God
According to Borowitz, “Baeck's exposition of Judaism remains typically liberal. It says much more about human beings, their ethical sense, and their consciousness of the Divine than it says about who God is and what, if anything, God does.” (p.60) At the same time, though, it tries to bridge the gap between the rational God of Cohen (who thought about God a lot) and the religious experience of devout Jews (who fell God a lot). His definition of Judaism as human ethics (the rational side of God) and religious consciousness (the expression of God’s meta-physical, or spiritual dimensions) tries do address that God is more than what human beings can rationally conceive.
Baeck would say that nothing can be said about the specifics of God’s existence (i.e. if there is a personal God), and that traditional Judaism has never said anything about it either, but “God is (...) understood personally and regarded as personal” (Borowitz, 61).
What is the meaning of revelation?
- “For Baeck, the validity of Judaism did not rest on a unique event at Sinai, but rather on the truth of the central ideas that the Jewish people had maintained over the ages. Baeck maintained this intuitive-historical stance toward the interpretation of Judaism in all his writings.” (Borowitz, 56).If I understand this right, we could see two basic arguments or paradigms for the validity of the Torah: (1) 600.000 men were present at Sinai when the Torah was delivered and it would be impossible to lie mentioning such a huge number of people; therefore, the Torah (both written and oral) are the sacred words of God; or (2) The Jews have believed in this system for thousands of years and if it were false, someone would have found it out and challenges its premises. Baeck followed the second approach. Borowitz doesn’t say it, but I think that if you follow this view, challenging traditional Jewish understanding becomes almost a duty, aimed at strengthening Judaism and its internal consistency.
What is God's relationship to or responsability for suffering?
- "The source of evil is the misuse of human freedom."(Borowitz, 62) People are ultimately responsible for their acts, including repenting and trying to correct our acts (re-establish the connection with God)
- Despite having experienced (and survived) a death camp, the Holocaust did not change his theory of evil
What does it mean to this thinker to be a Jewish human being?
- Jews have the "mission" of spreading ethical-monotheism around the world, which is not particularly open to the concept. Therefore, "stubborn endurance is a Jewish ethical imperative; for a Jew, to exist is a commandment." (Borowitz, 69)
- God is universal and, therefore, cannot be attached only to the Jews. "Baeck does not assert Jewish particularity in terms of Judaism's essential conent, which is universal, but only in the historic actuality of its appropriation and continuing expression. The Jews are 'chosen' because they chose to devote themselves to God." (Borowitz, 66)
9 comments:
Thanks, Rogerio, for getting us going with so much good summary. On the question of whether God is an addressable Thou or a concept or force in Baeck's universe, in my reading it's very important to Baeck that God is more than a concept. Though Baeck does describe a God both profoundly immanent and transcendent, I didn't get anywhere a sense that this God could be directly addressed. I'd say this God is more like a force. In Mystery and Commandment, p. 196, Baeck describes God as "the unknowable and unnameable, the unfathomable and unthinkable....that deep and mysterious sphere...something higher....that which is infinitely and eternally commanding...that which is omnipresent and enduring...." This God is not quite a "who" but a "what". Then again, this God is not a concept, but a felt experience. While Cohen's God was found in the frontal lobe, Baeck's God is found in the kishkes.
Rachel, I totally agree with you. After reading "Mystery and Commandment", I've changed my perspective on this issue. In this article Baeck does make specific comments about God's character!
While I'm not sure if there is anywhere a reference on how to address God in words, it is clear that God addresses us and we can address back in actions: "And reverence is man's feeling that something is higher and confronts him; and whatever is higher is ethically superior and therefore makes demands and directs, speaks to man and requires his reply, his decision. (M&C, 196)
Baeck describes a revelation that is universally available but personally and continually experienced. Rogerio, about your two options related to Sinai (when you say men, you mean people, right?), I'd definitely agree that Baeck is the latter, but I think an important emphasis for Baeck is less on proving right or wrong, but that the central ideas of Judaism are just intuitively, obviously true. Jews are onto something that everyone can sense in their being is the meaning and purpose of life. What do you mean by your last sentence in this section - about the duty of challenging traditional judaism?
