The Horns of a Dilemma
“Liberal religion in the twenty-first century is caught on the horns of a dilemma. It has been so badly gored by these horns that its survival is in doubt. The dilemma responsible for its injuries still rages, untamed. ”
Jews are caught up in this as much as anyone. The dilemma for Liberal Judaism, simply stated, is this: in order to be plausible, it is often dull. The more coherence the arguments can muster, the less commitment the religion can demand. The more one can make a case for it, the less one has any urgent need for it. The more lucid, the more tepid. The wider, it sometimes seems, the shallower.
Liberal Jews have become so used to repelling the crass criticism of our ideological adversaries that it may be hard to acknowledge the accuracy of this critique. We protest to all who will listen that our analysis is correct and our institutions strong. We underline the signal contributions we have made to the Jewish community and to society as a whole. At the same time, many of us are very concerned about the prospects for a vigorous Liberal Judaism. In the epidemiological jargon in which we all now feign expertise, the R rate, the estimated reproduction number, is below 1. In other words, card-carrying highly committed non-Orthodox Jews around the world are disappearing at a faster rate than they are being replenished. This does not mean that we have lost the argument about pluralism, or feminism, or historical development. These opinions are reproducing at an acceptable rate—but the institutional identity and ideological enthusiasm that used to go along with them are faltering.
This is not a new dilemma. It has been a latent threat to the project of modern Judaism ever since Jews became modern. In earlier decades, however, we were preoccupied, swept up either with modernity’s exhilarating breakthroughs or cast down by its heartbreaking brutalities. And for much of this period, Jews in most places have been busy "making it,” forging a path to financial and social stability. In recent decades, the challenge has become clearer and the distractions less effective. Antisemitism is still a reality, but the overwhelming acceptance and success of the Jews has thankfully been a more significant reality. Long before COVID-19, the sense that the horns of the liberal dilemma were getting closer and more threatening was growing. How can we be passionate moderates? How can we wear heavy commitments lightly? How can we be wholehearted and open-minded at the same time? How do we hold concurrently that which is correct (based in thoughtful research, plausible) and that which is true (compelling, motivating)? The dilemma is not simple at the best of times, and we are not living through the best of times.
Like Jacob at the Ford of Jabbok, there is no chance of emerging from this encounter unscathed. The question is whether we may also emerge from it, like Jacob did, both wounded and blessed. COVID-19 has not created the dilemma of Liberal Judaism, but it has accentuated it and sharpened its horns.
In an 1885 speech, Kaufmann Kohler, one of the greatest Reform scholars and leaders of his day, referred thus to our dilemma:
“That Reform has not made good all its promises, that is has failed to realize many of its expectations, I do not hesitate to admit. Its great shortcomings consist in its neglect of domestic devotion, in its constant appeal to reasons instead of cultivating sentiment. Reform abolished the old regular service, the Hebrew daily prayers, but it did not train our children to communicate with their God in fervent devotion at the beginning and close of each day. It did away with old formulas of praise and benediction but failed to imbue every step or enjoyment of the Jew with religious life. It allowed the old fires of self-consecration, of sanctification of human life at its various solemn epochs to cool down.”[1]
This honest self-critique did not weaken Kohler’s Reform commitments. He had little doubt that the truth of his position would prevail, and that his Judaism would become part of the great religion of America:
“We want progress and enlightenment, and shall not rest until we have divested Judaism of all its disfiguring rites and placed it on that height on which we may hope we shall one day feel that brotherly grasp of all those who gladly inscribe their names unto the Holy One of Israel, because they have felt and seen that God is with us.”[2]
I don’t share Kohler’s hope. I do not believe that a Judaism shaved of all its bumps and distinguishing features, sanded and smoothed to the point of platitude, will sweep America and the rest of the world. Rather, I fear that such an ethereal enterprise will evaporate. Judaism is not disfigured by its rites and specificities—it is configured by them, even as they change in form and interpretation. If the true meaning of progress and enlightenment is a Judaism with its vital features airbrushed out of the picture, liberal Judaism is—I both fear and predict—a doomed project.
And yet, I share many of Kohler’s core values. I believe that Judaism, like all human endeavors, lives in history and is predicated on the inevitability of change no less than on the endurance of tradition. I believe that unchecked, some of the introspective and exclusionary dimensions of Jewish tradition can be highly destructive. They must be resisted, not from some comfortable professorial distance, but as part of an essential debate about how we ought to live.
The only way we will be able to negotiate the sharp horns of the liberal dilemma is by being prepared to risk some pain. Our current crises have punctured any confidence that we are steadily heading for a bright tomorrow. They accentuate an insight made decades ago by an Italian sociologist: “Progress is not inevitable. History does not possess autonomous organizational powers. Progress and civilization are not automatic, but only human enterprises which are exposed to setbacks, have no guarantee against regression, corruption, and failure, and are dominated by uncertainty and fear.”[3]
We are learning in these dramatic days that the dilemma of liberal religion is an iteration of a wider and even more portentous question. All our certainties and stabilities notwithstanding, we may wonder whether any assumption that the states we live in will be more strong, stable, democratic and progressive than they were before can be taken as axiomatic. Maybe things are about to get worse, not better. Certainly, the issues raised in the United States, in Israel, and in almost every country in the world since early 2020 make the doctrine of steady improvement more difficult to uphold.
