The Fence and the Neighbor: Emmanuel Levinas, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Israel among the Nations

WORKS CONSULTED

EPILOGUE The Present of "Future Jewish Thought" Let me object, at the outset, to any attempt to explain anyone's views by where he comes from or who he is. I object as well to any attempt to distinguish between those who come from a milieu shaped by Western culture and others whose cultural and spiritual origins lie in Eastern Europe. I, too, belong to the Western world, although, geographically speaking, I come from the East. Maimonidean anthropology, with its emphasis upon man's individuality , is at least partially a product of the historic situation of Jewry in exile, a community divested of independent social functions and deprived of civic roles and obligations. - Yeshayahu Leibowitz Perhaps I am not Jew enough and too much ofa Germanic intellectual, full of reverence for the heroes of late Greece and their modern heirs. Perhaps the love for a motherly tradition in which one can feel at home prevents me from a more courageous exodus. It seems, however, worthwhile to meditate on what unites us with the heritage of our Greeceinspired modernity and to plunder it as much as we can before we leave it behind-before we are renewed by the arid sufferings of a desert. -Adriaan Peperzak The problem of Judaism is the problem of opening a way to Judaism that will show it to those who being blinded are now outside. I speak of those who, unlike the wicked men of Sodom, are knocking at the gate and seeking to enter; and even those who are not yet seeking entrance. An Aggadah promises the reconstruction of a Jerusalem in its glory, a reconstruction by the very means which were used to destroy it, precisely through fire, become protector. But where is the glory of His presence among us, if not in the transfiguration of consuming and avenging fire into a protective wall, into a defensive barrier. -Emmanuel Levinas 169 170 THE FENCE AND THE NEIGHBOR Rabbi Yochanan said, A man's feet are responsible for him; they take him to the place where he is wanted. i10'l1 i10'l~ cnpm Cl1P~~ Cl1P~ 1:1r-'; i110n :11 '~!l rm~ r m1 rm~ ';m1 ';1:m~ ';1:1'1 ';1:1m i10'l1 i10'lr- -Tractate Sukkah 53a Rav Hisda said, we learn place from place, and place from {light; flight from {light, and {light from border; border from border, and border from beyond; and beyond from beyond. Eruvin 51a, [elucidating Ex. 16:29 (Shabbat boundaries) with reference to Ex. 21:13 and Num. 35:26 (cities of refuge) and Num. 35:5 (Levite cities)] My heart is the East though I am in the uttermost West. - Yehudah Halevi Yehudah Halevi wrote, "In the East is my heart, and I dwell at the end of the West." That's Jewish travel, that's the Jewish game of hearts between east and west, between self and heart, to and fro, to without fro, fro without to, Fugitive and vagabond without sin. - Yehudah Amichai Epilogue 171 FROM PROPER NAME TO PLACE NAME Since in one respect this has been a study in proper names (some more familiar than others), a conclusion seems an appropriate place to recall the dramatis personae that have figured prominently in the foregoing pages. Emil Fackenheim, Emmanuel Levinas, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, R. Joseph Soloveitchik, R. Aharon Lichstenstein, Halevi, Hayyim Volozhiner Maimonides, David Hartman, Stanley Cavell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Immanuel Kant. To all except the last (recalling that Wittgenstein converted) can one apply the sobriquet, "Jewish philosopher "; if we are to follow Levinas's lead, the Sages of the Oral Law, or Doctors of the Talmud as he typically calls them, deserve the appellation as wei!.! In Noms propres, Levinas asks, "The proper names in the middle of all those common names and common-places-do they not help us speak" (4)?2 Inasmuch as my stated task in this book has been to provide a voice for two Jewish philosophers for whom Judaism and philosophy do not neatly coincide, the answer is, yes. But maybe the names have merely eased the problem of the role in each case, as though the proper name validates, fills in, bears out, the title. Does a more insistent problem inhere in the relationship between Judaism and philosophy, or within modern Judaism and modern philosophy themselves?' I cannot lay claim to the kind of thoroughgoing answer such a question really demands, and can only proffer...