Open Wounds: The Crisis of Jewish Thought in the Aftermath of the Holocaust

2. The Bankruptcy of Modern and Postmodern Thought

2 The Bankruptcy of Modern and Postmodern Thought When Ben Damah, the son of Rabbi Ishmael’s sister, asked when he might study the wisdom of the Greeks, the Rabbi answered, “Go find a time that is neither day nor night and then learn the Greek wisdom.”—Talmud Bavli, Menachot 99b What does the phrase “bankruptcy of thought” mean? How, indeed, can thought become “bankrupt”? Thought enters “bankruptcy” when it no longer operates in the categories that might reveal something about thinking , and, more important, when it is unable to determine the absolute sanctity of one’s fellow human being. It loses its value, in other words, when it cannot determine that the other person has an absolute value beyond contingency and context. Once bankrupt, thought can no longer think that, in any given thought, something more than thought might be revealed, something that would declare the life of a human being to be not just valuable or worthy of respect but holy. Indeed, once bankrupt , thought cannot see past itself. The Western ontological tradition has led to just such a bankruptcy of thought. From the standpoint of Jewish thought, by contrast, there is no thinking without the revelation of something more than thought: the holiness of human life. Indeed, the Chasidic master Nachman of Breslov taught that deeds of loving kindness are essential to any understanding 32 that thought might attain.1 What, then, is the nature of Jewish thinking about thought, as opposed to thought in the Western ontological tradition , and how may it be contrasted with the bankruptcy of modern and postmodern thought? jewish thinking about thought According to the Greek thinking that gave rise to the speculative tradition , the aim of wisdom is to “know thyself.” According to Jewish thinking , as stated by the twelfth-century scholar Bachya ibn Paquda, the aim of wisdom is to “become cognizant of the Creator,” who shows Himself in the very phenomenon of thinking (Bachya ibn Paquda, Chovot Halevavot 2:5). If Jewish thought is both troubled and steeped in gratitude, as suggested in the previous chapter, it is because the thinking of Another, of One who sanctifies thought itself, overshadows and disturbs human thought. As the disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoe, states it, “the thought above awakens the thought below.”2 And the Bahir, an ancient mystical text, describes this higher thought as “a king that is needed by all things that were created in the world, both above and below”;3 in his commentary on the Bahir, Aryeh Kaplan adds, “The [Jewish] concept of thought is like that of ‘up.’”4 Jewishly speaking , there is no human thought without this “up,” which is a higher “thinking ” that situates the life of a human being in a dimension of height. Emmanuel Levinas alludes to this higher presence when he declares that “the psyche in the soul is the other in me, a malady of identity, both accused and self, the same for the other, the same by the other.”5 This other that is the soul is an emanation of the Divine Light who thinks me into being and, in thinking me, commands me to attend to the need of the other human being. Hence one of the expressions for “God” in Hebrew is Baal Machshavot, the “Master”—or the “Ground”—“of Thoughts.” It is not merely that God knows our innermost thoughts but rather that God is the origin of thinking itself. Thus the formula for the Jewish outlook is not “I think, therefore I am,” but rather “God thinks, therefore I am.” Which is to say: “I am summoned for the sake of another, therefore I am.” If, in the words of Adin Steinsaltz, “the soul of a [person ] is the Divine speech that speaks the [person],”6 then the soul is more 33 The Bankruptcy of Modern and Postmodern Thought than a speech act: it is the manifestation of a creative Divine thought that thinks in the imperative mood: Thou shalt. . . . The thinking soul is made of the Divine imperative. Created from the “flames” of God’s “intellectual fire,” as the medieval mystic Solomon ibn Gabirol puts it,7 the soul thinks under the chupah, or “canopy,” of Divine thought. A chupah is, of course, a wedding canopy. The word suggests a marriage of human and Divine thinking; it suggests that thinking harbors an aspect of prayer...