Rambam is NOT the solution

Review: Shalom Sadik,  Keriah le’techiyah shel Hafilosofia Hadatit (Hebrew). 

Dr. Shalom Sadik is an accomplished and well known philosopher. He teaches at Ben Gurion University and has published an impressive array of philosophical essays and tomes. Recently, however, he published a book in Hebrew with more of a popularist orientation, on the subject of Jewish philosophy: “A Call For The Revival of Religious Philosophy.” 

The book aims to promote a rather audacious idea that is both far-fetched and misguided. 

In order to understand the idea, we need to back up a little bit and say a few words about his own religious beliefs. 

Dr. Sadik is a hard-core Rambamist, believing that Maimonidean theology is the only correct one. 

That in itself, however, would not have been that noteworthy. There are many like him, people who live their religious lives in full accordance with Maimonidean theology to the exclusion of any of the classical alternatives. 

What makes Dr. Sadik unique is that he espouses a very “radical” (his own words) interpretation of Rambam’s theology. His interpretation of Maimonidean theology is one in which most if not all classical Jewish credal tenets like Mattan Torah, nevuah, and reward and punishment are negated. Classical Jewish metaphysics, he believes, is a mere illusion. There is no real God in the classical sense, ergo Mattan Torah could not have been a “real” event – since there is no one “there” to have given the Torah. Nor, for that matter, is the premise of prophecy a metaphysical reality. Prophecy is the act of communing with God, but if there is no classical God, there is no one for the prophets to commune with. Similarly, the “problem” of evil (“How does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”), which according to tradition has plagued almost every thinker in our tradition – including Moshe Rabbeinu – is no longer a challenge: If a classical God who has agency does not  exist, no entity can be taken to task for the evil in our world.

This philosophical premise leads him to propagate a wild idea. 

Dr. Sadik believes that if it were more widely “known” (that is, according to his beliefs) that Judaism is a system of behaviors bereft of any credal demands, it would be much more popular. In his mind, the reason for secular Jews’ refusal to practice traditional Judaism is that they cannot embrace the supposed credal demands. If they were told that their assumption is incorrect, that in fact Judaism is merely a system of practices but makes no theological demands whatsoever, they would flock to Judaism en masse. 

Finally, one more important aspect of Dr. Sadik’s book is as follows: As a byproduct of his aggressive embrace of “radical” Maimonideanism, he bashes other Jewish belief systems. Every other approach is knocked and negated, and Judaism’s mystical tradition comes in for a massive drubbing. Over and over again he dubs it “idolatrous” because in his eyes it is no different from classical avodah zara.

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While there is much that is problematic about this book, for me, personally, that last aspect is the most egregious. 

There is no disputing that most of classical Judaism considers his beliefs unadulterated heresy. To deny the existence of an actual living God, dismiss the realism of Mattan Torah, and  negate the existence of prophecy is considered kefira. Therefore, to file his thesis under the rubric of classical Jewish theology is incorrect. It reflects the view of only SOME of Rambam’s interpreters, championed by a small cadre of medieval Jewish philosophers, none of whom are members of the Rishonic pantheon. The rest of Jewish tradition has vehemently rejected such a theology. 

And, as mentioned, all this is in service of the main purpose of this book. These arguments are the building blocks of Dr. Sadik’s fanciful sociological thesis about bringing the masses back into the fold of observance. The promotion of a Judaism whose philosophical foundation is radical Maimonideanisim (i.e., religious subservience minus any theological foundation) will not generate massive rejection of secularism in exchange for punctilious observance.

To believe so is rather naive. 

But …

If those were the only problems with the book, החרשתי, I would have remained silent. It is not my responsibility to compel someone to accept the correct beliefs, especially when it is plausible that his “radical” understanding of Rambam’s theology is perhaps correct. One can make a compelling case that Maimonides indeed was a “naturalist” and didn’t believe in the basic Jewish tenets of Mattan Torah, prophecy, reward and punishment, and the like as they are classically understood. It is shocking, troublesome, but certainly not implausible. In fact, it is a claim that precedes Dr. Sadik, suggested by some of the prominent medieval interpreters of Rambam’s theology. 

These are all things Professor Sadik can choose to address or ignore. 

The one aspect mentioned above that I can’t ignore is his incessant bashing of Jewish mysticism and his repeated insults to its adherents. He characterizes Judaism’s mystical tradition as avodah zarah, and labels its adherents idolaters. That is inexcusable personally and misguided professionally. As a caring human being I cannot ignore it, and as a teacher of Judaics for more than 25 years I cannot let it pass. It is an insult to all that I hold dear emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.

