Jewish Paganism
After Auschwitz.
by Richard L. Rubenstein.
Bobbs-Merrill. 287 pp. $5.95.
The Religious Imagination.
by Richard L. Rubenstein.
Bobbs-Merrill. 246 pp. $5.95.
God may be dead, but the Jewish people must live, although they are not a chosen people and there is nothing sacred about their existence. Jews are not commanded by God, since there is no God who commands, but Jewish morality must be preserved. Human life is essentially absurd. Thrown into our situation without purpose or reason, we must nevertheless struggle to fashion something meaningful out of ourselves and our own existence. Man is painfully alone, yet he can only live as part of a community. We come from nothing and we shall return to nothing, for only in death is there redemption and fulfillment. Life is nevertheless important and precious.
These are the main themes woven through the theological work of Richard L. Rubenstein in his two recently published volumes. Although they might appear at first glance to constitute nothing more than an exercise in mere contradiction or paradox, I believe that this is in fact not the case. Rubenstein is a thinker who is struggling earnestly with the perplexities of our age. He is not always convincing, and traditional Jewish theological positions can surely be defended against his strictures, but in the present discussion I should prefer to try to understand him, to see what sense can be made out of his various positions, and thus to come to terms with him in the full seriousness which his work deserves.
Moved by reflection on history and on his own experience, Rubenstein has found himself forced to abandon such staples of Jewish belief as the existence of a God who is transcendent, omnipotent, good, and wise; the doctrine of revelation which holds the Torah to have been given to Israel by God through Moses, the supreme prophet; the special role in history claimed for the Jews as the chosen people; and the hope for a final redemption of man. At the same time he values religion in general and Jewishness in particular. His task is to make a place for these, not along the optimistic lines which liberal Jewish religion has generally followed, but rather in a manner consistent with his pessimistic judgments of man and history.
The most extreme rejection of traditional theology emerges in Rubenstein's conception of the “death of God.” What moves him to the denial of the Jewish God of history is something very different from the concerns which resulted in Protestant radical theology. Rubenstein is so stunned by the facts of recent history that he feels forced to reject all claims that God is present in the world of human activity. In his view it is impossible to face honestly the agonizing truth of the Holocaust and continue to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent God. Auschwitz represents the watershed of traditional religious belief, and having lived through this ultimate expression of human cruelty and degradation, we can only deny the traditional God. It is not modern science with its built-in naturalistic bias which undermines faith, but rather the grim facts of our history.
Rubenstein reacts with understandable pain to the extreme case of the bestial destruction of European Jewry. Between the lines, however, it becomes clear that he is reacting less to Auschwitz as a unique event than to the classical problem of evil. “The real objections against a personal or theistic God,” he writes, “come from the irreconcilability of the claim of God's perfection with the hideous human evil tolerated by such a God. . . . A God who tolerates the suffering of even one innocent child is either infinitely cruel or hopelessly indifferent.” We see that one need not have the obscenity of Auschwitz before one's eyes in order to be moved to deny God. Human suffering of whatever dimensions, so long as it is unjust and unmerited, is sufficient to raise profound doubts about the existence of the God of our religious tradition.
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Rubenstein, of course, is not the first to have discovered the problem of evil, nor does he introduce any special new dimension into his discussion of that problem. If evil in the world counts decisively against belief in an omnipotent and good God, then the whole history of human suffering is one continuous witness to the nonexistence of such a God. Rubenstein knows this as well as anyone. Moreover, he undoubtedly knows all the standard countermoves made by theologians in defense of God. If all that were called for was polemic or debate, we could now proceed to pile up against Rubenstein the best of the arguments in favor of a personal God and the most skillful treatments of the problem of evil. But to deal with Rubenstein in this way would be a mistake, since it would miss the whole point of his work.
