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Itzkoff_jacket_cpi:Jacket.qxd 11/27/2013 6:09 AM Page 1

JUDAISM’S PROMISE, MEETING

JUDAISM’S PROMISE,
THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNITY

ITZKOFF
follows Seymour W. Itzkoff’s well-
Praise for Seymour W. Itzkoff’s received three-book series, Who Are
the Jews? Judaism’s Promise confronts
WHO ARE THE JEWS? SERIES MEETING THE CHALLENGE the many revolutions that have
reshaped Judaism over the centuries

OF MODERNITY

THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNITY

JUDAISM’S PROMISE, MEETING
allowing it and its people a path of
leadership into the modern world. It
“Recommended for academic libraries, libraries hosting Jewish takes the writings of the Torah, Holy
studies programs, and synagogues and public libraries.” Scriptures, and Talmud seriously as
Association of Jewish Libraries exemplars of the human search for
civilizational and moral intellectuality.
“Scholarly…Erudite…Brilliant.” The book’s basic concern is with the
Jewish Book World withering of Judaism as a force in
SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF was a pro-
contemporary Western civilization.
fessional cellist before completing his “Not just another Jewish history, but one which stands alone.”
masters and doctoral degrees in phi- The Jewish Press Sadly millions of Jews have left the
losophy at Columbia University. He is
faith. Others venture forth only hesi-
the author of twenty-three books in a
tantly into a synagogue, now a bas-
variety of intellectual disciplines. He
tion of fossilized ritual and conspicu-
became an emeritus professor after
ous consumption. These millions need-
thirty four years of teaching at Smith Vol. 1: Soul of the Israelites
ed more from the orthodoxy, and this
College. Vol. 2: A Nation of Philosophers
book attempts to show them the way
Vol. 3: Fatal Gift: Jewish Intelligence
back by giving renewed life to the
and Western Civilization
heritages of Judaism, and, conse-
quently, to its meaning for the modern
world. Judaism’s Promise argues for a
return to the synagogue’s originating
Hellenistic commitment “to come
together” in intellectual and moral
study. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan

PETER LANG
argued, Judaism must once more
become in the 20–21st century the
civilization that it once represented to

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY JULES ITZKOFF SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF the wider world, and not a fossilized
ceremonialism.
WWW.PETERLANG.COM
Itzkoff_jacket_cpi:Jacket.qxd 11/27/2013 6:09 AM Page 1

JUDAISM’S PROMISE, MEETING

THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNITY
follows Seymour W. Itzkoff’s well-
received three-book series, Who Are
the Jews? Judaism’s Promise confronts
the many revolutions that have
reshaped Judaism over the centuries
allowing it and its people a path of
leadership into the modern world. It
takes the writings of the Torah, Holy
Scriptures, and Talmud seriously as
exemplars of the human search for
civilizational and moral intellectuality.
The book’s basic concern is with the
withering of Judaism as a force in
contemporary Western civilization.

Sadly millions of Jews have left the

faith. Others venture forth only hesi-
tantly into a synagogue, now a bas-
tion of fossilized ritual and conspicu-
ous consumption. These millions need-
ed more from the orthodoxy, and this
book attempts to show them the way
back by giving renewed life to the
heritages of Judaism, and, conse-
quently, to its meaning for the modern
world. Judaism’s Promise argues for a
return to the synagogue’s originating
Hellenistic commitment “to come
together” in intellectual and moral
study. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan
argued, Judaism must once more
become in the 20–21st century the
civilization that it once represented to
the wider world, and not a fossilized
ceremonialism.
Itzkoff_jacket_cpi:Jacket.qxd 11/27/2013 6:09 AM Page 1

JUDAISM’S PROMISE, MEETING

JUDAISM’S PROMISE,
THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNITY

ITZKOFF
follows Seymour W. Itzkoff’s well-
Praise for Seymour W. Itzkoff’s received three-book series, Who Are
the Jews? Judaism’s Promise confronts
WHO ARE THE JEWS? SERIES MEETING THE CHALLENGE the many revolutions that have
reshaped Judaism over the centuries

