Religion and the Individual: A Jewish Perspective (review)

108 SHOFAR Summer 1994 Vol. 12, No.4 analytic and intellectually creative. In fact, modern Jewish intellectuals are basically Yeshiva buchers transposing the scholarly traditions of their orthodox ancestors to a worldly context. To deny this source of modern Jewish intellectuality is to cut off contemporary Jews from their roots. Equally misdirected is Kochan's disjunction of landed and spiritual Jewry. He perceives an opposition between commitment to the land of Israel and to the spirit ofJudaism-to the detriment of the former. In fact, the history of the Jews emphasizes the importance of the land of Israel. The postwar reestablishment of Israel marks the third return of the Jews to their Holy Land. If not in Kochan's mind, certainly in the convictions of most Jews, allegiance' to their faith and to earthly Israel are inseparably integrated. The recreation of Jewish Israel after the Holocaust-Judaism again triumphing over its setbacks and enemies-and the existence of Israel as a guarantor of the survival of the Jews if the diaspora demographic decline and trends toward assimilation end in the disappearance of nonIsraeli Jews, make eretz Yisrael even more inextricably connected than in the past with the Jewish faith. IfJehovah has a divine plan for the survival of His people, it could be argued that the modern Hebrew nation was made possible by the sacrifice of European Jewry and that if diaspora Jews disappear, Jewish existence depends on that country alone. Frederic Cople Jaher Department of History University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana Religion and the Individual: A Jewish Perspective, by Louis Jacobs. Cambridge: Cambridge University l'ress, 1992. 163 pp. £30.00. To focus on the individual as a basic subject of religious and moral predicates, as this book does, goes against two substantial bodies of opinion. One is contemporary. "Individualism" is denounced as parasitic on "thick" communities it proceeds to undermine. Its "atomistic" assumptions promote ways of life where too many people live and die alone. Culturally and intellectually, it is seen as discredited, an old epochal scheme on its way out. Existentialism was "then"; deconstruction is "now." The other is traditional. "Religions of the Book" are communal through and through. Judaism conspicuously emphasizes peoplehood, relegating the individual to a subordinate place. Book Reviews 109 It is the traditional body ofopinion that Louis Jacobs here reexamines. He aims to issue a corrective. "For all the admitted emphasis on peoplehood ," he writes, "there are equally powerful individualistic tendencies in Judaism it is perilous to overlook. In any balanced view ofJudaism, what the individual does with his life has eternal significance for him, not only for theJewish people...." One may reject atomistic individualism but not thereby shrug off as historically passe the claim that the individual has irreducible significance. Jacobs supports this claim from various sources. He attends in particular to the frequently cited statement from the Mishnah, tractate Sanhedrin 4:5. The Mishnah reminds witnesses who testifY against a man on trial for his life how serious their activity is, that to destroy any innocent life matters enormously. The Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve is invoked, on behalf of the view that every human life is sacred. "Therefore but a single man was at first created in the world, to teach that if anyone has caused a single person to perish Scripture imputes it to him as though he had caused a whole world to perish.... Again, to proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, blessed is He; for when a man stamps many coins with the same seal they are all alike; but the Holy One, blessed be He, has stamped every human being with the seal of the first man, yet no two are exactly alike. Therefore, everyone is required to say, 'For my sake the world was created.'" Jacobs interprets the passage as follows. All human beings ultimately possess equal worth. Each individual is a unique creation. He or she is not simply a means to or mere fragment of some grander, more embracing end of humanity as a whole. Each is entitled to view himself or herself as the reason for which the whole world was created. Each is an end for which God...