Hirsch and Kabbala II

Introduction

This is the follow-up to my post which- perhaps misleadingly- was called R' Hirsch against Kabbalah. 

Here I quoted from The Nineteen Letters Rav Hirsch’s view that, through misconception, Jewish observances had become “magical formulas for the up-building of higher worlds”.  Seeing the concept of mitzvot as affecting “extra-mundane dream worlds” had led the mitzvot to be seen as mechanical devices for affecting the spiritual world

In contrast, one should view mitzvot as making man better able to fulfill a this-worldly mission.  The following is part of an interesting correspondence based on that post.

Adam

From all I've experienced of 'current Chassidic and Charedi Judaism' the entire kabalistic view of Jewish life and purpose is no different than the very non-kabalistic. Both hold the the point of life is to utilise this world for the sake of achieving something higher than this world. Both hold the way to do this is through indentifying the which decisions are the right decisions, conquering 'self' and consistently making the right choice not the easy choice.

Both hold this is done (only) in the realm of the physical, the ritual [although I am of the opinion that there is no act that is considered purely ritual in Judaism - every act has personal meaning and is performed to enhance the actor's relationship with Hashem - and not (only) in some lofty spiritual way, but in very 'real' (as if the other , isn't!) intellectual and emotional terms], the emotional and above all the day-to-day.

To suggest otherwise for either on behalf of one betrays a lack of knowledge of the other. (Not that I claim to have expertise in either, but just the opposite. It's clear to anyone who has had a little education in either that the above is true)

Also, I would suggest that the comments from R.Hirsch above are talking about those throughout history who pervert Kabalah by turning it into a pseudo-religion or who use it for personal benefit. who the past and current 'Chassidic and Charedi world' also disown. Obviously having not seen the text inside, this may be incorrect. Quotes in context will prove one way or the other.

Neil Clarke

You are both right and wrong here, Adam. The first point to reiterate is that, as I said in post, the issue is not with Kabbalah itself, whatever that actually means. The issue is with the beliefs that people (Orthodox Jews) teach as 'kabbalistic beliefs'.

How else can I use the word? What else shall we call the mystic teachings which he is rejecting?

The area, therefore, in which you are absolutely right, and I made the same point myself, is that there is nothing wrong with the 'sources' of Kabbalah and that mode of learning. You are further right that Hirsch bemoans the misunderstanding of those sources. He says that they "are an invaluable repository of the spirit of Tanach and Talmud, which has unfortunately been misunderstood".

The question then is what the misunderstanding consists in, and this is where we will disagree. Hirsch is not saying that people have misinterpreted these other worlds, or been taught by the Kabbalah Centre! The misinterpretation lies in taking them to be·
talking about other worlds in the first place.

In their 'aggadic context' they are invaluable in helping us understand the world and leading to the purification and betterment of man. As such, a lot of the symbolism discussed in the Horeb is based on Zoharic explanations. But (just as he makes clear with regard to aggada generally) ones we take them as 'literal' we have misunderstood them.

Now you must admit that when elements of the chassidic and charedi worlds talk about 'other worlds' and utilise mystical explanations they take this, in some sense, literally. Now when I say 'literally' I'm not accusing anyone of crude anthropomorphism [or whatever the word is which builds those worlds in terms of our own] . This is why I said 'in some sense' they are 'real' worlds.

The real question is that does he think people have misunderstood the nature of these real worlds or does the misunderstanding consist in taking the kabbalistic sources to be talking about other worlds in the first place? I take it from your comments that you agree with the first, whereas I suggest the second.

When he comments on the Korbanot saying "they are neither a transitory concession to a generation still steeped in heathen views, nor do they form a chapter of kabbalistic, magical mysteries.... Their meaning and purpose is teaching the way to keep the ideals of the Torah". Here he first takes issue with Rambam (as he does often) and then with a kabbalistic view talking about the mysteries of the universe. If he accepts the Zoharic explanations but says they don't talk about mysteries of universe, then he is saying that to do so is a misunderstanding.

Both sides to the above question have been held. The first position, that whilst he didn't USE mystical teachings, he was in no way against them was held by Dayan Grunfeld and Rabbi Elias.

