Hearing from God

Dorff, Elliot N.

Hearing from God Philosopher of Revelation The Life and Thought ofS.L. Steinheim by Joshua 0. Haberman Jewish Publication Society, 1990. 332 pp., $29.95 Reviewed by Elliot N. Dorff Revelation...

...Judaism, according to Steinheim, clearly intends to be a revelational religion...
...Elliot N. Dorff is provost and professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles...
...Many have ambivalent feelings, at best, about God, and even those who believe in God often have serious questions about how God communicates with us—if at all...
...As Haberman demonstrates, Steinheim is worth the effort...
...the latter are ahistorical (since they derive their authority from timeless principles), they change every time humans think they have learned more about those principles, but they rarely do anything but confirm people in their present thoughts and habits...
...This view of revelation prepares one for a stringent view of Jewish law, but Steinheim drew very different conclusions...
...Haberman's translations of Steinheim's work are in uniformly contemporary American English—not a small feat when translating the long, involved sentences that German loves...
...Even if we set aside doubts about God's existence and the complications of the process by which the Torah was edited and passed down to us, how are we to satisfy ourselves that the Torah is God's word rather than other documents which claim to be (for example, the Koran) ? On the other hand, if we cannot identify God's word, how can God's will—and, for that matter, God—have any meaning for us...
...To approach Steinheim's ideas, it is important to understand that Judaism is based on the premise not only that there is a God, but that God communicates to us and is actively involved in our lives...
...This book, though, deserves a second look...
...Chapters 13 and 18 of Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah, propose two different and conflicting criteria by which humans could discern what was God's word and what was not...
...These criteria, however, proved insufficient to distinguish true prophets from false ones...
...Specifically, he defines revelation as "a spiritual proclamation of realities, of which we had no knowledge without the direct communication by God or by a divine messenger, and of which we had no knowledge prior to this proclamation...
...Some have maintained that revelational events only disclose God's being, not (at least, not directly) God's will, and some have said that God communicates will, but only by inspiring people to articulate it...
...At worst, Steinheim's well-stated arguments will force rethinking one's own view of these matters...
...but Steinheim is definitely talking about a crucial subject for modern Jews, and he is making some important points about how we should approach it...
...One is that a prophecy agrees with the substance of the Torah and the other is that a prophet's predictions come true...
...He is also a master teacher...
...332 pp., $29.95 Reviewed by Elliot N. Dorff Revelation is undoubtedly not the first concern of most modern Jews...
...How God communicates with us, however, is difficult to discern...
...Judaism, in contrast, requires that to be authenticated as revelation a given doctrine must be surprising and counterintuitive at the start but, in retrospect, must be substantiated by reason...
...We are asked to trust a document attesting to events we never witnessed...
...The prophet Jeremiah often complained about the number and popularity of false prophets...
...One does not have to agree with Steinheim on either revelation or Jewish law to derive much from his thought...
...Steinheim takes a strong stand against all these positions...
...Some have claimed that God's word is that which agrees with nature or with our feelings about right and wrong...
...He claims, instead, that revelation can only be recognized as such if we could not possibly have known its content before receiving it as a divine communication...
...What more could one ask...
...Judaism, for Steinheim, is therefore radically different from both Catholicism and Protestantism...
...Aside from introducing us to Steinheim with a clear, reasonably brief yet astute essay on his life and thought, Haberman provides the reader with helpful introductions to each section of Steinheim's book, so the reader knows what to look for and can follow the argument...
...At the same time, after the rev-, elation has been communicated, reason is necessary to delineate its meaning and to apply it to contemporary conditions...
...Since Judaism understands God as incorporeal, we can never see God directly...
...Catholic scholastics "did violence to revelation" by requiring that its content conform to reason, while Protestant Reformers "did violence to reason" by acknowledging as God's word only that which contradicts reason...
...Therefore a book focusing on that process, especially one about an early 19th century thinker, many Jews would probably pass by...
...Exactly the opposite of 19th century Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Steinheim claimed that God revealed what we should believe, not what we should do...
...Jewish law is, for him, a human response to revealed beliefs and, as such, may be changed or adapted at will...
...The Torah records God's words as if they were spoken direcdy to the patriarchs and to Moses, but we live millennia after those times...
...Steinheim thus contrasts revealed religions, based upon a revelation that occurs at a specific time, with nonrevealed (natural or ahistorical) religions, based on eternal characteristics of human experience: The former are rooted in a specific moment in history and from that time forward never change in content but do alter the nature of the people who adhere to them...
...Steinheim's book is not always as clear as Haberman tries to make it...
...Haberman also inserts marginal notes along the way to keep the reader's attention focused on what Steinheim is arguing, and, in a few pages titled "To the Uninitiated Reader," he suggests which sections general readers will find most interesting and which they might want to skip...
...any interpretation to the contrary distorts it and robs it of its normative value...
...All of these aids indicate that Haberman, a congregational rabbi, intends that this book be read profitably not only by scholars but also by people like some of his congregants—Jewishly and philosophically unsophisticated people who are, however, intelligent and college educated and who will rise to the challenge of conquering difficult material as long as they see that it is possible and worthwhile to understand it...
...From the very first pages, its author, Rabbi Joshua Haberman, exudes an unusually high degree of enthusiasm for his subject, and it is downright catching...
...A long string of Jewish, Christian and Moslem philosophers have tried to recognize God's word through its congruence with what reason tells us...
...Steinheim not only writes about a topic at the core of Jewish belief, but he propounds a theory about that subject that is at odds with much of modern Jewish thought...
...we can never have physical confirmation of the speaker or the message...
...nor could we possess or acquire it by means of our natural powers of cognition such as have been granted us by the Creator or by nature...

Vol. 15 • December 1990 • No. 6


 
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