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Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith Paperback – January 13, 2022

by Jeffrey Bloom (Author), Alec Goldstein (Author), Gil Student (Author)

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More than three centuries after Baruch Spinoza’s excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, his legacy remains contentious. Born in 1632, Spinoza is one of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment and arguably the paradigm of the secular Jew, having left Orthodoxy without converting to another faith.

One of the most unexpected and provocative critiques of Spinoza comes from Leo Strauss.
Strauss grew up in a nominally Orthodox home and emigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1930s. He taught at the University of Chicago and was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century until his death in 1973.

Though Strauss was not an Orthodox Jew, in a well-known essay that prefaced his study of Spinoza, he critically examines modern philosophy's challenge to traditional religion. There he argues that while the Enlightenment had failed to decisively refute Orthodoxy, at the same time, Orthodoxy could only claim to believe its core tenets were true but could not claim to know they were true. Strauss leaves the question at an impasse; both the Enlightenment and Orthodoxy rest on axioms that neither side can fully prove or fully refute.

Curiously, Strauss never asks Orthodox Jewish thinkers if his approach to defending Judaism against the claims of the Enlightenment is the same as theirs. This volume poses the question to a group of serious Orthodox Jewish thinkers in an attempt to find out if Orthodoxy has a better answer to the questions raised by Strauss than the one Strauss advanced on its behalf.

The seventeen essays in this volume use a variety of approaches, drawing on traditional primary Jewish sources like Scripture, Talmud, and Midrash; medieval rationalists like Maimonides; Enlightenment-era Orthodox sources; Jewish mystical writings like Kabbalah and Chasidut; modern philosophical movements including postmodernism and analytic philosophy; and contemporary Jewish Bible interpretation. While the answers differ, what unites these essays is the willingness to take Strauss’ question seriously and to provide “inside” answers, that is, answers given by Orthodox Jews.

Much of modern thought tries to square the circle of how to live in a world without belief. The better question is whether it is possible to recover authentic religious belief in the modern world. This volume is an Orthodox Jewish attempt to answer that question, one that no serious person can approach with indifference.

Print length

343 pages
Language

English
Publication date

January 13, 2022
Dimensions

6 x 0.86 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

194785772X
ISBN-13

978-1947857728
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Kodesh Press (January 13, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 343 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 194785772X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1947857728
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.11 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.86 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #993,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #486 in Jewish Theology

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Michoel Stern

A great variety of thorough responses to complicated questions

Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2022

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I love how this work compiled a series of responses from a variety of very deep thinkers who are Orthodox Jews regarding the question of how does Orthodox Judaism stand to the challenge of request for compelling evidence for belief in God from a rational perspective.

Very well done!

3 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Intellectual candy

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2022

In college I majored in philosophy and minored in Jewish studies, so as I am going through this book now, I am delighted. It is deep yet accessable. I appreciate the many different authors and angles, providing layers of perspectives addressing the same issue in different ways. This book is a real treasure to any serious thinking, philosophically oriented Jewish intellectual.

5 people found this helpful

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Michael Lewyn

interesting anthology

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2022

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Many of the essays in this anthology seek to answer the question: what makes Orthodox Judaism desirable if its major faith claim (Divine authorship of the Torah) can neither be proven or disproven? The authors come to a variety of answers, such as 1) the survival of the Jewish people 2) what one author calls "the Legacy Argument" (that one might as well retain a tradition in the absence of a good reason to abandon it), and 3) if you were born Jewish and accept the idea that complete atheism is risky in some way, you might as well accept your own religion (a modified version of the so-called "Pascal's Wager" argument for religion). None of these arguments seem irrefutable to me, but they were still interesting.

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robin friedman

Orthodox Judaism And Faith

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2022

This recent book, "Strauss, Spinoza and Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith" (2022) attempts to show the vitality of Orthodox Jewish faith in light of the questions raised about Orthodoxy by Spinoza and the partial defense of Orthodox belief by Leo Strauss.

Some brief background may be appropriate. Spinoza (1632 -- 1677) was excommunicated, age 24, by the Amsterdam Jewish community. He went on to write two important books: the "Theological Political Treatise" which challenged Revelation, divine authorship of the Bible, and miracles, among other things and the "Ethics" in which Spinoza set forth his own philosophical system which taught determinism and the lack of a personal God who gave commands, acted with purpose, and was involved in human affairs.

Leo Strauss (1899 -- 1973) was an important, if controversial German-American political philosopher of great erudition. In 1965, Strauss' book "Spinoza's Critique of Religion" was published in English for the first time. It was originally written in 1930 in Germany. Strauss examined the "Theological Political Treatise" and, in a newly written preface concluded that Spinoza had failed in his aim of refuting Orthodoxy. His position was complex, but Strauss essentially argued that Spinoza had essentially replaced one set of unproven assumptions with another. Thus Spinoza had not so much "refuted" Orthodoxy as bypassed it. Orthodox Judaism would not run afoul of Spinoza's critique as long as Orthodoxy was framed in terms of "belief" rather than "knowledge".

