GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

(This is a Purim-style jocular Interlude, before proceeding with other serious matters…)

My apologies to Bach, this entry has nothing to do with his or anybody else’s music, except for its title. Its subject is the amusing etymology of Jewish surnames in modern times.

Simon Bar Kokhba, Saad Ben Joseph, Moshe Ben Maimon, here are some choice properly Jewish names of yore. And then, of course, we have another set of perfectly Jewish names, such as Cohen, in all possible and impossible variations, and Levi-Levine-Halevi-Levitz, plus Rabin-Rabinowitz and such, plus some less explicit surnames, such as Katz (no relation to the German Puss in Boots), which is just an etymologically misleading anagram for Kohein Tzaddek; or Segal (often deliberately misspelled as Siegel or Seagal) which is yet another anagram, this time for Se Gan Levi, etc. Nor should there be any grounds for a surprise when, say, Bar Mendel becomes Mendelssohn, or Rivka’s son becomes Rivkin…

Of course, today we may be having a “Jewish man with a golden tooth named Smith,” and no one will ever want to ask, What are the names of your other teeth? But in between Ben Hur and Smith there are a host of other German-sounding names, like Stein, Bronstein, and Rubinstein, and where do they all come from?

Unlike Smith and Stephens, these Rosenbaums and Trafficants are easily recognized, often mistakenly, as Jewish names, but they have not existed just like that from the beginning of time. In fact, they are products of the emancipation of the European Jewry, to make their position of being different less striking in at least one area where the rules of Kashrus did not seem to apply.

The story of how the socially emancipated, shtetl-free Jews were getting their new Germanized names, and how much they were paying for them to the proper German authorities is one of the most hilarious episodes in the history of Judenthum.

I have to dig up some examples, mostly out of my head, I am afraid, as I shall never be able to dig up from any other place the price difference between surnames Goldberg and Silverberg or between Perleman and Rubin. But common sense should tell us that, had everyone been able to “afford” the name Diamant, there would have been no Steins… Nor Bergs, where Goldbergs had been equally available.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION AMONG THE HAREDIM

Writing this concluding and ultimate entry in the Jewish Philosophy subsection, it is very appropriate to end it with the thinking of the modern Haredim, that is, the super-ultra-Orthodox Jews, among whom my dear friend Rabbi Yisroel Rice might be considered left-wing.

These Haredim, consistently with their “philosophy,” place religion above all human preoccupations, while correctly observing that religion is not an exercise in free thought but a tightly conditioned discipline which is controlled by a set of given premises. From this generally valid point they make the next step, concluding that philosophy is a far inferior preoccupation, as it has no predetermined factors, allowing uninhibited, and thus irresponsible, thought, where “everything is allowed,” intellectually speaking.

In a previous Lev Shestov entry All Things Are Possible, we addressed the conflict between philosophy and science, and saw how Shestov deals with it. Even more previously, in Guiding The Perplexed, we discussed Maimonides’ not very successful effort to reconcile the three strong-headed giants, namely religion, science and philosophy. These two and most others have thus strove to find a measure of compatibility between the said disciplines, at least allowing them a peaceful coexistence. The Haredim, on the other hand, have stated a principled objection to the very foundation of philosophy, grounded in free thought, and have thus striven to deny it any legitimacy.

Having said that, what else are the Talmud and the Kaballah, which the Haredim are so adept in, if not first-rate philosophy? And for an outsider looking in, what is the religion of the Haredim if not that selfsame bona fide exercise in well-preserved free thought of the Jewish millennia?

THE POSTHUMOUS WILD ADVENTURES OF A NICE JEWISH THINKER PART III

Now, the following is an extremely interesting treatment of Leo Strauss by the Russian Academia, namely, Professor Yevgeni Mikhailovich Drohne, who was the official reviewer of Leo Strauss for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (the post-Soviet Great Russian Encyclopedia still in production has just [in 2010] reached the letter “L,” which means that it will reach Strauss only in 2013 at best), and the modern Russian philosopher Boris Andreevich Mezhuyev. Observe the smooth progression from Strauss’s esoterism to his “conspiracy theory,” as allegedly revealed by the actual neoconservative takeover of America during the Presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009), and perceptibly enduring, despite the disastrous setbacks in Iraq and wherever Washington’s efforts to impose its hegemony on the post-cold war world have been repulsed and ridiculed, even under the current Obama Administration.