OF MODERNITY

THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNITY

JUDAISM’S PROMISE, MEETING
allowing it and its people a path of
leadership into the modern world. It
“Recommended for academic libraries, libraries hosting Jewish takes the writings of the Torah, Holy
studies programs, and synagogues and public libraries.” Scriptures, and Talmud seriously as
Association of Jewish Libraries exemplars of the human search for
civilizational and moral intellectuality.
“Scholarly…Erudite…Brilliant.” The book’s basic concern is with the
Jewish Book World withering of Judaism as a force in
SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF was a pro-
contemporary Western civilization.
fessional cellist before completing his “Not just another Jewish history, but one which stands alone.”
masters and doctoral degrees in phi- The Jewish Press Sadly millions of Jews have left the
losophy at Columbia University. He is
faith. Others venture forth only hesi-
the author of twenty-three books in a
tantly into a synagogue, now a bas-
variety of intellectual disciplines. He
tion of fossilized ritual and conspicu-
became an emeritus professor after
ous consumption. These millions need-
thirty four years of teaching at Smith Vol. 1: Soul of the Israelites
ed more from the orthodoxy, and this
College. Vol. 2: A Nation of Philosophers
book attempts to show them the way
Vol. 3: Fatal Gift: Jewish Intelligence
back by giving renewed life to the
and Western Civilization
heritages of Judaism, and, conse-
quently, to its meaning for the modern
world. Judaism’s Promise argues for a
return to the synagogue’s originating
Hellenistic commitment “to come
together” in intellectual and moral
study. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan

PETER LANG
argued, Judaism must once more
become in the 20–21st century the
civilization that it once represented to

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY JULES ITZKOFF SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF the wider world, and not a fossilized
ceremonialism.
WWW.PETERLANG.COM
Itzkoff_jacket_cpi:Jacket.qxd 11/27/2013 6:09 AM Page 1

ITZKOFF
SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF was a pro-
fessional cellist before completing his
masters and doctoral degrees in phi-
losophy at Columbia University. He is
the author of twenty-three books in a
variety of intellectual disciplines. He
became an emeritus professor after
thirty four years of teaching at Smith
College.

PETER LANG
JUDAISM’S PROMISE,
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
OF MODERNITY
 PETER LANG
New York  Washington, D.C./Baltimore  Bern
Frankfurt  Berlin  Brussels  Vienna  Oxford
 SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF

JUDAISM’S PROMISE,
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
OF MODERNITY

PETER LANG
New York  Washington, D.C./Baltimore  Bern
Frankfurt  Berlin  Brussels  Vienna  Oxford
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Itzkoff, Seymour W.
Judaism’s promise: meeting the challenge of modernity / Seymour W. Itzkoff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Judaism—21st century. 2. Judaism—Essence, genius, nature.
3. Judaism—History. 4. Jews—History. I. Title.
BM565.I89 296.09’051—dc23 2012012647
ISBN 978-1-4331-2006-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4539-0871-6 (e-book)

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Cover illustration by Jules Itzkoff

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2014 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

Printed in Germany
 Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786); Hermann Cohen (1842–1918); Mordecai
Kaplan (1881–1983)
—Judaic Visions of Modernity

Itzkoff_Book.indb 5 23/10/12 5:42 PM

 BOOKS BY SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF
Smith College, Emeritus Professor

Cultural Pluralism and American Education 1969

Ernst Cassirer: Scientific Knowledge and the
Concept of Man 1971, 1997 (2nd edition)
A New Public Education 1976
Ernst Cassirer, Philosopher of Culture 1977
Emanuel Feuermann, Virtuoso 1979, 1995 (2nd edition)
The Evolution of Human Intelligence
1 The Form of Man, The Evolutionary Origins of Human Intelligence 1983
2 Triumph of the Intelligent, The Creation of Homo sapiens sapiens 1985
3 Why Humans Vary in Intelligence 1987
4 The Making of the Civilized Mind 1990
How We Learn to Read 1986
Human Intelligence and National Power 1991
The Road to Equality, Evolution and Social Reality 1992
The Decline of Intelligence in America, A Strategy for National Renewal 1994
Children Learning to Read, A Guide for Parents and Teachers 1996
The Human Prospect
1 The Inevitable Domination by Man, An Evolutionary Detective Story 2000
2 2050: The Collapse of the Global Techno-Economy 2003
3 Intellectual Capital in Twenty-First-Century Politics 2003
4 Rebuilding Western Civilization, Beyond the Twenty-First-
Century Collapse 2005
Who Are the Jews?
1 Soul of the Israelites 2004
2 A Nation of Philosophers 2004
3 Fatal Gift, Jewish Intelligence and Western Civilization 2006
The World Energy Crisis and the Task of Retrenchment 2008
The End of Economic Growth: What Does It Mean for American Society? 2009

