From xod@sixgirls.org Tue Jan 15 07:34:15 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: xod@reva.sixgirls.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 15 Jan 2002 15:34:15 -0000 Received: (qmail 11289 invoked from network); 15 Jan 2002 15:34:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m4.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 15 Jan 2002 15:34:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO reva.sixgirls.org) (216.27.131.50) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 15 Jan 2002 15:34:14 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by reva.sixgirls.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g0FFYCF17570 for ; Tue, 15 Jan 2002 10:34:13 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 10:34:06 -0500 (EST) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Can an atheist really understand religious text? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Invent Yourself X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1138703 X-Yahoo-Profile: throwing_back_the_apple X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 12946 The Sapir-Whorf implications of this article should be so glaringly obvious that I should not have to explain why I forwarded this. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 21:44:21 -0600 To: xod@sixgirls.org http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml? itemNo=117518&contrassID=2&subContrassID=6&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y &itemNo=117518 Tuesday, January 15, 2002 Shvat 2, 5762 Israel Time: 06:07 (GMT+2) Stirring up the `totally secular' Is religious faith a prerequisite for studying Torah? How a scholar's posing the question has created controversy. By Yair Sheleg Some three years ago, an article was published in the 17th issue of the journal Alpayim, which did not stop arousing comments until the most recent (the 22nd) issue a few months ago. The article continued to cause ripples amongst intellectual circles, particularly those that teach Judaic studies to the secular public. Even Alpayim, which has seen controversies before - particularly between Zionist and post- Zionist historians - has never know such fervent polemics. The article in question was penned by Prof. Gilad Bar-Elli of the Philosophy Department of Hebrew University. He claimed that there is a substantial contradiction between "total secularism" and the very ability to study Torah, to understand a text which is essentially religious. Under the title "On the secularization of studying Torah," Bar-Elli describes as "totally secular" a person who not only doubts the existence of God but one for whom the concept of God is totally alien and who completely rejects God's existence, together with the religious way of life. Such a person, in his opinion, is not capable of understanding the traditional Jewish sources which bear the stamp of religious belief in their entirety. As Bar-Elli puts it: "The study of Torah, which essentially implies understanding certain concepts, requires taking a stand, patterns of behavior, ways of life, and `truths' which a totally secular person is not prepared and not able to accept, and which he systematically and forcefully rejects. From this point of view, he is not able to actually study Torah." It is important to stress that Bar-Elli is not talking about a "different understanding" of the text but rather about an ability to comprehend it. He compares this to a person who completely negates the existence of demons trying to understand a text devoted completely to the acts of demons. Such a text, Bar-Elli believes, will in no way be intelligible to the reader. In the same way, the Torah, Mishna and Gemara cannot be intelligible to a person who completely negates the existence of God, he claims. In this context, he also opposes the secular translation of the figure of God in the Torah into an abstract concept like "supreme power." "The Torah itself speaks of God (Elohim) as a private name, not as a concept, and any other claim is a distortion," Bar-Elli says. "According to this interpretation, even rational-religious commentary such as that of the Rambam is a distortion of the Torah, but what can at least be said to its credit is that this is a built- in distortion in the understanding of one who reads the Torah not at its face value but as a symbolic text." In his article, Bar-Elli points to a series of what he calls stipulations and restrictions. For example, he says, he does not refer to the ability to derive historical, geographical, botanical or even literary information from the Jewish sources. These, he says, can certainly be derived also by someone who is "totally secular." He also stresses that his claim springs from a specific philosophical tradition of the concept of understanding, one which ties understanding exclusively to the contents of the text and not to the subjective intentions of someone reading it or listening to it. And of course, there is the original restriction which refers to a "totally secular person." In a conversation, he explains: "It is clear to me that a secular person of this type almost does not exist in reality, but I used this concept in order to bring into focus the basic question." Despite these qualifications, the article stirred up quite an intellectual storm. It is possible to understand this: Intellectuals never like to hear that a text of any kind is blocked to them, certainly not at a time when Jewish studies are gaining a great deal of popularity among educated secular circles. As is to be expected, the angriest reactions came from these secular circles. Ruth Calderon, who in recent years has been the most prominent figure in this sphere (at the Elul seminary and the Alma College which she established, as well as on TV programs) reacted in the next edition of Alpayim to Bar-Elli's article. She criticized the attempt to restrict the study of the Jewish sources to those who are "suitable." As she put it: "The working assumption that makes possible the entire revolution is that the material, the text, is strong enough and worthy enough and capable of facing any challenge and taking up any intellect." She also cynically criticized the very assumption that a member of one culture would not be able to comprehend other cultures. On that basis, "someone living in our times is not capable of studying ancient literature, people in the West cannot comprehend an Eastern text, a woman cannot understand