David Hartman on Judaism and the Modern Condition

David Hartman, A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices Within Judaism (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1999), xxxiii + 298 pages; and Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), xvi + 174 pages.

Rabbi David Hartman of Jerusalem is surely renowned in the English-language Diaspora as the preeminent Israeli philosopher and representative of traditional Jewish thought. A week rarely passes that R. Hartman does not appear on CNN, or speak in the pages of publications such as The New York Times, The Jerusalem Report, The Jerusalem Post, or Ha'aretz as an authoritative Jewish voice on the issues of the day. Scores of rabbis and lay people of all stripes from both Israel and the Diaspora have justifiably flocked to study with him for over three decades at both the Hebrew University and at the Shalom Hartman Institute. In addition, he has nurtured a generation of Israeli scholars at the Hartman Institute and their writings bear the unmistakable impress of his approach and influence. His Jewish knowledge and passion are palpable to all that hear him, and he bears himself with a charismatic authority that mesmerizes audiences and spreads his fame both in Israel and abroad.

However, R. Hartman has not confined himself to oral presentations in the classroom or to the media. He has also been one of the foremost contemporary scholars of Maimonides. His research on Maimonides displays the significance that the Sage of Fostat holds for present-day Judaism and his many essays and books on the enduring import and relevance of traditional Jewish values and thought for a contemporary world represent engaged scholarship at its best. His works as well as the writings of those who constitute his circle have captured the attention of elite intellectual circles both within and outside Israel, and his influence on religious and political thinkers of all types has been considerable. ¹ David Hartman is therefore part of an increasingly rare breed we have hardly seen since the days of Abraham Joshua Heschel--a serious student of Jewish religious thought who is also engaged as a public intellectual.

His two most recent books, A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices within Judaism and Israelis and the Jewish People: An Ancient People Debating Its Future, build upon themes he has addressed in the past, and constitute vital additions to his literary-philosophical corpus. As the intellectual-religious themes that were expressed earlier in A Living Covenant are developed and provide the foundation for the subjects addressed in his two most recent publications, reference to the earlier volume is essential if the latter two works are to be understood and appreciated. This review essay will therefore begin with a synopsis of the ideas and themes contained in A Living Covenant. Following this introduction, the essay will turn to A Heart of Many Rooms. While the article will reflect there upon the overall themes present in the 1999 book, I will focus most prominently--though not exclusively--on the sense of Jewish history he displays in the opening pages of this work as well as the first chapter, "Judaism as an Interpretive Tradition." These pages indicate that Hartman anchors his positions against the panorama of Jewish intellectual and political history, and the first chapter embodies the systematic reflections of a mature Hartman on the nature of Jewish legal hermeneutics. These topics stand at the center of much of his writing and they comprise an original and valuable contribution for comprehending the nature of modern Jewish thought as well as a Jewish legal process and its potential significance for the modern world. Hartman also goes on in A Heart of Many Rooms to create a holistic Jewish theology--one in which his thoughts on Jewish law are connected to the importance and centrality he assigns the modern State of Israel as the most appropriate locus for the manifestation of that...