Several weeks ago, our Beit Midrash held a Shabbaton with the theme, "21st Century Shabbat: Ancient Roots, Modern Meaning". Afterward, someone approached me with a good question. While she praised the excellent presentations, she wondered why no one had cited Abraham Joshua Heschel.
She was right to wonder. Certainly, Heschel's The Sabbath was written to address the modern meaning of Shabbat. His ideas are deep, his writing is grand. So why wasn't he cited? I told her, "I think many don't know what to make of him."
I certainly did not mean this as an insult to Heschel; how could I judge anyone, let alone someone who wrote so meaningfully and about whom I know so little? I was simply describing a reality: Abraham Joshua Heschel's work generally does not appear in Orthodox yeshivot. Separate from his personal religious practices, he taught at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary, the chief ordaining bodies of the Reform and Conservative movements, and to many this means that holding him up as an authority would promote movements which are at odds with Orthodoxy on fundamental issuesof belief and law.
One could no more expect Orthodoxy to endorse JTS and HUC than one could expect Lakewood to endorse someone like me, who represents university education and Zionism, or expect me to endorse Neturei Karta, which represents virulent anti-Zionism.
But the reality is not as simple as "Teach at JTS/HUC and the yeshivot will exclude you."
Consider the case of Shaul Lieberman – erudite talmid chacham, writer of important works on Tosefta and Yerushalmi, among others. And he taught at JTS, and he authored the controversial "Lieberman clause" addendum to the ketubah. In some Israeli yeshivot he is studied, and some sefarim quote his work. With Shaul Lieberman, teaching at a non-Orthodox rabbinical seminary was not enough to put him beyond everyone's pale.
And then consider the case of Shlomo Carlebach – a reputed talmid chacham, although best known for his music, which is sung in Orthodox shuls and yeshivos. But he was also the founder of the "House of Love and Prayer" in San Francisco, and his well-established reputation includes behavior with women which is certainly prohibited by halachah and which some might include in the category of yeihareg v'al yaavor.
So why is much of the Orthodox establishment comfortable having Carlebach in, ambiguous on Lieberman, and negative on Heschel?
Is one "in" because he publishes classic Torah scholarship (Lieberman), or because he is endorsed by Orthodox leaders (Carlebach – and Lieberman, according to some stories), or because his sins are not viewed as undermining general Orthodoxy (Carlebach)?
Is one "out" because he supports non-Orthodox institutions (Lieberman, Heschel), because his published canon focusses on spirituality rather than traditional text (Heschel) or because he has a falling-out with an Orthodox leader (Lieberman)?
Is the decision based on the actions of the individual, or the individual's potential threat to the institution that is Orthodoxy?
The practices of exclusion are not that interesting to me, but the question of how people choose definitely interests me.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
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r' Heschel-theology-out
ReplyDeleter' lieberman-no one "more kosher" on tosefta so grudgingly use his work
r' carlebach-no one cares about anything but his music
one you left out - r'ybs-too brilliant to ignore so quote all his important stuff in his grandfathers's name until he is dead long enough that you can rewrite his bio to be more acceptable.
KT
Joel Rich
I believe if you truly learned about R. Heschel's background, practice and all his work (Torah Min Hashamayim) you will view him in not only an acceptable manner but in a neccessary one. Yes he wrote about spirituality, perhaps bringing one closer to G-d than anyone in the last few hundred years, but his work on Scholarship and Torah is also remarkable. You'll find today more and more "Orthodox" bringing Heschel's ideas into their message, afterall some are life changing. BTW, he got Smicha at 17 from the Agudah of Warsaw.
DeleteI think Heschel had a good idea to put Torah on a logical foundation. But there is a bit too much Hegel in it. I mean the first thing a person should learn when he learns the Gemara is how to tell the difference between speculation and a reasoned argument. For all Jewish thinkers this should have been enough to reject Hegel immediately. Anyone can speculate until today until Kingdom come. So what. What about a reasoned argument. There have been numerous attempts to do this since the Rambam but all of them fall flat.
ReplyDeleteI am getting the impression that no one can do any better than the rambam in this area.
I read a review of a book on Shabbat a while back which criticised the author of the book for not mentioning Heschel's The Sabbath. Not so surprising, except that the author of the review was Rabbi Harvey Belovski, one of the front-runners to be the next British Chief Rabbi, which did surprise me.
ReplyDeleteI suspect part of the answer to your question is the perceived threat to Orthodoxy, but also that where the criticism comes from the 'right' it is more likely to be accepted than when it comes from the 'left' as was, I believe, the case with R. Carlebach.
