Creating an Ethical Jewish Life: A Practical Introduction to Classic Teachings on How to Be a Jew

By Byron L .Sherwin and Seymour, Cohen

The classic texts of Jewish ethical literature—works little known to most of us—now available for personal study. This one-of-a-kind book brings Jewish ethical literature from ancient and medieval worlds straight into our twenty-first-century lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Dec 4, 2000
• ISBN: 9781580237673

Byron L .Sherwin

Dr. Byron L. Sherwin (z"l), a leading scholar in Jewish theology, served for over forty years as professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism at Chicago's Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. He is the author of twenty-five books and over 150 articles, including In Partnership with God: Contemporary Jewish Law and Ethics; Why Be Good? and Jewish Ethics for the 21st Century. Active in international Jewish communal affairs and interfaith relations, Rabbi Sherwin was the first recipient of the "Man of Reconciliation" award from the Polish Council of Christians and Jews.

Book preview

Creating an

Ethical Jewish Life

Creating an

Ethical Jewish Life

A Practical Introduction

to Classic Teachings

on How to Be a Jew

Byron L. Sherwin

Seymour J. Cohen

For

Naomi Greenberg Cohen

and

Judith Schwartz Sherwin

Loving Partners and Devoted Friends

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Life as Art Form—An Invitation to Jewish Ethical Values and Literature

Part I

GOD

  1.  How to Believe in God

  2.  How to Thank God

  3.  How to Love God

  4.  How to Study the Torah

  5.  How to Repent

Part II

THE SELF

  6.  How to Deal with the Ego

  7.  How to Be Wise

  8.  How to Be Healthy

  9.  How to Employ Wealth

10.  How to Die

Part III

THE SELF AND OTHERS

11.  How to Behave Sexually

12.  How to Treat One’s Parents

13.  How to Parent

14.  How to Speak about Another

15.  How to Be Philanthropic

Endnotes

References

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Authors

Copyright

Also Available

About Jewish Lights

Sign Up for Email Updates

Send Us Your Feedback

Preface

This book has two goals: to introduce the major works and genre of Jewish ethical literature and to present some of that literature’s fundamental concerns. While the texts cited and the ideas discussed in the following pages are of historical and conceptual interest, they were neither composed, nor were they formulated, for the intellectually curious. Rather, their intention is to offer a road map for the individual committed to the creation of the supreme art form—one’s own life.

As this work has two goals, it also has two authors/editors: Byron L. Sherwin and Seymour J. Cohen. The conceptual organization of this volume was conceived by Seymour J. Cohen, who over many years has been engaged in the translation of classical works of Jewish ethical literature into English. Cohen’s intention has been to provide the English reader access to the treasure-trove of Jewish ethical literature (i.e., to its most significant works and to its most compelling ideas). Besides giving form and direction to this volume, Cohen also contributed to Chapters 3, 9, 11, and 14. The balance of this work has been written and edited by me, except, of course, the excerpts from classical Jewish ethical literature that accompany each chapter. These excerpts were carefully chosen to introduce the reader to the breadth, depth, and variety of literary genre that characterize Jewish ethical literature. Additional discussion regarding the structure of this book is found at the end of the introduction.

One of the prominent teachings of Jewish ethics is the obligation of gratitude. Seymour Cohen and I would be remiss were we not to express gratitude to a number of individuals and organizations.

Profound thanks are due to the late David S. Maikov for helping to fund some of the research and writing costs related to the preparation of this work for publication. Deep thanks are also due to Rosaline Cohn and to the Cohn Scholars Fund of Spertus College of Judaica for their financial support for research-related costs.

My proficient and conscientious secretary, Pam Spitzner, and Seymour Cohen’s steadfast and thorough secretary, Ingrid Hernandez, worked diligently and felicitously to prepare this manuscript for publication. Our families, especially our wives, Naomi Cohen and Judith Sherwin, deserve our immense gratitude for their forbearance and for their encouragement in the composition of this work. Seymour Cohen and I acknowledge and are grateful for permission to reprint excerpts from previously published materials.

