// essays //
Winter 2006
Tyranny of the Majority: Post-Enlightenment Judaism
Yonatan Brafman
Oreo. Twinkie. These terms are used by African-Americans and Asians, respectively, as derogatory labels for individuals who are perceived to have turned their back on their own cultural heritage and adopted the mannerisms and values of white culture. In sociological terms, these individuals have accepted the 'majority culture' as their cultural reference point. They refer to this culture, rather than their own, to evaluate matters and make decisions. The Oreo or the Twinkie is accused of evaluating his past community and tradition based on his new reference group, the majority culture, and of viewing his former community in a denigrating manner. Contemporary Jews do not have the opportunity to change their reference point to the majority culture. This change in reference point already occurred during the Emancipation period, during which Jews were integrated into the majority culture in Central and Western Europe.
This historical phenomenon has been observed by Jacob Katz, in his work Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation. Katz notes that a switch of cultural reference point generally occurs as a result of a process of social integration of a previously foreign or segregated minority into a more socially dominant culture. Jewish society underwent such a development during the 18th and 19th centuries. Traditionally highly segregated and considered an alien minority by both themselves and Christian Europeans, during this period Jews were integrated into general society to an extent that would have previously been unthinkable by both Jew and non-Jew alike. Katz argues that, due to the resultant novel patterns of social interaction between Jews and non-Jews, as well as the achievement of Jewish political emancipation, a "shift in reference group" occurred in the thought of some of the leading Jewish intellectuals. The current, almost complete identification of Judaism with the majority white/European/Western culture is the long-term result of the process of Emancipation, by which European Jews became politically enfranchised, and the overlapping Jewish intellectual renaissance known as the Enlightenment.
The social integration of European Jews is inexorably linked to a major development in general modern history: the rise of the modern nation state. Prior to the 18th and 19th centuries, Central and Western Europe had been ruled by corporate states, which recognized self-contained groups, such as Jews, under their sovereignty, and allowed them a degree of autonomy. In the closing years of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, however, there was a slow and sometimes inconsistent shift from a corporate state to a more absolutist state, which attempted to bring each individual subject under its direct dominion. The move from a corporate-oriented state to a more absolutist state undermined communal institutions within the Jewish society and opened up the community to the influences of non-Jewish European society. This process, which occurred over a protracted period and frequently antedated full political emancipation, rendered the Jewish community receptive to, if not proponents of, the bargain that was offered to them by non-Jewish supporters of emancipation.
In many European countries during the 17th and 18th centuries, a public debate was conducted about the place of Jews in the state. Many expressed the view that Jews were very different from the other subjects or citizens; they viewed Jews as base and inferior people who could not be integrated into general society. Even advocates of Jewish emancipation accepted the defective nature of Jewish character and society as a given in this debate. Thus, they appealed to the idea of civic betterment, namely that the political enfranchisement of Jews and their consequent exposure to general society would both improve their character and cause them to reassess their flawed communal framework.
Christian Wilhelm Dohm was one of the most prominent Prussian political figures to express both the traditional anti-Jewish prejudice as well as the possibility of civic betterment. Dohm writes that we can concede that the Jews may be more morally corrupt than other nations, that they are guilty of a proportionally greater number of crimes that the Christians; that their character in general inclines more toward usury and fraud in commerce; that their religious prejudice is more antisocial and clannish; but he says that this must be understood as the "necessary and natural consequence of the oppressed condition in which they have been living for many centuries." Thus, even according to Dohm, a true enlightenment thinker and personal friend of Moses Mendelssohn, the Jews have a flawed character and communal structure that must be improved by political enfranchisement.
The idea of civic betterment is the main principle which underlies the 1782 Edict of Tolerance of the enlightened despot Emperor Joseph II, which heralded the enfranchisement of Jews in Habsburg lands. The edict states that
[I]t is our goal to make the Jewish nation useful and serviceable to the state, mainly through better education and enlightenment of its youth as well as by directing them to the sciences, the arts and the crafts...
