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[First posted in 2012. This is a MUST READ for those wondering what Judaism is about. Its author Abba Hillel Silver, is considered as one of the great religious scholars of our time and in this book, he gives Jew and Gentile “the best introduction to Judaism” according to the Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal. As we always do, we feature only excerpts from the “bookends” — Introduction and Conclusion as well as the Table of Contents. This copy came from the collection of antique books purchased from estate and garage sales in the US, by a Filipino ‘balikbayan’ who happens to be the walking partner of my Catholic brother and who has passed on to us about 7 (books on Israel) for our library. May our Adonai YHWH bless these two gentlemen for their thoughtful gesture in adding to our S6K reading resources rare books we could otherwise not access. Here the the links to the sequels:
Reformatted and highlighted for post.—NSB@S6K]
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INTRODUCTION
There arose among the people of Israel in ancient times a group of men who had a message for their nation and for mankind, which made of Israel a distinct people everywhere for nearly three thousand years. These men were not unaware of the novel and revolutionary nature of their message. They foresaw that they were thrusting a unique mission upon their people, as yet unprepared for it, and the lonely ordeal of a leadership which would set them at war with the world. They had no choice in uttering their message, and they gave their people no choice in accepting it. The burden of spiritual compulsion was theirs, and it came to abide also with their people through the long centuries and amidst many strange vicissitudes of fortune. By it the world came to be profoundly agitated, and the spirit of man was quickened to new adventures in faith and social aspiration.
They were the founders of Judaism, a challenging and differing faith.
In later times and in other settings their basic ideas gave impulse and substance to Christianity and to Islam. These prophets and their successors fashioned a way of life for men, which like some strong Gulf Stream flowed steadily and discernibly through the great waters of humanity.
These men did not carve in marble or cast in bronze, or fashion dramatic art and epic of ageless beauty, or mold the subtle syllogism, or pioneer in the natural sciences, or build large empires or set their victorious triremes sailing the highways of the seas. They developed a clean and noble art of life for men and nations, without which, as they have witnessed in our day, the populous city becomes a heap and man reverts to the jungle.
In subsequent ages gifted sons and daughters of Israel were to achieve distinction in many fields of art and science as well, and in some of them even rare eminence; but in none did the genius of the people of Israel express itself as uniquely, as creatively, and as momentously as in the realm of the moral and the spiritual.
They were not technical theologians, these men who fashioned Judaism, nor did the faith which they founded ever boast of a systematic Jewish theology until the early Middle Ages, almost a thousand years after the final canonization of the Bible, more than two thousand years after Moses. In the Bible and Talmud the doctrines of Judaism are nowhere presented in the unified form of a treatise. They are broadly diffused in prophetic utterances, legal codes, history, poetry, precept, parable, and drama.
There were, of course, many theologians and philosophers among the Jewish people, especially in later times, and some of them were not wanting in great speculative power, but Judaism is not based upon their theology or philosophy. These religious philosophers, in successive generations, employed whatever philosophic thought was current in their day, from Platonism to Existentialism, to defend or to corroborate the basic tenets of their faith, “to prove the ideas of the Torah by correct reasoning.”
- Although metaphysical speculation was not native to Israel, Judaism welcomed the light of reason to elucidate the truths which it proclaimed.
- It never based itself on any radical skepticism of knowledge, and never urged men to say, “Credo quia absurdum est.”
- It did not restrict itself to rationalism, but it never justified itself by anti-rationalism.
- It did not distrust reason in matters of faith, but it never viewed reason as the source of faith or its final arbiter.
- It revered the human intellect as a divine endowment and taught men to pray daily, “O favor us with knowledge, understanding and intelligence,” but it knew the limits of discursive reasoning.
Jewish philosophers like Philo, Maimonides, and Crescas were often profound and original in their metaphysical insights, and they influenced the development of philosophic thought generally. Their conclusions, however, were preordained by the very nature of their self-imposed task.
They began with God and the Torah and they never wandered any distance away from them. The author of the Letter of Aristeas (2 c.B.C.) noted:
“For in their conduct and discourse these men [the Sages who were sent from Palestine to Alexandria to translate the Bible into Greek) were far in advance of the philosophers, for they made their starting-point from God.”
