The Wondering Jew Chapter 3

3 CULTURAL SECULARISM

Is it possible to connect to tradition without surrendering one’s freedom? Is there a way for Jews to maintain a meaningful connection to their past without weakening their secular identity? Over this mammoth task labored a thinker who was one of the founders of Israeli secularism—Ahad Ha’am, born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsburg. To this end, he presented a surprising idea: secular Jews can connect to their Judaism without subordinating themselves to religion—simply because Judaism is not a religion.1

Deep in the soul of any religious Jew is faith, a belief that above and beyond the reality we can see and comprehend exists another reality—sacred, invisible, and intangible. But according to Ahad Ha’am, this faith is not what stands at the center of the Jewish experience. Judaism is not a religion in which one believes but a nation to which one belongs. And whereas faith cultivates religiosity, nationhood nurtures solidarity. Instead of faith in a reality greater than ourselves, Judaism centers on faith in the group to which we belong. This sense of belonging replaces religious sentiments as the strongest emotional fiber in Jewish identity.

There are consequences to replacing faith with belonging. According to Ahad Ha’am, an individual’s sense of belonging to his or her nation manifests itself through belonging to everything that nation creates. In the Jewish context, such a sense of attachment creates a new, secular basis for the connection to the Jewish tradition. The Torah was neither revealed nor handed down to the Jewish people, but created by them. And a sense of belonging to the Jewish people entails a desire to connect to their creative works.2 If the Jewish tradition is not a religion but a culture, then the stronger secular Jews’ love for their nation, the greater their love for its national culture.

In Ahad Ha’am’s vision, secular Jews would devote themselves to studying their nation’s Holy Scripture in the same way religious yeshiva students did. But while religious Jews scoured these texts for the divine will, secular Jews in the style of Ahad Ha’am would search for the national spirit. Nationalism would therefore become an alternative source of energy, impelling Jews to connect to their tradition. Consequently, the Jewish nationalism that would replace the Jewish religion would not abolish tradition—it would renew it.

Both religious and secular Jews can devote themselves to their tradition’s founding texts, but there is still a vast difference between them. For religious Jews, the written word is a source of authority; for secular Jews in the style of Ahad Ha’am, it is a source of inspiration. Books that are sources of authority control their readers; books that are sources of inspiration enrich and empower them.3

Ahad Ha’am’s position stands against the religious position, but it also contradicts the secular worldview—or at least the rebellious incarnation of Jewish secularism expressed by Micha Josef Ber-

dyczewski discussed above. Ahad Ha’am likened the present to a tree and the past to its roots: “Can a tree be freed from its roots sunk deep underground?”4 In contrast, Berdyczewski averred that “all that is past, inasmuch as it is the past, buries the present, and all that is old buries the new.”5 If in Ahad Ha’am’s view the present grows out of the past, in Berdyczewski’s view the past buries the present.

Just as Ahad Ha’am developed a nonreligious affinity with tradition, he also developed a non-rebellious version of secularism. Consider this eye-opening analogy, from the late author Amos Oz, which clarifies Ahad Ha’am’s unique position. If the Jewish tradition is the Jews’ inheritance—the accumulated, multigenerational wisdom handed down from their ancestors—Jews must ask how best to manage that inheritance. When people inherit their grandparents’ property, they do not usually hoard all their possessions at home. Not every chandelier is affixed to the ceiling; not every sofa is moved into the living room. Wise heirs to family property know to fill the living room with whatever belongs there—and to move into storage whatever does not. They choose what to place in the garden as decoration, and if they have nowhere to put a particular heirloom, they might throw it in the garbage. Orthodox religious Jews are like heirs who unreflectively place everything they inherit in the middle of the house. Rebellious secular Jews are like those who would throw the whole inheritance, including priceless treasures, into the trash.6 Neither truly grasps that the most important skill in identity-formation is to use the inheritance of the wisdom of generations in an astute manner.

For Ahad Ha’am, both religious Jews’ slavish devotion to the past and rebellious secular Jews’ renunciation of the past repre-

sent broken relationships with history. He believed that the greatest challenge of modern Jewish thought was to shape a Judaism that would inherit the wisdom of generations without suffocating under the weight of the burden.

