Can Judaism Survive the Twentieth Century? Jacob Neumer he twentieth century, until practically our own time, has produced no important and in?uential Judaic systems. The well-established Judaisms that ?ourish today?Reform, Reconstructionist, Ortho- dox, and Conservative Judaism?all took shape in the nineteenth century, and in Germany. Secular Jewish so- cialism and Zionism also arose in the nineteenth century. How is it possible that one period produced a range of Judaic systems of enormous depth and breadth, systems that attracted mass support and changed many people?s lives, while the next three-quarters of a century did not? And, further, what are we now to expect, on the eve of the twenty-?rst century? I think we are on the threshold of another great age of system-building in Judaism. WHY No NEW JUDAIC SYSTEMS FOR SEVENTY-FIVE Why no new Judaisms for so long? The Stimulus for system?building surely should have come from the creation of the first Jewish state in two thousand years. Yet the creation of this State yielded nothing more interesting than a ?ag and a rather domestic politics, not a worldview and a way of life such as the one the founders of the American republic, Madison and Hamilton, enunciated. American Jewry presents the same picture. War and dislocation, migration and relocation?in the past these phenomena generated and sustained system-building in Jewish societies. But the political changes affecting Jews in America, who became Jewish Americans in ways that Jews did not become Jewish Germans or Jewish Frenchmen or Jewish Englishmen and women, have yielded no encompassing systems. Millions of people moved from one world to another, changed their language, their occupation, and virtually every other signi?cant social and cultural aspect of their lives?and produced nothing more than a set of recapitulations of four Judaic systems, serviceable under utterly different circumstances. I see three reasons why no Judaic systems have emerged since the end of the nineteenth century. I do Jacob Neumer z's Member of The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and University Professor at Brown University. 38 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4 not claim that they provide all-encompassing explana? tions, but I do think they help us answer the question before us. (1) The Holocaust. First of all, the demographic reason, which has two components. The most produc- tive sector of world Jewry perished. Also, the conditions that brought about the great systemic creations vanished with the six million. Not only too many (one is too many!), but the wrong Jews died. What I mean is that Judaic systems emerged in Europe, not in America or in what was then Palestine; and, within Europe, these systems came from Central and Eastern European Jewry. The Jewish population in Eastern Europe was vast. It engaged in enormous amounts of learning; and what?s more, it formed a self-aware community?not scattered and individual, but composed and bonded. In short, for the Jews that perished, being Jewish constituted a collective enterprise, not an individual predilection. In the West, people tend to identify religion with belief, to the near exclusion of behavior, so religion is understood as a personal state of mind. Jews in the West tend to be concerned more with self than with society, less with culture and community than with conscience and character. Under such circumstances, system?building doesn?t flourish, for systems speak of communities and create worlds of meaning, answer pressing public questions and produce broad answers. Yet the demographic explanation cannot, by itself, suf?ce. After all, today?s Jewish populations produce massive communities, 300,000 here, half a million there. Both American Judaism and Israeli nationalism testify to the possibility of system-building even after the mass murder of European Jewry. When we consider, moreover, the strikingly unproductive character of large popula- tions of Jews, the inert and passive ideology (such as it is) of the Jewish communities in France, Britain, South Africa, and the Soviet Union, for instance, it becomes clear that even where there are populations capable of generating and sustaining distinctive Judaic systems, none is in sight. So we must turn to yet another explanation. (2) The Demise of Intellect. The as-yet-unappreciated factor of sheer ignorance, the profound pathos of Jews? illiteracy in all books but the books of the streets and marketplaces, is a second explanation for the decline of Jewish system-building. The Judaisms that survive focus on emotional or political concerns?readily available to all. They offer nothing of taste and judgment, intellect and re?ection; nothing of tradition and traditional cul- ture; nothing of the worlds in which words matter. The systems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made constant reference to the Judaism of the Torah, even when rejecting it. Jews received and used the heritage of human experience, captured as in amber, in the words of the Torah. So they did not have to make things up afresh every morning or rely only on that narrow range of human experience that is immediately accessible. By contrast, Israeli nationalism and the American Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption?the two most in?uential systems that move Jews to action in the world today?scarcely concern themselves with this traditional focus. They emphasize only what is near at hand. They work with the raw materials made available by contem- porary experience?emotions on the one hand, politics on the other. Access to realms beyond requires learning in literature; but the Judaic systems of the twentieth century do not regard the reading of books as a principal part of the Jewish way of life. The consequence is a strikingly abbreviated agenda of issues, a remarkably one-dimensional