Contemporary Theology (Part 2): The Three Great Theological Developments of Our Time
What is the theology of a religion of Torah study, namely Jewish theology? It is giving the highest religious significance to Torah study, and learning is not only (and not primarily) memorization and interpretation, but innovation and creation, and above all - innovation and creation in the method itself. The supreme religious act is writing a new Torah - creating a new method - and therefore Moses is the great founder and not the father (Abraham), the conqueror (Joshua) or the king (David). Thus, the depth of the method that Moses taught us is not interpretation (to study the Torah) - but creativity (to learn from the Torah): to learn to write Torah
Theology is not philosophy of religion. Because contrary to the philosophical (provincial) bias of contemporary Jewish theologians - theology is not philosophy. Philosophy deals with the general religious phenomenon, while theology is always particular within the realms of a specific religion, and in our case - Judaism. That is: theology is theoretical learning - within the system, and not its conceptualization from the outside (and certainly not its explanation, in the Jewish parallel of Israeli hasbara, namely apologetics). In the second half of the 20th century, the century of language, theology often perceived itself as dealing with religious language (therefore, it was often a project of translating it into other languages, and vice versa. For example: the general philosophical language, or the intellectual language of our time, or the scientific language, or the psychological language, and so on. There were also more esoteric translation projects, such as Liebes who translated the entire Jewish mystical world into "Greek", where the Zohar becomes Eros, myth is everything, etc.).
Of course, such translation and language projects were by nature external to religious learning itself, just as language is external to what it speaks about, and therefore created alienation between religion and its theory, and in the Jewish case - between learning (of Torah) and theology. This suited the current Jewish religion like a glove to a hand, or like a garment to a statue, because what's better than an external (and if possible - ideological) engagement that allows the continuation of internal petrification processes. Needless to say: the state of Judaism as a religion is dire. Central bodies of renewal and creation were eliminated from it in the Holocaust and in modernity, and it barely survives as a living religion (as opposed to ideology, traditional folklore, national symbol, object for the humanities, tag in identity politics, red flag that annoys the world, orthodox doctrine, missionary army of emissaries, or just fundamentalism and extremism - the clearest sign of internal death, not life - and so on. And the reader already understands on their own, without any need for explanation, what belongs to which stream).
In fact, even anti-Semitism today is more alive than Judaism, and shows impressive signs of recovery after the mortal blow it also suffered in the Holocaust. The Jews are a people who quarrel a lot with themselves, split and divide, and generally love to rub against and defy and be insolent and confront the whole world, and therefore they always make (even today) a lot of noise, which of course manages to arouse living anti-Semitism. But all the noise in the world cannot in the long run cover up internal learning death (as opposed to distracting from it). External noisiness and friction are not internal creation and innovation, but they create an illusion that something is happening, that the body is alive - even though the core is dead (after all, there are blows, right?).
The rumor of the death of Judaism's inner core may take hundreds of years to reach the physical end of Judaism as a phenomenon in the world, but without a Jewish renaissance, and perhaps even a theological revolution - its fate is sealed. Such processes of degeneration, stagnation and dying lurk for every cultural phenomenon - and Judaism is no different from them. We all know dead phenomena, including such religious phenomena, that continue to exist by inertia, without significant internal creative forces, and as conservative factors in the world - and not innovators. Is this our fate? Will it turn out in retrospect, from a future perspective, that the Holocaust was indeed the kiss of death? Has the oldest religion in the world failed to survive the end of the modern era?
For the last half millennium, the central energy reactor of Jewish renewal from within was the core of Jewish mystical teaching. Therefore, in Judaism, one cannot separate theology from the core of the secret - if one wants to preserve the remaining forces of life and renewal within it. Three developments external to Judaism, which the core of the secret did not know how to respond to at all (and so did Judaism as a whole), caused it tremendous damage of loss of relevance, but also mark the possible directions of renewal, in response to the paradigmatic challenges they pose. That is - these are not just problems, but also learning directions.
