Very Brief Review of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, by Yoram Hazony.

Very Brief Review of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, by Yoram Hazony.

Earlier I posted a review of Hazony’s treatment of the political philosophy of the Bible. Here is a very brief overview of the book, based on a review I recently submitted for publication.

Yoram Hazony argues that Western academic tradition misguidedly sees Hebrew Bible as “revelation of secrets” or, following Christian notions of Scripture, as “witness (testamentum),” rather than studying it as ultimately a carefully argued work of “reason”—that is, of Philosophy. For Hazony, Scripture is a complex philosophical system, that, like much Greek philosophy, is in literary form and has religious references. As organized in Jewish tradition, the centerpiece is The History of Israel (Genesis through Kings), presenting basic discussions of ethics, political philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics, with conclusions sometimes more advanced than the Greeks regarding such topics as limited government reflecting the people’s desires and what is eternally true.  Parallel collections of Prophetic orations and Writings follow with additional perspectives on these issues. Mosaic Law is has to be discussed (as Hazony notes, he is an orthodox Jew) and it is: Hazony makes it clear that Scripture enjoins observance. But—in contrast to Christian teachings about the necessity of Faith—at the same time Scripture “criticize[s]…perfect trust in God” (24-25), and shows how we must demand what is right and true from leaders and even from God. Hazony argues Hebrew Bible is a complex, multi-authored work of Reason about the purpose of the world and its history, and how Israel should live in the light of that history. Moreover, Scripture asserts that ultimately, the Philosophy it sets forth is necessary to understand the history and task of all mankind.

Hazony has made it clear that he views this as promoting an ongoing discussion about how to view the Bible and its role as a work of Philosophy. Certainly, many departments of Philosophy are dismissive of this literature as having any claim to explain the world as it really is. The work, like Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,  may be most accessible to those who are both Orthodox Jews and Philosophers, but will have the impact its author hoped for if Hebrew Bible is understood more widely by academics as a fundamental work of the Philosophical tradition.

Seth Ward

Review of Gene A. Plunka, Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity

Gene Plunka states that “Drama has proven to be an effective medium for representing the Holocaust.” (16) In this book, he reviews many of the most important plays about the Holocaust, providing analytic accounts of the characters, and extremely detailed synopses of the plays. He is above all a theater historian and critic, giving background information about how each play came to be written and about the world-view it was supposed to represent, and offering a critical assessment of where it succeeded and where it did not replete with analysis of production and staging, number of performances, and critical reviews. These details provide invaluable contextualization: literary works, including these dramas, have been so influential in shaping our conceptualization of the Holocaust that it is easy to lose sight of how they were created, staged, and received.

While each chapter places the individual plays described in it into perspective, the introduction is the only place where a truly broad overview is offered; in the rest of the book, each chapter discusses a play or group of plays, and could easily be a stand-alone article on the subject. There is no overall conclusion reviewing the findings, discussing the significance of the conclusions, and charting an overall path through staged presentations of the Holocaust theme. While this would be my personal preference, it is not really Plunka’s purpose in this book.

Plunka lays out two overall goals, first, to ensure "accuracy and faithfulness to the Shoah"—although recognizing that playwrights have substantial latitude—and second, to serve as an effective drama critic (19). A concluding essay could have allowed for more attention to larger themes, such as the first of these two goals and questions such as the degree to which the "wide latitude" in the plays examined did or did not trivialize the event or disrespect the dead (19)—and an overall treatment of the such topics as “accuracy and faithfulness” in staged drama, where the characters must loom larger than life, even though they are portraying the Holocaust, the enormity of which is itself often seen as larger than any study or drama can portray. As for the second goal: Plunka is a skillful critic, and has much to day about the symbolism and meaning of the plays, unfolding development of characters’ attitudes to the Holocaust, and the attitudes of the playwrights to the most important issues in depicting the Holocaust on stage. Again, my personal preference would have been for an overall conclusion about the significance of such critical review, and the ways in which these dramatic productions reflected—and re-shaped—popular understanding of the Shoah and discourse about it. 