I was fascinated with this new book because I have long studied Spinoza and was familiar with Strauss' book from my unfinished dissertation on the "Theological Political Treatise" of many years ago. The book deserved more attention than I recall giving it at the time. Much more recently, I have seen an approach almost the reverse of Strauss. I participated in a reading group on philosopher-novelist Rebecca Goldstein's book, "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who gave us Modernity." Goldstein was raised in Jewish Orthodoxy which she abandoned. In her book, she recalls her experience in an Orthodox Jewish high school for girls in which one of her teachers spent a great deal of time, and showed some insight, in urging her charges to reject Spinoza and his thought. Questions about Spinoza and religion have fascinated me for most of my life.

In "Strauss, Spinoza, and Sinai", seventeen Orthodox Jewish scholars wrote essays on Spinoza and on the attempted defense of Orthodoxy by Strauss. The issue was whether Strauss' defense was adequate or whether there was something more and different to be said. This book is probably the first in which Orthodox Jewish scholars attempted to respond to Strauss. It proved to be a valuable project.

Besides the difficulty of essay summation of the thought of Spinoza or Strauss, there is a difficulty in understanding the nature of Orthodox Judaism. Strauss and, in my reading, many of the seventeen contributors to this volume are not comfortable with the efforts of Liberal Judaism to compromise in various ways between modernity and Judaism. Among other differences, many of the participants in this discussion tend, in contrast to adherents of Liberal Judaism, to be on the socially conservative side of issues, particularly those issues involving gender. It is valuable to see and to respect this. An essay in the volume by Joshua Golding offers a definition of Orthodox Judaism which, I think, is shared by most if not all of the contributors to this volume. Golding writes in part:

"Judaism is that religion or way of life which affirms as true the 'traditional Jewish understanding of Tanach,' In turn, the 'traditional Jewish understanding of Tanach' runs as follows: The Torah of Moses is God-given, it is an accurate and true record of historical events that happened to the Jewish people, and it represents the divine will for how the people of Israel should act.... The teaching that God ordained to the people of Israel is not confined to the text of the Scriptures: it also includes an Oral tradition which is represented by the Talmud and the rabbinic literature. .... While the Tanach does use metaphorical language to describe God, the traditional understanding is that God is the Supreme Person who created the world as we know it, who has control over nature, and who communicates with mankind through prophecy and who listens to prayer."

The seventeen essays in this book take a variety of approaches in explaining the sources of Orthodox Jewish faith. Many of the essays show a great deal of erudition and thoughtfulness. Several essays explore and try to rephrase the distinction Strauss draws between "belief" and "knowledge". Other essays bring the history of philosophy to bear using philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, and, especially, Maimonides. Many of the essays challenge the nature of the concept of reason developed by Spinoza and other Enlightenment thinkers. Other essays are less concerned to explore the question from the standpoint of philosophy. Instead, the argue that Strauss, and Spinoza, did not understand the depth of the Jewish tradition and its approach to questions of belief and faith. Some essays discuss the approach of the Talmud while others discuss Jewish mysticism and argue that Strauss had little knowledge of these sources. The essays seem in general agreement that there is a more personal, intuitive understanding of reason and truth than found in the grand abstractions of Spinoza. (This position is shared in part by many others, including Goldstein in "Betraying Spinoza".) In general, the essays argue that the case for the existence of God and for the Jewish Scriptures is stronger than the case for disbelief and that it isn't a matter of accepting either the Orthodox Jewish or the secular account because the Orthodox account is persuasive.

In addition to the essays, the book includes and Introduction by Jeffery Bloom which argues that the "great dilemma of liberal Judaism": "how to maintain adherence to the particulars of Judaism without belief in a God who commands them" is misplaced. Bloom says that the more fundamental question, explored in the book, is "if it possible to recover belief in the God who commands the particulars of Judaism in the first place." The book ends with a lengthy unattributed conclusion which attempts to summarize the many points made and approaches taken in the essays.

Many of the insights in this volume will apply to people of faith from other religions. Some of the essays and arguments are limited specifically to Orthodox Judaism.

I was not at all convinced by this volume but I found it refreshing. I was reminded of the difficulties and challenges both in philosophical thought and in understanding and following a religious life. For myself, I tend to have the same trouble that most of the contributors to this volume have in finding a plausible middle course between Orthodoxy and secularism. I learned from this volume and from Strauss, but I have learned more from Spinoza.

This book will reward reading by those interested in Spinoza and in religious philosophy. The publisher, Kodesh Press, kindly sent me a review copy.

