However, it was the new social and cultural reality of an independent Jewish state that made the need for a life-forging halachic process so crucial. Only when the tradition of rigorous halachic thinking, combined with halachic compassion, was applied creatively could personal, communal, and national life be renewed. In order to bring about a renewal of this kind, and make possible the education of creative halachic personalities who would operate within the limits of the halachic tradition, he felt it was necessary to reconsider a number of basic categories in the way the Talmud was studied. For example, he wanted to reconsider the relations between halacha and agada; the relation of the search for religious meaning to law in talmudic halachic discussions; the nature of human creativity in the context of a divinely revealed Tora; the limits of rabbinic authority in dealing with practical social and economic needs; and the intellectual breadth and human experience necessary for rabbinic leadership. Without reorienting Talmud study to deal with these issues, relevant to the contemporary needs of real people, secularism and ultra-Orthodoxy, he believed, would continue to dominate the public arena.

Forty years after framing his idea of the basic relationship between the revealed Tora and “actual life,” my father wrote the following concerning halacha and the State of Israel:

I think it safe to say that Eliezer Berkovits used the well-worn phrase “halachic Judaism” in two revolutionary ways. First, though springing from the fundamental commitments of Orthodoxy, halachic Judaism ac­cording to Berkovits refers to a non-denominational, or better, a post-denominational, Judaism whose ultimate concern is not with ideology, or even theology, but with the living demands of the dynamic condition of the Jewish people. Second, though deeply rooted in the wisdom of the Tora, the central aim of halachic Judaism is not to formulate a defensive, traditionalist posture for the protection of Tora from life, but rather to be a formative tool for the creative fashioning of human realities.

Dov Berkovits

Shiloh

 

Regarding Assaf Sagiv’s essay on the moral philosophy of Adi Ophir ("Evil’s Empire,"  Azure11, Summer 2001): Ophir bids us to avoid evils that are trivial and relative, ig­nor­­ing an absolute evil that has happened to us; also, Kant once had an absolute good wherewith, he thought, one could meet all evils, i.e., his good will that obeys moral law, not for the sake of reward, but for its own sake alone. After the war, the late Hans Jonas visited a German pro­fessor whose conduct, unlike his teacher Martin Heidegger’s, had been admirable. The professor said: "Jonas, without Kant I could not have done it."  An inspiring story about moral philosophy in Nazi Germany.

But even Kant would not have helped had the professor been in Auschwitz, for, as Primo Levi has testified, its victims, the so-called musel­manner, had been robbed of all will: “One hesitates to call them living, one hesitates to call their death death.” Normally humans are either dead or alive: The muselmann is, if not the sole, the most significant Nazi contribution to civilization; and the chief problem of moral philosophy, certainly the Jewish, is to define good and evil after Auschwitz.

To define “good” will still take a long time; “evil”  I tried to define decades ago: Judaism has 613 commandments; after Auschwitz we have a new one, a prohibition—we are forbidden to give Hitler posthumous victories. This commandment applies not only to Jews, but to all humanity.

Emil L. Fackenheim

Jerusalem

 

I read with great interest Assaf Sagiv’s essay on Adi Ophir’s new book, Speaking Evil. The publication of this book is without question a milestone in the intellectual life of Israel, and Azure’s dedication of a full-length essay to it is commendable. I wanted to add a thought that may shed light on some of the issues raised in Sagiv’s essay. Adi Ophir stresses that his work “was thought and written in Hebrew,” and that this is not “an essay on French philosophy.”  But to what extent does the content of his thought fit in with the Hebrew philosophical tradition—or is it, perhaps, closer to French thought?

As I read the book, I recalled a fa­mous legend from the Talmud (Shabbat 88a-b). A Sadducee provoked the talmudic scholar Rabba by accusing the Jews of being a rash people. At Sinai, he argued, the people of Israel accepted upon themselves com­mitments of which they had not yet heard, as is reflected in their declaration that “We will do and we will hear,” (Exodus 24:7) which places “doing” before “hearing” that is, obeying before understanding. Instead, argues the Sad­ducee, they should have first heard the obligations, then evaluated whether they were capable of honoring them, and only afterwards should they have decided whether to undertake them. Rabba’s response is that concerning the Jews, who walk with integrity, it is written that “the integrity of the upright guides them”; with respect to other peoples, who walk in perversity, it is said that “the perversity of the treacherous leads them to ruin.” (Proverbs 11:3)

At first glance, the question raised by the Sadducee is understandable, while Rabba’s answer is less so, for the Israelites indeed seem to have acted irrationally. Yet there is something profound in Rabba’s answer: It is their integrity itself that guides the upright, while the treacherous are led to ruin by their own perversity. A person or system who acts only according to the rule “we will hear and we will do,” who acts not out of faith and integri­ty but out of only suspicion and criticism, will eventually fall victim to his own principles. Such a system can­­not possibly result in anything constructive. Could anyone imagine, for instance, a healthy and productive relationship between parents and children that does not contain a certain element of ׂwe will do and we will hear”?

It seems that this is precisely where Adi Ophir deviates from the tradition of Jewish thought. As Sagiv notes, Ophir seeks to present a this-worldly and radical-secular philosophy of ethics, free of the residual transcendentalism that accompanies modern ethical philosophy. As a result of exclusive focus on the earthly and tangible, without any room for “we will do and we will understand,” the only basis on which Ophir can ground his philosophy is that of evil. From evil he seeks to derive good. And, in the spirit of his postmodernist approach, he constructs a real “kingdom of evil,” which he finds everywhere. Not surprisingly, his theory of action winds up prescribing little more than sabotage and protest.

In this context, a comparison between Ophir and the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas is illuminating. Sagiv notes that Ophir does not accept Levinas’ willingness to compromise with non-ethical interests in order to realize ethics in the real world. In my opinion, however, the fundamental difference between the two philosophers occurs where Levinas’ philosophy is not only French but also Jewish. Levinas establishes that the consciousness of commitment to the “other,” whose otherness is total, is an expression of commitment to the total, transcen­dent Other. Ophir, however, purges his philosophy of Levinas’ commitment to this Other. Indeed, it is hard to understand how Ophir derives altruistic commitment from the ordinary and the tangible. This basic difference between the starting points of Levinas and Ophir results in the former being much more optimistic and constructive than the latter. In contrast to Ophir, Levinas possesses a faith that leads him not to be satisfied with passive anticipation of the Messiah, but to believe in the possibility of transcending our current existence and building a better world.

The recognition of some infinite transcendence has allowed Jews to critically examine human values and mores, which themselves are finite. In this, Ophir continues in the Jewish tradition, if not explicitly. The other side of the coin in Jewish tradition, however, is the necessity of believing that there exists something “beyond the here and now.” Faith and innocence are the necessary foundations of all creation and creativity, and of every endeavor that advances mankind.

Jerusalem