Truth, Witness, Record, Faith, Jew

I recently read One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide Them by Ammiel Hirsch and Yosef Reinman [at Amazon]. It's an e-mail exchange that, over the course of a year and a half, extends to three hundred pages and covers a variety of topics. It was an interesting chance for me, living where there are few Jews and little Jewish life (the nearest congregation, which meets monthly, is two hours drive), to meditate a bit on my life and my practice as a Jew.

At the core of the debate, running through the whole book, was a very interesting theological/historical argument about the Torah, both the Written Law (the books of Moses, etc) and the Oral Law (Mishnah, Talmud, etc). Most of it was pretty conventional. The Orthodox position is that the Written Law was dictated at Sinai and the Oral Law was also given at Sinai but only written down in the later age when there was danger of corruption, but that both have the weight of being the Word of God. The Reform position was that these are inspired, but human, texts which need to be read and understood in their context and with the understanding that our context is different. Contradictions, for the Reform, are evidence that we need to apply our own intelligence and values to make up our own minds; for the Orthodox, contradictions are encoded messages, which our god-given intelligence may allow us to unravel to grasp at deeper truths. Whenever the Reform Rabbi, Ammiel Hirsch, quoted Talmud, the Orthodox participant, Yosef Reinman came back with clarifications and justifications; Reinman actually argued that Hirsch had no right to cite Talmud, as he had not studied it in an Orthodox fashion.

The most interesting argument which I had not encountered before was from R. Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari, and though there is an element of circularity to it, it was still intriguing. The argument goes something like this: the Torah is true, and we know that it is true because it was written when the main events recounted in it were still relatively fresh in the memories of the Jewish people. Events like the liberation from Egypt and the Sinai revelation were witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people, most, if not all, of whom would tell their children about the experience. If the Torah did not jibe with those experiences, there would have been protest, countervailing stories, and a call for correction; since there were none until the situation degraded to the point of political fragmentation, then the text must be a reliable reflection of the experience. That the Jewish people are portrayed in both positive and negative lights is also read as confirming the reality of the narrative, as who would construct a story portraying ones ancestors in such a contradictory and conflicted manner? Moreover, since the Sinai experience involved the revelation of the entire text of the Torah, then the entire text must be reliable in its details as well as its broad strokes. The Oral Law has the same justification: it was known from the time of Moses, but only written down in the Talmudic Age because of fear of the loss of knowledge.

This argument is often used, I have come to realize, to contrast the public, national Jewish revelation with the more private, individual revelations of other traditions. As I said, there's an element of circularity to it: it assumes, for example, that the recounting of events in the text is basically sound, and then uses the internal evidence of the narrative as evidence of its soundness; it assumes that contradictory stories would have managed to find their way into print or evidenced themselves some other way, when writing was rare and a priestly class held a stranglehold on ritual. But there's something compelling about it, as well. We know that oral histories, in societies with strong oral traditions, can be functionally accurate over hundreds of years, and provide powerful historical evidence. We know how hard it is to keep a single, recent, well-documented event from developing multiple versions, or counter-narratives, or outright deniers (Reinman uses the example of the Holocaust, with devastating effect). It is true that no other religious tradition involves the witness of miraculous events by more than a handful of founding members.

The argument weakens when applied to the Oral Law, and the subsequent centuries of Rabbinic rulings and customs. Even Reinman admits that the text is the ideas of the Oral Law in the words of the sages which, though he won't admit it, opens the possibility of misstatement, misinterpretation, colloquialism, elision and other forms of human error in communication. Not to mention the fact that the Talmud, etc, is students' (often more than a generation removed) recollections and quotations, and even applying a generous (this is the oral-written transition era for the Mediterranean, so high quality oral transmission is still possible) oral history standard, the potential for distortion and error is still high. The idea that the Talmud is based on deep-rooted principles is fine, but the historical fact is that the Talmud was written in response to dramatic changes in Jewish life and political status and religious practice, and the Sages were making it up as they went along. They did pretty well, considering.

Where does this leave us? Pretty much right where we started: the Torah and Talmud are historical texts of great importance and with strong claims to historicity, but as an historian I have to take with a grain of salt any unconfirmed text. Perhaps my grain of salt is a bit smaller now. But there is too much evidence of syncretism and editing, too much hindsight (the accuracy of Biblical prophecy is also adduced, by Reinman, as evidence of the accuracy of the text: talk about circular arguments!) too many human elements for me to accept it as Word of God, or even as a truly primary source for most of the events it describes.

But where does it leave me? Well, I come from a Reconstructionist perspective (here's the synagogue my parents belong to, and at which we were married), which is even more"liberal" than the Reform (and strongly Zionist) position represented by Ammiel Hirsch in the book, though, like many contemporary Reconstructionists, I think there is more of a place for faith and spirituality in Judaism than the" civilization" model posed by founder Mordechai Kaplan. Reform and Reconstructionism have, in the last two decades or so, shifted back towards a more traditional approach in some ways, while retaining the idea that Judaism must be relevant and adaptive.

Reading the book, I found myself wishing that the intensity and depth of the Orthodox writer were matched with the flexibility and balanced perspective of Reconstructionism. There is great power in tradition, ritual, custom: they can bring us joy and meaning; they are a form of bondage. It is in the discussion of women in the book that the Orthodox position is weakest: the inability to envision meaningful faith and practice outside of the social habits of the past and present is a real failing of Orthodoxy. Ultimately, to grow and change there must be some letting go, and that is something that Orthodoxy does very poorly. Knowing what to hold onto, though, is no piece of cake, either, and the Reform/Reconstructionist experimentation of the last two centuries has produced some truly awful results at times, liturgically, theologically, culturally. But that experimentation is necessary, and I think ultimately will produce something stronger and better for the future.