REVIEW: Soloveitchik’s Children’s “Orthodox” Pluralism
Daniel Ross Goodman, Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America (University of Alabama Press, 2023), 322 pp.
Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Covenant & World Religions: Irving Greenberg, Jonathan Sacks, and the Quest for Orthodox Pluralism (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2023), 490 pp.
Among the many disciples of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, some broke with their illustrious teacher on one issue or another. This should not surprise us. R. Soloveitchik taught a multitude of students. He famously encouraged his students to think for themselves and to challenge him. In addition, the Rav was famously complex and multi-faceted. People could delve into one aspect of his personality without necessarily endorsing, or even noticing other aspects. His son-in-law, R. Aharon Lichtenstein, observed that the Rav’s frustration at this
centered, primarily, on the sense that the full thrust of his total [effort] was often not sufficiently apprehended or appreciated; that by some, parts of his Torah were being digested and disseminated, but other essential ingredients were being relatively disregarded, if not distorted…. [He often felt] that even among talmidim, some of his primary spiritual concerns were not so much rejected as ignored.[1]
After his death, eulogists attempted to simplify him by deciding which of his facets represented his real commitments, and which were mere dalliances or hobbies. Despite the efforts of partisans, his legacy remains complex.
Two recent books, David Ross Goodman’s Soloveitchik’s Children and Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s Covenant & World Religions, explore modern Jewish thinkers, deeply influenced by the Rav, who broke with him principally on the issue of interfaith dialogue.
At first glance, though, the Rav’s stance on interfaith dialogue seems an unlikely area for disagreement. He argued for strict limitations on interfaith dialogue in his statement at the Rabbinical Council of America’s Mid-Winter Conference in 1964, which later appeared in TRADITION as “Confrontation” (Spring-Summer 1964). He advocated engaging with adherents of other faiths only on the “mundane human level,” where “all of us speak the language of modern man” (Goodman, 115). Classical Jewish sources provide ample precedent for such a stance.
The Torah itself contains prohibitions against “foreign worship” (avoda zara), and this is expanded on in the Talmud and Codes. And since the Torah enjoins us to abhor foreign worship, it seems to naturally follow that we ought not to engage in dialogue with its devotees concerning that worship. Millennia of the Jewish experience as a barely tolerated minority in someone else’s land provides enough motivation for us to feel revulsion at the thought of delving into the positive aspects of the host religion and faith culture.
The Rav framed our need to avoid interfaith dialogue differently, not as a matter of revulsion nor of fear of persecution, but of mutual incomprehension. Even if our interlocutors treat us as complete equals, on matters of theology, “dogmatic certitudes,” “eschatological expectations” and “religious experiences,” he wrote, we should not engage in such dialogue with members of other faith communities. The language of each community remains “intimate,” “private,” and “totally incomprehensible to the man of a different faith community.”
But the Rav’s statement about interfaith dialogue seems at variance with his own practice. He had delivered a lecture at St. John’s Catholic seminary in Brighton, MA, which contained material later published in “The Lonely Man of Faith.” In this highly influential essay he references Tertullian, Rene Descartes, Rudolph Otto, Søren Kierkegaard), and other Christian theologians. Statements about the incommensurate character of different faith communities in “The Lonely Man of Faith” show the Rav’s intensive and respectful reading of Karl Barth and other Protestant thinkers. The Rav spoke to Catholic seminarians; he expected them to find meaning in his own theological thought.
In the more benign parts of the modern world, Jews in secular democracies have lived side-by-side with adherents of other religious traditions. Some practitioners of other religions maintain triumphalist attitudes, but others approach us with apparent humility, asking us to join in dialogue. We can have our own practical interest in dialogue, too: Within the Catholic Church, particularly after the Holocaust, a faction began to consider changing its traditional supersessionist teachings. Certainly, we have an outsider’s interest in the Church deciding not to try to denigrate us or to convert us. Indeed, “Confrontation” was formulated in response to trends in interfaith dialogue precisely at the height of the Second Vatican Council, which was reformulating Catholic policy and ideology on these matters.
Under these circumstances, despite what became the conventional understanding of the Rav’s guidelines in “Confrontation,” some thought that cooperation with leaders of other faiths could benefit the Jewish community. Given the opportunity to engage in interfaith dialogue at that moment, Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg reasoned “too much is at stake for us not to.”[2] On a more theoretical level, remaining ignorant of other faiths, dogmatically insisting that those faiths have no value, would display our own insecurity and weakness. According to some rabbis, we should encounter them with confidence in the value of our own tradition.
Soloveitchik’s Children and Covenant & World Religions explore contemporary Jewish thinkers who find value in interfaith dialogue. Daniel Ross Goodman focuses on rabbis David Hartman, Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, and Jonathan Sacks, three thinkers who were deeply influenced by R. Soloveitchik. A reader could easily object to the title of Goodman’s book. These three thinkers represent at most a narrow tranche of the Rav’s many disciples, using that term in the loosest of meanings. Hartman (1931-2013) followed the conventional path or discipleship; after years of studying Talmud with the Rav, he was ordained by him at Yeshiva University. Greenberg (b. 1933, the only figure explored in the book still alive and active), when he served as a synagogue rabbi in the Boston area, studied with the Rav. Sacks (1948-2020) had a more remote connection, meeting the Rav in person only once, but devoting himself to the master’s teaching by admiringly and carefully reading the Rav’s philosophical works. Each in his own way decisively broke with the Rav on several issues. Their attitudes towards interfaith relations arguably constitute their greatest deviance from his instruction.