THE FOUNDATIONAL DEBATE OF SECULAR JUDAISM

The debate between Aristotle and Plato was the foundational debate of Greek philosophy; without understanding their differences, we cannot understand ancient Greek thought. The debate between the rival Jewish philosophical schools of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai was the foundational debate of the Talmudic world, and understanding it is the key to understanding the intellectual world of the Talmud.7 The debate between Maimonides and Judah Halevi was the foundational debate of medieval Jewish philosophy; without understanding it, we cannot understand medieval Jewish thought. Similarly, the debate between Berdyczewski and Ahad Ha’am was the foundational debate of Israeli secularism. Even if most Israelis remain unaware of this debate, it is the essential window through which the nature of Israeli secularism must be observed.8

The question at the heart of the polemic between Berdyczewski and Ahad Ha’am was: What constitutes a free, or secular, Jew? According to Berdyczewski, a free Jew is one who is free from the past. But according to Ahad Ha’am, a free Jew is one who maintains a free relationship with the past.

In Talmudic times, it was decided that the halakha would follow Beit Hillel, not Beit Shammai; in the Middle Ages, most Jewish thinkers and sages followed Judah Halevi, not Maimonides. And what happened in the debate over Israeli secularism? Was the

secularism that developed the type that draws inspiration from tradition or is cut off from it? The author S. Yizhar had a clear answer: “We have lost the key to the treasures of the People of the Book, so rich in history. And all that was stored from Second Temple times till yesterday is alien to us, silent and dark. Is it because the key to these treasures is primarily religious?”9

Yizhar compared the accumulated wisdom of Jewish tradition to a treasure chest, and the key that opens it is a religious one. Israeli secularism does not hold that key and therefore has no access to the treasures of Jewish history. The novelist Aharon Appelfeld similarly pointed to Israelis’ alienation from their Jewishness: “There was an attempt here to amputate internal organs of the soul. That caused incapacity, a serious cultural incapacity. . . . The result is a black hole of identity. That is why there is a deep recoil from everything Jewish.”10

Ahad Ha’am argued that Judaism was a culture, not a religion, and therefore the secular recoil from religion need not become a secular aversion to Judaism. But Ahad Ha’am’s project was never fully realized. Over the years, the antipathy that secular Jews felt toward religion led many of them to become antipathetic toward Judaism. The consequences for their identity were grave. In Appelfeld’s scathing words, secular Israelis suffered from a “serious cultural incapacity,” and Israeli society found itself in a “black hole of identity.”

The debate over the secular Jewish soul ended with a victory for Berdyczewski and defeat for Ahad Ha’am. The dominant model of secularism was one of rebellion, not inspiration, of neglecting the heritage of previous generations, not using the inheritance wisely.11

Berdyczewski’s philosophy is certainly more complicated than I have presented. The angry Berdyczewski who declared a revolt by the present against the past and by Jews against Judaism also believed that he was rebelling against himself. “When we defeat the past, we ourselves are the defeated,” he wrote.12 Judaism was a part of Berdyczewski’s being, and he was conflicted and pained by his revolt against it. “I cannot lie to myself. I regret that I will miss the sanctity of innocence, and I express this regret publicly.”13 Berdyczewski’s win, one could say, was also therefore his loss.

Yosef Haim Brenner represented an even more extreme position. Brenner shared Berdyczewski’s rebellious impulses, but they were not mellowed by the longing and emotional attachment to the past that drove Berdyczewski. “We . . . the free Jews have nothing to do with Judaism,” Brenner declared.14 To his mind, the ancient Jewish religion had no books or ideas with which it was worth engaging. “Have we not yet heard they’ve died, the gods have died, all of them? Yes, they are dead to us. Dead forever. And with them, their laws.”15

Brenner was the torch bearer of an unambiguously resistant and defiant form of secularism. Whereas Berdyczewski could see sparks of light in the darkness of Jewish history, Brenner comprehensively dismissed the tradition. The whole of rabbinic literature was, as he put it so sharply and bluntly, “the words of a dead god.”16

The gulf between Berdyczewski and Brenner is representative of the gulf between different generations of secular Zionists. The Jews of the Second and Third Aliyah, Berdyczewski among them, rebelled against the Jewish tradition and were emotionally wounded. They turned against the world in which they had grown

up. When they dismissed the tradition, they felt they were dismissing something of themselves. In the words of the researcher Moti Zeira, their souls were torn.17 But the generation who came after them, including Brenner, inherited their desire to revolt against the past but not their nostalgia for it. The second generation of Jewish secularists inherited the founders’ secularism without the emotional baggage.18 These secular Jews openly rejected the tradition without secretly feeling drawn to it. Their secularism was not torn. Thus, in a process that took only two generations, Ahad Ha’am lost, and the revolutionaries won.

Ahad Ha’am would not have been surprised by his defeat. He knew that history was not on his side. In his own day and age, he could already see the attraction of the rebellious version of secularism. He understood that the new secular Jews had difficulty accepting his message. When they looked at the Jewish tradition, they saw only a force that threatened them, not a cultural asset that could enrich their lives. Ahad Ha’am offered a psychological explanation for the secular Jews’ emotional recoil from their Judaism. He argued that their aversion to the past was based on a problem not with the past but with the present. The new secular Jews associated the rabbinic literature with the religious Jews of their own time. And since they were put off by the religious Jews of their own time, they were also put off by the ancient tradition that their religious peers purported to represent.