What is now needed is a Judaism able to respond not only to the inexorable march forward, but with something to say in times of uncertainty and fear. If it is to prevail, the Judaism we practice will need to be rigorous and vigorous; anchored in language and practice; sophisticated but not alienated or arrogant. It will need to offer a robust defense of the scientific method against crude magical thinking, and a robust defense of religious imagery and richness against clumsy reductionism. It will need to be aware of current trends in thought and society, and yet something other than simply a rubber stamp for every progressive sentiment.
I do not believe that the case for this kind of Judaism can be made, or ought to be made, simply from the standpoint of social utility. Emphasizing the salutary effects of liberal Judaism may generate some warmth, a nod of appreciation, but little heat. Flossing – to give an example from another aspect of life - may be advisable, but it is unlikely to become an activity on which I am prepared to stake my life. My gums may bleed for it. My heart does not.
Making a case for a thick, embodied, challenging liberal Judaism will require passion as well as prudence. And it will also require a forward-thinking Judaism to do that which Jews have always done. To grapple with the challenges of the present, it will need to look to the past.
In May 2020 a Midwestern legislator argued against the use of facemasks on the ground that this obstructs the image of God reflected in the human face. Everything about this suggestion is objectionable—its arbitrariness, its confusing of resilience with stubbornness, the gratuitous risk it carries to life and limb. It combines Bad Science with Bad Religion. But the idea that faith should be considered the ultimate prevention, stronger than any vaccine, has precedent. A tradition in the Babylonian Talmud (Ketubot 77b) might be read in this light. It relates to a disease known to the ancient sages as ra’atan[4]:
Rabbi Yoḥanan would announce: Be careful of the flies found on those afflicted with ra’atan, as they are carriers of the disease. Rabbi Zeira would not sit in a spot where the wind blew from the direction of someone afflicted with ra’atan. Rabbi Elazar would not enter the tent of one afflicted with ra’atan, and Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi would not eat eggs from an alley in which someone afflicted with ra’atan lived. Conversely, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi would attach himself to them and study Torah, saying as justification the verse: “The Torah is a loving hind and a graceful doe” (Proverbs 5:19). If it bestows grace on those who learn it, does it not protect them from illness?
Facemask deniers and their like may find encouragement in ancient sources such as these. They may conclude that our ancient forebears trusted in Torah to overcome infection. I read the text differently, noting that five of the six sages mentioned are concerned with prudent prophylactic measures. They are committed to safety and hygiene.
As for Rabbi Joshua, the Talmud suggests its own commentary on his approach by offering a response to his rhetorical question. He asks – could it be that Torah will not save a person from sickness? Immediately following the cited passage, we are told a tale of this rabbi on his deathbed. At least through juxtaposition, the redactors of the text are implying that while Torah offers the promise of community, it bears no guarantee of immunity. This is the very opposite of a clumsy reward-and-punishment theology.
Rather than offering a license for banal credulity, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi is the patron saint of all those caregivers and service providers and frontline workers and family members who get close to those at risk in full knowledge that their Torah of kindness may not preserve them from illness. Read as a collective, the rabbis responding to the plague of their day offer a recipe for a contemporary response – caution based on observation laced with courage rooted in Torah. I don’t trawl our tradition in search of a license for brazen disregard of science and common sense. In my reading, In my reading, we are not asked to go against science and common sense. We are asked to go beyond them.
The COVID-19 crisis will bring formidable challenges to the continued viability of many of our institutions and not a few of our governing assumptions. Yet it may also point the way forward for non-Orthodox religious Judaism – not because this disaster has been pre-ordained as part of a messianic dialectic. I don’t believe that. But rather because the challenges we face will force us to double or quit; to raise the stakes or fold; to come up with responses equal to the drama of this moment, or to fade away. We must not fade away.
“Consider two pictures. The first is an epidemic in New England in the seventeenth century. Everybody is thinking about God; the churches are full and days are passed in fasting and agonizing prayer. Only one way of getting rid of such an epidemic is known: men must gain new favour in the sight of God. The second picture is an epidemic in New England in the twentieth century. The churches are not full – they are closed by official order and popular consent to prevent the spread of germs. Comparatively few people are appealing to God; almost everybody is appealing to the health commissioner. Not many people are relying upon religion; everybody is relying upon science. As one faces the pregnant significance of that contrast, one sees that in important sections of modern life science has come to occupy the place that God used to have in the reliance of our forefathers. For the dominant fact of our generation is power over the world which has been put into our hands through the knowledge of laws, and the consequence is that the scientific mastery of life seems man’s indispensable and sufficient resource.”[5]
Harry Emerson Fosdick’s 1922 thought experiment of almost a century ago reads differently today. Now there is an epidemic in New England, and in Old England, and all around the world. In the time which has elapsed since the disease first entered our vocabulary, it has become clear that the current epidemic is not primarily about the battle between science and religion. Rather, in the US and elsewhere it has transformed into a battle between inclusivism and authoritarianism, between progressivism and populism, between nostalgia and memory, between defending democracy and cynically undermining it.