According to Joseph Blau, in his work Modern Varieties of Judaism, the Edict of Tolerance contains an implicit quid pro quo. While the edict repeals many discriminatory economic laws against Jews, its continued implementation is contingent on Jewish steps to integrate themselves into general society. The "Jewish nation" should improve the "education and enlightenment of its youth," presumably by substituting European education and values for backward Jewish education and values. By "directing them" towards science, art and crafts, Joseph II must have hoped that they would also be directed away from traditional Jewish culture.
The link between emancipation and civic betterment was not limited to the German-Austrian states. Indeed, even in France, where the attainment of Jewish emancipation was not as belabored as it was in the Central European countries, the inclusion of Jews in society was accompanied by the explicit acknowledgment that Jewish culture was inferior to French culture, and was made contingent on Jewish cultural assimilation. This is illustrated by the submissions made to an essay contest organized by the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Metz in 1785. Contestants were asked "Are there means of making the Jews more happy and useful in France?" The three writers who won agreed on two basic points: they each concluded that the Jews were capable of moral regeneration and civic betterment, and they each believed that this would come about through the exposure of Jews to the enlightened philosophy then prevalent in France.
As a result of the Edict of Tolerance and similar centralizing and liberalizing developments throughout central Europe, contact between Jews and non-Jews increased. Increased interaction with the surrounding society had a large influence on how European Jews themselves began to consider Judaism. European Jews internalized the underlying rationale of civic betterment--Jewish character and society was deficient, but could be fixed by exposure to enlightened non-Jewish civilization. It is not unimportant that one of the three finalists in the French essay contest was himself a Jew.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, due to the breakdown of the traditional social boundaries between Jewish and Gentile society, the cultural reference point of many European Jews switched from one that was internal to Jewish society to one that was mainly focused on general European society. Consequently, Judaism came to be evaluated by Jews from the perspective of the majority culture in which it was embedded. Mimicking the view prevalent in non-Jewish European society, Jews began to see themselves and their tradition as defective and in need of rehabilitation. Jews and Judaism were put on the defensive, spurring radical reform by some and eliciting apologetic reconciliation from others. Both of these defensive efforts so completely identified Jewish society with Western culture, that it is now considered odd to view Judaism and Jews as alien to that tradition. In truth, however, the notion of a shared Jewish-Christian culture is the result of a process of Jewish assimilation and apologetics in response to a devaluation of everything Jewish by the traditionally anti-Semitic European context.
Even individuals who were situated well within the traditional Jewish community exhibited early on a shift toward a more external reference point. One example is Naphtali Herz Wessely, a devoutly traditional early enlightenment Jew. Katz detects in his writings an appropriation of the surrounding, non-Jewish society's evaluation of Judaism. An essay of Wessely's from 1781, early in the process of social integration, critiques traditional Jewish education and advocates a new method that would instruct students in the 'Torah of God,' traditional Jewish learning, as well as the 'Torah of Man,' education that would acquaint Jewish children with the high values of German society. Wessely's devaluation of traditional Jewish pedagogy coupled with his wholesale endorsement of German cultural and educational values signals the fact that he now looks to non-Jewish German society as his reference group.
Later Jewish responses to the processes of emancipation and social integration also show that they had accepted the surrounding society's views on their traditions and culture. Michael A. Meyer, in his history of the Reform Movement observes that reforms to synagogues and schools in the 19th century were conducted piecemeal, not as part of any articulated theoretical framework. Meyer argues that these Jewish institutions were reformed in order to reconcile Jewish life with the surrounding society. Synagogue reforms demonstrated that Jews were evaluating the aesthetics of their services in reference to those of Protestant services. Educational reforms stressed conformance that was devoid of any theoretical basis for privileging German society over Jewish tradition; anything that prevented Jews from fitting into German society was subordinated to that which was perceived to be needed in order for Jews to function productively in the larger world.