I would be remiss were I not also to express my profound gratitude to my partner in this work, Seymour J. Cohen. Since my arrival in Chicago in 1970, he has been a faithful friend, colleague, and advisor. He introduced me to my wife Judith, and he has continuously been preoccupied with our well-being. During times of despair and professional difficulties, he has been a source of encouragement and help.

Finally, some technical points require elucidation. In a number of excerpted works, I have taken the liberty of altering the English style to make it more consonant with contemporary English usage. To avoid confusion, citations in excerpted texts from biblical and rabbinic sources have been standardized. Similarly, transliterations from those texts have also been standardized. The form of transliteration used is my own and should be of help both to the Hebrew and the non-Hebrew reader. A bibliography is provided at the end of the book to record works cited in its pages.

Byron L. Sherwin

Chicago, Illinois

Introduction

Life as Art Form—An Invitation to Jewish Ethical Values and Literature

The works that comprise Jewish ethical literature are self-help manuals in the art form of life. Their primary goal is not to inform, but to transform their readers. Their agenda addresses the most ultimate and the most intimate problems of human experience. They deal with the nature and expression of basic human emotions such as joy and love, anger and envy. They circumscribe and prescribe fundamental humane values such as humility and compassion. They address visceral human drives such as acquisitiveness and lust. They discuss and analyze social issues such as interpersonal communication and the employment of wealth. They confront perennially omnipresent human problems such as how to maintain integrity and how to retain dignity. They struggle to discern the purpose and meaning of human existence and to draw road maps toward their attainment. No human emotion, no human conflict, no moral problem eludes their grasp.

Rather than demonstrating how to accumulate wealth for oneself, Jewish ethical literature deals with how wealth may be employed for the benefit of others. Rather than offering strategies on how to manipulate others to do one’s will, it focuses on how best to live a life correlative with the divine will. Rather than teaching one how to deliver a speech, it is preoccupied with how to speak without harming others by one’s speech. Rather than offering ways of improving sexual technique, it formulates ways of enhancing love.

While old, the texts that comprise Jewish ethical literature are not obsolete. The questions they pose, the wisdom they impart, and the traditions they evoke often surprise their readers with unanticipated contemporaneity. While conditions of daily human life have changed since the time of their composition, the human condition has not substantially changed. The problems that vexed and challenged their authors continue to vex and to perplex us today.

For the authors of the classics of Jewish ethical literature, human existence is too precarious, life is too fragile, not to be taken with the utmost seriousness. In painting the portrait that is one’s own life, a single reckless stroke can mar the entire work. Commenting on the verse in Ecclesiastes (9:8), Let your garments be always white; let not oil be lacking on your head, a hasidic master observed, A person should view himself as being dressed in white silken garments with a pitcher of oil on his head, walking a tightrope. A single wrong small step and he becomes soiled; a single irretrievable step and he falls into the abyss below.¹

In his famous treatise, Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote, When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. An identical statement might have been penned by any of the authors of any one of the works of Jewish ethical literature. Like Thomas Paine, they knew that building one’s life as a work of art is the product of continuous, deliberate choice and unstinting personal effort. In this regard, Israel Salanter, founder of the nineteenth-century Musar movement, compared continuous moral development to the flight of a bird. Once a bird stops exerting effort to fly, once a bird ceases flapping its wings, it falls. Similarly, Salanter observed that moral development, building one’s life as a work of art, requires constant exertion, study, reflection, and practice.²

In the art of living, each individual is an apprentice. As Moses Maimonides said, It is impossible for a person to be endowed by nature from birth with either virtue or vice, just as it is impossible that one should be skilled by nature in a particular art.³ Life is an apprenticeship during which one has the opportunity to create the ultimate art form—one’s own life.