On the other hand, the level of threat they pose is high, because a relevance gap is a much more severe crisis than just an unsolved problem (or without a solution). In an unsolved problem, learning has not reached its conclusion or a satisfactory solution, but knows how to deal with problems and even deals with them. In contrast, in a relevance gap, the system's learning - that is, the way the system learns, its method - is not relevant to the problem at all. Such a gap requires a change in the method itself, and is therefore much more difficult (indeed, cultural and other systems often fail to renew the method - and this is the cause of their loss, not problems that their method could solve, and just got stuck and failed, which are overcome after a more or less severe external blow). In the Jewish case, a change in method requires a change in the method of Torah study (and particularly the method in the world of secrets), and not just in its contents. The evidence for the depth of the relevance crisis is the fundamental and widespread damage to extensive bodies of knowledge: in entire fields in Judaism, which are central organs in it. Death is always a system collapse, that is, severe and simultaneous damage to many of the sick body's systems, and not just one system.
And these are the three main "gap-directions" in contemporary theological development, arranged by past, present and future:
- The problem of the past: The Holocaust - history arranged a theological zero point for religion. In fact, one can more or less throw all pre-Holocaust theology in the trash, as well as that created in the generation after it, which still hasn't deeply digested it. There is no possibility and it is impossible to continue Judaism as it was before the Holocaust - in any field. The blow of the Holocaust (even the word blow here is out of place) is a mortal religious blow and a tectonic theological break that no religion has ever managed to overcome - because it has never been required to do so. The digestion of this break in all areas of Judaism has not yet begun at all, and contrary to the foolish opinion of Holocaust deniers who are the normalization adherents within Judaism, this break will not heal itself with time, but like a crack will only widen until it swallows Judaism into the abyss within it, if it does not come to its senses.
The formulation of the break can be quite simple, because if we continue most of the classic Jewish concepts (such as providence, faith, reward and punishment, God, etc.) we will find that they - as they are - have all completely lost relevance: it is impossible to believe after the Holocaust. It is impossible to pray after the Holocaust. There is no answer to the Holocaust in any text that existed before it, and in any Jewish conception that existed before it, in any of its fields. And the field that completely lost relevance in the Holocaust is Kabbalah, which was as mentioned the intellectual core of Judaism (and not Jewish thought). All its engagement with divinity, with the other side, with worlds, with couplings, with the Shekhinah, with the world to come, with heaven and hell, etc. became at once a joke. The Kabbalistic method, as it is, cannot deal with the Holocaust break as it dealt with the destruction, or the expulsion from Spain, or even modernity. Its central methods, such as creating symbolism, building myth, reflection in the upper world, internalization into divinity, or construction in the human soul - all of these cannot handle the Holocaust, which exceeds all representation, and all intellectual or psychological soothing. To read about raising sparks from husks, about "tikkun" and about the attribute of judgment and might after Auschwitz? The letters simply fall off the page.
- The problem of the present: Sexuality - the sexual revolution mowed down the form for Halakha. It is no longer possible to continue with almost any of the normative sexual constructions (such as various prohibitions) related to both straight and homosexual sexuality (this is not just a problem for homosexuals or just adolescents or just singles or just single women or just men or just unsatisfied married women or just feminists - that is, women - or just divorcees or just...). Unfortunately, these constructions are from the foundations of Halakhic law (not some marginal custom), and the break is on a very wide front. Any denial of this situation will end in the loss of Halakha, and of the normative validity of Judaism, if not in theory - then in practice (that is, terrible hypocrisy will be created, which will collapse it from within, in a Catholicization of Judaism, on one hand, and in its fundamentalization, from the Muslim side of the religious moment).
The institution of the rabbi itself is in an enormous relevance gap from the world, and it gives no reason to think that it can recover from it. If Judaism clings to this institution - then exactly what happened to the Catholic Church will happen to it. Recurring and frequent phenomena of #MeToo and sexual corruption of rabbis already echo the Catholic pedophilia and homosexuality scandals, and they are the final nails in the coffin of the rabbinic idea. And if Judaism continues with it - it will be buried along with it, scandal after scandal, until complete loss of trust.
