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[This is from Interview at Notre Dame in the Appendices of MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY, essays edited by AJH’s daughter Susanah Heschel.  We have featured bits and pieces of this’ MUST READ/MUST OWN book, downloadable as ebook on any kindle app. “I” stands for the Interviewer, not named but obviously a Catholic from Notre Dame.  Reformatting and highlighting ours.]

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AJH: [Excerpts from earlier questions not included here]

AJH:   Is it really necessary for a Christian to believe that the Creator of heaven and earth has resigned His power to Jesus and that God Himself, Omnipotent Father, is unable to reach men directly?  What of the psalmist? Would you be willing to say that the psalmist didn’t know how to pray?  And what of those who do not accept the claim of the Church?  Are the Jews and Mohammedans unable to pray or address themselves to God?  

 It is true that the “Hebrew Bible”—a term that should replace the condescending term “Old Testament”—stresses the relationship of immediacy between man and God.  But I feel that within the new thinking that is taking place in the Church, there is a need of a further clarification on this question.  I know that the Church stresses the centrality of Jesus in the process of Salvation.  I do not think, however, it has had to stress the centrality of Jesus in the process of inspiration and worship.

We believe in an afterlife. We believe that every one of us individually will be called upon to give account of the life we lived.  We are not saved by the synagogue;  our destiny will be determined by what we do or fail to do.  The commandment, the mitzvah, to serve God, is a term more central than the term “salvation.’

Q:   What is the Jewish conception of the afterlife?

A:  We have no information about it.  The only thing we know is what is given to us in the Talmud in the name of one of the sages of the third century.  We are told that the world to come is a sphere, a realm where the good people sit with crowns on their heads receiving joy of visio Dei –the joy of inhaling the glory of God’s presence.  That’s all we know.  We don’t know what the visio Dei means, or the significance of the “crowns.”  So we must allegorize, and we say that a crown is made up of the good and sacred moments in our life here on earth and the good deeds that we do in this life.

Q:  What happens to the evil man who rejects God?

A:  From the Torah we know only so much about the will of God.  The afterlife remains a mystery.  But we can say that Jewish tradition certainly teaches that there is a way of survival for the wicked that we call Sheol.

Death is not seen as mere ruin and disaster.  It is felt to be a loss of further possibilities to experience and to enhance the glory and goodness of God here and now.  It is not a liquidation but a summation, the end of a prelude to a symphony of which we have only a vague inkling of hope.  The prelude is infinitely rich in possibilities of either enhancing or frustrating God’s patient, ongoing efforts to redeem the world.

Death is the end of what we can do in being partners to redemption.  The life that follows must be earned while we are here.  It does not come out of nothing; it is an ingathering, the harvest of eternal moments achieved while on earth.

Unless we cultivate sensitivity to the glory while here, unless we learn how to experience a foretaste of heaven while on earth, what can there be in store for us in the life to come?  The seed of life eternal is planted within us here and now.  But a seed is wasted when placed on iron into souls that die while the body is still alive.

Q:  What can Christianity learn from Judaism?

A:  To be a witness to the God of Abraham, of Sinai, openness to God’s stake in the ongoing history of the Jewish people.  There are many things that Judaism teaches:  

• the importance of simple common deeds,
• sanctification of time, 
• and a sense of wonder and radical amazement.

But all these things flow from the primary witness to the God of Abraham.  The idea of witness, that is, sensitivity to God’s presence is, above all, the primary existential aspect of Judaism.  Other things, such as  the mysterious immediacy in relation to God, radical monotheism and the concept of man,  are aspects of witness.

Q:  Would you please explain the Judaic concept of man.

A.  We start with the certainty that God is involved in human life.  This means that the primary task of man is to realize that God has a stake in his life.  We also believe that the Jewish people are not the same since Sinai.  They are called upon to carry out the commandments of the Torah, the Law.  Man is by his very being a man in travail with God’s dreams and designs.

 In the Bible, we read about the creation of all other things:

 “And then God said. And so it was.  

But when God came to create man, He first had a vision of man.  He said: Let us make man in our vision. In other words, the vision of man preceded the creation of man.  We may say that God has a vision or expectation of man.  It is our task to recover it.  That’s why man is a messenger for God—the messenger.  

God is in our midst.  Our most important problem is the problem of responsiveness, obedience to the Law, openness, listening to Moses, Amos, Rabbi Akiba; our privilege is being a part of the Jewish community, past and present.

Q:  I think that a Christian would agree with all you have said.

A:  If he agrees with all that, then he is a Jew.

A:   Perhaps this is what Pope Pius XI meant when he said, “Spiritually, we are Semites.”

A:  But Christians leave out the possibility and the greatness of Mosaic Law.  A Christian theologian would say that the Law is an imposition.  We feel the blessing and the love of the Law; we sense God’s will.  A Jew is committed to the idea that he is able to be attached to God directly.  We have the certainty of being able to live a life that is compatible with His presence.  In other words, the will of God is within the scope of human understanding.  The Torah has not been abolished.  We have the gift of the word.  What is the Bible? The presence of God is found in many ways, but above all God is found in the words of the Bible.  We believe that we are living in the ancient Covenant of Sinai.  This is not a matter of feeling or even a matter of faith.  It’s a reality.  God is waiting for the sinner.  Up to the last day, God is waiting for his return.  Man has to respond.  The question of original sin is not of primary importance for the Jew.  The problem is not how shall I be saved.  the problem is how shall I serve God at this very moment.  My challenge is how can I be honest and helpful toward my neighbor in the presence of the Father.

