From the University Presses - Current Theological Writing

Judaism, Summer, 2002 by Arnold Jacob Wolf

THE OUTPOURING OF IMPORTANT WRITING ON JEWISH history and thought in recent decades becomes ever more abundant. From Indiana, SUNY, Chicago, Princeton, and Nebraska (to name only a portion of the most active school publishers) have come dozens, even hundreds of scholarly Jewish books. They are, on the whole, well edited and attractively printed. They constitute a body of work that even the most assiduous reader can hardly keep up with, but deeply appreciates.

Steven Aschheim's reputation precedes his new book, as do the outstanding previous accomplishments of Fritz Stem and Richard Wolin. By comparing the letters and diaries of very different German Jews of the twentieth century Aschheim sheds light on the career of each of them. Scholem's edited correspondence, recently published by Schocken, now further illuminates his unique career in which life and work are intertwined. Over all of these important books hovers the prophecy of Heinrich Heine delivered early in the nineteenth century and appearing as an epigraph to Wolin's incisive study of some outstanding, if also lesser known, Jewish intellectuals of the last century:

Do not become anxious, you German republicans: the German revolution will not take place any more pleasantly and gently for having been preceded by the Kantian critique, Fichtean transcendental idealism, or even natural philosophy. Through these theories revolutionary forces have built up which only await the day on which they may break loose, filling the world with horror and awe. Kantians will appear who want nothing to do with mercy even in the phenomenal world; they will plough up without pity the very soil of our European life with sword and axe, in order to eradicate every last root of the past.... Armed Fichteans will arise, whose fanaticism of will can be restrained neither through fear nor through self-interest.... More terrible than all will be the natural philosophers, who will participate actively in any German revolution, identifying themselves with the very work of destruction. If the hand of the Kantian strikes swift and sure because his heart is not moved by any traditional reverence; if the F ichtean courageously defies all danger because for him it does not exist at all in reality; so the natural philosopher will be terrible, for he had allied himself to the primal forces of nature. He can conjure up the demonic powers of ancient German pantheism and that lust for battle that we find among the ancient Germans will flame within him.

Heinrich Heine, History of Philosophy and Religion in Germany (1834)

These writers recall the achievements of the German-Jewish Golden Age:

Steven Aschheim, Scholem, Arendt, Klemperer: Intimate Chronicles in Turbulent Times (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002)

Fritz Stern, Einstein's German World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001)

Richard Wolin, Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001)

The most important Jewish thinker after the great German-Jewish school is Emmanuel Levinas, whose life spanned almost the whole of the twentieth century. Following on, and partly in response to, Franz Rosenzweig, Husserl, and Heidegger, Levinas both transformed phenomenological thought and deeply reimagined Judaism. A committed Zionist who believed in peace, a modernizing giant of post-modernism, Levinas interpreted Talmudic Aggadah and late European existentialism in powerful new ways.

Levinas insisted that ethics is the true first philosophy, that the face of the other has a claim on us that precedes both chronologically and logically any possible epistemology or metaphysics. He understood the biblical assent of naaseh v'nishma to mean that we must accept responsibility even before we know the full implication of our covenant with God. Levinas leaves us with a Judaism that eschews inward spiritualizing but demands that we become hostage to our neighbor's need. Obedience precludes our comprehension.

A veritable Library of interpretation has followed in Levinas's wake; several of the newest studies have just appeared. Especially important, in my view, is Kenneth Seeskin's review of the problem of Jewish autonomy, in what at first sight seems to be a heteronomous Judaism. From the Bible to Buber, Seeskin gives us his view of Judaism in the spirit of Maimonides and Hermann Cohen, a reading that might loosely be called rationalist, but more accurately ethical practical reason from the school of Steven Schwarzschild. The climax of Seeskin's book is a critique of Buber and Levinas from the Kantian view of religion as ethical thinking or practical reason. Seeskin faults Levinas for rejecting rule-ordered behavior yet honors the profound reach of Levinas as a disciplined Jewish philosopher. In what seems to me his best book, Seeskin's negative theology commands assent or, at least, careful and intelligent study. We may be sure that there will be many more studies of Levinas, whose passing has left us poorer in m ind and in spirit. I also recommend the books by Jeffrey Kosky and John Llewelyn.