The collision of Judaism with the subject of our time, whose sexuality is the root of his soul, will not succeed in turning him into another subject, and if it tries (and it indeed tries) he will eliminate it - and not vice versa. And here Judaism is actually in the worst situation among all religions, including Christianity and Islam, because of the validity of its practical limitations on straights precisely, and because of its normative rigidity (even Rabbi Sperber cannot permit homosexuality), which even surpasses Shiite Islam (which actually shows surprising flexibility sexually: marriages limited to one night, sex change surgeries, and more). Some believe that the technologization that sexuality will undergo will allow blunting the sting of prohibitions - but such a development will only empty them even more.
The speed at which the legal side of Judaism is losing legitimacy, compared to its petrification, will eliminate Halakha as a whole, and it will become like Catholic law. In any system: when there is no adaptation - a break is created. When there is no learning, and excuses in language begin, then the next stage is the transfer of learning outside the system, and the end of the system as a living learning system. The constant humiliation and elimination of any non-Halakhic option, such as "Reform", "Conservative", "antinomian sectarian", and so on - do not strengthen Halakha, but eliminate its own ability to recover from within. And unlike Kabbalah or secret doctrine, where one genius can make a revolution, one cannot expect a change in law within a huge, degenerate and cumbersome legal system like Halakha.
For example, one of the common forms of denial of the problem in the system is seeing it as the "feminist problem" stemming from the feminist revolution (and therefore if there were only female rabbis, or a more feminine Torah, it would be fine) - no, it's the sexual problem - stemming from the sexual revolution (feminism itself is just one moment of it). Will Judaism be destroyed because of its attitude towards sex? Can one even imagine a non-rabbinic Judaism, after such dominant control of Halakha and the rabbinic option in Judaism for almost two thousand years (yes, there have always been and still are other options!), to the extent that Judaism is almost identified with the figure of the rabbi, who is its greatest enemy (from within)?
- The problem of the future: Technology - Torah study has almost nothing to say (that is not trivial and worthless) about the most important development in the world - ever - not to mention that this is the messianic development. Yes, "the" messianic development. This is apparently what it looks like. Compared to the enormous learning system of the modern era with its tremendous achievements, Torah study - and even more so its center: Talmud study - have simply lost relevance. The Talmud has no ability to compete with the intellectual and cognitive development of the information age, and the age of the networked human, not to mention the approaching neuro-technological era. It's not just the inability (and lack of interest) to concentrate on such a book in the smartphone era, it's a matter of knowledge networking, where an isolated and secluded island of knowledge, like the Talmud, loses connection to reality, to the world, to development, to the future, meaning it loses any relevance, and can no longer stand in its face, because it penetrates everything. There are no more walls, no more ghetto, no more fortification within the system. If Torah study remains Talmud study - it will take a mortal blow compared to the universal human learning and the combined ideological-technological development that is the center of gravity of the world today.
There is a limit to all kinds of moments like Talmud as defiance against technology, and the ancient as a radical option against the new. It's nice, but it won't hold water in the long run, when all innovation is only on one side (and the other is dragged behind it opposing and screaming and stomping its feet). The enormous "innovations" of our time have long since not been in the field of Talmud, and neither are the prodigies and great scholars of the generation. The lack of interest in Talmud among many of its learners is just the symptom, because interest is the motivation for learning. Therefore, if one wants a living and innovative Torah, one must overcome the idea of Talmud study as the center of Torah study. But what could possibly replace the Talmud? These are no longer discussions about "Torah and science", because science was theoretical and isolated itself and accessible to the knowledgeable, just like the Talmud, and in practice the Talmud was stronger than it (through Halakha, may it rest in peace). In contrast, "Torah and technology" is already the practice - actions are followed by hearts - and technology as a practice is stronger than any Halakha, for example.
