MODERN ORTHODOXY’S ANCIENT PAST

Abstract

The movement known as Modern Orthodox Judaism is often distinguished from “ultra-Orthodoxy” (or Haredi Judaism) in terms of openness. While adherents of the latter form of Judaism typically live together in isolated communities and seek to seal themselves off from secular books and learning (and, in our own age, such potentially malign influences as television, movies, and the internet), Modern Orthodox Jews are generally characterized by a more open attitude toward such things, and toward outsiders and outside ideas in general. The present article seeks to argue that the tendencies represented by these two movements are in fact dyed in the wool—that, from the very beginning, Judaism has endorsed and incorporated both isolationism and openness. This contention is illustrated with examples from the Hebrew Bible itself as well as from the extensive literature of the Second Temple period.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The exponents of this movement have sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with the name, preferring “Centrist Orthodoxy” or simply “Orthodoxy.” See Lamm (1986). Of course, “Orthodoxy” itself was not a unanimously accepted way of referring to the unbroken Jewish tradition: Blutinger (2007).

2. On the matter of Modern Orthodoxy's self-definition, see: Waxman (1993, 59–70), Soloveitchik (1994, 64–130), Liebman (1998, 405–410), Helmreich and Shinnar (1998, 1–12), Freedman (2000), Berman (2001), Brill (20 04), and Kraut (2010).

3. On the development of some of these “new things,” see Silber (1994), Kaplan (2004, 165–178), and Soloveitchik (1994).

4. Among many treatments: Katz (1986, 3–17) and Katz (1998), particularly relevant: Shapiro (1999), Shapiro (2000, 76–86), and Ferziger (2005).

5. “Openness” might also serve as a unifying theme in most of the criteria advanced by Berman (2001), namely, openness to secular learning; to non-Orthodox groups as well as unaffiliated Jews; to the state of Israel; to changes in the role of women in Judaism; and to non-Jews and active participation in the wider, non-Jewish society.

6. Note, however, Gen. 38:22, 46:10. Genesis takes no stand against exogamy per se (Gen 25:1, 41:45); it is the Canaanites who must be avoided.

7. The case was laid out forcefully in Lemche (1998); see Finkelstein (1988) and Finkelstein and Silberman (2001); also Dever (2003) and Miller (2005).

8. These words are addressed to the inhabitants of Jerusalem but presumably apply to the whole people, perhaps reflecting a “telescoped history that remained in the collective memory hundreds of years after the close of the events” (Naaman 2005, 343).

9. Balaam could hardly be talking about any actual, geographic isolation, given the proximity of various neighbours to the Land of Israel; neither does this passage seem to refer to the absence of religious or cultural intermingling. Rather, Balaam's words seem to give expression to Israel's much desired but infrequently realized dream of not being a subject people ruled, and encroached upon, by foreigners. A “people dwelling apart” is a people left alone, not part of anyone else's empire. Philo of Alexandria certainly knew the geographic facts; he says that the Israelites are so described “not because their dwelling place is set apart and their land severed from others.” Nevertheless, he attributes a cultural and even metaphysical meaning to Balaam's words: “because of the distinction of their special customs, they [Israel] do not mix with others to depart from the ways of their fathers.” Continuing on the next verse, he explains, “Their bodies have been molded from human seeds, but their souls are sprung from divine seeds, and therefore their stock is akin to God.” Targums Onqelos and Ps.-Jonathan interpret “a people dwelling apart” as “a people destined to inherit the world [to come].” The Fragment Targums understand “not reckoned among the nations” as “they do not share in the laws/customs (nimusei) of other peoples” Klein (1980, 201); see also Vermes (1973, 146–47) and Haywood (1999, 19–36).

10. This hardly needs glossing; it seems to me to be as old as anything one might identify as the “religion of Israel” and is unmistakably present in such ancient texts as the Decalogue as well as being the great theme of the legal corpus of Deuteronomy.

11. Specifically addressed in Prov 7 and 8, a relatively late text; an earlier, and crucial, statement is Deut 4:6: it (like many other biblical texts) seems to locate conventional hokhmah as the province of other nations, suggesting that Israel's hokhmah is uniquely in its laws; cf. 1 Kings 4:29–31. This is rather different from the view of Weinfeld (1972, 151), which seeks to find in Deut 4:6 the equation of wisdom and law.

