Franks_Sinai Since Spinoza

8/8/2019 Franks_Sinai Since Spinoza

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/frankssinai-since-spinoza 1/22

SINAI SINCE SPINOZA: REFLECTIONS ON REVELATION

IN MODERN JEWISH THOUGHT

Paul Franks

University of Toronto, Canada

Spinoza (1632–1677 CE) was the first to understand that modern phi-

losophy, with its new conception of nature, issued an enormous chal-

lenge to Judaism as it had been interpreted in the Jewish philosophical

tradition, with which he was intimately familiar. Here I will bring this

challenge into focus by thematizing the role of Sinai in some strands

of Jewish philosophy. Some brief remarks on the linkage between Sinai

and nature in the Maimonidean tradition well-known to Spinoza will

enable me to characterize the challenge of modernity and to show

both that Mendelssohn’s pioneering response was problematic, and

that it contained the seeds of two contrasting approaches developed

by twentieth century Jewish thinkers.

1. Before Spinoza

The history of Jewish philosophy is intertwined with the history of

translations of the Hebrew Bible and, if one wants to locate the origin of

Jewish philosophy, one could do no better than to name the translation

of the Septuagint in Hellenistic Egypt. This much-storied event gave

rise to the earliest known Jewish philosophical conversation: a discus-

sion, preserved by Eusebius, about anthropomorphic characterizations

of God, between the Hellenistic king Ptolemy and a Jewish philosopher

named Aristobulus.1 More pertinent to my topic here, however, is the

Septuagint’s fateful translation of “Torah” as “nomos.” As has been noted

before, “didache” was an available alternative, yet “nomos” was used 196

times out of 220.2 Whatever the motivation for this choice, the result

1 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 8.10.1–5, translated by A. Y. Collins in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (ed. J. H. Charlesworth; 2 vols; Garden City, NY: Doubleday,1985), 2.837–838.

2 See T. Muraoka, “A Japanese studying an ancient Greek translation of the HebrewBible at Göttingen.” Online: http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/de/netzwerk/ veranstalt/hoersaal/doc/muraoka.pdf.

najman_f17_333-354.indd 333najman_f17_333-354.indd 333 8/28/2008 11:02:46 AM8/28/2008 11:02:46 AM



334 paul franks

was to present Torah primarily as the legally compulsory norm of a

Jewish polity—a move that would have rich and long-lasting implica-

tions for Jewish philosophy and for Judaism.3

It was of crucial importance that this nomos, unlike any other, was

given by the creator of nature. But the connection could be made

in several, significantly distinct ways. For Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20

BCE–50 CE), who drew on Stoicism among other resources, Torah

was nomos physeos.4 For Maimonides (1138–1204 CE), however, it was

crucial that, while nature was divinely established in its regularity, cre-

ation did not of itself give rise to any rule—or, at least, to any suf ficient

rule—of human life. Human beings were unique in being composedboth of matter and of a form—the intellect—that could in principle

become separate from matter, and this gave rise to a problem of indi-

vidual and collective governance that was essentially not natural but rather

political .5 It was a problem best addressed by a law whose origin was

divine. This was in part because such a law, while not natural, could

imitate the divine governance of nature. If, for Maimonides, Torah was

not natural law, then it was nevertheless quasi-natural : a sort of second

nature stemming from the creator of first nature.

3 See James Kugel, “Some Unanticipated Consequences,” in this volume, 1:

“Rabbinic Judaism, it almost goes without saying, is a religion of laws . . . How did all thiscome about?” On nomos, see Kugel, 7. In his broad-ranging and fascinating discussionof the development of the idea of a covenant and of the prescriptive character of prac-tices and figures, however, Kugel does not address the question of how this prescriptivecharacter came to be conceptualized as specifically that of law.

4 See Hindy Najman, “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law, ” SPhilo 11 (1999): 55–73; “A Written Copy of the Law of Nature: An Unthinkable Paradox?”SPhilo 15 (2003): 51–6. On Torah as law and its connection to nature in Josephus, seeZuleika Rodgers, “Josephus’ ‘Theokratia,’ ” in this volume, 129–47.

5 Thus Adam and Eve misunderstand the serpent’s promise because of the ambigu-ity of the Hebrew word “elohim.” Whereas they thought that, if they ate the forbiddenfruit, they would become “as gods,” they would in fact become “as judges.” See MosesMaimonides, Guide of the Perplexed (2 vols; trans. Shlomo Pines; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), I, ch. 2, 25. In general, Maimonides follows the Aristotelian viewthat moral and political judgments are conventional. He uses no term signifying naturallaw. However, as Kraemer has pointed out, it is possible to see natural law as implicit inMaimonides’ thinking in two ways: he never excludes the possibility that some detailsof conventional law may be rationally required for any well-ordered society; and heasserts that there is an inborn disposition to do what is right, independently of pro-phetic instruction. See Joel L. Kraemer, “Naturalism and Universalism in Maimonides’Thought,” in Meah Shearim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of IsadoreTwersky (ed. E. Fleischer et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 57, 59. Nevertheless, itremains the case that, for Maimonides, whatever norms of human life result from cre-ation do not suf fice to solve the problems of human life, which require a law that is notnatural, but political and indeed revealed.




sinai since spinoza 335

Thus the education that Moses needed and requested in order to

govern a people who could return to idolatry so quickly after the

wonders of Sinai, was an education in physics. When Moses asked

to be shown God’s ways, (Exodus 33:13) his point was that he had to

contend with “a people for the government of which I need to perform

actions that I must seek to make similar to Thy actions in governing

them.”6 And when God responded by causing “all My goodness” to

pass before Moses (Exodus 33:19), what Moses came to understand

were the divine actions—that is, the nature that God had created and

continued to govern, which God had found to be “very good.” 7 (Gen-

esis 1:31) Thus, Maimonides emphasized the extent to which Mosaicgovernance imitated the divine governance of nature:

