4.0 out of 5 stars RELIGIOIN CAN BE REASONABLE, 2024Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2024
Hermann Cohen’s classic is perhaps the most neglected religious classic in this century. This speaks badly for our century and worlds about the work.
Cohen was one of the most respected German intellectuals of the 19th century, even founding a school of neo-Kantian (i.e. anti-Hegelian) philosophy known (to perhaps one in a million today) as the Marburg School. He was a lifelong student of Jewish sources, including Bible, rabbinics and philosphy, and he brings his scholarship to bear in this exceptional work. In it he edited down his many articles on Jewsih tradtion that now fill thee German voumes, and are mostly yet to be transnlated.
So what?
While Cohen, a quintessential 19th century pre-Nietzschean thinker, derives a religion exclusively of reason from Jewish sources, in the post-modern 21st century the voice of reason may no longer be exclusive but it is hardly extinct. I hope. There has always been a tension in religious thinking between man’s use of reason as his ultimate God-given gift and therefore obligation, and the supra-reason mystical and revelational claims. Anyone who thinks of these claims as binary and mutually exclusive need read no further. But if one wants to attend deeply to the voice of reason in religious thinking, there is no better srouce than Cohen’s magnum upus in the field.
Let me give one example. In the field of “ethics,” Cohen points to the fact that ethical thinking is about “man” in the abstract, all men. This provides incomplete guidance with regard to a particular human being with whom we have dealilngs. Religion, which understands the complex uniqueness of each individual, based upon his iniquities, is necessary to guide inter-individual discourse. If it sounds like Buber, Rosenzweig and Levinas, it is indeed the somewhat neglected source of their thinking. And Cohen’s foundational claim that God of reason is not “one” but “unique” makes possible a renewed understanding of man’s relation to the “Unique.”
Historically, Cohen was struggling mainly with the protestantism that was reawakened with Hegelian thinking. His treatment of the prophets, particularly the move from societal ethics to personal ethics with Ezekiel was foundational for much of Israeli biblical scholarship from Ezekiel (serendipitous name) Kaufmann and further. He was also, like any 19th or early 20th century philosopher, a master of all Greek philosophy and the distinctions he makes here still ring true for the handful of folks interested in this.
This edition includes the best essays introducing Cohen to the 20th century. This review tries to make an update. The translation, I admit, is a bit pedestrian, limiting itself too much to German diction and it would be great to see a more user-friendly and less original-restricted version. Maybe in the 22nd century.
But to put it briefly: If as a denizen of this baffling century you are sure religion means ONLY revelation and mysticism – and that makes you “for it or agin’ it” – Cohen can help you to think twice.
5.0 out of 5 stars Clarifying history makes historyReviewed in the United States on September 15, 2024
S. Ilan Troen’s Whose Promised Land is much more than an excellent academic work; its publication constitutes an important event, and in three spheres.
As an intellectual event, the author has composed a monument of interdisciplinary scholarship. The author is personally well versed in American and European history, Israeli history and Jewish tradition. He had added scholarship in the fields of international law, diplomacy, Christian tradition and varieties of Islamic expressions. I know of few works that can create superb intellectual discourse across so many fields. And in this work the various fields actually interact with each other, beyond the more customary parallel play of scholars.
As a political event, the three claimants for the Promised Land are treated objectively and respectfully. The author, as a Jew residing in Isarel, cannot and does not try to disguise the particular warmth with which he treats the Israeli claim. Yet even here the claim is portrayed as complex, and one of the important contributions of this book is to make clear the religious aspects of the supposedly secular claims. The author succeeds in performing the same analysis of the religious bases for the secular claims of Christians and Moslems as well. I call this an event because any possible discussion or progress between the claimants requires that each understands the claim of the other. I would therefore propose that this singular work be required reading for anyone wishing to engage in honest discussion regarding the political possibilities for the Middle East. For myself, a traditional Jew residing in Israel, I found the full treatment of the other claims enlightening. An optimist, this reinforced my optimism; I suspect that pessimists could feel a parallel influence.
