What Judaism Is Not
By Mordecai M. Kaplan
"Every man who has seen the world knows that
nothing is so useless as a general maxim."
Macaulay, in Essay on "Machiavelli."
MORDECAI M. KAPLAN (born in Russia in 1881, came to America in 1889), studied at College of the City of New York (A. B. 1900), Columbia (M. A. 1902) and Jewish Theological Seminary (Rabbi, 1902); held Rabbinical position in New York, 1903-1909; Principal since 1909 of the Teachers' Institute, and Professor of Homiletics since 1910 in the Jewish Theological Seminary. Fearless and original in thought, and exceptionally stimulating as a Menorah lecturer, Professor Kaplan has won the deep respect and friendship of Menorah students at the various universities where he has lectured on Jewish Religion and Education.
MOST of the pain, which according to Koheleth comes with the increase of knowledge, is in the unlearning of the old rather than in the learning of the new. Once an idea has become imbedded in the mind, it cannot be removed without causing a mental upheaval. Blessed are the young to whom unlearning is easy, or who have not much to unlearn. Whether our Jewish young men know much or little about Judaism, they are certain, as a rule, to have formed notions about it of which they must be disabused, if Judaism is to constitute an important factor in their lives. Strange to say, they have obtained these notions not from sources hostile to Judaism, but on the contrary from sources distinctly intended to inculcate both a love and an understanding of the Jewish religion,—such as catechisms and text-books used in our religious schools, and articles in encyclopedias meant for the enlightenment of the general public. The view of Judaism that one gets in this manner is not only a distorted one, but it has the effect of bringing all further reflection to a standstill. It lands one in a blind alley. The conclusion which a person generally arrives at when he consults these sources for information about the Jewish religion is that, whatever else Judaism might be, it certainly offers no field for the exercise of deep insight or broad vision. This largely accounts for the manifest sterility and uncreativeness of present-day Judaism. To give new impetus to fruitful and creative thinking in Jewish life, it is necessary, in the first place, to counteract the paralyzing spell of these routine and conventional interpretations of Judaism.
To be concrete, let us take a typical instance of the kind of instruction that has been in vogue for more than a century. Here are a few sentences from the article on Judaism in Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics: "Judaism may be defined as the strictest form of monotheistic belief; but it is something more than a bare mental belief. It is the effect which such a belief, with all its logical consequences, exerts on life, that is to say, on thought and conduct. . . . . A formal and precise definition of Judaism is a matter of some difficulty, because it raises the question, What is the absolute and irreducible minimum of conformity? . . . . Judaism denounces idolatry and polytheism. It believes in a universal God, but it is not exclusive. It believes that this world is good, and that man is capable of perfection. He possesses free will, and is responsible for his actions. Judaism rejects any mediator and any cosmic force for evil. Man is free. He is not subject to Satan; nor are his material gifts of life inherently bad. Wealth might be a blessing as well as a curse," etc., etc.
In an encyclopedia we do not expect to find original or striking views. It is not the particular article from which this excerpt is taken that fault is found with. That article is selected simply as representative of the kind of information that is expected to help one grasp the meaning of Judaism. It is typical of the baffling glibness with which Jewish teachers and preachers usually talk about the Jewish religion. One who reads or listens to such statements finds that somehow or other little has been added to his stock of knowledge about Judaism. He experiences how irritating words can be when they either hide thought or betray its absence.
Mistaking the Shadow for the Thing Itself
IN the instance quoted, it is both amusing and painful to follow the author's vacillating description of Judaism. At first Judaism is a form of belief. Then it becomes the effect of that belief upon thought and conduct. From that it evolves into some irreducible minimum of conformity, if we can only get hold of it. This being difficult, it gets to be a series of colorless platitudes. Such a definition calls up the image of a streamlet, now leaping over rocks and boulders, now meandering upon level ground, and finally losing itself in the marshes. The fitfulness and inconsistency of the formulation, the picking up of the different threads of thought without following out any one of them to its conclusion, are characteristic of this type of definitions. They are as devoid of vitality as a long drawn-out yawn, and their want of logic is exasperating. The merest tyro can see that one can profess the principles they embody without being a Jew. There are many sects that would heartily subscribe to all of them. Universalists, Deists, Theists, Unitarians, and even Ethical Culturists hold these doctrines. As matters stand at present, these sects engage more actively in spreading them than we do.
