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Old October 15th, 2016 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
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Default Richard Silverstein’s Mythical Liberal Judaism

Richard Silverstein’s Mythical Liberal Judaism


I normally enjoy reading Richard Silverstein’s investigative journalism on Israel and all things jewish, which I am sure would appall him if he were ever to read these words. His recent article entitled ‘Yom Kippur: Losing My Religion’ made me laugh quite a bit however. (1)

The reason being that while I appreciated what he was saying about what he refers to as ‘settler Judaism’ (aka by enlarge the totality of religious Zionism these days) and his description of it as a cult populated by deranged genocidal fanatics. I disagreed strongly with his myopic vision of Judaism as this airy-fairy liberal spiritual philosophy that has made ‘unique contributions’ to the world.

He writes: ‘But since the last Temple was destroyed during the Roman era, the priestly cult was subsumed by a strongly decentralized rabbinic-synagogue model which emphasized spirituality and tikun olam. Though the Temple rite remained deeply embedded in the liturgy, it was seen as an symbolic element of the distant past, rather than as a project that demanded urgent realization.’

Now this is true as far as it goes in that the Temple rite was indeed a ‘symbolic element’ of Judaism in the exile. However that per se did not and could not ever mean that just because it was a symbolic element in the exile. It therefore follows that there was never any intention that these rites would not be restored at some point.

There is after all a point to the ubiquitous utterance of ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ at the end of the Pesach seder (i.e. Passover). If it were not actually supposed to happen: then why bother with the exhortation at all?

It is the very essence of Judaism that the Messiah will return at some point in the future and that the jewish people will once again be in Jerusalem and offering sacrifices to Yahweh in the newly rebuilt fourth temple.

You can claim the fourth temple is a philosophic idea if you like, but that isn’t what any of the jewish sages believed especially the rabbonim of the Mishnah in early days of the exilic period. It is simply folly to pretend that there was never a common desire to rebuild the temple at the heart of Judaism, because that is exactly what the Messiah is supposed to be coming to do (among other things).

That’s not to say I support the building of the fourth jewish temple as I don’t, but rather that I acknowledge the simple reality is that the majority (if not all) of the principal sages of Judaism throughout its history have held to the belief that a physical temple will be rebuilt.

It is also worth noting that Silverstein’s contention that ‘the priestly cult was subsumed by a strongly decentralized rabbinic-synagogue model which emphasized spirituality and tikun olam’ is simply made-up rubbish.

I certainly wouldn't, for example, describe the Judaism of the shtetl as being a ‘strong decentralized rabbinic-synagogue model’. Given that it was characterised by a plethora of Rebbe-centric cults comprising whole localities and having members across vast geographic areas and the despotic Kahals (basically rabbinic councils/courts similar to Islamic State’s Sharia Courts and the modern jewish Beth Din).

Nor was there ever a ‘priestly cult’ per se, because, even in the days of the priests, there were local ‘prayer rooms’ all over the Mediterranean. These obviously had little recourse to religious decisions made within the confines of the Temple’s religious precincts.

Silverstein is also ignoring the existence of strident factionalism within the religious leaders in days of the ‘priestly cult’ for knowledge of which you’d merely have to read the works of Josephus. Hence the famous factions of the Sadducees and Pharisees among many others who were jockeying for position and influence within Judea in Roman times (and who even used murder to gain their political and religious ends).

I do agree that Judaism has always been decentralised in terms of how each individual congregation interprets the day-to-day matters of halakhah and philosophy (hence the need for each congregation’s rabbi), but it is also a religion which has had its own interpretations definitively clarified at a very early date. Hence why there is both a Written Torah and an Oral Torah (i.e. the Talmuds) rather than just the Rabbinics.

There is plenty of variability within Judaism, but most of that has come in the last two centuries with the advent of breaks with the divine nature of the rulings of the Oral Torah (i.e. the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist denominations). Judaism didn’t start out that way and nor has it been that way form most of its existence.

