Eliezer Goldman and Judaism without Illusion

Introduction

It is somewhat surprising that the theological and philosophical works of Eliezer Goldman are practically unknown in the American Jewish community, as he was a product of that community. Goldman was born in 1918 in Brooklyn, New York, to Eastern European refugee parents and attended Yeshiva College studying under Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, whose philosophy courses he also attended. The study of Talmud and in particular the Brisker methodology remained a lifelong passion and he wrote “Until I started to learn in Yeshiva I was interested in all disciplines but then things changed because I realized that the intellectual challenge of learning Talmud is immeasurable greater than general studies.”¹ Immediately after graduating Yeshiva he made aliyah and eventually became one of the founders of Kibbutz Sdeh Eliyahu where he remained a chaver (member) until his death in 2002. His decision to join the kibbutz was in his own words, “an opportunity to fulfill the dream of a Jewish religious socialist. The impetus of aliyah came from the desire to build a Jewish socialist society based on Jewish sources.”² He remained a committed kibbutznik his whole life and was one of the last great kibbutz intellectuals of the twentieth century. In the early days of the Kibbutz he taught four different Torah classes every Shabbat. He worked in the fields and also taught in the local secondary schools before completing a doctorate in philosophy, eventually becoming a professor at Bar-Ilan University. The values of the kibbutz and of self-sacrifice in general, and commitment to a just society remained dear to him throughout his life. In a poignant letter to his daughter upon a visit to America, he wrote summarizing the two great projects of his life,

To those of us who founded the Kibbutz we had this vision, there are things that are important in life and things that are less important. There are things that are worth striving for because they are intrinsically important. For example, a truly religious Jew and not someone who just thinks they are religious, sees the primary goal of their life to serve God. This objective requires a lot from a person and cannot be accomplished by someone who is lazy or a person who worries too much about their conveniences and requires sacrifices . . . and there is another thing that we talked about and that is called chaluziot [loosely translated as pioneering but it suggests much more] which means that a person acknowledges the importance of a specific goal and is willing to adjust his whole life, his livelihood, the community in which he lives and his profession in order to achieve that goal. We have to give thanks that there were people like that who established our country.³

These two objectives of serious and introspective devotion to God grounded in the learning of Torah, together with a commitment to building a just and caring society, defined the life of Eliezer Goldman and others in the Religious Kibbutz movement.

Goldman was also a groundbreaking religious philosopher, heavily influenced by Yeshayu Leibowitz (whose works he edited), who wrote important articles on medieval and modern Jewish philosophy, the philosophy of Halakha, Judaism, and modernity, and the interaction of religion and state. This essay will briefly review some of his important contributions for the first time in English to modern Jewish thought as he has been called “one of the three most important Jewish philosophers of our time.”⁴

Philosophy of halakha

Perhaps Goldman’s most important contribution to the philosophy of halakha is his introduction of the concept of meta-halakha into the academic discourse. According to Goldman,

The halakha in its narrow sense relates to the actions of man; what he cooks, what he eats, what he slaughters, what he borrowed from his friend and why does he have to repay him. The meta-halakha does not relate to the actions of man but to halakha . . . for example, a rule like dina demalchuta dina [the principle that Jews must follow the local law] is a meta-halakhic principle, because it does not have any concrete...