log;
ENCOUNTER
t
If
my
you were
to
make
a film of
toda§‘s%éq;lu had to choose for
it
one of
those snappy, single-word titles which seem to be de rigueur nowadays, what
would it be? My suggestion is 'Encounter'.
As a matter of fact, there are two encounters. First, in a dream on the bank
of the river Jabbok, Jacob encounters a mysterious being who is referred to
nondescriptly as ya; ‘a man'.
Who is this £511, and is he good or bad? According to the Haftarah
traditionally read on this Shabbat, he is 1350, 'an angel‘ (H05. 1225), a
messenger of God, and therefore presumably good. And this interpretation
seems to be confirmed by the sequel in which Jacob names the place Peniel,
which means ‘the face of God‘, saying, yg'm—mmnmbs.Wm"), 'for I have
seen God face to face' (Gen. 32:31)‘ Peniel, in other words, is the place of
Jacob's encounter with God.
On the other hand, the ish might be an evil spirit. Why? Because the dream
takes place beside a river, and at night, which suggests one of those sprites of
popular folklore who hover where there is water during the hours of
darkness but at daybreak vanish into thin air, as in Jacob's dream the ish says
'Let me go, for day is dawning' (Gen. 32:27). In line
to him,
with this, the Zohar (Gen. 170a) identifies the mysterious being with
Sammael, which is another name for Satan.
Paradoxically, therefore, Jacob's encounter is either with God or with Satan!
And then there is a third possibility. According to the ,Midrash, the
the 'prince' or’l/geniué' of Esau’(Gen. R. 7823).
mysterious being is
And that makes good sense, since the prospect of meeting Esau, the brother
he treated so badly so long ago and who is quite possibly still bent on
vengeance, is what preys on Jacob's mind as he lies down to sleep on the bank
of the Iabbok.
And that brings us to the second encounter of our Sidra( which takes place
the following day, when the brothers really do meet. But is Esau good or bad,
and therefore, when he kisses Jacob, is it a genuine kiss or, as some
Midrashim suggest, is he really trying to bite him? Let us keep all these
possibilities in mind as we leap across the chasm of time to the present.
Last Sunday, in London, under Orthodox auspices, there took place what
was billed as an 'Encounter Conference‘ under the title ‘Judaism Faces
Modernity'. And what's the connection? Yes, you have guessed it! As Jacob,
in his dream, encountered a mysterious being, so Judaism, for the past two
hundred years, has been encountering modernity; and as the great question
about Jacob's ish is whether he is good or bad, so the great question to be asked
about modernity is whether it is good or bad.
‘
OEI’I
.
XOE’V‘H
AE'VJEEE’I
W,
CofihHWWfiH—mmemmkeyker,
Mimmodolegy_mmmkedjhout—that.
What then
is
modernity?
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‘
Tho—a—Hende‘i’thexlfiennial
According
to )im, the
f0
essence of modernity is faith in reason and faith in science, and since we no a VIM,
(doloj‘wlh
longer have so much faith in reason or in science, therefore, hésaid, we have
f
already left modernity behind and live in a post-modern age.
CMH.
2
may
how
word
used in sociology, but it is a
huge oversimplification! For one thing, thank God, we still have some faith
in reason, for reason is what stands between civilisation and barbarism.
Likewise, we still have some faith - indeed, a great deal of faith - in science.
The danger of global warning, for_ instance, is not to be laid at the door of
science. On the contrary, it is science which has alerted us to the danger, and
.Well, that
we
‘
are heavily
be
the
'modernity'
dependent on science
to
is
overcome
it.
WhaLJhe—K—yoto
In any case, modernity is not only about reason and science. It is about all
those things which significantly distinguish the modern age from the Middle
Ages. They include, we must admit, some negative things, like nationalism,
racism, totalitarianism, secularism, materialism, consumerism, and
permissiveness. But they also include many positive things, like the
rediscovery of classical civilisation, the spirit of free inquiry, the toleration of
diversity, individual autonomy, equality, democracy, and universalism.
