Judaism without God

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With the terrible pogrom that took place in my hometown, Amsterdam, and the ongoing Anti-Semitism in Europe, the United States, and indeed worldwide, it is time to give proper attention to one of the great mistakes of modern Jewish history. This is the myth that if Jews would only “normalize” themselves, anti-Semitism would come to an end; that when Jews would have their own homeland, a government and army, live their lives like all the other citizens of this world and do away with their strange customs, they would then live in peace with their neighbors.

This constantly repeated mantra has proven to be entirely wrong and in fact, dangerous.

The celebrated liberal Jewish thinker professor Emile Fackenheim (1916-2003) is best known for his writings on the Holocaust and Jewish peoplehood. Discussing the Holocaust, Fackenheim states that it is no longer possible for Jews to deny their “singular” condition. The Holocaust has proven that as never before.^[1]

Whatever the reason for this phenomenon, Jews have to stop deluding themselves that they are just one member in a community of nations. They are not and never were.

Secular Zionism made a fundamental mistake when it prophesied that once the Jews had their own homeland and state, anti-Semitism would end, and that there would then no longer be a need to remain Jewish. The creation of a secular Israeli nation would be sufficient to make Jews “normal”.

In perhaps his most quoted observation, Fackenheim states that the authentic Jew of today is forbidden to hand Hitler yet another posthumous victory: by assimilating. Since Hitler made it a crime to be a Jew and wanted to destroy the Jewish people, it is therefore an obligation for every Jew to make sure that he and his children remain Jewish. Fackenheim calls this the 614th commandment, over and above the 613 commandments of the Torah.^[2]

The how and why of Jewish continuity

It is not entirely clear from the writings of Fackenheim why he wants the Jews to survive. It seems that he is saying that Jews have no other option. It is a force majeure. But as to why this should be the case, he does not elaborate. It is however entirely clear that the continuation of the peoplehood of the Jewish people is for him a sine qua non. The Jewish people is not allowed to disintegrate.

In fact, this was the foundation of classical Zionism and it is a basic assumption of nearly every Jew who lives in the State of Israel or is a member of a Jewish community outside Israel. It should be patently obvious to every Jew that however much he tries to turn into a non-Jew and assimilate, it will not work. He will always be a Jew even if he would be baptized. It is as if there is a subconscious awareness of God’s word to the prophet Yechezkel: (20:32-34) “As for what enters your mind, as for what you say, that we will be like the nations, like the families of the land, it shall not be…”

Fackenheim struggles mightily with the question of how we can remain Jews when we are no longer observant. On the one hand he believes that after the Holocaust, it is no longer possible to remain fully religiously observant. After all, he believes that the conventional Jewish tradition does not have the wherewithal to solve the problem of God’s existence and His responsibility for evil in the wake of the Holocaust. The evil of the Holocaust does not fit into any earlier category of ongoing anti-Semitism; it is unprecedented, and its barbarism cannot be compared to earlier pogroms and expressions of anti-Semitism. The Holocaust was an “epoch making event”, totally outside the realm of Jewish history. And it must be treated as such.^[3]

As such, full traditional observance is no longer possible. Our world has to come to terms with a belief system that has been partially shattered by the Holocaust.

At the same time, Fackenheim fully realizes that without observance there will not be a Jewish future. The Jewish people will assimilate and disappear. All of his philosophical writings are imbued with this ambivalence.

Many Jewish thinkers do not agree with Emile Fackenheim’s assertion that the Holocaust is unique. While it is true that an unprecedented number of Jews—fully a third of the global Jewish population—were slaughtered in the Holocaust, in no way was the actual evil different from many earlier pogroms. It did not create more of a religious crisis than any other catastrophe in Jewish history.

The Jewish tradition has dealt with the barbaric 210 years of slavery in Egypt, the destruction of the Temples, the evil of the Roman and Greek empires, the collapse of the early Jewish Commonwealth, the inquisition in Spain and Portugal and their numerous pogroms. The Holocaust is cut from the same cloth: it is just a link in a chain of ongoing barbarism.

Whatever differences these thinkers have concerning the Holocaust, they all agree with Fackenheim that Jews have an obligation to remain Jews.

The necessity of religious observance

The problem, however, is that Jewish history proves over and over again that the moment Jews stop being observant, assimilation sets in, and within a short period of time Jews stop being Jews and their grandchildren are lost to the Jewish people.

The question is haunting: Why stay Jewish when we reject the very thing that kept us alive for thousands of years as Jews? It is clear that Judaism and religious observance are responsible for our survival. It would be hard to claim–as Spinoza and Sartre have done—that we remain Jews only because the gentiles hate us. One cannot build a Jewish future on the ashes of Auschwitz.

But what to do, when the Holocaust has destroyed the belief in God for many Jews?

It is here that we unearth a subliminal oversight which has been made by many well-meaning secular Jews. They, understandably, argue that they are no longer observant because they can no longer believe in a God who allowed the Holocaust to take place. If there is no Commander, why keep the commandments? This sounds fair enough!

