified, even debased fashion’ (Kellner 2006: 69). The first five principles, as Maimonides elaborated upon them, can easily be understood as describing the Aristotelian God rather than the personal God of Israel. In particular, the creation of the world does not appear at all in Maimonides’ original formulation of the fourth principle, which seems to imply that the world is eternal and not the act of a volitional God. Although Maimonides revised that principle later in his life to include creation, its original omission seems to have been intentional (Kellner 1986: 53–​61). The revision seems to have been unknown to virtually all medieval scholars with a single possible exception (Jospe 1988: 104, 158). In addition, prophecy is described by Maimonides as a naturalistic phenomenon rather than as personal communication. The messianic age was openly explained by Maimonides as a natural occurrence, while the resurrection of the dead was earlier announced to be ‘one of the cardinal principles established by Moses our teacher’ but without any clear statement that it will indeed occur. Indeed, in his introduction, Maimonides suggests that the Torah teaches certain beliefs to the masses for their own betterment and for the benefit of society, rather than as intellectual truth. In short, it is not difficult to read Maimonides’ principles in their original context as the creed of an Aristotelian Judaism (Kadish 2015: 214–​21). Yet the most radical element in Maimonides’ creed may be not in its contents—​which can nevertheless be understood in less radical manner—​but rather in its conclusion (Kellner 2006: 151–​2): When all these foundations are perfectly understood and believed in by a person he enters the community of Israel and one is obligated to love and pity him and to act towards him in all ways in which the Creator has commanded that one should act towards his brother, with love and fraternity. Even were he to commit every possible transgression, because of lust and because of being overpowered by the evil inclination, he will be punished according to his rebelliousness, but he has a portion [of the world to come]; he is one of the sinners of Israel. But if a man doubts any of these foundations, he leaves the community [of Israel], denies the fundamental, and is called a sectarian,

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epikoros, and one who ‘cuts among the plantings’. One is required to hate him and destroy him. About such a person it was said, ‘Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate thee’. (Ps. 139:21) At face value, this means that one’s status as a member of the people of Israel and one’s place in the World to Come depend entirely on assenting to 13 principles. That is a radical departure from traditional views about Jewish identity and about righteousness. It is also the clearest medieval precedent for understanding ‘Judaism’ as a religion in the modern sense (Melamed 2014: 44–​52). Schechter began his article by stating: ‘In speaking of dogmas it must be understood that Judaism does not ascribe to them any saving power’ (Schechter 1889: 48). A Judaism without dogma is meaningless for Schechter, but dogma ‘without abiding by its real or supposed consequences (e.g. the belief in creatio ex nihilo without keeping the Sabbath) is of no value.’ His article asserts a ‘connecting link’ between Maimonides’ view of dogma and the ancient Jewish tradition, yet it never once mentions Maimonides’ conclusion. In stark contrast to this, more than a century later Kellner devoted an entire volume (Kellner 2006) in order to show that a Judaism defined by the acceptance of specific doctrines was an innovation by Maimonides that is alien to the biblical and rabbinic traditions. What those traditions value is a relational kind of trust, loyalty and devotion to God, to the Torah and to the people of Israel (belief in) rather than assenting to a creed (belief that). Such a distinction was never made clearly by Schechter, who understood ‘belief’ and even ‘dogma’ in both senses and therefore equated the absence of dogma with a lack of meaning. Maimonides’ own formulation of his principles in their original context has been the basis for most of the systematic analysis of their meaning, purpose and internal classification by scholars from the Middle Ages to modern times. Yet Maimonides also restated his principles in other forms in Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed, which may suggest additional interpretations. Furthermore, the internal classification of the 13 principles has been interpreted based upon a distinction between cognitive versus traditional principles, or a distinction between God and His works, and various other distinctions that led to new internal classifications. Interpretations based on a parallel to the 13 divine attributes were also extremely popular. Some of these methods allow for interpretations that are distant from Maimonides’ philosophy (Kellner 1986: 21–​4, 49–​53; Gurfinkel 2017; Gurfinkel 2020).

18.5  Jewish Dogma Since Maimonides As mentioned above, the powerful, immediate and long-​term impact of Maimonides’ principles was achieved through popular reformulations. In the two centuries following Maimonides’ publication of his Commentary on the Mishnah a number of scholars also discussed or restated his principles, and others suggested similar lists of their own. This was especially prevalent in Provence, where rabbinic scholars were largely sympathetic to Maimonidean philosophy (Kellner 1986; Gurfinkel 2011; Kadish 2015: 227–​30). The systematic analysis of Jewish dogma in a sustained and orderly fashion began in Spain in the late 14th century (Kellner 1986). Its most important representatives are Nissim Gerondi (d. 1376) and several members of his school who composed ‘books of principles,’ i.e. full-​length treatises that are completely organized according to dogmatic structures (Kadish 2006: 89–​122; Kadish 2015). Gerondi proposed that a principle of the Torah be defined as an axiom, i.e. as an idea upon which the entire Torah depends and without which it cannot possibly stand. For Gerondi, the Torah’s single axiom is that God possesses volition: if that is true for a person, then the entire Torah and its commandments can be true for him as well. 230

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But if someone denies this, i.e. if there is no volitional commander, then the Torah and its commandments cannot be true for him either. Gerondi’s axiom is more inclusive than that of Maimonides, who argued in a conservative passage in the Guide of the Perplexed that creation is the single axiom of the Torah, because a single volition act by God to create the world at a certain moment in time opens the door to further volitional acts by God. Gerondi adds even if a person thinks that the world has always existed, because God’s will for the world to exist has never ceased, that is enough to render the Torah possible. Gerondi’s position is, quite simply, that the Torah is incompatible with a naturalistic world and an Aristotelian God who is devoid of volition. In a sense, this realization is what lies behind the major analytic discussion of Jewish dogma in Spain throughout the 15th century, which was largely carried out by his students (Kadish 2015). Simeon ben Ẓemaḥ Duran (1361–​1444), a student of a student of Gerondi, wrote one of the first systematic analyses of Maimonides’ 13 principles. In his opinion they are explications of the three statements in the mishnah, which led him to divide them into three classes: 1. Principles 1–​5, which are about God, correspond to ‘the Epikoros.’ 2. Principles 6–​9, which are about prophecy, correspond to ‘one who says the Torah is not from heaven.’ 3. Principles 10–​13, which are about reward and punishment, correspond to ‘one who denies the resurrection of the dead.’ This highly intuitive classification, which was later adopted by Joseph Albo (c. 1380–​1444) in his own book of principles, means that Maimonides’ 13 principles can be collapsed into three: God, Torah and divine recompense. The basic idea of three basic principles has roots in Averroes, who is likely the source for Albo and perhaps for Duran. It became the leading way to group Maimonides’ 13 principles from the Middle Ages to modern times (Gurfinkel 2020). Duran also proposed two additional ‘pillars’ upon which Maimonides’ 13 principles rest: The creation of the world and divine providence. These two ‘pillars’ relate to Nissim of Gerona’s original insight: creation and providence presuppose a volitional God who cares about human action. Duran was deeply disturbed that the creation of the world was not included among Maimonides’ principles, and that the known version of the fourth principle implied that the world was eternal. He felt that something essential was lacking in Maimonides’ list. His solution was to assert creation and providence as two unstated pillars which ‘underlie’ the 13 principles, i.e. to state that Maimonides’ principles assume that God is volitional and the world is not entirely naturalistic (Kadish 2015). Contrary to Maimonides, Duran argued explicitly that ‘inadvertent heresy’—​i.e. an honest misunderstanding of a dogma by a Jew loyal to the Torah—​does not render one a heretic. Schechter (1889: 119) considers this an extraordinary example of medieval tolerance. Kellner (1986: 98–​100; 2006: 56–​8) agrees but argues that it is also much more than that: a liberal view on ‘inadvertent heresy’ reflects a more traditional, relational view of the Torah (belief in) as opposed to a dogmatic view (belief that). It seems that Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340–​1410/​11) also held this view, while Albo made conflicting statements on the matter (Kellner 1986: 129–​ 36, 151–​5). Hasdai Crescas was Gerondi’s foremost student and the greatest philosophical critic of Maimonides. His book of principles is entitled Light of the Lord, a term he uses for revelation. In the book’s first treatise, Crescas shows that rational inquiry can prove no more than that there must be a necessary cause of contingent existence (Spinoza 2002: 791), but it cannot prove the existence of God as conceived of by the Aristotelians. This renders possible 231