12. For the broadening prohibition of exogamy, see: Deut 7:1–6; Ezra 9:1, 10:2–5; Tobit 4:12, Jub 20:4, 22:20; 25:4–9; 30:5; Philo, SpecLeg 3:29; T. Job 45:3; Jos. Asen. 7:6; Pseudo-Philo, LAB 9:5, 44:7, 45:3. Knoppers (1994, 121–141), Hayes (2002), Cohen (1999, 241–262), and Frevel (2011).

13. The book of Ruth has frequently been treated as a deliberate protest against the anti-exogamic measures recounted in Ezra-Nehemiah: see, e.g. Korpel (2001). Other recent studies focus more on the matter of social identity: see Lau (2011); note also Knoppers (2011, 170–191).

14. The ambiguity of Greek Ioudaios across the Second Temple period is well known: is it a geographic, ethnic, or religious designation? See in particular Cohen (1999, 69–106); note also Pilch (1997, 119–125) and Harvey (1996). For this article, I have adopted the terms “Jew,” “Jewish,” “non-Jew,” and the like.

15. Cited in Diodorus Sicilus, Bibliotheca Historica XL, 3; see Stern (1976, 26). On the authenticity of this passage as distinct from those of Pseudo-Hecataeus, see Holladay (1983, 277). Berthelot (2008, 19) asserts that the first term in Hecataeus's description, apanthrōpos (translated here as “unsociable”), “functioned as the opposite of philanthrōpos much more than [as a synonym of] misanthrōpos.” It essentially meant that, “because they suffered at the hand of their fellow human beings in whose country they were hosts, the Jews (following Moses) decided to avoid intercourse with other peoples. This explanation corresponds to the traditional Greek etiology of misanthropy.” In sum:

Because the Jews, for religious reasons, refused to enter into this religious and political koinōnia, they were perceived by Hecataeus as behaving like misanthropes. Although their attitude was considered strange and not very nice, in the eyes of a fourth/third century Greek writer like Hecataeus it was not yet as reprehensible as it happened to be at the end of the 2nd century BCE, when, in a completely different political context, Jewish separatism was understood as an expression of deep hatred against all non-Jews.

16. Some scholars have questioned the authenticity of this attribution to Manetho: Josephus, writing some four centuries after the presumed date of Manetho, apparently did not have access to Manetho's writings themselves; moreover, he cites Manetho as part of his case against Apion. Nevertheless, a recent careful review of the arguments has come out on the side of the basic authenticity (if not the precise wording) of this Manetho fragment: see Pucci ben Zeev (1993, 217–224); also Schwartz (1999, 73–87). Note that Josephus also ascribes to the first-century BCE rhetorician Apollonius Molon the condemnation of the Jews for “refusing admission to persons with other preconceived ideas about God and for declining to associate with those who have chosen to adopt a different mode of life” (cited in Stern 1976 , 156). Josephus reports that the anti-Jewish author Apion “attributes to us an imaginary oath, so that it would appear that we swear by the God who made heaven and earth and sea to show no good will to a single alien, above all not to Greeks.”

17. Jewish strictures about food were frequently cited as a reason for separating from non-Jews: Tobit notes that when he was carried off as a captive, “everyone of my kindred and of my people ate the food of Gentiles, but I kept myself from eating the food of Gentiles” (1:10–11). Judith similarly refuses the delicacies prepared for her by Holofernes: “I cannot partake of them, or it would be an offence” (12:2). Joseph's host Pentephres “set a table before him by itself,” “because Joseph never ate with the Egyptians, since this was an abomination for him” (Joseph and Aseneth, 7:1). When some of his fellow priests were taken prisoner and sent to Rome, Josephus reports that “I was anxious to discover some way of rescuing these men, especially having learned that, even in their affliction, they had not forgotten the pious practices of religion and supported themselves on figs and nuts” (Vita, 15). Cf. 1 Macc. 1:62–63; 2 Macc 5:27, Acts 11:3, and 1 Gal. 2:12.

18. Such as that imparted by touching a human corpse, for example; Jubilees actively sought to diminish the importance of such cultic impurity in his book. See Ravid (2002, 61–86); also Klawens (2000).

19. Echoing Ezra's use of the phrase in the previously cited passage (Ezra 9:2).

20. This is a reflection of the Hebrew text-form of Gen 26:32 as attested in the Septuagint, “We have not found water.”

21. A reflection of Gen Lev 18:21, “You shall not give any of your offspring to be passed to [the pagan god] Molech.” Molech was apparently a Canaanite deity associated with child sacrifice (Lev 20:2–5; 2 Kings 23:10, Jer 32:35), and to “pass over” probably meant “to pass through fire,” as in Deut 18:10. But in later times this verse acquired a new meaning: “And do not give of your seed for sexual relations with a daughter of the nations, to pass over to idolatry”: see Mishnah Meg. 4:9, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Lev 18:21, B. Talmud Meg. 25a. See further Vermes (1981, 108–124) and Kugel (2012, 145–146).