According to Maimonides, the quest for human meaning, moral virtue, and artful existence cannot be acquired by proxy. Maimonides interpreted the well-known talmudic adage If I am not for myself, who will be for me? to mean that no one but one’s own self can create the work of art that is one’s own self.⁴ Self-potential may only be realized by means of what the hasidic master Mendel of Kotsk called arbiten auf sich—working on oneself.⁵

The soul is a seed implanted within each of us. Each person is like a tree that may choose whether to bring forth its own fruit. At life’s end, one may return a diminished form of what one received, or more than one received, at life’s beginning. One has the choice to corrode or to create, to pollute or to improve, what one initially had been granted.⁶

While little Jewish genius was invested throughout the ages to create works of fine art, much Jewish genius and effort were expended on the endeavor to create lives that were works of art. Rather than concentrating on things of beauty, Jewish teachings focused on the creation of people of beauty. The primary goal was not physical prowess, or comely appearance, or even commercial success. Rather, the goal was to become a shainer yid—a beautiful Jew—to create one’s life as a work of art.⁷

The Jewish people produced no edifices to rival Notre Dame, no paintings like those of Michelangelo or Raphael. The particular art form cultivated by the Jews was not architecture, painting, or sculpture, but human existence. The artistic masterpieces of the Jewish people do not hang in any museum. They appear in no tourist’s guidebook. The great works of art that emerge from Jewish history are the lives and teachings of the greatest people it has engendered.

An artist viewing a great painting in a museum may stand in awe, gazing at its beauty, inspired by the artist’s ability and creativity. Similarly, as Solomon Schechter observed, the great saintly souls are lovely to look at just as a great piece of art is.⁸

In Greco-Roman thought, physical beauty was a good toward which one aspired. In Jewish thought, goodness is a form of beauty that one aimed to achieve. For much of secular Western aesthetics, art was a way of life. For Jewish thought, life is a way of art. Greco-Roman art elevated physical beauty over the moral act, how one appears over what one does, ontology over ethics. An example of this distinction between the Greco-Roman and the Jewish views of aesthetics was stated by Josephus in his commentary on 1 Samuel.

According to the biblical text, God sends Samuel to the place of Jesse of Bethlehem to seek out a king for Israel. Samuel sees Jesse’s eldest son, Eliab, and believes him to be God’s intended king. But God says to Samuel (1 Samuel 16:7), Pay no attention to his appearance or to his stature, for I have rejected him. For not as man sees [does God see]; man sees only what is visible, but God sees into the heart. On this verse, Josephus commented and paraphrased: God said to Samuel, ‘You look at this young man’s beauty, thinking none other than him is worthy to be king; but I make not of the kingdom a price for comeliness of body but for virtue of soul, and I seek one who in full measure is distinguished by this, one adorned with piety, justice, fortitude and obedience, qualities whereof beauty of the soul consists.’ ⁹ In this view, beauty is not determined by how one appears but by the deeds one performs. Not bodily appearance, but the values one embodies, is the criterion for determining beauty, goodness, and truth.

Great art is not simply the product of momentary inspiration. The apprentice artist who wishes to create a masterpiece of his or her own cannot rest content with a dazzled gaze at the masterpieces of the past. An apprentice must proceed to study the techniques that the master utilized in the composition of the work being admired. The apprentice must then analyze the masterpiece even more closely, studying the use of color, the subtlety of shade, the employment of lines and shapes. Still not content, the apprentice must compare the masterpiece to other works of the same master artist, or to other works of the same place and time as well as to those of different places and times. All of this is undertaken by the aspirant, with the hope and with the intention of being able to gain some insight and some knowledge to incorporate into his or her own artistic endeavors. But, study and analysis alone cannot suffice. Such study must be supplemented with constant practice. For the apprentice artist, neither talent nor skill, nor study, nor practice are sufficient in and of themselves. Only in concert can they converge to provide the potential for the emergence of a new great work of art.

