The Kerem Institute for Teacher Training for Humanistic-Jewish Education

Two courses are being offered: To Be a Jew in the Modern World and Jewish Thought in the Era of Secularism and Modernization.

To Be a Jew in the Modern World

The ghetto gates were opened, the walls protecting Jewish tradition, as it was formulated in the Middle Ages, and the Jewish community fell, and the Jew stands confused by the challenges that confront him in the new reality. Processes of comprehensive secularization, the development of rationalism and scientific thought, modernization, industrialization and urbanization are the heritage of every one, but for the Jew they had a special flavor. The encounter between the world of Jewish tradition and the modern world created a compound of ideas and cultures both interesting and of great creative power.

Beyond the encounter with the Renaissance of western culture, the Jews had to cope with their place in western society, to define their identity in a period of nationalism and definition of states according to ethnic-national ascription. In the twentieth century, the Jewish world underwent the destruction of the Holocaust and the collapse of Jewish communities in the Muslim world. On the other hand, the Jewish State was established and posed basic questions for Jews about their existence as a public and their cultural identity.

In the course we will examine how various Jewish philosophers dealt with human and societal crises in the modern world in general, and with the life of the Jewish people in the modern world, with the horrible destruction, and with the establishment of the Jewish State. Classic motifs from Jewish culture along with cultural and philosophical elements taken from western culture have become raw materials for modern Jewish thought, for the development of new topics of thought, and for sketching the new horizons of Jewish existence.

Course Outline:

First Week: The Jewish World before the Modern Era. Jewish existence in the social-political-cultural reality of the Middle Ages, main topics of medieval Jewish thought, dialogue and competition with the other religions alongside social separation and consciousness of the advantage of the Jewish religion. The inner failings of classical Jewish theology, the changes that occurred in European society at the end of the Middle Ages and their influence on Jewish existence, and as a result also on Jewish thought, the gradual exit from the ghetto and the hopes for emancipation.

Second and third Week: Judaism, the Scientific Worldview of the Modern Era and Critique of Revealed Religions. What is the power of human reason? What is the essence of God? The secularization of thought about God and His relation to the world in the pantheism of Spinoza, the challenge of Spinoza to Jewish-Christian theology, the polemic of Spinoza and its influence on religious and philosophic thought in the Jewish-Christian world to this day.

Fourth-Fifth Weeks: Judaism, Enlightenment and Religious Pluralism in the 18th Century. Tolerance for the other and the challenge of integration into the surrounding society, Moses Mendelssohn – “the Jewish Socrates”, Jewish deism and the idea of separating Jewish nationalism as expressed in the Mosaic law and the commandments from the Enlightenment and religious identity that are universal, a model of Jewish existence in the open world: separateness and belonging in parallel.

Sixth Week: Judaism as an Historic and Not an A-historic Phenomenon. The approach of Solomon Maimon on the development of Jewish culture, Rabbi Nachman Krochmal – the life cycle of Jewish civilization, Jewish Wisdom and the study of Jewish antiquities.

Seventh-Eighth Weeks: Pluralism and Change – Adaptation of Judaism in the Past and Future. Rabbi Nachman Krochmal – Change is the secret of Jewish existence, the Jewish attitude to its ethical kernel, ethical monotheism and Israel’s mission to the world, the reform movement in religion – Liberal Reform Judaism, the Positivist-Historical movement, neo-Orthodoxy, renewal of Jewish streams in “the New World.”

Ninth-Tenth Weeks: The Jewish People is a Living Nation. “Rome and Jerusalem” – Moses Hess and the renewal of a model society in the Land of Israel as an interpretation of the Spinozan pantheism, Jewish national renewal in Russian territory: critique of the Enlightenment and Liberal Judaism by Russian Jewish writers and thinkers, the flowering of a model of Judaism as the continuous, historical and linguistic culture of a special people whose uniqueness is maintained despite its lack of religious unity and one ethical perspective.

Eleventh Week: The Dream of National Revival of the Jewish people. The return to national autonomy and government, the “Auto-Emancipation” of Pinsker, “The State of the Jews” of Herzl, questions about religion and state in Herzl’s vision.

