Why I'm Jewish

Following delays that may or may not have to do with the birth of my daughter (yay!), the latest entry into my Faith in Reason series with 18Forty was just published. The essay attempts to synthesize various ideas from throughout the series into a single case for Judaism from first principles. In a nutshell, the argument I present can be framed as a series of questions:

1. Is there a God?

2. Is that God personal?

3. Would a personal God reveal Their will to humanity?

4. Is the Torah a legitimate representation of the Divine Will?

If each of those questions are answered affirmatively, I would contend that we have a strong case for what I like to call Torah Judaism (as distinct from Orthodox Judaism, the case for which will be made in the series’ next installment).

If Torah Judaism is true, as answering the above questions in the affirmative would entail, then other religions (at least those directly competing with Judaism such as Christianity and Islam) must be false. After all, the Torah itself includes provisions against their core claims.

To highlight this point, I was once asked by an evangelist why I was not a Christian. He argued that being Christian is simply being a fulfilled Jew and that accepting Jesus as my Lord and Saviour need not be in conflict with my Jewish identity. Perhaps against my better judgement, I responded with something along the lines of “show me a community of Jewish Christians who consistently keep the Torah’s commandments at the same level as Orthodox Jews.” He was unable to do so, and the conversation did not get much further.

If one understands the Torah to truly reflect Divine will, that will explicitly includes the Jewish people observing God’s commandments eternally. If Judaism and Christianity were truly compatible, “Messianic” synagogues would need to be at least as observant on average as their Orthodox counterparts. The fact that they are not prevents me from being able to consider it as an option before any argument about whether or not Jesus was the Jewish Messiah or whether or not he rose from the dead.

But there is another type of argument one can make for being Jewish as opposed to another religion - a more pluralistic argument that I touched on in my 18Forty essay but did not expand on. This sort of argument suggests that Judaism is one path of many towards Divine Truth. That God reveals Themself differently to Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc and that we all receive the messages we are meant to in order to lead the world where God wants. Many argue that Maimonides makes a light form of this argument in his Guide for the Perplexed, when he implies that Judaism is the most expedient way to Truth, but ultimately only one mean toward that end.

I became enamored with that kind of argument after an important conversation I had with the at-the-time dean of a non-denominational rabbinical school in Boston. I was in the midst of my crisis of faith, and his writings always spoke to me when I needed guidance and grounding. I met with him and asked what I thought was a simple question: “If God doesn’t care what religion I am, why should I be Jewish?”

The answer I received was one that I’m sure he gave to many religious seekers who started to believe that Judaism had nothing left to offer them. Judaism may not be the One True Path, but it is a rich tradition with tremendous power to inspire its adherents. There is also a lot of room to make it one’s own and to find parallels within for much of the universal spiritual practices that many are drawn to. If one is uniquely situated to teach and preach it to others, then doing so is a great service to others and to one’s self.

These sorts of approaches, distinct from each other but sharing a common thread, are attractive in the postmodern age in which we find ourselves. Objective arguments are hard to make, and even then they are often ignored in favour of venerating multiple narratives to avoid conflict. On the one hand, Raphael Jospe has argued that such a approach is the only way to fully capture the idea of revelation. Surely an Infinite God would not reveal Their will to humanity in a Finite way. In his words, “revelation need not, and indeed cannot, be understood to mean exclusive possession of absolute truth, since even the revelation of the Torah at Sinai had to be adjusted to subjective human understanding and to diverse national cultures.” He continues his argument by questioning how Jews can “continue to insist on certainty and absolute truth in metaphysics” and eventually “pleads guilty” to arriving “at a degree of moderate epistemological relativism” in order to justify his pluralism.