Similarly, standing awestruck by the spiritual, intellectual, and moral achievements of the great personalities of the past will not suffice for one who desires to shape one’s own life as a work of art. Like the novice artist, such an individual must proceed to study the masterpieces produced in the past in order to distill from them insight and information, wisdom, and inspiration that can be incorporated into the creation of one’s own work of art, which, in this case, is one’s own self. And, as in the case of the aspiring artist, the individual committed to cultivating the art of living cannot be satisfied with a terminal course of study. For such a person, each completion is the prelude to a new beginning; each graduation is a commencement. Continuous study, perpetual practice, and relentless self-development are the necessary ingredients toward the goal of artful living.

According to Scripture, the human being is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Postbiblical Jewish religious literature takes this to mean that one should imitate the ways of God, that one should act in a godly manner, for example, as God is merciful and compassionate, so should human beings be merciful and compassionate.¹⁰ As God is creative, so too should human beings be creative. As God is an artist, so too should human beings be artists.

God’s most superlative artwork is the human being. It is the human task to complete God’s unfinished artistic masterpiece—the human person. Ethics is a way in which one creates life as a work of art. Each of us is an unfinished masterpiece of God. Like a master artist, God leaves completion of His works to His apprentices—to each of us. In a poem written on the occasion of a wedding, the ninth-century Italian Jewish poet, Ammitai ben Shephatiah, writes of God, the ultimate, awesome artist:

A person sketches a form on the wall

decorating it with colors, yellow and red.

Where it is put, there must it remain.

It stays: permanent, transfixed,

whether its foot is gnarled or broken.

It neither speaks, nor sees, nor hears.

But God is an awesome artist:

He can create form within form

perfect and complete in every way,

capable of perception and movement.

In a pregnant woman’s womb

So does He shape the embryo.¹¹

The works that constitute Jewish ethical literature are masterpieces that can be perused for inspiration, studied for information, and consulted for wisdom that can be incorporated in the development of artful living. The masters who composed these works were maestros in the art of life. Blending personal quests with past wisdom, combining individual experience with inherited knowledge, they addressed the ultimate human moral issue, the most intimate personal question: How can I best live the life God has entrusted into my care?

Despite the various literary forms it adapts and the diverse views it represents, Jewish ethical literature coheres around the idea that the crucial challenge to human existence is how to manage the trust of life deposited into each of our hands. Like composers who create different melodies from various configurations of the same notes, these authors articulate a variety of visions of what and of how the individual artwork of life may be configured. However, what they share is the sense of urgency and immediacy of the challenge of initiating the enterprise of spiritual and moral self-development. For these authors, since life is like a blind date with an uncertain future, each moment is considered a summons to begin or to continue the process of self-development.

Hillel said, If not now, when? Commenting on this statement, a medieval Jewish writer observed that Hillel did not say, "If not today, when? but If not now, when? because even today is in doubt whether one will survive or not, for at any instant one can die."¹² Consequently, one cannot wait even a day or two to exert oneself in the pursuit of human fulfillment.¹³ This attitude is similar to that articulated by Benjamin Franklin, who advised, Since you are not sure of a moment, throw not away an hour.

For Jewish tradition, the encounter with the tenuous nature of human life, with the reality of our own mortality, is not meant to be an invitation to morbidity, but a collision with realities that can serve as catalysts for human self-development. Being conscious of human finitude when set against the infinite plenitude of creation causes one to pause to consider how to infuse meaning into the blink of eternity that is each human life. At birth, each human person is issued a passport to transcendence, an invitation to develop one’s own life as a work of art. The disposition of each human life depends on whether one chooses to accept this invitation, to make use of this passport. Jewish ethical literature offers a variety of tour guidebooks for the journey through life.¹⁴

WHAT CONSTITUTES JEWISH ETHICAL LITERATURE?

One may characterize Jewish ethical literature as those works and excerpts of works from classical Jewish religious literature that address the problem of how to create an artful existence.