The reformers' new reference point gained a theoretical basis with the historicization of Judaism. During this period Jewish studies first arose as an academic discipline. From its inception, one of the primary focuses of Jewish studies was the charting of the development of Judaism over time. Once Judaism was seen as changing with time, reformist scholars seized on the notion that the zeitgeist, or spirit of the time, was a valid measuring stick from which to evaluate and change Judaism. Judaism, understood within its historical context, was no longer merely a descriptive academic theory; it was now a prescriptive notion, relevant to all areas of Jewish thought and practice. Conveniently for the reformers, the zeitgeist was usually associated with the intellectual, aesthetic, and social trends prevalent in general society. Thus, this historicization of Judaism substantiated the general shift in reference point by reformers as well as their specific innovations.12 While the advent of the academic study of Judaism produced outstanding scholarship that greatly improved Jewish self-understanding, it is regrettable that it was used by reformers to accommodate Judaism to azeitgeist that was, almost by definition, the philosophy that was popular in general society. Thought was never given to the idea that Jewish culture itself might be a legitimate expression of the spirit of the time. Judaism and Jewish society were altered by the reformers in order to conform to European culture without critical consideration of the non-Jewish zeitgeist on Jewish culture's own terms.
The reformers, however, were not the only Jews to accept Europe as the new cultural reference point from which to evaluate Judaism. Another, less obvious, manifestation of the defensive Jewish response to emancipation can be found in the writings of individuals who believed themselves to be defenders of traditional Judaism. These thinkers display an adoption of a European cultural reference point by engaging in an apologetic reconciliation of Jewish culture with that of general society. Most prominent among such individuals was Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, an arch-opponent of many of the reforms discussed previously and arguably the forerunner of modern or neo-Orthodoxy. Hirsch had a major impact on Jewish thought and communal politics. He published many works defending continued adherence to traditional Jewish practice. Additionally, he served as editor to the Orthodox journal Jeschurun, which had a wide distribution. Moreover, he led the Orthodox community in the important city of Frankfort-am-Main in its secession from the wider Jewish communal organization, which had become dominated by reformers.
Hirsch understands the danger of a change in reference point, even as he unintentionally submits to it. He states in one of his most important works, The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel, that any approach to modern Judaism, in order to be considered an authentic expression of the Jewish tradition, must be a "self-comprehending Judaism." According to Hirsch, Judaism may accept the contributions of modern society and thought, but both practical and doctrinal reforms should be investigated and reformed on Judaism's own terms.
However, Hirsch's writings accept general society's evaluation of his own traditions; the most telling mark of acceptance of an external reference point. For instance, Hirsch attempts in the following passage to explain the disenchantment of Jews with Judaism:
Suppose I were to tell you that a dull and prosaic dialectic had reduced to merest mummies laws full to overflowing of life and spirit, and that Israel, concerned and apprehensive because of the errors and evils which it had often seen follow the efforts of the uncontrolled intellect, had driven it away from the Law as one drives away a bird of prey from a dearly-beloved corpse?"
In this brilliantly metaphorical paragraph, Hirsch argues that the only reason traditional Jews fear the criticism of reformers is because they have already allowed their tradition to become a "mummified corpse" through "dull and prosaic dialectic." According to Hirsch, Judaism in its original vitality could withstand any critique. While seeming to provide a robust defense of traditional Judaism, this description of Judaism echoes many of the criticisms of Jewish society leveled by non-Jewish Europeans. Hirsch is not defending Judaism as it was currently practiced, but rather his idealized image of it. In regards to the current state of Judaism, Hirsh seems to agree with non-Jewish assessment that Judaism is a backward, particularistic religion, which holds its adherents back from participation in modern European Enlightenment society. Additionally, he appears to concur that currently traditional Judaism requires the performance of meaningless rituals that only serve to isolate Jew from Gentile. Finally, Hirsch acknowledges the most grievous criticism (considering the spirit of the time), namely that Judaism at present places intellectual shackles on its followers.
Hirsch's mission, as the above statement implies, is to restore a more correct conception of Judaism which he will call Torah im Derekh Eretz (Torah coupled with the ways of the world). Accordingly, he spends much ofThe Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel describing a semiotic system of mitzvot observance wherein traditional Jewish rituals are viewed as symbols for greater ideas. Through this program, Hirsch shows that adherence to traditional Jewish practices is not backward; rather, rituals serve to remind Judaism's practitioners of timeless and universal messages.