Let it be granted from the outset that no decent man should believe in and worship a God who is guilty of causing the unspeakable monstrosities which have been the bitter heritage of almost every age of human history. If God's omnipotence makes Him responsible for human suffering, as Rubenstein sometimes suggests, then we should revile Him and rebel against Him. Such a God is unworthy of man's loyalty, and Rubenstein is right in preferring to deny His very existence. But for this we do not need Auschwitz, since, as Rubenstein himself notes, the suffering of a single child is enough. Then what is he getting at? What does he see in the Holocaust which forces him beyond conventional discussions of the familiar theological paradoxes?
An answer can be found in the two books before us, though one wishes that it were clearer and more explicit. Auschwitz drove Rubenstein to deny God primarily because it convinced him that there is no real hope for man. The whole complex of events that is captured in the name “Auschwitz” points to the existential absurdity of the human situation, as Rubenstein sees it. In effect, he challenges us to make sense out of the combination of passive Jewish suffering which brought millions to the agony of unnatural death, plus the indescribable brutality of the Nazis and their helpers, aided by the callous indifference of the supposedly civilized world. Auschwitz refutes God not by adding one more decisive step to the classical theological debate, but by making clear the meaninglessness and the hopelessness of human existence.
For classical Judaism, as Rubenstein sees clearly, God is the ground of hope and the source of meaning. He recognizes that, “It would have been impossible for the rabbis to reject an omnipotent God and affirm an absurd universe. Theirs was not yet the time of the death of God. He who rejects God rejects hope.” We, presumably, live in a time in which absurdity and darkness are so complete as to leave no room for the God of Israel. For Rubenstein, then, “Auschwitz” means simply the cataclysmic moment which robs man of all his comforting illusions, the moment in which man discovers that he stands alone. This is why he believes that our main concern must be with theological anthropology rather than with a theology of history. He looks in vain for God's presence in history, and having failed to find Him turns instead to man. But while the understanding of man in the Jewish tradition is such as to lead us back to God, Rubenstein will not allow such a move. Biblical and rabbinic man is more than just another animal. He is a creature whose uniqueness is expressed in the idea that he is created in the image of God. Jewish man has his ultimate meaning in the claim that he can and should seek to be God-like. Rubenstein denies all meta-historical meaning to man and seeks instead to fashion a human life which is sane and satisfying in its own terms.
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The Nietzschean motif is very strong in Rubenstein's thought. Denying meaning to history, he insists on a return to nature which will make history, like nature, cyclical, repetitive, and inherently senseless. Man should not be crushed by the lack of meaning in history, but should rather be challenged to create his own meaning. Nietzsche saw eternal natural recurrence not as a tragedy, but as a glorious opportunity for man to exalt himself. Only the weak, he thought, needed to be sustained by the belief that history moves toward its own proper fulfillment. Strong men would face the truth and stubbornly fashion their own world, their own values, their own structure of meaningful existence. Nietzsche's true superman is not, as the popular picture would have it, the great muscular blonde beast. His true superman is the philosopher, who is the strongest and most significant of men because he creates values, and by so doing stands as a challenge to all men to create their own values.
But it is in his radical departure from the Nietzschean theme that the depth of Rubenstein's Jewishness comes out. Granting that history is without meaning and that man must fashion his own world, Rubenstein does not conclude that we stand absolutely alone. Nietzsche's philosopher creates his world in solitude and by himself. The covenant which binds Israel to God, on the other hand, also binds the people together as a nation so that no Jew is ever an isolated individual totally detached from the community. Rubenstein may reject the traditional God of Israel and the notion of the covenant, but his Jewish sensitivity prevents him from rejecting the community of Israel. His picture of the Jew is not that of a solitary individual struggling to fashion his own special destiny and his own structure of values, but that of a member of an important and cherished historical community who finds the ground of his own special existence within the context of that community, its history and its destiny.
This is not to say that Rubenstein treats the Jewish community in a traditional way. He rejects the doctrine that the Jews are a chosen people and with it any claim for Jewish uniqueness or a special kind of peculiarly Jewish sacramental existence. Yet he values Jewishness for the special way in which it can form and structure his own life and for the ties it gives him to a great historic community:
It is precisely because human existence is tragic, ultimately hopeless, and without meaning that we treasure our religious community. It is our community of ultimate concern. In it, we can and do share, in a depth dimension which no secular institution can match.
