Summary: Judaism, the religion of the people Israel, is by nature "political." Yet, in the modern period this seemingly self-evident truth is both called into question and compellingly rediscovered in the historic events of revolution, emancipation, persecution, destruction, and national rebirth. -- This conference explored the political dimension of Judaism from the perspectives of major modern Jewish philosophers, such as Baruch de Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rosenzweig. Major contemporary scholars from the US and abroad addressed questions of fundamental concern to political philosophy, monotheistic faith, and Jewish law.

The Conference in Detail

This conference explored the political dimensions of modern Jewish thought and philosophy. Modern Jewish Thought is here defined as the period in the Western Jewish intellectual experience that begins with Benedict de Spinoza (17th century) and reaches into the contemporary era. The philosophical thinkers whose work was considered range from Spinoza to the 18th-century Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, the 19th-century Hegelians (e.g., Samuel Hirsch), the Schellingian Salomon Formstecher, and the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen, to the 20th-century thinkers Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Emil Fackenheim, and Emmanuel Levinas. On the side of halakhically orthodox figures there is likewise a range of positions to be taken into account especially regarding their respective attitudes towards Zionism.

The political dimensions of modern Jewish thought can be conceived of as follows.

1. Judaism as the religion of the people Israel is by nature "political." However, the differentiation of Judaism into a political and a religious dimension is typically modern. From the outset, Torah was the constitution of a Hebrew commonwealth and the prophetic tradition emphasized political redemption. The "cultural memory" (Assmann 1992) of classical, or rabbinic, Judaism perpetuated the ancient political functions and hopes under the condition of foreign rule and exile, thus providing justification to Jewish legal autonomy and cultural continuity.

2. Medieval and early modern Europe inherited the principle unity of state and church from the political systems of antiquity, not least among them the Roman Empire. Yet the authority and legitimacy of government was derived from the Bible. Emancipation of the state from the authority of religion was associated with criticism of the Bible, especially (for reasons of rhetorics and fear of censorship, or for reasons of plausibility and evidence) with critique of the Old Testament. Judaism and Jews continued to serve as the model for the evil Christianity was to overcome. Because of this rhetorical and argumentative structure which was carried over from the Middle Ages into the effort of modernization, anti-semitism is central rather than marginal in the process of Elightenment and emancipation.

3. Political modernity is associated with a fundamental crisis in the traditional Western synthesis of religion and politics, a crisis that affected not only the Christian world but the self-definition of the Jews within the Christian world. The "Jewish question" was at the heart of Europen debates about the conundrums of modern nation building. But it was a question Jews and Jewish philosophers had to raise for themselves as well. Participation in a state based on religious toleration was something to aspire to. It meant ecomonic opportunity as well as intellectual freedom, a situation as unprecented and utopian to Jews as it was to the majority of Christians. Such participation, however, meant a dismantling of the Ghetto from the inside. Jewish Philosophy served the political task of sustaining Jews and Judaism while dismantling the support of traditional intellectual, ritual, and other cultural separations between Judaism and the Gentile world.

4. The story of rebuilding Judaism from a modern philosophical and historical perspective has been unfolding in two stages which have crystallized into two distinct modes of Jewish political existence. The philosophical embrace of emancipation de-politicized Judaism and reinvented it as a religion. This has provided the diasporatic existence of the Jews with a new reason d'etre. In reaction to this development and in reaction to the Christian national reaction to Jewish assimilation, a Jewish "renaissance" in the early 20th-century provided the cultural conditions for a reaffirmation of Jewish nationalism. Today, the diasporah and the State of Israel consitute distinct modes of Jewish political existence in need of philosophical reflection.

For the above reasons, modern Jewish thinkers of all stripes have addressed the fundamental problems of social and political organization, problems affecting Jews and non-Jews alike and reflecting on the larger issues of state, constitution, law, religion, identity, etc. Since the days of Spinoza, whose interest was not a defense of Judaism but of the freedom of philosophical thought, Jewish thought no less but differently positioned than general (i.e., Christian and post-Christian) philosophical thought was challenged to address the notions of intellectual freedom, civic liberty, and moral autonomy in the context of a religious constitution characterized as "revealed legislation." One of the underlying political themes of modern Jewish thought has been the effort to reconcile a seemingly heteronomous religious tradition with the demands of civic equality in the nation state. In this manner, Jewish thought can be interpreted as a harbinger of the current debates on multiculturalism and multi-ethny in the pluralistic state. Other matters at stake have been definitions of religion in the modern sense, the ideal and reality of the separation between church and state, and the relation between religious tradition and political ideology. Finally, political Zionism has become a challenge to earlier modes of resolving the tension between national and religious tradition in Judaism, a challenge that continues to haunt all diasporatic modes of Jewish political reasoning.