In Israel, where I live, the dynamic is different, but the dilemma is remarkably similar. Are our progressive values strong enough to stare down intimidation? Will the rule of law be bulldozed? Can the vision of a Jewish and democratic state be maintained? The fact that Liberal Judaism in Israel is marinaded in the Hebrew language and plugged in to the Hebrew calendar helps it as it faces the dilemma of modernity. The fact that Israeli society is in many ways profoundly conservative and that pluralism is an option rather than an assumption makes the challenge harder.
“We will have to double down on a Judaism that takes words and texts and deeds and moments seriously.”
All around the world we are prodded and poked by the uncomfortable dilemma of being both passionate and moderate, focused but not blinkered. We are only likely to be equal to it if we respond with rigor and vigor in two directions simultaneously, grabbing the dilemma by both its horns. First, we will have to double down on a Judaism that takes words and texts and deeds and moments seriously. Doing this means going beyond the repetition of stock liberal mantras. It means embracing a Judaism that demands seriousness of purpose even when it does not require credulity or naivete. It means doing more Torah, more practice, more transformative acts. If we stay where we currently are, we are bound to lose ground.
“We will need to lift high our Torah of moderation and compassion and justice and humility and reasonableness.”
Second, we will need to lift high our Torah of moderation and compassion and justice and humility and reasonableness. It is not a sop for the suburbs, a blanket for the bourgeois. It is the Torah handed to Joshua by Moses, of explicit ethical action and deeply moral questions, passed on by the prophets and the sages, utilized and expanded upon by the thinkers and the activists. If we cannot believe that the Torah we bear is an iteration of that early Torah, if we find the image of a chain of tradition fanciful, an insult to our weary intelligence, then our Torah is no Torah at all.
To meet the challenges of an extreme time, as an epidemic rages and our concept of a good society is frayed at the edges, we will need agility and fortitude. At times our response will be like those sages laboring to avoid being downwind of the plague. At times we may identify with Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, leaning into the crisis, taking risks.
Kaufmann Kohler thought that it was only a matter of time until the truth of Reform Judaism prevailed. Harry Emerson Fosdick thought that an epidemic brought to the fore the retreat of all religion and the rise of science. What are we to add to this debate? The old fight between religion and science is not the focus of our current crisis. Now we must ask: given our commitments, on what will our commitments to the good society be based? On what will our vision of lives well lived, with personal responsibility and communal support, rooted in an ever-renewing past, focused on an ever-evolving future, on what will this vision stand? I choose to stand on the ground of a Torah of growth and development, often messy and rarely messianic. We can stay home and pray for market share. Or we can get in the ring with an angry dilemma and face up to its threatening horns.
I am suggesting that if, like me, you find the path of non-fundamentalist Jewish commitment to be your path, it is time to ramp up the commitment. What exactly this looks like is up to you – individuals get to choose. But it may mean studying more, praying more, building community more, mobilizing more, arguing more. Whatever it is, there will need to be more of it.
The world is on fire. In the months and years to come many beliefs and assumptions will be put to the test. Some will give up on the identities and ideologies to which they subscribed. Others will double down on them and try to drown out voices of doubt. Those of us who choose a path of engaged Jewish commitment, soaked in sources, informed by practices, in conversation with ideas, in solidarity with others, will have to work hard to make this option work. We will need to do and be more than we currently are, even though we may find ourselves with depleted resources. We will need to grab the dilemma by its horns. This may be hard, but it is also exhilarating. It has kept Judaism alive and vital for millennia. This year the plaintiff cry of the ram’s horn is heard in different settings than usual. Listen closely, and you may be able to hear the resonant possibilities of the horns of our dilemma.
[1] Kaufmann Kohler, Studies, Addresses and Personal Papers (New York: Alumni Association of the Hebrew Union College, 1931), 212-213.
[2] Kohler, Studies, 213.
[3] Franco Ferrarotti, The Myth of Inevitable Progress (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985), 83.
[4] See Fred Rosner, “The Illness ‘Ra’atan’ (Insect in the Brain)”, Koroth 10 (1993): 157-161; Boris S. Ostrer, ”Ra’atan Disease in the Context of Greek Medicine”, Review of Rabbinic Judaism 4.2 (2001): 234-235; Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, On the Margins of a Minority: Leprosy. Madness and Disability Among the Jews of Medieval Europe [transl. Haim Watzman] (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014), especially 30-32.
[5] Harry Emerson Fosdick, Christianity and Progress, (New York: Association Press, 1922), 52-53.