Regrettably, it seems that all the symbols that Hirsch argues Jewish practices stand for are merely universal and contemporarily accepted messages. Eliezer Berkovits, a 20th century Jewish theologian, writes that the philosophy of Hirsch "is a strong defensive position, but it had no genuine philosophy of its own...its philosophy was apologetic." Behind the preservation of the familiar mitzvot lies an almost uncritical acceptance of the superiority of contemporary German society.
Thus, the various Jewish responses to modernity during the 18th and 19th centuries shared certain basic characteristics. Both the reformers and the neo-Orthodox responded to emancipation and integration with defensive and apologetic gestures. Jewish thinkers during the period either adjusted Judaism wholesale to conform to the expectations of general society or engaged in reconciliatory apologetics. Jews did not enter European society on their own terms; rather, they were forced to conform themselves to the expectations of a society that was hostile to them and their traditions. Even the most liberal non-Jewish supporters of Jewish emancipation expected Jews to 'sell out,' namely to forsake their own culture and become European in order to be enfranchised.
The Judaism with which my peers and I identify has been inherited from the early German-Jewish religious reformers and Samson Raphael Hirsch. I attend secular university, wear the latest clothing styles, and am an academic student of Jewish law. Thus it seems in this essay I have indirectly argued that my own life is merely a diluted Judaism, a Judaism adapted to a Western reference point. Have I unintentionally concluded that the only true Judaism is reactionary? Is the only alternative to 'selling out' to adopt the Judaism of Rabbi Moses Sofer, a reactionary contemporary of Hirsch, who concluded that that "chadash assur min hatorah" (innovation is Biblically forbidden)?
I do not think so. While Hirsch erred in the elaboration of his philosophy of Judaism, he was correct in asserting that in order to remain authentic, Judaism need not isolate itself from general society. The best philosophies and ideologies ought to be studied and considered. But this process of study should proceed with reference to Judaism and Jewish culture. Jews and Judaism should be self-confident enough to engage critically with Western 'modernity;' neither becoming immediately defensive and apologetic nor reactionary. Jewish culture must find its rightful place alongside Western modernity, neither invalidated as backwards and particularistic nor distorted through assimilation into a constructed Judeo-Christian culture.
This historical phenomenon has been observed by Jacob Katz, in his work Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation. Katz notes that a switch of cultural reference point generally occurs as a result of a process of social integration of a previously foreign or segregated minority into a more socially dominant culture. Jewish society underwent such a development during the 18th and 19th centuries. Traditionally highly segregated and considered an alien minority by both themselves and Christian Europeans, during this period Jews were integrated into general society to an extent that would have previously been unthinkable by both Jew and non-Jew alike. Katz argues that, due to the resultant novel patterns of social interaction between Jews and non-Jews, as well as the achievement of Jewish political emancipation, a "shift in reference group" occurred in the thought of some of the leading Jewish intellectuals. The current, almost complete identification of Judaism with the majority white/European/Western culture is the long-term result of the process of Emancipation, by which European Jews became politically enfranchised, and the overlapping Jewish intellectual renaissance known as the Enlightenment.
The social integration of European Jews is inexorably linked to a major development in general modern history: the rise of the modern nation state. Prior to the 18th and 19th centuries, Central and Western Europe had been ruled by corporate states, which recognized self-contained groups, such as Jews, under their sovereignty, and allowed them a degree of autonomy. In the closing years of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, however, there was a slow and sometimes inconsistent shift from a corporate state to a more absolutist state, which attempted to bring each individual subject under its direct dominion. The move from a corporate-oriented state to a more absolutist state undermined communal institutions within the Jewish society and opened up the community to the influences of non-Jewish European society. This process, which occurred over a protracted period and frequently antedated full political emancipation, rendered the Jewish community receptive to, if not proponents of, the bargain that was offered to them by non-Jewish supporters of emancipation.
