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August 1966

Symposium on Israel's Chosenness (1966)

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Article for Commentary Symposium (1966)

I have always felt that Shammai’s policy was wiser than Hillel’s in their respective reactions to the Gentile who challenged them to teach him the whole Torah while standing on one foot. It is probably better not to try at all than to risk all the ambiguities that must necessarily attend a condensation of one’s religious outlook to a couple of thousand words. Nevertheless, out of deference to the preference of the Jewish tradition for Hillel, I am willing to take my chances and come armed with naught but naive trust in the reader’s fairness, no matter what his convictions. (1) I believe the Torah is divine revelation in two ways: in that it is God-given and in that it is godly. By “God-given,” I mean that He willed that man abide by His commandments and that that will was communicated in discrete words and letters. Man apprehends in many ways: by intuition, inspiration, experience, deduction – and by direct instruction. The divine will, if it is to be made known, is sufficiently important for it to be revealed in as direct, unequivocal, and unambiguous a manner as possible, so that it will be understood by the largest number of the people to whom this will is addressed. Language, though so faulty an instrument, is still the best means of communication to most human beings. Hence, I accept unapologetically the idea of the verbal revelation of the Torah. I do not take seriously the caricature of this idea which reduces Moses to a secretary taking dictation. Any competing notion of revelation, such as the various “inspiration” theories, can similarly be made to sound absurd by anthropomorphic parallels. Exactly how this communication took place no one can say; it is no less mysterious than the nature of the One who spoke. The divine-human encounter is not a meeting of equals, and the kerygma that ensues from this event must therefore be articulated in human terms without reflecting on the mode and form of the divine logos. How God spoke is a mystery; how Moses receiv…
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Course Syllabus - Problems in Jewish Philosophy (1972)

Course structure: A. Dogmatology; B. Free will; C. Character; D. The proofs for God's existence. 2. The lectures on freedom should be essentially the same as in the past but less explication of text and not as many reports on the freedom question. Should not last more than a third of the semester. From freedom go to counter-culture and its conception of liberation and honesty, and leading to character problem. Here, assign the best students to prepare reports on character from following sources:ח n«־ י^ , 0/_zJ o H ר<ק ׳ ^V)^A_vM ך^ף^ חג H^ .—^-£׳17 ?v ק ׳ 9 י*J׳ ^ ^־ א>j<־ Mi ן ^יץיז ^'i)General assignment for all students•Faith and Doubt chapters 1 and 3.Special assignments for reports:Critique of Pure Reason Part 3, and Anthropology Part 2.The philosophical nature of Halakhic norms:Faith and Doubt chapter 9.*?ג^ ^ר>1 ^ 14 ר^נזןר-- ר\׳ר^ק ן 'רןג. *2[ _/>^U ^ SV I At ^3ר*^0< ^ ה 1^^? TP .£סה ח fa p^rt 1?\V^ ^ ’ lop*א^י1< ר
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Symposium on the State of Jewish Belief (1966)

In revelation, the Divine meets the human: It does not remain in inaccessible transcendence. While meeting the finite human, It yet remains in divine infinity: the finite is not idolatrously deitied. And It enters into the human situation: It does not force the human into a mystic surrender of its finitude. The Divine commands, and commands humans in their humanity. . . But it cannot do so except by singling out particular humans in their particularity. A philosopher may rise above his particular situation to the perception of a timeless truth. Every prophet must remain tn his situ- ation, in which the divine word singles him out. And the same is true of the whole people Israel. A Jew may wish to abandon his belief in the chosen people (1 would prefer: his covenant with God), and seek to transform, in the style of philosophy, his Judaism into a set of timeless universal truths to which he has risen. To do so. however, is to fragment the one reality of lhe covenant into two realities only accidentally connect- ed- a Judaism reduced to purely universal principles, and a Jewish people reduced to a merely accidental particularilv. To some this fragmentation is a modern necessity. To the believer in a singling-out revelation it is a religious impossibility. To the believer, a Jewish self-understanding of Jewishness as a merely accidental manifestation of humanity-in-gcncral, only accidentally having a special obligation to the ”universal principles of Judaism, is not a rise to a higher level of humanity. It is a betrayal of the Jew ish position. Thai the chosen-people concept has nothing in common with racism is shown by the traditional doctrine concerning converts, who become sons of Abraham. That it is diametrically opposed to racism- as well as to the religious tribalism which may be viewed as its ancient countcrpart-follows from the bcing-singled-out which is the chosenness. Tribal deities, as finite as the tribes themselves, are bound to their respective tribes. On…
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