Jewish existentialism Rosenzweig Buber and Soloveitchik

CHAPTER 34
Jewish existentialism: Rosenzweig, Buber,
and Soloveitchik
Oliver Leaman
It is always difficult to group philosophers together under labels, and defining thinkers as
“existentialists” is perhaps the most difficult label to apply appropriately. Existentialists
seem to have an aversion to being labeled in any way at all, which has the merit of being
consistent with their existentialism but which also makes it difficult to know which
thinkers should be grouped together.1 But there are good arguments for considering these
three thinkers together, as representative of what might be called Jewish existentialism,
although it must not be thought that they share a party line. It will be argued here that
considering them together is a useful way of highlighting a number of difficult but
interrelated philosophical issues which have come to have great prominence in the
twentieth century, and which form part of the curriculum of Jewish philosophy itself.
After introducing some basic aspects of their general thought, their contrasting views and
arguments on the attitude which Jews should adopt to halakhah, to Jewish law, will be
described in order to see how their philosophical views actually work when they are
trained on a particular issue.
FRANZ ROSENZWEIG
Many would argue that the greatest philosopher of the three is Franz Rosenzweig (1886–
1929), and his Star of Redemption is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Born in Kassel in
Germany, he grew up within an environment which regarded itself as Jewish in a social
rather than religious sense. As he approached adulthood he experienced the familiar
forces of assimilation which came to characterize so much of the Jewish experience of his
times. He was particularly marked by his relationship with a lecturer in philosophy in
Leipzig, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who converted to Christianity from Judaism.
Rosenzweig’s own cousin, Hans Ehrenberg, had also abandoned his religion and become
a Christian, and this struck Rosenzweig as a profoundly correct move. As he often points
out, the sort of society in which the Jews of Germany lived was thoroughly Christian, and
the “Jewish” culture which they experienced was so strongly marked by Christianity that
it seemed more honest to become a Christian and throw off the pretense of maintaining a
nominal Judaism. This led to Rosenzweig’s own desire to convert, but he felt, typically of
the seriousness with which he acted, that, before he became a Christian, he ought to
become a Jew in a real sense, since that would give the act of conversion an aspect of
authenticity which otherwise it might well lack. His participation in Jewish religiosity
disabused him of his desire to convert. He came to think that it was possible to come
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close to God without the mediation of Jesus Christ as a result of his new awareness that
many of his contemporary Jews had no difficulty in finding a deep spirituality and
meaning in their religion.
He came to this decision when he was twenty-seven years old, and decided to spend
the rest of his life working on Judaism. In Berlin he joined the classes which Hermann
Cohen gave which emphasized the significance of philosophy for the understanding of
what Judaism means. His interest was far from entirely academic, though, and he came to
create and organize a very important institution of Jewish learning in Germany, when he
set up the Lehrhaus, which sought to communicate all aspects of Jewish learning to the
community at large, and in particular to those who trained there to work in that
community. This took place after the First World War, during which he spent much of his
time on the front. Sadly, in 1921, he became very unwell with a growing paralysis, and
over the next few years rapidly declined in health, dying in 1929. His last eight years
were very rich intellectually, and he played a very full academic and pedagogical life
with the assistance of his wife and other assistants who helped him work around his everincreasing disabilities. His ability to continue working despite his sufferings, and the
poignancy of such a fluent writer becoming trapped in a body which stopped working,
has done a lot to increase his romantic aura.
Rosenzweig’s philosophy should originally be seen as in opposition to philosophies
which he first of all accepted and then rejected. His first target was Hegelianism, which
he rejected on account of what he saw as the reification of entirely general concepts such
as “humanity” and its inability to make sense of the life of the individual. He also
rejected the sort of approach to Judaism promoted by Hermann Cohen, which regards it
as a religion of reason and so as a representation of entirely general universal truths. It is
worth noting that both of these approaches are in line with assimilation as a personal
decision by the Jewish philosopher. After all, if Judaism is just a stage along the progress
of the idea in history, then there is nothing much to be said for adhering to it once that
period of history has passed. Similarly, if Judaism is just a particular version of entirely
general ethical truths, all that one needs to do when abandoning religion is to ensure that
wherever one goes one maintains the same ethical principles. This could be adherence to
a new religion, or to no religion at all but to some principle like socialism. Rosenzweig
wanted to reject philosophical approaches which represented a justification for
assimilation, not just because he came to disapprove of that as a strategy but largely
because he came to see that Judaism could not be reduced to anything else.
The “new thinking” which Rosenzweig called for was not in itself very new, since it
owed a lot to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but it was certainly quite new when applied to
Jewish philosophy.2 It is based on the principle that being is prior to thought, in the sense
that the place to start philosophically is with the experiences of the individual, and then to
expand from these experiences to more complex and abstract concepts. Rosenzweig’s
analysis maintains its existentialist flavor throughout, in that when he discusses religious
and philosophical concepts he emphasizes the significance of how they relate to our
experiences and situation in the world. Reality is a matter of the dynamic interaction of
God, world, and humanity, and what is of crucial significance here is this notion of
interaction. Judaism manages to bring these diverse ideas together in such a way that they
form a picture of the way things are in mutual relationships. It is that which creates and
establishes a form of reality which allows human beings to find meaning in their lives.