And finally, a religious event. The three claims derive from the same God, all of them are claims from ancient civilizations. But all three religions progress into modern – and perhaps even “post-modern” – civilization with significant modifications and adjustments. Here this scholarly work presents the ground for religious discourse among the three claimants, a discourse that this reader became convinced must take place together with all the political issues. The author points to possibilities of redefining absolute claims in each of the religions in order to achieve an accord all three can live with. He also describes, for pessimists, the extreme sides of each religion, strident but minorities. For each religion, the material can serve as a basis for principled opposition to the extremes from within each religious community. For example, there is all too little clear opposition to extremism on religious grounds among the Jews in Israel who often feel intimidated from stating an alternative to extremism based upon a non-extremist understanding of Judaism.
Any reader either involved in or interested in the Middle East crisis in 2024 cannot afford to ignore this work.
5.0 out of 5 stars A Work on Spirit and Sex Not Just For JewsReviewed in the United States on October 16, 2021
Noam Zion’s monumental Sanctified Sex is so rich that it should attract the attention of mental health professionals in addition to its obvious appeal to scholars of Jewish history and religion. While I have some overlap with the latter, it is as a psychiatrist that I focus this review.
Especially in our nascent 21st century, with the parallel proliferation of spiritual values and previously unthinkable redefinitions of sexual realtions, Zion’s account of the two millennia long ”debate” within the Jewish tradition about emotional and erotic intimacy in committed relationships is profoundly if not urgently relevant.
It is easy enough to point out the extremes in traditional rabbinic thought. Zion gives one extreme side to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, a central figure in first-century C.E. Judaism. The Rabbi’s relations with his wife are told in a vigorous narrative. In brief, this end of the spectrum sees any bodily experience let alone pleasure as diminishing the life of the spirit. At the other end comes the outrageous story of Rav, a Rabbi a century and a half later who moved from Israel to Mesopotamia. Not only does Rav enjoy all carnal aspects of his relations with his wife and engages playfully in erotic conversation with her, but the story is related by his student Kahana, who crept under the bed to learn intimate details from his teacher! These narratives are recounted in the most felicitous prose and create the framework for the endless debate.
Now, from the vantage point of our century we may look upon the entire debate as anachronistic. Who in mental health still thinks that the body and soul are Cartesian strangers? Well, many of our clients, that’s who. This debate would not have raged for two thousand years if it did not present a matter of intense concern to many human beings. It would seem that we have a natural difficulty in bringing together the experiences of our senses and the experiences of our minds. People who devote themselves to the “spiritual” are constantly challenged by their bodies and the bodies of others. We can recall that none less than the religious existentialist Soren Kierkegaard distinguished the aesthetic (sensory) level and the ethical (how we deal with others) from the “leap” that one makes into the “religious.” Rabbi Eliezer was an earlier “leaper,” dismissing both bodily pleasure and even consideration for his wife’s in favor of a pure “spirit.” Rav, on the other hand, “leaped backwards,” incorporating both physical pleasure and interpersonal kindness as necessary parts of “spirit.” We will meet many leapers of all sorts in our clinical work.
I am suggesting that many of our clients live between these two extremes, and that this life includes no small measure of perplexity. Zion’s book rewards its readers with a panoply of narratives about living in the middle and that is its greatest contribution. We hear from all kinds of people, from Rabbis and would-be saints to mystics and even to sexual athletes. Over the years Jewish legal literature, written admittedly almost entirely by males, has included many different voices. These different voices inform us of the different modes of living of different people who tried to create a working relationship with sex.
Here are but two examples. 18th century Rabbi Jacob Emden actually suggested (excusing the obvious gender inequality) that men be allowed mistresses with a non-marriage arrangement, in order not to place one’s sexual needs exclusively on a wife and that some women would prefer informal relationships without the complications of legal divorce should the relationship prove unsatisfactory . Historically, this view gained little currency, but Noam Zion shows how some contemporary American rabbis reject the idea of a mistress alongside a married spouse but approve a committed relationship of living together even without sacred matrimony. Another example is 16th century Josef Caro, a mystic who promulgated very stringent limitations on sexual pleasure which gained dominance and challenged subsequent generations to squirm out of them. If we listen to our clients with an unbiased ear, we will still meet Emdens and Caros. And in this century we might be advised to listen for “spiritual” questing that interacts with sexuality, if we can become the helpers who listen not only for sex but also for spirit.
