Freedom From Bondage

The past few years has seen a resurgence in militant atheism -- think Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. As a backlash against the religious revival of the past 25 years, these authors and speakers have been arguing against religion. It was bound to happen eventually, but now Judaism has been specifically targeted. Someone named R.D. Gold -- not an atheist but someone ardently and angrily opposed to Orthodox Judaism -- has written a book that argues against Orthodox Judaism's core beliefs.

Reading Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit was, to me, a relief. I expected a much stronger book that systematically evaluated every Jewish belief and poked every hole possible. Instead I found an angry book that has a few good arguments interspersed with many generalizations and rhetorical tricks. That makes my job -- reviewing the book's arguments from the perspective of an Orthodox Jew -- much more comfortable than it could have been.

Click here to read moreWhat I intend to do is to review the book chapter-by-chapter, describing the main arguments, as well as some minor, and explain what I agree and disagree with and why. This will take a series of posts so please be patient.

I am sure that some religious people will ask why I am bringing more attention to the book. Had I remained silent, many readers would be unaware of it. Now that I discuss it, some people might decide to buy the book and read it. That is a very valid issue, although the book has already been publicized on another Orthodox blog (Cross Currents). Additionally, I am reviewing this book because I believe that it is the beginning (or middle) of a growing trend of anti-Orthodox arguments that we ignore at our own peril. After consultation with a rabbinic advisor, I have decided to publish this detailed review.

For many years we Orthodox have had the luxury of presenting any argument we want without challenge, and as long as someone was convinced (or we convinced ourselves) no one objected. We are finally being challenged and I think that it will only make us stronger.

My main comments about the book's goals and methods can be found in the sections of Preface and Introduction. Discussion of specific arguments will be in the bulk of the chapters and discussion of the religious experience and heterodox branches of Judaism will be in the final chapter.

PREFACE

The author begins with a classic dichotomy -- revelation vs. reason, Jerusalem vs. Athens. According to Gold, philosophers believe that truth is reached through "scholarly inquiry, evidence, and reason, that truth emerges from the human mind" while religious thinkers believe that "truth about the world can be found only in God's word and God's will" (p. xi-xii).

As anyone familiar with religious philosophy -- medieval in particular but modern as well -- will tell you, this is a false dichotomy. Someone interested in finding truth will use all of the available tools, including both reason and revelation. Emil Fackenheim puts it best ("What Is Jewish Philosophy?" in Jewish Philosophers and Jewish Philosophy, p. 169):

The more recent academic welcome accorded to [religious] medieval philosophy shows its former exclusion, for all its superficial justice, to have been riddled with prejudice that may be called modernist, crypto-Protestant, or neo-pagan... [W]hile no prejudice is implicit in the "paganism" of Socrates and his ancient followers (for an exposure to Revelation had yet to occur) prejudice is involved when, after such exposures, philosophers resort without examination to "neo-paganism," as if the rejection or "overcoming" of Revelation were a self-evident necessity for modern philosophers. Should they not ponder the fact, of the great speculative philosophers of the earlier modern period -- Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel -- only Spinoza and Fichte rejected Revelation in behalf of modern "autonomy"? Should they not also ask whether, of the more recent anti-speculative philosophers, such foes of Revelation as Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche are truly better and more solid guides to modernity than the Christian Soren Kierkegaard and the Jew Franz Rosenzweig?

What Gold really objects to is the suppression of reason by advocates of revelation, e.g. the opposition to Galileo. I, too, object to such suppression. But an example of the bad use of religion should not be used to taint all religion as bad. Revelation and reason can be used together to reach great heights of wisdom, as has been shown by philosophers throughout the millennia.

Gold's main question is, as he puts it, "Does all this religious fervor really make any sense?" (p. xvi).

This italicized question goes to the heart of Gold's arguments throughout the book: a religion has to follow common sense. On some level he is correct. It cannot be true if it contradicts explicit facts. However, reality rarely allows us such simple evaluations. Philosophies are complex creatures that involve depth and nuance. Seeming contradictions, both internal and external, are often the results of superficial understandings. Common sense only serves us well if it is accompanied with careful analysis. Otherwise it leads to rejecting (or accepting) an artificial idea.

Gold takes three books as representative of Orthodox outreach and, as the book progresses, Orthodox Judaism in general: R. Emanuel Feldman's On Judaism, R. Ezriel Tauber's Choose Life, and R. David Gottlieb's Living Up... to the Truth (p. xviii). The selection is, on the one hand, well done. The three books represent fairly well the various attitudes in the Orthodox outreach community.

However, Gold is not just arguing against Orthodox outreach but Orthodox Judaism in general. For that purpose, his selection is deficient. These three books show an Orthodoxy that is highly rational and feels a need to prove itself positively and conclusively. In reality, this is merely a minority voice in Orthodox Judaism. In truth, R. Emanuel Feldman's book is much more mainstream than the other two, but it is also much less a target of Gold than the other two books. The book that provides the most fodder for Gold's attacks is R. Dovid Gottlieb's book, and his work is highly unique in Orthodox Judaism.

The truth is that, as within any general philosophy, there is a broad spectrum of beliefs. It should come as no surprise that there are mystical Jews. They have no need for, and little interest in, proofs for Judaism. There are Orthodox Jews with a wide variety of beliefs on the issues Gold attacks. These include not just theological propositions but also political issues; not all Orthodox Jews are "Right Wing Settlers" nor full-time kollel students. However, at least some of his arguments are applicable to all, or the vast majority, of Orthodox Jews. If he had restricted himself to those attacks he would have had a stronger but much shorter and less emotionally powerful book. As it is, it misrepresents Orthodox Judaism and incorrectly attacks it.

(More to come)