Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Halakhah’s Moment of Truth
Evelyn Gordon and Haddasah Levy have written an article in Azure, “Halacha’s Moment of Truth.” They should be applauded for composing an articulate call for halakhic change:
Halacha’s successful adaptation to the needs of exile preserved the Jews for 2,000 years. But by stymieing its readaptation to the needs of revived Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, its most zealous adherents are doing it a disservice. Not only are they preventing it from fulfilling its original mission—i.e., providing Jewish solutions to the problems of a sovereign Jewish state—but they are also undervaluing the purpose of its exilic adaptation: The preservation of the Jewish people as a people. For if halacha continues to have nothing constructive to say about the burning issues confronting the modern Jewish people in its state, many Israelis may eventually become convinced that only by severing the state from its Judaism can it survive. Should that happen, of course, Israel will cease to be “Jewish” in any meaningful sense. And the disappearance of the world’s only Jewish state—even if the State of Israel were to physically survive—could prove as devastating for the Jewish people as the loss of its state was in 70 C.E.
Their article isn’t an historical analysis, but one comment about some of their historical claims. Jewish independence disappeared before 70 C.E. Already in 63 B.C.E. the Land of Israel became a Roman client state, and any community that remained in the Land of Israel was to some extent living in exile.
I am also not sure where they fall on the question of religion and politics. They wrote:
For if halacha continues to have nothing constructive to say about the burning issues confronting the modern Jewish people in its state, many Israelis may eventually become convinced that only by severing the state from its Judaism can it survive. Should that happen, of course, Israel will cease to be “Jewish” in any meaningful sense.
What do they mean by “severing the state from its Judaism”? Do they oppose the a cultural separation? A legal separation? I for one, think that as things stand now, the dissolution of the Chief Rabbinate is probably one of the best things that could happen to Judaism in Israel. There would be lots of problems, but I can think of very view positive things that state-appointed rabbis are doing in Israel these days.
They also wrote:
To be sure, non-Orthodox Jews do not consider themselves bound by the rulings of Haredi rabbis. Yet since the Israeli government has granted the Haredi-dominated Chief Rabbinate jurisdiction to affirm a person’s Jewish identity—an affirmation that, in turn, determines whether he or she can marry another Jew, since the rabbinate holds sole jurisdiction over marriages involving Jews—Israel’s non-Orthodox majority has no choice but to grapple with its decisions. And while more moderate Orthodox circles may not necessarily view Haredi rulings as authoritative, they are often reluctant to challenge them: They are ideologically committed to preserving the Chief Rabbinate’s authority, viewing it as a way of injecting Jewish content into the state. Yet precisely because of their avowed commitment to both halacha and the state, religious Zionists have a vital interest in resolving conflicts that arise between the two, and pushing for more lenient halachic solutions as a viable alternative. Unfortunately, in this instance, instead of engaging the Haredi community in vigorous halachic debate, various organizations that identify with the religious Zionist movement simply petitioned the High Court of Justice—that is, they turned to a secular authority.40 No clearer declaration of failure was possible: Halacha, this move announced, has no solution to this problem. Only a secular court can save halacha from itself.41
There are plenty of moderate religious rabbis in Israel who challenge Haredi rabbinic authorities and rulings, its just that generally Haredi rabbis don’t care what religious zionist rabbis have to say. And thank God the following statement of theirs is less true with each passing day.
[Moderate Orthodox cirlces] are ideologically committed to preserving the Chief Rabbinate’s authority, viewing it as a way of injecting Jewish content into the state.
Israel is a Jewish state not because of some rabbinic bureaucrat, whether he Haredi, dati-leumi, Conservative or Reform. When the majority culture and population is Jewish, that is what makes it a Jewish state. If anything, Israel is becoming more culturally and religiously Jewish despite the Rabbinate. It is the rabbis and individuals from all different religious and non-religious communities that are helping make Israel a Jewish state, not some pencil pusher. There have been some exceptions, but I think that today it is hard to think of a figure in the rabbinate who isn’t either someone else’s puppet, or so irrelevant to Israeli society, that if they disappeared hardly anyone would notice.
I have written before about Yoav Serok and his approach to the question, but I think that one of the earliest, if not the earliest, thinker to address this issue was Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Leibowitz is know to many people as the fierce critic of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and a fierce critic of religion in Israel, but decades before Israel occupied the West Bank, he wrote some provocative thoughts about the state of Judaism and Jewish law in Israel. I think that much of his later opposition to the current state of Judaism in Israel, was in part due to his disappointment with what he saw as the failure of religious zionism to meet the challenge of a sovereign Jewish state.
The following are excerpts from the chapter, “The Crisis of Religion in the State of Israel” in Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State
It scarcely needs to be said that the position of religious Jewry in Israel today is not what it was in sixteenth-century Galilee. [When the Shulhan Arukh was compiled.-MM] It share responsibility for the conduct of every sector of life. Nevertheless, it still professes to view Caro’s Shulhan Arukh as a program for our times, although this code applies only to certain areas of life and neglects the others.
(163)
What has been said of the Shulhan Arukh applies equally to all the classic sources of Halakhah, from the Mishnah to Maimonides. None of these provide us with a religious-halakhic approach to the present Jewish state. The state described in the Mishnah and Gemara of Tractate Sanhedrin or delineated in Maimonides’ Code under the rubric “Laws of Kings and Their Wars” never existed, and never will exist within the framework of historical reality. It is a metaphysical entity, belonging to a world in which physical nature will undergo a metamorphosis, if we follow the aggadic line, or in which human nature will be fundamentally different, as Maimonides seems to imply. Only two forms of the “state of Israel” are known to the Halakhah-the prehistoric and the posthistoric. One is the Kingdom of David and Solomon, from an idealized semi-mythical past. The other is the Kingdom of the Messiah-a vision of the end of days.
(164-5)
The religious question arising in the contemporary state of Israel is how to conduct affairs of state according to the Torah and the needs of the hour. The Halakhah, as we know it, never envisaged this “hour.”
(167)
March 10th, 2011 at 3:51 am
Excellent post. I was thinking of writing a critique of the article, but this is better than what I would’ve written.
One small point: I’d argue that when Chazal talk about the “Exile” after the 2nd Temple, they are in the main talking about the shift of population centers from Judea to the Galilee in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
March 10th, 2011 at 9:43 am
Thanks for the compliments. That’s an interesting take on how Haza”l understood exile.
March 11th, 2011 at 1:06 am
Here we go again. Biblical Judaism died because it could no longer meet the needs of a new historical era. Rabbinical Judaism suplemented Biblical Judaism and was relatively successful for two thousand years in the Diaspora. But modernity with its historical criticism, science, the sovereignty of the individual,democracy, new cultural and economic structures,etc is spelling the death knell of Rabbinic Judaism. For heavans sake, the vast majority of Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel has in fact rejected it. THe Orthodox solution of denial and having more kids is not a long term solution. And the Conservative Movement the less said the better. What will take its place no one knows. But let a thousand flowers bloom.
And one more thing, religious law and democracy just does not mix. There cannot be a democracy without pluralism, and religious law ( as understood that it is given by God, or authoritively decided by Rabbis who “knows what God wants) cannot be pluralistic. So Israel has to choose.