232 - A New Jewish Theology In the Making

A New Jewish Theology In the Making
By Eugene Borowitz
220 pp. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1968. $6.50.

Eugene Borowitz has set forth a preliminary statement of new Jewish theology. Unfortunately Borowitz' success as an expositor of other men's views is considerably greater than his success in conveying his own. When Borowitz describes the religious thought of Mordecai M. Kaplan, Herman Cohen, Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, he proves himself to be a lucid and gifted expositor. His presentations are fair and balanced. He is capable of translating complex theological notions into ideas which can easily and accurately be grasped by the student and the intelligent layman. I would guess on the basis of reading Borowitz' expository essays that he is an excellent teacher.

Borowitz' best essay is on the thought of Abraham Joshua Heschel. He is sincerely appreciative of Heschel's strengths, especially Heschel's capacity to express his intuitive awareness of the reality and wonder of God's existence. He likens Heschel's methodology to that of a Zen koan or a Hasidic master. The radical character of Heschel's insights, his insistence that the Bible is God's anthropology not man's theology, is conducive to a refreshing kind of religious and personal enlightenment. Nevertheless there is another side to Heschel which Borowitz describes with frankness and fairness. There is perhaps no contemporary Jewish theologian who has shown himself to be as unreceptive to opposing points of view as Heschel. Heschel's one-sidedness may stem from an unwillingness to test his ideas in meaningful dialogue with his fellow theologians. The intuitive insight Heschel offers has its place in theological discourse. It is not a substitute for reasoned interchange. Borowitz quotes Heschel as characterizing opinions other than his own as " arrogant," "absurd," "insane," and "incredible." According to Borowitz Heschel "regularly offends men who do not have as firm a belief in God's revelation to the Jewish people as he has." Borowitz intuits a profound personal as well as theological flaw in Heschel's lack of charity or openness to other religious and theological options.

While Borowitz proves to be an excellent expositor, it is possible to question the wisdom of his selections. Jacob Agus, Arthur Cohen, and Will Herberg have been over the same ground. There is something almost ritualistic in the formula that Baeck, Kaplan, Cohen, Buber, and Rosenzweig are the men who constitute the religious thinkers of twentieth century Judaism. Much of the spiritual and religious vitality which has been expressed by modern Jews is to be found outside the writings of the official teachers of religious thought. There have been profound changes in both the spiritual and the existential situation of the Jewish community. With the exception of Martin Buber and Mordecai M. Kaplan,

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most of the thinkers Borowitz discusses have little of relevance to say on the great issues of twentieth century Jewish life. Perhaps no adequate understanding of the Jewish religious situation will be possible until the religious relevance of thinkers like Ber Borochov, A. D. Gordon, Nahum Sirkin, Theodore Herzl, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, and Bruno Bettelheim is better understood. Admittedly there is little that is explicitly "religious" in their work. Nevertheless contemporary Jewish thinkers might profit from the example of the enormous range and openness of a man like Paul Tillich. Tillich's theology was by no means impoverished by his willingness to confront the main currents of contemporary culture. Apart from the pedestrian character of Borowitz' selections, one must question the provincialism of his concerns. He is open to a very limited range of issues within contemporary Jewish experience. Perhaps he would have been better advised to look for the religious dimension within secular Jewish life rather than to seek ways, as he advocates, of excluding secular Jews from the synagogue.

Borowitz proves weakest when expounding his own theology. It is another version of covenant theology, but it rests on a simplistic view of both the human predicament and the Jewish situation. The core of Borowitz' thought is exceedingly simple. He tells us: "God needs Jews. He still uses Jews for his purposes and they should continue to work and wait for him." Ignoring the insights of the social sciences, Borowitz asserts: ". . . the Jews have lived; more, they have lived in holiness." Ignoring Auschwitz, Borowitz affirms: "The Jew knows that God keeps the Jewish people alive. He is the Master of their destiny. . . . His providence guides human history surely though inscrutably. His help is the source of Jewish strength, and his support the ultimate basis of Jewish dedication."

Although I subscribe to none of these propositions, I am convinced that they can be defended with sophistication and insight. What is lacking in Borowitz' current presentation is evidence of his awareness of how profoundly difficult the believer's vocation is. Each of these theological propositions can only be affirmed in passion and agony. Perhaps his forthcoming works will reveal the extent to which Borowitz has actually confronted the inner problematics of faith. In his current work, his affirmations seem too facile, too self-assured. There is no faith without some mark of inner crucifixion, to use a Christian metaphor.

Perhaps the most disappointing chapter in the book is "Against Christian Neo-Orthodoxy." Borowitz rejects Neo-Orthodoxy's stress on the sinfulness of man. He recalls that about twenty years ago Irving Kristol criticized American Jewish thinkers for their relative indifference to the problem of sin. He found great relevance in Neo-Orthodoxy's concern

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with human sinfulness. Then as now most Jewish thinkers maintained that man has the capacity to know the righteous deed and to perform it. Kristol insisted that men may do evil in the very process of intending or even doing the good. Certainly after Auschwitz, Kristol's admonition was hardly unreasonable. Nevertheless he has been largely ignored by mainstream Jewish thinkers. Perhaps Jews have suffered so many indignities in their history that most Jewish religious thinkers find it difficult to confront realistically the problem of human evil. Borowitz continues this tradition. He rejects what he calls "the theology of sin." He insists that the Jew is concerned "not with a sense of man's helplessness before the evil consequences of his well-intentioned behavior or . . . the powerlessness of his will before his own evil inclinations, but rather with . . . an irreplaceable faith in man's capacity to know the righteous act and to accomplish it successfully" (italics mine). Perhaps the greatest limitation in Borowitz' theology is that he is so preoccupied with seeking to know, interpret, and fulfill God's covenant that he seems to have done very little looking into himself. For most men, such an inward gaze seldom yields great confidence in the human capacity to know and do the righteous act successfully. After all that Jews and Christians, black men and white, have been through in our time, Borowitz' facile assurances sound a little strange.

Richard L. Rubenstein
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania