INSIGNIFICANT OTHERS

(Note: the lightheartedly jocular title of this entry refers exclusively to the specific philosophical legacies of the individuals discussed in it. There is no question, though, that someone like Rabbi Samuel Hirsch, of the Reform Movement fame, cannot be called “insignificant” on the sum total of his achievements.)

While the illustrious Moses Mendelssohn, who opened the Haskala door to all significant and insignificant others of Jewish philosophy, was looking back to Plato, Spinoza and Leibniz, for inspiration and imitation, the ones he ushered in derived theirs from some of the more recent Gentile sources and contemporaries. In my opinion, this lack of originality does not call for any special attention from us on philosophical grounds, but their social and ideological implications are nevertheless interesting. Of those better known among them, Solomon Formstecher was a Schelling man, Nachman Krochmal and Samuel Hirsch (the principal figure of the Reform movement in Europe and America) were Hegelians, Solomon Steinheim followed the anti-scientific thinking of Friedrich H. Jacobi, while Hermann Cohen was an adept in Kantian metaphysics. (Curiously, Cohen’s writings of the last period of his life have been noted by all historians of Jewish philosophy as a radical departure from Kant, in his assumption of the essence of Man’s relationship to God in their mutual Love for each other. This allegedly innovative departure, however, does not impress me that much, as I see it only as a rather unsophisticated infusion of typical Christian thinking, which, even though very nice and sensitive, cannot be put on a philosophical par with his far more sophisticated, albeit very derivative, neo-Kantian expositions, and thus it should not offer any ground for comparison. In other words, I prefer the earlier Cohen to the later Cohen... Come to think of it though, the Christian idea of Love is a Jewish idea, and any implication that Cohen gets it solely from Christianity, rather than from its native Judaic source, merely proving that Jesus was also a Jew, will be standing on shaky ground.)

In applying the principles of Western (here synonymous with German) philosophy to address the issues of Judaism, previously unexplored from such a novel and potentially rewarding perspective, they all achieved a measure of their own originality as I shall briefly illustrate here by the example of the Hegelian neophyte Nachman Krochmal, who applied the great German’s concept of national spirit to his study of the national destiny of the Jewish people, as compared to the other goyim ha-aratzot. The Geist of the goyim, he wrote, was in each case essentially particular, as it completely depended on the historical accidence of this or that nation, becoming extinct when the nation became extinct, or assimilated into a more powerful Geist, when such a thing happened to its host nation. Remarkably, for Krochmal, even Great Britain at the height of her imperial power is perishable goods in this context.

Unlike the goyim ha-aratzot, however, the spirit of the Jewish people is not particular in its essence. Being unique, it is a part of the Universal Spirit, tying God’s chosen people to Him, and thus accounting for their eternal and indestructible perpetuity… What we unmistakably see here is an extension of Tikkun Olam, the Jewish Manifest Destiny.

As for the Jewish philosophical view of Christianity, Samuel Hirsch offers us a glimpse seeing it as nothing terribly radical in-itself, being a fairly innocuous extension of Judaism, except that a certain renegade Jew, Saul of Tarsus, Saint Paul of the Christians, made them sadly incompatible by the infusion of his own anti-Jewish teachings.

This last point, although philosophically insignificant, has huge practical implications. I must repeat for my reader’s better understanding, that, according to this line of thinking, the Jewish Rabbi Jesus presents no compatibility problem for the Jews and the Christians, but Saint Paul does! This is not a new thought, of course, but, given Hirsch’s perspective on it, and especially considering his special founding role in the Reform Movement in America, it certainly sheds a new light on this particular matter.

Regarding today’s nexus of Jewish and Christian Zionism in the United States of America, even religious Zionist Jews can accept this nexus with a good conscience. All they have to do is read Samuel Hirsch. The same cannot be said, however, of the Christian part of the nexus, who just cannot ignore Saint Paul, being the principal writer of the Christian Bible. But apparently there is an easy solution here even for them: it’s politics, stupid, and good conscience has nothing to do with it.

…So much for the Judaeo-Christian Zionist alliance, a table set (a playful allusion to the literal meaning of “Shulkhan Arukh”) for a partnership celebration party on top of an awakening volcano…