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711
The notion of God in Judaism is not of a distant creator, someone whose contribution
to the world was merely to create it, like an irresponsible parent. On the contrary, he
represents the notion of interaction with his creatures, and this is represented through
revelation. Although particular revelations occur at certain times and places, this is
merely symbolic of the deeper notion of revelation, according to which human beings
establish a notion of their own selfhood through their consciousness of the fact that they
are created and loved by God. The important thing about this love is that it is not just a
passive emotion in which to indulge, but it has serious practical consequences. It provides
the emotional juice which keeps the fact of revelation from becoming just a dead symbol,
a past event of little present force. It is true that creation took place in the past, and
revelation brings out its implications for us in the present, but these would be incomplete
without redemption which points to the future. Redemption is seen as something which
takes place in our world and time, not in some distant abstract future, not something
brought about by divine fiat. Redemption is brought about by ourselves, although perhaps
not entirely by ourselves, and represents our power to experience eternity within finitude.
How can this be done? For Rosenzweig, the route to this feeling of redemption lies
through the religious practices of Judaism, through the rituals and roles of religion. We
respond to God by responding to other human creatures, and in so doing we set upon a
path which can end in the construction of a messianic state of affairs, and it should be
noted yet again that this is not to be seen as something which comes about because of the
arrival of the messiah, as a sort of messiah ex machina, but we ourselves, through our
actions and attitudes, can bring the messiah about ourselves. Judaism is a call to action, to
the creation of meaning and love in our world.
Rosenzweig’s insistence that we make the rituals of religion a living part of our lives
is based on his theory that we have to recognize that the main events of Jewish history are
not just historical events. In a sense we are still participating in those events, and it is
incumbent on us to bring those events to life in our activities. He discusses at length the
nature of the Jewish year, and in particular the cycle of religious festivals and the daily
order of service, arguing that they are based on the idea of eternity in time; they give us
some idea in their very repetitiveness of what it would be like to live eternally. The
Sabbath in particular brings to our mind every week the fact of the creation, not just as an
event which occurred in the past but in a sense as an event which occurs every week in
our lives, an event which is represented and celebrated in terms of the rituals surrounding
the Sabbath.
Why not use Christianity to find meaning in the world? As we have seen,
this was far from just an abstract question for Rosenzweig, who for a
period actively considered becoming a Christian. The answer is that, for
all its merits, Christianity lacks the “rootedness” of Judaism as a religion
of which one is a part for entirely natural reasons. That is, Jews are born
Jews, and they are therefore members of a community which over the
centuries has adopted, and been consigned to, a set number of roles, chief
among which has been a concentration not on the practical affairs of the
world but rather on religious duties and spirituality. Hence his distrust of
Zionism, which often was based on the idea that the Jews should be like
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everyone else, citizens of a state which thus makes them “normal.” This
goes against what Rosenzweig saw as the special role of the Jews, as the
representatives of an other-worldliness which results in a deeper
commitment to acknowledging God’s links with the world than can be
found in other groups of people. I think it has to be said that Rosenzweig’s
critical approach towards Zionism was based on what he saw as its secular
background, and he would probably have found little to complain about
had he contemplated the possibility of a religious Zionism. The latter, after
all, would provide a viable route for the successful commitment of at least
some people to what it is to live a Jewish life. It is clear, though, from his
writings, that he shrewdly acknowledged the danger of Zionism replacing
Judaism in the lives of many Jews, a danger which exists in the very
notion of a Jewish nationality which is in principle unconnected with
spirituality. We see today many Jewish communities in the Diaspora
maintaining their sole links with their religion through their commitment
to Israel, in effect hiding from themselves their practical rejection of
religion through their adherence to a nationalistic political movement.
Were Rosenzweig able to see the present situation in the Diaspora, he
would probably feel that his criticisms of Zionism were solidly based.
MARTIN BUBER
It is interesting to compare Rosenzweig with Martin Buber (1878–1965), and not only
because they constantly saw their work through each other’s eyes. Buber was born in
Vienna, but spent much of his early youth in Galicia, within a family with a far more
explicit commitment to religious Judaism than the Rosenzweigs. Whereas Rosenzweig
came to religious Judaism from the life of the secular Jew, Buber followed precisely the
opposite route, and in his early teens stopped practising Orthodox Judaism. For both of
them the philosophy of Nietzsche was very important, in particular his turn from Hegel
and the abstract towards the situation of individuals trying to make sense of what is
happening to them. Buber became very interested in promoting two aspects of Judaism
for which Rosenzweig felt no enthusiasm, Chasidism and Zionism. The latter seemed to
Buber to be a movement capable of genuinely reflecting the demands for a Jewish life in
the twentieth century. Certainly it seems to have played an important part in bringing him
back to a form of adherence to Judaism and to life within the Jewish community from
which initially he felt excluded. He became immersed in the political activities of the
Zionists, but obviously still felt unsatisfied that he had really found an entirely fulfilling
form of life. When he came across a saying of the Baal Shem Tov, the creator of
Chasidism, he suddenly felt that here was a way of living and thinking which was entirely
in tune with his needs. One can easily imagine how someone who had spent much of his
early life concentrating on entirely intellectual and political activities would be impressed
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by the piety and the natural religiosity of a movement such as Chasidism, and Buber
spent several years immersing himself in the study of their writings.