Unlike other characterizations of Jewish ethical literature that more narrowly circumscribe its perimeters, this approach assigns a wide port of entry to bibliographical candidates seeking inclusion. This approach considers the often sharp division among Jewish ethics, law, philosophy, and mysticism to be largely artificial.¹⁵ While this approach would certainly include ethical treatises per se under its umbrella, it would not exclude extensive selections from Jewish legal codes and responsa that deal with moral issues under its purview. For example, discrete, moral treatises such as Solomon ibn Gabirol’s Improvement of Moral Virtues would merit inclusion, but so would sections of Maimonides’ legal code, the Mishneh Torah, that address undeniably ethical issues, such as Hilkhot De’ot (Laws of Ethical Behavior). Similarly, responsa treating ethical issues, for example, those treating problems in medical ethics, would also qualify for inclusion.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to surgically separate Jewish law and ethics. They are two sides of the same coin. The often-evoked distinction between law as what to do and ethics as how or why to do, simply does not stand up to a careful analysis of the literature.¹⁶ Legal codes and responsa often discuss motivation and attitude, while ethical treatises often prescribe precise behavior. Such a distinction between Jewish law and ethics is often contrived.¹⁷ Furthermore, the often-made claim that many Jewish ethical treatises were composed to challenge and to undermine halakhic authority cannot be supported by the sources. Such treatises simply intend to complement and to strengthen Jewish legal commitment. Rather than existing in opposition, Jewish law and ethics coexist as part of the organic and historical continuity of the Jewish tradition.

Though one may admit the existence of a discrete Jewish philosophical-ethical literature, this should not exclude excerpts of other philosophical or mystical works from the bibliography of Jewish ethical literature.¹⁸ For example, Bahya ibn Pakudah’s Duties of the Heart is justifiably considered a classic of Jewish philosophical-ethical literature despite the fact that large sections of this work deal with metaphysical and not with specifically ethical issues. On the other hand, excerpts on ethics from Jewish philosophical works that deal primarily with metaphysical issues should be included as part of Jewish ethical literature, for example, the short last chapter of Abraham ibn Daud’s Exalted Faith (Ha-Emunah ha-Ramah) entitled Healing the Soul.

As one cannot easily bifurcate Jewish law and Jewish ethics, one cannot clinically separate Jewish theological and Jewish ethical concerns. As a form of theological or religious ethics, Jewish ethics inevitably rests on certain theological premises.¹⁹ It is precisely for this reason that before he can specifically address ethical issues in his Duties of the Heart, Bahya ibn Pakudah must first treat fundamental principles of Jewish theological concern such as the existence and nature of God.

The theological claims that God exists, that His will has been revealed through the Torah, and that human beings have been created in the divine image are premises assumed by discussions of Jewish ethical values, attitudes, and deeds. To address Jewish ethical concerns without reference to their theological underpinnings is to posit conclusions without premises, to state a fallacy. In the edifice of Jewish religious thought, theological premises establish a foundation. Jewish ethics builds upon that foundation.

The insistence that human beings act in a godlike manner, that human moral action imitate the ways of God (imitatio Dei), presumes a prior formulation of the nature of the divine and His preferred actions.²⁰ Jewish theology and Jewish ethics, Jewish theological and Jewish ethical literature, are often too inextricably intertwined to accommodate the neatly imposed, clinically discrete categories of much of contemporary, critical scholarship. An example of how Jewish law, ethics, mysticism, and theology may all be interwoven in a single text may be demonstrated by consideration of the meaning of a phrase found in various kabbalistic texts. This phrase simply identifies the mitzvot and the middot. In Nahmanides’ words, "the mitzvot are the middot."²¹

Mitzvot are the commandments, the laws. By performing the mitzvot, a human being imitates the ways of God. He or she becomes godlike. In medieval Hebrew, middot (singular: middah) has two prominent meanings. One refers to ethical values or to moral qualities of the human soul. The other refers to divine attributes.²² In kabbalistic literature, the term refers specifically to the sefirot, the manifested attributes of God expressed through the emanations or divine potencies.²³

In this view, the laws of the Torah, the ethical values of the Torah, and the divine attributes are conceptually inseparable; they are organically linked. Through observance of God’s commandments, by performance of the moral virtues, one imitates and sustains the divine attributes from which these laws and values originally derive.²⁴

