LIMITS AND OBLIGATIONS
“This system of norms is constitutive of Judaism” writes Joshua Leifer, quoting Yeshyahu Leibowitz, an Israeli orthodox Jewish philosopher. Leifer continues “At its core, in other words, Judaism is a religion of limits and obligations—two concepts utterly opposed to the dominant currents of contemporary life. Our liberal capitalist culture celebrates boundless growth, infinite choice and instant gratification.” (Tablets Shattered p. 330)
Tablets Shattered is a very interesting book about contemporary Judaism and the decline of the consensus that ran the community since the six day war in 1967. Leifer offers four possible paths forward in what he calls the Autumn of Jewish life in America. He believes demographic decline is inevitable, and there are ways we can be Jewish in spite of that. Read the full book for the well constructed, persuasive argument.
The four paths forward are what he calls (p. 316ff)
The Dying Establishment
Prophetic Protest
Neo Reform
Separatist Orthodox.
They all have their shortcomings, and I’m not going to discuss the first three. But let’s turn to Separatist Orthodoxy and what he likes about it. To be clear, Leifer is a political progressive with very harsh words about Israeli government action in Gaza and the West Bank (the book was written mostly before October 7). But he admires Separatist Orthodoxy because he believes that it both captures the essence of Judaism as he sees it and because he believes it is the only counter-cultural path of the four. He thinks Judaism has basically been swallowed by our liberal capitalist culture and he longs for the limits and obligations that are only found in Separatist Orthodoxy. He embraces the Rabbinic interpretation of these limits and obligations, believing that we need to be obligated to God and the Jewish community, and limit our behavior according to Jewish law. Thus he engages in traditional Talmud study, lays Tefillin every morning, wears a Kippah, even while maintaining his progressive political views.
I believe in limits and obligations, only it is a different set of limits and obligations than what Leifer endorses.
I’ve believed in limits since I first read the French Existentialist writers when I was in High School. Malraux, Sartre, Camus, Andre Gide all convinced me that we are, to use the phrase I later learned from Heidegger, thrown into a given situation. We are finite beings, so we can’t be all knowing, all powerful, all places at once (unlike the traditional Western conception of God). Our job as humans is to work with what has been given us. And, here came my Judaism, improve the world. Gadamer, one of Heidegger’s students, talks about exploring our horizons, the edges of our known and felt world, and merging our horizon with other horizons as a way to expand our world. This was one of those things I read in 1979 and still lives with me every day. I believe in limits.
I also believe in obligations. I don’t think I’ve ever not believed in obligations. But the question has always been obligated to what? I did feel I was obligated to the Jewish people, but I just could never get behind being obligated to a God with whom I had no connection, whom I had never experienced. Thus I never embraced the idea that you had to follow all the commandments issued in his name but, to me, obviously devised by people and thus fallible because by definition, anything human is imperfect. The idea that the laws are perfect just grated at me.
I had this incredibly powerful experience on top of a grain silo in Israel when I was 18. I realized that I belonged to the land as I looked out over the Hula Valley. This experience was what Bill Plotkin would later call an ecoawakening, a realization of a primary commitment to the more than human world. But in 1976 I didn’t have the words to articulate that at all. I didn’t have a community with whom I could share it—I don’t think I ever discussed it with anyone at the time. I certainly had no way to express a primary commitment to land that I thought would work.
My commitment to land competed with other commitments such as my restless intellect, my off and on commitment to a Jewish life, my struggle to find a way to earn a living and eventually a commitment to raising a Jewish family. And my commitment to land routinely came second, I am embarrassed and ashamed to admit. If I feel like I have wasted much of my life, it’s because I did not follow this primary commitment. My life would have been a lot different if I would have centered that commitment. But I was both a bright Jewish kid from the suburbs of New York and a psychological mess and neither of those are the kinds of ingredients that lend themselves to a life committed to working with the land and worshipping what Victoria Loorz calls “the holy wild”, a felicitous phrase.
I pray that I am now in a position to embrace both my obligations to the land and my limitations as an earth based Jew who feels at home in a Continental ecosystem, such as where I live in Vermont, and not a Mediterranean one such as California or Israel. I hope I can learn and teach that we must embrace our limitations, that we much choose to what we are obligated and must take the steps we can to embody those limitations and obligations.