It has to be said at the beginning that Buber had a highly romantic notion of Chasidism
which bore little relationship to its reality. But that is surely of no significance. What is
important is how he used his understanding of that religious movement to explore some
of the basic concepts of Judaism. Chasidism represents for Buber the freshness and
creativity of religious experience, and also the ability to combine the life of the mind and
the body in a satisfying whole. The idea that everything in life is holy, that it is possible
to imitate the love of God in our relationships with our fellow creatures, and the
mysticism of the Chasidic movement all attracted Buber. He was not so interested in
actually living the life of the Chasid as in using their writings, and in particular the highly
evocative stories which the movement produced, to show how it is possible to live a
natural religious life. One of the aspects of the stories which impressed him was their
ability to represent just such a life, where the individuals felt that they belonged to a
community which celebrated its links with God in an entirely natural and unselfconscious
way. This lifestyle was impossible for someone with Buber’s background, since it was no
longer open to him to accept as natural a form of life to which he came, as it were, from
outside. But the principles of Chasidism could still be used to enliven a concept of
Judaism which might otherwise become unduly nomocentric and formal.
Buber was far more than an abstract philosopher. He went on to run the Lehrhaus on
the death of Rosenzweig, set on the enormous task with him of translating the Hebrew
Bible into German, and was an important part of the spiritual leadership of German Jewry
up to the Holocaust. But his main achievement is undoubtedly his short but pellucid I and
Thou, a rather pretentious translation of the original title Ich und Du. This book was
intended to be part of the “New Thinking” movement, in that it stressed the significance
of dialogue between persons as a route to authenticity. According to Buber, there are two
types of relationship. The I—Thou is a direct and reciprocal relationship with another
person, and through it the I is created. By contrast, the I—It relationship is abstract and
impersonal, and is not genuinely reciprocal. What is interesting about Buber’s account of
this contrast is that he sees the nature of the dialogue as not just characterizing a
relationship but as actually creating the participants of that relationship.3 That is, in real
dialogue each of the participants has to do something which is quite difficult. The other
has to be regarded as an other, and yet as a person with whom one can relate. He or she
must be regarded not as an object, nor as a subject, since either of these alternatives
misrepresents the nature of the other in genuine dialogue. An object is more appropriately
a part of an I—It relationship, in that one sees the other as essentially separate from
oneself to be acted toward for some purpose which one has. On the other hand, the other
is not a pure subject either, since one is aware throughout the interaction that he or she is
a different person from oneself. The I—Thou relationship is constantly on a metaphysical
knife-edge, as it were, between plunging into objectivity or subjectivity, yet it is worth
trying to achieve none the less. Moral behavior is not a matter of responding to others
entirely subjectively or in terms of an objective ethical code, but is rather an attempt to
meet the needs and deserts of the other by recognizing their status as a genuine person.
The best way to understand this relationship is through its existence in relationships
such as friendship and love. These relationships are authentic, Buber argues, if they
represent genuine reciprocity between persons. That is, one should not confuse love with
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setting out to use someone for one’s own purpose, nor even to try to mold that person into
someone more appropriate as an object of one’s affection. One has to accept the other as
he or she is, and care for them for their own sake. As a result of that relationship it may
well be that both participants in the relationship will change, but one cannot go out from
the beginning to try to bring about that change, since that would condemn the relationship
to inauthenticity. That is not to say that we have to spend all our time trying to establish
I—Thou links with other people, since there are obviously many occasions on which
these would be entirely inappropriate. Often our only links with other people are quite
cursory, and there is no need to regret this. My milkman is not entitled to expect me to
love him, nor am I entitled to expect him to be concerned with me as anything more than
the person who pays him every week. That is not to say that we are entitled to treat each
other with contempt but rather that it is appropriate for us to have an impersonal
relationship.
One of the main difficulties of establishing a genuine I-Thou relationship is that one
tends to slip into an I—It relationship without even realizing it. That is, one might start
off by appreciating the genuine otherness of the other person and celebrating that
otherness in the relationship, and yet over time there is a tendency for us to try to change
the other, to make him or her more like ourselves, and so to treat him or her as an object
to be manipulated. The important thing to notice here is that if we fail to respect the
otherness of the other, if we do not allow them to be different, then not only do we not
help them realize themselves, but we also limit our own ability to achieve our own
potentiality. The relationship here is genuinely mutual in that, if one part suffers, so does
the other.
How does this affect our relationship with God through religion? According to Buber,
the main achievement of Judaism is to establish the possibility of dialogue with God, and
this is what monotheism is really about. Like Maimonides, he denies the possibility of
knowing God’s attributes, but he insists that God is the “Eternal Thou” whom we can
meet through our dialogue with the world. God is always there, but it is we who are
unwilling to enter into dialogue with him, and our route to dialogue is through our
relationships not with him as a person but rather through our relations with other people,
with the events of the world and nature. In so far as we see the rest of creation as
something we should love, we are open to and aware of the presentness of God. This
leads to Buber adopting a rather critical approach to the practices of Orthodoxy, and also
to those of the Reform movement in Judaism. The former regards the Bible as literally
true, and halakhah to be followed rigorously, while the latter would tend to interpret the
events of the Bible as being symbols of the truth rather than the literal truth, and halakhah
as a system of law to be followed selectively and critically. Buber tries to insert a wedge
between these two positions, and suggests that we can see the events of the Bible as both
true and symbolic, since they represent aspects of lived experience which in themselves
were unique events in which attempts at establishing dialogue between humanity and
God took place, and such events have a character which is both objective and subjective.
When an event is experienced by a person or the community it may have a significance
for them which no natural or supernatural explanation may diminish, and it is such events
which often figure in the Bible. The trouble with the conflict between the traditionalists
and the modernists is that they emphasize unduly one side only of dialogue. The
traditionalists stress the impact of God on the world, and so they insist on the literal truth
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of the miracles and the historical events represented in the text. Yet what is also
important about those events, according to Buber, is how they were received and
intepreted by the Jews, the object of the communication. The modernists see the Bible as
not literally true, but the representative of a message which it is trying to get across. This
overemphasizes the role of the audience, and downplays the significance of the agent,
and both participants in dialogue are vital for dialogue itself to be possible.