In Ahad Ha’am’s words: “Judging by their ‘freedom,’ they are still slaves to the feelings of hate that fill their hearts against the living religion of the present. And in their imagination they always see a group of fanatics persecuting them to force them to wear a

tzitzit and tallit, and this is why they concede their national cultural heritage of the past, in order not to be seen as having any connection to the faith and religion of the present.”19

Secular Jews’ revulsion from religious orthodoxy in the present has become an emotional barrier blocking off intimate contact with the cultural assets of the past. Ahad Ha’am saw this as enslavement. If religious Jews are enslaved by religion, secular Jews are enslaved by their hatred of religion.

SECULAR JEWISH RENEWAL

The revolt against religion was victorious. But although Ahad Ha’am was defeated, his ideas did not die. They survived on the periphery of Israeli culture, biding their time. Now, in the twentyfirst century, it may be time to resurrect them.

There are signs that Ahad Ha’am’s alternative secularism is beginning to revive. Plato once noted that when a society’s music changes, that is a clear sign that the whole society is changing.20 And Israeli music is indeed experiencing a change. Ehud Banai is writing, composing, and singing a new type of songbook, as are Kobi Oz, Corinne Allal, Berry Sakharof, Etti Ankri, and many others. They are setting biblical verses, lines from prayers, and medieval poems to music, sometimes even composing their own original prayers. With so many leading artists involved, the phenomenon is reaching a critical mass in Israeli culture. “Jewish” music, which until recently was considered separate from “Israeli” music, is now an organic part of the Israeli music scene. The names of these artists might not be familiar to Diaspora Jews, but in Israel they are popular artists on par with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

The change is coming not only in the new songs. There are also new books. In recent years, publishers have started giving prominence to books that make Judaism accessible. Books about Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, the Talmud, and the Hebrew Bible are being written for the general public and becoming best sellers. Just as Jewish music has become Israeli, books about Judaism are no longer trapped under the category of “holy texts.”

Music is composed and books are written when there is demand for them. When there seems to be a cultural hunger for them. And this hunger can be seen in the new, nonreligious batei midrash (Jewish study centers) that are opening up and flourishing all over Israel.21 These new study centers teach the Gemara, the Mishnah, and the Hebrew Bible, but most of the students are not religious, nor do they intend to become religious. They are returning to their tradition—without turning to religion.

Here, then, are three signs that something new is happening: Israeli music is evolving, Israeli nonfiction is expanding, and the offerings of Jewish study halls in Israel are changing. Many secular Israelis are looking to get back in touch with the Jewish tradition without being controlled by that tradition. They are successfully overcoming the emotional barriers and drawing inspiration from the past without making negative associations, as the early secularists did, with what repels them in the present. They are not becoming religious—they are becoming another kind of secular Jew. Ahad Ha’am’s secularism is back.

This phenomenon, known as the Jewish renewal, is not widespread, but it is spreading, and it shows that an alternative type of secularism can develop alongside more classical secularism. And note, this “Jewish renewal” has nothing to do with the progres-

sive, neo-Hasidic movement that shares its name: it is the birth of a vibrant, secular culture that draws on its ancient roots. The Jewish religious world, as we know, is diverse and impassioned. Alongside the dominant streams of Judaism, each generation creates alternative interpretations of its own. And indeed, it seems that not only the religious world has disagreements; so does the secular world. Just as every few generations Jewish history throws up an alternative religious movement to the dominant religious stream, so now we are beginning to see the emergence of another form of secularism, an alternative to the central stream of Jewish secularism.

Secularism is a mindset of sovereignty. Secular people consider themselves to have complete sovereignty over their own lives. And this might lead to a surprising conclusion: as secularism becomes more Jewish, it also becomes more secular. Secular Jews who study the foundational texts of the Jewish tradition do not limit their personal sovereignty; they enhance it. They apply their own sovereignty to the Jewish tradition. This important reversal can also be seen in the sharp words of one of the founding thinkers of Israeli secularism, Berl Katznelson: “A renewing and creative generation does not throw the cultural heritage of ages into the dustbin. It examines and scrutinizes, accepts and rejects. At times it may keep and add to an accepted tradition. At times it descends into ruined grottoes to excavate and remove the dust from that which had lain in forgetfulness, in order to resuscitate old traditions which have the power to stimulate the spirit of the generation of renewal.”22

The Jews are in control of their history, Katznelson proclaimed. From the heritage of past generations, they can choose what suits them and throw in the dustbin whatever cannot nourish them.