However, R' Danziger says the following:

"A non-apologetic reading Of Rav Hirsch’s words will indicate he is referring to two opposing, rather than complementary, approaches. He is not complaining that the ethical does not complement the extramundane. No amount of apologetics can get around the hard fact that Rav Hirsch calls the extramundane worlds of (what is in his opinion) “misconstrued” kabbalah “external DREAM-worlds”"

Also R' Aryeh Carmell on why he follows R' Hirsch in using the Zohar despite omitting mystical references:

"This too is not surprising when it is remembered that Kabbala itself is essentially an exploration of the internal world of the unconscious mind and especially of the non-ego layers of the human psyche." [hence why acceptable]

Misunderstanding in Good Faith

Here is a draft of an essay I have written about Rav Soloveitchik entitled:  “Misunderstanding in Good Faith: Confronting Rav Soloveitchik’s Position on Interfaith Dialogue”:

Soloveitchik Interfaith.docx

This essay is being written for Degel which is the academic journal of the Alei Tzion community in Hendon. 

It is currently quite long and unedited.  However, any suggestions more than welcome which you can send to onlynameleftever[at]gmail.com.

Happy (and possibly confusing) reading!

Pesach Thought 2: Immigrants and Strangers

[See Pesach Thought 1: Hesed and the Prisoners Dilemma]

There are certain ideas, fears, sayings, criticisms and dangers that arise in every generation.  For example, when do you think the following was written?

The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence [respect] for their parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint; They talk as if they alone know everything and what passes for wisdom in us foolishness in them. As for the girls, they are foolish and immodest and unwomanly in speech, behaviour and dress

Yes, that’s right- Peter the Hermit in the 8th Century!  You can find similar quotes from Hesiod (8th C BCE), Socrates (4th C BCE) and Seneca (1st C CE).  Another thing that rears its ugly head every generation is the fear of the immigrant and the stranger.  They’ll become too mighty!  They’ll take our jobs!  Their loyalty lies elsewhere! We’ll be overrun! 

This was exactly the attitude of Pharoah towards the Ivrim who, as the name connotes, were a landless people and a tribe of nomads. He believed that they would “become even more numerous… [and] join our enemies”.  However, this wasn’t anti-semitism or anything against our group in particular, but from a general attitude.  One text of theirs says, “strangers from outside have come into Egypt… Foreigners have become people everywhere.”  The Egyptians used the name Habiru to any group of nomads and their records show that they used other groups in their construction projects. 

It is our treatment at the hands of the Egyptians that informs much of the Torah’s approach to morality.  Time and time again we get statements such as: “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having been strangers in the land of Egypt.”  Having been immigrants in another land, we are implored to act towards immigrants in a more humane way than we experienced.  The Torah, of course, is not a liberal document and there is debate about which injunctions to love the stranger apply to converts, which to non-Jews who agree to follow the Noachide Laws (a Ger Toshav) and which to just anyone who lives amongst you.  If someone, at least meets the middle category, then we must treat them “with the consideration and deeds of loving-kindness due to a Jew, for we are commanded to sustain them…” (Maimonides)

Whatever the precise halakhic ramifications, the spirit is clear, as elaborated by Rav Hirsch:

Whether a country is to be considered just depends less on what rights it accords its citizen, who are in any case secure and well-represented, and more on what rights it confers upon defenceless strangers.  In Jewish law, the complete equality before the law of the stranger and the indigenous citizen is axiomatic.  It is not nationality which entitles a man to right, but the acknowledgement of human rights which grants nationality.

Pesach is the ultimate re-living of history, showing us that the fears and (potential) events of history are destined to be repeated in every generation.  As such, our past experience must inform our present attitudes.  Per R. Hirsch, our experience teaches that “Harshness and cruelty follow[] automatically, as they always do and will, once the basic concept of human rights and justice is perverted”. 

Not that this proves I’m not racist.

Not Racist

I don’t know much about immigration policy, and have no more than vague feelings about numbers of immigrants we should let in.  Personally, I’d feel uncomfortable with a fixed and potentially arbitrary quota.  Surely the focus should just be on what they are here to contribute.  Nonetheless, I approach the issue with an open mind.

One thing, however, David Cameron is certainly right about is that we should feel free to discuss such issues without the threat of being labelled “racist”.  If “cultural sensitivities” prevent discussion in polite society, it leaves it to the extremists to make a meal of what are genuine concerns.