Itzkoff_Book.indb 6 23/10/12 5:42 PM

 Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Chapter 1: The Future of the Jews? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: Sources for the Religious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 3: Torah/Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 4: Scriptures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Chapter 5: Talmudic Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Chapter 6: Haskalah: Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Chapter 7: Our Judaic Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter 8: Holocaust: A Message for the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Chapter 9: Israel, Judaism: Our Contemporary World Malaise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Chapter 10: Understanding Historical Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 11: Judaism Reconstituted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Chapter 12: Values and the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Itzkoff_Book.indb 7 23/10/12 5:42 PM

Itzkoff_Book.indb 8 23/10/12 5:42 PM
 Introduction

Our Concern
Judaism and the Jews are gradually disappearing. Take a look at the comparative
numbers of Jews and other religionists and you will understand my meaning. Few
Jews even whisper about this looming demographic and civilizational disaster.
Why? Simply, fatalism.
What you will read in the pages and chapters that follow is an argument by
a dissident Jew who does not accept this fatalism. In front of everyone’s eyes, the
message is that Judaism is an ancient fossilized tradition, irrelevant to the world
except for a nation, Israel. This is wrong. Israel does profess to be a Jewish state,
modern and progressive. But Israel itself at the least faces the same demographic
tidal wave that may efface Diaspora Judaism. Demography is not necessarily des-
tiny. I here want to argue against this dismal determinism.
Much of this book delves into the historic achievements of the Jews. In order
to explore the possibilities for the renewal of Judaism you must understand its past,
and why it has for so long survived so much malignant opposition. This is important
because the truly heroic adaptability to change amidst the threats inherent in these
events is hidden to students of Jewish history. Why, because of the control of Jewish
education by those who want to preserve their powers of domination, the doorkeep-
ers of contemporary Judaism. These consecrated ones are destroying Judaism today.

Itzkoff_Book.indb 9 23/10/12 5:42 PM

 x | judaism ’ s promise , meeting the challenge of modernity

If you can truly absorb the meaning of the radical alterations made by Jews to
adapt our faith to the ever-new of history, you will understand that it is still possible
for a new Jewish leadership to go forth and educate the world to rise up to a higher
level of intellectual and moral values. As part of this enlightened understanding
of Judaism’s path through many thousands of years of destiny, you will also begin
to understand the contemporary power structures within our faith and heritage.
The current waning of Judaism as a religion and culture is due to the fact
that its surface institutional representations are petrified. They might have been
appropriate in the 16th century given the anti-Semitic hatred and persecutions
that Jews suffered under the thumb both of Islam as well as Christianity, but
since then the challenges have been different. The seductions of assimilation and
toleration have seen millions of Jews flee the synagogue to evaporate into the
woodwork of secularism or Christianity. As a result the synagogue has convulsed
into successive splinterings in its attempt to hold on to its congregants and bring
them back.
Isn’t it ironic that the one Judaic group that is flourishing in numbers and
media recognition today is the Haredim, the ultra-orthodox pious, garbed in their
15th-century uniforms. But, of course, few dare to engage in public discussion of
their views on personal immortality, the Messiah, the role of women in their con-
gregations and family life, their responsibilities in defending their homeland, either
the United States or Israel, their commitment to do a day’s work for self-support.
Sadly they are the window dressing of today’s Judaism.
This concern for the existence and future of a modern and relevant Judaism
is the message of “Judaism’s Promise.” The challenge to Judaism in its ability to
survive the 21st century should constitute one of the most important lessons for the
entire world, both for Jews and non-Jews. This importance of Judaism lies in the
deeper core, one might say the metaphysical assumptions rooted in a pure mono-
theism as it relates to the moral behavior of humans, here originally set forth in the
Ten Commandments. The documents that thence issued from the Israelites and
the Jews over the millennia symbolize this striving to preserve these truths. These
were and are an education for Western civilization. The contemporary crisis is
thus not merely a Judaic one, but in reality echoes a deeper and universal malaise.
A modernized Judaism, still true to its fundamental intellectual and moral commit-
ments, could do much to reverse this downward trend. A moment of opportunity?
We ought not waste it.
The present book is thus written to establish the intellectual ground for a new
generation of Jews to make this heritage again relevant both to the Jewish people
and to those non-Jews who might want to become one with Judaism. The ancient
rituals and traditions do have a deeper and universal meaning, and we need to
explore their significance. Most important, the primal monotheistic vision of the

