Abstract
One of the major conflicts within the state of Israel is that between secular and religious Jews. This conflict touches upon the problematic effort to combine Jewish religious heritage, as perceived from an Orthodox perspective, with liberal-democratic values. In this chapter we try to show another option, one that is manifested in the thought developed by two eminent Zionist Orthodox thinkers after the Six-Day War in 1967: Rabbi Professor David Hartman and Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi. Hartman formulates an impressive religious-Zionist pluralistic thought, while Halevi’s demonstrates the possibility of elaborating a messianic religious-Zionist, liberal-democratic perspective.
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Notes
Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1989);
Giovani Sartoni, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (New York: Chatham House, 1987).
The republican heritage can be manifested in conventional, antidemocratic ways, but it can also enrich democracy. On this see David Held, Models of Democracy (Stanford: Stanford, CA University Press, 1996).
On liberalism see David John Manning, Liberalism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976);
John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chapter 2.
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Freedom,” in Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 118–72.
There is a vast literature on Jewish Orthodoxy along with its various streams. Some of the well-known books and articles on the subject are: Samuel C. Heilman, “The Many Faces of Orthodoxy,” Modern Judaism 2/1 (February 1982), pp. 23–51;
Jacob Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, ed. Peter Y. Medd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 3–17;
Jonathan Sacks, Traditional Alternatives: Orthodoxy and the Future of the Jewish People (London: Jewish College, 1989), vol. 2, chapters 9–10;
Jonathan Sacks, Tradition in an Untraditional Age (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1990), chapter 4;
Jonathan Sacks (ed.), Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1991);
Mordechai Breuer, Modernity within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany, trans. Elizabeth Petuchowski (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
On the characteristics of Modern Orthodoxy in the United States, see Charles S. Liebman, “Orthodoxy in America,” American Jewish Year Book 66 (1965), pp. 21–97;
Charles S. Liebman, “Orthodox Judaism Today,” Midstream 25 (1976), pp. 19–28;
Charles S. Liebman and Steven Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990);
Bernard Susser and Charles S. Liebman, Choosing Survival (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), chap. 8.
On the different aspects of David Hartman’s thought, see Jonathan W. Malino (ed.), Judaism and Modernity: The Religious Philosophy of David Hartman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
On Rabbi Halevi’s thought, see Zvi Zohar and Avi Sagi (eds.), A Living Judaism: Essays on the Halakhic Thought of Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute and Bar-Ilan University, 2007) (in Hebrew).
On the relative openness of various Sephardic rabbis see Zvi Zohar, The Luminous Faces of the East: Studies in the Legal and Religious Thought of Sephardic Rabbis of the Modern Middle East (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz ha-Meuchad, 2001) (in Hebrew).
On the influence of Rabbi Uziel, the first Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, on R. Halevi, as well as on the latter’s own philosophies, see Moshe Hellinger, “Religious Ideology That Attempts to Ease the Conflict between Religion and State: An Analysis of the Teachings of Two Leading Religious-Zionist Rabbis in the State of Israel,” Journal of Church and State 51/1 (Winter 2009), pp. 52–57.
In this chapter we refer to the following works by David Hartman: Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976); Joy and Responsibility: Israel, Modernity, and the Renewal of Judaism (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi-Posner and Shalom Hartman Institute, 1978); Conflicting Visions: Spiritual Possibilities of Modern Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1990); A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1985); A Heart of Many Rooms: Celebrating the Many Voices within Judaism (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999); Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: The Terry Lectures (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). There is a vast literature on the different aspects of David Hartman’s thought. First, there are two collection of articles devoted to Hartman: Malino (ed.), Judaism and Modernity;
and Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar (eds.), Renewing Jewish Commitment: the Work and Thought of David Hartman (Tel Aviv: Shalom Hartman Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001) (in Hebrew).
See also the following studies: Arnold Eisen, “Jewish Theology in North America: Notes on Two Decades,” American Jewish Year Book (1991), pp. 3–33;
David Singer, “The New Orthodox Theology,” Modern Judaism 9/1 (February 1989), pp. 35–54;
David Nobak, “Jewish Theology,” Modern Judaism 10 (1990), pp. 318–322;
Abraham D. Cohen, “God and Redemption in the Thought of David Hartman,” Modern Judaism 17 (1997), pp. 221–251;
Moshe Sokol, “David Hartman,” in Interpreters of Judaism in the Late Twentieth Century, ed. Steven T. Katz (Washington, DC: B’nai B’rith, 1993), pp. 91–112;
Neil Gillman, “The Exciting Future of Jewish Theology,” Judaism 39/2 (Spring 1990), pp. 243–248;
Daniel Landas, “A Vision of Finitude: David Hartman’s ‘A Living Covenant,’” Tikkun 1/2 (1986), pp. 106–111;
Charles S. Liebman, Deceptive Images: Towards a Redefinition of American Judaism (New Brunswick, NJ, and Oxford: Transaction Books, 1988), pp. 52–54;
David Shatz, Jewish Thought in Dialogue: Essays on Thinkers, Theologies, and Moral Theories (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2009).