Men enamored of compact systems will have difficulty in grasping the essence of Judaism, because it is not a tidy and precise arrangement of concepts, any more than history is. But just as history, in spite of its troughs and crests and its patent incongruities, manifests a clear upward movement in human development, so does Judaism reveal in its development the progress and perseverance of a group of cardinal spiritual and ethical ideas. Judaism held high a light in the darkness of the world. Not all the darkness is dispelled, but there is enough light to guide man along his way, and society to a fuller and happier life.
A clear knowledge of God, Judaism maintained, is possible to no one, but an acceptable worship of God is possible to everyone.
This profound truth was made known to the foremost among the prophets, Moses, who when seeking to discover the nature of God was told that the face of God was forever hidden from mortal man, but that he might learn much about “all the goodness” of God (Ex. 33:18-23). This was then revealed to him in the 13 oral attributes (Ex. 34:6-7). In Judaism the true worship of God does not culminate in a mystic ecstasy, or an inner “experience” of God, or in the “identification” of the worshipper with God, but in the good life.
“And you shall do what is right and good
in the sight of the Lord” (Deut. 6:18).
The accent in Judaism is never on abstract speculation but on an ethical message and a program. Many of the basic theologic and philosophical problems which engaged the minds of men through the ages are propounded in Biblical and Rabbinical literature, and receive various degrees of attention, but the strong emphasis is always on moral action.
The beginning of wisdom is reverence for God.
(Prov. 1:7).
Reverence for God is made manifest through action.
He judged the poor and needy, then it was well.
Is not this to know Me? says the Lord.
(Jer. 22:16).
It is in this sense that the phrase, “to know God,” which occurs frequently in the Bible is to be understood. Da’at Elohim—the knowledge of God—means the true worship of God, not a full intellectual fathoming of His nature.
“Let him who wishes to glory, glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who practices kindness, justice and righteousness in the earth, for in these things do I delight, says the Lord” (Jer. 9:23).
All speculative ways of knowing God lead from one darkness to another.
“A man, when he has made an end [of probing the mysteries of God] has hardly begun, and when he ceases, abides in deep confusion.” (Eccl. 18:7).
A modern philosopher makes a similar confession for philosophy:
“Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.”
However profound their insights, men must still resort to human categories to describe God, and they cannot escape the limitations which condition all human knowledge.
Judaism has always been aware of this. God does not depend upon His being completely understood, and faith does not wait upon final intellectual sanctions. Judaism is in essence a religion of few subtleties but of majestic range and glowing depths of spiritual consciousness.
No special metaphysics, no unique “knowledge” or secret gnosis which is requisite for salvation, no evangel of a miraculous scheme of redemption are offered by Judaism. It is not a transcendental wisdom so recondite that it can be grasped only by the exemplary few, and by them only after a long and intense psychophysical discipline. Judaism does not attempt to answer unanswerable questions, or to give man what man cannot have.
Judaism is Torah—“teaching.”
The Aramaic Targum correctly translates it Oraita, while the Greek Septuagint ineptly renders it nomos—law.
Torah is a compendium of moral instructions, a rule of life for all men, a pattern of behavior, a “way” revealed in the life of a people through prophets and sages, which, if faithfully followed, leads to the well-being of the individual and of society.
“You shall teach them the statutes and the decisions and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do.” (Ex. 19:20).
“The ‘mizvah’ [religious commandment] is a lamp, the Torah is a light and the moral instructions are the way of life.”
(Pr. 6:23).
The term Halachah which the Rabbis employed for laws based on the Torah also means the proper way in which a man should walk.
Judaism’s “way” is designed to sustain and advance life, not to escape or transcend it. Its roots are deep in the practical needs of man and it is fully responsive both to his instincts and his aspirations. Judaism is a devout morality.
The source of its authority is God.
The motive force is the love of God and man.
Its confidence is derived not alone from revelation, as unaccountably mysterious as the origin of intelligence itself, but also from history and from the empirical experiences of the people of Israel. The reward for man and mankind is now and in the future. To propagate this faith — “to proclaim God’s unity in love” — Israel deemed itself chosen as an instrument of leadership. The technique for this leadership is defined:
“To learn and to teach, to observe and to practice.”
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. One and the Same
II. A Pattern in History
III. On Being Receptive
IV. On Being Different
V. On Clinging to Eminene
VI. On Rejecting Treasures
VII. On Avoiding Alternatives
VIII. On Being Reasonable
IX. On Social Progress
X. That Men Need to be Saved
XI. That Men are Not Equal
XIII. That Men are Not Free
XIV. That Men should not Resist Evil
XV. That Death is Better than Life
XVI. Differences and Underlying Unity