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the personal and relational God of Israel, who is known through encounter and experience (Kadish 2015). In the following treatises, Crescas examines ideas which are inherent to the personal and relational God who gave the Torah, and shows that they can be accepted with intellectual integrity. In his second treatise, Crescas analyzes six elements of relationship that are known to be true by virtue of the revelation of the God of Israel. A meaningful relationship requires that each side must possess three mutual capabilities: they must both be capable of cognition of each other; they must both possess personal volition; and they must both be capable of meaningful action upon one another. The Torah itself is a testament to all three of these mutual capabilities, and Crescas shows that rational inquiry allows for them. In his third and fourth treatises, Crescas lists various truths that are taught by the Torah and various issues about which it takes no clear position. None of these truths or possibilities are contradicted by rational inquiry. The list in the fourth treatise is of 13 uncertainties (!), an ironic contrast to Maimonides’ 13 absolute dogmas. In Schechter’s analysis of Duran and Crescas, they abandon Maimonides’ dogmatic structure to one degree or another (Duran partially and Crescas entirely) and are thus ‘Anti-​ Maimonists,’ yet they agree with Maimonides that Judaism has dogmas and further agree on its basic doctrines (whether they are listed as dogmas or not). Important scholars since Schechter have largely agreed (Kellner 1986: 1; Shapiro 2004: 4). Yet it is arguable—​and likely in view of the historical context of these works—​that Duran and Crescas were actually using the format of dogma as a tool to reject the Aristotelian God and the Maimonidean conception of the Jewish tradition. In other words, rival systems of dogma are not a semantic argument about which doctrines define Judaism, but rather a substantive argument about the very nature of the Jewish tradition (Kadish 2015). Rather than saying that Duran and Crescas shared Maimonides’ dogmatic ‘impulse’ (Schechter 1889: 61), we might say that they used his own dogmatic format against him to oppose his philosophical impulse. Isaac Abarbanel (1437–​1508) wrote Rosh Amanah, which was the first systematic and extensive analysis exclusively devoted to Jewish dogma as dogma—​i.e. as opposed to a work of Jewish philosophy that has a dogmatic structure—​and also the last extensive and systematic work on dogma in the Middle Ages. In it he defended Maimonides’ 13 principles from the criticism of Crescas and Albo, but also argued against the very idea of building dogmatic structures for the Torah (Kellner 1982; 1986). It was Abarbanel who first isolated the 13 principles from their literary context in an analytic discussion. Since Abarbanel, the analysis of Jewish dogma as dogma per se, as an independent field, has been standard even among modern scholars (Kadish 2015). Over the centuries, each of Maimonides’ principles has been widely interpreted in ways that Maimonides rejected, or else questioned and opposed in numerous ways (Shapiro 2004). Since the 16th century there have been numerous rabbinic statements acknowledging the 13 principles as the authoritative Jewish creed. At the very same time there have always been traditional authorities who opposed this, and the medieval disagreements about dogma were still well-​known to scholars. Since the 19th century, Maimonides’ 13 principles have been a hallmark of Orthodoxy and the opposition to Reform (Shapiro 2004: 17–​27).

18.6  The Danger of Anachronism Widespread use of ‘Judaism’ (and its cognate terms in other languages) to designate the religion of the Jews is a modern phenomenon. It is not by accident that the initial need within popular discourse to designate a Jewish religion, with its own peculiar religious doctrines, roughly corresponds with the American and French revolutions. Premodern Jews might speak 232

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with ease of such things as ‘God,’ ‘Israel,’ and ‘Torah,’ all of which were to some degree, from their perspective, concrete realities that they encountered and lived with. They were, after all, the people of Israel with whom God established His covenant. The very notion of a Jewish religious confession, with which one may choose to identify (or not) based upon personal conviction, would have been quite alien to them (Batnitzky 2011; Melamed 2014). The modern study of Jewish doctrine and dogma is therefore fraught with the danger of anachronism. This applies not only to the individual doctrines and dogmas themselves, and to the systems that incorporate them, but even to the very language that we use to describe them. Terms and concepts that span all or part of ancient, medieval and modern times have shifted their meanings in subtle and not-​so-​subtle ways over the ages. This is particularly significant in terms of the ways we speak of ‘religion’ and ‘belief’ (Melamed 2014), as well as the way that we understand the function of dogma within a ‘religious’ tradition. What is dogma (or what seems to be dogma) may have different connotations or serve very different purposes depending on its historical and literary contexts. Dogma has often been the face of Jewish traditionalism in modern times, but dogma is not traditional. That adherence to dogma or rejection of it are thought to define Jewish denominations is a direct result of the popularization of ‘Judaism’ as a modern religion. This has an impact not just on popular conceptions, but also on scholarship. Related Topics: The Existence of God; Afterlife and Eschatology; Revelation; Medieval Jewish Philosophy