Q:  Surely the Hebrew Bible is an essential element of the total Christian view.

A:  But what did you do to the Hebrew Bible? You made it an “old” book of Law that very few people read.  I have encountered many wonderful priests whose spirituality I greatly admire who haven’t read the Hebrew Bible.  Recently, a very fine, inspired priest, a man advanced in years, told me: “I am now reading for the first time the Hebrew Bible.  What a great work it is.”  The fact is that Catholics read only the Psalms from the Hebrew Bible.  They read papal encyclicals, Christian authors, and, of course, the New Testament.  But they forget the Hebrew Bible.

Q:  What else does a Jew expect from Christianity?

A:  We are a small group always in danger.  History has shown that our situation has always been precarious—on the brink of disaster.  For almost two thousand years, the Church has tried to understand itself as an antithesis to Judaism.  I am not speaking about the results of such hostility.  I am speaking about the scandal of rejecting the genuine roots of Christian belief.  Jesus was a Jew.  His disciples were Jews.  Jesus prepared for the Sabbath, sanctified the Seventh Day, read the traditional prayers, and recited and interpreted the Bible.

To answer your question, I would say that the most that Christianity can do is to be faithful to its ultimate roots.  Christians must abandon the idea that the Jews must be converted.  This is one of the greatest scandals in history.  It reminds me of a spiritual Oedipus complex.  “Honor your father and mother.”  Your mother and father were both Jews.  The first thing you could do for us is to be genuine in your Christian faith and to be a witness to the God of Abraham.  I recognize in Christianity the presence of holiness.  I see it; I sense it; I feel it.  You are not an embarrassment to us, and we shouldn’t be an embarrassment to you.  We can help each other on many levels.  The Jews have a good memory of what the Bible means.  The Christians have had great experience in proclaiming the message of the God of Abraham to the Gentiles and have been able to preserve many ancient insights and loyalties in their spirituality.  A Christian should realize that a world that does not have Israel will be a world without the God of Israel.  A Jew, in his own way, should acknowledge the role of Christianity in God’s plan for the redemption of all men. 

Q:  What is the goal of Christian-Jewish cooperation?

A:  The purpose of such interreligious cooperation is not mutual refutation.  It is to help one another share insight and learning.  We must also search for the sources of devotion and for the power of love and care for man.  More than ever before we need each other’s help, and we need the courage to believe that the word of the Lord endures forever.  We must keep ourselves sensitive to God around us and listen to His word in the Bible.  Religion is a means, not an end.  Over all stands the Creator and Lord of history.  He who transcends all.

Q:   Recently a New York minister suggested that Christians join Jews in observing Saturday instead of Sunday as the Sabbath.  What do you think of this?

A:  It should not be done just for ecumenical reasons.  One should serve God not for the sake of the ecumenical movement but for His own sake.  There is much involved here.  What is the nature of the Christian faith?  If it is a biblical faith, then you take the Ten Commandments seriously.  So why did the Christians change the Holy Day?  I cannot understand it.  Historically, it was not necessarily done for spiritual reasons.  My task is not to tell the Christian what to do.  My task is to help him, not to debate with him.

Q:   Your life has been dedicated to theology, the study of the word of God.  What are the main characteristics of Jewish theology?

A:  Jewish theology must never be detached from the human situation.  The standard of Jewish theology is the degree to which it may affect the life of the Jew his thoughts as well as his concrete action.  A person goes astray if his theory far outstrips his actions.  It was a major principle in early Hasidism:  Beware, lest your wisdom transcend your fulfillment or concrete service.  With every new insight that comes to you, seek to carry out a new act of serving Him . . . As to the term itself, “theology” is not quite accurate to a Jewish thinker.  I once said in my book Man is Not Alone that the Bible is not man’s book about God but rather God’s book about man.  In this sense, the real concern is to discover what God requires of man—what is God’s expectation of man.  Anthropology is central to theology.  I often use the term “philosophy of religion,” but then I have to define it.

Q:   What do you mean by philosophy of religion?

A:  The term “religion” in the phrase “philosophy of religion” may be used either as an object or as a subject.  In the first sense, philosophy of religion is a critique of religion; religion as a theme or object of examination.  In this sense, we employ e.g. the term “philosophy of science.”  In the second sense, philosophy has a meaning comparable to the meaning of a phrase such as the “philosophy of Kant” or the “philosophy of Plato.”  

Now, Judaism is a source of ideas, basic insights, perspectives, and teachings.  The task of the philosophy of Judaism is twofold:  radical self-understanding in terms of its own spirit, as well as critical reassessment of Judaism from the point of view of both our total knowledge and our immediate situation.

Q:  With this distinction in mind, how would you relate it to the contemporary theological quest?

A:  We are challenged from two directions, by the insecurity of faith and by the earnestness of our commitment to the Bible.  It is necessary to look at the Bible from the perspective of our situation and to look at our situation from the perspective of the Bible.