If you consider the divine actions—I mean to say the natural actions—thedeity’s wily graciousness and wisdom, as shown in the creation of living beings, in the gradation of the motions of the limbs, and in the proximityof some of the latter to others, will through them become clear to you.Similarly His wisdom and wily graciousness, as shown in the gradual suc-cession of the various states of the whole individual, will become clear to

you . . . Many things in our Law are due to something similar to this verygovernance on the part of Him who governs, may He be glorified andexalted. For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impos-sible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of aban-doning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. And therefore God sent

Moses our Master to make out of us a kingdom of priests and a holy nation . . .8

In general, although the Torah was not, for Maimonides, the law of

nature, nevertheless, “the Law always tends to assimilate itself to nature,

perfecting the natural matters in a certain respect.”9

What was the role of Sinai within this conception of Judaism? It was

the event that manifested the identity of (1) the creator of nature, (2) the

giver of natural or quasi-natural law, and (3) the covenantal partner who

intervenes in history to bring Israel out of Egyptian servitude. On the

one hand, the tie between revelation and creation was essential, for the

revealed law had to be either natural or quasi-natural, and such a law

could only originate with the creator. On the other hand, the tie between

revelation and covenantal history was no less important, for although

6 Maimonides, Guide, I, ch. 54, 125.7 Maimonides, Guide, I, ch. 54, 124.8 Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 32, 25–6.9 Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 43, 571.




336 paul franks

the law was of significance for all human beings, it was nevertheless

the law of Israel in particular. This duality was reflected in the con-

tent of the Decalogue: the first two commandments were concerned

with God’s existence and oneness, which were knowable through a

speculation on nature that was universally accessible; the remainder

“belong to the class of generally accepted opinions and those adopted

in virtue of tradition, not to the class of intellecta,” and were directly

communicated to Moses the prophet alone, who communicated them

in turn to Israel.10 Since the Torah was the uniquely quasi-natural law,

it was important to emphasize that Sinai was a unique event: “nothing

like it happened before and will not happen after.”11

2. Spinoza and the Advent of Modernity

Spinoza understood with great clarity the importance of the reconcep-

tion of nature articulated in the project of modern physics, and he fol-

lowed what he took to be the radical implications of this reconception

with unparalleled consistency and forthrightness. Among these impli-

cations were consequences for Judaism, and in particular for Judaism

as interpreted by Maimonides, consequences from which Spinoza did

not shy away.

As Spinoza emphasized, the new physics was supposed to employmathematics in order to grasp necessary truths about extended things,

giving rise to exceptionless generalizations. Although some modern

philosophers spoke of these truths as laws of nature, Spinoza saw that

this locution was problematic and potentially confusing:

The word “law,” taken in its absolute sense, means that according towhich each individual thing—either all in general or those of the samekind—act in one and the same fixed and determinate manner, this man-ner depending either on Nature’s necessity or on human will. A law whichdepends on Nature’s necessity [e.g., that all bodies colliding with smallerbodies lose as much of their own motion as they impart to other bodies]is one which necessarily follows from the very nature of the thing, that is,

its definition; a law which depends on human will, and which could moreproperly be termed a statute [ ius ], is one which men ordain for themselves

10 Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 33, 364.11 Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 33, 366.





and for others with a view to making life more secure and more conve-nient, or for other reasons.12

In other words, it was essential that laws of nature be exceptionless,

or else they would not be laws of nature in the modern sense; but it

was equally essential that laws depending on human will should admit

exceptions, otherwise they would not be laws in the relevant sense of

regulating human life. To avoid confusion, Spinoza suggested that we

should be clear about which sense of the term “law” is primary:

Still, it seems to be by analogy that the word “law” is applied to naturalphenomena, and ordinarily “law” is used to mean simply a commandwhich men can either obey or disobey, inasmuch as it restricts the totalrange of human power within set limits and demands nothing that isbeyond the capacity of that power. So it seems more fitting that law shouldbe defined in its narrower sense, that is, as a rule of life which man pre-scribes for himself or for others for some purpose.13

Note that laws in the strict sense concern rules that have purposes. In con-

trast, as Spinoza insisted, following Descartes, the modern conception

of nature excluded the notion of purpose from physics altogether.14

It follows, as Spinoza noted, that nature as reconceived by modern

philosophy could offer no ethical or political guidance whatsoever for

human life: “Whatever an individual thing does by the laws of its own

nature, it does with sovereign right, inasmuch as it acts as determinedby Nature, and can do no other.”15 Since the laws of a thing’s nature

were exceptionless, nothing could count as transgressing those laws.

Consequently, the laws of human nature called for no particular actions

or arrangements rather than any other.

It is important to note that this potential for confusion existed because

of the advent of the modern reconception of nature. Aristotelian phys-

ics, for example, articulated a conception of nature that fits more neatly

with the idea of law. According to Aristotle, physics did not deal with

what is always and by necessity, but with what is for the most part.

“Mathematical accuracy is not to be demanded in everything, but only

in things which do not contain matter. Hence this method is not that

of natural science, because presumably all nature is concerned with

12 See chapter 4 in Theological-Political Treatise in Benedictus de Spinoza, CompleteWorks: Spinoza (ed. M. Morgan; trans. S. Shirley; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), 426.

13 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 4 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 427.14 Spinoza’s Ethics I, Appendix in Complete Works, 238–43.15 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 16 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 527.