References Batnitzky, L. (2011) How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ben-​Shammai, H. (2015) A Leader’s Project: Studies in the Philosophical and Exegetical Works of Saadia Gaon. Jerusalem, Israel: Bialik Institute [Hebrew]. Gurfinkel, E. (2010) ‘The Influence of Intellectual Changes on the Versions of Ani Ma’amin,’ Kenishta 4(2010): 51–​112 [Hebrew]. —​—​—​. (2011) ‘Discussion of Principles after Maimonides: Continuity versus Change,’ Alei Sefer 22(2011): 5–​17 [Hebrew]. —​—​—​ (2017) ‘The Thirteen Principles of Faith and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy,’ Daat 84(2017): 35–​81 [Hebrew]. —​—​—​ (2020) ‘Order and Structure in the Maimonidean Principles: From Form to Meaning,’ Jewish Studies 55(2020): 115–​82 [Hebrew]. Jospe, R. (1988) Torah and Sophia: The Life and Thought of Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press. Kadish, S. (2006) The Book of Abraham: Rabbi Shimon ben Zemah Duran and the School of Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi. University of Haifa (PhD diss.). —​—​—​ (2015) ‘Jewish Dogma after Maimonides: Semantics or Substance?’ HUCA 86(2015): 195–​263. Kasher, H. and U. Melamed (2016) ‘The Conception and Birth of the Liturgical Poem Yigdal Elohim Ḥai’ in U. Erlich (ed.), Jewish Prayer: New Perspectives. Jerusalem, Israel: Bialik Institute [Hebrew]. Kellner, M. (1982) Principles of Faith (Rosh Amanah), Isaac Abravanel (trans. and ed.). Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. —​—​—​ (1986) Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: From Maimonides to Abravanel. Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. —​—​—​ (2006) Must a Jew Believe Anything? (2nd edition). Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Melamed, A. (2014) Dat: From Law to Religion –​The History of a Formative Term. Tel Aviv, Israel: Hakibbutz Hameuchad [Hebrew]. Muffs, Y. (2005) The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith and the Divine Image. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing. Schechter, S. (1889) ‘The Dogmas of Judaism,’ JQR 1:1 (1888): 48–​61; 1:2 (1889): 115–​27.

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The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy —​—​—​ (1909) Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology. London, UK: The Macmillan Company. Shapiro, M. (2004) The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides Thirteen Principles Reappraised. Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Spinoza, B. (2002) Spinoza: Complete Works with Translations by Samuel Shirley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Sussmann, Y. (2019) Oral Law Taken Literally: The Power of the Tip of a Yod. Jerusalem, Israel: Magnes Press [Hebrew]. Urbach, E. E. (1975) The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, Israel Abrahams (trans.). Jerusalem, Israel: Magnes Press. Wyschogrod, M. (1996) The Body of Faith: God in the People of Israel. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

Further Reading (In chronological order and the recommended order for reading.) Kellner, M. (1986) Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: From Maimonides to Abravanel, Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. (A thorough, systematic survey and discussion of the major figures and their positions based on an analysis of the primary texts in English translation.) —​—​—​ (2006) Must a Jew Believe Anything? (2nd edition), Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. (Argues that Maimonidean dogma was a radical departure from the biblical-​rabbinic tradition, and that a meaningful Judaism need not be based on dogma.) Shapiro, M. (2004) The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides Thirteen Principles Reappraised, Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. (An encyclopedic compendium of traditional rabbinic opinion from medieval to modern times that disagrees with Maimonides’ 13 principles.) Kadish, S. (2015) ‘Jewish Dogma after Maimonides: Semantics or Substance?’ HUCA 86 (2015): 195–​ 263. (Argues that systems of Jewish dogma offered as alternatives to Maimonides’ 13 principles express arguments about the very nature of the Torah, as opposed to previous scholarship which considered them all to be descriptions of the same basic doctrines.) Gurfinkel, E. (2020) ‘Order and Structure in the Maimonidean Principles: From Form to Meaning,’ Jewish Studies 55 (2020): 115–​82 [Hebrew]. (A rich intellectual history of how Maimonides’ enumeration of 13 principles has been classified by scholars from medieval to modern times and the philosophical ramifications of those classifications.)

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19 JUDAISM AND SCIENCE Shoaib Ahmed Malik

19.1 Introduction The relationship between religion and science has long been a topic of scholarly debate, scrutiny and fascination. Judaism, with its ancient roots and multifaceted intellectual traditions, offers a rich terrain for exploring this relationship. From the cosmological descriptions in the Book of Genesis to the intricate laws in the Talmud, the nexus between Jewish thought and scientific inquiry provides a unique lens to explore the broader dialogue between faith and reason (Samuelson 2009; Efron 2014a). This chapter probes the nuanced relationship between Judaism and science, underscoring their historical, philosophical and practical convergences. By charting the intertwined trajectories of Jewish intellectualism and scientific discovery, this chapter endeavors to shed light on the strategies Jewish scholars employed to harmonize and incorporate scientific advancements within their doctrinal understandings. The narrative navigates through four, very broad, pivotal historical periods: (1) ancient times (circa 2000 BCE–​500 CE), (2) the medieval era (500 CE–​1500 CE), (3) the early modern age (1500 CE–​1900 CE), and (4) the current period (1900 CE–​present). In traversing this path, the objective is to help appreciate the symbiotic dynamics between Judaism and science, focusing on how this venerable religious tradition has both influenced and adapted to scientific progress. Readers should note that, due to word count constraints, this overview is by necessity concise rather than comprehensive. Two key considerations must be highlighted at the outset. Firstly, the distinct separation commonly observed today between science and religion wasn’t readily evident in ancient Judaism. Historically, science and faith were typically perceived as complementary avenues of understanding the world (Brooke 2014; Harrison 2015). The Hebrew Bible and Talmud, for instance, did not distinguish rigidly between these two realms. Nonetheless, throughout Jewish history, there were cautionary voices wary of an excessive emphasis on external, non-​ religious knowledge, concerned it might overshadow foundational religious teachings. This integrated perspective on science and religion markedly contrasts with the more delineated views prevalent in modern times (Efron 2007). Secondly, when examining the interplay between Judaism and science across history, various methodologies can be employed. This study will position thinkers within the milieu of their era, comparing them to contemporaneous peers. This approach provides valuable insights into their philosophical underpinnings,

DOI: 10.4324/9781032693859-26

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and where necessary, additional context will be provided to illuminate the historical backdrop shaping these discourses.

19.2  Ancient Jewish Thought and ‘Science’ In tracing the historical trajectory of Judaism, it becomes evident that its foundations were laid in an epoch vastly different from our contemporary understanding of the world. The cradle of ancient Jewish civilization did not possess the detailed methodologies or empirical paradigms that characterize modern science. However, it would be a mistake to presume that the ancients lacked a sophisticated or nuanced understanding of the world around them. The civilizations of antiquity, where early Jewish thought took shape, nurtured a holistic worldview. For them, the realms of the cosmos, the earthly environment and human existence were deeply interconnected, woven together by threads of theology, metaphysics and nascent observational insights. In this framework, it wasn’t unusual for what we now segregate as ‘science’ and ‘religion’ to be deeply entwined (Reed 2007). The ancient Israelites’ perception of the cosmos is heavily rooted in the study of the Scriptures (Tanakh), with the Genesis (Bereshit) narrative offering significant insights (Parpola 2017). This depiction of the world emerging in six days presents more than a mere recounting of divine creation. It paints a vivid tableau of an orderly transition from the primordial chaos, known as ‘chaos and void’ (tohu va-​vohu), toward a meticulously arranged universe. This narrative, whilst delineating the tenets of monotheism, also mirrors a wider ancient Near Eastern cosmological perspective. For instance, the portrayal of the ‘firmament’ (raki’a) separating the ‘waters’ (mayim) above from those below (Genesis 1:6–​7) aligns with the period’s views of a canopy-​like sky. Though the essence of this account remains theological, it resonates with the era’s understanding of the universe’s systematic structure, echoing the intrinsic quest to identify patterns, structures and natural laws within creation. Further elucidating the fusion of religious and scientific understanding within Judaic practices is the intricacy of the Hebrew calendar (Luaḥ). The establishment of this lunisolar system underscores the ancient Jewish synthesis of basic astronomical observations (Popović 2014). This calendar was meticulously curated, relying on the ‘new moon’ (Rosh ḥodesh) to demarcate the commencement of months and ensuring that agricultural festivities like Passover (ḥag ha-​Pesach) or the Feast of Tabernacles (ḥag ha-​Sukkot) aligned with the appropriate agricultural seasons, which indicates interesting engagement with observational astronomy. Beyond Genesis, the Tanakh offers numerous instances of intertwining theological wisdom with the scientific knowledge of the age. The Book of Job (Sefer Iyyov), while being a profound theological contemplation, also touches upon cosmological themes. Allusions to the ‘circle of the Earth’ (Job 22:14) and constellations like the Pleiades and Orion (Job 38:31) reflect an inherent awareness of astronomical phenomena. Similarly, the Psalms (Tehillim), particularly 104, weave a panorama of nature’s wonders, from springs cascading down mountains to the precise timing of the sun’s setting, all of which capture a worldview where the natural and the divine harmoniously intertwine, underscoring a universe orchestrated by divine providence. The health and medical practices of ancient Jews were also inextricably entwined with their broader cosmological and theological perspectives. From their foundational texts to day-​to-​day rituals, a holistic worldview emerges, where the physical and spiritual realms are interconnected, and human well-​being is perceived in relation to the broader cosmic order (Mokhtarian 2022). Central to this holistic approach were the dietary laws (kashrut) as laid down in the Torah. While these laws dictate permissible foods and methods of preparation based on religious principles, there’s an underlying theme of order, differentiation and 236