Twelfth-Thirteenth Weeks: Judaism as a Civilization. The thought of Mordecai Kaplan, Yehezkel Kaufman, and A. D. Gordon.

Fourteenth-Fifteenth Weeks: The Renewal of Jewish Values and Abandonment of the Jabneh Approach. “Complete and healthy life are the real life,” the thought and works of Micah Joseph Berdichevsky and Joseph Haim Brenner.

Sixteenth Week: The Return of Man to Nature. A. D. Gordon – involvement as an alternative to modern alienation, fullness of life as a secular religion.

Seventeenth-Eighteenth Weeks: Judaism and Post-Modernism. The search for meaning in a world without certainty, alienation of man from his environment, the existential isolation of man within modern industrialization. Martin Buber – the problem of man, “Chevruta” as a way to cope with loneliness, the religious community, search for meaning in the modern world, the concept of revelation as a dialogue between man and his environment, I-Thou relationships versus I-It relationships.

Nineteenth-Twentieth Weeks: Man Hungry for Meaning in the Modern World. Franz Rosenzweig – Judaism as an existential response to the modern crisis, dimensions of language as representations of dimensions of spiritual existence, experiences of eternity in Jewish spiritual life, Victor Frankel, Man in Search of Meaning.

Twenty-first-Twenty-second Weeks: Is Normality the Desired Vision for Modern Jewish Existence? Rabbi Dov Baer Soloveitchek – Lonely Man of Faith, coping with the challenge of modernity from an halakhic perspective, The Voice of My Beloved Knocks – the neo-Orthodox response to the Zionist claim for the normality of Jewish life.

Twenty-third-Twenty-fourth Weeks: Messianism and Non-Messianism in Jewish Reality and Thought in light of the Return of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel. The vision and the historical narrative that Jews live through in the modern world, renewal of Hebrew and establishment of the State of Israel. Gershom Scholem – the Jewish abyss opens wide its mouth. The unbearable tension between the Jewish apocalypse and aspirations for contemporary democratic life.

Twenty-fifth-Twenty-sixth Weeks: Coping with the Destruction of the Jewish World in the Holocaust: the Destruction of Jewish Communities, the Demographic and Geographic Crisis, cynicism and nihilism as characteristics of Jewish existence after Auschwitz, Gershom Scholem – what is the source of authority for Jewish values in our day? Wiesel – the orphanhood of the Jews, Richard Rubenstein – Jewish life without God.

Twenty-eighth-Twenty-ninth Weeks: Questions about Designing Life Systems and Jewish Culture in our Day. What characterizes Jewish life today? The design of Jewish time in the past and in our day, the place of the traditional text in Jewish education in the past and in our day, if at all.


Bibliography:
Hebrew

1. Martin Buber, “The Problem of Man,” Faces of Man, Jerusalem, Bialik Institute, 1965.
2. Martin Buber, “I-Thou,” In Secret Discussion, Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1980, p. 3-103/
3. Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1983.
4. Y. Ben-Shlomo, Chapters in the Thought of Benedict Spinoza, The Broadcast University, Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1983.
5. S. H. Bergman, History of the New Philosophy I, 1974, pages 231-297, 451-485.
6. A. D. Gordon, Man and Nature, Tel-Aviv: “The Young Laborer” Press, 5717.
7. T. H. Wolfson, “From Philo to Spinoza,” Jewish Thought in the Middle Ages, pages 9-72.
8. G. Weiller, “The Critique of Spinoza on Religious Authority,” Jewish Theocracy, Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1976, pages 87-108.
9. Jacob Katz, Between Jews and the Nations, Jerusalem: 5721, chapters 11, 12.
10. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis, Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 5738, last two chapters.
11. Ze’ev Levy, Between Japhet and Shem, pages 231-250.
12. Ze’ev Levy, Spinoza and the Concept of Judaism, Tel-Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1972, pages 11-43.
13. Joseph Dov Halevy Soloveitchek, “The Lonely Man of Faith,” Man of Faith, Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook, 1981.
14. Victor Frankel, Man’s Search for Meaning, Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1981.
15. Franz Rosenzweig, Selection of Letters and Diary Excerpts, Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1987.
16. Eli Schweid, History of Jewish Philosophy, Tel-Aviv: Keter Publishing Co., 5738.
17. Eli Schweid, The Individual – The World of A. D. Gordon, Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1970.
18. Gershom Scholem, Another Thing, Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1989.
19. Y. Ta-Shma, “Change and Tradition” (entry), The Hebrew Encyclopedia, 32:186-201.