Modern theology must seek to recover the uniqueness of biblical thinking, of categories with which to face ultimate problems.  the perspective from which we look at reality determines our way of formulating our problems.  We have long been accustomed to search in the Bible for answers to non-biblical problems.  The result is confusion.  The Bible is the ancilla theologiae.  What I plead for is a search for the intellectual relevance of the Bible.

Q:    Do you have any observations about the direction this search should take?

A:  Let us take, for example, the problem of being, which is the central metaphysical problem today.  For the biblical mind, being is not the primary question.  The Bible is concerned with creation, God’s care for creatures.  To be or not to be is not the question.  We have being.  The problem is living.  The whole conception of the person and of man has been distorted because we have overemphasize ontology.  Biblical theology approaches man in a different way.  The right question is not “How do I know God?” but “Am I known by God?”  This is the basic issue. We have pagan questions, and we seek biblical answers.  To understand the Bible, we must know that the Bible has answers to ultimate questions.  But first of all, we must know what the ultimate questions are.

Q:  Do you think that insensitivity to God is a major problem today?

A:  Yes, it is.  But to deal with sensitivity to God is already an advanced problem.  We cannot begin with God until we have first dealt adequately with certain pre-theological presuppositions.  The way I relate myself to this chair will determine the way I relate myself to God.  We must analyze some basic core-theological directions or attitudes, such as the sense of wonder, reverence, and gratitude.  These prerequisites are not cultivated in our society. Thus, the problem today is not sensitivity to God.  We are not even sensitive to God’s creation.  Unless we know how to be sensitive to God’s glory and know something of His presence in the world, we will never know anything about His essence.

Q:  You spoke of the insecurity of faith.  How should theology face this challenge?

A:  First by saying mea culpa.  Religion has been reduced to institution, symbol, theology.  It does not affect the pre-theological situation, the pre-symbolic depth of existence.  To redirect the trend, we must lay bare what is involved in religious existence: we must recover the situations that both precede and correspond to the theological formulations; we must recall the questions that religious doctrines are trying to answer, the antecedents of religious commitment, the presuppositions of faith.  A major task of philosophy of religion is, as said before, to rediscover the questions to which religion is an answer.  The inquiry must proceed both by delving into the consciousness of man and by delving into the teachings and the attitudes of the religious tradition.

The urgent problem is not only the truth of religion but man’s capacity to sense the truth of religion and the authenticity of religious concern.  Religious truth does not shine in a vacuum.  It is certainly not comprehensible when the antecedents of religious insight and commitment are wasted away; when the mind is dazzled by ideologies that either obscure or misrepresent man’s ultimate questions; when life is lived in a way that tends to abuse and to squander the gold mines, the challenging resources of human existence.  The primary issue of theology is pre-theological; it is the total situation of man and his attitudes toward life and the world.  I discussed this in my book The Insecurity of Freedom.

Q:   Have you any suggestions how the churches may work to save man from destruction?

A:  Responsible religious people should discover the real moral problems.  The churches should be more concerned with how to save the humanity of man, God’s image within man.  The prophetic dimension is indispensable.  Looking at the past, we may think that the prophet was the most superfluous man that ever lived.  The Law was given, the message was there.  With the temple and the priests, why was there need for prophets?  Apparently it was within the Divine Plan that besides the Law there also be some men who with prophetic vision could remind others of God’s message.

Q:   What advice would you give those religious people who tend to become discouraged when they see so much evil in the world?

A:  For man to be frustrated is a cardinal sin.  Man is not alone in his concern for justice, God is with him.  Therefore, we must continue to fight to the last breath.  As a criticism, I must say that religious people are often too concerned with trifles and lose sight of greater issues.  How can a religious community tolerate violence?  This is one of the things I do not understand.  I believe that church members can do much to overcome evil if they unite.  Why don’t all those affiliated with churches—and synagogues—gather together some afternoon and fill the streets with one voice of protest against the killing of innocent civilians.  the protest of these many millions of believers would have a great effect . . .They should not cease to utter their disgust that America permits civilians to be killed.  This is one practical way to carry out the will of God.

Q:   I once read that for the Jews a basic difficulty with Christianity is that the “God of Christians is humble, and we Jews cannot accept such humility.”  Do you agree with this?

A:  No.  There is a passage in the Talmud that says just the opposite:  “Wherever you find God’s grandeur, you find His humility.”  The divine pathos is a basic category in our understanding of God.  I have written about this in my books The Prophets and Theology of Ancient Judaism, Vol. 1.  The issues between Jews and Christians are quite different.  We reject the Incarnation, we insist on God’s transcendence, and we make absolute the difference between God and man.  We don’t acknowledge the messiahship of Jesus, because we expected and continue to expect that the Messiah will bring about a radical change in concrete history.  We cannot accept the Christian claim that Jesus abolished the Law.  To us the Law continues to be valid.

Q:   The Catholic Church certainly looks upon herself as the ecclesia, the sacred, worshipping community.  The communitarian aspect is as strong in Christianity as in Judaism.

A:  I wish it were, but it isn’t.

Q:   Do you mean theologically or historically?

A:  I am not competent to judge theologically, but historically.  Christianity has not stressed the idea of community.  Let me give you an example.  In my childhood I could not understand how German and French soldiers, both claiming Christianity as their religion, could kill each other.  You call this a community?  Maybe you can give me a theological answer for this, but for me it is inconceivable that such a thing should happen in a community.  It is fratricide.  You are not one people if you kill each other.  This is your challenge, and I pray that you can meet it.  So far you have not.

