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Examining
God's Plan
A Jewish
Philosophy of History: Israel's
Degradation &
Redemption
by Paul Eidelberg
iUniverse, 2004, 314
pages, paperback
Reviewed by Dr. Eugene
Narrett
This erudite and ambitious work
examines the development of philosophy,
ethics, science and theologies from
ancient times to the present, tracing the
impact throughout of Jewish understandings
of God, man and nature. The result is
remarkable in its scope, clarity,
practical teachings and emotional impact.
A Jewish Philosophy of History is
in many ways a searching elaboration of
good news -- many people would say the
best possible news, -- the rational means
and empirically demonstrable stages by
which Israel can and will be
redeemed.
To any such claim, a contemporary
reader, even a favorably disposed reader
might well say, 'hold on a minute.' After
all, Israel is in the midst, or perhaps at
the late stage of a decades-long process
of retreat from the redemptive
possibilities of its victory in 1967. A
short list of these redemptions would have
included the full unification of Jerusalem
under Jewish sovereignty; the
incorporation, settlement and development
of the Jewish heartland and its holy
sites, and of the Gilead and Bashan, too;
of strategic depth in an ever-more
unstable world; independence in energy and
politics rather than vassalage to "Uncle
Laban." That is to say, since the military
victory in 1967, the governments of Israel
have turned away from its roots and
identity; they have spurned the nation's
birthright. As part of Israel's retreat
from these historical imperatives, from
itself, since September 2000 the Arabs
have engaged in Jew-killing and pillage
that cripples prosperity and seems to make
peace a pipe dream. Indeed, so perverse
are our times that in regard to Israel and
the Jews settled there, "peace" has been
defined as the expulsion of Jews from
Judea and Samaria overseen by a long-time
hero of the IDF. Moreover, the Executive
Branch of Israel's 'best friend,' America,
particularly its State Department is
committed to creating a terror state named
Palestine in the heartland of Israel and
airbrushing from history 3700-years of
Jewish presence and worship there,
airbrushing, too perhaps, the West's
indebtedness to Israel. And if that means
cutting America off from its own roots,
well, that is essential to fashioning a
'Brave New World.'
Given these conditions, what time does
one have for a scholarly study, however
plain-speech and reader friendly it is,
that sketches an overview of Israel's
saving role in history, a role it can
achieve, Eidelberg explains, only as a
fully and genuinely Jewish State? But in
reply, if not now, when? Indeed, now
above all, for not only does the
current, long-building crisis cry out for
informed action by all concerned, Jews and
non - Jews, but as many people recognize,
whatever their degree of familiarity with
Torah, the great civilizations of the
world have been for two centuries in a
period of acute crisis and transformation.
"Nations are in turmoil, kingdoms tremble;
He has raised His voice, the earth
dissolves," as states psalm 46. In ways
horrific and inspiring, for life and for
death, modern times have seen the
re-emergence of Israel to a prominence it
has not had since the compiling of the
Mishna in the aftermath of its third great
war for independence from Rome.
A Jewish Philosophy of History
is the culmination of Paul Eidelberg's
lifetime project of studying the relation
of cultures to their formative political
ideas, ideas that always contain a theory
of human nature, needs and origins, and
relating this knowledge to Torah, to the
condition, influence and capabilities of
the Jewish people. The author has built
the foundation for the current study
through masterworks like Demophrenia:
Israel and the Malaise of Modern
Democracy (1994) and Judaic Man:
toward a Reconstruction of Western
Civilization (1996). It is the unique
background, diligence and genius of
Eidelberg, a distinguished political
scientist grounded in classical
civilizations and philosophy, a historian
of ideas and earnest Torah scholar with
singular gifts for analysis and synthesis
that provide us in this text with an
overview of civilizations, of their
governing ideologies and history that is
both lucid and magisterial. The
development of his thesis has the elegance
of a mathematical demonstration; no
surprise, for math is one of many primary
fields Eidelberg integrates with Torah
commentaries ancient and contemporary.
Always this type of creative synthesis
illuminates foundational concepts of
Judaism, providing a persuasive and
learned narrative of history as the
gradual triumph of Jewish concepts of the
Creator, creation, human dignity,
responsibility, and redemption.
This is no small accomplishment. A
Jewish Philosophy of History is
arguably the crowning point not only of
Professor Eidelberg's career but of two
centuries of meta-cultural studies by
which western thinkers have sought to
chart the formative ideas, ideals, modes
of expression and production, rise,
decline and fragmentation of the West.
