Between Kant and Kabbalah: An Introduction to Isaac Breuer's Philosophy of Judaism PDF
Preview Between Kant and Kabbalah: An Introduction to Isaac Breuer's Philosophy of Judaism
BETWEEN KANT AND KABBALAH SUNY SERIES IN JUDAICA: HERMENEUTICS, MYSTICISM, AND RELIGION MICHAEL FISHBANE, ROBERT GOLDENBERG, AND ARTHUR GREEN, EDITORS BETWEEN KANT AND KABBALAH An Introduction to Isaac Breuer's Philosophy of Judaism ALAN L. MITTLEMAN State University of New York Press Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1990 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mittleman, Alan L. Between Kant and Kabbalah : an introduction to Isaac Breuer's philosophy of Judaism / Alan L. Mittleman. p. cm.-(SUNY series in Judaica) Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-7914-0239-8.-ISBN 0-7914-0240-1 (pbk.) 1. Breuer, Isaac, 1883-1946.2. Orthodox Judaism-Germany. I. Title. II. Series. BM755.B66M58 1990 89-34101 296.8'32'0943-dc20 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Preface vii 1. From Frankfurt to Jerusalem 1 2. A Critique of Human Experience 25 3. Creation and Revelation 73 4. Law, Nation, History, and Redemption 124 5. Toward a Critical Appreciation of Isaac Breuer 175 Notes 189 Bibliography 217 Index 223 v PREFACE In this study, I have endeavored to present Isaac Breuer's philoso phy of Judaism. The eminent Israeli critic Baruch Kurzweil, in an important essay on Breuer, offered a kind of warning to those who would study him. Just slightly less forbidding than "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," it reads, "Only one who is enlightened by the rich sources from which his soul drew will attain to an un derstanding of his personality and work. But as for these, their por tion is sealed beyond repair. Heaps of ruins cover the others." Kurzweil, in effect, consigns Breuer to a bygone world, a world that has been submerged in the Shoah and suspended by the founding of a democratic, secular State of Israel. On the one side, the im pressive synthesis of Judaism and German high culture that Breuer achieved may be of no more than historical interest. On the other side, Breuer's hope for a theocracy, a "Torah State" in the land of Israel, came to an end in 1948, if not before. The intellectual diffi culties of interpreting Breuer, coupled with the apparent impossi bility of building upon his thought in a living fashion, have worked to discourage a serious study of his contribution. Yet all who have been engaged by him, sympathizers as well as harsh critics, have recognized intellectual and spiritual great ness in the man and his work. Among his critics, Gershom Scho lem noted the lack of a critical analysis of Breuer and pointed out that such an estimation of that "able thinker" would be desirable. Professor Rivka Horwitz, who related this story, has herself called for and contributed to a philosophical presentation of Breuer's achievement. She noted that without the studies of Maurice Fried man and Nahum Glatzer, Breuer's contemporaries Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig might not have found an audience beyond their own milieu. vii viii PREFACE I am unable to say whether Breuer's greatness equals that of his two noted contemporaries, for I am uncertain how such things are to be measured or indeed whether it falls to us rather than to history to do the measuring. I am able to say that Breuer's philo sophical acumen, rigor, erudition, and comprehensiveness compare quite favorably with Buber's and with Rosenzweig's. I imagine, without hard evidence, that his learning in the sources of tradi tional Judaism, including Kabbalah, far exceeded theirs. I would argue that Breuer is a philosopher for the latter half of the twentieth century. In Jewish terms, he is a philosopher of the post-Enlightenment age, a philosopher of the dialectic of Enlight enment. He has realized the disillusioning restlessness of modern reason and has abandoned all aspiration to achieve a harmonious accord between it and Judaism. The pretensions of Enlightenment reason, which still live on in science, are exposed. Reason is encul turated. It is someone's story. The Jewish response to reason is necessarily a response to culture, to another's story. The ground on which the Jew stands and out of which the response must come is bordered by the Jewish story. Consciousness of the perimeters of this ground and loyalty to it are prerequisites for a proper philo sophical response. That response comes as an assertion of Jewish Being, of Jew ish will, of willing the powerful reality of the Jewish story in dia lectical tension with the stories of modernity. Telling both, while trying to maximally live one, was Breuer's way. The metaphysical richness of the Jewish story, on Breuer's account, is hard to match. Breuer will continue to offer tradition-minded Jews a depth of un abashed yet disciplined metaphysical reflection seldom found in today's climate. For all of this critique of historicized, enculturated reason, however, Breuer never takes flight into irrationalism. He does not propose the triumph of the will, but rather the education of the will. Although nourished by the well-springs of Kabbalah, he is dismissive of mysticism. Nor does his metaphysically grounded stance as a "national Jew" turn into another romantic national ism. Despite the utopianism of his political vision, he holds to a severe self-criticism that deflates political enthusiasms. His tense, dialectical wrestling with philosophical reason and his critical ap proach to politics make him a philosopher of Orthodoxy free of any tendency toward fundamentalism. His thought does not lend itself to anticultural reaction and fundamentalist nationalism. Yet, in him much of modern Orthodoxy also comes to an end. He
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