Q:   Do you have any observations concerning the role of the Jews in the present ecumenical dialogue?

We are now at the beginning of a new period in the history of religious cooperation between Christians and Jews. . . . I have had hundreds of conversations and meetings with Christians, and if I discovered that we have many disagreements, I also discovered that there is much upon which we can agree.  It is true that our dogmas and ways of worship are different.  But we both worship the God of Israel.  We are both committed to the Hebrew Bible as the word of God, to some of the commandments as the will of God, to the sense of contrition, and to the conviction that without the holy, the good will be defeated.  Our prayer is for Christians to continue to serve and to worship God.

However, I have one complaint.  Give up the idea of the mission to the Jews, the idea of converting the Jews.  It is arrogant to play God.  Once the Christians give this up, much of the tension will be relieved.  Christianity, as an expression of Providence, is not problem for us.  It is true that you have a number of ideas that I wish you would modify, and in fact you are modifying many of them.

Q:  Some Jews are suspicious of the ecumenical movement and fear that if all Christians unite, then the Jews will again be persecuted.

A:  You can’t blame the Jews for such fear.  I have been stoned and beaten up many times in Warsaw by young boys who had just come out of church.  What do you expect the Jews to feel?  Do you think I can forget the long history of my people and the horrible things that happened to us in the last thirty years?  The Jew is afflicted with anxiety.  The psalmist frequently reminds us that there is no security in this world.  But I believe that God will purify the heart and will give wisdom and grace to His sons.  I take consolation in the words of Rabbi Johanan Ha-Sandelar, a disciple of Rabbi Akiba, who said:  

“Every community which is established for the sake of heaven will in the end endure, but one which is not for the sake of heaven will not endure in the end.”

[This was first posted June 11, 2012, revisited Dec. 8, 2014, and deserves to be reviewed on this 2015 observance of “My feast” of Shavuot, in commemoration of YHWH’s giving of the Torah to the “mixed multitude.”  

This is one of 40 essays written by Abraham Joshua Heschel circa 1953, in a collection edited by his daughter Susannah Heschel, titled:  Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity.  This book is another excellent MUST READ, in fact MJST OWN, and should be in the library of any serious student of the Hebrew Scriptures. 

What AJH calls “the Bible” is only the TNK, the Hebrew Scriptures, not the Christian Bible with OT and NT. If you’re familiar with his essays, you will agree that almost every sentence is thought-provoking, memorable, in fact quotable. Only highlights of the essay are featured here.

Consider that as a Jewish philosopher, he addresses primarily the people he proudly belongs to but gentiles have much to learn and absorb from his wisdom and unique understanding of what happened on Sinai. In fact, this is the other book that was instrumental in our decision to connect with the Revelator on Sinai and choose the revelation there (Torah) as the main source of spiritual illumination and redirection of our way of life.  

Where does an ex-Christian go when you don’t want to join Judaism, but still be focused on the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the Torah of YHWH? Sinai, a neutral place chosen by the Creator to reveal Himself to a ‘mixed multitude’. Think of yourself among the ‘mix’, the gentile among Israelites. Non-Israelite slaves took advantage and joined the exodus, leaving the place of bondage and idolatry to wander in the wilderness toward a Liberator who gives instructions on how to live in the world He created. The Covenant was with Israel, but the prescribed Way of life is for all nations. Gentiles represented the ‘stranger among you’ in Numbers 9: “There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or citizen of the country.”

The excerpts have been reformatted and highlighted for this post; consider it as though you’re reading through a Sinaite’s notes from a lecture. [EF] is Everett Fox, translator of our choice, The Five Books of Moses.—Admin1.]

Image from www.kingjamesbibleonline.org

The Bible reflects its divine as well as its human authorship;

• expressed in the language of a particular age, it addresses itself to all ages;
• disclosed in particular acts, its content is everlasting.  

The word of God is in time and in eternity.  

• It preceded the creation of the world, the beginning of time,
• and is given to us in the setting of time.
•  It is therefore continually in need of new understanding.

The Bible is not a system of abstract ideas but a record of happenings in history.  Indeed, some of the biblical maxims and principles may be found or could have been conceived elsewhere.

•  Without parallel in the world are the events it tells about and the fact of taking these events as the points where God and man meet.
•  Events rather than abstractions of the mind are the basic categories by which the biblical man lives; they are to his existence what axioms are to measuring and weighing.  Man does not steal because of a timeless imperative but because he was told by God not to steal; the Sabbath is kept not because it is of timeless value—because it is good to rest—but because God commanded us to rest.

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The God of the philosopher is a concept derived from abstract ideas; the God of the prophets is derived from acts and events.  

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The root of Jewish faith is, therefore, not a comprehension of abstract principles but an inner attachment to those events;  to believe is to remember, not merely to accept the truth of a set of dogmas.  

Our attachment is expressed—

• by our way of celebrating them,
• by the weekly reading of the Pentateuch rather than by the recital of a creed.  

To ignore these events and to pay attention only to what Israel was taught in these events is like tearing out a piece of flesh from a living body.

AN AESTHETIC experience leaves behind the memory of a perception and enjoyment; a prophetic experience leaves behind the memory of a commitment, not only of a perception.  