set of urgent questions. The reason for this neglect is that today?s Jews, espe- cially in Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States, but also in Canada, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and other areas, have lost all access to the Judaism of the dual Torah, oral and written, that sustained ?fteen centuries of Jews before now. Jews in the European, African, and Australian worlds no longer regard ?being Jewish? as a matter of intellect, and, to the extent that they have a Jewish worldview, it has little connection to the Judaic canon. American Jews speci?cally have focused their imagina- tive energies upon the Holocaust, and they have centered their eschatological fantasies on ?the beginning of our redemption? in the State of Israel. But they have not gone through the one, nor have they chosen to participate in the other. Not having lived through the mass murder of European Jewry, American Jews have restated the problem of evil in unanswerable form and have then transformed that problem into an obsession. Not choos- ing to settle in the State of Israel, they have de?ned redemption?the resolution of the problem of evil?in terms remote from their world. In short, American Judaism is plagued by focusing on a world in which its members do not live. (3) 7796 Triumph of Large-Scale Organization. Third and distinct from the other two factors is the bureaucratiza- tion of Jewry that has resulted from its emphasis on immediately accessible political and emotional concerns. Jews who place little value on matters of intellect and learning are placed in organizational positions of power, while those more re?ective Jews are given little in?u- ence. This stratification prevents system-building be- cause intellectuals are the people who create religious systems. Administrators do not, and when they need ideas they simply hire publicists and journalists who churn out propaganda. This emphasis on bureaucrats is hardly surprising. In an age in which, to survive at all, Jews had to address the issues of politics and economics, and build a state (in Israel) and a massive and effective set of organizations capable of collective political action (in the United States), politicians, not sages, were needed. And though these politicians did their task as well as one might have hoped, we should not lose sight of the cost. The end of the remarkable age of Judaic system-building may prove to be a more calamitous consequence of the destruction of European Jewry than anyone has yet realized. Not just Jews, but the Jewish spirit as well, may have suffocated in the gas chambers. THE END OF THE JUDAISMS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY mong the six great Judaisms of the ?rst third of the twentieth century, all have lost nerve and none retains vitality. Jewish Socialism-cum- Yiddishism is a victim of the Holocaust. Zionism has no important message that is not already available from the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption. Reform, Reconstructionist, Orthodox, and Conservative Judaisms have all lost power. Reform Judaism, having sold its soul to the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption, has lost the source of its energy in the prophetic tradition of Judaism. Western Orthodox Judaism answers questions about living by the Torah in modern society that few people wish to ask anymore. Those who want tradition and also a place in an open society ?nd the answer in a variety of Judaisms. The diverse Orthodoxies now concur, with the exception of the minority around Yeshiva University, that to be Orthodox is to live segregated from and with scarcely veiled hostility to the rest of the Jewish and gentile worlds. Accordingly, everyone wants a place in the center, everyone espouses the ideal that we now identify with Conservative Judaism: that we wish to be Jewish in an integrated society and that we want our Judaism to infuse our lives as Americans with meaning. It is a mediating, healing, centrist, and moderate ideal; an ideal that teaches us to look to the Judaic religious tradition for guidance but to make up our own minds, to live by something we call Judaism but to accept the possibility of change where appropriate, necessary, or desirable. The institutions of Conservative Judaism, however, are weak. They do not enjoy the financial support of CAN JUDAISM 39 Jewish laypeople, and much of the Conservative rab? binate is alienated from the-movement?s central insti- tution, The Jewish Theological Seminary. In fairness, however, the younger generation of Conservative rabbis is starting to overcome this alienation. What of Reform Judaism? If I had to choose two words to characterize the contemporary state of Reform Judaism, they would be sloth and envy. I call Reform Judaism slothful because it has become lazy about developing its own virtues and so deprives all Judaisms of its invaluable gifts and insights. I call it envious because it sees virtue in others and despises itself. The single greatest and most urgent idea in the Jewish world today is the one idea that Reform Judaism has made its own and developed for us all, and that is the idea that God loves all humanity, not only holy Israel. Yet the movement still regards itself as second-class and somehow less than a fully legitimate form of Judaism. By ?the movement? I do not mean a few theologians at Hebrew Union College who have set forth a solid and substantial rationale for Reform Judaism in both history (Michael A. Meyer) and theology (JakobJ. Petuchowski). I mean the vast number of pulpit rabbis and laypeople who see more observant Jews and think of themselves as somehow inferior, who meet more learned Jews and think less of themselves. Though leSS observance and less learning weaken Reform Judaism?s claim to Jewish authenticity, I think Reform Judaism has a message to offer