A New Halakhic Compendium of Jewish Belief
A New Halakhic Compendium of Jewish Belief
Y. Tzvi Langermann
Professor Y. Tzvi Langermann is Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He has published widely on science, religion, and philosophy in medieval Jewish and Islamic cultures.
Over the past thirty-plus years Rabbi Eliezer Melammed (b. 1961) has been issuing volumes of up-to-date rulings on halakhah. The series, called Peninei Halakha (“Pearls of Halakhah”) is very popular; on sale in most Israeli bookstores, it is also now freely available online, translated (in part at least) into English, French, Spanish and Russian. There is also a children’s version in comic book form. The series covers the usual topics, such as laws pertaining to the Sabbath or the kosher kitchen, but also complete volumes on topics that were little studied, such as conversion, or that have come to prominence only recently, such as women’s prayer gatherings.
The volume I am speaking of is not a philosophy of Judaism but a halakhic (legal, normative) compendium, following the example (but in a very different format, not to mention content) of the first section of Maimonides’ great legal code Mishneh Torah. In this connection, perhaps the most striking observation is the following. Rabbi Melammed’s approach is non-dogmatic. It is usual in formulations of normative religious belief for the author to present his personal opinion as the one and only correct one. (Maimonides mollified this attitude in the presentation of his famous set of thirteen foundational doctrines…) In his preface Rabbi Melammed relates that he consulted with the staff at his yeshiva and, on occasion, modified his position in response to feedback which he received.
He also is willing to acknowledge that his position differs from what he and/or his staff understands to be the current consensus, and to make some effort to accommodate opposing views. For example, in the chapters on magic, clairvoyance, augury and “practical kabbalah,” the Rabbi explicates the “spiritual roots” that enable such practices, both from the features of holiness and the features of impurity that may be involved. However, his draft was strongly criticized for two main reasons: his staff alerted him to the fact (if only this were true!) that the current consensus concurs with Maimonides’ denial of occult powers. Moreover, those who believe in occult powers have a tendency to fall into serious error “in the fundamentals of belief and morality.”
The rabbi was not convinced by their arguments. However, he decided to present the position of Maimonides and the Maimonideans “respectfully” for a number of reasons, most notably “so that anyone who tends toward their position may feel comfortable even though they patently reject the position of Nahmanides and the kabbalists” – the latter, needless to say, accept occult powers as true features of our world, and Rabbi Melammed relies upon their authority. Dogmatic theology, intentionally or not, alienates those who cannot accept its precepts. Rabbi Melammed is aware of this danger and does his best to avoid doing so.
Just as his series includes volumes on new or neglected topics, so do the two volumes on belief extend their range beyond what one finds in the earlier (in fact, it is much earlier) literature. For example, there are sections on how Judaism looks upon Christianity and Islam; Jewish thinkers have engaged with those two religions since their inception. However, there is also an independent section on “eastern religions,” most of it devoted to Hinduism. Though Jews have visited India, and lived there, for quite some time, it is only in the twentieth century that Jews in significant numbers (and some influential individuals) began to take a serious, personal and spiritual interest in eastern religions – mostly Buddhism, which receives less attention. It should not come as a surprise that Rabbi Melammed is not all that well informed about these religions, but that is not the point. His engagement is far removed from religious polemic following that is a section on “The Future of Religions” which is strongly influenced by the views of Rabbi Avraham Kook (1865-1935). Rabbi Melammed acknowledges that his book is based by and large on the teachings of Rav Kook, which he absorbed from his youth from his father, who was a devoted disciple of Rav’s Kook son, Tzvi Yehudah Kook, who published his father’s writings, interpreting or rather re-interpreting them – some would say misinterpreting them. However, in “The Future of Religions” he re-emphasizes that what he writes is based on the writings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook –perhaps because they do not square with views held by “Kookists” of various sorts, students of students of the great rabbi? Rav Kook was of the opinion that there is an innate sense of, and quest, for God in all humans. (This reminds me of the Islamic notion of fiṭra; but that is a story for another day.) However, some humans are unable to refine their quest so as to divest their conception of God of any and all materiality. Hence, the proliferation of idol worship in ancient times, and the continual employment of icons and other images into our own day. Significantly, this perspective detects a positive element in idol worship – the idolaters are trying to worship the one and true God, but they don’t know how to do it. (Shades of the Khazar king in Halevi’s seminal Kuzari – but this point too cannot detain us here.) One of the main tasks of the people of Israel is to guide all nations towards the “light” of the true conception.
This section accordingly carries many footnotes, some quite lengthy, with liberal quotations from Rabbi Avraham Kook. Rabbi Melammed masses additional support for this approach to religion from a range of earlier Jewish thinkers: passages from the medieval philosopher Joseph Albo (c. 1380 – c. 1444), the nineteenth-century Italian rabbis Marco Mortara (1815-1894) and Elia Benamozegh (1823-1900), as well as short, surprising (for me at least) quotations from the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) and Jacob Emden (1697-1776).
This post is nothing more than a small Vorspeise. It will be interesting to see what if any interest this volume stimulates.