According to Mezhuyev, “Strauss believed that ancient political philosophers secretly held views that were different from those held by the populations of their hometowns. For this reason, in their writings they used codes accessible only to the chosen, to convey their higher truth, so that none of the others would be able to understand. For Strauss, such esoterism of the ancient philosophers reveals their moral superiority. Strauss understood very clearly that without a belief in this higher truth liberal democracy as a political formation is doomed to fail.” And here is Drohne: “Strauss insisted that if a man has enough intellect to figure out what he wrote in code in his books, then he is not going to fight against it, because being smart enough to figure it out--and thus potentially to belong to the inner circle--will by definition want to participate in this game.” It’s on this principle that the Straussian conception of neoconservatism has been based, its essence being the “creation of a reality with a double bottom: one for all, and the other for the few.”

Dr. Drohne continues his commentary on Strauss in 2004, as the results of the neoconservative revolution in the United States were coming in with a vengeance, having been made visible to all. “On bloodless takeover of power.” Theoretically refined and successfully used in practice, the longterm mechanism of this takeover would be as follows: “There are several circles of disciples; and even those taken into lesser confidence can be used for lesser tasks; whereas the closest disciples of the innermost circle are initiated into the subtlest fineries of the teaching… outside the texts (!!!), that is orally, entirely sub rosa. Thus we are raising several graduating classes of students over the years and the initiated ones are now forming a kind of sect, helping each other’s careers and making careers for themselves, keeping the teacher informed and involved at all times… in this fashion after a few decades of this practice, ours, without firing a shot, take control over the most powerful country in the world.”

Such is the Russian take on Strauss, and on whatever happened to America over the last several decades. All this looks farfetched, and even preposterous, except there is no smoke without fire here. Strauss has indeed been accused by the American scholars and political theorists of being an accomplished intellectual fascist, a sinister cult leader taking his cue from Messrs.’ Lenin and Trotsky; and, from all that has been said about him, really capable of the worst insinuated about him. But there is a repudiation of such a characterization as well, and even some evidence to suggest that rather than being the father of the American secret order of the neocons, he was no such thing, and that, in fact, the neocons themselves, decades after Strauss’s death, appropriated his name and his legend for their cause, basically making up all these sordid associations and insinuations themselves.

So, was there, indeed, a super-secretive and super-sinister oral teaching initiated by Leo Strauss? Due to the super-hidden nature of this subject matter, the truth is hard to come by. But the fact itself that such talk has active currency, and that its sources are not some anti-Semitic bigots of the Protocols' historical infamy, but American Jewish academics and political activists themselves, brings forth several troubling questions, and the least troubling of them, in fact, the least relevant of them, is whether the late Professor Leo Strauss had anything to do with it at all.

THE POSTHUMOUS WILD ADVENTURES OF A NICE JEWISH THINKER PART II

Before we touch upon the more sensitive aspects of Strauss’s Leninist proclivities, let me say all the positive stuff I have to say about him.

Strauss was a well-educated student of classical philosophy with a special interest in the thought of Ancient Greece. Being a political philosopher, he separated the era of the pre-Socratics, where science and ontology were the main preoccupation, from the era that started with Socrates, seeing the birth of political philosophy in Socrates’ view that philosophers could not study nature without first studying their own human nature. In Aristotle’s words, Strauss says, “man is by nature a political animal,” hence, we are present at the birth of political philosophy.

Apart from his love for the Ancient Greeks, Strauss was a great admirer of Nietzsche. In his own words, “I can only say that Nietzsche so dominated and bewitched me between my 22^nd and 30^th years that I literally believed everything that I understood of him.” He wrote that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to properly understand relativism, an idea grounded in a general acceptance of Hegelian historicism. Heidegger, in his view, sanitized and politicized Nietzsche, whereas Nietzsche believed that our own principles including the belief in progress, will become as relative as all earlier principles had shown themselves to be; the only way out… that one voluntarily choose life-giving delusion instead of deadly truth, that one fabricate a myth. He also wrote that Hegel was correct when he postulated that an end of history implies an end to philosophy as understood by classical political philosophy.

