Analyzing Batnitzky, How Judaism Became A Religion

Antúrio done in watercolor paint for my aunt Silvana. To me, representation of emboldening oneself, something that school, and my excitement over my classes and the work I do in them, has taught me to embrace of myself.

A prompt I responded to in my online class: Religion & Politics.

2) What is it about Judaism (Jewish Law, religion, nationality, culture, etc.) that makes it difficult to place into the newly established category of religion? What does this say about its inherent politics?********

The newly established category of religion was defined by individuals’ and in turn a people’s commitment to a sensation pertaining to belief or emotion. Schleiermacher defined it as “neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling.” (p. 25) Recalling our initial reading by Jonathan Smith Religion, Religions, Religious, Smith refers to Samuel Johnson’s dictionary published in 1755 in which Johnson defines religion as “virtue, as founded upon reverence of God, and expectations of future rewards and punishments.” In the same reading, Smith quotes the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s (1771) definition of the term: “To know God, and to render him a reasonable service, are the two principal objects of religion.” (p. 271, Smith)

In other words, during the development of the Prussian state, the growing German Enlightenment ideals influenced the meaning of religion to be directly defined by individual belief, feeling, and relationship with God or divine power in general. The first manner in which Judaism fits this description is less so a parallel of it and more so the agreed opposition to it: the unity of church and state. Religion in this time period was stressed to be separate from state and that, Mendelssohn can attest, the Jewish culture, religion, and/or even political structures, are confirmed to be or can be independent from the law of the nation-state. He asserts that Judaism as a religion is “not a matter of belief but rather of behavior,” and therefore cannot directly “conflict with the possibility of the Jewish integration into the modern nation-state.” (p. 20)

Mendelssohn also highlights a great similarity between the moral intentions behind the law of the state and Jewish law. He asserts that because the Jewish ceremonial law is consistently philosophically revised over time, reevaluated and reapplied to adapt to the most modern ideologies of their environment(s), it therefore “avoids idolatry, and is also a model for the nations of the world for avoiding it.” (p. 21) He artfully poses a unique brilliance of Jewish texts for his fellow Christian citizens by encouraging concordance between them on what they consider the “fundamental human problem” which is idolatry. The fact that they can agree on the core issue which religion and law, individually or together, seek to correct means that regardless of how one classifies Judaism (be it law or religion), it will inherently “not [conflict] with reasoned enlightenment.” (p. 22)

A particular element of discussion for Mendelssohn that is both a compliment as well as a criticism to Christianity is his reveal of the Christian hypocrisy that is coercion. “A demand for conversion violates the definition of religion as noncoercive. At the same time, the requirement of belief in Christian dogma is also problematic from the perspective of enlightened reason.” (p. 20) The only route in which these opinions on enlightened reason would function is within the assumption that enlightened reason must be the self-reflection of an individual to reach an enlightened conclusion of religion. With this assumption, no religion that requires belief in order to be a part of it applies, and therefore Christianity in this case inappropriate and Judaism is fitting. However, such an assumption is specific, and the general meaning or resolution of the Enlightenment as a whole is an ongoing debate -- can historians label a time period as a period of “enlightenment” if the notion is a private experience? How is that measured? If it is only achieved by the individual, by himself, for himself, can it even be labeled as a group movement?

Although most of Mendelssohn’s arguments for Jewish religion are well-founded, and rational as they must be in order to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment period, there is a fundamental flaw in it. He compared Judaism to Christianity and said that although they are both religions, they are so for two very different reasons based in very similar intentions. He claimed that “Judaism demands action, not belief.” The difference between the two is merely the requirement which then classifies the individual as being a part of that religion, but both are in relation to God. In Christianity, one must believe in God, whereas in Judaism, one must obey God. And although the definition of religion at the time was indeed open-ended enough to include both as religions (as delineated in my initial paragraph), the focus of those definitions by German Protestant Enlightened thinkers (who were, at this time, the leaders of the movement) was on the idea of belief, superior to the idea of obedience. Because the whole purpose of Jewish defense was to gain rights for Jewish people by abating the Christian fear that they are seeking power, the confusion lies in the blurred line between obedience to Jewish law and obedience  to the law of the state and how such obediences could interfere with one another. This begged the very obvious and articulated question by Batnitzky himself, “So if Jews don’t follow Jewish law because of belief, and if Jews don’t follow Jewish law because it is in some sense political, why do or should Jews follow the law?” (p. 22)

The debate continues. If Jews want to follow the law, what law do they want to follow? The law of the state, or Jewish law? If Mendelssohn argues that these two are distinct because Jewish law is in fact Jewish religion, but Jewish religion is based in obedience and not belief, then how should the state govern over a Jewish people? Both Dohm and Friedlander agreed that Jews needed improvement, whereas Mendelssohn did not. Where Friedlander and Mendelssohn agreed most is that “Jews ought to receive rights as individuals and not as a corporate community.” (p. 24) Even more dramatic, Schleiermacher believed that “Jews need[ed] to repudiate their hope for a messianic future in which Jews would be reunited as one people, and they also need to submit to Prussian law...” (p. 26) Meaning that although all four authors in discussion (Mendelssohn, Dohm, Friedlander, and Schleiermacher) agree that Jews ought to receive rights as citizens, Schleiermacher is the only one to blatantly assert the political dominance of the state. Furthermore, this would “relegate Jewish law to a secondary, ceremonial status at best,” (p. 26) which is ultimately a nod of agreement to Mendelssohn’s entire justification for Judaism to be titled a religion so that it can continue to exist in the philosophical sense and not affect or be affected by the political state in which it exists.

What does ALL OF THIS say about Judaism’s inherent politics? Man, you tell me!

The Torah, Jewish culture, the Jewish law, Hebrew as a language, the Jewish people, were in many ways already “enlightened” by the time of the Enlightenment debate of what is or is not religion, of what is or is not law, how the two correlate, how the two separate, and how one (the individual) applies or is applied to their existence in a state which incorporates such concepts of vast variety. I say this because evidently, the Jewish religion or the Jewish law (however you choose to call it) was intentionally written to encompass such broad discussions so as to be able to be interpreted over time. This is yet another example which begs the explanation of how, in truth, religion actually differs from politics, and vice versa. What is the real difference? Personally, I am confused as to why and how such debates even existed! But then again, we are all looking at it from the past… And hindsight’s always 20/20.

****** All quotes assumed to be from Chapter 1, Batnitzky unless otherwise quoted.

What is art but expression? What is expression but existence?

ABSGELLER