Itzkoff_Book.indb 10 23/10/12 5:42 PM

 introduction | xi

founding Levites, priests, prophets presented humankind with a new vision for
our species, humbling in the face of those ever-unknown powers in the universe.
This understanding was and is critically important to the founding of the faith,
the social disciplines and the belief in the existence of the deep roots of the moral
law. From this irresistible set of convictions came the Torah, the Holy Scriptures,
and the Talmud. We need to tend to these historic visions, but always, go beyond.
It is to the young that these concerns are devoted more as an invitation to
enrich and supplement the good of the past than as any dictat from “on high.”
This book sets forth a personal search for meaning, but the issues are universally
relevant. The conclusions are simply that our Judaic vision can be saved and rein-
vigorated. Much of the argument in the following chapters constitutes a contextual
underlining of the true historical meaning of Judaism’s contributions to our civili-
zation. Most important, the inherent rational secularity, the moral intellectuality of
these thousands of years of persistent struggle to obey the law can be reinvigorated,
but not by any rigid set of edicts from the mythological past. To the young Jew: do
it your way, invigorate the heritage.
Most rabbinical texts treat Judaism as a tradition of whole cloth, a unified
vision of which the rabbinate is today the singular purveyor. But, there is in fact
no unified Judaic heritage. Rather this heritage is more a series of revolutions in
which many well-ensconced leadership traditions have been abandoned. New sets
of leaders and ideas have successively come to fruition to allow Jews and Judaism
to survive history’s always new challenges. That is our argument for the future.
From a secular, scholarly standpoint in this book, we identify four revolutionary
traditions, thus to argue for our fifth.

Cutting the Chains of Rabbinism

Here is a fifteen-hundred-year-old heritage, certainly evolved over time. Much
in the ritual traditions of Judaism today will never be effaced. But should they
encompass more than a few percentage points of the substance of Jewishness? As
the reader will find from the historical chapters in this book, the rabbinic tradition
itself constituted a revolutionary turn from an ancient historic vision, the written
Torah, the law.
The Talmud, the core of rabbinical Judaism, grew out of the pharisaic revo-
lution’s Oral Torah. Here the words of Jehovah were supposedly given to Moses
who transmitted them at a distance of over a millennium to the Pharisees to mod-
ify, override, re-interpret the written Torah, in the context of modernity, then,
Hellenistic civilization. What started as early as the sixth century BCE as an inter-
pretation of the Pentateuch to the ignorant survivors of the Babylonian captivity