Personally: Those people he calls idolaters are my family, teachers, and forebears. It is also a belief held by an overwhelming number of Achronim, Rishonim, many voices within the Talmud and the Mishnah, and perhaps going back all the way to the Bible.  There is no denying that a simple read of biblical theology is inclined toward the mystical. 

In addition to the sociological and historical shortsightedness, Professor Sadik overlooks a basic premise of Jewish mysticism. As many scholars have pointed out, mystical belief is comprised of two components, the theosophic (its theology) and the theurgic (the notion that humans have the power and ability to “urge” God and impact God’s actions). Dr. Sadik pays no heed to this division; he conflates the two, assuming that anyone who embraces mysticism’s theosophy is also an adherent of mystical theurgy, when in fact that is not the case at all. A more nuanced articulation of Jewish mysticism would have resulted in a less dismissive attitude toward so many. 

Professionally: In my more than quarter-century of teaching and helping hundreds of students navigate the treacherous journey of spiritual self-understanding, my experience has taught me the exact opposite. Jewish philosophy is long past its 13th-century heyday. Its appeal peaked toward the end of the medieval period/beginning of the modern era. Nowadays, very few people find the philosophical approach compelling; it does not resonate anymore. A sophisticated articulation of our mystical tradition has taken its place. It has the potential to achieve the goals Dr. Sadik set for himself: to make Judaism appealing to the modern seeker. 

While I have elaborated on this postulate in the past, in the confines of this review I will just briefly lay out the arguments in support of my counterpoint: that mysticism in its Chassidic iteration, not “radical philosophy,” holds tremendous promise for the contemporary thinker who struggles to reconcile classical beliefs with our modern convictions. Its theology is the one perfectly situated to offer meaning and spirituality to the contemporary modern seeker. In fact, I feel strongly that it is our only hope. Chassidut today is not a luxury, it is a necessity. If the Torah-u’Madda project is to succeed, Chassidut needs to become an integral part of its curriculum.

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Chassidut is, of course, a vast discipline. For our current purposes, here are three aspects of Chassidic theology that stand out as particularly suited for the goal Dr. Sadik set for himself: to make classical Judaism appealing to a broader audience.

1) Truth. We live in a postmodern world where objective truth is rejected and absolute claims are frowned upon. As a result, rationalism (in the general and colloquial sense) as a source for emunah increasingly speaks to fewer people. It, therefore, behooves us to come up with alternative models. Chassidut could very well be that alternative model. Its nomenclature shares many of postmodernism’s modes of discourse.

Facts and empirical truth are not Chassidut’s primary currency. While it does a priori accept the biblical theological faith statements, its goal is not to argue or prove the scientific veracity of the Bible’s claims. Chassidic theology has two main features. It is a-rational and a-historical. It is apathetic about Jewish historicity as a proactive theological stance. For Chassidim, the Torah is there to teach us how to live life and serve God; the narrative qua narrative (the origin story) is mere background music. The narration parts of the Torah are, therefore, not of much theological significance to them; they are a-historical.

However, during those rare occasions when they do pay attention to the biblical “stories,” their orientation is a-rational. They absolutely “believe” those stories, but their belief is internal: It is true because it happened in the Torah. That is where these events transpire and that is where these stories matter. Asking about their historicity is, as far as they are concerned, foolish and missing the point.

2) Spiritualization. As scholars have pointed out, Chassidic teachings contain elements of spiritual psychology. They provide us with a language that helps us infuse our lives with meaning. One can point to many examples where this psychological spiritualization occurs in Chassidut. I will mention two of them.

Everybody has a bad hair day sometimes, when we wake up feeling less than optimal. Chassidut has a term to describe that mood; it calls it mochen de’katnus. While in essence it means the same as a “bad hair day,” the language is mystical. Mochen de’katnus describes a less than stellar spiritual state, a low energy level that does not allow us to engage in the usual religious pursuits we crave.

Another example is Kabbalah’s elaborate taxonomy of love and awe: Kabbalah and Chassidut talks about superior and inferior love (ahavah ela’e’e and ahavah tata’a) or superior and inferior awe (yir’ah ela’e’e and yir’a tata’a). While these terms primarily describe nuanced stages in our engagement with the Divine, they traditionally have been imported into the colloquial arena. They are used to describe varied emotional states that we experience in our interactions with friends and loved ones.

Contemporary life does not provide us with that many opportunities for encountering the Divine in our daily lives. Chassidut allows us to bring God in. Sprinkling our conversations with mystical and Chassidic terminology allows us to infuse our daily routines, moods, and mundane pursuits with meaning and spiritual significance.

Besides enriching our personal encounters, adopting a Chassidic ethos could enhance our communal experiences.