allJews, including the most Orthodox of the Orthodox and the most nationalistic of the nationalists?one that is more im- portant than studying the Talmud or not eating lobster. Reform Judaism de?nes Judaism as a religion of respect and love for the other, as much as for the self. Reform Judaism teaches that God loves all people, emphasizes the parts of the Torah that deliver that message, and rejects bigotry and prejudice when practiced not only by gentiles but by Jews as well. he single most urgent moral crisis facing Jewish communities today is the Jews? hostility toward the other, the outsider. The novelist Norman Mailer, writing in the New York Times in language reminiscent of the prophetic tradition, stated what I conceive to be the great contribution of Reform Judaism to the life of Jewry everywhere: What made us great as a people is that we, of all ethnic groups, were the most concerned with the world?s problems. . . . We understood as no other people how the concerns of the world were our con- cerns. The welfare of all the people of the world came before our own welfare. . . . The imperative to survive at all costs left us smaller, greedier, narrower, 40 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4 preternaturally touchy and self-seeking. We entered the true and essentially hopeless world of the politics of self-interest; ?is this good for the Jews?? became, for all too many of us, all of our politics. Mailer concluded: ?The seed of any vital American future must still break through the century-old hard- pack of hate, contempt, corruption, guilt, odium, and horror. . . . I am tired of living in the miasma of our in- definable and ongoing national shame.? I find in Mailer?s comments that morally vital prophetic tradition that Reform Judaism?alone among contemporary Judaisms? espouses. All the worse that today Reform Judaism has lost its nerve. Just when Jewry needs what Reform Judaism has always stood for, the message is muf?ed. The single most urgent moral crisis facing Jervis/9 communities today is tlae Jews? hostility toward the other; the outsider Speaking to the Council of Reform and Liberal Rabbis in London last year, Israeli Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi said that there is a crisis in our relationship to the gentiles. In a stunning public statement, Harkabi raised the possibility that ?the Jewish religion that hitherto has bolstered Jewish existence may become detrimental to it.? Harkabi pointed to manifestations of hostility against gentiles, formerly repressed, but ascendant in the past decade. In the State of Israel, in particular, that hostility takes such forms as these: Chief Rabbi Mordekhai Eliahu forbade Jews in the State of Israel to sell apartments to gentiles; a former chief rabbi ruled that Jews must burn their copies of the New Testament; Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, a scholar who has received the Israel Prize in Judaic Studies, declared that a gentile should not be permitted to live in Jerusalem; and the body of a gentile woman who lived as a Jew without of?? cial conversion was disinterred from a Jewish cemetery. Explaining these and many other expressions of antigentile prejudice, Harkabi pointed out that these sentiments are not limited to the State of Israel, and he called for ?discarding those elements? of Judaism that instill or express hostility to outsiders. He said, ?Demon- strating to Orthodoxy that some of its rulings are liable to raise general opprobrium may facilitate the achieve- ment of a modus vivendi between it and the other streams in contemporary Judaism.? Where are we to ?nd the corpus of ideas concerning gentiles to counter these appalling actions and opinions of the pseudomessianic Orthodoxy of the State of Israel? I ?nd them, these days, mainly in Reform Judaism?a corps of rabbis bearing a moral concern and, more important, an intellectual system and structure that encourage the Jewish people to think of both itself and the other, to love not only itself but also the outsider. For this reason it is particularly tragic that the Reform movement has become lazy and envious, that it is inse- cure and accepting of views it should abhor. And what of Orthodoxy? If the Reform movement exhibits a failure of nerve, Orthodoxy displays a failure of intellect. It is not that the Orthodox are stupid or wrong or venalwmerely that their views are irrelevant to the great issues confronting today?s world. Except for Yeshiva University Orthodoxy, all of the Orthodox Judaisms of the day (the baredz'm, or ultra-Orthodox, in various guises) exhibit the same enormous incapacity to speak to the Jewish condition. This is not to suggest that the Orthodox are ignorant of the classical texts of Judaism or that they misrepresent their content. To the contrary, the representation of Torah-true Judaism by the baredz'm is SOund on nearly every point. Knowledgeable people can quote chapter and verse of talmudic writings in support of their posi- tion on all issues. And that is precisely why the policies and program of the baredz'm, and therefore of the Judaism of the dual Torah, offer no meaningful option for Jews today. We must ask whether the Torah in its received or authentic or accurate version, as the baredz'm represent it, can serve in the twenty-?rst century. I think it cannot. The Torah omits all systematic inquiry into the three critical matters of contemporary life: politics, economics, and science. Thus, any Judaism today that authentically realizes the Torah, oral and written, demands that Jews live only a partial life and that those Jews living in Israel dismantle the Jewish state. Jews living in the Diaspora, for their part, lacking a position on politics and eco- nomics and science, must simply retreat into ghettos, having no way to cope with the formative forces that shape the world today. The baredz'm want to make