Perhaps one of the most neglected areas of study in our yeshivot and women’s
seminaries is that of Jewish theology.
The average Jewish day school or
yeshiva student is taught to sing in kindergarten, “Hashem [God] is here, Hashem
is there, Hashem is truly everywhere. Up, up, down, down, right, left and all
around. Here, there and everywhere – that’s where He can be found!” (How many of
you sang along while reading the words?)
After this song is memorized, any other
discussion of God is focused on His demands of us. Children are taught biblical
stories and how to recite prayers and blessings. Soon they learn to read and
emphasis is placed on mastery of Jewish texts like the Bible, the Mishna and the
Talmud. Over the years, students will be exposed to all the Jewish holidays and
with their laws and customs, but Jewish theology itself is orphaned, neglected
and ignored.
I have been privileged to meet many Jews who love Torah and
are scrupulous observers of the commandments, but I cannot say I got the feeling
that many of them love God. This is, of course, an anecdotal observation but one
I fear most would agree with.
What, then, is Jewish theology? Why is it
so important? It would seem that while spirituality can be universal, theology
cannot. Theology is particularistic; it is what Abraham Joshua Heschel called
“the content of belief.”
Thus Jews and gentiles might very well share the
same spirituality and even feel the same while visiting their respective places
of worship, but the content of their experience will necessarily be
different.
Jewish theology doesn’t teach that God exists. It contains the
meaning, the form and the function of his existence from a Jewish point of
view.
The problem was best described by my teacher, Byron L. Sherwin:
“For more than a century, the claim that Jewish theology does not exist – or
that it is irrelevant to contemporary Jewish concerns and communal agendas – has
been pervasive.”
Even the very Orthodox among us have seemed to neglect
the study of theology.
As Marc B. Shapiro writes, “Jewish theology is not
taken seriously in contemporary Orthodoxy. Unlike earlier generations, which had
their ‘professional’ theologians or, at the very least, scholars who devoted a
great deal of time to this field, today we have talmudists, who at best merely
dabble in it.”
The efforts of the Orthodox have been concentrated on
Halacha for far too long.
Shapiro believes “the claim that Judaism is
totally a religion of law to the exclusion of love, faith and morality, is
simply neither historically nor theologically defensible.”
As Heschel put
it: “To reduce Judaism to law, to Halacha, is to dim its light, to pervert its
essence and to kill its spirit.”
In fact, it is ridiculous to posit that
Judaism is a religion of law and to ignore the fact the very idea of there being
any law at all is based on the theological premise of a God who acts in covenant
with Israel, to whom He revealed His will. Nor can one posit that Judaism is a
moral, ethical religion without a theistic belief in a God who determines what
is in fact moral or ethical.
Today it is in vogue to present religion as
a Baskin-Robbins of 31 flavors that offers something to everyone. Solomon
Schechter said, “No! True religion is above all these silly demands. It is not a
jack-ofall- trades, meaning monotheism to the philosopher, pluralism to the
crowd, and some mysterious Nothing to the agnostic, Pantheism to the poet, and
Service of Man to the Hero worshiper. Its mission is just as much to teach the
world that there are false gods and false ideals as to bring it nearer to the
true one. It means to convert the world and not convert itself.”
Sherwin
said it best when he wrote: “Jewish theology is a palace of faith and conviction
grounded in revelation and forged by tradition. Engendered by divine providence
and love, carefully crafted by human intuition and intellect, and honed by
history and experience, the theological edifice of Judaism rests upon three
firmly planted pillars: God, Torah and Israel.”
Yet in studying theology,
we would be wise to remember the maxim quoted by Solomon Schechter that “the
best theology is not consistent.” Therefore, we do not look at theology as a
science that by definition must always yield consistent results and answers. We
look to theology to better understand who God is and what the parameters are of
our relationship with Him.
Arthur Cohen once wrote that “Theology in
Judaism is an intellectual discipline with a continuous history but a
discontinuous tradition.” It is a shame that Jews, who are the bearers of so
many traditions, have neglected this particular one. In the absence of Talmud
and Halacha, Evangelical Christians talk a lot more about God than Jews do. Does
one have to come at the expense of the other? Our children need to develop a
deeper theology than a theologically problematic kindergarten song. This
education needs to continue throughout elementary and high schools and continue
to be a work in progress till the day one can confirm his or her notions of God
when one meets his or her Maker.
If Judaism is a religion of covenant,
wouldn’t it be wise to not only understand the nature of the covenant, but with
Whom we have this covenant?
The writer is a doctoral candidate in Jewish
philosophy and currently teaches in many post-high-school yeshivot and
midrashot.
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