In many European countries during the 17th and 18th centuries, a public debate was conducted about the place of Jews in the state. Many expressed the view that Jews were very different from the other subjects or citizens; they viewed Jews as base and inferior people who could not be integrated into general society. Even advocates of Jewish emancipation accepted the defective nature of Jewish character and society as a given in this debate. Thus, they appealed to the idea of civic betterment, namely that the political enfranchisement of Jews and their consequent exposure to general society would both improve their character and cause them to reassess their flawed communal framework.
Christian Wilhelm Dohm was one of the most prominent Prussian political figures to express both the traditional anti-Jewish prejudice as well as the possibility of civic betterment. Dohm writes that we can concede that the Jews may be more morally corrupt than other nations, that they are guilty of a proportionally greater number of crimes that the Christians; that their character in general inclines more toward usury and fraud in commerce; that their religious prejudice is more antisocial and clannish; but he says that this must be understood as the "necessary and natural consequence of the oppressed condition in which they have been living for many centuries." Thus, even according to Dohm, a true enlightenment thinker and personal friend of Moses Mendelssohn, the Jews have a flawed character and communal structure that must be improved by political enfranchisement.
The idea of civic betterment is the main principle which underlies the 1782 Edict of Tolerance of the enlightened despot Emperor Joseph II, which heralded the enfranchisement of Jews in Habsburg lands. The edict states that
[I]t is our goal to make the Jewish nation useful and serviceable to the state, mainly through better education and enlightenment of its youth as well as by directing them to the sciences, the arts and the crafts...
According to Joseph Blau, in his work Modern Varieties of Judaism, the Edict of Tolerance contains an implicit quid pro quo. While the edict repeals many discriminatory economic laws against Jews, its continued implementation is contingent on Jewish steps to integrate themselves into general society. The "Jewish nation" should improve the "education and enlightenment of its youth," presumably by substituting European education and values for backward Jewish education and values. By "directing them" towards science, art and crafts, Joseph II must have hoped that they would also be directed away from traditional Jewish culture.
The link between emancipation and civic betterment was not limited to the German-Austrian states. Indeed, even in France, where the attainment of Jewish emancipation was not as belabored as it was in the Central European countries, the inclusion of Jews in society was accompanied by the explicit acknowledgment that Jewish culture was inferior to French culture, and was made contingent on Jewish cultural assimilation. This is illustrated by the submissions made to an essay contest organized by the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Metz in 1785. Contestants were asked "Are there means of making the Jews more happy and useful in France?" The three writers who won agreed on two basic points: they each concluded that the Jews were capable of moral regeneration and civic betterment, and they each believed that this would come about through the exposure of Jews to the enlightened philosophy then prevalent in France.
As a result of the Edict of Tolerance and similar centralizing and liberalizing developments throughout central Europe, contact between Jews and non-Jews increased. Increased interaction with the surrounding society had a large influence on how European Jews themselves began to consider Judaism. European Jews internalized the underlying rationale of civic betterment--Jewish character and society was deficient, but could be fixed by exposure to enlightened non-Jewish civilization. It is not unimportant that one of the three finalists in the French essay contest was himself a Jew.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, due to the breakdown of the traditional social boundaries between Jewish and Gentile society, the cultural reference point of many European Jews switched from one that was internal to Jewish society to one that was mainly focused on general European society. Consequently, Judaism came to be evaluated by Jews from the perspective of the majority culture in which it was embedded. Mimicking the view prevalent in non-Jewish European society, Jews began to see themselves and their tradition as defective and in need of rehabilitation. Jews and Judaism were put on the defensive, spurring radical reform by some and eliciting apologetic reconciliation from others. Both of these defensive efforts so completely identified Jewish society with Western culture, that it is now considered odd to view Judaism and Jews as alien to that tradition. In truth, however, the notion of a shared Jewish-Christian culture is the result of a process of Jewish assimilation and apologetics in response to a devaluation of everything Jewish by the traditionally anti-Semitic European context.