The efforts of two of these thinkers to find mandates in classical Judaism for their practice of interfaith dialogue form the focus of Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s Covenant & World Religions: Irving Greenberg, Jonathan Sacks, and the Quest for Orthodox Pluralism. Goshen-Gottstein and Goodman thus largely marshal the same sources to study the same development in Jewish thought. Their approaches, however, diverge sharply.
Goodman humbly sets about to clarify the opinions of Hartman, Greenberg, and Sacks. In clear, concise prose, Goodman tries to help his reader understand the reasoning that undergirds the conclusions of each of these thinkers. In the first section of his book, Goodman presents the thoughts of these three in relation to their teacher; in later sections, he develops their thoughts in relation to each other. Goodman strives to make a sympathetic presentation of each opinion. As a careful scholar he aims to fade into the background; where the thinkers disagree, Goodman tries to give his readers the opportunity to appreciate each opinion. He does not try to impose his own agenda, but, as he presents their thoughts, it is apparent that Goodman respects their enterprise. Readers who wish to understand these thinkers in context will find Goodman’s work valuable. Readers hoping to see push-back against their more radical decisions will feel disappointed; Goodman wants to share an accurate appreciation of these thinkers.
Goshen-Gottstein, writing about Greenberg and Sacks, takes a critical view of the two (in both senses of the word critical). Although he applauds their general efforts to appreciate other faiths, when he identifies what he sees as a shortcoming, he uses sharply negative language. For example, Greenberg innovatively suggests that one can see Jesus as a “failed Messiah,” a perspective that could enable Jews to generate “respect towards the focal point of Christianity.” But in asserting this perspective, Greenberg, in Goshen-Gottstein’s words, becomes “a Jew [who] tells a Christian what his symbols mean,” and this amounts to “interreligious colonialism” (Goshen-Gottstein, 134).
Greenberg discusses Christianity (and, with less detail, other faiths) respectfully, in part because he believes that God can have multiple covenants. Goshen-Goodstein perceptively notes that approaching other faiths as covenants would allow us to relate to those faiths as narratives of relationship, rather than as truth claims (426). Greenberg observes that the Torah emphasizes God’s exclusive covenant with the people of Israel, but does not preclude the possibility of other covenants with other peoples. Goshen-Gottstein, though he wishes to develop a positive Jewish view of other religions, attacks this innovation as “not based on sound biblical foundations” (69). The biblical account describes, in addition to the covenants with Israel, a covenant with humanity as a whole, the children of Noah, but not with any other specific community or faith. So Goshen-Gottstein attacks from the right, finding it inconsistent with the biblical model of covenant as faithfulness: “It seems to me that this view of the biblical covenant would be unrecognizable to the biblical authors” (87).
He also attacks it from the left, as “inclusivist,” rather than truly “pluralistic.” Inclusivist thinking, according to Goshen-Gottstein, means “regarding the other as valid on one’s own terms,” when people yearn for acceptance on their terms (135). A Jewish formula for the value of Christianity does little for dialogue with Christians, who value their faith as Christianity, and as a continuation of Judaism, not as a kind of acceptable variety of Noahide observance. The covenant of the Noahide laws, in Goshen-Gottstein’s words, amounts to a moral vision, but not a religious vision; they constitute a covenant of “no-harm” (431). Even Rabbi Menahem Meiri’s notion of his non-Jewish neighbors as law-abiding persons bound by their faith, a notion taken up by Greenberg, strikes Goshen-Gottstein as inadequate. Validating the practical outcomes of cooperating with people of good behavior does not validate or even respect their belief systems per se.
Greenberg does go further. He writes that “God was asking us to do something much more serious, which is to work at a pluralism that takes the other religion seriously in its own terms, in its distinctive beliefs” (cited in Goshen-Gottstein, 153). While objecting on biblical grounds to Greenberg’s vision of alternative covenants, Goshen-Gottstein approves of the impulse toward radical inclusiveness. “I am in total sympathy…. I fully concur that we can be inspired by models of faith of other religions to discover our own deepest possibilities” (86).
Greenberg sees God as empowering humans, in this modern era, to take increased responsibility for our relations to other communities. Where Greenberg develops the idea of “hidden God,” Sacks accuses him of secularism, of “absent God.” Greenberg thinks hidden is the opposite of absent. Experiencing God as “hidden” empowers humans to seek for, and to find, God everywhere. “In the first era of Jewish and divine history, God was encountered largely in the Temple and in the second era in synagogues and the study hall” (cited in Goodman, 46). The ancient model of encountering God as “present” emphasized the spaces of sanctity, and thus created profane (literally “outside the Temple”) spaces; Greenberg believes his modern model of encountering God as “hidden” challenges humans to seek God everywhere, and also to take responsibility for the outcomes of our actions. Goshen-Gottstein writes that “nothing could be farther from the relevant biblical literature than the description of covenant as somehow straddling divine inaccessibility or absence” (87). When Greenberg uses the term tzimtzum to explain this increased human responsibility, Goshen-Gottstein writes that it shows “Greenberg’s own remove from the actual study of kabbalah” (31).