338 paul franks

matter.” Since physics dealt with matter, it was not concerned with

exceptionless truths. Rather, it was concerned, for example, with the

truth that honey-water is usually beneficial in the case of fever; there

were numerous exceptions, but stating these was not the task of sci-

ence.16 Similarly, ethics and political science dealt with what is for the

most part.17 Moreover, physics—like ethics and political science—was

concerned with purposes.

In general, Aristotelian physics gave rise to generalizations that were

valid for the most part and involved reference to purposes. Nature was

“very good” (Genesis 1:31) because it served these purposes. Because

ethics and political science also dealt with generalizations that were validfor the most part and involved reference to purposes, it was eminently

plausible, either that nature could give ethical and political guidance to

human life, or that nature could provide a model for a law that could

give such guidance. In contrast, modern physics gave rise to general-

izations that were exceptionless and involved no reference to purpose.

Consequently, nature could no longer provide guidance, either directly

or indirectly, to human life.

Now, since—according to Spinoza—God was the ground of the ratio-

nality and intelligibility of all that existed, and since what existed was

rational and intelligible to the extent that it operated according to excep-

tionless generalizations, it followed that such generalizations—eternal

truths—were the sole expressions of God. If God had been understood

instead as giving rise to laws in the strict—ethical or political—sense,

then this could only have been a result of ignorance:

God’s af firmations and negations always involve eternal necessity or truth.So, if for example, God said to Adam that he willed that Adam should noteat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it would have been a con-tradiction in terms for Adam to be able to eat of the tree. And so it wouldhave been impossible for Adam to eat of it, because that divine decreemust have involved eternal necessity and truth. However, since Scripturetells us that God did so command Adam, and that Adam did neverthe-less eat of the tree, it must be accepted that God revealed to Adam onlythe punishment he must incur if he should eat of that tree; the necessary

entailment of that punishment was not revealed. Consequently, Adamperceived this revelation not as an eternal and necessary truth but as alaw, that is to say, an enactment from which good or ill consequence wouldensue not from the intrinsic nature of deed performed but only from the

16 Metaphysics, Book VI, 1027a20.17 Nicomachean Ethics, 1094.





will and absolute power of some ruler. Therefore that revelation, solelyin relation to Adam and solely because of the limitations of his knowl-edge, was a law, and God was a kind of lawgiver or ruler. For this samereason, namely, their lack of knowledge, in relation to the Hebrews alonethe Decalogue was a law; for not knowing God’s existence as an eternaltruth, it was inevitable that they should have perceived as a law what wasrevealed to them in the Decalogue, namely, that God existed, and thatGod alone must be worshipped. But if God had spoken to them directly,employing no physical means, they would have perceived this not as a law,but as an eternal truth.18

Here, in a striking break with the Maimonidean tradition, Spinoza

argued in effect that it was impossible for God to be both the origin of nature and the origin of law.

What, then, could Torah be? After all, it purported to be the law

that originates with God. Spinoza concluded that it could only be a law

based on ignorance. However, such a law was necessary, since ignorance

was to be expected among the majority of human beings, and since

obedience could not be grounded solely on the knowledge that only a

few could be expected to attain. This gave rise to a division of labour

between faith and reason, theology and philosophy:

According to our fundamental principle, faith must be defined as theholding of certain beliefs about God such that, without these beliefs, there

cannot be obedience to God, and if this obedience is posited, these beliefsare necessarily posited . . . between faith and theology on the one side andphilosophy on the other there is no relation and af finity . . . The aim of philosophy is, quite simply, truth, while the aim of faith . . . is nothing otherthan obedience and piety. Again, philosophy rests on the basis of univer-sally valid axioms, and must be constructed by studying Nature alone,whereas faith is based on history and language, and must be derived onlyfrom Scripture and revelation . . .19

The happy implication of this division of labour was that faith and

reason, theology and philosophy, need not and indeed could not conflict,

since they were concerned with entirely different domains.

Of course, Spinoza’s radical rethinking of Scripture in accordance

with the modern reconception of nature could hardly leave the Sinaievent untouched. He regarded the very idea of a revelatory event as

an inappropriate anthropomorphization of God, and he was scornful

18 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 4 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 430.19 Theological Political Treatise, chapter 14 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 516–19.




340 paul franks

of Maimonides’ attempt to avoid the problem by portraying divine

speech as issuing from a “created voice”:20

It seems quite alien to reason to assert that a created thing, dependent onGod in the same way as other created things, should be able to express ordisplay, factually or verbally, through its own individuality, God’s essenceor existence, declaring in the first person, “I am the Lord your God,etc.” . . . Now in the case of people who previously knew nothing of Godbut his name, and desired to speak with him so as to be assured of his exis-tence, I fail to see how their need was met through a created thing (whichis no more related to God than are other created things, and does notpertain to God’s nature) which declared, “I am the Lord.” What if God

had manipulated the lips of Moses—but why Moses? the lips of somebeast—so as to pronounce the words, “I am the Lord”? Would the peoplethereby have understood God’s existence?21

But there was no problem here, since—as we have seen—a true revela-

tion would have to be of eternal truths. What happened on Sinai was

not an act of revelation, but rather an act of law-giving, and it was in

this light that the pyrotechnics of the event should be understood:

Although the voice which the Israelites heard could not have given thosemen a philosophical or mathematical certainty of God’s existence, it suf-ficed to strike them with awe of God as they had previously known him,and to induce them to obedience, this being the purpose of that manifes-

tation. For God was not seeking to teach the Israelites the absolute attri-butes of his essence (he revealed none of these things at the time), but tobreak down their obstinacy and bring them to obedience. Therefore heassailed them, not with arguments, but with the blare of trumpets, withthunder and with lightnings (see Exodus ch. 20 v. 20).22

In short, Moses was a master of statecraft, and he understood well that

the establishment of a new polity called for, not an impressive feat of

argumentation, but rather an impressive public drama.