Can we assume that people make these practical judgments based on principles? If it's based on feelings, then one could understand why people treat a popular musician/composer differently.
ReplyDeleteIn that connection, it's interesting how some more recent Jewish musicians have come under Orthodox fire for this or that---maybe their work has seen less acceptance, making them easier to reject.
Bob-
DeleteIt certainly could be based on feelings, but I think even those, on a mass level, should be classifiable as principles.
In his Torah Min HaShamayim, he implied without actually stating that he rejects Torah MiSinai and takes a less literal approach (which he attributes to the school of R. Yishmael).
ReplyDeleteJust find this page - You could not be more wrong - As a minor proof (there are major ones) to his steadfast belief in Torah being from Heaven aside from the name - his statement "the only way to believe (accept) that Torah is from Heaven, is to get Heaven from Torah" and if you are at all read on his life, you know that Rabbi Dr. Prof. Heschel got and gave Heaven from Torah. Also, if you read TMH closely, any implication was merely presenting some points of views (not his) always countered with the conflicting point of view - always in this case either from the school I Yishmael or Akiva - which one of those would you say is not in the Torah MiHaSinai School?
DeleteI'm still thinking of an answer to your question, as the fact that Heschel's ideas on the Sabbath are not used (or at least not cited in his name) bothers me, as he is always speaking in defense of tradition. But your statement, "The practices of exclusion are not that interesting to me, but the question of how people choose definitely interests me" puzzles me. Isn't one dependent on the other?
ReplyDeleteYes, but I find the decision about whom to include much more interesting than the mechanisms employed for exclusion.
DeleteMy father kept Heschel's books on the same (top) shelf as Buber; he told me countless times about going to march with MLK with a bunch of friends from his class at YU and how they heckled Heschel for not wearing a kippah during the march...
ReplyDeleteConcerning Carlebach, there's a dispute concerning a teshuva from Rav Moshe that discusses using music from someone who "went off", in which Rav Moshe clarifies the practical difference between a mumar l'taiyavon and l'hachis in this context; the yeshivish guys always claimed the teshuva was about Carlebach...and then listened to him on their headphones.
1. Heschel - long hair, did not write seforim, associated with JTS and with non-Jewish causes, wrote theology, did not apparently seek to be associated with Orthodoxy; all enough to determine Haredi attitudes toward him.
ReplyDelete2. Lieberman - his scholarly work only accessible by, and of interest to, a tiny number of Orthodox; by defn any O person interested in Tosefta bound to be radical (!); therefore quiet tolerance (and see Marc Shapiro's monograph on 'Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox'). He was of no interest to the Haredi 'street'.
3. Shlomo Carlebach - as a previous commenter mentioned, his music conquered all.
Although major figures, they are hardly the only examples of profound contributors to traditional Jewish life in different ways who do not figure in Haredi or 'Orthodox establishment' (your phrase) appreciation. Isn't the answer simpler: all were non-conformists, and Orthodox life - I regret to say in almost all of its spectrum - in the last decades is a history of imposing conformity and excluding non-conformity. (In Israel the phenomenon of the 'non-recognised' is perhaps even more extreme,)
PJS-
DeleteAs I understand religious and ethnic life, it's normal for cliques to identify their own based on loyalty tests which exclude non-conformists who might not support the group in a time of need. It's a matter of sociology; see the work done by Rich Sosis on this.
I would actually be more surprised by a religious or ethnic group that embraced its non-conformists.
"who might not support the group in a time of need."
Delete== !!!!!! considering that the O institutions / individuals exist almost entirely on the backs of the same "non-conformists" - whether private (Diaspora) or Govt (Israel). And should our spiritual ife / society be run acc to the sociological norms????? Does the word "normal" really apply here?
I think you are being kind.
Or .. putting it another way -- should Torah be excuding or including?
DeleteAren't all membership-based systems excluding, by definition?
DeleteI am not an excluding person by nature, but I must admit that once we embrace a system in which membership is defined by loyalty to a creed, we automatically become exclusive.
A good friend, who does not want to be quoted, pointed out that something similar to what PJS said: Lieberman's work was not a philosophy of Judaism but commentaries to texts that could be easily disguised as "frum" books. Heschel wrote entire philosophies of Judaism that were very accessible and harder to disguise in the bookshelf.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Heschel while a Ben Torah was a Musmach of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums as well as receiving traditional smicha before he went to Gymnasia. With this type of background I can understand why the Frume Velt would be sceptical of his works despite his personal observance.
ReplyDelete