• Revelation was not an act of enjoyment.  God spoke and man not only perceived but also accepted the will of God.  Revelation lasts a moment, acceptance continues.
• Biblical revelation must be understood as an event, not as a process.   What is the difference between process and event?
  • A process happens regularly, following a relatively permanent pattern; an event is extraordinary, irregular.
  • A process may be continuous, steady, uniform; events happen, intermittently, occasionally.  The term “continuous revelation” is as logical as the term “a round square.”
  • Processes are typical; events are unique.
  • A process follows a law; events create a precedent.
  • Nature is made up of processes—organic life, for example, may be described as consisting of the processes of birth, growth, and decay; history consists primarily of events . . . .
• The term “event” is a pseudonym for “mystery.”  
  • An event is a happening that cannot be reduced to a part of a process.
  • It is something we can neither predict nor fully explain.  
  • To speak of events is to imply that there are happenings in the world that are beyond the reach of our explanations.  
  • What the consciousness of events implies, the belief in revelation claims explicitly, namely, that there is a voice of God in the world—not in heaven or in any unknown sphere—that pleads with man to do His will.
• What do we mean by “the world”?
  • If we mean an ultimate, closed, fixed, and self-sufficient system of phenomena behaving in accord with the laws known to us, then such a concept would exclude the possibility of admitting any super-mundane intervention or penetration by a voice not accounted for by these laws.  Indeed, if the world as described by natural science is regarded as the ultimate, then there is no sense in searching for the divine which is by definition the ultimate.  How could there be one ultimate within the other?

The claim of the Bible is absurd, unless we are ready to comprehend that the world as scrutinized and depicted by science is but a thin surface of undisclosed depths.  Order is only one of the aspects of nature; its reality is a mystery given but not known.  Countless relations that determine our life in history are neither known nor predictable.  What history does with the laws of nature cannot be expressed by a law of nature.

Revelation is not an act of interfering with the normal course of natural events but the act of instilling a new creative moment into the course of natural events.

• An event . . .  retains its significance even after it has passed;  it remains important because and regardless of its effects.   Great events, just like great works of art, are significant in themselves.  Our interest in them endures long after they are gone.
• The decisive event in the spiritual history of our people was the act that occurred at Sinai.  It had a two-fold significance.
  • One in opening up a new relationship of God with man, in engaging Him intimately to the people of Israel,
  • and second in Israel’s accepting that relationship, that engagement to God.
• It is an event in which both God and Israel were partners.  
  • God gave His word to the people, and the people gave its word of honor to God.
  • That word of honor was not given by one generation alone.
  • All generations of Israel were present at Sinai.
  •  It was an event that happened at a particular time and also one that happened for all time.

“Not is it with you only that I make this sworn covenant, but with him who is not here with us this day as well as with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:13-14).

[EF]:  “Not with you-alone

do I cut this covenant and this oath,

but with the one that is here, standing with us today

before the presence of YHWH our God,

and (also) with the one that is not here with us today. 

•  It was an act of transcending the present, history in reverse: thinking of the future in the present tense.  
• It was a prophetic foresight, for to be a prophet is to be ahead of other people’s time, is to speak of the future in the present tense.

The contemporaries of Moses succeeded in transcending the present and committed subsequent generations to follow the word of God, because of their ability to think of life in terms of time.  

• They had no space,
• they had no land,
• all they had was time
• and the promise of a land.

Their future depended upon God’s loyalty to His own promise, and their loyalty to the prophetic events was the essence of their future. . . .

The Bible teaches that life without a commitment is not worth living, that thinking without roots will bear flowers but no fruit.  Our commitment is to God, and our roots are in the prophetic events of Israel.

• In the light of the Bible, history, then, is not a mere succession of faits accomplis, things done and no longer worth arguing against.
• In the eyes of God nothing is ever lost; the past is always present.
• Though events do not run according to a predestined plan, and though the ultimate goal can never be expressed in one word or in words at all, we believe that history as a whole has a meaning that transcends that of its parts.

We must remember that God is involved in our doings, that meaning is given here and now.  Great are man’s possibilities. For time is but a little lower than eternity, and history is a drama in which both man and God have a stake.  In its happenings we hear the voice as well as the silence of God.

What is the spirit of the Bible?

•  Its concern is not with the abstract concept of disembodied values, detached from concrete existence.  
• Its concern is with man and his relation to the will of God.  
• The Bible  is the quest for the righteous man, for a righteous people.  

“The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of man, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God.  They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one” (Psalms 14:2-3).

• To the discerning eye the incidents recorded in the Bible are episodes of one great drama:
  • the quest of God for man,
  • His search of man,
  • and man’s flight from Him.

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Judaism is a way of thinking, not only a way of living.  And this is one of its cardinal premises:  

The source of truth is found not in “a process forever unfolded in the heart of man” but in unique events that happened at a particular moment in history.  

There are no substitutes for revelation, for prophetic events.

 Jewish thought is not guided by abstract ideas, by a generalized morality.

At Sinai we have learned that spiritual values are not only aspirations in us but a response to a transcendent appeal addressed to us.  Greek philosophy is concerned with values; Jewish thought dwells on mitzvot.

