Symposium on the State of Jewish Belief (1966)

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August 1966

Symposium on the State of Jewish Belief (1966)

Faith

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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 Israel's Chosenness (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, unequivo- cal, 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 anthropo- morphic 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 rece…

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What Do Jews Believe? (1996)

Yes, it goes without saying that I believe in God. But my big and terrifying question is whether He believes in me... More than a cute answer, this is a religious as opposed to a theological response. Theology, a monologue by man about God, has its place on the periphery of the consciousness of a believing Jew. In the center, however, stands God, and man must not merely think about Him, but respond to Him as part of the dialogue between man and his Creator. The creation of the human race was an act of faith by God in man, and the response of man determines whether that confidence was vindicated or misplaced. In Judaism, the will of God is made known to man in the Torah, mostly in the form of mitzvot. commandments. These commandments are, by their very nature, binding. They summon man to obey, and the human reaction comes on many levels and is accompanied by a variety of emotions. It is this interplay between summons and response, and their almost infinite variety of nuances and subtleties, that determines the quality of one's religious experience. But underlying all is the conception of the mitzvot as theonomous rather than autonomous: we may understand or not understand a commandment, prefer one mitzvah to another, but all God's will must be obeyed. Israel was chosen at Sinai as “a holy nation and a kingdom of priests." A "holy nation" is a mission for the polity in and for itself: to grow in sanctity as a godly people. A "kingdom of priests" is the outward reach of the Jewish enterprise in the world: to be a priest-teacher to all of humanity, inviting it by both word and example to fulfill the "image of God" in which every human being was created. The two are linked: Israel cannot teach if it is not itself informed, and therefore it must always strive to be a "holy nation.” And its own inner mission is unfulfilled if it fails to communicate holiness — in its numinousness and its ethical consequences — as "a kingdom of priests” to the rest of the world. The Torah …