Buber shared Rosenzweig’s suspicion of Zionism as paradigmatically a
national movement, yet the former had a far fonder attitude to the idea of
the Jews becoming a holy people in their own land than did his friend.
Buber tended to be critical of much of the exclusivity of Zionism, though,
and became quite unpopular in Israel for his insistence on the mutual
respect of the rights of the Arabs in the country. He adopted a similarly
unusual attitude to halakhah also. Rosenzweig came to adopt a strict
adherence to religious law and ritual, yet Buber’s approach was very
different. He saw strict observance of the law as potentially dangerous, in
that it made Jews concentrate not upon their dialogue with God but rather
on an objective system of legislation. In his controversy with Rosenzweig
on this issue, Buber argues that he is happy to accept that a law is a
mitzvah if it is really addressed to him by God. That is, he cannot obey all
the laws blindly, but has to enter into a dialogue with the giver of the law
before he can genuinely accept it as something which really stems from
God. Buber is very critical of those who see the Jewish revelation as a
one-off event, since that gives them a sense of security in their faith and in
their ability to carry out their religious obligations which is entirely
misplaced. In his interpretation of Jewish history Buber sees a constant
struggle against the tendency to objectify the law and in favor of the
reassertion of a living and dynamic relationship with God. Hence the
critique of sacrifices without the right attitudes by the Prophets, leading up
to the Chasidic movement, with its insistence that it is only the specific
intention to see every action as that of the person turning to God which
really makes a mitzvah a mitzvah.
JOSEPH SOLOVEITCHIK
It is difficult to know how precisely to classify Joseph Soloveitchik (1903–1993) as a
philosopher, since he does not immediately strike one as a philosopher. A talmudist,
without doubt, and a theologian of considerable stature, his works also provide evidence
of interesting and pervasive philosophical ideas. He was brought up in a rabbinical family
in Poland and received a traditional education in halakhah and the Talmud while young.
He later on went to study philosophy at Berlin University before moving in 1932 to the
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United States, where he became chief rabbi of Boston. Soloveitchik took charge of the
training of many of the new Orthodox rabbis in the United States through his teaching in
New York, and through his sermons and other writings came to have great importance in
stimulating the intellectual life of American Orthodoxy.
It has to be said right from the beginning that Soloveitchik actually wrote rather little,
but from what we have it is possible to build up a fairly accurate view of his thought,
since in addition to his writings we have reports on his addresses from audiences. Like
Buber and Rosenzweig, he concentrates on constructing a picture of human beings which
emphasizes the concept of the self. Human beings experience the sensation of being
alone, and out of that feeling we establish some notion of our distinctness from what is
around us, of our self. But becoming a self is a task which has to be actively
accomplished, and it is quite easy for us to refuse to perform this task and to become
objects instead. Religion is a matter of self-realization, self-awareness, and self-creation,
and it enables us to escape from assimilation into the mass. When we seek to approach
God, we also transform our own selves, and the idea of the covenant is of a relationship
between persons in which both sides of the agreement help the other to establish their
selves. How do we come near to God? According to Soloveitchik, we need to dedicate
ourselves to the carrying out of God’s will, and this is possible for us through following
halakhah and basing our lives on the Torah.
Jewish life rests on a number of basic principles. There is the acknowledgement that
God exists and is the sole and unique cause of everything. All other values and aims are
necessarily secondary to the absolute good represented by the deity. It follows that our
total commitment must be to working for God, since there can be nothing more important
than having this as one’s aim. Finally, the truth of the Torah and the halakhah has been
revealed in Judaism, and it is incumbent upon Jews to believe totally in the former, and
behave rigorously in line with the latter. Halakhah should not be seen as a rigid set of
rules, but rather as a form of life which is capable of giving meaning to the life of the
Jew, assisting in the creation of a spiritual self which is constructed in accordance with
the laws of God and which has as a result a divine nature. Halakhah is both spiritual and
practical, since it is capable of organizing our lives whatever we do in society, and at the
same time it presents us with an ideal model of how we ought to live, thus appealing to
our spiritual needs and reconciling them with material necessities. One of the excellences
of this system of law is that it recognizes the dual nature of human beings, that we are
capable of being both material and spiritual, objects and subjects, and it provides us with
rules and advice which enable us to balance in our lives these different parts of ourselves,
to the end that not only do we live acceptable material lives but we also leave open the
possibility of following the divine purpose as specified in Judaism.
It is important for Soloveitchik that we do not follow the law blindly, merely out of
habit or tradition, but we have to use our intellect to work out how we are to act, and
what purpose there is in such action. We have been given an intellect by God, and he
expects us to use it. Excellent and complete though the Torah is, it cannot be expected to
state explicitly what we ought to do in every possible situation, and we need to think
rationally based on what the Torah does tell us to work out where our duty lies. What he
has in mind here are the discussions in halakhah of how we should act in situations which
are slightly different from those specified in the Torah, problems around which a huge
literature has grown in Jewish law. Is not all this effort to specify the halakhic solution to
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these very minor difficulties misplaced? For example, does having a handkerchief in
one’s pocket constitute carrying, and so constitute work, and thus is forbidden on
Sabbath? Naturally, the Torah does not comment explicitly on this point, but later rabbis
certainly have done. It might be put to Soloveitchik that having rules on matters as minor
as this in one’s religion is an exercise in triviality. The answer would be, though, that
God insists that we explore the nature of every area of our lives, even the most petty and
seemingly unimportant. If we think of every aspect of our lives as part of the service of
God, then we have to work out how he wants us to live throughout our existence, and this
gives us a sense of the divine purpose which is implicit in the world.