Our Jewishness is valuable because:
it continually reminds us of the community of experience, wisdom, insight, and common need which has linked the generations of Israel one to another. Certain behavior patterns are Jewish and we freely choose to live in a way which our ancestors have done, not because we have to, or because we are commanded to, but because our free understanding of our Jewish situation makes these choices more rewarding and meaningful than others.
Rubenstein understands religion as the way in which we share our hopeless predicament with a community, and as the way in which we celebrate and give significance to crucial and critical events in our lives.
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Just as Rubenstein refuses to give up the Jewish people, so does he refuse to give up the Torah. In fact, not only does he consider Torah to be central, but he also insists on the holiness of the entire Torah, even those portions which many modern Jews find somewhat embarrassing in their primitiveness. We must not, however, confuse the position Rubenstein has taken with Jewish Orthodoxy. Obviously, since he has rejected the God of history, his regard for the Torah must rest on grounds very different from those of Jews who believe in revelation. Neither should we confuse his position with that of the Reconstructionists, in spite of their superficial similarities, and in spite of the fact that he expresses, at times, sympathy and appreciation for Reconstructionism.
For the Reconstructionists, since it is no longer possible to accept the Torah as divine revelation, we are obliged to judge the content of Torah by our own current intellectual and moral standards. Whatever does not measure up to those standards must clearly be rejected. Rubenstein, as much a contemporary man as anyone, is not troubled by the intellectual problems which disturb the liberal mind. His view of man and the world makes him open to all the possibilities of the Torah, since he recognizes that there are many ways in which a text can be meaningful and many dimensions of human experience to which it may speak. He has, to his credit, overcome the intellectually embarrassing stance of simple-minded literalism so typical of liberal theologians when they speak about the Torah. Whatever he may be unable to come to terms with in the Torah he freely rejects as an act of personal decision, but he does not confuse his own momentary situation with the ultimate truth. As the prime possession of the Jewish heritage the Torah is worthy of respect and care. One never knows which aspect of Torah may gain a new relevance as human circumstances provide us with changed perspectives and needs.
Rubenstein's “Jewish paganism,” his concern that we accept our bodies and our physicality in a healthy way, his strong feeling for the importance of our attachment to the earth and to earthiness, constitute some of the distinctive elements in his approach to religion. There is here an atmosphere which could have no place in conventional versions of liberal Judaism, Reconstructionist or other. One example should suffice to make the point clear. Reconstructionism, like Conservative and Reform Judaism, finds the ancient Temple cult and animal sacrifice an expression of primitive religion which modern men can no longer accept. Each group has revised the traditional liturgy in such a way as to eliminate the prayers for the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of the sacrificial rites.
By contrast, Rubenstein considers the Temple ritual and animal sacrifices to be not an embarrassment, but a positive good. Life and death, blood and earth, are biological and psychological realities which man cannot escape. In Rubenstein's judgment it is both wise and healthy to have concrete direct experience of these inescapable dimensions of our existence. For this reason he shares the traditional Jewish view that the destruction of the Temple was a major calamity and that prayer is, at best, never a fully satisfactory substitute for the Temple ritual.
Similarly, Rubenstein finds the sacrificial rites psychologically valuable and morally healthy. It is not clear whether he believes that any such rites could conceivably be practiced by Jews today, but he refuses to apologize for them. In a special way, despite profound theological differences, he seems at this point closer to Orthodoxy than to liberal versions of Judaism, precisely because he is ready to accept the whole Torah as holy and is perfectly comfortable with it.
