Hebraism and Hellenism reconsidered

Judaism, Spring, 1994 by Louis H. Feldman

Actually, Judaism seems to place a premium upon doubt, so that we may suggest that for the Jew, faith is doubt once removed. For the Jew, the most sincere form of closeness to God is doubt; indeed, doubt once removed is good kavanah ("intention"). The Jew's credo is, to paraphrase Descartes, Dubito ergo sum. Dubitare est humanum. Who is a Jew? A Jew is someone who thinks. Talmudic texts treat punctuation and sentence structure very casually, so that a statement can often be read in a positive or negative sense and can express an assertion as well as a doubt or a query. The word teku, indicating that a given dispute remains unresolved, appears no fewer than 319 times in the Babylonian Talmud. Is there any order religion that has a major, seminal work with so many issues unresolved? Where but in Judaism can one have a scenario in which God Himself is outvoted? But that is precisely the case in the Talmud (Bava Metzia 59b), where the miracles of an uprooted carob tree, a stream flowing backwards, walls caving in, and a heavenly voice supporting the view of Rabbi Eliezer, are unavailing to sway the vote of a human Sanhedrin; and what is perhaps even more amazing is that the Talmud there records God's pleasure at being outvoted! The typical Yiddish intonation to this day is a question mark, and the typical Jewish joke is, "Why does a Jew answer a question with another question?" To which the prompt reply is, of course: "And why not?" As Elie Wiesel has put it, only the Jew opts for Abraham, who questions, and for God, who is questioned.

In fact, the born Jew is defined not in terms of creed or deed but rather in terms of the identity of his mother, so that Judaism turns out to be more of a family or a nation than simply a religion. For what other religion is an expression comparable to that of a Jewish atheist not a contradiction in terms? A talmudic saying (Sanhedrin 105a) has it that "Impudence, even against Heaven, is of avail." The wondering Jew in thought is as typical as the wandering Jew in space. Indeed, in the introduction to his Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides, in response to the question whether it is permissible to ask fundamental questions of faith, asserts that it is not only permissible but actually mandatory, inasmuch as there is a commandment to love God, which is possible only through the intellectual love of God, namely, through using one's mind in asking questions. Furthermore, Maimonides criticizes Job, noting that he was punished because he accepted everything on tradition; he was virtuous but not intelligent and, consequently, deserved to be punished. Mordecai Kaplan is once said to have remarked that theology is the immaculate conception of thought not sired by experience. Why do Jews feel so much at home in the United States? Perhaps it is because this is the only country that has a national anthem that begins and ends with a question: "Oh say, can you see? . . . Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave?"

Matthew Arnold, moreover, would have us believe that a major difference between Hebraism and Hellenism is that the former is monolithic and intolerant, whereas the Greeks exhibited extraordinary tolerance and diversity. But the extraordinary rarity with which foreigners were admitted to citizenship in ancient Athens, Pericles' proposal (which was adopted) to remove from the citizenship rolls those who had only one parent born in Athens, the requirement that only those who spoke Greek were permitted to participate in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the conviction of Socrates on the grounds of atheism and corrupting the youth--all seem to argue otherwise. On the other hand, we may note the positive attitude of Jews toward Benei Noah, those non Jews who take it upon themselves to observe the seven commandments given to Noah, according to tradition. Moreover, even the sacrifices in the Temple were intended not merely for Jews but also for all of mankind, as we see in the fact (Sukkah 55b) that on the holiday of Shemini Atzeret, seventy bullocks were offered on behalf of the seventy nations of the world.