To this complex cluster of phenomena which constitutes modernity, what
‘
should be our attitude as Jews? There are four possibilities‘ First, we could
sell our souls to it, or to whichever part of it appeals to us. In that spirit,
many Jews at the beginning of the last century, like Heinrich Heine,
converted to Christianity, with or without conviction, as a way of merging
into a new society in which they could conveniently forget their Jewishness;
and in the same spirit, a few generations later, many opted for Marxism as
their sole ideology. It is the way of apostasy.
At the other extreme, it is possible to ignore modernity altogether, to turn
our backs on it, to say to our people, 'Keep well away from it, for it is evil;
avoid any encounter with it', or, as Lewis Carroll might have put it, 'Beware
the Jabbok, my son" That is the way of old-time Orthodoxy, represented at
.r ,.
‘kwolfla‘ the beginning of the nineteenth century by the Chatam Sofer, known for his
that‘anything new is ipso facto forbidden by the
slogan,
a”,
Torah’, and today by the Charedim.
m-M
Between these two extremes there are only two possibilities. One is the way
of Neo-Orthodoxy/ or Modern Orthodoxy, QL/‘Bfegiessilexgsthadoxy', as\
1‘t
W”,
.
*ovuk
M
Mia/k
“‘0‘”-
j
it, which goes back to Samson Raphael
Hirsch with his slogan, rm "[11 m7 mm, by which he meant that one should
combine traditional Jewish belief and practice with participation in European
culture. And it is the spirit of the conference that was held in London last
Sunday. It is a way of saying: we are not hostile to modernity; we are
interested in it and want to listen to it; but on the other hand, it has nothing
significant to teach us, and therefore nothing it may say is going to make any
significant difference to the way we understand and practise our Judaism. It is
an encounter, but a one—sided one: more like a confrontation.
Which leaves the way of Progressive Judaism. We don‘t sell our sOuls to
modernity, and we don't turn our backs on it. We face it, but not in a spirit of
condescension. We don't pretend that Jewish tradition has all the answers
and that therefore we have nothing to learn from modernity. On the
contrary, modernity has already taught us many things. It has even given us
a truer understanding of how the Bible came to be written and how Judaism
grew and developed. It has certainly taught us those Enlightenment values
'
'
which
I
mentioned
earlier, like
individual autonomy, pluralism, democracy,
equality especially as between men and women, and universalism.
Of course the roots of these ideas can be traced, to some extent, in Jewish
sources, too. But the realisation of their full implications has come, not from
traditional organised religion, whether Jewish, Christian or otherwise, but
often against the opposition of traditional organised religion, from
modernity, from the Enlightenment, from the spirit of reason and science
And through this realisation,
Judaism, in its Progressive form, has been enriched.
Jacob had a hard struggle with his adversary, and a limp to show for it.
Outwardly, he did not emerge unscathed. But inwardly, his dream was a
growing experience. When he awoke, he was no longer Jacob, the schemer,
but Israel, the one who knows the difference between what is divine and
what is not divine. He became mature, and in his new maturity he could face
Esau, and respect the good in Esau, and make peace with him.
Modernity is not all good, but neither is it all bad. And through what is
good in it, God has spoken to us more clearly than through the hidebound
defenders of an immutable tradition.
Judaism that respects individual
autonomy, that celebrates diversity, that gives equal rights to women, that
repudiates the atavistic hope for a return to priestly sacrifice, and 'that looks
forward to a messianic age conceived universally, is a nobler, larger Judaism:
-
'
'
'
'
'
'
.
A
it is true, but inwardly more mature.
As Jacob made his peace with Esau, and as Jeremiah advised the exiles to
make their peace with Babyloni so Progressive Judaism has made its peace
WUdernit-yrand—is‘th'é‘bette or it.
From our point of View, Iudaism‘s encounter with modernity, like Jacob's
outwardly modified,
encounter with his
ish,
has been a positive encounter, a give-and-take
It has been for us a Peniel, an encounter
encounter, a growing experience.
with God.
(1%».24'14‘”?
’