There was much, Spinoza thought, to learn from the statecraft of

Moses. Indeed, the original idea of Moses’ theocratic constitution—the

idea of universal equality before God—was an excellent one:

Since the Hebrews did not transfer their right to any other man, but, as ina democracy, they all surrendered their right on equal terms, crying withone voice, “Whatever God shall speak, we shall do” (no one being named

20 Maimonides, Guide, II, ch. 33, 365.21 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 1 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 397.22 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 14 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 519.





as mediator), it follows that this covenant left them all completely equal,and they all had an equal right to consult God, to receive and interpret hislaws; in short, they all shared equally in the government of the state.23

However, the seeds of the destruction of the Mosaic constitution were

also planted at Sinai, when the people withdrew after hearing the first

two commandments:

But on this first appearance before God they were so terrified and so thun-derstruck at hearing God speak that they thought that their last hour hadcome . . . they . . . abrogated the first covenant, making an absolute transferto Moses of their right to consult God and to interpret his decrees.24

Thus true theocracy became debased theocracy, which eventually

became monarchy:

It had first been intended to entrust the entire ministry of religion to thefirstborn, not to the Levites; but when all except the Levites had wor-shipped the calf, the firstborn were rejected as defiled and the Leviteswere chosen in their place. The more I consider the change, the more Iam forced to exclaim in the words of Tacitus, “At that time, God’s concernwas not for their security, but for vengeance.” I cannot suf ficiently marvelthat such was the wrath of heaven that God framed their very laws, whosesole end should always be the honour, welfare and security of the people,with the intention of avenging himself and punishing the people, with theresult that their laws appeared to them to be not so much laws—that is,

the safeguard of the people—as penalties and punishments.25

Here we must recall that, by divine reward and punishment, Spinoza

understood nothing other than temporal success and failure, insofar

as these lay beyond the limits of human endeavour. It was in this way

that he explained the election of Israel:

All worthy objects of desire can be classified under one of these threegeneral headings: 1) To know things through their primary causes. 2) Tosubjugate the passions; i.e., to acquire the habit of virtue. 3) To live insecurity and good health. The means that directly serve for the attainmentof the first and second objectives lie within the bounds of human natureitself, so that their acquisition must depend on human power alone; i.e.,

solely on the laws of human nature. For this reason it is obvious that thesegifts are not peculiar to any nation but have always been common to all

23 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 17 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 540.24 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 17 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 540.25 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 17 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 549. The Tacitus

quotation is from Histories, I, 31.




342 paul franks

mankind . . . But the means that serve for the attainment of security andphysical well-being lie principally in external circumstances, and are calledthe gifts of fortune because they mainly depend on the operation of exter-nal causes of which we are in ignorance. So in this matter the fool andthe wise man have about an equal chance of happiness or unhappiness.Nevertheless, much can be effected by human contrivance and vigilanceto achieve security and to avoid injuries from other men and from beasts.To this end, reason and experience have taught us no surer means thanto organize a society under fixed laws, to occupy a fixed territory and toconcentrate the strength of all its members into one body, as it were, asocial body . . . If [such a society] . . . endures for some considerable time,this is to be attributed to some other guidance, not its own. Indeed, if it

overcomes great perils and enjoys prosperity, it cannot fail to marvel atand worship God’s guidance (that is to say, insofar as God acts throughhidden external causes, and not through the nature and mind of man);for what it has experienced is far beyond its expectation and belief, andcan truly be regarded even as a miracle . . . Thus the Hebrew nation waschosen by God before all others, not by reason of its understanding nor of its spiritual qualities, but by reason of its social organization andthe good fortune whereby it achieved supremacy and retained it for somany years.26

If the original idea of a constitution based on universal equality before

God was the source of Israel’s endurance and the sign of Israel’s elec-

tion, then the debasement of that idea, which eventually led to the

destruction of the state, must have been a sign of Israel’s rejection.Both were present at Sinai.

This division between the original Mosaic idea and its debasement

also generated a distinction between the eternally valid core of the

Mosaic polity—a politics based on universal equality and an ethics

of neighbourly love—and those aspects that were limited to ancient

Israel. Even if some particular aspects of Mosaic law contributed to

the endurance of Israel, it followed only that these were worthy of

close study, not that they were in any way binding upon contemporary

descendants of the Israelites:

The Divine Law, which makes men truly blessed and teaches the true life,

is of universal application to all men . . . Now ceremonial observances— those, at least, that are laid down in the Old Testament—were institutedfor the Hebrews alone, and were so adapted to the nature of their gov-ernment that they could not be practised by the individual but involvedthe community as a whole. So it is evident that they do not pertain to

26 Tractatus, chapter 3 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 417–18.





the Divine Law, and therefore do not contribute to blessedness and vir-tue. They have regard only to the election of the Hebrews, that is (as wedemonstrated in chapter 3) to their temporal and material prosperity andpeaceful government, and therefore could have been of practical valueonly while their state existed . . . That the Hebrews are not bound to prac-tise their ceremonial rites since the destruction of their state is clear from

Jeremiah, who, when he saw and proclaimed the imminent ruin of thecity, said that God delights only in those who know and understand thathe exercises loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth, andso thereafter only those who know these things are to be deemed worthyof praise (see chapter 9 v. 23).27

Thus Spinoza issued a challenge, not only to Jewish philosophy, but to Judaism itself: according to the philosophical tradition, the validity of

the Torah as law of Israel depended on its direct or indirect linkage to

nature; but nature could no longer be understood as a source or model

of law; so it followed that the law of Israel was no more and no less

sanctioned by nature than any other law, and that the destruction of

the Jewish state should have resulted in the end of Judaism.

