Can an atheist really understand religious text?

[Invent Yourself <xod@sixgirls.org>]

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.




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