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

Judaism

Judaislll Gershom Scholem J udaism cannot be defined according to its essence, since it has no essence. Judaism cannot therefore be regarded as a closed historical phenomenon whose development and essence came into focus by a finite sequence of historical, philosophical, doctrinal , or dogmatic judgments and statements. Judaism is rather a living entity which for some reason has survived as the religion of a chosen people . Indeed, for such a people to have endured for three thousand years as a recognizable entity, a phenomenal fact for which nobody has any truly sufficient explanation, is itself an enigma. The continued survival of the Jewish people seems to suggest that the Jews have in fact been chosen by someone for something. The enigma of Jewish survival has intrigued generations. Why are the Jews there? What are they up to? Who are they? Are they simply a "fossil," as Arnold Toynbee opined? If not, what are they? Judaism, however, cannot be defined by or with any authority, or in any clear way, simply because it is a living entity, having transformed itself at various stages in its history and having made real choices, discarding many 506 JUDAISM phenomena that at one time were very much alive in the Jewish world. And having discarded these phenomena, Judaism bequeathes to us the question of whether that which was historically discarded is also to be discarded by present-day Jews or by the future Jew who wishes to identify himself with the past, present, and future of his people. If Judaism cannot be defined in any dogmatic way, then we may not assume that it possesses any a priori qualities that are intrinsic to it or might emerge in it; indeed, as an enduring and evolving historic force, Judaism undergoes continuous transformations. Nevertheless, although Judaism is manifestly a dynamic, historical phenomenon, it has evolved under the shadow, so to speak, of a great idea, namely, monotheism-the idea of one unique God, the creator of the universe. Yet, it is clearly impermissible to understand this idea in such a manner that whatever follows or does not follow from it must necessarily be referred to the halakhah. To be sure, the halakhah is certainly an overwhelmingly important aspect of Judaism as a historical phenomenon, but it is not at all identical with the phenomenon of Judaism per see Judaism has taken on many varied forms, and to think of it as only a legislative body of precepts seems to me as a historian and as a historian of ideas to be utter nonsense. If I say that Judaism has no essence, this means two things. First, I do not accept as valid the all-embracing, Orthodox, or what I prefer to call fundamentalist definition of Judaism as a given law in which there are no differences between essential and unessential points-which, of course, is the point of view of strictly Orthodox halakhic Jews. Neither am I a partisan of the school that defines the "essence" of Judaism by reducing it to some essential spiritual statements such as those made by Moritz Lazarus, Hermann Cohen, Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, and many others during t~e last hundred and fifty years. Under a dominant Protestant influence, this tendency of modern jewish thought has regarded judaism as a purely spiritual phenomenon. But it is incorrect to consider judaism in spiritual terms alone. judaism certainly is a spiritual phenomenon, but it is a spiritual phenomenon that has been bound to a historical phenomenon, namely, to the jewish people and the jewish nation. To try to disassociate one from the other has proved impossible, as evidenced by the unsuccessful attempt made by Reform or Liberal judaism to denationalize judaism. Similarly, Zionism's reaffirmation of jewish nationality would be illadvised to attempt severing its link with the spiritual dimension of judaism. In fact, Zionism does not attempt to do this; it merely seeks to sponsor the return of the jewish people and its spiritual life to history. When the halakhah governed their life, the jews were not masters of their own destiny. This is one of the most problematic aspects of the halakhah, paradoxically, since JUDAISM 507 the halakhah did playa very positive role in preserving the jewish people. Yet it is nonetheless true that the halakhah as a body of laws and way of life ultimately relinquished responsibility for the historic destiny of the jewish people. One cannot, of...