Beginning in the sixteenth century, the quest for the artful life is conceived as having three facets: the relationship of the individual to his or her own self, the relationship of the individual to others, and the relationship of the individual to the divine. In this view, the division between the theological and the ethical is clearly inappropriate. From this perspective, the human-divine relationship is a critical aspect of the artful life, of moral existence. Ethical living requires the cultivation of the moral virtues and of interpersonal relationships, but is incomplete without a relationship with the divine. This approach is encountered in biblical and talmudic commentaries.²⁵ Hence, excerpts from relevant biblical and talmudic commentaries must also be embraced by a bibliography and by a conceptual framework of Jewish ethical literature. The talmudic text that spawned these commentaries is as follows:

Rabbi Judah said: He who wishes to be pious must fulfill the laws of Seder Nezikin [one of the six sections of the Mishnah; it deals with tort law]. But Raba said: [He who wishes to be pious must fulfill] the matters [dealt with in tractate] Avot. Still others said: [He who wishes to be pious must fulfill] matters [dealt with in tractate] Berakhot [that deals with laws of blessings].²⁶

Commenting on this text, Samuel Edels (Maharsha), a leading Polish talmudist of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, wrote:

A person can perform three kinds of pious deeds. These are: good [deeds] to Heaven, and good [deeds] to others, and good [deeds] to oneself. As Rabbi Judah said, one who wishes to be pious must fulfill the laws of Nezikin, for then one will be able to perfect one’s deeds so that one will be good to others. And Raba said to fulfill the matters in Avot, for then one will be able to perfect one’s deeds so that one will be good to oneself in [performing] the moral virtues. Still others said: Fulfill the matters in Berakhot, for then one will be able to perfect oneself so that one will be good to Heaven. Each one of these views reflects a single one of these three varieties of good deeds that one can perform.²⁷

Edels’s commentary to this talmudic passage was anticipated by the sixteenth-century Jewish mystic, Judah Loew of Prague. In his commentary to the Talmud, Loew observed:

The explanation of this [text is] that human perfection has three independent aspects. A person must be complete within himself, complete within his relationship with other people, and he must be complete within his relationship to his Creator, i.e., in matters that relate to his Creator. These three aspects of completion [i.e., perfection] include everything. This matter is explained further in Moses received.²⁸

Loew’s reference to his further elucidation of this matter in Moses received refers to his commentary on the text Moses received found in the Ethics of the Fathers. There, Loew wrote:

Man must achieve the good which is his purpose, thereby justifying his existence, and when his existence has been justified, the whole universe has been justified, since all hinges on man.… Therefore, a person should endeavor to cultivate good qualities. And what makes a person good so that one might say of him: What a fine creature he is? One requirement is that he must be good in relation to himself.… The second category of good is that he be good toward the Lord who created man to serve Him and to do His will. The third category is that he be good to others. For a person does not exist by himself. He exists in fellowship with other people.… A person is not complete until he is completely pious vis-a-vis these three varieties of [human] perfection: with his Creator, with other people, and with himself as well. Then he is completely perfect.²⁹

Thus, both Edels and Loew divide the moral virtues into three kinds: personal virtues, religious virtues, and social virtues. They portray three aspects of moral behavior: the individual’s relation to God, the individual’s relationship to himself or herself, and the individual’s relationship to others.

The structure of this volume follows that suggested by Loew and Edels. Each of the three parts addresses the three areas of Jewish ethical concern, as stated above. Each part consists of five chapters, and each chapter deals with a particular Jewish ethical value addressed by that general area of ethical concern. Each chapter consists of an excerpt from Jewish ethical literature, preceded by a presentation of the ethical issue under discussion in the excerpt, the nature of the work from which the excerpt derives, the genre of Jewish ethical literature it represents (where relevant), and the life and contributions of its author.