Since these texts, -- Gibbon, Hegel, de
Toqueville, Nietzsche, Whitehead,
Spengler, and others Eidelberg's work is
remarkable not only for its erudition and
lucidity but for the brevity with which it
explores and illumines its subject. It is
unique also in its tone of hopefulness and
affirmation. For in this text Eidelberg, a
long-time keen observer and commentator on
daily events whose vagaries and follies
often pain and shock, keeps his and the
reader's eyes and mind focused on the
grand and unmistakable theme of history's
development as encapsulated in the work's
subtitle. The hope and trust, the faith
that history is divinely ordained for
compassionate and life-enhancing purposes,
justice, prosperity, understanding and
peace and the "good news" that Israel
through many channels has been bringing
that grand project to individual men and
women and to entire civilizations since
Abraham began "forming souls" in Haran, is
the scope and ground of this book's
inquiry. It is a grand and very learned
midrash.
The prologue to the study masterfully
previews the author's topic. The modern
world, its ideology devolving from seminal
theories of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Galileo,
Newton, and Rousseau has encouraged the
"undisguised egoism of individuals" and
"the covert egoism of the state."
Combining in the dogmas of moral
relativism, utilitarianism, and evolution
of species, Modernism has been an era of
unprecedented violence, alienation, of
cultism vacillating between social revolt
and totalitarianism, a pregnant decadence
"that calls out for a renaissance of
Hebraic civilization."
Eidelberg begins his inquiry into
history's providential, rationally
discernible promise by plunging into
recent and current events, particularly as
they touch the Jewish people and Israel, a
people that is also a nation and a way
(derekh) of living whose faith is
not a 'mental' or 'emotional' phenomenon,
but embedded in reason, practical deeds,
and the materiality of the creation. The
practical crisis addressed in starting is
the embattled rebirth of Israel.
Exhortatory, instructional texts by two
Torah masters, Rav Tzvi Kalisher
(Derishat Tzion 1864) and Rav
Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal (Eim Habanim
Semeichah 1943) focus the author's
reflection on the failure of most of
Orthodox Jewry to actively support the
settlement of the Land, a settlement that
had never ceased but that began
accelerating markedly in the second half
of the 19th century. Rav Teichtal, who
perished in the shoah, compared the
pious who had failed to ascend, or even
urged that other Jews not ascend, with the
ten spies who "murmured in their
tents…and despised the desirable
land" (Psalm 106, cf. Numbers 14).
- The same holds true in our time
[Teichtal wrote]. This one has
a good rabbinical position, this one
has an established business or factory,
or a prestigious job that provides
great satisfaction. They are afraid
that their status will decline if they
go to Eretz Yisrael…
Quoting Teichtal on the sages, e.g. "he
who dwells in Eretz Yisrael is like one
who has a God, and he who dwells outside
the land is like one who does not have a
God" (Ketubot 110b), and "it is
prefereable to dwell in deserts in Eretz
Yisrael than in palaces abroad (Midrash
Rabbah, Genesis 39:8), Eidelberg proceeds
to the great failure of the leaders and
generation after 1967 who 'despised' and,
in fact, 'spurned' rather than settled the
land. And so the State and people of
Israel have been 'in the wilderness' since
then, led by "a government of fools" that
chases the mirage of peace through
alienation rather than grasping the joys
of identity, settlement, abundance and
sovereignty. And so Israel has been
"afflicted by a non-nation and a loathsome
people," a rabble whose 'nationhood' may
be the greatest political fraud of a
century of horrible frauds by which "the
past was erased, the erasure was
forgotten, and the lie became truth." But,
as Eidelberg often has written, the
historical function of this non-nation,
the 'Palestinians' was to prevent Jews
from forgetting who they are and to remind
them that only by grasping and fulfilling
their entire mission and morasha will they
secure its rewards.
Professor Eidelberg's achievement
includes tireless and insightful efforts
to integrate the practical and immediate
with the conceptual, foundational and
trans-generational aspects of life, to
illuminate the present by the context of
history and Torah. That is to say that his
life work is a quintessentially Jewish
project to sanctify and illuminate the
creation. So as part of his philosophy of
history and the sciences he takes up
Israel's "demographic problem" and the
related problem of its chaotic,
unresponsive (and often anti-Jewish) form
of governance. Here, too, he provides
practical, readily achievable means for
alleviating these crises. For example,
"declare Jewish sovereignty over Judea,
Samaria, and Gaza while broadcasting
biblical and historical evidence as well
as international law affirming Israel's
exclusive rights to these areas. Relocate
some cabinet ministries to Judea, Samaria
and Gaza, to show that Jews intend to stay
there permanently [emphasis in
original; the point being to stop all
discussions of 'land-for-peace']; and
to "sell small plots of land in these
areas at very low prices to Jews in Israel
and abroad with the proviso that they
settle on the land for at least six
years." This would remove the
socialist-state's control of Israel's
heartland while facilitating the essential
mitzvah of settling the land. It would
restore Jewish and Israeli pride,
prosperity and sanctify God's
Name.