Charles S. Liebman, “Attitudes toward Democracy among Israeli Religious Leaders,” in Democracy, Peace, and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, ed. Edy Kaufman, Shakri B. Abed, and Robert L. Rothstein (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), pp. 137–44.
See also Charles S. Liebman, Religion, Democracy, and Israeli Society (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997).
Menachem Kellner, “Well, Can There Be Jewish Ethics or Not?” Journal of Jewish Thought &; Philosophy 5/2 (1996), pp. 237–241.
For an example of the difficulty in adopting a pluralistic position in the modern Orthodox world, see Eugene Korn, “Tradition Meets Modernity: On the Conflict of Halakha and Political Liberty,” Tradition 25/4 (Summer 1991), pp. 30–47.
Avi Sagi, Jewish Tradition after Theology (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2009), chapter 1;
Avi Sagi, Tradition vs. Traditionalism: Contemporary Perspectives in Jewish Thought (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008), chapter 5.
In this respect Hartman’s thought resembles that of Joseph Raz. See Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), chapters 14–15;
Avi Sagi, The Open Canon: On the Meaning of Halahkhic Discourse (London and New York: Continuum, 2007), p. 191, n. 43: “Raz views the various options as competing alternatives that are a condition of autonomy.” The linkage between individuality and autonomy in liberal thought is interpreted here in a pluralistic direction. Hartman introduces a similar position.
Hayyim David Halevi, Bein yisrael la-amim [Between Israel and the nations] (Jerusalem: n.p., 1954), pp. 114–115.
Hayyim David Halevi, Mekor hayyim ha-shalem [The complete source of life] (Jerusalem: n.p., 1976), vol. 4, pp. 367–368.
On Halevi’s messianism see Dov Schwartz, “Changes in the Messianic Thought of Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi,” in A Living Judaism: Essays on the Halakhic Thought of Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi, ed. Avi Sagi and Yedidia Z. Stern (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute and Bar-Ilan University, 2007), pp. 331–355 (in Hebrew).
Halevi, Bein yisrael la-amim, pp. 108–109. On Rabbi Halevi’s universalism see Zvi Zohar, “Sephardic Religious Thought in Israel: Aspects of the Theology of Rabbi Haim David Halevi,” in Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Religion, and Government, ed. Kevin Avruch and Walter P. Zenner (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 115–136.
Hayyim David Halevi, Torat hayyim [Torah of life] (Tel Aviv: n.p. 1992), on Genesis, vol. 1, pp. 28–29.
Hayyim David Halevi, Nezah Moshe [The eternity of Moses’ law] (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1996), pp. 415–422. For the source of the rabbinical saying see Mishnah, Sanhedrin IV, 5. For Maimonides’s version see Hilkhot Sanhedrin XII, 3.
Hayyim David Halevi, Aseh lekha rav [Attach yourself to a rabbi] (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1988), vol. 8, pp. 195–203.
Hayyim David Halevi, Dat u-medinah [Religion and state] (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1969).
On this, see Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman, Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), chapter 3.
Hayyim David Halevi, Devar ha-mishpat [The word of the law] (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1963), vol. 1, p. 174.
Yedidia Z. Stern, State, Law and Halakha: Civil Leadership as Halakhic Authority, trans. Batya Stein, Position Paper No. 2 (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, December 2001), part 1, pp. 5–75.
R. Nissim B. Reuven of Gerona, Derashot ha-ran [The sermons of R. Nissim of Gerona] (Jerusalem: Shalem Institute, 1974), eleventh sermon. On his approach see Aviezer Ravitzky, Religion and State in Jewish Philosophy: Models of Unity, Division, Collision, and Subordination (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2002);
Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. David Bromwich and George Kateb: with essays by Jean Bethke Elshtain et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), chapter 1.
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© 2015 Meir Hatina and Christoph Schumann
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Hellinger, M., Cohen, A. (2015). Liberal-Democratic Jewish Modern Orthodoxy after 1967: The Thought of David Hartman and Rabbi Hayyim David Halevi. In: Hatina, M., Schumann, C. (eds) Arab Liberal Thought after 1967. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137551412_12
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