What is fundamentally wrong with the above definition and with the entire class of formulations of which it is an instance? The tendency to mistake the shadow of a thing for the thing itself. The main cause for misapprehending the true character of Judaism is the proneness to regard it merely as a form of truth, or, at best, as the effect of a truth upon thought and conduct, and to overlook entirely the fact that it is a living reality, a very strand of the primal moving forces of the world. "Judaism is the truest form of truth," says one writer. "Judaism gives, to truth the most truthful shape," says another. Now and then they speak of it as a "form" of life, but it turns out to be only a lip service, or a homiletical phrase. They fail to follow up the clue which is more than once suggested to them by the difficulty of expounding Judaism as a form of truth. That being a Jew has always involved conforming to certain principles and modes of life is a truism. But these principles or observances by themselves constitute only the outward expression of Judaism. The mathematical formula which states the law of gravitation is not the same as the force of gravitation itself. It is conceivable that further experimentation might make it necessary to qualify the mathematical formula. But the force of gravitation will ever be the same as it has been. The change from looking upon Judaism as a form of truth to that of regarding it as of the very substance of reality calls for a complete transformation in our mode of thinking, or what has been termed "a psychological change of front." We must break completely with the habit of identifying the whole of the Jewish religion with merely certain beliefs and duties, while ignoring completely the living energy which has operated to produce them. They are only the static residue of something that is essentially dynamic.
The Jewish Aversion to Creeds and Formulas
THE change in attitude which is here advocated is not a departure from all that has gone before in Jewish life. If it were that, Judaism could not possibly survive under it. The fact is that we are only bringing to the fore and translating into modern phraseology an attitude that in one form or another has always asserted itself in Judaism. Simultaneously with the tendency to compress Judaism within certain formulas, there has always shown itself a strong aversion to gathering Judaism within creeds and minima of conformity. To-day that aversion, which has hitherto remained a matter of feeling and intuition, can make itself articulate by availing itself of the results of recent research in the fields of religion. It need no longer entertain the fear of being charged with spiritual anarchy. Discountenancing dogmas in Judaism is not synonymous with intellectual libertinism. It is rather a protest against shallowness and superficiality, much like the chagrin of the artist at having his knowledge of drawing praised and the soul of the picture missed.
We can give in this connection a few cursory examples of the anti-summarizing tendency. The Torah itself, in one instance, seems to set out with a view of reducing Judaism to a minimum, but scarcely finds itself able to do so. "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, and to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of thy Lord and the statutes, which I command thee this day, for thine own good?" "Is this a small matter?" asks the Talmud, in evident surprise at the hugeness of the program. When the would-be proselyte came to Shammai and requested him to sum up the entire Torah in one principle, he received no better treatment than he deserved, when he was made to take to his heels. That Hillel did not rebuff him and gave him the principle, "What is hateful to thee do not do unto thy neighbor," proves that Hillel knew how to be patient and tactful, but not that the Talmud looks upon that summary, or any other, as expressive of the essence of Judaism. The same applies to religious practices, concerning which the Mishnah announces the maxim that it is not for us to estimate which are more important than others. We are told that the custom obtained at one time of having the Ten Commandments read as part of the daily service; but that as soon as it gave rise to the impression that the Ten Commandments were more essential than the rest of the Torah, it was discontinued. It is true that Philo reduces the teachings of Judaism to five essential doctrines, but that was because Judaism to Philo was Platonism divinely revealed.
As Shown by Judah Ha-Levi
THE movement to formulate the fundamental teachings of Judaism first gained headway at the beginning of the eleventh century with the Karaites, whose entire conception of Judaism was such as to render their sect hopelessly stagnant and doomed to dwindle. Still, even they would never have thought of emphasizing certain dogmas as indispensable, had they not discerned in the teachings of Mohammedanism a dangerous challenge to Judaism. Thus the dogma-making tendency in Judaism arose during the Middle Ages not as an indigenous product but as a retort to the dominant religions of the time. What might be called the application of the synoptic method to the Jewish religion remained confined mostly to the part of Jewry which came, directly or indirectly, under the influence of Aristotelian intellectualism.
To this trend Judah Ha-Levi (1085-1140) stands out as a notable exception. In him the disapproval of having Judaism subsumed under formulas of a philosophic stamp comes again to the surface. His being a poet even more than a philosopher enabled him to get a better insight into the inwardness of Judaism than that obtained by the intellectualists with their analytic scalpels. This is apparent in his well-known "Al-Khazari." The story goes that the Khazar king, after consulting a philosopher, a Mohammedan, and a Christian as to what he should believe and do, finally turned to a Jewish rabbi. When the king asked him about the Jewish religion, the rabbi replied, "I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who led the Children of Israel out of Egypt, who fed them in the desert, and gave them the land. . . . . Our belief is comprised in the Torah, a very large domain." Upon hearing this, the king grew indignant, and said to the rabbi, "Shouldst thou, O Jew, not have said that thou believest in the Creator of the world, its Governor and Guide, and in Him who created and keeps thee, and such attributes which serve as evidence for every believer?" But the rabbi persists in his mode of stating Judaism. He parries successfully the king's efforts to draw out of him some definition of Judaism in terms of speculative theology. The king in time becomes a convert to Judaism, and it is only then, according to Judah Ha-Levi, that he succeeds in getting the rabbi to teach him concerning the attributes of God, as if to imply that one has first to be a Jew before indulging in any abstract or philosophic study of Judaism. The keynote of Ha-Levi's thought is that the essence of Judaism is not merely to give assent to any general belief, but to belong to Israel and share in its experiences.