But the study sounds its most
compelling themes when Eidelberg embarks,
aided by sources of the most fascinating
variety and relevance, on an examination
of the culture-forming and deforming
concepts and ideologies that have brought
us to our day, its crises and choices. His
critique of the absurdities and
soul-numbing assumptions of moral
relativism and psychology, that most
grandiose, manipulative and destructive of
the social 'sciences' is a tour de force,
the beginning of a simple-language
analysis of the history of ideas that
should make A Jewish Philosophy of
History a required text in all College
Philosophy and world History courses.
Eidelberg elegantly explains how the
subordination of thought and morality to
the passions, as formulated in The
Leviathan (1659) by the profoundly
influential Thomas Hobbes, helped spawn
"imaginative man," the human being of the
Romantic period (c. 1780 to the present)
set free to master and enjoy a world made
in his image and in which human beings
confront the phantasmagoria of their
passions amplified by technology, --
'monsters of the id.' Eidelberg's
discussion of the historical development
from 'cognitive' to 'volitional' to
'sensual' man is masterly and succinct in
charting the decay of humane sensibilities
and sustainable societies.
In pursuing this diagnostic aspect of
his study, Eidelberg examines the
self-negations in psychology, explaining
how its deterministic and reductive view
of human behavior (as being based on
repression of instincts) contrasts
explosively with its insistence on freedom
and gratification, how endless efforts to
stimulate desire forever outrun any
sustainable or life-sustaining pleasures.
Psychology, the popular religion of
sensual man and the therapeutic state's
vocabulary and means of control is a
culture of "stress, alienation, fatigue,
mental impoverishment" and enrichment of
drug companies and tax-funded
'care-givers' that destroys families,
damages souls, and leads to demands for
personal and national security. Those
encouraged to "know no boundaries" in
their pursuit of "self-realization" are
"consumed in bewildering terrors" that
invite a global security state, one that
intends to police the 'peace' earmarked
for Israel.
Eidelberg neatly sums up this
long-developing spirit of the age: "the
conquest of nature [made possible by
Galileo and Newton] required the
liberation of man's material instincts and
this was facilitated by modern psychology
and… its political vehicle,
democracy." But, as laid out by its
nihilist forefathers, Machiavelli and
Hobbes, modern democracy is norm-less,
'non-judgmental' in principle while
arbitrarily judgmental in fact, and with a
predictably suicidal tendency to choose
'the other' over itself. Thus, as
Eidelberg and others have noted, it is
utterly unable (and at the highest levels,
unwilling) to deal with the threat of
Islamic violence and
imperialism.
While Eidelberg has an essential
chapter on the current "clash of
civilizations," his most seminal and
culture-forming work is his study of the
convergence of modern science, especially
physics, astronomy, and math with Torah,
including its ancient commentaries. He
illuminates how Jewish concepts of
creation, nature, human nature, and the
divine pervaded pre-Socratic philosophies,
classical philosophy of nature and ethics,
and gave rise to Christianity, that is, to
the Greco-Roman synthesis of natural
philosophy and polytheism with the Jewish
principles of a God that is Unitary,
transcendent but also personal, ineffable,
caring and providential, a God Who orders
history toward a redemptive goal that
gives human life and society the dignity
of purpose and the promise of kindness and
justice rewarded and
established.
This part of his discussion draws
extensively on the work of Dr. Gerald L.
Schroeder (The Science of God, New
York 1997), but equally upon the Ramban,
the sages of Talmud and Mishna, and the
Zohar. At pains to elucidate the
rationality and prescience of Jewish
understanding of the creation, Eidelberg
focuses on the distinct terms "creation,"
"making" and "forming" to show how ancient
Jewish sources postulate creation
(bara) out of nothing and that the
beginnings of time with the creation of
energy and matter. As the Ramban wrote,
"the Holy One, Blessed be He, created all
things from absolute non-existence…
He brought forth from absolute nothing a
very thin substance devoid of corporeality
but having a power of potency fit to
assume form…" in short, energy. Two
hundred years before Galileo, Rabbi Hasdei
Crescas cited the Talmudic discussion of
the essential uniformity of the universe,
all originating from one source of energy
and beyond that, the Creator. "Rabbi Huna
said in the name of Rabbi Joseph: all that
exists, including that which is in heaven
and earth, consists of
earth…everything that exists in the
universe, its fundamental elements, are
identical to those of earth" (Midrash
Rabbah on Genesis 12:11). In addition to
the unity of nature from its ineffable
source, Judaism affirmed the divinity of
the soul, human form and thus of life
itself. All share the energy, will, and
gracious kindness of the
Creator.