Even individuals who were situated well within the traditional Jewish community exhibited early on a shift toward a more external reference point. One example is Naphtali Herz Wessely, a devoutly traditional early enlightenment Jew. Katz detects in his writings an appropriation of the surrounding, non-Jewish society's evaluation of Judaism. An essay of Wessely's from 1781, early in the process of social integration, critiques traditional Jewish education and advocates a new method that would instruct students in the 'Torah of God,' traditional Jewish learning, as well as the 'Torah of Man,' education that would acquaint Jewish children with the high values of German society. Wessely's devaluation of traditional Jewish pedagogy coupled with his wholesale endorsement of German cultural and educational values signals the fact that he now looks to non-Jewish German society as his reference group.
Later Jewish responses to the processes of emancipation and social integration also show that they had accepted the surrounding society's views on their traditions and culture. Michael A. Meyer, in his history of the Reform Movement observes that reforms to synagogues and schools in the 19th century were conducted piecemeal, not as part of any articulated theoretical framework. Meyer argues that these Jewish institutions were reformed in order to reconcile Jewish life with the surrounding society. Synagogue reforms demonstrated that Jews were evaluating the aesthetics of their services in reference to those of Protestant services. Educational reforms stressed conformance that was devoid of any theoretical basis for privileging German society over Jewish tradition; anything that prevented Jews from fitting into German society was subordinated to that which was perceived to be needed in order for Jews to function productively in the larger world.
The reformers' new reference point gained a theoretical basis with the historicization of Judaism. During this period Jewish studies first arose as an academic discipline. From its inception, one of the primary focuses of Jewish studies was the charting of the development of Judaism over time. Once Judaism was seen as changing with time, reformist scholars seized on the notion that the zeitgeist, or spirit of the time, was a valid measuring stick from which to evaluate and change Judaism. Judaism, understood within its historical context, was no longer merely a descriptive academic theory; it was now a prescriptive notion, relevant to all areas of Jewish thought and practice. Conveniently for the reformers, the zeitgeist was usually associated with the intellectual, aesthetic, and social trends prevalent in general society. Thus, this historicization of Judaism substantiated the general shift in reference point by reformers as well as their specific innovations.12 While the advent of the academic study of Judaism produced outstanding scholarship that greatly improved Jewish self-understanding, it is regrettable that it was used by reformers to accommodate Judaism to azeitgeist that was, almost by definition, the philosophy that was popular in general society. Thought was never given to the idea that Jewish culture itself might be a legitimate expression of the spirit of the time. Judaism and Jewish society were altered by the reformers in order to conform to European culture without critical consideration of the non-Jewish zeitgeist on Jewish culture's own terms.
The reformers, however, were not the only Jews to accept Europe as the new cultural reference point from which to evaluate Judaism. Another, less obvious, manifestation of the defensive Jewish response to emancipation can be found in the writings of individuals who believed themselves to be defenders of traditional Judaism. These thinkers display an adoption of a European cultural reference point by engaging in an apologetic reconciliation of Jewish culture with that of general society. Most prominent among such individuals was Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, an arch-opponent of many of the reforms discussed previously and arguably the forerunner of modern or neo-Orthodoxy. Hirsch had a major impact on Jewish thought and communal politics. He published many works defending continued adherence to traditional Jewish practice. Additionally, he served as editor to the Orthodox journal Jeschurun, which had a wide distribution. Moreover, he led the Orthodox community in the important city of Frankfort-am-Main in its secession from the wider Jewish communal organization, which had become dominated by reformers.
Hirsch understands the danger of a change in reference point, even as he unintentionally submits to it. He states in one of his most important works, The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel, that any approach to modern Judaism, in order to be considered an authentic expression of the Jewish tradition, must be a "self-comprehending Judaism." According to Hirsch, Judaism may accept the contributions of modern society and thought, but both practical and doctrinal reforms should be investigated and reformed on Judaism's own terms.