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categorization that resonates with the creation narrative in Genesis. Just as the world was fashioned in an orderly manner, from the separation of light from darkness to the creation of distinct creatures, the dietary laws reflect a desire for order and distinction in the consumption of food. This systematic approach to diet, while primarily ritualistic, might have also catered to the health challenges of the ancient world, suggesting an intrinsic relationship between the physical act of eating and the spiritual and cosmological order. Leviticus, another book from the Torah, offers insights into the management and diagnosis of various ailments, notably skin conditions. On a deeper level, the detailed procedures mirror the broader cosmological theme of moving from chaos to order. Diseases, often seen as disruptions to the natural state of the human body, required procedures that restored order, paralleling the cosmic narrative where the world transitions from chaos to a structured universe. The practices in Leviticus, while serving religious and ritualistic purposes, also underscore an awareness of the delicate balance in the human body and its relation to the universe.1 The ancient Jewish tradition organically intertwines health, spirituality and cosmology, as exemplified by practices such as the observance of the Sabbath (Shabbat). This weekly day of rest serves dual purposes: it commemorates the divine act of creation and functions as a regular rejuvenation for the mind, body and spirit. Rooted in Jewish cosmology, the Sabbath underscores the understanding that human well-​being requires periodic balance, recuperation and harmony. Further illustrating this holistic worldview, the ancient Israelite wisdom literature, notably the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Job, seamlessly merges natural observations with moral teachings. A prime example is the Book of Proverbs, which commends the ant’s industrious behavior, stating, ‘Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!’ (Proverbs 6:6). These references to nature hold more than just symbolic value; they underscore the Israelites’ deep connection and understanding of their surroundings. For them, nature was not only a testament to divine creation but also a rich source of wisdom and knowledge. Their keen observations, ranging from the habits of ants to the vast movements of celestial entities, depict a vibrant interplay between the spiritual, ethical and empirical realms in ancient Jewish thought (Alexander 2014). While ancient Jewish thought did not possess laboratories or telescopes, it was embedded in a rich tradition of observation, reflection and reverence. The intertwining of the spiritual and the material was not a sign of primitiveness but represented a significant understanding that the world, in all its vastness and intricacy, was a canvas bearing the brushstrokes of the Divine. In this canvas, patterns, rhythms and structures—​the precursors to scientific thought—​ were recognized, celebrated and integrated into the very fabric of religious and communal life.

19.3  Medieval Confluence: Maimonides and the Rationalists The medieval epoch, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age, presented another fertile ground for intellectual cross-​pollination. Institutions like the House of Wisdom in Baghdad facilitated interdisciplinary dialogues. Jewish scholars, such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873) and Saadia Gaon (d. 942), were central to these exchanges, translating and transmitting classical Greek knowledge and reconciling Jewish beliefs with Greek philosophy (Adamson 2016). Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (d. 1204), commonly known as Maimonides, epitomized this synthesis. His multifaceted experiences from Cordoba to Cairo, coupled with his roles as a physician, jurist and philosopher, positioned him uniquely at the nexus of Judaic and Greco-​ Islamic thought (Manguel 2023; Sadik 2023). His medical treatises integrated Jewish dietary laws with classical medical insights from the likes of Hippocrates and Galen (Bos 2002; Segal and Blazer 2020). Philosophically, his famous Guide for the Perplexed harmonized Jewish theology with Aristotelian ideas, although it invited critiques from traditionalists wary of 237

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external influence. This engagement with broader intellectual currents was bidirectional. While Jewish scholars absorbed ideas, they also contributed significantly to the larger discourse (Adamson 2016). In summary, the medieval era bore witness to a prolific interaction between Jewish rationalism and the expansive intellectual traditions of their environments. While rooted in their own traditions, Jewish intellectuals actively participated in, contributed to and were shaped by the broader intellectual milieu of their times. However, to get further insights into how medieval science was discussed against the Jewish heritage, we need to review the ideas of Maimonides and their reception, to which we now turn.

19.3.1  The Synthetic Creativity of Maimonides Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, also known as the Rambam, was born in 1135 in Cordoba, an epicenter of intellectual vigor during Andalusia’s Golden Age. As a young scholar, Maimonides was exposed to both the religious richness of Jewish tradition and the vast reservoirs of secular and scientific knowledge that Muslim Spain had inherited from Greek antiquity. His sojourns through varied cultural terrains, from Fez to Cairo due to Almohad persecution, further enriched his intellectual palette, enabling a synthesis of Judaic theology with prevailing scientific paradigms. In his ground-​breaking Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides embarked on a challenging quest to reconcile the apparent contradictions between the Torah and the scientific and philosophical knowledge of his day. Maimonides’ endeavor to reconcile Jewish teachings with contemporary science was revolutionary (Kellner 1997). While he faced criticism from purists who viewed his interpretations as diluting sacred teachings, his approach carved a path for subsequent Jewish scholars to engage with the evolving world of science without forsaking their religious heritage. His belief in the essential harmony between divine revelation and human discovery set a precedent. It asserted that Jewish tradition and scientific inquiry were not adversaries but complementary avenues to understanding the truth.

