‘Moderne’ orthodoxe rabbijnen hielden zich bezig met Spinoza

Rabbijnen als Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), Samuel Alexandrov (1865 - 1941), Joseph Dov Soloveitchik (1903 - 1993) e.a.

Het vorige blog werd aanleiding om op zoek te gaan naar

Abraham Isaac Kook, een orthodoxe rabbijn, opgeleid in het Oosten, maar wonend en werkend in Palestina voor het de staat Israël werd; hij was de eerste Asjkenazi opperrabbijn in het Britse Mandaatgebied Palestina, stichter van de Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav Kook, joodse denker, halakhist en kabbalist.

Er is e.e.a. te vinden over wat Kook vond van Spinoza.

David Wietchner verzamelde enige passages over wat Rav Kook schreef over Spinoza, waarin deze er niet goed afkwam, “Spinoza and Bismarck are like Bilaam and Haman,” [cf.], maar je komt ook andere geluiden tegen. Zo schrijft dr Harris Bor:

“While most Orthodox Jews have been wary of Spinoza, a handful of modern rabbis have been drawn to him. In his diary, Rav Kook, Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine, famously made a connection between Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, the father of the Jewish Enlightenment, and the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidism, suggesting that Spinoza’s ideas could be made compatible with Judaism.” [Cf.]

Benjamin Ish-Shalom, Rav Avraham Itzhak Hacohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism [SUNY Press, 2012 - 357 pagina's] heeft vanaf p. 73 een hele beschouwing over Rav Kook en Spinoza, cf. books.google,

En er is een internetpagina: Rav Kook on religion and other religions- from the new book [cf.]

James A. Diamond & Aaron W. Hughe (Eds.), Encountering the Medieval in Modern Jewish Thought. BRILL, 2012; daarin Chapter 4, James A. Diamond: “R. Abraham Isaac Kook and Maimonodes: A contempory mystic's embrace of medieval rationalism.” Cf. books.google

En toen stuitte ik op:

Dov Schwartz, Faith at the Crossroads: A Theological Profile of Religious Zionism. BRILL, 2002 – books.google]. Dat bevat een

Chapter Three: "The Dialectic View of Spinoza," p. 90 – 130; de boeiende paragraaf daarin, § 5. Tug of War: Was Spinoza a Materialist?, ben ik voornemens in een volgend blog over te nemen.

Ter introductie neem ik eerst enige alinea’s over uit het review van dit boek van Daniel J. Lasker van de Ben-Gurion University of the Negev dat verscheen in het Review of Rabbinic Judaism [Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Vol. 7, 2004 - te vinden op scribd]

The academic canon of modern Jewish thought includes very few Orthodox personalities. Scholars, until recently predominantly non-Orthodox, apparently prefer those liberal thinkers whose struggle with modernity has led them to abandon traditional Jewish beliefs and practices, assuming that those Jews who have been loyal to pre-modern Judaism have little to say that could not have been said oneway or another 500 years earlier in the Middle Ages. Certain exceptions were made for those who were considered able to assimilate contemporary philosophical ideas into their defenses of tradition, providing at least a patina of modernity to their thought. Thus, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who was instrumental in the formulation of nineteenth-century German Jewish Orthodoxy, which incorporated elements of modernity (unlike its Eastern European counterpart), calling for both Torah and derekh eretz (secular studies and pursuits), has been the subject of serious scholarly interest.

Recently, as the ranks of Jewish studies academicians have been  augmented by modern Orthodox (and even, to a lesser degree, ultra-orthodox) Jews, there has been a renewed interest in thinkers who could serve as models for contemporary Orthodoxy. Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, German trained and living in America, is used as an exemplar of conservative rationalism; Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Kohen Kook, trained in Eastern Europe and living in pre-state Israel, provided a more traditional and mystical model for his followers. The thought of Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz is a popular subject of research and discussion, both among non-observant academics for his unconventional views regarding Israeli politics, and among the nationalist Orthodox Zionists who vigorously opposed him. There has also been recent interest in Hasidic thinkers, the nineteenth-century founders of the Musar movement, and some Orthodox Holocaust theologians. Otherwise, very few modern Orthodox thinkers have been studied seriously in the academy.

Prof. Dov Schwartz of Bar-Ilan University, an institution that is one of religious Zionism’s major accomplishments and a preeminent symbol of accommodation with modernity, has devoted much of his prolific research to broadening the canon of medieval Jewish philosophy to include ignored thinkers and their philosophical circles. In contrast to most historiographers of Jewish thought in the Middle Ages, who are firmly in the “great thinkers” mode of dicourse, Schwartz has brought to light ignored authors and issues in order to reevaluate the role of philosophy in Jewish life among the larger populace and not only among the few outstanding thinkers. He has also discussed that period from new perspectives, such as attitudes towards messianism and astrology. Displaying a virtuosity that is becoming rare in an era of increasing specialization, Prof.Schwartz has also produced a number of works devoted to modern and contemporary Jewish thought.

In the present book, Schwartz has attempted to expand the canon of modern Jewish thought, offering the philosophy or theology of those Orthodox thinkers who are associated with religious Zionism, that part of modern Jewry that has attempted to make a synthesis of Jewish nationalism (whose advocates have tended to reject religion) and traditional Judaism (whose ultraorthodox/haredi practitioners have tended to reject nationalism). Although some of the religious Zionist thinkers are well known, such as Rabbis Soloveitchik and Kook (and his son Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook), others are less well-known or almost completely unknown outside religious Zionist circles. Thus, Schwartz employs the writings of Samuel Alexandrov, Moshe Amiel, Isaiah Aviad (Wolfsberg), Isaiah Bernstein, David Cohen (theNazir), Reuven Egushewitz, Simon Federbusch, Stem-Tov Gefen, Jacob Harlap, Hayyim Hirschensohn, Zeev Jawitz, Isaac Nissenbaum, Meir Or, Isaac Jacob Reines, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Moshe Unna, Abraham Yekutieli and others as sources for his discussion.

[Ik sla een heleboel alinea’s over, waarvoor ik naar de tekst zelf verwijs en ga verder met waar Spinoza om de hoek komt kijken]:

“Prof. Schwartz then proceeds (Chapter Three) to discuss religious Zionist reactions to the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza, the excommunicated seventeenth-century Jew who inspired many secular Zionists for his rejection of supernatural religion and his raising the possibility of a reconstituted Jewish state. The latter statement occurs in Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, a work noted for its seminal criticism of the unity and divinity of the biblical corpus and for its call for religious freedom. This aspect of Spinoza’s thought was rejected by the Orthodox Zionist thinkers who were attracted more by Spinoza’s philosophy in his Ethics. Ironically, a number of these thinkers adopted some of Spinoza’s ideas, such as the immanence of God, despite his being declared a heretic. Of course, Spinoza is also the subject of criticism for his denial of a personal God. Nevertheless, the religious Zionist use of Maimonides to provide argumentation, as well as a perceived need to answer Spinoza three hundred years after his death, border on the anachronistic. One might also ask whether Spinoza plays such a central role in religious Zionism as is implied in this chapter. Nevertheless, the seriousness with which some Orthodox thinkers treated Spinoza is in sharp contrast to the total haredi disregard of him.”

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Website over Rabbi Kook ofwel Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook (1865-1935), first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Erets Israel. Met recent artikel over Rabbijn Kook.