20th Century Jewish Religious Thought: Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs

Reason

Reason Eugene Borowitz F or Greek philosophers, reason itself authoritatively explained reality and mandated action. In that sovereign role (one that much of Western civilization accepted) reason has been both a problem and an opportunity for believing, thoughtful Jews. The biblical authors knew God had spoken to them and to their people . Having that certain source of knowledge, they acknowledged no other beside it. Perhaps biblical wisdom literature reflects a common-sense ethics and piety that one might reach without revelation; indeed, precisely its independent notion of wisdom has led scholars to suggest it manifests a Hellenic influence. The rabbis, who know something of Greek culture and philosophy, wipe out any trace of ambiguity in this matter. They insist on the ultimacy of Torah and the subordinate status of general wisdom. To be sure, rabbinic literature manifests the expliCit use of reason much more than does the Bible, but it operates in terms laid down by Torah. The "logic" of derash (homiletical interpretation) and of halakhic reasoning derives from the oral Torah, not from autonomous speculation. For classic Judaism, reason serves as a handmaiden to revelation. 750 REASON Jewish tradition took note of reason as a source of truth equivalent to or, in fact, superior to revelation only when Jews found philosophical claims so compelling they could not easily be ignored. The work of Philo of Alexandria (unknown to Jewish tradition until recent centuries) illustrates the problem so intriguingly that opinion remains divided concerning it. Does Philo's allegorization of Scripture merely reflect his intuition that Hellenistic thought and the Torah must contain the same truth? Or by vigorously employing an idealizing hermeneutic does he mean to replace biblical historical concreteness with Greek intellectual abstractions? Reason acquired an honored place in Judaism through the writings of the medieval Jewish philosophers. For about six centuries, a small elite, which occasionally gained a sizable following, acknowledged reason's claims upon them and therefore sought to situate it within Judaism. This shift of attitude partially arose from the success of Moslem philosophy in separating Greek philosophy from its idolatrous context and in arguing that it yielded the purest form of monotheism. Medieval Jewish philosophy may therefore be read as a series of variations on the dialectic between reason and revelation. MaiIllonides and Gersonides, who give reason preeminence, find their counterpoise in Judah Halevi and I:Iasdai Crescas, who exhibit equal cognitive competence but use it only to demonstrate the validity of revelation. Emancipation confronted Jews with an understanding of reason radically more secular than that of the Middle Ages. Nonetheless, most Jews found its claims irresistible. Moses Mendelssohn foreshadows much of the later problematic ofJewish thought in his pioneering effort to come to terms with modernity. The pre-Kantian rationality of his day established a truth precious to Mendelssohn: every rational person had the capacity to participate in society as an equal-and thus so did Jews. The universality of reason supplied the intellectual justification for emancipating the Jews~ hence, to deny the authority of reason implied validating discrimination. But if truth were universally available, why remain Jewish and, as Mendelssohn did, be disciplined by its mandates? Mendelssohn forthrightly answered that, as Christians surely admitted, history as well as reason yields religious truth. Esteeming reason, Judaism had a sublime openness to ideas and taste, but God had once given it a law (the written and oral Torahs as one) that remained forever binding upon it. A Jew could be fully modern in thought and style but live as God's revelation required. This compartmentalization of the self, as contemporary observers of Orthodoxy have termed a similar phenomenon, proved unacceptable to most of Mendelssohn's contemporaries. They sought greater integration of self than his philosophy supplied, and thus identified the issue that has REASON 751 remained at the center of modern Jewish thought: What integration of modern reason and Jewish tradition, if any, does justice to them both? fn time, the overwhelming majority of modern Jews found additional grounds for making reason the arbiter of their Judaism. Science explained so much more and so much better than did revelation that it discredited the latter. Practicality also played a major role. Modernizing Jews knew that the ghetto-shaped way of life they had inherited clashed with the ethical truths and aesthetic goods reason liberatingly indicated. Besides, nineteenth-century German idealism clarified what remained everlastingly valid in Judaism and what might be changed. It...