English

20. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is Not Alone, New York: Noonday Press, (1951), 1991.
21. Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (1955) 1987.
22. Leon Wieseltier, “Against Ethnic Panic - Hitler is Dead,” The New Republic Online. May 16, 2002, at: www.thenewrepublic.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020527&s=wieseltier052702


Jewish Thought in the Era of Secularism and Modernization

First Session: The disappearance of the “classical” topics of Jewish Thought (from Saadiah Gaon to Spinoza), such as Divine supervision, creation, revelation, miracles, knowledge of the Lord, prophecy as it relates to philosophy, etc., in light of the critique of the Enlightenment, and rejection of sacred writings as authority for social matters. The new agenda effectively turns Jewish thought to self-reflection on Jewish existence. As a result, historians, intellectuals, literary people and social reformers join philosophers and theologians in this field.

Second Session: The new agenda of Jewish Thought: the place of Judaism in the new national state and among the nations, the relationship of Jewish faith and human rationality, Moses Mendelssohn and the emergence of a new model of Judaism as Mosaic faith and ethical practice that is not opposed to European science, enlightenment and ethnicity.

Third Session: Discussions on the future of Judaism in the era of Emancipation in the Berlin school of thought. The re-discovery of Judaism as a faith free of ethnicity and open to all, like Catholicism and Protestantism. The breaking of the symbiosis of faith and nationhood in traditional Judaism. The emergence of the model of Judaism as a moral-behavioral school. Results of this thought in social life: the birth of Reform (Friedlander, Geiger, Jewish Wisdom.)

Fourth Session: Critique of the Berlin school by Russian-Jewish writers and thinkers: Smolenskin, Lillienblum. The emergence of the model opposed to the Berlin model: Judaism as a continuous culture from the historical and linguistic perspective of a unique people that is not necessarily comprised of a religious, ethical or philosophical population.

Fifth Session: To what extent are two models (Judaism as a school of thought and Judaism as a national culture) influenced by various life conditions of leaders of the Jewish Enlightenment in the west of the post-Emancipation era (the need to find uniqueness as an ideological battle against assimilation) and of those in the Russian Empire (the continuous and not unique ethnic existence of the Jews, assimilation – for 99% of the Jews not an option.)

Sixth Session: Radical representatives of the approach of Judaism as a spiritual or spiritual-religious school: R. Nahman Krochmal, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber.

Seventh Session: Radical representatives of the approach of Judaism as the culture of a historical family that includes diverse opinions, tensions and permutations: Dubnov, Berdechevsky, Brenner.

Eight Session: Two of the great vacillators: Ahad Ha’am and Zvi (Heinrich) Graetz. Judaism is more spiritually homogeneous than a historical family, but less homogeneous than a philosophical or ethical school.

Ninth Session: The central argument in Hebrew literature and Jewish Thought as a whole: how to effect a synthesis of the Jewish culture with it’s historic uniqueness with universal (i.e., European) culture – Jerusalem and Athens (Rome or Sparta.)

Tenth Session: The place of Zionism in its various streams in this continued argument: Herzl, Nordau, Ahad Ha’am, Sirkin, Borochov, Brenner, Ya’acov Klatzkin, Yehezkel Kaufman, Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion. The “Hebraic European” - the new Hebraic verses the traditional Jew.

Eleventh Session: Jewish Thought, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

Twelfth Session: The range of opinions in Jewish Thought regarding the State of Israel. Is the State the destroyer or preserver of Judaism? Does it imply a revolution in the image of the Jew towards the “myth of the Sabra.”

Thirteenth Session: To what extent do the main cultural arguments in the State of Israel continue the old arguments, and to what extent do they respond to reality and new problematics?

Fourteenth Session: Jewish Thought and the thought of the Jews: is the difference between Jewish and general thought only thematic and personal (The thought of Jews about Jews) or is it possible to indicate also a special color – if not a special “Torah” – that characterizes Jewish thought?

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