The movement of revelation must not be separated from the content of revelation.  Loyalty to what was uttered in the event is as essential as the belief in the reality of the event.  The event must be fulfilled, not only believed in.  

Revelation is the beginning,

our deeds must continue,

our lives must fulfill it. 

Yet we must not idolize the moment or the event.  The will of God is eternal, transcending all moments, all events, including acts of revelation.  

The significance of time depends upon what is done in time in relation to His will.  

The moment at Sinai depends for its fulfillment upon this present moment, upon all moments.  

 The

tablets 

are

broken

whenever 

the

Golden

Calf

is

called

 into

being. 

We believe that every hour is endowed with the power to lend meaning to or withhold meaning from all other hours.  No moment is as a moment able to bestow ultimate meaning upon all other moments.  No moment is the absolute center of history.

Time is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose periphery is nowhere.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

1953

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[First posted in 2014;  Chapter 3 of our MUST READ/MUST OWN book:  The Jewish Mystique by  Ernest Van Den Haag.  

Other posts from this book:

• “What makes the Jews so Jewish?”
• Israel is the Promised Land . . . but not for American Jews
• • MUST READ/MUST OWN – The Jewish Mystique – Ernest van den Haag

Reformatting, highlights, images added.—Admin1.]

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THE JEWS have invented more ideas, have made the world more intelligible, for a longer span and for more people, than any other group.  They have done this directly and indirectly, always unintentionally, and certainly not in concert, but nevertheless comprehensively.  The lives of us all in the West (as well as in Russia) and even of vast areas in the rest of the world have been strongly influenced, if not altogether shaped, by a view of human fate which is essentially Jewish in cast and origin.  Jewish influence continues, not only through our common religious heritage, which clearly bears the marks of its Jewish origin, but also produced by Jewish scientists and scholars.  To be sure, the Jewish view of the human career on earth—of its genesis, purpose, rewards, and pitfalls—has had its own career.  Any creed that persists so long must be expected to change and develop.  More remarkable, however, is the continuity of the core of the Jewish conception of human fate for so long at time.

Certainly Jewish groups, factions, movements, or persons do not hold the same ideas; nonetheless the persistence of some common beliefs leading to common practices and attitudes has been sufficient to leave a strong residue in the Jewish character.  Attitudes are transmitted from generation to generation, and they are intensified when the external conditions which originally supported them remain unchanged.  They become part of the character of the group.

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At first glance, the idea of a “Jewish character” may seem absurd or, worse, an anti-Semitic stereotype.  Individual Jewish characters certainly differ.  So do characteristics.  And often Jews stand at opposite poles of almost any conceivable range of beliefs, practices, or positions.  Some Jews are very poor, others are very rich.  (Most are somewhere in between.)  Certainly this influences their characters.  Some are ruthlessly ambitious for material success—they want above all to “make it” wherever “the action is”—others are gentle and other-worldly.  Some are sensualists, others puritans. some purvey the worst vulgarities of our culture in soap operas, musical comedies, TV, and general Kitsch, others are among the finest and most sensitive literary and social critics we have.  Some (e.g. Norman Podhoretz’s Making It) combine intellectual gifts with success-oriented ambition, and perhaps with a renunciation of any identity other than that of succeeding—not an uncommon traumatic effect of sudden emancipation.  Some are Communists, others are on the extreme right. (Most are in the “liberal” middle). Some are criminals, others judges.  (The Jewish ambiguity toward the law and conscience is illustrated in the career of Judge Leibowitz of New York State.  One of the most successful criminal lawyers the country has ever known, he defended notoriously vicious mobsters and killers.  Elevated to the bench, he has become equally famous for his severity in sentencing the criminals he used to defend.)  The Rosenbergs, atomic spies, were Jewish.  So is Judge Kaufman, who sentenced them to death.

Do Jews have things in common then, other, than religion or descent, to transcend the many political, cultural, moral, psychological, social, economic, etc. differences that divide them and sometimes set one against the other?

I believe so.  It is not, to be sure, any one thing.  Rather there is a complicated network of overlapping and crisscrossing similarities and traits which occur and recur with greater than chance frequency among Jews.  It is the resemblance that members of the same family may bear, even if some are nuns and others whores; some rich, others poor; some illiterate, others academicians; some atheists, others priests; some beautiful, others ugly.  The similarity is not in what is done or thought, but in the way that it is done, thought, felt, believed, or expressed.  And even this kind of family resemblance is a matter of frequency:  it is not equally pronounced in all members of the group.  The Jews obviously are not homogeneous.  Yet the group is identifiably genetically, culturally, and psychologically by the relatively higher frequency of certain traits.  Contradictory surface manifestations are produced by these traits, but the traits, more often than not, are the common source of these reactions.

There are three common elements deeply inherent in Judaism (the religion) and Jewishness (the character of the tribe and nation formed by the religion).  The first of these elements is messianism; the second, intellectualism; the third, a moralistic-legalistic outlook.

From these common elements many seemingly contradictory ideas, actions, and styles can be derived.  This includes the socialism, communism, atheism of some Jews and the conservatism and religious dogmatism of others; the civil disobedience of some and the insistence on lawful conduct of others; the intolerance of some—e.g., Communists, or sometimes, anti-Communists—and the tolerance of others; the puritanism of the rabbis, and Norman Mailer’s frenzied attempts to defy it and to free himself from it, or Philip Roth’s no less talented, or, at times, less obscene or frantic attempts to do so.