Elaborating the above distinction
between creating and making, an intriguing
case is made that the 'making' that occurs
between each of the seven days of creation
may take any amount of time, after each of
which "generations" a 'page is turned,'
"and it was evening, and it was morning, a
third day." The work of each day
encompasses "the generations of the
heavens and the earth when they were
created" (Genesis 2:4), or, put in
relation to human development, "the book
of the generations of Adam in the day that
God created Adam (5:1). In regard to this
last phrase, Eidelberg notes the Zohar's
commentaries on "pre-Adamite" generations
and discusses the work of Rabbi Israel
Lipschitz, decades before Darwin and
Huxley, in correlating Torah accounts of
human beginnings with archaeological
findings seeming to indicate two different
species of man one of which was the issue
of Adam's knowing of female beings during
the 130 years between the murder of Abel
and the day when he "again knew his wife,
Eve."
This grand meta-history, this unified
field history of humanity's evolution
toward recognition of God, an experiment
in which the Jewish people serve as "the
constant," concludes with a timely
discussion of the related concepts
"yerusha" (to conquer and expel)
and "yeshiva" (to settle) as
Eidelberg reviews their discussion by
masters of Torah and their relation to
each other in Holy Scriptures. In this he
proceeds as a scholar who has absorbed the
rigor of Math and Science by elegantly
presenting six 'orthodox' arguments
against ascending to conquer the Land, and
then offering six refutations of these
arguments. Along the way he adumbrates the
Gemara's overview of how the Shmoneh
Esrei incorporates the stages of
redemption and works toward a practical
distinction between a hechsher --
mitzvah and the mitzvah itself,
kiyum -- mitzvah. Like a
beautifully developed geometric theorem,
the argument unfolds and demonstrates
itself: the land in fact has been settled
and the mitzvah achieved for a long time;
it is therefore not only appropriate,
permissible and possible but incumbent for
Israel lareshet "to conquer" the
Land fully. Thus degradation becomes
redemption; the state, gravely flawed as
it is has helped facilitate the
pre-mitzva; and Israel, the people and
nation are prepared bring together the
world and the Torah, the marriage that is
God's purpose for history and creation. As
it states, "kindness and truth have met;
righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth
will sprout from the earth, and
righteousness peers from
heaven."
Eidelberg's genial and scholarly manner
evinces an inspiring passion to know and a
joy in unfolding the multi-leveled
purposefulness of creation. Though we may
not be used to associating rational
inquiry and erudition with hopes for
redemption, or recalling that messiah will
be a very human being, this
engaging text has no less ambition than
that Israel, and those who sense her
historical role, practice the kind of
inquiry and action that may hasten to
produce the genuine peace behind the
diplomacy, and to recognize and empower
the man able to achieve it. Eidelberg
quotes the Rambam:
- Do not think that Moshiach will
have to perform signs and
wonders,
- bring anything new into being,
revive the dead or do similar
things…
- The ancient sages already said,
'the only difference between the
present
- and the period of Moshiach is
that political oppression will then
cease"
- (Mishneh Torah, XI.3,
IX.2.8)
Redemption will come and it is coming,
is the leitmotif of A Jewish Philosophy
of History. This is to say that
Eidelberg offers his study and conclusions
as examples of how the goodness
'hard-wired' into existence may be
hastened, as God desires. "Surely His
salvation is close to those who fear Him
that glory may again dwell in our
Land…" Then in concord with human
intelligence, labor and hope, "Hashem,
too, will provide what is good and the
earth will yield its produce.
Righteousness will walk before Him and set
his footsteps on the way" (Psalm
85).
Acquire this book for yourself, your
local library, and make sure your children
and grandchildren have it when they begin
high school or College. This is one of
those wise and elegant texts that not only
illuminate but can shape history.
Order
at Amazon
About
the reviewer...
Eugene
Narrett earned his BA, MA, and PhD from
Columbia University in New York City.
During the past twenty-five years he has
been teaching literature, philosophy and
art in the Boston area and has written
extensively on culture, politics, and art.
He currently Directs and teaches in the
Baccalaureate Program in Multidisciplinary
Studies at Cambridge College.
Visit
Dr. Narrett's Essay Archive in The Radical
Academy
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