My hands-down favorite among Strauss’s ideas is his excellent distinction between “scholars” and “great thinkers,” which I have chosen to present as a separate entry in my The Genius And The Scholar section. He says that most self-described philosophers are in actuality scholars, cautious and methodical. Great thinkers, in contrast, boldly and creatively address big problems. Scholars deal with these problems only indirectly, by reasoning about the great thinkers’ differences. With a deliberate touch of humility he characterizes himself as a “scholar.”

Now, before we move on with everything else, here is a brief but instructive Strauss summary, courtesy of the Wikipedia (which appears in teal font).---

According to Strauss, modern social science is flawed, because it assumes the fact-value distinction, which concept he finds dubious, tracing its roots in philosophy to Max Weber, a thinker whom he described as a “serious and noble mind.” Weber wanted to separate values from science, but, according to Strauss, he was really a derivative thinker, deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s (lupus in fabulis!) relativism. Strauss treated politics as something that could not be studied from afar. For Strauss a political scientist examining politics with a value-free scientific eye was self-deluded. Positivism, heir to both Auguste Comte and Max Weber in the quest to make purportedly value-free judgments, failed to justify its own existence, which requires a value judgment.
While modern liberalism stressed the pursuit of individual liberty as its highest goal, he felt that there must be a greater interest in the problem of human excellence and political virtue. In his writings, he constantly raised the question of how, and to what extent, freedom and excellence can coexist. He refused to make do with simplistic or one-sided resolutions of the Socratic question: “What is the good for the city and man?”
Strauss taught that liberalism in its modern form contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards extreme relativism, which in turn led to two types of nihilism. The first was “brutal” nihilism, expressed in Nazi and Marxist regimes. He said that these ideologies, both descendants of Enlightenment thought, tried to destroy traditions, history, ethics and moral standards replacing them by force under which nature and mankind are subjugated and conquered. The second type, “gentle” nihilism, expressed in Western liberal democracies, was a kind of value-free aimlessness and a hedonistic “permissive egalitarianism,” permeating the fabric of contemporary American society. In the belief that twentieth century relativism, scientism, historicism, and nihilism were all implicated in the deterioration of modern society and philosophy, he sought to uncover the philosophical pathways that had led to this situation. The study of it led Strauss to advocate a return to classical political philosophy as a starting point for judging political action.

So far so good, and so innocent, but now the clouds are about to appear on the horizon. Ironically, they start with the allegedly anti-democratic premise, which I totally share, that all societies consist of the minority elite and the majority hoi polloi. Apparently, to protect itself from the physically overwhelming majority, and, at the same time, to effectively subjugate hoi polloi to its superior intellect and will, the elite minority practices esoterism.

In 1952, he published Persecution and the Art of Writing, commonly understood to advance the argument that some philosophers write esoterically in order to avoid persecution by political or religious authorities. A few readers of Strauss suggest esoteric writing may also seek to protect politics from political philosophy whose explosive reasoning might well shatter fragile opinions undergirding the political order. Stemming from his study of Maimonides and extended to his reading of Plato, he proposed that esoteric texts were the proper type for philosophical learning. Rather than simply outlining the philosopher’s thoughts, the esoteric text forces readers to do their own thinking and learning. As Socrates says in the Phaedrus, writing does not respond when questioned, but invites a dialogue with the reader, thus reducing the problems of the written word. One political danger Strauss pointed to was students too quickly accepting dangerous ideas.

Ultimately, he believed that philosophers offered both an exoteric, or salutary teaching and an esoteric, or true teaching, the latter concealed from the general reader. For maintaining this distinction, Strauss is often accused of having written esoterically himself.

This does not look so innocent anymore...

 

(This is the end of Part II. Part III will be published tomorrow.)

