Theology is typically not one of American Jews’ primary pastimes. Although some recent studies have argued that younger American Jews are more “spiritual” when compared to their elders, Jews overall are among America’s most secularly-minded population segments. Even among those Jews who do consider themselves religious, theology per se is frequently seen as “un-Jewish.” Ours is a religion based on “action,” the oft-repeated claim goes, not “faith,” much less extended theologizing.
While there is certainly some truth to this, there is good reason for those of us who care about Jewish education to take theology seriously. The ultimate challenge for Jewish education today is not the transmission of information on how to be Jewish; it’s making the case for why to be Jewish, i.e., why, with so many options for living our lives today, should we choose to frame our lives around values, behaviors, and communities that are recognizably “Jewish”? This is not a question that needs to be (or can be) answered solely on an intellectual level – the most powerful answers are often experiential: living a “Jewish life,” especially in community, is its own best argument for continuing to do so (see Peter Berger on the power of “plausibility structures”). But, neither can we afford to pretend that serious questions about the why’s and wherefore’s of Jewish living, and of living in general, are irrelevant. Jewish education that fails to address questions of ultimate purpose, of our place in the world, and of how our Jewishness relates to these, runs the risk of becoming trivial. We may come out knowing lots of things and how to do lots of things, but not why they matter.
I will confess that though my doctorate is in religious studies, I don’t get to read a lot of theology myself—generally just one or two books a year, and often around the time of the Yamim Nora’im (High Holidays). This year I read a new book by Rabbi Arthur Green entitled Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition, and I’m glad I did. Green is a scholar-thinker-activist. He was one of the founders of Havurat Shalom in the late 1960s and has gone on to be a scholar of Jewish mysticism, President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (I would love to know what Mordecai Kaplan would have thought of that), and now a professor and rector of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College in Boston.
The theology that Rabbi Green offers will, indeed, appear very radical to some. Green is a self-described “God seeker and truth seeker,” and he attempts to articulate an understanding of God, Torah, and Israel that can withstand the scrutiny of modern critical scholarship and at the same time satisfy the yearnings of those for whom the sacred and the life of the spirit are powerful and personally compelling realities. He takes as his task mining the rich Jewish storehouse of imagery, mythology, and conceptualization, from the Bible through the 20th century, to fashion a Judaism that can speak to 21st century Jews who are immersed in a scientific worldview and an open and pluralist society.
Theologically, Green is a “neo-mystic,” one who draws his insights and vocabulary heavily from the Jewish mystical tradition, especially the Zohar and Hasidut. He is unabashedly a “panentheist,” treating (as many others have before him) the imagery of God as a person that dominates the Bible, Siddur, and many familiar Jewish texts as a symbolic construction, not to be taken literally. But, behind this symbol, he argues, is something very real – the mysterious, ineffable, yet experientially accessible unity of all Being that mystics of all faith traditions have recognized as the ground and source of our own being.
It is the consequences Green draws from this neo-mystical theology that I personally found most powerful and provocative in his thinking. His Judaism “clearly assert[s] the holiness of all life, seeing the face of God both in the uniqueness of each individual creature and in the underlying and mysterious unity of all” (p. 73). This leads Green to propose a bold and radical life-affirming universalist ethic of responsibility that also becomes a mission: it is our role as Jews to constitute “a human community in which God is present, in which that presence is felt from within and seen from without” (p. 131). Green does not shy away from translating this mandate into what he and others would label a “progressive” stance on a wide range of social and political issues. Further, Green asserts clearly that the work of making God manifest in the world is work we share with seekers from many other backgrounds and traditions, and argues, therefore, for an open and expansive understanding of who is part of our community. Green’s understanding of Torah’s message and Israel’s mission position these as a challenge and a foundation for searching self-criticism when we assess the realities of Jewish behavior in the world today, but also as a source of inspiration to take our place in the great journey of the unfolding of God in the world that culminates in what we call “redemption.”
My aim in describing Rabbi Green’s “radical Judaism” is not to convince you to accept his views, especially since my extremely cursory summary does not come close to doing them justice. Rather, I focus on this book as one example (there are certainly others, e.g., the writings of Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks) that it is both possible and, I would argue, vital to write Jewish theology today that is both deeply rooted in classical Jewish sources and concepts and immediately relevant to the questions that are so central to our Jewish and Jewish education’s situation today: Why does any of what we’re teaching matter? And, when I’ve absorbed it all, when I’ve wrestled with the texts and learned what I can, what am I supposed to do?
Jewish education has to address these questions. The reason why theology is important for Jewish education, I believe Green would agree, is not because we need to learn how to talk about God, but because we need to respond to God, or to whatever it is we call the reality that asks us continually, “who are you; where are you?” I worry, frankly, that we are often so concerned with the what and how of Jewish learning, and all the issues that flow from these entirely legitimate questions, that we lose sight of the what for. Whether you like Green’s theology and the behavioral consequences he derives from it or not, his book is a stimulating reminder that Judaism is serious and wonderful stuff. Our job is to make sure that the Jewish education we provide does this magnificent tradition full justice.
Questions to consider and discuss:
What do we need to do to ensure that Jewish education helps learners address life’s most important questions? How can we translate and communicate the vocabulary of Jewish tradition so that it speaks to contemporary learners?