Technology, for example, is destroying the book. Is the Torah not a book? Perhaps, but the Talmud is definitely a book. Day and night they chant: Learning, oh learning, Torah study... Can anyone even claim that Judaism has learned something significant (meaning truly learned Torah) from these three world-changing revolutions? This absolute lack of learning is the sure sign of internal petrification and death, not of strength and power, because learning is the life and vitality of a cultural phenomenon, including religious. In fact, the ideology of Judaism has become non-learning. Self-preservation. Standing in the breach. Holding on. Resisting. Resisting learning. And thus the obsession to survive at all costs - will lead to annihilation. One who cannot give up anything of himself, and cannot change deeply, is not preserving tradition - but preserving himself. Because the tradition of Judaism is precisely learning - and even revolutionary learning. And these revolutions - like the rabbinic revolution, or the Zoharic revolution - should be celebrated (and not a false ideology of all Torah from Sinai). Is there anyone who deludes himself that in the Talmud it will be possible to find this future learning? Meaning that the Talmud is the future of Jewish learning - and not its past?
But is Judaism even built to separate from its central bodies that carried it through exile and even (with much less success) through the modern era? Bye bye Kabbalah? Bye bye Halakha? Bye bye Talmud? What's left at all? Well - the Torah itself, the Written Torah, is still strong, and as a literary work and as the foundation of culture it is undisputed. And not only among the religious, but also among the secular. And not only among the secular, but also among the gentiles. The Holocaust too is not only a rupture, but also an identity definer with tremendous power. It's not pleasant to admit, but for a dying body like Judaism - the Holocaust is also an asset. The holidays - are still strong too. This is a ritual system that has not lost its vitality, and so is the ritual system of the life cycle itself and the rites of initiation and transition and mourning, and to a considerable extent also the Sabbath as a weekly ritual system. Prayer, on the other hand, died quite dramatically with the Holocaust. And its intensity as a ritual system (meaning: much more daily time waste than in Christianity and Islam) is only to its detriment, and only increases the distress from it. That is: we are left with relatively long-term ritual systems, with the Holocaust, and with the Bible. Almost identical to the secular identity (which is the true seismograph for Jewish life, meaning what is really alive and attractive in it). Where is the religion?
In fact, the crisis in the religious system can be located much more precisely if we look at the method of Jewish renewal. One must always follow the learning. What exactly is the method that allowed Judaism to survive and renew itself at all? Well, once every few hundred years, as an order of magnitude, a masterpiece is written in Judaism, which is a giant work (also quantitatively), and provides spiritual nourishment for generations after it, who interpret and study it, until the next work, which also founds its own field and method. That is: each time a new Torah is written, as part of Torah study. The Torah of Moses. The Prophets. The Writings. The Mishnah and rabbinic literature. The Talmud. The Zohar. And... oops, that's it? Simply put - the Jewish crisis (and perhaps even the Holocaust itself! which also stemmed from the lack of Jewish adaptation and learning) simply stems from the fact that no new Torah has been written for too many hundreds of years. And therefore the Torah has lost relevance. If the most innovative and unsettling thing in the Jewish world is still Kabbalah, meaning a product of the Middle Ages - then we are in trouble (and in huge lag). We would expect the situation to be reversed, meaning that like in modern literature, or like in the encounter of Jews with modern culture, modernity would produce an inflation of masterpieces. In fact, it was strange to expect at all that Judaism would survive without its ancient method: without writing a great masterpiece of the human spirit, of the national soul, of Jewish genius - and of the religion of Moses.
How far is Judaism from writing such a work? Very very far. The resistance within it to any innovation of this magnitude is enormous, and no one from any stream even begins to dare to take on such an enterprise (which probably, and so far it has been, cannot be an individual enterprise at all, but a whole literary movement). Worst of all - there is no creative method of this kind at all within current Judaism, which is expressed in zero such attempts in recent generations: 0. And only after many attempts and wanderings can one even think to try at all to succeed in a task of such cultural magnitude. None of the previous works was created in one day. Not even in one generation. And even if Ramadal [Rabbi Moses de León] perhaps wrote the Zohar entirely alone, he was the product of a whole kabbalistic ideological movement, including strong previous attempts (like the Bahir, Sefer Yetzirah, and more). There are no such forces in dying Judaism, pushing in this direction, or any insight into the urgency of this enterprise, its necessity, or even its feasibility. One cannot give up on the Talmud, Halakha, Kabbalah and prayer if there is nothing to replace them. We will be left with nothing. With a secular, Reform, traditional identity, and so on, meaning not with a living religion but with folklore. A ghost.