One of the advantages of Soloveitchik’s view is that it accurately represents the nature
of Judaism as a religion which relates far more to the everyday activities of the Jew as
compared to public rituals in synagogues. The idea that the halakhah is a comprehensive
system which sanctifies the whole of life, which in fact replaces the secularity of the
everyday with the transcendental character of religion, implies that the attitude which one
should adopt to the legal regulations is more than purely formal. It is not enough just to
carry out the laws, but one must also carry them out in the right way, with the attitude
that they represent the route to achieving heaven on earth, not through some extraterrestrial decree but rather by incorporating the infinite into the finite. The
comprehensiveness of the law is not a burden placed on Jews, but is rather a way of
escaping from the dualism of wondering which rules to obey and which to ignore, which
is surely the appropriate attitude for the Jew who accepts some of halakhah but not
everything. For Soloveitchik, nothing in life is really secular, and the all-encompassing
nature of halakhah constantly reminds the observant Jew of this.
What is it that makes halakhah sacred? One is tempted to say that it is the fact that it
has been prescribed by God, and of course this is certainly part of the answer for
Soloveitchik. But an even more important part of the answer lies with us, with the ability
of human beings to regard certain practices and beliefs as obligatory and holy.
Soloveitchik contrasts Mount Sinai and Mount Moriah in this regard. The former, which
saw God come down to humanity to deliver the Torah, is after the event of no especial
significance. By contrast, Mount Moriah, on which Abraham set out to sacrifice Isaac and
where the Temple stood, is regarded in Jewish law as holy, and will always be so. It was
the manner in which Abraham approached God, trusting him completely in being
prepared to sacrifice his child when commanded to do so, and also the ceremonies of the
Temple that represent the ways in which the Jewish people recognized the sanctity of
God and his law, that make Mount Moriah special. In a sense, the Jewish people discover
themselves in their approach to God, and they create for God a self and persona which
reflects back on themselves, and the creative activity of the individual and the community
is a vitally significant aspect of meaning-making in both religion and life. Of course, for
Soloveitchik, one cannot really distinguish between these categories at all.
Religion and life can be very distinct, of course, in that one may sink into a sort of
spiritual lassitude in which one thinks that religion is of no significance, or where one
fails to maintain the laws of Judaism. Yet those laws represent a perfect way for us to
regulate our personal, emotional, and religious life, since they point us toward the mean
in action, which is where we ought to be. There is little doubt but that Soloveitchik is
faithfully representing his early interest in Maimonides on this point, since his language
here is highly Maimonidean. There is nothing to be said for the empty following of ritual,
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yet it is often better to follow a ritual without thinking much about it than not to follow
anything at all, since the ritual at least represents the fact that one has put oneself one step
above the entirely secular. As Soloveitchik points out, many regulations of the halakhah
anyway require only performance, not any particular motivation. It is wrong to stop at
obedience to ritual in one’s commitment to religion, but perhaps better than nothing, and
certainly it is capable of leading the individual in the right direction more surely than any
other form of behavior.
One of the useful features of Soloveitchik’s style is his constant production of
oppositions, between different types of personalities, and his arguments that they are
capable of being reconciled in religion. As with Buber, these personalities create and
recreate themselves by coming into contact with each other, by trying to attain certain
sorts of relationships with others and at the same time trying to keep something of
themselves to themselves. This is the essentially unstable nature of the dialogic relation,
the dialectic which is constantly in motion working to relate changing theses and
antitheses as it becomes more and more sophisticated and ambitious in its aims. As our
understanding of this dialectic progresses, we achieve more satisfactory relationships
with each other and with God, since we ought continually to seek to transcend duality in
our lives. Of course, many people do not do much to reduce what they experience as the
tremendous gap between themselves and others, and especially God, and they see the gap
as natural and inevitable. Even if they become practicing and believing Jews, or have
always been so, they do not manage to work out how to get away from the forms of
inauthentic duality which characterize their lives.
It may be that one of the problems which they experience is their inability to get away
from the idea that they can know exactly what God expects of them, since they know
what the law is and they set out to obey it. They believe that God has revealed himself in
the Torah, and they study and follow the Torah to bring their lives into alignment with
what God has ordered and recommended. Yet for Soloveitchik God conceals a lot of
himself even from believers. It is not enough for them to wait for God to reveal himself,
but they have to participate in the act of revelation itself. How are they to do this? By
living in accordance with halakhah and by studying Torah, since in this way they have
the opportunity to share in the process of creativity which essentially stems from God but
which we can also experience through the exercise of our intellect and our free choice as
to how we are to behave. There is no doubt that the passionate love which Soloveitchik
advocates as the best sort of relationship we can have with God is in tune with the
tradition of Jewish mysticism, and yet throughout his writings there is a theme of respect
for reason and for the demand that the grounds on which adherence to Judaism can be put
must be rationally defensible. That is, we should be able to examine rationally the
arguments for halakhah, and assess the claims of halakhah to be a way of ending the
duality of human life in a way which appeals to reason. It is not surprising that
Soloveitchik had an early interest in science and mathematics, since his works are replete
with claims for support on general and rational grounds which would not be out of place
in a scientific context. It is also not surprising that many of his interpreters have stressed
his role as the Orthodox antagonist of the demands of modernity. He certainly tries to
beat modernity at its own game, by arguing that it can be used to defend the structure of
Judaism, if not the central revelation on which it is based.