By Maimonides and by Abravanel
EVEN Maimonides (1135-1204), who is usually represented as the chief sponsor of the systematizing and speculative tendency in Judaism, is far from having attached as much significance to the Creed he formulated as the fact of its presence in the prayer book might indicate. He himself strongly deprecates attaching more importance to one part of the Torah than to another. "The Ten Commandments and the Shema in the Torah," he says in the very same chapter of his commentary on the Mishnah which contains the Creed, "are no holier than any of the genealogies that are found in it." Albo (1380-1444) reduces the essence of Judaism to three, yet inconsistently declares that he who denies other articles of faith which are of minor importance is no less a heretic than he who denies any of the essential ones. In fact, he admits that there are as many articles of faith as commandments in the Torah.
Abravanel (1437-1508), though an admirer of scholasticism, and practically the last of the line of Jewish Aristotelians, considers the thirteen Articles of Maimonides' Creed gratuitous, and as not representative of the maturer views of Maimonides. His opinion is that they properly belonged to the commentary on the Mishnah, which was the work of his youth; and that as he ripened intellectually, he changed his mind about their value. We miss them in the Code and in the "Guide to the Perplexed," where we should most of all have expected to find them. In the same connection, Abravanel adds that the fashion of laying down creeds as fundamental in Judaism owes its origin to the method employed in the secular studies which always started with certain indisputable axioms.
The same resistance to the effort to extract Judaism from a few source principles is encountered in Jewish mysticism. Whatever we may think of the particular form which mysticism took on in the Jewish religion, we cannot but regard it as the outbreak of a longing that forms a part of all vital religion. We have good reason, therefore, to treat with respect its opinion of the intellectualizing process of Jewish philosophy. Although it was also addicted to speculative categories and developed a theosophy instead of a theology, it approached Judaism from an entirely different angle. Being impressionistic in its trend, it was bound to look elsewhere than to abstract concepts for the core of Judaism. To put Judaism into the form of a creed appeared to the mystics like combining pure gold with a baser metal, in order to mint it for circulation.
And More Recently by Mendelssohn
IN modern times the anti-dogmatizing tendency found a vigorous exponent in Mendelssohn. Yet, somehow or other, he has been singled out for attack, as though he had advocated a dry formalism, unredeemed by any inner principle or inspiration. He is charged with having been under the influence of the shallow deism of the English philosophers. The truth is that Mendelssohn only repeats in his way what Judah Ha-Levi had taught before him. He distinctly emphasizes the belief in the existence of God, in providence and in retribution as the sine qua non of Judaism, but he is clear-minded enough to realize that they constitute what he calls "the universal religion of mankind," and not Judaism.
Mendelssohn did not succeed in developing a constructive view of Judaism, whereby it might be enabled to withstand the shock of modernism; nevertheless, he does not deserve the treatment accorded him because of his alleged attitude towards creeds. His position as to the relation of creeds to Judaism is the only tenable one. He maintains that creeds can only be of two kinds; either they oppose reason, and should therefore find no place in Judaism, or are so self-evident that they are not confined to Judaism. This does not mean that to be a Jew one can believe whatever he likes, or not believe at all. It does not mean that Judaism only demands outward conformity. Mendelssohn was aware that certain "Hobot ha-Lebabot," Duties of the Heart, are indispensable to Judaism. But he refused to make of Judaism a mutilated philosophy.
Judaism Needs Working Principles—Not Abstract Dogmas
NO sphere of life can be maintained intelligently without some basic principles, particularly so exalted a sphere as religion. Who counts upon any art attaining a high degree of development by mere rule of thumb? Is anything so characteristic of modern life as emphasis upon the mutual interrelation of theory and practice? All our strivings to rehabilitate Judaism are bound to prove futile unless they are made to center about some definite conception of its aims and methods. We need principles, yea dogmas, in Judaism as we need working hypotheses in any great undertaking. But dogmas, in the sense of abstract principles, regarded as immutable, are both superfluous and dangerous. If such dogmas are nothing more than the common denominator of all that has been identified with Judaism in the course of its history, they are sure to be banal and colorless. If they are to be fixed and unalterable, they are bound in time to clash with reason and experience, and to sap the religion of its vitality. Judaism needs principles that can help it to withstand danger, that can give it a lease upon life. This is the criterion to be applied to any articulate conception of Judaism. Can the principles which the text-books on Judaism declare to be fundamental render this service? The reply is an unequivocal No. Hence they are worse than useless.