19.3.2  Clashes with Maimonides Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (d. 1198), also known as the Raavad, was one of the most formidable opponents of Maimonides’ synthesis of Jewish law and philosophy. Their disagreements primarily stemmed from the Raavad’s apprehension about Maimonides’ methodological approach in the Mishneh Torah (Shapiro 1993; Diamond 2017). One of the salient points of contention related to Maimonides’ reliance on reason was Maimonides’ views on the resurrection. Drawing heavily from Aristotelian principles, Maimonides offered an interpretation of the resurrection that seemed to de-​emphasize its physical aspect, suggesting a more spiritual or intellectual continuation (Kirschner 1981; Lerner 1983). The Raavad, echoing the sentiments of other traditionalists, found this view problematic and not in line with traditional Jewish teachings. In the Mishneh Torah, specifically in the section titled Laws of Sanctifying the New Month (Hilchot kiddush ha-​ḥodesh), Maimonides provides a detailed exposition of the Jewish lunar calendar, including the calculations involved in determining the new month based on the moon’s phases. He employs advanced astronomical knowledge, drawing on the Ptolemaic model which was the accepted scientific model of the universe in his time. This model, propounded by the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, placed the Earth at the center

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of the universe with all heavenly bodies orbiting it in a complex system of deferents and epicycles (Neugebauer 1949). Maimonides’ attempt to reconcile this model with Talmudic teachings was an effort to bridge the gap between the ancient rabbinic traditions and the scientific advancements of his time. His aim was to provide a comprehensive and accurate guide to Jewish law, which included the technical aspects of the calendar so that it was in alignment with the observable phenomena (Kellner 1991). The Raavad, however, took issue with certain details in Maimonides’ presentation. While he did not dispute the validity of astronomy, he was concerned with the discrepancies he perceived between Maimonides’ account and the descriptions provided by the Talmudic sages. The Raavad’s critique is multifaceted. On a basic level, he argued for the precedence of Talmudic authority in cases of apparent conflict with newer scientific models. Additionally, he pointed out specific areas where he believed Maimonides had misunderstood or misapplied the Talmudic texts. For instance, in discussing the length of the lunar month, Maimonides provided a value that was slightly different from the one mentioned in certain Talmudic sources. The Raavad defended the Talmudic value, emphasizing the tradition’s sanctity and authenticity (Twersky 1957). Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier (d. circa 13th century), while an important figure in Jewish history, is also remembered in the annals of Jewish scholarship for his vehement opposition to Maimonides, specifically regarding the Guide for the Perplexed. This opposition wasn’t just a mere academic disagreement; it was deeply rooted in concerns about the very fabric of Jewish belief and practice. Some of Rabbi Solomon’s concerns were with the integration of Aristotle’s ideas with Jewish thought. For example, Maimonides entertained the option of the universe being eternal in the Aristotelian sense,2 which was contrary to the traditional Jewish belief in creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). Rabbi Solomon, adhering closely to the traditional viewpoint, saw this as a significant deviation, potentially undermining the very foundations of Jewish theology (Caputo 2007: 19–​52). The intellectual landscape of medieval Jewish thought was marked by a notable tension, exemplified in the disputes involving Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham and Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham of Montpellier. Together, these disagreements underscored a pivotal moment in Jewish history, reflecting the broader struggle between the preservation of tradition and the integration of external or foreign knowledge (Silver 1965).

19.4  Modern Challenges and Responses: The Age of Enlightenment and Beyond The Enlightenment era, widely regarded as a luminous period of rationality and intellectual ferment, emerged as a reaction to the dogmas and rigidity of the past. Europe, hitherto bound by the chains of feudalism, scholasticism and Church authority, was now witnessing a renaissance of ideas and an unfurling of curiosity. The tenets of the Enlightenment—​reason, evidence and the power of the individual—​heralded a seismic shift in how society understood the world, its origins and its destinies. The unyielding certainties of religious orthodoxy now faced the questioning gaze of a burgeoning scientific community. For Judaism, which had weathered various epochs—​from the biblical era, the diasporas, the medieval scholastic period to the ghettos of Europe—​the Enlightenment posed both a challenge and an opportunity. The Jewish diaspora, dispersed across Europe, had already been engaging with various cultures and intellectual traditions. Yet, the Enlightenment, with its potent blend of reason and empiricism, demanded a re-​articulation of ancient beliefs.

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19.4.1  Cosmological Shifts A prime example of this challenge was the rise of heliocentrism. The Ptolemaic, geocentric model of the universe, which posited Earth as its static center, had not only been the dominant astronomical view but also held theological implications. Scriptures across religions, including passages in the Tanakh, seemed to align with this geocentric perspective. Verses in Psalms (96:10–​13), for instance, that spoke of the Earth’s stability (‘The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved’) and descriptions in Job which touched upon the Earth’s foundational pillars, were traditionally interpreted in congruence with the Ptolemaic understanding. However, the audacious claims of Nicholas Copernicus (d. 1543) in the 16th century, which were later empirically bolstered by the telescopic observations of Galileo in the 17th century, upended this paradigm. The universe was not as Earth-​centric as previously believed; rather, Earth was but one of the planets revolving around the sun. This shift was not merely astronomical but deeply theological. If Earth was not the center, did it diminish its significance in the divine scheme? And what did it imply about scriptures that seemed to assert otherwise? Rabbi Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (d. 1655), arguably the first Jewish Copernican, emerges as a figure emblematic of the tensions inherent in reconciling emergent scientific paradigms with deeply entrenched religious doctrine. The early modern period, marked by an efflorescence of scientific discoveries, witnessed the Copernican heliocentric model challenging the traditional geocentric perspective, which had enjoyed the imprimatur of religious authorities, including preeminent Jewish scholars (Brown 2021: 66–​81). Delmedigo’s magnum opus, Sefer Elim, furnishes insights into the depth of his intellectual wrestling. It is apparent that Delmedigo, having been exposed to the Copernican model’s empirical substantiations—​most notably Galileo’s telescopic observations such as the phases of Venus, which were discordant with the geocentric model—​manifested a discernible proclivity toward the heliocentric perspective. Such empirical observations, refractory to geocentric explanations, provided cogent validation for Copernicus’s postulations, a fact not lost on Delmedigo. However, as a scholar steeped in the Jewish intellectual tradition, Delmedigo confronted the theological conundrums posed by the heliocentric model. The model ostensibly contravened various biblical passages, including Psalm (104:5), which delineates a stationary Earth. Within Sefer Elim, Delmedigo embarked on an intricate journey to harmonize the empiricism buttressing the Copernican model with the sacrosanctity of scriptural interpretations. Delmedigo stands out as an emblematic figure navigating the intricate interplay between scientific knowledge and religious orthodoxy. Maimonides, through his seminal Guide for the Perplexed, undertook the task of harmonizing Jewish doctrine with the prevailing Aristotelian cosmology, firmly anchored in his belief that rationality and divine revelation could coexist. This effort evinced his commitment to the Aristotelian paradigm, viewing it as a conduit to elucidate and enrich religious understanding. In contrast, Delmedigo, while perhaps inspired by Maimonides’s hermeneutical approach, was not tethered to Aristotelianism. Instead, he grappled with the newer challenges posed by the Copernican revolution. While Maimonides sought compatibility between Jewish thought and Aristotelian science, Delmedigo ventured into reconciling Jewish theology with the empirical evidence supporting Copernican heliocentrism. To this end, Delmedigo suggested an allegorical interpretation of certain biblical passages, mirroring Maimonides’s method but applied to a distinctly different scientific milieu. Thus, while both scholars shared a reconciliatory ethos, their intellectual landscapes and the specific challenges they addressed were markedly divergent. Baruch Spinoza (d. 1677), the excommunicated Dutch Jewish philosopher, proffered a radical departure in his interpretation of the Copernican model, especially when juxtaposed 240