Jewish existentialism
719
Was Soloveitchik really a philosopher? He was primarily a talmudist, and
his more philosophical thoughts are often expressed within a theological
context where the theology almost submerges the philosophy. But the
question as to whether he was a philosopher is in some ways a strange
one, since it is not possible to segregate the Talmud or even the Torah
from philosophy, as though these were entirely discrete areas of inquiry.
As a thinker Soloveitchik certainly went through some intellectual
changes, ranging from a fascination with neo-Kantianism to some sort of
commitment to forms of existentialism, and yet his work appears to be
quite unified. The central issues which concerned him were essentially
those of Buber and Rosenzweig, namely, what are the constituents of an
authentic relationship. Not, it should be noted, an authentic relationship to
God, since that is just a particular form of authentic relationship in
general, and for all of them it turns out that getting the right relationship
with God established implies getting the right relationship with other
people going also.
THE DISPUTE OVER RELIGIOUS LAW (HALAKHAH)
How should we go about evaluating the thought of the Jewish existentialists? First of all,
they emphasize certain aspects of Judaism, in particular love, and the importance of
understanding the nature of the relationship which we have with God in terms of
relationships with each other, and these are positive features of the theory. Also, the
amount of time they spend analyzing what it is to be a subject and an object is not
misplaced, since they certainly add conceptual depth to these terms. If one puts Buber
and Rosenzweig in their cultural context, as coming after neo-Kantianism and Hermann
Cohen, it can be seen that they take the debate at least a few steps further along the way.
In a sense, all three are addressing precisely the same issues which were early on
signposted by Moses Mendelssohn, in particular how the Jewish people should react to
modernity. It is far from trivial that Buber and Rosenzweig set out to translate the
Hebrew Bible into German, a task which had already been performed quite exceptionally
well by Mendelssohn. But of course the sort of translation which the latter provided was
written in the language of his own times, bearing on its face all the assumptions of the
Enlightenment. A new translation was needed, they thought, because the old one no
longer spoke to its Jewish readers in a way capable of rousing their excitement and
commitment. They suspected, quite accurately, that the way in which Mendelssohn saw
his translation being used was very different from what they regarded as appropriate.
Mendelssohn wanted to show both the Jews and the German people how elegantly the
Bible spoke to the Jews in its representation of past events. Buber and Rosenzweig
wanted to bring the freshness and relevance of the Bible to the attention of the Jewish
community in the German-speaking world (which we should remember extended far
beyond the boundaries of the German state). When we look at their correspondence on
History of Jewish philosophy
720
the project we can see that they certainly were not lacking in pride in their ability to use
the German language with grace and precision, but this was not high up the list of
desiderata. The point was to show how the Bible demands a response from the Jews, who
are not allowed to regard it as just an account of past events. It is ironic that the
translation project came to an end only long after the death of Rosenzweig, when Buber
produced the last few volumes, but not very long after the complete extirpation of the
German-speaking Jewish cultural world.
One of the problems of existentialism has always been that the glorification of
subjectivity leads to what might appear to be an arbitrary drawing of conclusions. Let us
take as an example here the contrasting positions of Buber and Rosenzweig on how Jews
should relate to halakhah. As we have seen, Buber is suspicious of the ways in which the
religious authorities in Judaism lay out as necessary a whole system of law to be obeyed.
He argued that one should only obey what one can authentically obey, and that consists
of those laws which one feels have been addressed to one personally as a Thou. In fact,
he implies, there are great dangers in Jews feeling that they need to adhere to a whole
realm of law, since they may use that adherence to think that they have done their duty
and need not seriously examine their relationship with God, and, even more importantly,
it gives Jews the impression that their duty lies in observing a set of objective standards,
whereas in fact what we should be doing is investigating how God addresses us
personally and responding as to a person on the basis of those present and pressing
contacts.
Rosenzweig criticized this sort of approach. He points out quite rightly in his essay
“The Builders” that Buber had come over the years to appreciate more readily a much
wider breadth of theoretical work in Judaism than at the start of his writings on the
subject (when he tended to prioritize the work of those Jewish thinkers on the margins,
such as mystics, prophets, and so on), and yet his rather critical attitude to halakhah
persisted throughout. Rosenzweig suggested that Buber might see halakhah as a possible
realm of responsiveness to God. That is, he claims that it seems arbitrary to deny that this
aspect, one might say this extraordinarily important aspect of Jewish culture, is alone
excluded from the gamut of possible institutions that may be employed to relate in a
direct way to the deity. Many halakhists write of performing a mitzvah in precisely the
sort of way of which one might expect Buber to approve. That is, they are conscious that
they are responding to the word of God, and they are aware of the presence of God while
carrying out the task. They feel that God is addressing them personally and asking them
to perform that act, and they freely accept that obligation and do their best to act in
accordance with the divine request.