If so, Jewish theology at this time should not justify religion and try to artificially hold or strengthen it in an ideational (external) structure. We are not in the Middle Ages, and justifications for those returning to questioning/faith are a pathetic and even destructive matter intellectually and in terms of learning (good justifications actually have an anti-learning effect). The moment there is learning, renewal and creation within Judaism, its power of attraction will naturally increase, like any cultural phenomenon (just as the current corpse smell drives Jews away from it, to the point of assimilation. It has lost its appeal). What responsible theology - which is honest religious theorization - needs to do at this time is to become critical theology (as opposed to secular criticism of religion) and point out the depth of the learning crisis of the system, the collapse of internal systems and methods, and the disease spreading in the organs - in the bodies of Torah. Then it must characterize the learning disease, show the symptoms of stuck and irrelevant methods, and analyze what causes what (so that we don't just deal with symptoms instead of the deep problems: the methodological problems). And finally - it should offer concrete healing directions: new and relevant religious methods (and not: secular methods that treat religion, because religion will reject them as a foreign implant, as it has done so far). Because theology of a sick religious-cultural body becomes cultural medicine.
But theology, meaning the doctor, must remember that it is not the patient. The signs of life are not supposed to arise in it. It is not the field of creation and innovation, but religion itself. It is just a gardener who wants growth (meaning: learning) in the garden, and provides fertilizer and water, and its goal is the growth of a new branch on the tree and the giving of fruits. The three problems we raised are also the three directions of solution, meaning: any masterpiece of religion today - any new Torah (messianic Torah? Torah of the Land of Israel? Torah of the future to come?) - is supposed to deal with these very areas and grow in new directions. There may even be several real solutions (vision of the end of days) that will compete with each other, and fertilize all of Judaism for spiritual flourishing - and thus it will have its resurrection of the dead. Moreover, it is very likely that any real solution will deal with all three questions, and give them a solution that connects them in deep ways. How might such a solution look?
First of all, we face the problem of genre (prophecy is no longer relevant, right?). One of the reasons there is no serious writing attempt "in the direction" is that the genre for such writing simply does not exist. There is no platform for writing Torah in our era, not culturally and sociologically, and more seriously - not literarily. Therefore this will have to be a work that invented its own genre (an internet genre?) - just like all the previous great works. But because of the degeneration that has spread in the religious world itself, there is no chance of creating such a work within it. They simply won't print it (and won't relate to it). There is no credibility. Therefore the most likely way to proceed in the current situation is through literature precisely. If S.Y. Agnon had written such a work, perhaps by the power of his genius he would have succeeded in being not only our senior writer, but more than that. So too Kafka, certainly. That is: we need a religious Kafka, or a Ramadal of our time, or a Nachman of Breslov who lived in our time until the age of 83 and not 38, or our own Kabbalistic Freud, or a Moses of the information age, or (perhaps) Elijah (who created the professional biblical prophetic world by the power of his charisma). Another problem is that in our time a single person, or a flesh and blood person, probably cannot stand behind such a work. It must be a work of a group - the voice of the multitude as the voice of the Almighty - or of a pseudonym.
In any case, a purely theoretical-theological response to the problems, or such a halakhic-Talmudic response, is not a response that will provide an answer. Because the problems are deeper than their reduction to problems in practice alone or in pure theory - these are depth problems. And here is the great advantage of a mythical-literary text: it can touch these layers (action and theoretical thought) from all the layers together - that is: it can be deep. It can not separate between the theoretical, the practical and the narrative. Therefore it will be able to do much more than a text that is limited to one of these worlds (a new Shulchan Aruch, for example, will not be accepted). And if it will be a great text - Judaism will accept it, in the end. Maybe for lack of choice. Maybe with enthusiasm. Maybe with long resistance (as happened to the Zohar). But if its influence will be deep - it will become part of its core secret, and create new life within it.
To Part 1