The topic of political dimensions in modern Jewish thought is important also in light of current debates about category formation in the study of religion. More specifically, the emphasis on action over dogma and the historical dimension of Jewish "cultural memory" have put Judaism in tension with models of a religion that were based on the Christian paradigm. The study of political dimensions in modern Jewish thought contributes to the ongoing exploration of the tension between self-definition and pressures to conform and reinvent Judaism after the model of a spiritual and a-historical religion.

The Jewish legal and philosophical tradition is concerned with determining the rational significance of a revealed legislation. It has therefore aptly been called a "Platonic" tradition, namely in that the political dimension of the laws is intricately linked with the possible epistemological and ethical implications of the Torah. Thus, this conference also concerns a modernization of Platonic modes of philosophizing out of the sources of Judaism.

Program

Oct. 26 (Sunday)
School of Education Auditorium, Room 130
605 Commonwealth Ave

2 - 3 pm

Keynote address:
Monotheism and Liberalism
Lenn E. Goodman

Respondent: Hillel Levine

3:30-6:00pm

Classical Jewish Thought and the Challenge of Political Modernity

Steven Smith: Spinoza, Liberalism, the Jewish Question
Allan Arkush: Mendelssohn's Domestication of Spinoza's Political Thought
Michael Zank: Germanism, Judaism, and the Rediscovery of the
Political Dimension in Jewish Thought: The Case of Hermann Cohen

Chair: Aaron Garrett (Boston University)

Reception and Dinner

8:00pm

Political Dimensions of Monotheism
Ze'ev Levi (Haifa University)

Respondent: Bishop Krister Stendahl (Dean emeritus, Harvard Divinity School)

Monday, Oct. 27

School of Management, Case Room 302

595 Commonwealth Ave

9am

Utopianism, Anti-Semitism, and Zionism

Richard Landes: The Logic of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Ken Koltun-Fromm: Moses Hess' "return" to Judaism: Problems in Jewish National and Religious Identity
Yirmiyahu Yovel: Judaism and the Jewish State

Chair: Steven T. Katz

12:00 Lunch

1:30pm

Halakhah, Ethics, & Political Philosophy

Alan Mittleman: Jewish Political Thought: Sources and Characteristics
Richard Cohen: Rosenzweig and Levinas on War
Jacob Meskin: The Question of the Polis in Jewish Tradition and Modern Jewish Philosophy
Respondent: Adam Seligman
Chair: Jay Harris (Harvard University)

List of Participants

Allan Arkush (Judaic Studies, Binghamton University)
Richard Cohen (Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte)
Aaron Garrett (Philosophy, Boston University)
Lenn Goodman (Vanderbilt University)
Jay Harris (Judaic Studies, Harvard University)
Steven T. Katz (Religion, Boston University)
Kenneth Koltun-Fromm (Judaic Studies, Haverford College)
Richard Landes (History, Boston University)
Zeev Levy (Philosophy, Haifa University)
Jacob Meskin (Religion, Rutgers University)
Alan Mittleman (Religion, Muhlenberg College)
Adam Seligman (Sociology, Boston University)
Steven Smith (Political Science, Yale University)
Krister Stendahl (Dean emeritus, Divinity School, Harvard University)
Yirmiyahu Yovel (Philosophy, Hebrew University Jerusalem and New School of Social Research, New York)
Michael Zank (Religion, Boston University)

Major funding for this conference has been provided by the
Humanities Foundation,
the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences,
and the Jewish Cultural Endowment at Boston University.

Conference Organization:
Uta Low
Contact:
Center for Judaic Studies
Boston University
Tel: (617)353-8096
email: ulow@bu.edu

Conference planning and funding investigation:
Dr. Michael Zank
Assistant Professor of Religion
Department of Religion
Boston University
745 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, MA. 02215
Tel: (617) 353-4434
Fax: (617) 353-5441

or

Michael Zank (Boston University)

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