In his response to Rosenzweig Buber makes clear that his main objection to halakhah
is his insistence that revelation cannot be embodied in law. This is to deny the immediacy
of revelation, the way in which revelation affects the individual as though his life was
suddenly illuminated, and this sort of experience, and the personal growth which stems
from it, cannot be a reaction to a law. Rosenzweig wonders why not. After all, both he
and Buber are agreed that a page of the Bible is just a page, and the words can be
mechanically recited and repeated in a fairly meaningless sort of way from their point of
view. On the other hand, those words may be seen as constituting the moment of
encounter between God and his creatures, transforming us and guiding us on our route
through life. Why cannot Jewish law operate in precisely the same way? Buber responds
Jewish existentialism
721
that it can, but it has to be viewed as a commandment addressed directly to him by God,
and Buber suggests that we cannot see the whole corpus of law like that. We can
certainly recognize some in this way, but not the whole of the law. Rosenzweig wonders
why not, since the only way to discover which laws are personally addressed to us is to
try them all out, and if one then comes across a law for which one feels no personal
compulsion, then at least there are prima facie grounds for rejecting it as a
commandment. Until we try, though, we shall not know where we stand in this respect,
and the only way to try is through embedding one’s life in the system of law as a whole.
This is an interesting debate, and it is one which continued in the writings of Buber for
many decades after his friend’s death. In a sense it is a typical existentialist debate. Buber
reports on his own experience, and says that he can make no sense of the idea that the
whole of Jewish law is God addressing him as a Thou. Rosenzweig, on the contrary,
seems to suggest that there is no difficulty in using halakhah to sanctify the whole of his
life, and he argues at some length that the structure of Judaism with its rituals and
holidays is precisely in line with such a project of sanctification. The important
existentialist move for them both is the emphasis upon freedom and the necessity to
choose without sliding into doing what is traditional or habitual. Rosenzweig did not, it
should be remembered, become a halakhic observer through following what was for him
a natural lifestyle. On the contrary, he came from outside of halakhah, in a sense, and saw
it as the route to communion with God for him. Buber, coming from within the tradition,
rejected it as just such a route for him. Now, is this just a matter of different people
having different attitudes to something, like someone just liking carrots and someone else
not liking them? If so, then the argument is trivial, and of very little interest. It would just
go to show how poor and arbitrary much of the discussion which takes place in
existentialism is, which is perhaps not surprising given the emphasis upon subjectivity
within that philosophical method.
We do not have to leave it at this, though. Both Buber and Rosenzweig have good
arguments for their conclusions. As Buber says, it is very difficult to see a body of law as
constituting a personal address from the deity. The law may be experienced as a
complicated system of rules and regulations which has to be understood and mastered
throughout one’s life, thus getting in the way of the sort of spontaneity which Buber
thought was so important in relationships. It may dominate one’s life, and give one the
false impression that one had lived entirely as one ought. In any case, although we can
certainly see the point of many laws, there are plenty which have no obvious justification,
and obeying the whole system implies acting in obedience to principles which one has
not considered and arguments which one has not heard. The law stands rather as an
obstacle between God and the person. It certainly cannot be used by the person who is
always trying to be a subject and who is trying to treat many significant others as
subjects. Halakhah produces uniformity of treatment and result which deadens our
relations with each other, and with God. We need to pick and choose which laws we are
going to obey, on the simple criterion of which laws appear to us to be personal
commandments from God. The law as a whole, as a vast system of impersonal rules,
certainly cannot stand as such a personal commandment.
Rosenzweig would argue that this argument was invalid. It is certainly true that no one
should accept halakhah uncritically, and nor should anyone feel that, if they have carried
out their legal requirements, then they have done everything required of them. On the
History of Jewish philosophy
722
other hand, one cannot see the system of law as like an a la carte meal. One cannot just
obey what appeals to one as being a direct commandment and ignore the rest, perhaps
only for a while. The whole system has a divine basis and it allows us to bring holiness
into every area of our lives. The arguments which Soloveitchik produces would provide
useful support for this view here, in that he goes into great detail into how this can work.
But even Rosenzweig uses the main religious symbols of Judaism to explore the notion of
using ritual to import infinity into the finite, and this has to be all of the system of ritual,
not just what one fancies on a particular occasion. As Soloveitchik points out, basing
one’s life on halakhah does have the advantage that it frees one’s thinking from concerns
about how one should behave in everyday terms, and allows us to concentrate on higher
things, such as our relationship with God and with other creatures.
We are left here with something of a dilemma. Who is right? Is Rosenzweig justified
in thinking that it is possible to interpret the whole of halakhah as a personal
commandment, as a personal address which has to be freely accepted? Is Buber right in
arguing that he does not recognize all the laws and rituals of halakhah as just such a
commandment, and so chooses not to follow them? One might be tempted to say that
they could easily both be right, in that they are both reporting on what seems valid for
them, and, given the high respect given to subjectivity in both philosophers’ thought, this
seems to be as far as one can go. But this would surely diminish the interest of their
arguments a good deal, since if arguments stop at the point where individuals recount
what their personal opinion is on an issue, the whole process of argument seems
nugatory. Fortunately it is not quite like this here. What Buber is saying is something
stronger than just that he cannot see the whole of the law as a personal commandment.
He is implying that no one can really do this, since the system of law is not the sort of
concept which can be seen as a personal commandment. It is too abstract, too complex,
and far too mechanical to constitute an appropriate address. There are certainly aspects of
it which are possible commandments, but not the whole system.