Many suggestions have been made to circumvent this problem. But it has become clear by now that none of them work. Jewish nationalism, Jewish culture, Jewish secular festivals, Holocaust memorials, museums…none of these have proven successful in keeping Jews Jewish.

Even the Jewish State does not guarantee Jewish identity if this identity is not underpinned by something that makes the Jewish State feasible. The State of Israel does not guarantee the existence of the Jewish people. But the existence of the Jewish people makes the Jewish State possible, so long as Jews hold on to something much greater than themselves—something that inspires them to want to stay Jewish.

This is an inescapable fact which seems to be unsurmountable. A Catch-22. If we cease being observant, what then will make us remain Jewish and why should we want to?

And in the case that people can no longer believe in God, the issue becomes even more desperate. If the God idea is no longer acceptable and observance consequently becomes meaningless, what will make our children want to remain Jewish?

There seem to be only one answer to this dilemma, and this answer is paradoxical and far from perfect. For those who no longer believe in God, the only way to make sure that their great grandchildren stay Jewish in the future is that they must continue to be observant despite their disbelief in God.

This means that Judaism, if push comes to shove, needs to be able to circumvent belief in God.

Voluntary observance

It is here that we must turn to the well-known contemporary Orthodox Jewish philosopher Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and his concept of Voluntary observance.^[4]

Rabbi Greenberg comes to the conclusion that Jews are no longer obligated to observe the commandments. He believes that God has broken His covenant with the Jews due to the Holocaust. Since God failed to live up to His side of the covenant by protecting the Jews, the Jews are no longer obligated to keep their side of the Covenant either.

Despite this, Rabbi Greenberg calls on to Jews to remain observant. But this observance is purely voluntary. There can no longer be a Commander, only a Recommender. It is similar to the case of the convert who chooses to become Jewish and mitzvah-observant. There is no obligation to convert, only a sincere choice.

Whether one agrees with this radical notion or not, the need for a voluntary commitment to observance is of utmost importance to those who no longer believe in God after the Holocaust.

But here we come to a great paradox. The believing Jew will argue that the main reason he observes the commandments is because God commanded him to do so. But this path is not open to the secular Jew.

This means that he must find another reason why he should be observant, despite his rejection of a living God.

Judaism therefore needs to have the power to outlive the belief in God.

This is only possible when Judaism is taught and lived such that the secular Jew will be so uplifted by the grand ideas of Jewish Tradition that, despite his denial that God exists, he cannot resist living by its sublime directives.

This requires an entirely new direction in Jewish education. The secular Jew needs, as A. J. Heschel put it, to take a leap of action—to do more then he understands in order that he understands more than he does. ^[5]

What is required not just intellectual cognition, but also, as Chassidism and Franz Rosenzweig have stated, “to hear in the deed”.[6] One can only understand the meaning of Shabbat when one experiences Shabbat by actually observing it. To claim otherwise is identical to a person who denies the sublime beauty of music on the basis that he never heard it.

And so it is with nearly all of the commandments. They must be learned and lived as a revolution, as a protest to the commonplace, as an act of defiance. Their observance must be undogmatic and joyful. Above all they must be taught as a universal mission and not merely a conventional lifestyle.

This requires tremendous courage from the secular Jew. He must actively live a religious Jewish life, despite his renunciation of God.

Everything points to the fact that this is the only possible solution to the conundrum of Jewish singularity. It will be necessary to organize special courses and even academies to teach Judaism in such a manner that even the most secular Jew will be inspired and feel the inner need to become observant without admitting that there is a God.

In this respect he is greater than the religious Jew. He is the authentic Baal Teshuva!

A ladder of observance

An important mechanism to enable this process is to create a ladder of observance. Measured steps, building blocks, will inspire observance.

While there are no guarantees that this will work and there remain many inherent paradoxes, inconsistencies, ambiguities, I believe this is the only viable option available to the secular Jewish community.

No doubt, it will be argued that the grandchildren of Israeli Jews will be Jewish without any observance. But this is highly questionable.

First of all, an increasing number of secular Israelis have left Israel and assimilated in the diaspora. Today, secular Jews outside of Israel marry non-Jews at a rate of over 50%.

Secondly, physical survival does not guarantee Jewish continuity. The question is not just whether we will survive but also how we will survive. Assimilation is not merely a matter of intermarriage, but also a loss of Jewish identity. Nor is Jewish identity identical with Israelism. The very fact that there can never be an Israeli claim to the land of Israel but only a Jewish claim demonstrates that without Judaism there is no chance to keep our children Jewish. Where there is no continuity, there can be no return. Either we admit we returned to the Holy Land or there was no land to return to.

The secular Jew must make peace with these facts, however uncomfortable.

But if he does so, he will be a pioneer, he will have proven that Judaism is too great to be left to the religious. There is no greater compliment.