THE POSTHUMOUS WILD ADVENTURES OF A NICE JEWISH THINKER PART I

(This entry is being posted in three consecutive parts.)

The reader ought to be aware that I am quite seriously of two minds about the persona of Leo Strauss. On the one hand, I like many of his ideas, and in some ways I see him almost as a kindred spirit. On the other hand, there exists a significant body of evidence picturing him as effectively the mastermind of a brilliantly clever (devilish, one might say) plot to take over the power in the United States in a bloodless coup, relying on the extreme determination and superior brainpower of its predominantly Jewish conspirators, bringing forth frightening memories of the pernicious and indisputably utterly fictitious Elders of Zion, of the infamous Protocols fame. Hence, his spurious title of the father of the American Neoconservative Movement, which is thus being equated to the said political conspiracy. Ironically, Strauss happens to be just as controversial and just as significant as a particular representative of the species, as the whole of Judenthum is significant and controversial on the world-historical scale.

And one more thing: on the question of American neoconservatism, allegedly begotten by Leo Strauss and put into action by his “followers,” see my previously posted entry Lenin In America in the American section, posted on this blog on June 30^th, 2011. (There is perfect justice in having entries about Leo Strauss in both American and Jewish sections.)

As the reader has been reading this section, he or she must undoubtedly have noticed that alongside some very positive things that I am saying about the Jews, other things are by no means flattering to them, but on the balance I can hardly be suspected of picking up either the plus or the minus side at the expense of the other. (Those who may suspect me of bias, will suspect me anyway, just for speaking my mind, instead of talking in bland propaganda generalities, which is the only acceptable way of talking about these things.)

There are at least three important reasons for my placement of the German-born Jewish-American political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) in Tikkun Olam, in addition to, say, in the American section, where I try keeping all notable Americans together. On the one hand, he was certainly a bona fide Jew who changed his country of residence several times during his life, moving from Germany to France, then on to England, and only then to the United States, where he would live from 1937 until his death, thirty-six years later. In this respect, like Albert Einstein, he can be called a Jew with far greater justification than he can be called an American, like someone, Jew or Gentile, who had lived in America all his life. On the other hand, his portrayal in America, as the founding father of the modern neoconservative movement, has been so much affected by this terrible association that, in order not to be too biased against him, I would rather leave that misshapen image where it belongs, but detach the wretched man from it, by considering him here as a Jewish political philosopher, as opposed to there, as an American political ideologue.

There is a third reason here, too, which is the fact that I would like to maintain a proper balance of fairness in speaking my mind on Res Judaica, and, in case anyone still thinks that I am too harsh on the Jews in this section, here is a very peculiar case in point. Leo Strauss, who represents a striking contrast of perceptions: was he a nice Jewish thinker, with some extremely interesting ideas, or was he indeed a sinister mastermind of a daring political conspiracy to take over the power in the United States by means of a bloodless coup, based on the superior brainpower of the select, using esoteric codes, psychological games, dissimulation, as well as the latest brainwashing techniques?

(This is the end of Part I. Part II will be published tomorrow, and part III the day after.)

THE REDEMPTIVE STAR OF FRANZ ROSENZWEIG

My next two Jewish philosophers are Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) and Martin Buber (1878-1965). They are so closely related that for a while I was thinking of giving them both a joint entry, but at the end of the day I thought otherwise. It is true that Buber is better known, but personally I used to be more taken by the intellectual brilliance and the remarkable personality of Rosenzweig, probably because I had a chance to read him at length with an undivided attention, finding him very interesting, and also learning some facts of his biography, which have intrigued me. Such a distinctive personal edge elevates Rosenzweig to a subjective level in my “graces,” which I cannot say about Buber. The particular reason why the two of them are closely tied is that they were very good friends, and collaborated on a number of projects, including a new German translation of the Biblia Hebraica.

Other than that, they were in constant argument concerning the phenomenon of Zionism. Buber was a dedicated Zionist, for which reason he was-- and is-- especially honored in the State of Israel. Rosenzweig, on the contrary, happened to be an anti-Zionist, deeply worried about the future of the Jewish people, should they pursue the Zionist ambition. This conviction must be perhaps the main reason of his undeserved semi-oblivion among the Jews, not even to mention the Gentiles, who are virtually ignorant of him.