Rosenzweig denies this, since he argues that once we accept the chosenness of the
Jewish people we have also to accept the whole of the law as part of that chosenness,
since it supports the distinctiveness of a lifestyle consequent upon election. We need to
distinguish here between an institution and that which the institution makes possible. The
institution of halakhah makes possible a particular way of living within which it is
possible to experience aspects of law as personal addresses from God, yet there may well
be difficulties in accepting the institution itself as a personal address, since it is an
institution. It is difficult to see an institution as something personal since it is nothing
more than a set of rules, and what makes a set of rules valuable or otherwise is its
application to practice, not what it is in itself. Any value it may have in itself is based on
its value in practice. So Buber is quite right in arguing that there are problems in seeing a
system of law as a personal commandment. Rosenzweig is also right to argue that, if we
are going to be able to see the law as just such a commandment, we have to try it out first
in its entirety and then reflect on how successfully it fits the bill as something which God
could address to us personally. This contrast of views brings out nicely how much more
of an existentialist Buber is as compared with Rosenzweig. The former is not prepared to
allow human freedom to be limited by the imposition of law, even law which is freely
chosen, on the basis that that law is God-given. It is incumbent on us as free agents to
consider each and every law and instruction we are given before we accept it, since
Jewish existentialism
723
otherwise our behavior falls short of authenticity. For Rosenzweig and Soloveitchik, the
fact of human finitude and frailty as compared with the power and authority of God
compel certain forms of initial acceptance. Yet once those forms and structures are
established, it is possible, and indeed necessary, to regard the links with God as personal,
and for us to choose freely within that context.
So the contrast between Buber and Rosenzweig on this issue is far from arbitrary, but
is based upon very different views of what it is to operate authentically within a religious
tradition. Rosenzweig and Soloveitchik argue that Jews have to accept certain principles
and practices as given, and then can work and live within those constraints. One might
argue that freedom makes sense only within a particular structure, since only then can
one tell what one is free from. Buber, on the other hand, is not prepared to accept that he
must adhere to a system of law as a whole before he can recognize personal
commandments in that law. This strikes him as a radical constraint on his freedom. To
look at another example, suppose someone were to wonder whether he would like
playing soccer, but is not prepared to obey the rules and try the game out. Would this be a
rational decision? It could be, since he might in observing others play to the rules
conclude that this is not the game for him, because, perhaps, it does not give the sort of
scope for creativity and spontaneity which he looks for in a game. When Buber looks at
the whole corpus of Jewish law, he sees an objective and impersonal system which he
could not possibly regard in any other way. There is no reason in principle why someone
else, someone like Rosenzweig or Soloveitchik, might not be able to see that system
differently, but Buber implies it would take some doing. Bodies of law are just of their
very nature objective and impersonal, and they are not the sort of thing which we can feel
personally addressed by.
Since Buber hovers between arguing that we cannot feel thus addressed, or that we are
unlikely to be able to feel thus addressed, it is not entirely clear how strong his thesis is.
But there is no unclarity at all about the very real problem which he highlights here, and
from the point of view of existentialism it would be extraordinary to see law as our route
to divine contact. On the other hand, one of the impressive aspects of the thought of
Rosenzweig and Soloveitchik on this issue is that they make the idea of the subject
realizing himself as a subject through following religious law almost plausible.
Is there any one central contribution which these three thinkers made to
Jewish philosophy? Notwithstanding their many significant differences,
they all emphasized the crucial role of the subject in making Judasim the
religion it is. Judaism is a faith with a justifiable claim for adherence
despite the urgings of modernity which would abandon it altogether, or
translate it into something less particular and more universal. They sought
to reassert what they took to be the central principles of Judaism in the
notion of the individual subject, since it is that which creates meaning in
the world, and, if anything is to revive and make religion vital, it can be
nothing other than human subjectivity.
History of Jewish philosophy
724
NOTES
1 This is excellently discussed in M.Warnock, Existentialism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
2 For a discussion of this way of doing philosophy, see O.Leaman,
Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
3 This is discussed slightly differently in chapter 9, “Buber,” in ibid.,
pp. 165–84. In this chapter there is an extended discussion of how
Buber, and to a certain extent Rosenzweig, deal with the phenomena
of evil and suffering in their philosophies.
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Rosenzweig
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Rosenzweig, F. (1970) The Star of Redemption (New York: Holt,
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Studies
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Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig (New York: Holt,
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Rosenstock-Huessy, E. (ed.) (1969) Judaism despite Christianity (New
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Schmied-Kowarzik, W. (ed.) (1988) Das neue Denken und seine
Dimensionen (Freiburg: Alber).
Buber
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Texts
Buber, M. (1937) I and Thou (Edinburgh: T. & T.Clark).
——(1948) Between Man and Man (New York: Macmillan).
——(1953) Good and Evil, Two Interpretations (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons).
——(1955a) The Legend of the Baal Shem (New York: Harper).
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——(1967) On Judaism (New York: Schocken).
Studies
Diamond, M. (1960) Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist (New York:
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Soloveitchik
Texts
Soloveitchik, J.B. (1974) Shiurei Harav (Sermons of the Rabbi) (New
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——(1965) “The Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition 7.2:5–67.
——(1980) On Repentance, translated by P.Peli (Jerusalem: Oroth).
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History of Jewish philosophy
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Studies
Besdin, A. (ed.) (1980) Reflections of the Rav (Jerusalem: World Zionist
Organization).
Borowitz, E. (1983) Choices in Modern Jewish Thought (New York:
Behrman).
Hartman, D. (1985) A Living Covenant (New York: Free Press).
Kaplan, L. (1973) “The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph
Soloveitchik,” Tradition 15.3:43–64.
——(1988) “Rabbi Joseph B.Soloveitchik’s Philosophy of Halakhah,”
Jewish Law Annual 7:139–97.
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Singer, D. (1986) Joseph B.Soloveitchik (New York: New York
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