To a certain extent, the discussion of the plays is driven instead by the delineation of five goals of Holocaust drama, based on the work of Robert Skloot: homage to the victims, educating audiences, inducing empathy, raising moral and ethical questions, and drawing lessons from history. (17)  Thus, Plunka sees Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy: A Christian Tragedy most importantly as falling under the rubric of raising moral and ethical questions. The play engendered much discussion regarding the Vatican’s role in the Holocaust, a topic that remains controversial today. Plunka sees the heart of the play as the “assumption of moral responsibility” which leads him to take issue with the typical understanding of the play, noting that the Papal Deputy’s choice “vindicates the Church, and when viewed in this manner, his martyrdom is a tribute to, not an attack upon Christianity.” (183). Seeing the play as ultimately about moral choice, Plunka lambasts Hochhuth’s decision to lengthen the play by adding a fifth, final act set in Auschwitz, calling it a “critical mistake.” The fifth act lengthens the time needed to mount the play, not only by the extra act, but by elaborations of characters really needed only to support it; otherwise it could be mounted in four hours or less. But loss of focus may be the heart of the critical problem. Opining that the purpose of the extra act appears to have been to associate Auschwitz with evil and to question God’s role, he says “those two topics are not germane to the central notion of moral responsibility and even muddle the issue unnecessarily.” (185)

As the discussion of The Deputy focuses on category of examining moral and ethical questions, in his final choice, Harold Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes, Plunka appears to focus on the category of drawing lessons from history—indeed, he notes that it alerts us to Wiesel’s plea not to forsake the Holocaust’s lessons. Rebecca’s vision of the Holocaust at the end of the play—of Nazis ripping babies from their mothers—“allows her to refuse to be victimized again and again and again.” His final remark is that this play “makes us aware that such genocide could begin again if we do not recognize that the personal is meshed with the political.” (326-327).

The Holocaust is one of the enduring symbols of our times: a foundation stone of our narrative about good and evil, about society and values, about who we are and how we came to be who we are. We use fraught terms to designate actors in this all-too-real and all-too-evil drama: survivors, victims, liberators, resistors, deniers[1]—and even treat this status as a heritage, using terms such as 2nd and 3rd generation, or asking where someone’s grandfather was in the Holocaust. Drama is indeed an effective medium for reflecting on the Holocaust, debating issues and lessons, and indeed, defining the parameters of discourse. Thus Plunka convincingly argues that Hochhuth adding Auschwitz was a critical mistake but in retrospect, Auschwitz is such a potent embodiment of evil, that it’s easy to imagine why he thought it was dramatically necessary—and its inclusion could only increase the visibility of Auschwitz. 

Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity functions best on the level of individual plays, both for its insightful analysis of style, focus, plot, and character, and for its critical assessment of staging, production and reception. Taken as a whole, it is a fruitful basis for discussion of issues of dramatic accuracy and faithfulness, of coherence and focus, and of the extent to which dramatic presentations of the Holocaust trivialize it and render it banal or a mere metaphor or symbol—or memorialize, crystallize issues and teach transformative lessons. This is an important read for dramaturgs and students of theater, for professors of literature and intellectual history, and for the general reading public concerned with the presentation of the Holocaust.

 

Seth Ward


[1] Holocaust Resistors do not play much of a role in the book under review, but they are the subject of Plunka’s most recent book, the just-released Staging Holocaust Resistance (Palgrave 2012).

Thoughts on Political Philosophy based on a review of Yoram Hazony’s The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture.

This essay started as a Dvar Torah for October 3, 2012—the night of the first Presidential Debate between Mitt Romney and Barak Obama, and has only been lightly edited.