In choosing excerpted texts, an effort has been made to offer diversity in terms of literary genre, as well as to include material from works that would be prominently featured in any bibliography of Jewish ethical literature. Each chapter title contains the term how to so as to express the view that the works that comprise Jewish ethical literature are how-to manuals in creating an artful life. By focusing each chapter on an excerpt from an important work and genre of Jewish ethical literature, the texts are provided an opportunity to speak for themselves without an overlay of critical embellishment.

I

God

1

How to Believe in God

Jewish ethics is a form of theological or religious ethics. As such, it rests upon certain theological premises. The most fundamental theological premise is the existence of God. For example, in Bahya ibn Pakudah’s Duties of the Heart—one of the mainstays of Jewish ethical literature—the author reports that he searched for a concept that serves as the pillar of Jewish ethics and theology. He found this in the idea of the existence of one God who created the universe. In Bahya’s words, When I searched for the most important pillar of our religion and the main root, I found this basic principle in the pure assertion of the unity of our Creator. This is the first article of the Torah. This assertion is the chief truth of our religion.¹ Similarly, Moses Maimonides in his legal code, the Mishneh Torah, describes the belief in God’s existence as the basis of all theology and philosophy; indeed, of all knowledge. Maimonides wrote, The basic principle of all basic principles and the pillar of all knowledge is to recognize that there is a First Being [i.e., God] who brought everything into being.²

Bahya and Maimonides affirm Judaism as a theistic faith, grounded in the claim that God is; that the world is because God is; that there is evidence of design, purpose, and meaning in the world and in human existence; that this design and purpose are the compositions of a Designer; and that moral norms that provide human life with meaning and purpose inhere in the Designer (i.e., God).³

Judaism affirms a partisan view of reality, while tenaciously rejecting alternative views that deny the existence of God, that disclaim a purposeful creation, and that rebuff the affirmation that human existence has intrinsic meaning. Like the British essayist G. K. Chesterton, Judaism holds that one who can believe in nothing, can believe in anything. In Jewish religious thought, the alternative to the theistic view is to affirm the existence of the universe as a sheer, unexplained brute fact, to posit either that the universe and human life have no intrinsic purpose or that such purpose is either merely apparent or a human contrivance, that moral norms inhere only in the morally precarious realm of human invention, and that the religious experience of humankind throughout the ages is but one grand delusion. In the final analysis, the theist and the nontheist disagree about more than the issue of whether or not God exists. They are divided by fundamentally different philosophies of existence.

For the theist, a reasonable means of explaining how and why we are here and what we ought to do here is available. For the nontheist, the burdens of explaining how and why we are here, and what the purpose of our being here is, remain open questions. The theist affirms meaning, purpose, and the presence of road maps for creating the artful life, while the nontheist must discover and build a life upon his or her own fabrications.

Neither the theist nor the nontheist can prove the truth of his or her position. But, the theist offers a way of explaining the universe and the human place in it. The nontheist may discard the theist’s position, may reject the theist’s premises and conclusions. Nevertheless, the nontheist must do more than simply debunk the theist’s view. The nontheist must establish a basis for explaining how the universe came to be, from where human purpose may be derived, and how moral norms might be discerned. For the theist, the ultimate question is how to live a life consistent with the Creator’s purpose, how to create an artful existence from the life entrusted into his or her care. The nontheist, on the other hand, might be led to affirming with the French existentialist Albert Camus that, there is but one major philosophical problem and that is whether or not to commit suicide.⁴ The nontheist might be led to Macbeth’s view that Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.⁵

For the theist, there is intrinsic meaning in human existence precisely because there is a God who created the world with purpose and meaning. For the nontheist, human meaning, like human life, indeed, like the universe itself, may be a product of chance, an accident waiting to happen. In this regard, Bahya observes that if we read a beautifully written poem, we cannot assume that it came to be as the result of ink spilled by accident onto a sheet of paper, conveniently situated nearby. Instead, we conclude from reading the manuscript that it has an author. Similarly, we conclude that the universe has an Author, that its composition expresses the Author, and that the Author had a purpose in composing it.⁶ In a similar vein, the twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, To believe in God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.⁷