However, Hirsch's writings accept general society's evaluation of his own traditions; the most telling mark of acceptance of an external reference point. For instance, Hirsch attempts in the following passage to explain the disenchantment of Jews with Judaism:
Suppose I were to tell you that a dull and prosaic dialectic had reduced to merest mummies laws full to overflowing of life and spirit, and that Israel, concerned and apprehensive because of the errors and evils which it had often seen follow the efforts of the uncontrolled intellect, had driven it away from the Law as one drives away a bird of prey from a dearly-beloved corpse?"
In this brilliantly metaphorical paragraph, Hirsch argues that the only reason traditional Jews fear the criticism of reformers is because they have already allowed their tradition to become a "mummified corpse" through "dull and prosaic dialectic." According to Hirsch, Judaism in its original vitality could withstand any critique. While seeming to provide a robust defense of traditional Judaism, this description of Judaism echoes many of the criticisms of Jewish society leveled by non-Jewish Europeans. Hirsch is not defending Judaism as it was currently practiced, but rather his idealized image of it. In regards to the current state of Judaism, Hirsh seems to agree with non-Jewish assessment that Judaism is a backward, particularistic religion, which holds its adherents back from participation in modern European Enlightenment society. Additionally, he appears to concur that currently traditional Judaism requires the performance of meaningless rituals that only serve to isolate Jew from Gentile. Finally, Hirsch acknowledges the most grievous criticism (considering the spirit of the time), namely that Judaism at present places intellectual shackles on its followers.
Hirsch's mission, as the above statement implies, is to restore a more correct conception of Judaism which he will call Torah im Derekh Eretz (Torah coupled with the ways of the world). Accordingly, he spends much ofThe Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel describing a semiotic system of mitzvot observance wherein traditional Jewish rituals are viewed as symbols for greater ideas. Through this program, Hirsch shows that adherence to traditional Jewish practices is not backward; rather, rituals serve to remind Judaism's practitioners of timeless and universal messages.
Regrettably, it seems that all the symbols that Hirsch argues Jewish practices stand for are merely universal and contemporarily accepted messages. Eliezer Berkovits, a 20th century Jewish theologian, writes that the philosophy of Hirsch "is a strong defensive position, but it had no genuine philosophy of its own...its philosophy was apologetic." Behind the preservation of the familiar mitzvot lies an almost uncritical acceptance of the superiority of contemporary German society.
Thus, the various Jewish responses to modernity during the 18th and 19th centuries shared certain basic characteristics. Both the reformers and the neo-Orthodox responded to emancipation and integration with defensive and apologetic gestures. Jewish thinkers during the period either adjusted Judaism wholesale to conform to the expectations of general society or engaged in reconciliatory apologetics. Jews did not enter European society on their own terms; rather, they were forced to conform themselves to the expectations of a society that was hostile to them and their traditions. Even the most liberal non-Jewish supporters of Jewish emancipation expected Jews to 'sell out,' namely to forsake their own culture and become European in order to be enfranchised.
The Judaism with which my peers and I identify has been inherited from the early German-Jewish religious reformers and Samson Raphael Hirsch. I attend secular university, wear the latest clothing styles, and am an academic student of Jewish law. Thus it seems in this essay I have indirectly argued that my own life is merely a diluted Judaism, a Judaism adapted to a Western reference point. Have I unintentionally concluded that the only true Judaism is reactionary? Is the only alternative to 'selling out' to adopt the Judaism of Rabbi Moses Sofer, a reactionary contemporary of Hirsch, who concluded that that "chadash assur min hatorah" (innovation is Biblically forbidden)?
I do not think so. While Hirsch erred in the elaboration of his philosophy of Judaism, he was correct in asserting that in order to remain authentic, Judaism need not isolate itself from general society. The best philosophies and ideologies ought to be studied and considered. But this process of study should proceed with reference to Judaism and Jewish culture. Jews and Judaism should be self-confident enough to engage critically with Western 'modernity;' neither becoming immediately defensive and apologetic nor reactionary. Jewish culture must find its rightful place alongside Western modernity, neither invalidated as backwards and particularistic nor distorted through assimilation into a constructed Judeo-Christian culture.