On God's relationship to / responsibility for suffering, what we've read about and by Baeck so far addresses human suffering at the hands of other humans beings (as being about free will, meaning God is not related to it or responsible for it -- and God doesn't interfere out of respect for human dignity), but not other forms of human suffering such as illness and natural disaster. I do not know if Baeck addresses this question in his writings. Anyone have a thought on that?
Jewishness. I would love to explore more Baeck's ideas about the role of law. It seems like he's saying that law is useful when/because it leads to commandment. But there's also this piece about law binding us together, and the role of Shabbat. Though he doesn't say it, it seems to me like Baeck feels minhag like he feels God -- there is a love in him of at least some of the particularly Jewish (like Shabbat), not for any other end but for its Jewishness. One thing I've loved so far about Baeck is that he is not a philosopher -- he doesn't try to prove anything but instead writes passionately about his loves -- and one of his loves is the Jews.
Rachel, about the 600.000, I confess that I thought before I used the word "men", but that's what the Torah says "shesh meot elef ragley ha-gevarim levad" (Ex.12:37). I don't know what the feminist reading of this verse is, and I'd love to learn it!
About the duty of challenging the tradition (and, again, after reading "Mystery and Commandment" I am not sure I hold the same view), what I meant was that (if we are operating under the second paradigm) the only strength of saying that Judaism has been adopted by the Jews for thousands of years resides in the fact that we have struggled with it for all this period.
A dogma carried for thousands of years remains a dogma, but a concept that still stands after being constantly challenged certainly has some very deep foundations. But the argument only keeps working if we do not accept these deep foundations as a given and continue to struggle with them - otherwise the concept becomes a dogma, frozen and incapable of dealing with new realities.
First-off, excellent analysis everyone. I'm totally engaged, and you keep saying things that make me say, "Yeah, exactly!"
Secondly, to Rachel - in looking back at Baeck's incorporation of law into his paradigm of mystery and commandment, I saw the following distinction. Mystery and commandment are God's ways of reaching to us. This is how God allows us to interact with and experience this world (in an ideal way).
As Rogerio said, law is the human response to commandment, and likewise, the counterpart that Baeck identified (to correspond to mystery) was mysticism. I think that these two realms are the human method of attempting to reach back to God - our version of creating mystery and commandment.
This is where I find his paradigm absolutely fascinating - in a way, mysticism and law are the ways in which we attempt to mimic God. Doing so comes with great responsibility, for on the one hand it seems like the human way of reaching back to God. However, it requires us to do so in accordance to God's will (which is not always so easy to identify). Otherwise it could be used to lead people away from the ethical system created through the merger of mystery and commandment.
(Oh, yeah, I haven't yet mentioned that I'm toying with the idea that perhaps Baeck's fascination with ethics - a topic that is separate from commandedness, but still related - is that it represents the level of existing where mystery and commandment are equally balanced. How Maimonidean of me!)
I love Baeck’s idea of mystery and commandment- that one does not exist without the other. When I read M&C I made two columns on my page and wrote down each of the things that corresponded to one another. The two zugot that really struck me were humility and reverence- and the notion that we should always be conscious that we are both created and expected to create. This reminded me of that idea that in our pockets would should carry two pieces of paper, in one- “the whole world was created for me” and in the other, “from dust to dust.” To me this encapsulates Baeck, and what he saw as the unique Jewish contribution- the ability to simultaneously hold two conflicting ideas and to find a way to intricately connect them (and even make them dependent on one another). After reading the whole article I tried to summarize it by writing an equation (How Ari like of me)
Unity= Jewish piety (mystery) + wisdom (commandment)
Rogerio,
Hacving just read your next entry I see that you wrote something very similar to what i just posted. Sorry- hadn't gotten that far
So, Dalia, according to your equation, what is "unity"? Are you saying that wholeness only comes through the combination of mystery and command? Or is there something else you are referring to with "unity"? (Just trying to understand it further)
Yes- wholeness can only be achieved when both command and mystery are represented. And as you posited- maybe Judaism is our “just right” mix of the two.
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