But we cannot afford to stop at this point. Knowing what Judaism is not, is only half-knowledge, and therefore quite dangerous. We must apply ourselves anew to the task of pondering over the problem of Judaism. We may indulge to our heart's content in lauding the past when one could be a Jew without troubling his head about the question, "What is Judaism?" We may sigh in regret for those days when a Jew upon being asked about his religion was able to reply, "I have no religion; I am a Jew." The danger of the entire economy of the Jewish soul going to pieces is too imminent to permit us to lull ourselves into that blissful unconsciousness, the praises of which Carlyle sang quite consciously. We are treading the narrow ledge of a precipice. Men like Zollschan, Ruppin, and Theilhaber have pointed out the awful chasm that threatens to engulf us. It requires not a little courage to maintain our nerve and avoid being seized with the vertigo. But courage alone is not enough. We must take into account the narrowness of the path and tread over it warily.
We Must Face the Real Problem of Judaism
WE Jews must do some very hard thinking, of a kind, perhaps, that we have not been called upon to do before. That task dare not be shirked. We must not give in to that tendency which breaks out whenever we have something very difficult to do, of turning to anything except that which we know demands peremptory attention. A task that is thus neglected revenges itself by haunting us and upsetting whatever we undertake. Instead of giving to the problem of Judaism the careful deliberation that it requires, we get busy with a thousand and one things, whereby we hope to escape the need of concentrated attention. We have become fussy and fidgety. We are divided into committees and sub-committees. In place of clearness of thought we have a confusion of tongues. Our case illustrates the truth which Pascal enunciated, that most of the evils in the world can be traced to the inability of a person to sit in his room and think.
Without deprecating any of the undertakings to bring order out of the social chaos in Jewish life, we must place at the present time chief emphasis upon the serious consideration of our inner problem, the problem of the Jewish soul and of the Jewish spirit, the problem of Judaism. We may well envy the thousands of soldiers on the battlefields of Europe to whom it is a joy to meet death for the sake of their respective flags. Each of them has a cause to die for. Most of us, by reason of our Jewish descent, find life, particularly in the higher sense of the word, to be a keener struggle for existence than our neighbors do. Yet it would not be half so wearing if our difficulties were consecrated by an inspiring cause or by a thrilling loyalty. Why need we be poverty-stricken in spirit, bereft of everything that makes struggle sweet and suffering endurable? We must put the very question, What is Judaism? in a new way and in a different spirit. We must have the definite purpose in mind, of so understanding it as to know what to do next, and to strive for that vigorously, so as not to drift like helpless flotsam and jetsam. We need strong beliefs which, as Bagehot puts it, win strong men, and then make them stronger.
Judaism Must Speak to Us in the Language of Today
IN the Talmud we find the principle enunciated that the Torah adopted the style of language that men were wont to use. A condition indispensable to a religion being an active force in human life is that it speak to men in terms of their own experience. Judaism, to be significant to modern man or woman, can no longer afford to speak in the language of theology. Psychology and social science, history and human experience, have revealed new worlds in the domain of the spirit. The language of theology might have a certain quaintness and charm to the ears of those to whom religion is a kind of dreamy romanticism. But to those who want to find in Judaism a way of life and a higher ambition, it must address itself in the language of concrete and verifiable experience.
The ideas in which Judaism was wont to spell itself out in the past are no longer at home in the Weltanschauung of the modern man. What prevented the Reform movement from becoming a real reformation and a vitalization of Judaism was that it sought to adjust Judaism to a Weltanschauung which had already begun to grow obsolete. We have to reckon with all that has been learned in the meantime concerning human society and the place of religion in it. When one comes to a strange land, and has with him only the coin of his native country, he must calculate in terms of the currency of the land he is in, if he wants to know whether or not he has enough to live on. Can we Jews afford to live spiritually upon our heritage? That can only be answered if we learn what that heritage is equivalent to in the current mental coin of the modern man. If we do not wish to be cut off from the stream of living thought, if we do not want to be spiritually starved, we Jews must know not so much what Judaism meant twenty centuries ago, nor even a century ago, but what it is to mean to us of today.
Editors' Note.—In articles to follow, Professor Kaplan will give his conception of "What Judaism Is."