For the nontheist, an autonomous basis for morality must be affirmed for moral behavior to be justified. For the theist, the existence of God serves as the ultimate source of and justification for moral behavior. For example, a rabbinic text interprets the well-known verse from Leviticus (19:18)—You should love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord—to mean: "You should love your neighbor as yourself because I am the Lord, because I [God] have created him."⁸

Different expressions of Jewish religious thought offer a variety of understandings of the basis for belief in God. For example, the medieval Jewish philosophical tradition adapted a largely cognitive approach to belief in God. Many of its advocates attempted to demonstrate belief in God on the basis of logic and reason. According to Bahya, for example, faith without reason, belief devoid of cognitive understanding, is incomplete and is unworthy of the truly enlightened believer. For Bahya, faith grounded in tradition alone, or in an irrational leap of faith, is akin to the blind leading the blind. Rather, one must look before one leaps. According to Bahya, faith through reason grants sight to the blind.⁹ Faith without reason is not true belief.

The medieval Jewish philosophers were not trying to demonstrate the existence of God from scratch. Instead, they were attempting to provide a rational and logical demonstration for that which they already believed. For these philosophers, faith unaccompanied by reasonable belief is not real faith at all. It is merely a matter of personal preference. However, for the majority of Jewish religious thinkers, to demonstrate that which is already believed is deemed superfluous.¹⁰ For many Jewish thinkers who affirmed God as the ultimate reality, demonstrating the existence of God is as unnecessary as a lover having to prove the existence of his beloved. Or, as the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard observed: What can be more impertinent than to interrupt an audience with an enthroned King to debate the King’s existence?

Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, the dominant form of Jewish belief in God has been belief rooted in a personal commitment, rather than in the affirmation of intellectual propositions. Neither biblical nor rabbinic theology attempt to adduce any demonstrations for the existence of God. Most ancient and medieval Jewish thinkers posited faith in God based on revelation as transmitted by tradition. In the following excerpts, Judah Ha-Levi articulates this approach. Like other advocates of this view, Ha-Levi finds revelation, tradition, and personal commitment to be more reliable foundations for faith in God than reason alone. Reason, in this view, is a tool that can examine the validity of an argument but is incapable of establishing the validity of the premises of an argument. God, who transcends the world, certainly transcends the categories of reason and logic into which a philosopher may attempt to encapsulate Him. In the final analysis, cognitive belief in God is tenuous. Just as such belief can be established on the basis of philosophical demonstrations, so it can be eroded or even dispelled by philosophical demonstrations. Grounding faith in cognitive belief alone can lead to a rejection of the very faith and life-style cognitive belief is invoked to justify and to defend.¹¹

The cognitive approach leads to a rational confirmation of the proposition that God exists. But, what is of greater import to the Jewish religious thinker is the relationship between belief and action. In this view, intellectual affirmation of theological propositions constitutes an incomplete expression of faith, since it does not necessarily engender moral action. What is more important is belief as a result of a personal decision, as an expression of the moral will. In Nahmanides’ words, Faith in the existence of God, which He demonstrated to us with signs, with miracles, and through revelation, is the essence and the origin from which the commandments derive.¹² From this perspective, how one lives, rather than the cogency of the propositions one affirms, offers a validation or a refutation of one’s stated personal commitments.

The dominant approach to religious belief in Judaism is not exclusively cognitive but experiential. From this perspective, there are two major varieties of experience: inherited experience (i.e., tradition), and personal experience. What binds these two together is memory. In Judaism, faith is grounded in memory. Hebrew Scripture does not command belief in God, but enjoins us to remember experiences of the divine.

Belief in God is not simply a personal endeavor. It is an effort accumulated over the centuries; it is the achievement of a continuity of the ages. Jewish belief is a recollection of events in the life of the Jewish people. Not abstract ideas, but memory of concrete events