Going beyond a review of past rabbinic positions, Zion is to be especially commended for opening the reader to the current scene in the Jewish debate. He provides a deep appreciation for the divides among orthodox and ultra-ortodox Jews in Israel today. No one working in Israel cannot but profit from this exposition. And then he covers the American scene with a rare honesty and thoroughness, giving voice to the range of non-orthodox expressions over the last half century up to the present. No one working in America today can afford to be ignorant of these voices and how they touch upon the lives of our clients.
This is a long book, but it is printed in large font and pleasant to hold and read. The production is worthy of such an erudite and communicative author. Few people would even imagine taking a thematic tour of so many Jewish cultures and texts spanning so many years. Noam Zion has demonstrated his extraordinary talent for getting to all of the sources, presenting them with relish and analyzing them with penetrating insights. The only fault I can find with the work, which is an editorial glitch easy to correct in the next edition, is that the historical annotations in parentheses after each author’s name tend to be inconsistent, which is a little unsettling for the reader. My guess is that most readers will be so engrossed and engaged that this will pass them by.
5.0 out of 5 stars Two Guides are Better than OneReviewed in the United States on August 31, 2013
Josef Stern has returned Maimonides to the people, any people, and especially Jewish people on a spiritual journey. Using the superb skills of a philosopher and decades of patient study, Stern makes the author of the Guide come alive as a welcome if somewhat antiquated companion, pretty much the way I think non-academic Jews have studied him for centuries.
Stern’s work turns on process rather than content. He reconstructs Maimonides’ process of finding and constructing parables and takes the reader steadily through the many puzzling and seemingly contradictory passages. Stern is able to demonstrate the three-tier level of the parables with the final deepest meaning revolving around the process of asymptotic spiritual quest. Because of man’s material nature, he is at a loss to actually reach knowledge about the immaterial world. Coming to understand this limitation while continuing to strive for the unachievable (in Stern’s lexicon the regulatory goal) is the process that spiritual journey is all about. Stern points out the in Greek philosophical schools that was the main meaning of being a skeptic and engaging in skeptical practice.
For the non-specialist, until now we had three presentations of the Guide. The view I was brought up with was that Maimonides had to salvage Judaism from the Aristotelian challenge. That view engendered two camps, one claiming that the Sage of Fustat was a Aristotelian but hid it in the Guide. The second camp claimed that Maimonides just did not know how to manage all the philosophical contradictions, so he busily performed some kind of political balancing act. As a psychiatrist, I might suggest that some scholars saw Maimonides in their own image. I certainly think that Stern has created – to my view rediscovered – Maimonides in his own spiritually searching image. What a breath of fresh air! Maimonides is no longer the paranoid or the muddler of information, he is a dedicated guide. Like a true guide, he takes the reader where the guide himself is still moving, because he and his fellow travelers are all missing something – the ability to know scientifically about the immaterial. As Stern points out, the meaning of “perplexed” is that something is missing. (My own guess would be that the Arabic that became “perplexed” may have translated the Greek aporia which indicates mainly that something is lacking. Expertise in Greek is the only thing Stern is lacking.) Stern has now become, in my eyes, THE Guide to the Guide, so now we folks on a spiritual quest despite being material have two companions and guides.
5.0 out of 5 stars Movinf Faith and Relevant DissentReviewed in the United States on April 7, 2019
Paul Mendes-Flohr has created a monument worthy of its subject. Martin Buber: A life of Faith and Dissent succeeds in recounting the life of this “unfortunately complicated and difficult subject” without excess complication and difficulty. The result is a readable, believable, deeply moving story of the faith and dissent of a remarkable Jew.
Mendes-Flohr is to be congratulated on the immense erudition and no less meticulous choices that seamlessly document the inner and outer life of Buber. Quotations from Buber’s prolific correspondence and his personal poetry are perfectly set in the context of moments of turning and periods of reflection. These are balanced with the interactive Buber, his actions and their reception, and especially his great friendships, – Gustav Landauer, Franz Rosenzweig, Agnon, Shmuel Bergmann, and above all his wife Paula. In addition, Mendes-Flohr makes exquisite use of Buber’s addresses to express his thoughts. While Buber himself was notoriously difficult to read, Mendes-Flohr allows the complexity of life and thought to become fully comprehensible.