3. Responses: From Mendelssohn to Breuer,

Buber and Rosenzweig

Mendelssohn (1729–1786 CE) was perhaps the first Jewish philosopherto respond seriously to Spinoza’s challenge. However, even as he resisted

Spinoza’s conclusions, he adopted some central features of Spinoza’s

views about Judaism, no doubt because he too saw the enormous sig-

nificance of modern philosophy’s reconception of nature.

In particular, Mendelssohn adopted, from Spinoza’s revision of the

Maimonidean tradition, the idea that the Torah revealed on Sinai was

essentially nomos, a purely political law:

Revealed religion is one thing, revealed legislation another. The voicewhich let itself be heard on Sinai on that great day did not proclaim, “Iam the Eternal, your God, the necessary, independent being, omnipo-tent and omniscient, that recompenses men in a future life according totheir deeds.” This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism; andthe universal religion of mankind, without which men are neither vir-tuous nor capable of felicity, was not to be revealed there. In reality, itcould not have been revealed there, for who was to be convinced of these

27 Theological-Political Treatise, chapter 5 in Spinoza, Complete Works, 435–37.




344 paul franks

eternal doctrines of salvation by the voice of thunder and the sound of trumpets? . . . A historical truth, on which this people’s legislation was to befounded, as well as laws, was to be revealed here—commandments andordinances, not eternal religious truths.28

Mendelssohn rejected Maimonides’ view that the first two command-

ments were speculative in content. Rather, they were expressions of

God’s covenantal relationship with Israel. Indeed, it would have been

odd if God had revealed speculative truths at Sinai, for such truths

were to be known through observation of nature and through rational

reflection, not through pyrotechnics, however divine.

The Torah revealed on Sinai was a political law for a people cov-enanted to God. It was not, strictly speaking, a religion. For religion

consisted in eternal truths conducive to human felicity, and was con-

sequently universally accessible through reason, not directed to a par-

ticular people through revelation. Consequently, just as Spinoza had

argued that religion and philosophy could not conflict since they were

concerned with different domains, so Mendelssohn argued in effect

that there could be no tension between “the religion of mankind” and

Judaism, which was therefore more compatible with the Enlightenment

than Christianity, which did indeed purport to be a religion.

This was not to say, however, that Judaism lacked all connection to

eternal truths. Here Mendelssohn parted company from Spinoza: “All

[ Mosaic] laws refer to, or are based upon, eternal truths of reason, or

remind us of them, and rouse us to ponder them.”29 Indeed, the mission

of Judaism was to preserve “pure concepts of religion, far removed from

all idolatry.”30 It was to do by embodying and symbolizing ideas, not

in images, which could all too easily give rise to idolatry, but rather in

patterns of living , to be passed down through the generations by largely

unwritten example.31

Mendelssohn also disagreed sharply with Spinoza’s conclusion that

Judaism should have ended with the destruction of the Temple:

I cannot see how those born into the House of Jacob can in any consci-entious manner disencumber themselves of the law. We are permitted to

reflect on the law, to inquire into its spirit, and, here and there, where the

28 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem or On Religious Power and Judaism (ed. A. Altmann;trans. A. Arkush; Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1983), 97–8.

29 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 99.30 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 118.31 See Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 102–20 for his account of the need for the oral law.





lawgiver gave no reason, to surmise a reason which, perhaps, dependedupon time, place, and circumstances, and which, perhaps, may be liableto change in accordance with time, place and circumstances—if it pleasesthe Supreme Lawgiver to make known to us His will on this matter, tomake it known in as clear a voice, in as public a manner, and as far beyondall doubt and ambiguity as He did when He gave us the law itself. As long as this has not happened, as long as we can point to no such authenticexemption from the law, no sophistry of ours can free us from the strictobedience we owe to the law; and reverence for God draws a line betweenspeculation and practice which no conscientious man may cross.32

In other words, although the Torah was intended as a political con-

stitution, it originated in an event that was not only political but alsorevelatory, and only another revelatory event could abrogate it.

However, Mendelssohn’s defence of Judaism was problematic. First,

Mendelssohn himself had argued in an earlier section of Jerusalem

that any exercise of legally coercive power in the domain of religion,

rather than in the domain of the state, was incompatible with natural

right: “Religious society lays no claim to the right of coercion, and cannot

obtain it by any possible contract.”33 This did not make his views con-

tradictory, since he regarded the theocracy established at Sinai to be a

direct effect of revelation, not of a contract. But he offered no account

of what it meant to regard Sinai as revelatory and he did nothing to

counter Spinoza’s objections to traditional conceptions of revelation

as inappropriately anthropomorphic. Consequently, it was hard to see

why the demise of the Mosaic state should be lamented rather than

celebrated, and it was hard to see what force Mendelssohn’s defence

of post-destruction Judaism could have.

Salomon Maimon (1753–1800 CE), a younger contemporary of

Mendelssohn’s and a crucial figure in the development of post-Kantian

Jewish philosophy, drew the conclusion that Mendelssohn wished above

all to avoid:

So far as I am concerned, I am led to assent entirely to Mendelssohn’sreasoning by my own reflections on the fundamental laws of the religionof my fathers. The fundamental laws of the Jewish religion are at the

same time the fundamental laws of the Jewish state. They must thereforebe obeyed by all who acknowledge themselves to be members of this state,and who wish to enjoy the rights granted to them under condition of theirobedience. But, on the other hand, any man who separates himself from

32 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 233.33 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 45.