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with contemporaries like Delmedigo. Spinoza’s seminal Tractus Theologico-​Politicus subtly endorsed the Copernican worldview, although he conspicuously avoided naming it explicitly. Central to Spinoza’s argument was his conviction that the Bible, rather than being an infallible divine revelation, was fundamentally a human artifact crafted to convey moral directives. This perspective allowed Spinoza to challenge prevailing views on biblical exegesis: he contended that efforts to harmonize the scripture with the Copernican or any other scientific model were misguided (Rudavsky 2001). Such attempts, in his opinion, reflected a misapprehension of the Bible’s primary purpose and were thus redundant. Spinoza’s emphasis on the moral, as opposed to the literal or scientific dimensions, of the Bible stemmed from his belief in its human origins. Consequently, he saw no imperative to reconcile biblical descriptions, particularly those related to the natural world, with the evolving scientific paradigms of his era. His philosophical leanings, informed by this interpretative lens, starkly contrasted with the approach of Delmedigo, who operated within the ambit of traditional Judaism and sought to balance religious texts with scientific revelations (de Dun 2013). Spinoza’s excommunication further accentuated this distinction: while his ideas were very influential in broader philosophical circles, they remained somewhat estranged from the central currents of Jewish intellectual discourse during his lifetime. Others were less accepting of the Copernican model (Brown 2021: 82–​105). Isaac Fernando Cardoso (d. 1683), hailing from Portugal and practicing as a Jewish physician, found himself at the forefront of opposition to Copernicanism, a stance deeply rooted in his unwavering religious convictions. When Cardoso delved into the sacred pages of the Bible, his interpretation unearthed a specific conception of the universe. The scriptures, as he understood them, painted the heavens as a realm of absolute permanence—​an eternal, unchanging expanse wherein celestial entities maintained their ordained positions, never deviating from their designated orbits. This conception of a static cosmos was deeply entrenched in many traditional religious teachings and persisted for centuries. For Cardoso, this heliocentric portrayal didn’t merely challenge established scientific thought; it struck at the very heart of his religious beliefs. The notion of Earth—​a realm created by God, home to His chosen people—​moving around the Sun seemed incongruous with the biblical accounts he held dear. To him, if the scriptures conveyed the idea of an unyielding, constant heaven, then how could Earth, a part of this divine creation, be in perpetual motion? Such a contradiction, in his view, was not merely a matter of differing perspectives but bordered on sacrilege. It threatened to disrupt the divine hierarchy and the very orderliness of God’s creation. Cardoso’s fidelity to religious scriptures wasn’t merely a matter of personal belief; it was the bedrock upon which he constructed his understanding of the world. The Bible, for him, was the ultimate wellspring of truth—​an infallible guide that offered insights into the nature of existence and the cosmos. As such, any theory, regardless of its source or the evidence backing it, was immediately suspect if it appeared to contravene the scriptural narratives. The heliocentric theory, by suggesting a universe in flux, did precisely that. In Cardoso’s perspective, aligning with such a theory would not only be an acceptance of a scientific model but would also signify a deviation from the divine path, making it a matter of important spiritual consequence. Thus, for Cardoso, rejecting Copernicanism was both a defense of religious integrity and an act of preserving the sanctity of divine teachings. Tuviah Cohen (d. 1729), originating from the region of Moravia, also displayed a markedly different perspective on heliocentrism compared to some of his contemporaries, like Fernando Cardoso. Whereas others might have been quick to condemn or accept the Copernican model based on religious beliefs, Cohen’s approach was more nuanced and grounded in the principles of scientific inquiry (Levine 1983).

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For Cohen, the matter wasn’t as straightforward as accepting or dismissing a theory based on its alignment or misalignment with religious texts. Rather, he was emblematic of the burgeoning spirit of the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, where new ideas and theories were approached with a judicious blend of curiosity and skepticism. This mindset was particularly evident in the realm of science, where ground-​breaking ideas were rapidly reshaping humanity’s understanding of the natural world. The heliocentric model, as proposed by Copernicus, was one such revolutionary idea that promised to redefine our place in the cosmos. Yet, for Cohen, the mere presentation of a new theory, regardless of its ground-​ breaking nature, wasn’t enough. The essence of the scientific method, which he seemed to uphold, revolves around the demand for tangible, empirical evidence to substantiate any claim. In other words, the veracity of a theory is gauged not by how ground-​breaking or elegant it might be, but by how well it withstands the rigorous tests of empirical examination. For example, during Cohen’s time, certain celestial phenomena, such as the retrograde motion of planets, were better explained by the heliocentric model than the prevailing geocentric one. But for Cohen, such observations, while intriguing, weren’t definitive. The transition from a geocentric to a heliocentric worldview was a monumental paradigm shift, and Cohen seemed to believe that such a shift should be buttressed by irrefutable evidence, encompassing all aspects of celestial behavior and not just a select few. One of Cohen’s significant critiques was the absence of observable stellar parallax. If the Earth revolved around the Sun, as the Copernican model suggested, there should be an observable shift in the relative positions of stars as the Earth moved from one side of its orbit to the other. This phenomenon, known as parallax, would be evidence of Earth’s motion. However, given the limitations of astronomical instruments and observational techniques of the time, no such parallax had been observed. Cohen, being a scientifically inclined individual, recognized this lack of evidence as a glaring issue with the heliocentric model. The era marked by the ascendancy of heliocentrism symbolizes a watershed moment in the intellectual evolution of society. This cosmological shift, supplanting the deep-​seated geocentric worldview, became emblematic of broader epistemological transformations as traditional religious interpretations were brought into direct contention with nascent scientific paradigms. Figures like Rabbi Joseph Solomon Delmedigo epitomized the delicate act of navigating between religious orthodoxy and emergent empirical evidence, highlighting the era’s broader struggle to reconcile past beliefs with new discoveries. In contrast, thinkers like Baruch Spinoza reflected a burgeoning movement to re-​evaluate religious texts beyond their literal interpretations, indicative of a growing emphasis on rationalism. Meanwhile, the hesitations of individuals like Tuviah Cohen to wholeheartedly embrace heliocentrism without comprehensive empirical backing underline the period’s rigorous intellectual scrutiny. Collectively, these diverse responses to heliocentrism underscore a period of intellectual flux, as Jews grappled with redefining their understanding of the universe, their place within it, and the very foundations of knowledge.