Robin Friedman

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Israel Drazin

This book will make readers think

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2022

Is Judaism the truth?
Jeffry Bloom, a graduate of the University of Chicago who studied in several Orthodox yeshivas (rabbinical schools) in Israel after college, was bothered by what the scholar Leo Strauss wrote in his book Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. Strauss emigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1930s. He taught at the University of Chicago and was the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century until he died in 1973. He grew up in a nominally Orthodox Jewish home but was not Orthodox. He argued that Spinoza did not refute Orthodoxy. Judaism, he wrote, is based on faith, on beliefs but not provable facts. Other religions are also not provable, and even science cannot assert that what it claims is undoubtedly true. Bloom wondered if this assertion belittled Judaism or minimized it. He wrote, “Is Strauss correct that we can only claim to believe in the truth of Judaism, but we cannot claim to know it is true?” He joined with two others in seeking the views of seventeen Orthodox Jewish thinkers, rabbis and professors. Their essays are in the book Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai.
People have been bothered by uncertainty since ancient times. They want confirmation that what they think is true is really true. An oracle considered the Greek Socrates (circa 470 to 399 BCE) to be the most intelligent man of his generation because he recognized his ignorance regarding many subjects he investigated, that human wisdom begins with recognizing one’s ignorance, and that the unexamined life is not worth living. But the Athenians were bothered by his claim that we do not know the truth and killed him.
His student Plato (circa 429 to 347) recognized the difficulty most people have with uncertainty and with ideas that conflict with what they think is certain. He developed the “noble lie.” He told people that certain untruths were true to help make their lives pleasant.
The brilliant Islamic philosopher Ibn Tufayl (1105-1185) wrote about this in his easy-to-read Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale. I recommend this book. There are many valuable lessons in the philosopher Ibn Tufayl's twelfth-century masterpiece. But what is most interesting in his parable is his view that wise people, philosophers, and religious leaders must refrain from telling what they understand to the general population. This is especially true, he states, about religion. Organized religion, as understood by the masses, is necessary for the masses but wrong for people with understanding because it is not true.
Ibn Tufayl introduces his story by telling how his predecessors hid truths from the multitude. They said one thing in their books they expected the general population to read and something entirely different in books they wrote for scholars.
Alfarabi (870-950), for example, wrote in his The Ideal Religion that the souls of wicked people live on after death and are perpetually tortured, but in his Civil Practice and his commentary on Aristotle's Ethics - the Greek Aristotle lived from 383 BCE to 322 BCE - he wrote that the notion of life after death is wrong and that "all other claims are senseless ravings and old wives' tales."
Similarly, Ibn Tufayl tells us that the philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) warned intelligent people to be careful in how they read Aristotle because "if you take everything in Aristotle (literally), you will end up far from perfection."
So too, while discussing Ghazali (1058-1111), Ibn Tufayl points out that this philosopher hid what he truly meant so that only those who were learned would understand what is true. "Most of what he said was in the form of hints and intimations, of value to those who hear them only after they have found the truth by their sight or to someone innately gifted and primed to understand. Such men need only the subtlest hints."
Ibn Tufayl writes that he, despite years of study and his intelligence, had to work hard to unravel the truth from the lies his teachers and the lies taught him that he saw in books. They are notions not based on the truth but on blind faith and are wrong.
But not all thinkers were willing to live with uncertainty. An example is the Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141). Halevi argues in a circular fashion that Judaism is not based on faith but on historical experience. We know, he insists, that there were six hundred thousand Israelites at Sinai who experienced the revelation of the Decalogue because the Bible tells us so – and we know that the Bible is telling us the truth because six hundred thousand Israelites could not have been wrong. We also know that Judaism is true because what the Israelites saw and heard has been passed down to Jews by tradition. Halevi also “proves” that free will exists by arguing that we know it exists because we feel it exists.
The most outstanding Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1138-1204), would not have accepted Halevi’s views. He agreed with the other philosophers. He called the “noble lie” the “essential truth,” the untruths that people must teach people to control them, make them act appropriately, and feel good. That God grows angry when people misbehave is an example of an essential truth.
Like Socrates and Strauss, Maimonides knew that the human mind is incapable of knowing much about God and this world. He wrote that we could not know anything about God. The best we can learn are some things about what God created, including the laws of nature.
So, Strauss is right, Judaism is based on beliefs, not facts.
Some of the seventeen in this book disagreed. Some accepted Strauss’ distinction between belief and knowledge but disagreed with his claim that Judaism rests on belief alone. For example, one writes that he hesitates “to become enthusiastic about a faith whose foundations are so admittedly tenuous… I would prefer a religion to demonstrate a little more conviction in itself before I become emotionally invested.” Another similarly wrote that faith could and should be a stepping-stone to philosophy. One essayist saw the validity of Orthodox Judaism not in faith but in the tenacity and persistence of the Jew’s belief. “Clearly, something in the consciousness of the Jewish people will not allow us, as a people, to abandon God.”
Others spent their time telling us the benefits of Judaism that aid Jews even though we cannot prove Judaism to be true. Some accepted the Protestant theologian Soren Kierkegaard’s notion that we have to have a “leap of faith” that goes beyond reason and rational considerations. This will satisfy us, for we will see the advantages of Judaism over other religions. One sees the significance of Judaism by viewing why people are prompted to convert to Judaism, while another considers the value of Judaism in Jewish history and the Oral Law in contrast to the Bible. Still others stress that it is more important to experience Judaism than to be worried about faith and the truth – be like the married couple that enjoys life together and strives to increase each other’s enjoyment without spending time reading books analyzing how their bodies function.
All seventeen are interesting and thought-provoking, worthy of being read. The value of this book lies in its ability to make us think.
Israel Drazin

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