My talk this evening has little to do with the Torah readings for Sukkot or for that matter, with the Parashat Hashavuah. Those were my first thoughts for a subject to be sure, but I recently received a review copy of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, by Yoram Hazony, a political philosopher whose volume The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul created quite a stir with its analysis and critique of (inter alia) the orientation of the academic world in Israel. Hazony argues that the Tanakh must be part of the discourse of philosophy in the academic world, a “work of reason”—of philosophy--as much as those based on Greek philosophers. Given tonight’s Presidential debates, I turned to Hazony’s chapter with a subtitle “A Political Philosophy.”

Commenting on a verse from I Samuel, Hazony concludes that “the Hebrew Bible can be seen as going farther in the direction of endorsing democratic rule than any of the classic texts of Greek philosophy.” Perhaps American democratic ideals reflect 18th century European thought more than the ancient Greeks, but that is not particularly important for us: his comments are based on his reasoning from Hebrew Bible and are relevant to our own democratic process.

The verse records words God is said to have spoken to Samuel (I Sam 8:7)
 שְׁמַע בְּקוֹל הָעָם, לְכֹל אֲשֶׁר-יֹאמְרוּ אֵלֶיךָ  “Accept the voice of the people in everything they say to you.”
But this is only part of the story: He sees this as Divine acquiescence in what is practical and indeed necessary—and contrary to the prophet’s judgment—yet still problematic: in this verse, Samuel is told that they are rejecting God himself: Ki Oti maasu—“they have rejected Me.” In a note, Hazony compares this to God telling Abraham to listen to Sarah to do what is practical and necessary, although against his better judgment, and expel Hagar and Ishmael.

Yet Hazony adduces a second source of political legitimacy from Samuel’s speech when the people suggest that maybe they had sinned when they asked for a king. (1 Sam chap. 12), noting that “The legitimacy of the state cannot derive from the consent of the people alone.” (151) as Samuel says he will instruct them

 בְּדֶרֶךְ הַטּוֹבָה וְהַיְשָׁרָה. “in the good and the right path.”

Thus the Hebrew Bible argues for a political system of dual legitimacy: the interests of the people, and the demand for the Good and Right. In Hazony’s words: “the people and their representatives… [make] demands on the king in defense of their own interests,” while the government is also urged towards the good and right by the Prophets. 

Thus, according to Hazony, we have a reasoned argument for a doctrine of limited government, differing from the imperialism of Egypt which enslaved the Israelites and the expansionism of Assyria and Babylonia, but also differing from the anarchy of the period of Judges which caused civil war and disunity. The Laws of Kings from Deuteronomy call for the King to refrain from amassing horses, wives and gold.  These rules are designed to preclude the king from waging constant warfare, from complicated international alliances, (cemented by marriage), and excessive taxation and plunder. The ideal political system is a limited state governed by law, not by arbitrary whimsy of the government and by self- aggrandizement. This is why the King is to write a copy of the Torah and keep it with him.

Solomon shows the difficulty of maintaining this balance. Solomon impresses all with his wisdom achieves peace and builds the Temple. But he exacts heavy taxes, has entangling alliances through his wives, and gathered many chariots and horses. (1 K 10:14-11:4). The law of the King, says Hazony, is not only to keep the King oriented towards God, but loyal to his people and sympathetic to them “so that his thoughts be not lifted above his brothers” (Deut. 17:20). Could Solomon possibly have met this criterion if he only drank from silver vessels, and taxed the people to build himself a palace larger than the Temple itself, and sumptuous palaces for foreign wives? Doesn’t the forced labor imposed on Israel remind us of the forced labor endured in Egypt?

Hazony argues that the Bible wrestles with two types of government options: an imperial state, leading to bondage, and anarchy, leading to dissolution and civil war, and argues that the State must steer a clear course between the two extremes, seeking “the good and the right.” Government must understand that virtue comes from limitations – on borders, on armies, on foreign entanglements, on income, on the raising of the government above the people. The Political mission of man is to steer clear of both extremes, of the twin threats, “thereby assuring the sympathies of both man and God and the political longevity of the kingdom.” (160).