Buber wrote that a translator enters into the mind of the writer and renders this mind as the author “would” have put it in a different linguistic and cultural context. Mendes-Flohr has “translated” Buber in this sense, by communicating a Buber above all human. The choice of “faith” and “dissent” as dominant themes in Buber’s Jewishness lay the framework for Buber’s development, for example the “three stations” in his Zionism. These themes also help in understanding his appreciation for the religious “spark” ignited in Hasidism – a movement characterized by both deep faith and profound dissent. The account of Buber’s courage in the face of Nazism is perhaps the most moving example of this interplay of faith and dissent. For Buber, being a Jew required a vital and personal faith in God and the responsibility to dissent when this faith was distorted.
This new biography sets a high standard for “psychological” understanding. Nowhere does Mendes-Flohr speculate about obvious landmarks such as Buber’s abandonment by his mother when he was three years old. He allows this event to be addressed by Buber himself on various occasions, and resists the temptation to “peek behind the scenes” and “explain” various aspects of Buber’s way. This restraint allows the life to appear in full enigmatic human richness. It also allows the “voice” of the biographer to take its proper place, as Buber might have said, standing at the window and showing the life of its subject.
An author inevitably makes choices. For Mendes-Flohr Buber’s immensely prolific writings and activities pose a prodigious challenge. For this reader, the choices work remarkable well. One particular example is the study of Buber’s way to I and Thou, the topic of a previous work by the author. Mendes-Flohr recounts the drama of Buber’s friendship with Gustav Landauer, helping the reader to understand the social and philosophical context. Citing proto-dialogical thinking up to the point of the completion of the work, the biography never leaves the dialogical theme of the in Buber’s activities. But the account of I and Thou itself, Buber’s most famous work, is relegated to a mere six pages (40-45). In these few pages the content and the poetry of the work is so perfectly expressed that the reader would wonder why people struggle so much with this work. The presentation of I and Thou within a life of dialogue could not be more exact.
I read this work two days before Israel’s elections. To my mind, Mendes-Flohr has courageously brought forth Buber’s faithful dissent from the political path that Zionism took. Buber’s voice is presented in his own words, which remain startlingly relevant, even prophetic, to the State of Israel today. At a conference in Jerusalem marking the 50th anniversary of Buber’s death, a prominent Israeli academic condescendingly referred to Buber’s views about society and Israel as a “noble failure.” This biography paints an entirely different picture, in which it was a living faith that required dissent, and still does.
Top review from the United States
5.0 out of 5 stars Lasker Opens the Window
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2022
Lasker Opens the Window
Daniel Lasker’s Karaism (2022) is more than just a fascinating introduction to a fascinating topic. It is also a model of communication between the highest levels of academic scholarship and the non-specialist reader.
The book’s structure suggests the hand of a master teacher. The first half tells the chronological story. The second half describes and analyzes Karaitic culture and literature. Lasker then appends a “Dramatis Personae” which enables the reader of the second half to remind himself of the writers who are mentioned without scrounging around in the first half of the book. Each chapter concludes with a brief and helpful summary and suggestions for further reading that is the only place where the author’s exhaustive scholarship becomes evident.
Lasker has succeeded in creating a single voice at once appealing and authoritative. His felicitous prose belies the complexity of the issues involved. The reader is guided with confidence through many thorny issues of scholarship. The author makes consistently wise choices in entering or passing over controversy. He understands his reader no less well than his material.
The second half of the work reveals the unique capabilities of the author. Lasker is a polymath no less than a specialist. He is at home in every area of Karaite -and Jewish – literature and culture. Chapter 8, on Theology, is worth the price of the book. The author summons prodigious knowledge of medieval Jewish philosophy to discuss Karaite and Rabbinate philosophers in a depth that is understandable to the non-specialist. The same is true of his discussion of Exegesis in Chapter 9. The reader would thankfully say “Dayenu” (how sufficient) while Lasker then continues as a world-expert of medieval religious polemics in Chapter 10 (Polemics and Historiography) and as a great linguistic and literary authority in Chapter 11 (Language and Literature). The final chapter informs the reader of something truly unique, in that this academic has continuing personal contact with the main figures in Israeli Karaite culture today. I think this personal connection informs Lasker’s voice as a respectful student of a living Jewish alternative culture.
In short, here is a unique work by a unique authority. Anyone interested in Jewish culture or in religious life will find reading Karaism both enjoyable and rewarding.
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Alan Flashman 