us all Amish, and the Jews are not going to agree, even though, right now, more than a few would like to walk out on the world as it is. The three most powerful and formative forces in all of human civilization today are democracy, capitalism, and science; and on these three subjects the authentic, classical Judaism, accurately represented by the baredz'm, either has nothing at all to say or says the wrong things. The baredz'm can make their extravagant claims on the rest of us only by being parasites: we do the politics, the economics, and the science so they can live their private lives off in a corner. If we are going to live in the twenty-first century, we require not only the Torah but also economics, politics, and science. World Jewry has no choice but to turn its back on the baredz'm. Would that God had made the OUTSTANDING, original art, upbeat, big: Israeli-Palestinian Peace Button, $2 each, 5 for 88. Also, information on particupatory poster pro'ects. Artists for Mideast Peace. itch Kamen, 144 Moody St, Waltham, MA 02154. (617) 891-4235. world so simple as the baredz?m think it is. So fond farewell to the fantasy that the authentic Torah of Sinai, as the framers of the Babylonian Talmud read it in the seventh century, is, or can ever be, the authentic Torah of the twenty-?rst century. We shall do and we shall hear, indeed: today. AND YET: TOMORROW ere the story to end with the creation of the new Judaisms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we would face an un- happy ending. But the advent of the twenty-?rst century marks the beginning of a new age of Judaic system- building. The vital signs are beginning to appear. I point to the formation of a distinctively Judaic politics, taking shape around Tz'kkun magazine, and another among the intellectuals of the right as well. These two intellectual perspectives present two of the three pre- requisites of a vital Judaism: a worldview and a way of life. Both of them join the everyday and the here-and- now to an ideal in which people can ?nd meaning in their life together. Whether these political Judaisms can take root in the social worlds of large numbers of Jews and thus constitute not merely theologies and life pat- terns but is, social entities?remains to be seen. Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Western Orthodox Judaisms, as well as Zionism and Jewish Socialism-Yiddishism, all formed not merely intellectual positions but social worlds. Their strength lay in transforming organizations into societies, so to speak. So far, Tzkkun and Commentary express more than a viewpoint but less than a broad social movement. I point further to the bavum movement, the renewal CAN JUDAISM 41 of Reconstructionism with Arthur Waskow and Arthur Green, the development of an accessible Judaic mysticism by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the development and framing of what we may call a feminist Judaism. Each of these extraordinarily vital religious formations gives promise of establishing a Judaism: a worldview, a way of life, realized within a social entity that calls itself (not necessarily exclusively) ?Israel.? All of these religious formations have identi?ed urgent questions and pre- sented answers that, to the framers, prove self-evidently valid. So I think the long period of no new Judaisms is coming to an end, thOugh it is much too soon to tell which Judaisms, in North America at least, will inherit the greater part of Jewry. The new Judaisms of the acutely contemporary age will succeed as we increasingly overcome the demographic and cultural catastrophe of the Holocaust. We have in 42 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4 North America a vast Jewish population increasingly capable of sustaining a variety of Judaisms,,and we are facing a renewal of Jewish intellectual life in a way that might have stirred envy in even the proudest Jews of Germany and Poland between the Wars. The possibility of the development of new Judaisms is helped by the decline of the power of the politi- cal and communal organizations that have dominated American Jewish life in the twentieth century. The corporate model for organized Jewry has shown its limitations. The decay of B?nai B?rith; the demise, on the local scene, of organizations such as the American Jewish Congress; the retreat of the Federations from the ideal of forming ?the organized Jewish community? and their transformation into mere fund-raising agencies? these are all indications of decreased organizational power. Jews no longer ?nd interesting aJudaic existence consisting of going to a meeting to talk about something happening somewhere else. Merely giving money, for instance, to help another Jew help a third Jew settle in the State of Israel has lost all credibility. People want hands-on engagement, and the corporate model affords the opposite. The rejection of the corporate model and the affirma- tion of the place of the individual at the center of activity now marks the mode of organization of every important new Judaism today. The Tz'kkun conference in New York City is an example of that fact. I see no clear counterpart in the political Judaism of the right, which seems to me to be fragmented in social circles such as those surrounding Commentary, the National Review, and Chronicles. Professors of Jewish origin in the new National Association of Scholars, for example, hardly form the c0unterpart to the social formation made visible at the Tz'kkun conference. In this regard the left has provided the right with a model. We no longer live in what Max Weber called a bureau- cratic ?iron cage,? and the ful?llment of our calling to be Israel comes only through our immediate and com? plete engagement with our highest spiritual and cultural values?whatever our Judaism tells us these are. We have, in other words, survived the twentieth century. El