19.4.2  The Jewish Enlightenment This era also gave rise to the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) in the 1770s, a movement that sought to navigate the delicate balance between modernity and religious identity (Feiner 2011). Central to the Haskalah was the desire for Jews to actively engage with the larger world, both intellectually and socially. This marked a significant departure from the insularity that had characterized much of Jewish life in Europe, especially in ghettos and shtetls. The advocates of Haskalah saw in the Enlightenment an opportunity for Jews to expand 242

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their horizons, embracing secular knowledge and cultural achievements while retaining their unique religious and cultural identity. Moses Mendelssohn (d. 1786), often hailed as the Socrates of Berlin, stood at the forefront of this movement. He himself exemplified the synthesis that Haskalah proponents envisioned. While deeply rooted in Jewish learning—​he penned significant religious works, including a pioneering German translation of the Hebrew Bible—​Mendelssohn was equally immersed in European philosophy, engaging with luminaries like Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (d. 1778) (Dahlstrom 2023). Mendelssohn’s advocacy for secular educa­ tion stemmed from his belief that knowledge was universal, and that Jews could benefit from studying the sciences, humanities and arts. By doing so, they wouldn’t merely gain practical skills for economic advancement, but they’d also be equipped better to appreciate the rational elements inherent in Judaism itself. Furthermore, cultural integration was seen to counteract the prejudices and misconceptions that had isolated Jews for centuries. By participating actively in European cultural and intellectual life, Jews could challenge stereotypes, forging bonds of understanding and mutual respect with their non-​Jewish neighbors (Sorkin 1996). The rational approach to Judaism advocated by Mendelssohn and his compatriots didn’t seek to diminish religious commitment. Instead, it aimed to present Judaism as a religion compatible with reason. Scriptural interpretations were to be scrutinized, rituals were to be understood not just as sacred acts, but also as symbolic expressions with deep philosophical meanings, and theological tenets were to be re-​evaluated considering contemporary knowledge. Rabbi Moses Sofer, known prominently by his work Ḥatam Sofer, was a seminal figure in the Orthodox response to the Haskalah during its surge in Central Europe (Hildesheimer 1994). Born in Frankfurt and later establishing a significant presence in Pressburg (modern-​day Bratislava), Rabbi Sofer ardently defended traditional Jewish values against the encroaching secularism and rationalism of the Haskalah. His doctrine, encapsulated by the maxim ‘anything new is forbidden by the Torah,’ highlighted his staunch belief in preserving tradition against any form of change (Schreiber 2002: 124). As a reflection of this, his yeshiva in Pressburg strictly focused on Talmudic studies, resisting the integration of secular subjects. Rabbi Sofer’s unwavering commitment to tradition amidst the challenges of his era positioned him as a beacon of traditionalist Orthodoxy and left an indelible legacy that continues to influence Orthodox Jewish thought. Potentially sympathetic to the Haskalah, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (d. 1888) stands out as a seminal voice in the realm of Jewish thought in this period, especially in the context of reconciling traditional Judaism with the forces of modernity. Recognized widely as the intellectual forerunner of Modern Orthodoxy, his contributions to this synthesis are anchored in the philosophy he termed ‘Torah im Derekh Eretz’—​which translates to ‘Torah with the way of the world.’ Far from seeing secular knowledge as a threat, he viewed it as a tool through which Jews could deepen their connection to their faith and understand the divine mandate within a broader context. Through this educational model, Rabbi Hirsch showcased his conviction that an individual didn’t have to choose between modernity and Judaism. Instead, he argued that Jews could live in both worlds simultaneously, harnessing the benefits of each. The emergence of the Haskalah marked a transformative moment in Jewish history, signaling a departure from previous insularity toward a more engaged and cosmopolitan outlook (Ruderman 1995: 339–​41). Figures like Mendelssohn, advocating for the melding of secular knowledge with Jewish wisdom, showcased the potential harmonization between Enlightenment principles and Jewish traditions. Yet, the epoch was also marked by intense debates, with figures such as Rabbi Sofer championing the unwavering preservation of tradition, while Rabbi Hirsch proposed an innovative synthesis of modernity and faith. Collectively, these narratives reveal an era of introspection and dynamism within the Jewish community, striving to redefine its identity amidst the sweeping tides of change. 243

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19.5  Contemporary Challenges From the 18th to the 20th century, the Jewish diaspora underwent a further complex metamorphosis, setting the stage for the intricate relationship between Judaism and science in today’s world (Efron 2014b). Initially prompted by the Enlightenment, the Haskalah fostered an environment where secular and religious education didn’t merely coexist but influenced one another. This was pivotal as Jewish scholars began pioneering major scientific and intellectual fields. Simultaneously, political changes, notably in Europe, prompted Jewish communities to migrate. This movement was not just geographical but intellectual, with new hubs of Jewish thought blossoming in places like the United States (Sachar 2005). Figures like Albert Einstein (d. 1936) and Sigmund Freud (d. 1939),3 products of both rich Jewish traditions and secular European thought, came to prominence in this period. Alongside this, the creation of Israel offered another dimension, where a renewed national identity meshed with aspirations of scientific and technological progress. Collectively, these developments highlight the nuanced interplay of tradition, identity and intellect, laying the groundwork for the multifaceted discourse on Judaism and science in the modern era. Some of the most important challenges of this era are the age of the earth and evolution (Samuelson 2008; Swetlitz 2013; Langton 2019). Rabbi Avigdor Miller (d. 2001) lived during a time of significant transitions and challenges for the Jewish community. His lifetime witnessed two World Wars, the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel and a massive movement of Jews to the United States. Additionally, the 20th century was a period marked by ground-​breaking scientific discoveries and a broader societal embrace of secular humanism and rationalism. He was known for his unwavering commitment to Orthodox Judaism and was particularly recognized for his emphasis on the deep appreciation and contemplation of God’s creation. Unlike some other religious figures who might dismiss science or view it with suspicion, Rabbi Miller acknowledged the marvels of the natural world that science unveiled. He saw the intricate design and vastness of the universe as a testimony to God’s grandeur and wisdom (Swetlitz 2013). However, it is essential to differentiate between his appreciation for science’s observations and his critique of certain scientific theories, which he believed clashed with the Torah’s teachings. Rabbi Miller often addressed controversial topics, including the theory of evolution (Miller 1995). He often expressed skepticism toward the idea that life, in all its complexity, could have evolved gradually over billions of years through natural processes. Instead, he argued that the intricate design and order observed in the world provided evidence of a purposeful Creator. This perspective also extended to the age of the Earth. In contrast to the scientific consensus that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, Rabbi Miller maintained a young-​earth viewpoint. He believed that the earth was created in six literal days, as described in Genesis, and that it was only several thousand years old. Additionally, Rabbi Miller’s teachings often delved into the philosophical and spiritual implications of accepting evolutionary theory. He believed that accepting evolution could erode the foundation of Jewish faith and values, potentially leading individuals away from a God-​centered life. For him, the story of creation was not just about the origin of the world; it was also a testament to the relationship between God and humanity, underscoring God’s role as the Creator and Sustainer of all existence. His understanding of the relationship between science and Judaism was not one of inherent conflict but rather one of harmonious potential. For Rabbi Miller, true scientific observation should lead one closer to God. He believed that the more one delves into the intricacies of the universe, the more one should be filled with awe and gratitude to the Creator (Englander 2014).