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Nevertheless, in the end, and despite moments of deep perception, Rubenstein's impressive attempt to provide for a living Judaism after having dispensed with the living God remains unconvincing. If it is true that Auschwitz must lead us to lose hope in man, and thus to deny God, then we have lost the essential foundation of classical Judaism. Attachment to the Jewish people, observance of the traditional forms, even the acknowledgment that all of the Torah is holy, are insufficient grounds for a viable Jewish existence. For unless we see ourselves as standing under God's judgment and bound, by His commandments, the Torah cannot be truly holy; it becomes no more than a book to which the Jews have happened to give a central place in their lives—a book, moreover, which is not attuned to the moral and psychological predilections of every succeeding age. We can see the hazards of this line of thought in the very divergence that separates Rubenstein from other non-Orthodox Jewish thinkers over such a matter as sacrifices. Committed to a biopsychology which finds value in sacrificial rites, Rubenstein views them positively and sympathetically. A radically different psychology and a particular theory of moral progress forces other Jews to reject sacrifices as psychologically unhealthy and morally repugnant. In neither case does the teaching of Torah prevail simply because it is Torah. It is noteworthy in this regard that in the very sentences in which Rubenstein affirms the holiness of the entire Torah, he adds an escape clause that leaves him free to ignore whatever does not suit him.
Rubenstein notes: “The rabbis emphatically rejected the notion that they were free to determine appropriate behavior in pragmatic or utilitarian terms. They regarded independence of judgment before the demands of religious obligation as an example of extraordinary folly.” But what happens to the religious structure of the rabbinic tradition when one insists, as Rubenstein does, that there is neither command nor commander, but only our free decision to redeem ourselves from the formless absurdity with which life is given to us by taking our stand inside the Jewish tradition? The answer is that the structure inevitably collapses, and in the process it can no longer serve even the limited purposes which Rubenstein hopes for it. He repeatedly points out the soundness of the widely held view that without God all things are permitted. He also notes the terrifying implications of such moral anarchy for human society. In fact, the worst brutalities of our age are an example of what is possible when men no longer acknowledge divine law. Rubenstein strives mightily to avert the danger by proposing a religion without God and a law which binds us though it is not a divine command:
If we must live without God, religious law is more necessary for us than ever. Our temptation to anarchic omnipotence and the total indifference of the cosmos to our deeds call forth the need for a set of guidelines to enable us to apprehend the limits of appropriate behavior. Without God, we need law, tradition, and structure far more than ever.
But how are we to achieve a law which is binding, a tradition and structure to which we submit our lives, if there is no ground on which these can rest and no source which gives them authority over us? Only if we are prepared to argue, along Kantian lines, that the moral law is purely rational in character and binds us because we are rational beings do we have the possibility of a law which is both effective and autonomous. But there is no evidence at all that Rubenstein thinks of morality as based on a Kantian categorical imperative. A moral law which is neither divine nor rational is, in the last analysis, no law at all.
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In denying God, then, we not only lose the foundations of morality, we also lose the possibility of seeing human life as meaningful. Rubenstein puts it beautifully when he says that, “Of all the gifts the Aggadah bestowed upon the rabbinic Jew, it is likely that none was as precious as the gift of meaning.” Now, Aggadah is based on a belief in a God who is present in history, a God who is concerned with man, who commands him and loves him. When we no longer find belief in such a God possible, we have lost every hope for meaningful existence. There may of course be a few rare individuals, Nietzschean supermen, who are capable of creating their own structure of meaning and value in a world which is essentially absurd. However, these highly gifted individuals do nothing to solve the problem of the vast majority of men. Most men cannot create their own values nor can they endow their lives with meaning. Neither can they live comfortably in a universe which is irrational and meaningless.
Though Rubenstein sees all this, he still holds that because “we are children of the secular city, traditional belief is impossible for most men.” One suspects that “most men,” even in the secular city, and despite the theologians, do in fact hold to fairly traditional beliefs. Perhaps they do so, while facing the counter-pressures of our age, precisely because they sense that to give up God is to give up meaning and to be plunged into hopeless absurdity. Against Rubenstein on the one hand, and the spokesman for liberal religion on the other, the healthy religious instincts of ordinary men may be the most effective of all arguments.