Secular Jews who feel attached to their Judaism are therefore

freer than secular Jews who cut themselves off from it. Their freedom includes the freedom to choose what they want from the past rather than simply the freedom to reject it.

Notwithstanding everything I have said about the “Jewish renewal” and the emergence of an alternative secularism, however, this idea has not been fully internalized by secular society in Israel. I say this based on my own life experience. I have often seen how surprised secular Israelis are to discover that someone they know is studying the Talmud and Hebrew Bible out of curiosity and enthusiasm. They are almost always certain that anyone who explores these texts is taking the first steps toward becoming religious. They cannot fathom the possibility that their friends might not be becoming religious but rather choosing a different kind of secular life. Their resistance to such an idea may be because they are unfamiliar with alternative models of secularism. Many secular Israelis are convinced there is only one authentic way to be secular.

The lack of secular pluralism in Israel mirrors the lack of religious pluralism. Read the founding texts of Jewish religious thought, and you will discover there is more than one way of being religious. Read the founding texts of secular thought, and you will discover there is more than one way of being secular. In modern Israel, the Orthodox religious establishment controls who can and cannot be a rabbi, and what constitutes an authentic conversion. But the secular world has its own orthodoxy: a strong, dominant voice that determines what qualifies as truly secular.

The “Jewish renewal” within Israel’s secular public offers another kind of secularism. Following the path charted by Ahad Ha’am, it proposes an alternative model of secularism and another way to be free. It challenges the conventionally accepted trade-off:

that a sense of belonging that fills one’s life with meaning must come at the expense of intellectual integrity and personal liberty.

WHY IS THIS RENEWAL HAPPENING NOW?

Twenty-five years ago I was a frightened soldier at an IDF infantry basic training camp. My biggest fear was of my commander, Nachshon. I was a sloppy and scatterbrained soldier, who kept on losing his military gear and was repeatedly late in performing missions. Night after night, I showed up at the gates of the base to face the punishment my commander meted out to me. I remember well those nights with Commander Nachshon when he made me run with heavy equipment on my back up and down a hill over and over again.

Twelve years later, I found myself facing Commander Nachshon again. I had just finished teaching a lesson at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As I was walking down the corridor at the Mount Scopus campus talking to students about some issues that had come up in the lesson, I saw him. He was a first-year philosophy student. I approached him cautiously, said hello politely, and quickly went on my way. When I noticed that my heart rate was rising, I asked myself what was happening to me. Could it be that I was still afraid of the man who had been my commander in basic training twelve years earlier? Nachshon was now a frightened freshman, and I was a university lecturer. Why was I afraid to see him? Why when I looked at him could I not see Nachshon the student but only Nachshon the commander?

It can be confusing to see someone who once had authority over one in a new light. Is it possible to meet such a person without hearing echoes of his former authority? This is also the ques-

tion facing Israeli secularists. For many generations, the Jewish tradition was authoritative. Could it be stripped of its authority and a new relationship be forged with it? Ahad Ha’am believed that it could. He believed that Jews could strip the tradition of its magisterial robes and reconnect on that basis. Jews could adopt ancient ideas and ancient Jewish wisdom without getting ensnared and imprisoned by the authority of tradition. Berdyczewski thought otherwise. He thought that tradition always implied authority, such that any connection with it would eventually lead to its taking control. The only way to shake off the authority of the tradition was to shake off the tradition itself.

I bumped into Nachshon the commander again eight years later. This time, I was in no rush to run away. He invited me for a cup of coffee, and I accepted. We reminisced about times gone by. Nachshon, I discovered, was a sensitive man with a strange and infectious sense of humor. This time, he no longer appeared to me as my commander, just as Nachshon. After twenty years his authority had diminished, no longer concealing the man in front of me. When we finished our meeting, I knew that I had finally been released from the army.

During the first generations of Jewish secularism, the authoritative stranglehold that the tradition held hid that tradition from the eyes of many. But perhaps now some forces in the secular world are breaking free of their identity-related fears, and are ready to reconnect with the tradition without fearing it might swallow them whole. This seems to me one of the main reasons why the first generations of secular Jews tended to express their identity by rebelling against the past and attacking religion, while growing sections of the present generation have enough confidence in

themselves and their identity as free Jews to express their secularism through renewed engagement with the tradition. The “Jewish renewal” is not an expression of the core voice within Israeli Jewish secularism, but it does express a new voice within it. It is the voice of people who have lost their fear. And this loss of fear of the tradition indicates that their secularism has gained, not lost, strength. The secularism that engages with Judaism is a secularism that has finally managed to release itself from religion.