Silverstein further writes that:

‘Returning to what defined the sacred in Judaism over the centuries–yes, Israel was always on the lips of praying Jews for millennia. But Israel was a vision like William Blake’s New Jerusalem, as much as a real place. And there was never any movement in post-Temple Judaism which defined the borders of Israel or demanded specific territory and named it as inviolably Jewish. Until 1967, there never was the equivalent of a Jewish Crusade to liberate such lands from the heathen as there was during the Christian Middle Ages.’

His contention that Israel was, in effect, a jewish fantasy is correct: it was.

What he doesn’t mention however is that if something is a fantasy then you do actually want it to happen as a rule rather than just treating as an interesting speculation that you’d prefer to remain as a fantasy.

As to whether there was a movement in exilic Judaism which defined the borders of Israel or demanded specific territory. Silverstein is clearly forgetting the existence of the religious wing of the Zionist movement, which comprised quite a few prominent rabbonim and their followers like Arthur Cohn (the Baseler Rav) and the first Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Palestine Avraham Isaac Kook.

Or are these not a ‘movement with Judaism’ now?

On the subject of a jewish ‘crusade’ that is somewhat contentious as well since jewish military units aligned with the Persian empire to conquer and sack Byzantine-held Jerusalem for religious reasons in 614 AD. This incidentally lead to the barely known massacre of a large number of Christian men, women and children at Mamilla pool by jewish forces that were almost certainly acting out a revenge fantasy based on their religious convictions.

There is also the large failed jewish crusade organised by Sabbatai Zevi to retake Palestine from the forces of Islam with recruits-cum-pilgrims from all over Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East in 1666 AD.

Silverstein continues stating that: ‘Rabbinic Judaism saw the sacred in ideas, values and performance of everyday mitzvot.’

Here he is focusing on jews performing a good deed (i.e. mitzvah), but forgets to mention that what is a mitzvah is controlled by the mitzvoth (i.e. the 613 Commandments) that stipulate what is good and bad according to Judaism.

These were, you guessed it, centrally codified based on the Written Torah (contradicting Silverstein’s earlier claims of a completely de-centralised Judaism) and stipulate that a jew shall love and not hate other jews (240 and 237 in Maimonides’ list respectively).

By contrast there is little to no positive mention of non-jews in the mitzvoth.

In fact they are defined as the enemy ergo mitzvoth 602 to 604 in Maimonides’ list, which stipulate that jews should remember what Amalek (i.e. non-jews who oppose jews) did to them in the desert and exterminate them accordingly as Yahweh has ordered them to.

So yes Rabbinic Judaism does focus on performing good deeds (mitzvot), but ‘good deeds’ in Judaism includes exterminating non-jews who are regarded as opposing jews – as we can witness in the Book of Esther - because what a good deed is; is defined within the context of the 613 commandments derived from the word of God: the Written Torah.

Silverstein writes that:

‘While it always valued what was unique in the Jewish contribution to civilization, it appreciated other religious traditions. It embraced a universalist vision as espoused by the Prophets.’

Apparently I have a different copy of the Tanakh to Silverstein, because I cannot find anything in it indicating the jewish prophets held a universalist world view given that, for example, the entire book of Nahum is dedicated to fantasising about the extermination of the Assyrian empire.

I am sure the prophet Nahum wanted world peace… well after Hashem had slaughtered all the goyim he didn’t like anyway.

Further I am puzzled about Silverstein’s claim that Judaism has always ‘appreciated other religious traditions’ given that there is a good part of Rabbinic literature, which is devoted to attacking other religious systems (most frequently Christianity) in the most vitriolic of terms.

Or perhaps the repeated references to Jesus as the son of a jewish prostitute (Mary) and a Roman soldier (Pandera) are really meant as a compliment and not an insult to Christians?

We can see from all this that, speaking frankly, Silverstein’s liberal Judaism is quite literally a myth that is largely limited to himself and maybe a few other modern jews.

It has no historical basis and is also (seemingly deliberate) misrepresents Judaism and its history to try and shore up the fact that ‘liberal Judaism’ is a very modern invention and not anything with much in the way of an intellectual link to the time of the Mishnah or the shtetl.


References

(1) http://www.richardsilverstein.com/20...g-my-religion/

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This was originally published at the following address: http://bit.ly/2ej5lPI
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