Roth, however, uses obscenity where it belongs:  there is obscenity in his art, whereas there is art (often) in Mailer’s obscenity.  Twho different ways—Roth’s more sublimated than Mailer’s—of defying one’s past?  It seems likely.  Mailer usually writes primitively idealized fantasies of himself—disguised as an Irishman—whereas Roth deals more directly and realistically with his past, trying to acknowledge and reabsorb what Mailer tries to deny by his disguise.

Unlike the other peoples of antiquity, the Jews not only believed in a paradise lost—the reign of Saturn to the Gentiles—but also in a paradise to be regained.  This divine promise, to be redeemed by the Messiah—which Christianity elaborated, stressed and extended beyond the chosen people—underwent many modifications among bothy religious and nonreligious Jews, but it never was written off.  Among the religious, it was felt that redemption depended on the Jews keeping their side of the bargain.  Strict observance and interpretation of the Law became necessary because the Messiah would not come until all the Jews were virtuous and deserved paradise.

Judaism and Jewishness coalesced into an unending series of rules of conduct that identified Jews, made them cohere, set them apart, and made them suffer yet persist.  For the promise was going to be redeemed.  God was not going to go back on the bargain.  And since the virtue of all the Jews was necessary to the descent of the Messiah from Heaven, it became the duty of every Jew to urge all other Jews to adhere to the Law and to their God.  On this basis the intense community of the Jews was separated from all other peoples throughout their long history.

Emancipated Jews who, under the impact of the enlightenment, of industrialization, and of science, left their religion, secularized the idea of redemption as they did other Jewish values.  Rationalism itself contains a promise of salvation:  the idea of progress, the idea that by means of appropriate reforms and careful thought we ourselves can create the paradise that the Messiah was to establish.  The idea that paradise can be achieved, whether by upholding or by overthrowing the law, is common to the religious Jew as well as to the anti-religious Jewish radical; it is an essentially Jewish idea.

To be sure, non-Jews can be, and are, Utopians, too.  They are, knowingly or not, influenced by their Christian heritage, which contains the salvationist idea derived from Judaism.  But the far greater frequency with which Jews dedicate themselves to messianic schemes is a direct result of the secularization of their traditional religious beliefs, which strengthen not only faith in salvation but also the conviction that salvation requires knowledge of some ineluctable law.  Marxist theory, for instance, with its notions of historical necessity, can eaily take the place of talmudic scholarship.  And often does.

As for justice, the Jews are the only people who have entered into a legal contract with their God—the covenant He made with Noah and with Abraham. Jews pray to their God, but also bargain and demand that He live up to His side of the agreement.  And it is the law and the constant reinterpretation of it, the belief in justice and the practice of the intellectual legal version thereof, that has kept the Jews Jewish.

At first glance, it may seem unreasonable to derive either the messianic Utopianism which in religious or secular form has been a characteristic of Jews, or the moral drive for social justice and equality, from the prophetic Judaism in which they first appeared.  Why should ideas pronounced 2500 years ago in a minor kingdom in the Middle East now influence Jews scattered in various places under the most diverse conditions?  They would not, but for circumstances and institutions that kept these ideas alive.

When, after three unsuccessful rebellions, the emperor Hadrian banned the surviving Jews from their territory, many had already left.  The more reasonable and moderate Jews, unable to forestall the rebellions of the Zealots and all too able to see the hopelessness of their attempt to defeat the Romans, had settled in various parts of the world. Some did not resist the influence of their new environment, but most followed the rabbinical injunction to keep apart, to live according to the Law which prohibited marriage with Gentiles and prevented more than casual relations with them.

According to the historian Josephus, as Jerusalem seemed about to fall to Vespasian’s legions (actually, it fell only later to those of Vespasian’s son, Titus), Rabbi Jochanaan ben Zakkai was sneaked out of the besieged city, hidden in a coffin.  Rabbi Jochanaan was a leading Pharisee, that is, a moderate conservative; the Sadducees were the pro-hellenistic reform elements; and the Zealots were zealots in both politics and religious fundamentalism.  (It is remarkable that these three elements—reform, conservative, and fundamentalist—can be seen once more in modern Judaism.  But then circumstances have become similar: a secular, non-Jewish world beckons again.)

The leaders of the anti-Roman rebellion, themselves divided by factional strife, were Zealots, and the Pharisees had to lie low.  Nonetheless, Rabbi Jochanaan surrendered to Vespasian in the name of the then actually powerless Pharisees, and in exchange obtained from him permission to open an academy of Hebraic studies.  Vespasian was aware of the rabbi’s powerlessness, but he thought the formal surrender politically useful in Rome.  It officially ended the war and conveniently classified the further fighting, at least temporarily, as a police action.

The rabbi’s institute, which flourished first in Japneh and later in Babylon, created a tradition that never wholly disappeared from Jewish life.  It recreated Jewish identity and made it independent of territory, temple, and political organization:  as invisible, and as strong and demanding, as the Jewish God.  It achieved the transfer of legal and religious authority from God and His priests and prophets to the divine Law and its scholarly interpreters—the rabbis.  These learned interpreters proceeded almost immediately to do three things that made possible the bond which has held the Jews together, cemented them into communities, and the communities, however scattered, into a nation.  A nation without territory, government, or sovereignty—but still a nation.  Owing to this tradition, cultivated by the rabbis, Jews continued to feel the yoke, the task, the moral mission of being Jews—of preserving themselves as such, and to the surprise, scorn, and at times hatred of the rest of the world, of refusing to become anything else.