The title of this entry belongs to Rosenzweig’s magnum opus, the one that I have read with a considerable interest. Franz Rosenzweig published his principal philosophical work Der Stern der Erlösung in 1921. It begins with a rejection of the traditional philosophical attitude denying the fear of death, and maintaining instead that this fear is the beginning of the cognition of the All. Man should continue to fear death, despite the attitude of the philosophers who have a predilection for accepting it. (It can also be said, I may add, that the fear of death is the beginning of all ethics! Fearless people tend to be amoral, in my estimation. Such an attitude is not very popular, of course, but I am happy to share it with Rosenzweig.)

Traditional philosophy is monistic; it is interested in the universal only. But there are actually three distinct domains, as identified by Kant: God, the world, and man. A monistic perspective deprives our consideration of this triad of the necessary analytical flexibility. (This is a promising approach, which establishes not one or two, but three active forces that also happen to be interactive forces. The argument about analytical flexibility, or the lack thereof, is invincible, even if one disagrees with the other parts.)

Everything is known through experience (and experience of God is through revelation). The Bible focuses on all three parts of the triad, in their relation to each other: between God and the world, which is creation, between God and man, which is revelation, and between man and the world, which leads to salvation. (The most unusual observation, effectively denying the quality of salvation to the relationship between man and God. Before we dismiss it indignantly, however, Rosenzweig’s triad is well worth thinking through carefully, and even if we persist in our disagreement, our own understanding is deeply enriched by the encounter with his thinking.)

Biblical faith produces two valid religions, according to Rosenzweig. They are Judaism and Christianity. (In a way, this is almost a truism, but Rosenzweig is clearly trying to establish a meaningful comparison of the two faiths, for which reason he isolates them from all other religions.) The latter seeks the way to salvation in the vicissitudes of time and history. Judaism, on the other hand, is utterly unconcerned with these two. In fact, Jewish life is already a life eternal, forever renewed by the rhythm of the Jewish liturgical year cycle.

Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption was ignored by mainstream philosophy, and it gained its reputation as a piece of maverick thinking, which, not surprisingly, I find most attractive.

The highlight of his life was his decision at the age of 26 and after a long struggle with himself to convert to Christianity (his personal experience with Judaism was virtually non-existent). Having found his solution to the philosophical problem of man in religious faith, Protestantism was appealing to him particularly, as allowing an existential faith and a “dialogical” relationship with God. While preparing himself for Baptism, he attended, however, as perhaps his last rite as a Jew, the Yom Kippur services in a small Orthodox shul in Berlin. The event had a profound effect on his psyche, as, according to his description of it, he now found what he was looking for, both spiritually and philosophically, not outside his inherited Jewish identity, but precisely within its confines. And from then on, he would devote his life and thought to the study, teaching, and the religious practice of Judaism.

Another biographical fact about him, which I find still more appealing, in terms of my personal partialities, is that, having served in the German Army, during World War I, in 1918, he attended an officers’ training course near Warsaw, as Poland at the time was under German occupation. There he had a chance to observe the life of the Poilische Yidden and was summarily overwhelmed by the depth and richness of their faith. It was that encounter which prompted his thinking toward what would become his intellectual masterpiece--- Der Stern der Erlösung.

(I must remind the reader that the general attitude of German Jews toward the Poilische Yidden had always been contemptuous and culturally dismissive. It was therefore almost heroic on the part of Rosenzweig that in his case he was able so acutely to appreciate the distinctive Jewishness of the Haredim, who constituted a small fraction of German Jews, but nearly a hundred per cent among the Polish religious Jews. The reason why I italicize “religious” is that a large number of Polish and Russian Jews were agnostics, and as much dismissive of religion as such, as the emancipated German Jews used to be dismissive of the Haredim, and not surprisingly still are. Ironically, choosing the Haredim, who would never care about him anyway, over the Haskala Jews, who have surely been offended by his dismissal of non-Orthodox Judaism, Rosenzweig found himself in the unenviable position of a pariah, which offers the reader another reason for his continuing semi-oblivion.