346 paul franks

this state, who desires to be considered no longer a member of it, and torenounce all his rights as such, whether he enters another state or betakeshimself to solitude, is also in his conscience no longer bound to obey thoselaws . . . As far as is known, Mendelssohn lived in accordance with the lawsof his religion. Presumably, therefore, he always regarded himself as still amember of the theocratic state of his fathers, and consequently acted upto duty in this respect. But any man who abandons this state is acting justas little in violation of his duty.34

Exercising the option that he thought Mendelssohn had shown him

to be available, Maimon left not only the observance of Judaism but

also the Jewish community. Since his attempt to convert to Christianity

without compromising his philosophy was rebuffed,35 and since therewas no secular state of which he could become a citizen, he betook

himself to solitude.

Maimon’s attitude to Mendelssohn was widely shared among Jewish

philosophers: they revered Mendelssohn as a pioneer and as a personal-

ity, but they regarded his response to the challenge of modernity raised

by Spinoza as a failure. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn’s work contained the

seeds of at least two later responses that did not break with Judaism,

as Maimon had done. On the one hand, one could continue to main-

tain, with Spinoza and Mendelssohn, that Judaism was fundamentally

not religion but law. Then, however, one would have to explain why

theocratic nomos was a good thing, and why its validity had outlastedthe existence of a Jewish state. On the other hand, one could break

with the entire tradition, originating in the Septuagint, of regarding

Torah as nomos. But then one would have to explain what role, if any,

there could be within Judaism for obligations.

The first option was developed by Isaac Breuer (1883–1946 CE), the

leading intellectual figure of independent German Orthodoxy.36 After

34 Solomon Maimon, Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography (trans. J. Clark Murray;Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 229–30.

35 Maimon, An Autobiography, 253–57.36 Breuer was the grandson of Samson Raphael Hirsch, who founded independent

Orthodoxy, and he was the son of Joseph Breuer, Hirsch’s son-in-law and successor.Unlike communal Orthodoxy, independent Orthodoxy insisted on rigorous separation( Austritt ) from all institutions involving non-Orthodox movements, including traditional Jewish communal institutions, and on the intrinsic value of both Torah and the sur-rounding, general culture. See Mordechai Breuer, Modernity within Tradition (New York:Columbia University Press, 1992); Alan Mittleman, Between Kant and Kabbalah (Albany:SUNY Press, 1990); and Matthias Morgenstern, From Frankfurt to Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill,2002). Breuer played a leading role in the founding of Agudath Israel—the primarynon-Zionist, Orthodox political movement—and later of Poalei Agudath Israel, but





developing a general account of law within a Neo-Kantian philosophi-

cal framework, Breuer argued that the Torah was obligatory for Jews

in exactly the way that law was obligatory for citizens of a state:

Law is simply obligatory ruling. It is in the concept-characteristic of obli-gation pure and simple that the complete abstraction from the individuallies . . . The Jewish law is no different. According to the collective will of the

Jewish nation which was given expression at Mount Sinai, the sole andexclusive constitutional organ of the legislature is God . . .The individual Jewis subject to the law by reason of his membership of the Jewish nation. The condi-tion and basis of his obedience lies not in his personal conviction of theexcellence of the law, indeed not even his conviction of its divine origin.

The law imposes absolute obligation . . . whoever has never seen the king of Prussia and, therefore, succumbs to the fixed idea that such a persondoes not exist at all—then, should he disobey the constitutional will of themonarch, he will very soon and in a most unpleasant manner receive suf-ficient conviction, indeed not of his theoretically confirmed existence but of his practically extremely effective manifestation of power.37

Such a view necessitated an emphasis on Sinai as the location of the

event whereby the polity was established. Employing Neo-Kantian

terms, Breuer regarded the Sinai revelation as the factum at the basis

of Judaism, without which it simply could not be understood, just as

every science has a factum at its basis:38

The teaching of Judaism was demonstrated on Sinai with perfect luciditybefore the eyes of the entire nation. The conviction, which the Sinaiticcommunity brought to the teaching was not merely subjective, won fromthem in their deepest sensitivity; it was rather the direct self-assurancewhich was based on their own perception. The Sinaitic community actu-ally experienced the doctrine of Judaism at Mount Sinai. For them the teach-ing of Judaism thus became a fact of experience.39

So far, Breuer sounded as though he was merely articulating in Neo-

Kantian terms the idea—developed by Spinoza and Mendelssohn—that

the Torah was a non-natural nomos. But he departed significantly from

his combination of uncompromising Orthodoxy with Neo-Kantianism and socialismremained largely his own view rather than the ideology of the movement.

37 From Breuer’s Teaching, Law and Nation (1910) found in Isaac Breuer, Concepts of Judaism (trans. and ed. J. Levinger; Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), 41.

38 On the notion of a factum in post-Kantian philosophy, see Paul Franks, “SerpentineNaturalism and Protean Nihilism: Transcendental Philosophy in Anthropological Neo-Kantianism, German Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism,” in Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (ed. B. Leiter and M. Rosen; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

39 Teaching, Law and Nation, in Breuer, Concepts of Judaism, 43.




348 paul franks

his predecessors in his argument—which draws on the Bible com-

mentary of his illustrious grandfather, Hirsch—that Sinai established

as king, neither God nor Moses, but rather the Torah itself :

“Moses commanded us a teaching ; it is to be the inheritance of Jacob’scongregation; for this reason it became king in Yeshurun” (Deut 33:4–5,following Hirsch’s translation). . . . Moses commanded a teaching to us whowere collected at Mount Sinai. He has permitted us direct insight into thetruth of this teaching by making it our experience. Therefore he couldcommand us to accept this as a teaching. But this doctrine is not to disap-pear with us. The teaching is to become an inheritance for all the futuremembers of Jacob’s congregation. The revelation was to remain effective

for all time and not just for the contemporary generation. This was thereason why the teaching should become king in Yeshurun, why it had tobe clothed in the power of the law and secure for itself purity and a futurethrough the commanding authority of the law.40

Here lay the key both to Judaism’s continued legitimacy and to the need

for separatism. Sovereignty was vested, not in institutions such as the

monarchy or the Temple, but rather in the Torah as Israel’s constitu-

tion. Consequently, Jewish communities that treated the Torah as their

constitution retained the right to exercise legally coercive power, while

Jewish communities that ceased to treat the Torah as their constitution

lost their legitimacy entirely. It was therefore of crucial importance to

maintain the Jewish polity by preserving or, if necessary, re-establishing “Torah-true” communities, to which Jewish individuals would continue

to be bound, not by subjective consent, but in virtue of what happened

at Sinai.