This mission has been internalized deeply and pervasively, even by Jews who deny its raison de’être and regard talk of a chosen people and religion itself as so much superstition.  Jews may call themselves humanists, or atheists, socialists, or communists; they may indifferently or passionately repudiate any reason whatsoever for remaining Jews; they may even dislike Jewishness and feel it—to use an apt metaphor—as a cross they have to bear.  But rarely do they refuse to carry it, through they continually grumble and threaten to throw it off, and deny that they are getting anywhere, and haggle with God, the world, and their friends about the compensations they are to get.  They will not be cheated out of the promised redemption, though the expectation is vague and ritualistic in some, altogether unconscious in others.  They won’t give up being Jewish even when they consciously try to, when they change names, intermarry, and do everything they can to deny Jewishness.  Yet they remain aware of it, and though repudiating it, they cling to it; they may repress it, but do act it out symptomatically.  Their awareness of their Jewishness is shared by others simply because the denial is always ambivalent.  Unconscious or not, at least some part of every Jew does not want to give up its Jewishness.

• The first of the three vital steps taken by the long line of rabbis who laid down the law to the Jews was to codify this LAW—the Old Testament.  They decided what was, and what was not, Holy Writ.  A body of history and prophecy was created, identical for all, which henceforth constituted the Jewish religion.  The binding power of that codification stood the test of centuries.  Indeed, the Jews, together in Jerusalem before the Diaspora, were divided into more sects and factions bitterly fighting each other than they were most of the time after their dispersal.

• Secondly, the rabbis codified the ritual of worship, which became identical for all Jews.

• Thirdly, and of immense importance, beyond worship the rabbis codified conduct which was to be inextricably linked to religion and to Jewishness.  To be a Jew meant to follow numerous rules of conduct about eating, marrying, intercourse, children, education—about almost every detail of life.  These rules of conduct served, together with ritual and belief, to set Jews apart from non-Jews, to keep them apart, and to keep them together.  Not only were Jews warned against marrying non-Jews, they were prevented from even eating with them.

These three things separated the Jews from the rest of the world and provided a common center of belief and practice around which they could unify.  The rabbis thus replaced the destroyed temple and its sacrifices of cattle only to impose a life of continuous self-sacrifice and ritual on the Jews.  For to keep the minute rules and the comprehensive regulations was a heavy burden.  Jews, for good measure, were enjoined to bear it joyfully.

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Individual practices, of course, required adaptation when circumstances changed.  These were provided in continuous interpretations—in response to problems as they arose—given by a long line of rabbis.  Interpretations were in turn reinterpreted and re-reinterpreted ad infinitum in every Jewish community.

And the community was just that.  The synagogue was its center; the rabbi represented the community and decided what should be done with regard to the Gentile environment; he was the judge in religious and civil matters; often he was the physician; always he acted as “human relations counselor.”  He was the final authority in the community.  All this by virtue of his dedication to and knowledge of the Law.

This authority, derived from his study of the Law, contributed to the immense respect the Jews developed for learning.  Together the Jewish communities did constitute a nation even though not sovereign or ruling over territory.  Their internal affairs were left to them to regulate according to their Law (at least until emancipation) by their host nations.  And their regulation had a distinct national style.

Such a long period of following the precepts laid down in the series of commentaries that shaped Jewish life and governed behavior and attitudes toward the outside world could not but be internalized.  As it was transmitted from generation to generation, it left profound traces in individuals formed in these communities and resulted in characteristics which form a character—a character which remains in the modern secularized Jew who has abandoned the precept of which it is the precipitate.

None of the Jewish traits, however characteristic, is uniquely Jewish.  Whether one considers attitudes toward the family, or money, or education, there are non-Jewish individuals who have identical attitudes and Jews who do not have “Jewish” attitudes.  Nor is the totality of such traits in their relationship to each other—the character—altogether peculiar to the Jews.  There are non-Jewish individuals whose total character is within the range of “Jewish” character types; their circumstances may have been such as to produce a character-type of the Jewish sort.  And there are Jews with “un-Jewish” characters.  Further, there is not one Jewish character, nor even one prototype, but a range of character types.  This range overlaps with some others, in some aspects and segments—e.g., the Italian or Spanish character—but it does not fully coincide with any other.  This entitles us to speak of those within it as “Jewish” character types.  And secondly, the Jewish character types, those within the Jewish range—though also occurring within other groups, and not necessarily extending to all members of the Jewish group—occur within the Jewish group more frequently than outside.  This, too, entitles us to speak of a specifically “Jewish” character.

Thus:

1. The Jewish character includes a range of character types with individual variations, even though
2. not all Jews have Jewish characters, and
3. not all non-Jews lack Jewish characters, for,
4. more Jews conform to one of the Jewish character types than do non-Jews.

That much to show that there can be, indeed there must be a Jewish character, and to show what it means if a character is attributed to a group.  I have yet to describe at least some traits of that character [in following chapters of his book].  Let us see how history took a hand in forming them.