Can Judaism Be Saved
Arthur Green, Can Judaism Be Saved: Its Future After Gaza (Teaneck, NJ: Ben Yehuda Press, 2025) pp. 139.
It seems that the Israeli election will be the moment for a reckoning for the pogroms of October 7th, the events of October 8th – – the eruption of anti-Israel and antisemitic protests that began before Israel had even responded in Gaza – and the Gaza war.
Much consideration has been given to the rise of antisemitism. It surely has come to dominate the agenda of Jewish organizations in the diaspora and in Israel and the conversations around the Shabbat table and between friends in synagogues and places where Jews gather. It is an urgent concern in universities and among scholars.
The question of the political implications of Gaza and its aftermath is of international concern. The relationship of diaspora Jews toward the State of Israel and especially its government is discussed in fora large and small and in families between the generations even dividing husbands and wives, parents and children. Much less consideration is given to the implications for Judaism of what has just befell the Jewish people and what Jews have said and done.
That is what makes Arthur Green’s work so important.
Green is a unique figure, a scholar of towering reputation, his studies of Hasidism and his theological works are widely read and even more widely respected. His scholarly work, now routinely published in Hebrew as well as English, has gained an important following in Israel among the non-rigidly Orthodox and religious seekers who are searching for an alternative to the current posture of Israeli and American Judaism.
But Green is more than a scholar. Twice, he left the comfort of distinguished academic institutions – the University of Pennsylvania and Brandeis – to lead liberal Rabbinical seminaries – RRC, it is pre anti-Zionist phase, and Boston Hebrew College – believing that if liberal Jews had differently trained rabbis, they could attract liberal Jews to Judaism, An activist even in his youth, he was the founder almost sixty years ago of Havurat Shalom, a pioneering religious institution that gave Jews of the late sixties a model of a serious religious community and which gave roots and wings to men and women who made significant contributions to Jewish life in academia, the rabbinate, in literature, the arts and philosophy. He is the leading voice of Neo-Hasidism today writing for a general audience, mentoring his would-be successors and training a new generation who are at home not only in Jewish spiritual texts but in Jewish spiritual life.
In this slim volume written in the anguish of the past two years, Green grapples with the question can Judaism survive and thrive, if the face of religious Judaism is the Kahanist racism of Itamar Ben Gvir and false messianism of Bezalel Smotrich, leading and powerful extremist voices in the Israeli government, and if the only alternative face of Judaism are the Haredim, who not only want to separate from the non-Jewish world, but from the rest Israeli Jews – including the modern Orthodox who serve in the IDF and whose anger at that community is most intense precisely over the Haredi resistance to IDF service.
Green is both a religious Jews and a superb historian of Judaism so before he addresses the current crisis, he invites the reader to join him in a concise but brilliant sojourn in Jewish intellectual history, starting with the Biblical legacy traversing the Talmud, medieval mysticism and rationalism, Kabbalah and Hasidism before confronting the circumstances and the conflicting struggle of modern Jews. His survey of Jewish religious history is essential to establishing the legitimacy, the rootedness, and the integrity of a Jewish tradition that while adhering to Jewish particularism, demands respect and reverence for all of God’s creation.
Green explores the tension between particularism and universalism in Jewish tradition. He is most comfortable living in the dialectic, in the creative tension. He contrast Psalm 136 the great Hallel with Psalm 145 recited three times a day – twice in the morning and once at Mincha – Ashrei He juxtaposes the teachings of Rabbi Akivah “love thy neighbor as thyself” with his companion in PARDES Ben Azai who says that the essence of the Torah is “on the day God created humans he made them in the divine image male and female,” God created man and woman, not merely Jews.
He engages the classical Rabbinic text that” Why was man created as one? In order to teach you that whoever destroys one person destroys and entire world, and whoever sustains one person sustains an entire world,” And the corollary so that no one can say that my father was greater than your father.
Critical scholar that he is, one must consult a footnote to understand how later manuscripts amend the text to whoever sustains one soul in Israel – meaning only Jews, sustains the world entire.
He omits the Midrash that many of us add to the traditional Haggadah after the authors get carried away increasing the plagues on Egypt from 10 to 50, from 50 to 200 and on to 250. that when the Angeles in heaven wanted to join the Israelites Song of the Sea, God silenced them: “the work of my hands is drowning at the Sea, how can you sing a song?” However necessary one cannot fully celebrate because the enemy was also created by God, in the Divine Image.
He traces the same tension between an exclusive focus on the Jews and the universal commitment to humanity because all are created in the image of God through the liturgical piyyutim and Kabballah on to the teachings of Hasidic masters. Green in comfortable living in that tension but vehement that Judaism is misrepresented by engaging in the one extreme.
He is non-apologetic conceding however much his wishes that the extremist views were not present in tradition, they are, but they must be countered by the other elements f Jewish tradition that embraces our common humanity and that recognizes the “other” is also of significance.
When he engages the modern world, he also seeks balance. Not all good ideas come from Judaism, perhaps not all ideas in Judaism are good, but Jews have learned how to adapt and Judaize much of what we have absorbed from the outside world. So while the origin of democracy can be traced to Greek thought, it can be and must be embraced by Jews. Israel must be not a Jewish and democratic state but a democratic Jewish state. And Green will leave it to others to determine how to protect democracy, his interest is protecting Judaism from its extremist representations and its pietistic withdrawal.
Bavel and Jerusalem were historically two great centers of Jewish life that remained in dialogue with each other, that learned from each other, the engaged each other, that enhanced each other. So too America and Israel And while pilgrimages to Israel by diaspora Jews are an important part of their quest for a Jewish identity, the exposure of Israelis to American Jews and American Judaism would be of enormous benefit to the Jewish character of Israel and the face of its religiosity. He rejects those who believe that Israel and Israelis are the drama of Jewish history and diaspora Jews merely the audience that must applaud.
Though comfortably progressive, Green who was born in 1941 and ordained literally on the eve of the Six Day War, embraces the necessity of Israel haven and homeland, cultural center and a vital part of the Jewish future. Precisely because he is deeply critical – politically, religiously and morally not only of Israel’s government and but of all those who regard the lives of its neighbors as expendable, he has the authority and the stature to challenge fellow progressive to understand the importance of Israel.
He is not alone in his fear that xenophobia and exclusivism seem to have overridden a common love of humanity. One yearns for the days when even an Israeli hawk such as Golda Meir could say. “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
No slim volume can offer a solution, but after reading Green one must face the question, And the question should be a centerpiece of returning from the abyss after October 7th. What kind of Judaism do we want to have? The answer is ours to create.
