Letter from Ruth Kobrin about Faith and Doubt (1967)

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G-dless Goodness (1966)

The question is often posed to us, sometimes by ourselves: can I not be good without being religious? Is it not possible to be decent without accepting all the minutiae of religion? Is not good behaviour sufficient without observance of all the rituals? That question has recently been answered ‒ in a sophisticated fashion ‒ by a number of theologians who have declared ‒ borrowing a phrase from Nietzsche, the German philosopher ‒ that “G‑d is dead.” This means that G‑d has no relations with our world, that He is unconcerned with man, and that therefore He is irrelevant and meaningless. Hence, they conclude, we must construct a morality in human terms ‒ without reference to traditional religion; we must devise a secular ethic and propound a G‑dless goodness.How shall we respond, we who | are believing and observing Jews, we who deny that — Heaven for-bid — "G-d is dead,” but who insist instead, on affirming un-dying faith in the Torah’s Elohim hayyim, the living G-d of the Bible?First, we cannot deny that there are good people who do not believe in G-d. We have all met such people in our own personal experience. However, Judaism maintains that such goodness can-not last forever. The moral instincts that prevail today among the non-religious are but the residue of a religious reser-voir which is rapidly drying up. They are living off the ethical I interest from the quickly dwind-ling religious capital of two or three generations qgo.For ethical living is the branch of a tree of life, of which the roots are religion. When you cut off the root, the branch does not wither immediately, but eventually it must die. So, ethics is a natural consequence of religion. Reject religion, and within a few generations ethical living and ׳ moral instincts must die as well. .Why Good ... and to what extent?Secular ethics, G-dless goodness, is inadequate for yet another reason, as the late Dr. Isidor Epstein has pointed out. It simply is not inwardly compelling. There comes a time when…

General Jewish Thought

Letter to R. Zeilingold about Whether Judaism Is the Only True Religion (1966)

Dear Rabbi Zeilingold: As I told you over the telephone, I genuinely regret my inability to fly out to St. Paul to lecture to your congregation. However, I am pleased to be able to be of assistance to you in any other way. The question which you have been called upon to treat at the symposium in your community, "Is Judaism The Only True Religion?״ is a thorny one, and one which requires a good deal of preparation. My own preliminary feeling on this question could best be summarized as follows: First, we must be clear as to what is meant by ״religion." The term, as generally used, comprehends two concepts or interpretations of experience which, while they differ one from the other, are not necessarily in opposition. Christianity, for instance, sees in religion primarily a dogmatic structure, a system of articles of faith rather than merely "works," by which the Christian usually means ethical deeds. There is, however, a second dimension to religion usually ignored by non-Jews: that of the "mitzvot maasiyot," the practical commandments or observances which, cumulatively, spell out Halakhah, or the Jewish "way." (The concept of "Mitzvah," as Jews understand it, is largely alien to the Christian.) There are some Jewish thinkers today in Israel, as there were in Germany during the beginning of the Enlightenment, who maintain that Judaism is primarily a religion of law rather than of dogma or ideas. I think that by now, however, we have become disabused of this error. It is fair to say that Judaism is, in toto, both a "way" of life which requires certain patterns of behavior both ritually and ethically, and at the same time requires of its communicants the affirmation of certain abstract propositions, such as: the existence of God, His unity, "Torah min ha-shamayim," the chosenness of Israel, etc.Now, the problem of the exclusive truth of Judaism must be discussed in this framework.From the point of view of the practical observances, the question would have to be answere…

General Jewish Thought