a simple thing about the world of the sages, and how can a modern person, even if he follows halakha [Jewish law], understand something of the rituals of the Temple, feast, impurity and cleansing, of the ancients?" She is still angry now: "The possibility that someone would claim, even as a theoretical philosophical claim, that there is no place for me to study Torah, is a very difficult thing for me to accept. It made me very agitated and that is also how I responded." For his part, Bar-Elli met Calderon's anger with anger of his own. In an article of response to the response, he claims that the writer did not understand his article. "For Ms. Calderon, `the text is raw material for a personal creation, for understanding oneself and the world' [a quote from her article referring to Jewish sources - Y.S.] It is possible that she related to my article in this way, too. Whatever the meaning of these oracular expressions, I, in my innocence, believe that before all this, one has to read and understand the text." Calderon was amazed by his reaction. "It was such a violent reaction. So what if I'm not an analytical philosopher? Why does he need to insult and humiliate one? A little more modesty is required in this discussion. Let culture decide for itself who is and is not worthy of engaging in study." Dr. Yossi Schwartz of the Alma College that Calderon heads, whose speciality is philosophy and religion, came to her rescue. No one can claim that Schwartz does not understand the field. In an article in the 22nd edition of Alpayim, Schwartz says, at the outset, that this is a dialogue of the deaf: Bar-Elli is dealing with the subject on a theoretical level, as a means to test philosophical concepts of understanding and significance, while Calderon is speaking about the reality of those who study the Torah, he says. Only then did he turn to a criticism of Bar-Elli's basic assumptions. He quotes his personal biography in order to contradict Bar-Elli's claim of a significant misunderstanding between religious and secular. Schwartz says that he was born to a religious father and later became non- religious. His father's uncle, who like his father observed the religious precepts all his life, broke away from Schwartz's father when he began academic studies. "At least in my own eyes, I answer to the strictest criteria of secularization," Schwartz writes. "But I do not believe there is a rift between me and my father of the type that developed between him and his uncle." The conclusion: Modernization creates a much wider gap between people than does their religious or secular identity. In the same issue, Dr. Boaz Arpali, a philosophy lecturer at Tel Aviv University, also attacks Bar-Elli. Under the sarcastic title of "On Indian Mythology that was Judaized," Arpali concentrates on the claim that is repeated by all those who criticized Bar-Elli - the argument with the basic conclusion that emerges from Bar-Elli's argument that people of different cultures apparently cannot really understand each other. "If we accept his claim, there is a serious implication that a person in our times cannot study Greek mythology, understand the full meaning of writers like Homer, Sophocles or Shakespeare ... that a Western person cannot comprehend Indian or Chinese philosophy or a man learn gender studies." He also attacks the theoretical concept of "a totally secular person" and says that it a "mere scarecrow that was created in order to get its creator out of the maze he found himself in." In conversation today, Bar-Elli does not hesitate to answer his detractors by saying that cultural differences do indeed restrict the ability to comprehend. "In fact, this is the ultimate lesson of the analytical philosophy of the 20th century. Our set of beliefs do create barriers to what we can actually understand. Fortunately, this is not as dramatic as those who attack me would have us believe because many of the beliefs are common to different cultures. But when it comes to large gaps in belief it is indeed difficult to comprehend the next person." Referring to the polemics of the debate, Bar-Elli says that "the article raised a great deal of interest among people in my department (the philosophy department at the Hebrew University). All in all, most of the philosophy departments are close to the issue of Torah studies and it is natural that they should be interested." A few months after his article was published, the department held a special evening of discussion on the topic. "It became clear that, contrary to the criticisms expressed in Alpayim, many of my colleagues actually agree with me." At least in one case, one of the other lecturers in the department asked him to explain his claims to his students. Bar-Elli sent them an article. Bar-Elli says that "in the synagogue where I prayed on Rosh Hashana after the article was published, many people supported me. Nevertheless, I noticed that many of those who supported me there and in other places, did not exactly understand the argument." Bar-Elli? Synagogue? This story about the synagogue is very unusual for Bar-Elli who is meticulous about not revealing personal details. He was also not prepared to be photographed for this article. This is a give-away to the fact that Bar-Elli himself is not the "totally secular" person that his article refers to. Here there is an interesting denouement to the plot. Whoever thought that Bar-Elli wrote the article in order to convince the "totally secular" that there is no point in their trying to study Torah, should understand that the exact opposite is true. The article, he says, was written in order to prove to those who define themselves as "totally secular," that they in fact are not, since they show an interest in studing the Torah. "The motivation for the article was not to take Torah study out of the hands of the secular but rather to take away from the secular the concept of themselves as `totally secular'. It is meant to bring home to them what price they have to pay for such a definition and that this definition contradicts their ability to study and to enjoy studying the Torah. And indeed many people told me that my article helped them to comprehend that they are not `totally secular.'" >>From this point of view, the angry secular reactions to his article only prove what he tried to demonstrate. Searching for the best free email? Try MetaCrawler Mail, from the #1 metasearch service on the Web, http://www.metacrawler.com