In the last years of his life, suffering from an incurable illness gradually taking away his life, he became interested in classical and sacred music (another winner for him in my estimation), leaving an array of delightful essays on the subject as the last testament in his brilliant and original legacy.

And now, Franz Rosenzweig’s beautiful title The Star of Redemption is about to connect the legacy of them both, Rosenzweig and Buber: the man who died before his time, and the man who certainly had outlived it. (The Martin Buber entry will be posted later.)

FONS VITAE

[This entry about the philosopher-poet Solomon ibn Gabirol (1020-1057), uses the title of his major work Fons Vitae as its own title. Originally written in Arabic (there are no extant texts of the original), its Latin translation was made a century after its author’s death, in 1150, and only afterwards found its way into Hebrew, as a translation from Latin! Jewish scholars have shown little interest in Gabirol as a philosopher, but all have honored him as a poet and the genius author of the hymn Adon Olam. (See my Adon Olam entry earlier in this section.)]

There were several notable Jewish philosophers during the time between the closure of the Talmud and the coming of Rambam (Maimonides). Some of them will be mentioned in the historical subsection, later on in this section; others are of lesser interest to me, and therefore are not going not be mentioned at all. But one of them in particular needs a special mention, perhaps not so much as a philosopher as a case of some curiosity in the history of the often uneasy coexistence between the Jews and the Christian world.

Solomon ibn Gabirol (1020-1057), known in Latin to Christian scholars as Avicebron, is considered a neo-Platonist philosopher, and several later Jewish scholars have used this “offense” against him, complaining about his “Gentile” leanings, and his lack of interest in Res Judaica proper. It is hard to imagine, however, that the great author of Adon Olam could ever be accused of a deficiency in Jewish zeal! Much more likely, as a philosopher, he had taken it upon himself to reconcile Jewish thought with Gentile philosophy, finding such a mission to be more in tune with his philosophical aspirations, and, generally speaking, more useful to Res Judaica than the normal occupation of a Jewish scholar, working in complete isolation from the outside non-Jewish world.

Ironically, Gabirol’s apparent preoccupation paid off with the Gentile posterity, when his works, particularly his Fons Vitae, in Latin translation, were mistaken for works of some Christian scholastic philosopher. One of his chief admirers was none other than Duns Scotus, a dedicated Platonist. On the Aristotelian side of the purely Christian controversy over Gabirol’s philosophical legacy were such luminaries of Christian thought as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.

To be honest, Gabirol’s philosophy is rather too scholastic, and there is little point in writing about matters scholastic any more than they have already been treated in my philosophical sections. But a brief detached summary of Gabirol’s philosophy may be in order, once we have used Fons Vitae as our title anyway.

(Quoted from the Wikipedia.) “Fons Vitae consists of five tractates, treating of (1) matter and form in general, and their relation in physical substances; (2) the substance that underlies the corporeality of the world; (3) proofs of the existence of substantiae simplices, of intermediaries between God and the physical world; (4) proofs that these are likewise constituted of matter and form; (5) universal matter and universal form.

The chief doctrines of the Fons Vitae may be summarized as follows:

(1) All created beings are constituted of form and matter.

(2) This holds true of the physical world, and is not less true of the spiritual world.

(3) Matter and form are always, and everywhere, in the relation of sustinens and sustentatum, propriatum and proprietas, substratum and property or attribute.

The main thesis of Fons Vitae is that all that exists is constituted of matter and form; the same matter runs through the whole universe from the highest limits of the spiritual down to the lowest limits of the physical, excepting that matter the farther it is removed from its first source becomes less and less spiritual. Gabirol insists over and over again that the materia universalis is the substratum of all that exists.”

Those who are familiar with Duns Scotus, can easily deduce that it was materia universalis which caught his attention in particular, in Fons Vitae. But I would assume that Duns promoted Fons Vitae (presumed to be a Christian work, remember!) not so much for its intrinsic merit, as to promote his own original views, using Fons Vitae as a vehicle, after the saying that there is safety in numbers.