3) Social Change. One of the most pressing tensions in the community is how to reconcile our values with our convictions, what to do when halakha points us in one direction and our contemporary values in another direction. We are tempted to follow our values but pulled to abide by our halakhic commitments. A proper resolution requires an emboldened stance toward tradition, one that allows us to cajole the tradition to reconcile itself with our modern sensibilities. [Using, of course, legitimate halakhic mechanisms developed by our predecessors when they were confronted with similar challenges.]

Our values are emboldened in this way because they derive their power from Chassidut. A Chassidic life is a spiritualized life, which infuses our values with powerful theological significance. It thereby allows us to aggressively challenge the tradition, to reevaluate its assumptions, and attempt to accommodate it – when halakhically possible – to a changed modern reality.

Chassidut is very explicit about the value of “azut de’kedusha,” holy chutzpah.  The following two quotes are often encountered in Chassidic writings: “Even a thief says a prayer before he breaks in to his victim’s home” (quoted on the margin of Brachot 63A, from the Frankfurt manuscript), and “An aggressive stance towards the Divine bears results” (Sanhedrin 105A). While the provenance of these texts is Talmudic, they take on significant prominence in Chassidic theology. They become the impetus for an aggressive theology, which is informed by a religiosity that sees itself driven by a Divine immanence that infuses our values and ethical intuitions with spiritual resonance, subsequently leading to radical societal change.

Such change is actually an integral part of Chassidic social history. When one looks at recent major changes in traditional Jewish society, it is hard not to notice that the forerunners were often Chassidim. The last sixty years have seen far-reaching social and political change.

The two most dramatic changes that have happened are that Jews are now sovereign and that women have made significant progress in their pursuit of religious equality. The pioneers of both these changes were driven, at least in part, by a Chassidic ethos.  R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was one of the first Orthodox scholars to champion female Talmud scholarship, while R. Avraham Yitzchak Kook, a serious student of Chassidut, was an outspoken early proponent of a Zionist state.

There is no doubt that their Chassidic worldview at least partially informed their proactive stances toward these changes. Their adherence to a spiritualized religiosity allowed them to explore new religious vistas. Their particular theological outlook changed the religious and legal equation for them, simultaneously making their decisions more complex and more progressive. Their spiritualized worldview allowed them to see divinity in the ostensibly secular state or the seemingly illegitimate request of women for unrestricted access to Jewish texts. .

Granted, this hybrid of Chassidic spiritualization and robust religious creativity would be a 21st-century concoction; traditionally, these two do not go together. Chassidism, for the most part, frowns on halakhic change and religious creativity. As a matter of fact, 19th-century Hungarian Chassidim were vociferously opposed to any accommodations to modernity. Further, the contemporary thinker is not going to intuitively embrace spiritualized non-rational thought. It is, nevertheless, a match pregnant with immense potential and could go a long way toward reviving a dormant Modern Orthodoxy.

To put more bluntly: the Chassidut that I am advocating is vastly different from that which a person encounters in Borough Park, Monsey, Bnei Berak, or Meah Shearim. 

The differences are many but primary among them are the following: 

1. As mentioned above, there are two aspects to Jewish Mysticism and Chassidut, the theosophic (the way they understand the nature of God and God’s relationship with the material word) and the theurgic (the premise that we urge or compel God to do certain things and behave in a particular manner). I am deeply invested in the former and have little interest in the later. 

1. The Chassidut I am promoting is purely internal and existential. It is  a way of thinking and a mode of being in this world. It makes zero external demands. One does not have to dress in a certain way, eat certain foods, or have one’s spiritual quest mediated by a “tzaddik” or “rebbe.” 

This is the version of Chassidut I am passionately  championing–for the spiritual well-being of our Jewish future. 

Contemporary Jewry is struggling; a significant number of Jews are abandoning Yiddishkeit, and many who stay no longer find it meaningful. Inertia has set in. 

I therefore strongly believe that a Chassidic theology combined with a sophisticated modern overlay could be the elixir for the dispassion and disinterest that ail our community. It will provide our community what it so desperately needs: a torat chaim ve’ahavat chesed – a Torah that stimulates our minds but at the same time also gladdens our neshamah. No reasonable person would really believe that an embrace of a “radical philosophy” whose observance is purely mechanical – bereft of any real intellectual, emotional, or spiritual substance – could accomplish any of the above.

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Returning to the book under review: All in all, Dr. Sadik’s book is courageous (he is willing to publicly proclaim his embrace of a “radical” Maimonidean theology) and audacious (he is not afraid to advocate for something he strongly believes, notwithstanding its farfetchedness), but regrettably, when it comes to addressing Jewish mysticism and its adherents, the book is misleading (by presenting a flawed and superficial version of classical mysticism), unnecessarily hurtful to thousands of Jews, אשר ישנו פה ואשר איננו פה, and most problematically, incorrect in its diagnosis of what ails the modern soul and what would be its proper elixir.