Here is Cameron addressing one such concern:

But as well as abuse of the system, there are other problems with the family route. We know, for instance, that some marriages take place when the spouse is very young, and has little or no grasp of English. Again we cannot allow cultural sensitivity to stop us from acting. That's why last November we introduced a requirement for all those applying for a marriage visa to demonstrate a minimum standard of English

Language is an important enabler for integration into wider society and entry into a culture.  It allows for access to education and the workplace.  Through the media, it allows the free-flow of information, opinion and analysis.  It allows for joint projects and projects and identities amongst different groups of people. 

And yes, dare I say it, it is about being British and feeling a sense of belonging and loyalty to this country.  The country isn’t merely a hotel that provides services.  Rather than residing in self-segregated cultural ghettos, people should contribute to projects wider than their own group.

Obviously, this has nothing specifically to do with Britain or Britishness. Anglos often do the same forming isolated communities in France, Spain or Israel.  It is equally wrong there, and it constitutes a certain arrogance if English speakers refuse to learn the language of their host country. 

Of course, having a national identity doesn’t mean any group turning the back on their own individual identities.  The aim is what the Chief Rabbi calls “integration without assimilation”.  If you disagree, feel free to call me a racist, but perhaps I could just be plain-vanilla wrong.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Yesterday I watched The Pursuit of Happyness for the second time on DVD, and it got me wondering.  It’s a brilliant movie based on the true story of struggling salesman Chris Gardner who managed, against all the odds, to land a top stock-broking job for which he had no experience.  This despite the fact that while he was trying his wife left him, he had to raise his son by himself with no money and suffered prolonged periods of homelessness.  He fulfilled the “American Dream” and managed to create a better life for himself and his son.  A feel good movie, right?

Well, it is a clear case of where a Hollywood movie promotes values which some may see as completely wrong.  The main character is turned onto his dream job after noticing stockbrokers in their fancy cars and observing that they are all happy!  After he lands the job, the voiceover announces “This is the part of my life called happiness”, before it flashes up on the screen that he went onto become a multi-millionaire.  Whilst I don’t think money will make you happy, I personally have no problem with people making money, working in finance or with capitalism more generally.  After all, that is where I am working!  Yet, many socialists, for instance would disagree.  I wonder what they are thinking whilst watching the film.  Do they notice the messages?  Are they writhing in their seats?  Are they being convinced?  Or is it seen as harmless entertainment?

If they do disagree, I wonder how they express exactly what in the film they disagree with.  Equally, I wonder how their criticisms are taken by most of their friends- the unthinking consumers of the product who just went and enjoyed the film without analysing it.  It would appear mad to start criticising the character for his actions.  After all, it is surely undeniable that he was happier having money which enables him to properly provide for his child, and should be congratulated for following his dream and doing so by honest hard graft and labour.  You start criticising the film, and go off on one about the film’s morality, you’d just appear really mean-spirited.

Yet, one may feel that this is just because the film is engineered to mean you must come to this conclusion.  In this very specific instance, with the two very stark options, with the limited context we see, with the motivations the writer has implanted in the characters- then, yes, we must agree with the outcome.  However, one may feel the moral of the story is insidious and is detrimental to the common good.

This is how I feel about a lot of films, but unable to articulate it without seeming to have a massive bee in my bonnet.  But Pursuit of Happyness is one where others (not myself) would have the same feeling.

The (Inexpressible) Faith of a Child

A Sub-section of my essay: “Misunderstanding in Good Faith: Confronting Rav Soloveitchik’s Position on Interfaith Dialogue”

According to Soloveitchik, the God-man relationship expresses itself in the triad of private experience, objective norms and judgements, and concrete acts in the external world. Although all aspects of our religious life are correlated with one another, it is the subjective relationship with God that is the essence of faith, and our desire to interpret the world in light of that relationship. Our childlike emotional connection is in many ways an aboriginal response to spiritual reality. Commenting on Likkutei Torah’s approach to the symbolism of Matzah, representing the boundless and unqualified trust bnei Yisrael put in G-d on the night of redemption, he says approvingly:

“It is the naive approach of the child, a commitment based not on a rationally explicable reason, but on an inner, intuitive, emotional, inexpressible experience” (FF 63)

This pre-rational faith defies objective analysis, is inseparable from our experience of the world and will give rise to experiencing various contradictory states (e.g. G-d’s remoteness and immanence). Nonetheless, for Soloveitchik, it is this experience that forms the existential background of all religion.