In the same volume, Jospe faced firm pushback from Jolene and Menachem Kellner (the latter of whom is, ironically in this situation, infamous for writing the book Must a Jew Believe Anything?). The Kellners argued that Jospe’s stance “renders the notion of revelation in any classic sense of the term incoherent” and enters worrying territory. In their words,

Let us for a further moment grant Jospe his thesis, which, as we understand it, boils down to the claim that it makes both philosophical and Jewish (as well as moral) sense for a Jew to affirm the truth of Judaism for Jews while affirming the truth of Christianity for Christians, of Islam for Muslims, and so on… We do not see how Jospe can formulate a Jewish argument against assimilation, intermarriage, and religious syncretism. If Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and so on are different paths to the same truth, or competing but complementary truths, or complicated combinations of truth and falsity each, then why prefer one over the other? For Jospe it would seem to boil down to a matter of choice. If one chooses to abandon Judaism altogether, through assimilation or through outright apostasy, or if one chooses to become a Jew for Jesus, on what grounds can Jospe complain?

I myself have written here about some of the dangers of allowing other religious traditions to influence Judaism too much. This is the strongest weakness of such appeals to pluralism, postmodernism, relativism, or whatever word is most commonly used at the moment. Any argument that renders Judaism as one legitimate option amongst many opens itself to the follow-up question of “so then why do I have to be Jewish?”

One answer to that question might be to take an ethnic approach. Judaism is, after all, as much an ethnicity/nationality as it is a religion. A natural response then, night be to treat it the same way someone would answer the question of “Why do I have to be French, Spanish, American, or any other nationality?” We are Jewish by virtue of our birth and it is our culture. That answer may be a starting point, but it is incapable of providing a truly compelling reason for one to remain Jewish. Anyone can, with enough effort and/or motivation, immigrate to another country (perhaps even relinquish their prior citizenship in the process) or assimilate their family beyond recognition over enough generations. Hence the need, in my opinion, of a stronger argument; one that proclaims Judaism as the way for Jews to live, to the explicit exclusion of other ways of life.

The challenge of that approach, though, is that it can all-too-easily lead to religious fundamentalism and perhaps even extremism. In her most recent book (stay tuned for my review), Miriam Freud-Kandel draws attention to this but also articulates why such approaches are gaining popularity:

In some quarters, the value of external sources of authority that are beyond questioning and which claim to build on objective, transcendent accounts of truth has been strongly reasserted. Submission to a higher authority is deemed a worthwhile price to pay for the sense of some type of certainty it can claim to offer. Of course, this approach still represents a choice in the spiritual marketplace, indicating how Orthodoxy cannot escape the subjective turn. Yet it also demonstrates Orthodox Judaism’s considerably appeal and explains why establishing revelation as an unquestionable external source of authority beyond subjective influences is so important in Orthodox circles.

Note Freud-Kandel’s remark that even accepting an objective style of religious argumentation in this age represents merely “a choice in the spiritual marketplace.” One may read that and assume the author is deluding herself. If an objective argument were really to be made, then it is no longer one option among many but the only legitimate option. At the same time, it is hard to argue with the fact that we live in an age of unprecedented personal autonomy where even the acceptance of objective arguments is itself a subjective decision.

This, then, is perhaps the greatest argument for the Soft-Postmodern Orthodoxy advocated by Rav Shagar (which I’ve explored in previous posts), where Orthodox Judaism is positioned “as a hard, unconditional truth, while remaining open -absurdly- to the existence of other truths that contradict it.” If embodied correctly, such a Judaism “will be able to persist without losing its soul to rigid dogmatism or self-deception.” This approach would ideally be “driven by an acceptance of multiculturalism that enables it to choose itself without rejecting or delegitimizing other cultures, and without becoming rigid” and “will excel at creating gaps between various frames of reference in a manner that retains the truth of each, and prevents the distortions that arise from attempted syntheses, while rigorously empowering and maintaing the boundaries of its own truth.” It’s a tall order, requiring much unpacking, but it may just be the most productive way forward in the milieu in which we currently find ourselves.

In my next essay for 18Forty, and its accompanying Substack, I’ll attempt to unpack the repercussions of such a move as best as I can while defending the decision to be an Orthodox Jew in particular.