Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating its Future (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 609-612 David Hartman. Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating its Future. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. ?vi + 174. David Hartman looks at Israel and sees, at least among those Israelis who define themselves as Zionist, two main schools of thought. One sees the creation of the State of Israel as the opening scene in the divine drama of redemption. Everything that happens in Israel is read through a biblical lens and given world-historical, even metaphysical, significance. The other school of thought sees the creation of the State of Israel as, in effect, the closing scene in the long drama of Jewish history. Jews should become Israelis , and Israelis should be allowed to become a normal people like every other nation. Hartman's profound and profoundly moving book is an attempt to chart a middle ground, one which sees the creation of the State of Israel as being significant in Jewish religious but not necessarily messianic terms, and which proposes a form of Judaism which would allow Israelis to remain Jewish. In effect, there are two books here. In one book, consisting of chapters one and five, Hartman seeks to diagnose the spiritual angst of contemporary Israel and prescribe a remedy for it. Speaking as a person deeply sympathetic to Hartman's approach, I must say that I found these chapters ultimately disappointing, as I explain below. In the second book, consisting of chapters two, three, and four, Hartman presents a brilliant and penetrating analysis of the differing religious sensibilities of Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides. In these chapters, Hartman the scholar and Hartman the religious thinker come together to get to the very heart of the Jewish worldviews of Halevi and Maimonides, and then to seek to anchor Maimonides ' worldview in rabbinic texts. To summarize Hartman's thesis, Halevi 's Judaism is biblical and event-based, while Maimonides' Judaism is rabbinic and text-based. Followers of Halevi see the creation of the State of Israel as marking the end of galut history, when God's face was hidden, and as a reversion to biblical history, when God's presence erupts into history and dominates the stage of human affairs. Hartman urges Israelis to follow Maimonides, whose God remains largely outside of history, and who is best approached through study and practice. The creation of the State of Israel on this view becomes an opportunity for Jews to live lives of holiness in the social, and not just personal, sphere. Given the biblical idea that humans are created in the image of God, any Jewish theology must imply a Jewish anthropology, and any Jewish anthropology will have implications for theology. David Hartman does not make this point explicitly, but his two chapters comparing Halevi and Maimonides surely illustrate it. Halevi understands God's name, "I am that I am," 6 1 0 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW to mean "I will be present for you in the future as I have been present for you in the past" (p. 37) while Maimonides understands it to mean that God is the single unique being whose existence is not contingent upon anything. Halevi's definition emphasizes God's connectedness to (Jewish) history while Maimonides emphasizes God's absolute self-sufficiency and independence from history. In effect, Halevi and Maimonides each emphasize a different part of Exod 20:2, "I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt." For Maimonides the important part of the verse is the first half; for Halevi, the second. David Hartman shows that this theological disagreement leads to anthropological disagreements. Halevi must draw a sharp distinction between the natural and spiritual side of human beings, and in consequence, he must draw a sharp distinction between Jews and gentiles. For him, the controlling idea shaping his spiritual universe is drawn from Jewish history. Since Jews are the truest examples of humanity (beings created in the image of God), one must understand the nature of Judaism in order to understand human nature. Thus, the commandments of Judaism are characterized by their radical singularity and it is only...