The continued legitimacy of Judaism after the destruction of the

Jewish state was not the only problem with Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem

that Breuer could claim to address. He also argued that the Jewish pol-

ity founded at Sinai was a good thing from the standpoint of reason.

For Breuer, Kant’s approach to ethics and law was the culmination

of natural right, since it thematized the necessary conditions for the

exercise of practical reason and could therefore claim universal validity.

However, Breuer af firmed the charge—originally made by Maimon but

more famously repeated by Hegel—that Kantian ethics and natural

right were merely formal and empty of content. Kant had succeeded

in formulating the structure of practical rationality, but he had failed

to provide substance for the structure. Indeed, he could not help but

40 Teaching, Law and Nation, in Breuer, Concepts of Judaism, 44–5.





fail, since human reason alone could not solve the problem. Only

revelation could: “From freedom—to law: [Kant] could not tread this

path of Judaism, since he had not stood before Mount Sinai. So he

had to be content with filling up the gap, where the law should have

been, with the idea of the law.”41 Only the Torah, as non-natural and

revealed nomos, could succeed where Kant—and, indeed, human reason

unguided by revelation—had to fail.

A very different view was developed by Martin Buber (1878–1965

CE), who rejected the identification of Torah with nomos, and empha-

sized instead that Torah was teaching . It was as if he was returning to the

Septuagint and re-translating “Torah” as “didache.” In a famous letter,Rosenzweig (1886–1929 CE) gave Buber full credit for this move, and

for an open-mindedness towards Jewish tradition that had transformed

German liberal Judaism, which had once recognized as Jewish teaching

only what it could also find in Kant:

We accept as teaching what enters us from out of the accumulated knowl-edge of the centuries in its apparent and, above all, in its real contradic-tions. We do not know in advance, what is and is not Jewish teaching; whensomeone tries to tell us, we turn away in disbelief and anger . . . Earliercenturies had already reduced the teachings to a genteel poverty, to a fewfundamental concepts; it remained for the nineteenth to pursue this as aconsistent method, with the utmost seriousness. You have liberated the

teaching from this circumscribed sphere and, in so doing, removed usfrom the imminent danger of making our spiritual Judaism depend onwhether or not it was possible for us to be followers of Kant.42

However, Rosenzweig complained that Buber had excluded the legal

aspects of Judaism altogether. Indeed, Buber saw revelation as an

immediate I-thou encounter that could only be betrayed if it was

expressed in legal terms:

I do not believe that revelation is ever a formulation of law. It is only throughman in his self-contradiction that revelation becomes legislation. This isthe fact of man. I cannot admit the law transformed by man into therealm of my will, if I am to hold myself ready as well for the unmediatedword of God directed to a specific hour of life.43

41 The New Kuzari (1934), in Breuer, Concepts of Judaism, 277.42 “The Builders” (1923) in Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning (trans. and ed.

N. Glatzer; New York: Schocken, 1965), 77.43 Martin Buber, letter to Rosenzweig, June 24, 1924, found in Rosenzweig, On Jewish

Learning , 111.




350 paul franks

Surely it was possible instead to adopt towards Jewish law exactly the

same open-mindedness of attitude that Buber had urged towards Jew-

ish teaching:

And so it is all the more curious that after liberating us and pointing theway to a new teaching, your answer to the other side of the question, thequestion concerning the Law: “What are we to do?”—that your answershould leave this Law in the shackles put upon it—as well as upon theteachings—by the nineteenth century. For is it really Jewish law withwhich you try to come to terms? . . . Is the Law you speak of not rather theLaw of the Western Orthodoxy of the past century?44

Indeed, Rosenzweig suggested that Buber’s narrow-mindedness con-sisted in rejecting the legal aspects of Judaism as if they could only be

interpreted as Mendelssohn and Breuer had interpreted them—namely,

as obligations stemming from the nomos of a Jewish polity established

at Sinai. Just as problematic as an over-emphasis on Judaism as legal

system was an accompanying over-emphasis on Sinai itself:

Just as the formulas into which the liberalism of the reformers wanted tocrowd the Jewish spirit can be traced back to a long line of antecedents,so too can one trace back the reasons that S. R. Hirsch gave to his Yisroel-

Mensch45 for keeping the Law. But no one before Hirsch and his followersever seriously attempted to construct Jewish life on the narrow base of these reasons. For did any Jew prior to this really think—without having

the question put to him—that he was keeping the Law, and the Law him,only because God imposed it upon Israel at Sinai? Actually faced by thequestion, he might have thought of such an answer; and the philosophersto whom the question has been put because they were supposedly “profes-sional” thinkers, have always been fond of giving this very reply.46

Here Rosenzweig explicitly connected both Kantian Jewish Liberalism

and Hirsch’s independent Orthodoxy—implicitly, also Breuer’s ongo-

ing development of his grandfather’s approach—to the sense in the

nineteenth century that Judaism was compromised by modernity, in the

face of whose challenge it had no choice but to transform itself into

something narrower than traditional Jewish life. Moreover, Rosenzweig

saw clearly that this unfortunate development had begun with Men-

44 “The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning , 77.45 Hirsch’s educational ideal was the person who was well-rounded both as a Jew