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The context in which Rabbi Miller operated was crucial. Living in the US during a time of increasing secularism, he felt the urgency to bolster Jewish belief and counter secular arguments. He aimed to provide his followers with a robust intellectual framework, grounded in the Torah, to navigate the challenges of modernity. This framework included an appreciation for the wonders of the natural world revealed by science but also a critical examination of any scientific theory or assertion that seemed to challenge the Torah’s divine origin. A slightly different approach was taken by Rabbi Natan Slifkin, often recognized as the Zoo Rabbi due to his interest in the animal kingdom and zoology. He is a contemporary Orthodox Jewish scholar who has extensively explored the confluence of Judaism and science, especially regarding evolution (Slifkin 2012). In his examination of the subject, Rabbi Slifkin posits that the theory of evolution does not inherently contradict the belief in the Divine origin of the Torah. He suggests that the primary intention of the Torah is not to provide a scientific account of the universe’s mechanics but rather to convey important religious and moral truths. This perspective allows him to approach the Biblical narrative with a different lens, especially the account of the Six Days of Creation. For Rabbi Slifkin, the Genesis account of creation doesn’t necessarily refer to literal 24-​hour days. Instead, he perceives these ‘days’ as possibly representing stages or phases. This interpretation accommodates the scientific consensus regarding an old Earth and the gradual development of life. Within this evolutionary framework, he emphasizes the guiding hand of the Divine. To Rabbi Slifkin, evolution is not a random process; it represents the mechanism by which God chose to bring about and nurture life on Earth. His endeavors to reconcile Orthodox Judaism with modern scientific understanding, especially as presented in his works like The Challenge of Creation, have not been without controversy. Some sectors of the Orthodox Jewish community, particularly among the ultra-​ Orthodox, have critiqued and even banned his publications (Robinson 2010; Swetlitz 2013). They argue against his non-​literal interpretation of the Genesis narrative and his inclination to prioritize modern scientific theories over traditional rabbinic interpretations. Nevertheless, at the core of Rabbi Slifkin’s scholarship is a belief in the harmonious coexistence of science and faith. He contends that an understanding of science can enrich and deepen one’s appreciation and comprehension of the Torah, and that the two, rather than being in opposition, can offer complementary insights into the nature of existence and the Divine. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (d. 1967), often referred to as The Rav, was a central figure in Modern Orthodox Judaism in the 20th century. Renowned for his intellectual prowess and his synthesis of traditional Talmudic scholarship with secular knowledge, his approach to the relationship between science and religion offers deep insights into the harmonious coexistence of these domains in the context of Jewish thought. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s philosophy was largely rooted in the belief that human beings operate in two distinct realms: the ‘covenantal’ and the ‘utilitarian’ (Kaplan 1973; Blidstein 1994). These realms correspond to humanity’s dual role as both the master of nature and as a covenantal partner with God. The utilitarian world, according to the Rav, is where humans employ scientific reasoning, empirical evidence and logical deduction to understand and manipulate nature. This domain is characterized by objective observation, classification and a quest to harness the powers of the natural world. In contrast, the covenantal realm is where humans encounter God, engage in moral deliberation and seek existential meaning. Here, experiences are deeply personal, transcending the empirical, and centered on a relationship with the Divine. Given this framework, Rabbi Soloveitchik saw science and religion as addressing different aspects of the human experience (Soloveitchik 1983). Science, as a manifestation of the utili­ tarian realm, seeks to answer questions about the natural world and its workings. It thrives

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on quantifiable data, reproducible experiments and objective truths. Religion, operating in the covenantal realm, grapples with issues of purpose, morality and the individual’s relationship with God. For Soloveitchik, these two realms, though distinct, were not inherently contradictory. Instead, they catered to different facets of human existence and inquiry. Rabbi Soloveitchik, with his extensive secular education, had a great respect for the scientific method and its achievements (Singer and Sokol 1982). He did not believe that scientific findings, even those seemingly in tension with biblical accounts, posed a genuine threat to religious belief. Instead, he posited that the Torah and science operate on different planes and address different questions. In his writings, Rabbi Soloveitchik often emphasized the idea that while science can provide answers to the ‘how’ of creation, it is the role of religion to address the ‘why.’ For him, religious truths were not contingent on empirical validation, nor were scientific truths meant to be read into religious texts. Each had its domain of authority, and while they could inform and enrich one another, they were not meant to supplant or contradict each other. Indeed, the beauty of this perspective lies in its reconciliation potential of some of the seeming tensions between the scientific and the religious. For Rabbi Soloveitchik, neither dimension negated the other. Science, with its objective methodologies and empirical rigor, offered truths about the material world and its functioning. Religion, on the other hand, provided a framework for engaging with the deeper existential mysteries, offering a sense of purpose and anchoring morality. Furthermore, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s approach showcased the fluidity with which an individual might move between these archetypes. A scientist, in her laboratory, might dissect the intricacies of the physical world. Yet, the same scientist, when pondering the vastness of the universe or the intricacies of life, might feel a great sense of awe and wonder that transcends empirical understanding. For such reasons, perhaps, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s ideas were easy to align with evolution (Soloveitchik 2005; Feit 2006; Pear 2018). Evolution, as a challenge of the modern era, has elicited varied responses from prominent Jewish scholars. Rabbi Miller viewed it with skepticism, leaning toward divine design (perhaps even anticipating intelligent design). Rabbi Slifkin sought harmony between the Torah and evolutionary theory, interpreting the Genesis narrative as epochs rather than literal days. Rabbi Soloveitchik, meanwhile, distinguished between the realms of science and religion, emphasizing their distinct purposes. Together, these responses illustrate how even today scholars continue wrestling creatively with the scientific challenges of the day.

19.6 Conclusion The historical engagement of Judaism with science showcases its dynamism and the depth of its intellectual tradition. Throughout different periods, we observe a nuanced entanglement between faith and reason, highlighting the intricate layers within Jewish thought. This relationship underscores Judaism’s adaptive nature, revealing a religion that isn’t wedded to a singular perspective but appreciates diverse viewpoints. The willingness to engage with the evolving scientific landscape, while maintaining core religious tenets, speaks to a community that balances intellectual exploration with spiritual authenticity. Judaism exemplifies a faith both open to external insights and grounded in its rich traditions, with its scholars earnestly trying to determine the balance between the two. In envisioning the future of Judaism and science, I will part with the thoughtful words of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (d. 2020): Religion and science, the heritages respectively of Jerusalem and Athens, … must now join together to protect the world that has been entrusted to our safekeeping, honoring 246

Judaism and Science

our covenant with nature and nature’s God –​the God who is the music beneath the noise; the Being a the heart of being, whose still small voice we can still hear if we can learn to create a silence in the soul; the God who, whether or not we have faith in him, never loses in faith in us. (Sacks 2011: 291)

Notes 1 However, it is important to keep in mind that there is a Rabbinical tradition that interprets tzara’at as a spiritual malady (Shoham-​Steiner 2009: 100–​4). 2 Much like Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides argues that using only logical reasoning to prove whether the universe was created or has always existed is an unachievable endeavor. While Maimonides expresses his belief in a created universe, he acknowledges that one can only slightly tip the scales in favor of this perspective given scriptural inferences (Seeskin 2023). 3 It should be noted that the exact nature of their Jewish identities has been contended (Gresser 1991; Geller 2006; Gimbel 2012).

Related Topics: Medieval Jewish Philosophy; Early Modern Jewish Philosophy

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Samuel Lebens, Erkki V. R. Kojonen, Paul Williams and Rezart Beka for reading the first draft and offering excellent comments that improved the chapter. Moreover, I would like to give my sincere thanks to Daniel Rynhold and Tyron Goldschmidt for inviting me to participate in this project; it has been incredibly edifying.

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