I do not know how exactly Hazony would apply these principles to modern Israel or modern America. For readers of his book who, like him, come from a modern Orthodox or similar background, the content of his reconstruction will not be all that surprising. But the book is more exactly an argument aimed at academic scholars and departments, arguing that the Hebrew Bible is a crucial component in the development of Western thinking and those who ignore it or relegate it to “revelation” rather than reason are misguided. In other words, he is not necessarily arguing that readers should accept the political philosophy as correct, just as a philosopher explaining Plato or Aristotle might emphasize interpreting their ideas and understanding their significance.

I will leave it to you to interpret the ideas about good government Hazony asserts derive from a study of the Bible as a work of reasoned argument and their significance, including their application to large states, such as the USA, or to the contemporary State of Israel, and how these ideas about legitimacy, power, and ”the good and the Right”  relate not only to an actual or ideal Israelite sovereign, but to general goals of government, and the pitfalls that befall politicians.

Seth Ward

An informal review of Sadakat Kadri. Heaven on Earth: A Journey through Shari’a Law.

I finally got around to reading the book by Sadakat Kadri. Heaven on Earth: A Journey through Shari’a Law. On the whole, it is an excellent read. It’s a book I could consider for my History of Islam course, especially if our Program runs a course on Islamic religion as well as “History of Islam.” (That might be a better division than the current course offerings).

 

There are a few places where I thought Kadri was wrong or left things out. Most of the time, that’s OK, as his choices make sense, although sometimes I thought the approach was too simplistic, given the breadth and depth of the book. What is less clear to me is whether I consider his narrative of the past stunningly integrative—that is, integrating political history and the development of legal thought in a useful way—or going overboard in selecting and reshaping the material to do so. But the general trajectory of his history serves to support ideas that continue to surprise me although I agree with them and teach them: the sunna emerged as a response to legal reasoning, not the other way around—and Islam changed forever in the wake of the Mongol invasion, the context in which Ibn Taymiyya was active. He explains this and other such matters well.

 

One reason I mention the concept reshaping the material is his treatment of Ibn Taymiyya. With good reason, he regards Ibn Taymiyya as crucial for understanding many aspects of the development of Islamic thought for the past seven centuries, and especially important for the Salafi approach today (he finds Salafi preferable to many similar terms used today such as extremists, Wahhabis, etc.), and to developments in the concept of Jihad, especially against other Muslims. And he paints an easy-to-understand picture detailing exactly how and why Salafi-style Islam (especially since 1979) differs from all previous ideas about jihad and violence against other Muslims, including the imposition of violent shari’a punishments. Again, I am not sure that I would agree on all his main points, but the book provides a reasonable argument and a very clear statement.

 

Kadri’s approach to the Palestinian/Israeli issue is curious in one sense: he delineates why it is central to much radicalization in contemporary Islam, and especially the role it played in the development of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but on the whole, this issue gets less space in the book than one might think given his assertion of its centrality. I think Kadri is indeed correct to keep it in perspective, and to emphasize “promoting good and forbidding evil” and other aspects associated with sunni Islam and especially with contemporary counties in which violent, traditionalizing Muslim groups are dominant—by no means all traditionally- Islamic countries. And I think Kadri could have offered even more contextualization of conflicts between Salafis, Muslim Brotherhood, Shia and moderate Sunni Muslims, within issues of bad government, world politics (going back to 1st and 2nd World War and Cold War/Third World issues), and “minority relations,” that is, tensions between groups based on religion, religiosity or ethnicity.  

 

I am grateful to a student who suggested I read this book and comment on it; for me personally, it has raised some questions about how to teach Islamic history, specifically how to integrate the development of legal ideas into a political narrative—something Kadri does quite well—and how I wish to research and write about issues of Islamic law, of 13-14th century Islam, and about contemporary considerations. I am grateful for the encouragement to have read it, and know it will affect some of my thinking on these issues as I go forward.

 

Seth Ward