Goshen-Gottstein’s book is longer by far than Goodman’s. Several factors contribute to the greater length. Goodman writes in an admirably concise fashion, while Goshen-Gottstein is loquacious. Goodman generally contents himself with delineating the thoughts of his subjects; Goshen-Gottstein goes further, evaluating their thoughts, arguing with their conclusions, and expressing contrasting positions of his own or of other critics. Goshen-Gottstein also considers the sometimes-critical reception afforded Greenberg and Sacks by Christian readers. Goodman composed his book as a single unit; Goshen-Gottstein has compiled his book from essays written on different occasions, leading to a good deal of overlap and repetition. Finally, Goodman conceives of his book as a secondary source, devoted to presenting the ideas of his subjects; Goshen-Gottstein includes two primary sources, an interview with Greenberg about his theological journey, and an interview with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, about his interactions with Jonathan Sacks.
Greenberg, in his interview, expresses disappointment that his own theologically has had such little apparent impact on the Orthodox world. Goshen-Gottstein reassures him that in fact, many Orthodox thinkers have come to embrace his ideas without acknowledging their source, or even, in some cases, realizing the debt that they owe to Greenberg.
Goshen-Gottstein particularly applies that insight to Sacks, noting that Sacks read an astonishingly wide variety of writers in many fields, and generously credited his sources, yet rarely cited Greenberg’s writings despite their apparent presence in in Sacks’ books. Perhaps Sacks arrived at these ideas independently; perhaps, as Goshen-Gottstein suggests, the ideas proved more palatable to the Orthodox Jewish world when they came without that attribution (414). These are significant accusations the author makes against Sacks, but they are speculative.
Goshen-Gottstein presents a sharp distinction between Greenberg and Sacks when it comes to interfaith dialogue. Greenberg, as seen by Goshen-Gottstein, engages in dialogue as a theologian; he hopes to share his insights, but also to learn by respectfully listening to his non-Jewish friends. That gives his theology autobiographical and narrative thickness. His personal experience also explains why he generally focuses attention on Christianity. Sacks, a communal leader and social thinker, presents a theory that dialogue can lead to communal understanding, thus discouraging violence. He taught in interfaith settings, but he does not expect to be transformed by them. So, perhaps paradoxically, though he transgresses the Rav’s injunction against theological sharing, he still respects the Rav’s principle that discussion with those of other faiths aims at practical benefits.
Goshen-Gottstein repeatedly seeks an authentically Jewish ethos that goes beyond inclusivism, merely validating other faiths from within the terms of our faith, to pluralistically validating the terms of other faiths as understood by their believers. Possibly those criteria contradict each other by definition. Goshen-Gottstein can fairly call on practicing Jews to appreciate the doctrines of other faiths from a Jewish perspective, but that appreciation may necessarily fall short of appreciating those doctrines in a way that would please practitioners of that other faith. Conversely, a Catholic thinker might come to understand Jewish objections to prayer focused on statues, but we should also not expect the Catholic thinker to do so in a way satisfying to Jews. Maybe we should not expect even a cosmopolitan Hindu thinker to appreciate our approach to monotheism, or other non-Jews to admire the idea of Torah from Heaven, or our status as the chosen people, or our relation to the land of Israel. One need only glance at the daily news to see we are failing on that final score!
In the final essay of Goshen-Gottstein’s book, he presents his own understanding of a “Jewish Theology of Religions,” how a covenantal perspective can invite observant Jews into interfaith dialogue. He proposes that we see “multiple covenants as achieving different divine tasks and purposes” (428). Jews live as servants of God, in a covenant established for God’s own purposes; but we can see other faith communities as each serving God in accord with His purposes for them. This variation on a theme by Greenberg and Sacks seems susceptible to Goshen-Gottstein’s own challenge that it might not have precedent in biblical or rabbinical thought. Goshen-Gottstein also argues that Creation, and the concept of “image of God,” could do much of the work of establishing a Jewish appreciation of other faiths. God who loves diversity creates humans who do not resemble each other, and whose different spiritual sensibilities fulfill their divergent roles.
Readers will find a straightforward presentation of Jewish rationales for interfaith dialogue in Goodman’s Soloveitchik’s Children; they will find complex evaluations of these rationales in Goshen-Gottstein’s Covenant & World Religions.
Rabbi Eliezer (Louis) Finkelman has served as a Hillel director, synagogue rabbi, and college and high school teacher.
[1] Aharon Lichtenstein, Leaves of Faith: The World of Jewish Learning (Ktav, 2003), 201.
[2] Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity (Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 14.