22. This section of 1 Enoch is known as the “Book of Luminaries” (chaps. 72–82).

23. Cohen (1987, 41) has put it well:

All Jews of antiquity were “Hellenized” to some degree. All shared in the material culture of the larger world and all were exposed to the Greek language. But usually the term “Hellenization” involves more than pots, pans, and language. It involves the way of thought and the way of life.

24. For some examples: Kugel (2002).

25. One might compare the situation to the role of English in contemporary Jewish life: certainly the English writings of J. B. Soloveitchik, A. J. Heschel, and other leading Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century (as well as the translation into English of works by such figures as Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig) are currently prized by a broad spectrum of Jews in the English-speaking world. Should English cease to be the language of this great segment of the Jewish population, some, perhaps most, of these writings would be lost to subsequent generations unless they are translated into the new lingua franca. Indeed, this would likely be true not only of works of philosophy and theology, but the writings of novelists like Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth, of poets such as Charles Reznikoff, Allen Ginsberg, or John Hollander, plus the English language creations of innumerable Jewish filmmakers, entertainers, critics, and on and on—all these prized by a great many Anglophonic Jews, in a way altogether comparable to Hellenistic works of the Second Temple period.

26. Estimates of the population of Judea are sketchy at best; Avi-Yonah (1974,109) suggests that in Hasmonean times, it may have reached half a million.

27. It used to be maintained that spoken Hebrew had been marginalized by New Testament times, but an increasing body of evidence demonstrates that this was not the case: see the recent collection of articles in Buth and Notley (2012).

28. On its miraculous origins: Wasserstein (2006).

29. On the gradual separation of Christianity and Judaism, there is a vast scholarly literature: see the recent studies by Boyarin (2004) and Schremer (2010).

30. This includes the aforementioned book of Jubilees, which has survived thanks to Christian translations of the work into Greek (now lost), and thence to Latin (about a third of this translation survives in a palimpsest) as well as into Ge‘ez, an ancient Ethiopian language similar to Tigre and Tigrinya, in which form nearly all the book has been preserved.

31. One possible trace of Philo's influence on rabbinic thought is found in the comparison of Philo's De Op. Mundi 16–20 with Genesis Rabba 1:1; see on this Winston (1981, 338), Runia (1993, 14), and Urbach (1981, 175–176); cf. the New Testament “Letter to the Hebrews,” 11:3. Some of Philo's writings were available to medieval Jews in Arabic and Syriac translation; see Poznański (1905, 10–31). He was later “rediscovered” by Azariah dei Rossi and made known to the Hebrew-reading public in his Me'or Eynayim, published in 1573–1575.

32. On the extensive borrowings from Philo in Clement's works: van den Hoek (1988).

33. As certainly happened, once again, in the opposite direction: the liturgical compositions known now as “Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers,” found in books 7 and 8 of the early Christian Apostolic Constitutions, clearly rework themes from the Hebrew ‘Amidah. It appears that the Greek text is based on an earlier, Syriac version, reflecting the close contacts between early Syrian churches and Jews living in the land of Israel and Syria. See Fiensy (1992, 450–451) and van der Horst and Newman (2008).

34. The fourth plague is called in Hebrew ‘arob. The Septuagint translated this word as “dog fly,” an understanding that was followed by Philo, Life of Moses, 130–131. It is certainly noteworthy, therefore, that WisSol here follows the tradition found in Palestinian sources such as Josephus, Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, Targum Neophyti, etc. See Kugel (1998, 563–564).

35. Here again is a striking parallel to later, rabbinic exegesis of the bronze serpent episode (Num 21:6–9). See Kugel (1998, 797–798).

36. One case study: Meeks (2002).

Additional information

James Kugel is Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature (emeritus) at Harvard University and Professor of Bible (emeritus) at Bar Ilan University in Israel. A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, he is the author of more than 80 research articles and 15 books, including The Idea of Biblical Poetry, On Being a Jew, and The Bible As It Was (winner of the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion in 2001), How to Read the Bible (National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007), and In the Valley of the Shadow. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, and Editor-in-chief of Jewish Studies: an Internet Journal.