(“Yisroel”) and as a human being (“Mensch”).46 “The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning , 78.





delssohn, and that, if Buber was its leading Liberal exponent, Breuer

was its leading Orthodox representative:

From Mendelssohn on, our entire people has subjected itself to the tortureof this embarrassing questioning; the Jewishness of every individual hassquirmed on the needle point of a “why.” Certainly, it was high time foran architect to come and convert this foundation into a wall behind whichthe people, pressed with questions, could seek shelter. But for those living without questions, this reason for keeping the Law was only one among others and probably not the most cogent. No doubt the Torah, both writ-ten and oral, was given to Moses on Sinai, but was it not created beforethe creation of the world? Written against a background of shining fire in

letters of somber flame? . . . And can we really fancy that Israel kept thisLaw, this Torah, only because of the one “fact which excluded the possi-bility of delusions,” that the six hundred thousand heard the voice of Godon Sinai? This “fact” certainly does play a part, but no greater part thanall we have mentioned before, and all that our ancestors perceived in every“today” of the Torah: that the souls of all generations to come stood onSinai along with those six hundred thousand and heard what they heard.For a Jewish consciousness that does not question and is not questioned,all this is as important as the “fact,” and that “fact” no whit more impor-tant than those other considerations.47

Before Mendelssohn, Sinai was indisputably an important factor within

Jewish thinking about the demands of the Torah and their basis. But

it was only one factor among many others, articulated within a web of midrashic and kabbalistic traditions to be found both in the books of

scholars and in the liturgy familiar to the masses. In the effort to respond

to the challenge arising from the modern severance of law from nature,

too much had been given up. German Jews had been forced into a

choice between revelatory teaching with no ritual or legal expression,

and revelatory law with the heavy-handedness of the state.

There was, Rosenzweig insisted, an alternative to the forced choice

between narrow Liberalism and narrow Orthodoxy. The Torah’s

demands upon action could be conceptualized in a way that was

actually more consonant with traditional Jewish life, if not with Jewish

philosophy—as mitzvah rather than as nomos:

Whatever can and must be done is not yet deed, whatever can and must becommanded is not yet commandment. Law [ Gesetz ] must again becomecommandment [ Gebot ], which seeks to be transformed into deed at the

47 “The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning , 78–79.




352 paul franks

very moment it is heard. It must regain that today-ness [ Heutigkeit ] in whichall great Jewish periods have sensed the guarantee for its eternity.48

In other words, each Jew had to face the spiritual challenge of coming

to understand what seemed to be an impersonal law as a personal com-

mandment addressed directly to him or her by God. By invoking the

demand that every day be seen as “today”49 —as the present moment

of revelation—Rosenzweig effected, not the replacement of Sinai with

the plains of Moab, but rather the situation of Sinai within a broader

tradition originating with Deuteronomy.50 For, if Sinai was more than

a merely political event that had occurred in ancient history, this was

because of the Deuteronomic repetition of Sinai, and because of theaccompanying call to make revelation ever-present by repeating Sinai

again and again.

As Rosenzweig acknowledged, he learned the distinction between

law and commandment from the controversial Christian theologian,

Christoph Schrempf.51 But he could perhaps have found an intimation

in Section I of Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem:

The state gives orders and coerces, religion teaches and persuades. Thestate prescribes laws [ Gesetze ], religion commandments [ Gebote ] . . . In oneword: civil society, viewed as a moral person, can have the right of coercion,and, in fact, has actually obtained this right through the social contract.

Religious society lays no claim to the right of coercion, and cannot obtain itby any possible contract.52

As was discussed above, it was hard to reconcile Mendelssohn’s rejection

of religious coercion in Section I with his presentation of Judaism as a

revealed nomos in Section II. Why should some parts of this law have

remained obligatory once the state was destroyed? Mendelssohn could

have distinguished between those parts of the law directly associated

with statehood and those whose significance did not depend on legal

coercion. The latter—called commandments in the above passage—

would have retained their obligatory status when the state ceased to

48 “The Builders” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning , 85.49 See Deut. 26:16 and Rashi’s commentary ad loc.: “Every day [the command-

ments] should be new in your eyes, as if you were commanded concerning them that very day.”

50 See Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism ( JSJSup 77; Leiden: Brill, 2003).

51 See Franz Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings (trans. and ed. P. Franksand M. Morgan; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), 71.

52 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 45.






354 paul franks

required to undo the revelation at Sinai, or because the Jewish polity

could survive without a state. The second response rejected Spinoza’s

thesis and, indeed, questioned the exclusive identification—traceable

back to the Septuagint—of Torah as nomos. But it did not restore the

pre-modern link between Torah and nature. Instead, it insisted that the

Torah was in part teaching ( didache ), and that the obligations of Juda-

ism were best understood, not as laws, but rather as commandments,

addressed by a personal God to a singular individual or to a singular

people. While the first line of thought made Sinai more central to Juda-

ism than ever, the second sought to undo what it regarded as an undue

emphasis on Sinai that misunderstood Sinai’s importance. Following theDeuteronomic tradition, this second response took Sinai’s importance

to consist, not in its uniqueness, but rather in its repeatability.55

55 I have of course dealt here with only one strand of modern Jewish philosophy. Foranother perspective on the relationship between Torah, Sinai and nature, see DavidNovak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).


Date post:	09-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	pfranks
View:	218 times
Download:	0 times

Franks_Sinai Since Spinoza

Documents