This is hardly what we might expect of Halakhic Man who prides himself on his exoteric and adult religion! Indeed, in the drash above, hametz represents the fully grown individual who interprets his experience within the categories of a sensitive intellect. Yet, whilst these show “homo theoreticus in his full glory and majesty”, they “can never bring man into the presence of G-d” (FF 65.) The religious person, unlike the scientist, cannot ignore the qualitative aspects of reality and work wholly in concepts and abstractions. The reason is that the norms and concrete acts- the very things halakha conceptualises- result from the spirit trying to objectify itself in the outside world. As a result, for the religious mind, “the world he knows is identical to the world he experiences”. It is through entering into the ideal world of Halakha that a Jew can claim full flourishing of his cognitive, creative personality but it cannot lose its connection to the experience that gives it living content.

Soloveitchik perceived his inability to communicate to his students the link between halakha and subjective religiosity, to be his greatest failing:

They lack the experiential component of religion, and simply substitute obscurantism for it.... How can I convey experiences to my students? I simply do not know how... My students are my products as far as lomdus is concerned. They follow my method of learning... However, when it comes to my philosophical experiential viewpoint, I am somehow persona non grata. My ideas are too radical for them.

Evidently, the lack he felt in his own students, was one that he felt in culture at large and amongst those of all faith communities. A certain loneliness, and inability to communicate religious experience, comes from the nature of faith itself. Yet, contemporary man exacerbates this problem by “searching not for a faith in its singularity and otherness”. They are committed members of religious communities but deny as superfluous, the defeat, withdrawal and sacrifice involved in genuine faith. They don’t appreciate that one can never fully translate it into terms that those not of their faith can understand:

Each faith community is engaged in a singular normative gesture reflecting the numinous nature of the act of faith itself, and it is futile to try to find common denominators

To deny this feature, in the terms of Confrontation, is to eschew the ‘double confrontation’ in favour of a ‘single confrontation’. Unless we say that our faiths are singular, we diminish the grandeur of both.

Why I Could Not be an Academic

It’s the first time that I am trying to write an academic essay in two years, and I realise why I am no good at it.  My housemate has asked me to write an article for Degel which is an academic journal published by the Alei Tzion community.  It is about Rav Soloveitchik’s approach to interfaith dialogue- a much misunderstood topic and one that I already know quite a lot about.  Moreover, I have read and re-read his works until they are coming out my nose. 

I should  be able to just sit down and write it!  Yet three things prevent me.  Firstly, no matter how clear, sublime and radical the thoughts are in my head, they never translate when I try and write them down where they appear dull and repetitive.  The sparkle and fizzle of my chaotic brain count for nothing so long as I can’t find the right structure to place them in or where the exact formulation remains on the tip of my tongue.  As R'. Soloveitchik himself says:

Feelings, emotions, thoughts and ideas become clear, and are grasped only after they are expressed in sentences bearing a logical and grammatical structure.  As long as one’s thoughts remain repressed, as long one has not bought them out into the open, no matter how sublime and exalted they may be, they are not truly yours; they are foreign and elusive.

Secondly, I end up deleting as many (if not more) words than I write.  At work, I write a lot of documents very quickly.  I act with complete professionalism and yet I care less about them.  As such, I can churn them out to a high quality as I know that my thoughts will be good enough even if the words don’t express what I want to say 100%.  Yet with a philosophy essay, I’m never quite happy with the formulation and see the objection to the statement even before I get the chance to write it.  This makes for a slow process!

Thirdly, and this isn’t necessarily a bad quality, I am never completely sure of my position.  So much has been written about Rav Soloveitchik, and so many conflicting opinions, that every time I read something new, I begin to unnecessarily doubt all that I thought.  It certainly doesn’t help that the Rav was not entirely consistent in his terminology, application of his opinions or typologies of Genesis!  Whilst the general trend is consistent, he certainly provides others with enough material to prove me wrong!

So there we have it.  Only time will tell if I manage to write this essay.