Itzkoff_Book.indb 11 23/10/12 5:42 PM

 xii | judaism ’ s promise , meeting the challenge of modernity

(by Ezra and Nehemiah), grew over the centuries into the Oral Torah, a way of
fending off the modernistic rationalism and culture of Hellenism.
Here in the spirit of Plato was a ‘lie of words,’ meant to guide the am ha
arez, the people of the land, into moral and public behavior more congruent with
modernity. The priestly Sadducees of the Temple would at that time accept noth-
ing as Holy Writ beyond the Torah. They scoffed at the Pharisees as “Greek” intel-
lectuals, and then they themselves immersed themselves in the wealth-producing
rituals of the Second Temple and the cultural institutions of the Greeks. The
Samaritans, in old Israel, wanted only the Five Books as holy guidance. ‘But they
essentially were Assyrian immigrants, not true Judeans.’
What is critical, as I demonstrate in this book, is that after the Sadducees
disappeared, with the obliteration of the Second Temple, the victorious Pharisees
themselves did not recreate the Oral Torah teachings into a permanent written
document. Instead, at the end of the first century, they created the Holy Bible of
the Jews, the Pentateuch, the Prophetic and the Wisdom writings, TaNaK. This in
a sense was testimony to the intellectual power of Hellenism. The Holy Scriptures
were part of the Jewish response.
The Mishnah and then the Talmudic setting down of the traditions of the
Oral Law came, at the earliest, one hundred and fifty years later, an interpreted
way of life in the then-established modernity of Roman and oncoming Christian
challenges, the Jews ever more, a people apart.
The Holy Scriptures, the various Talmuds are all rich in wisdom and guidance.
They remain a deep and precious heritage of the Jews. But they served a world that
no longer exists. We need another Talmud, a new guide to the future, a future now
devoid of the supernaturalism that, at least among modern Jews, gains no adher-
ence over their real beliefs and behaviors.
“Judaism’s Promise,” then, should be seen as a prolegomenon to a new, pro-
gressive Judaism. It will value Torah, Scriptures, and Talmud, together with the
accumulated writings of ancient and modern intellectual and moral minds, Jews
and Gentiles. It will put this wisdom into a form that will discipline a widening
community of Jews with the defensive fiber to allow Judaism to flourish humanely
for another three thousand years.

Writer’s Perspective
This book is written by a Jew, a secular Jew educated in the Yiddish schools of the
Workmen’s Circle (Arbiter Ring), but also in the New York City Public Schools.
An American citizen first, a Jew second. The human mind can love pluralisti-
cally. My parents were immigrants from Czarist Russia. They had a deep love for

Itzkoff_Book.indb 12 23/10/12 5:42 PM

 introduction | xiii

America, their adopted nation. Putting me in semi-socialist Yiddish schools was

a nod to our heritage. At the same time they were totally committed to the full
Americanization of their children, their commitment diminished not at all by their
Jewish heritage. Their allegiance to this nation and mine lay in the fact that our
nation still cherishes the privacy of community histories and beliefs. All humans
need the amalgam of a national plus an ethnic heritage. The great test comes in
the balancing of the two.
When asked why they did not attend a synagogue, this after my first initia-
tion to a Bar Mitzvah party of a friend’s elder brother, both my parents spoke out
strongly—“hypocrites.” Their Judaism demanded more of themselves. And that
was the end of the discussion. Neither of my parents had a high school educa-
tion. But culture, music, literature, was their passion. Even after twelve to eigh-
teen hours of slaving away, my mother, a dressmaker in the garment district, my
father chained to his candy store, all I heard in our cramped apartment was the
Metropolitan Opera. It nearly drove me crazy. I wanted to hear the “Yankees.”
I write about this to contrast the orthodox way of Judaism with my family’s
views on the synagogue. My parents viewed synagogue Judaism as a philistine
institution under the thumb of very materialistic and amoral people, who called
themselves Jews. Whenever my sister and I would talk about the books that we
obtained from the public library, they would ask whether the authors were Jews.
To them the highest mark of a Jew was whether he was a Sholem Aleichem, a Fritz
Kreisler, or a Richard Tucker.
Such opinions about synagogue Judaism were not mine alone. The masses
who have left Judaism testify to the aridity of the institution and the present crisis
it represents for this richest of religious traditions. Note that Moses Mendelssohn,
the great 18th-century Enlightenment Jew who wanted all his brethren to breathe
the free air of Emancipation, saw all of his children convert to Christianity, Felix,
his composer grandson included. Yet, it should be known, Felix still considered
himself a Jew.
Both of my parents lost many dear ones in the Holocaust. I remember looking
into my father’s drawn face when I pointed with childish energy to the New York
Times map showing the Nazi divisions closing in on his small railroad town, then
inhabited by his mother, sisters, brother, their children. The Panzer divisions were
surging toward Moscow, this in late 1941. I will never forget the silence of his eyes.
The Germans came too fast. Much of his family and my mother’s in the Ukraine
were consequently destroyed.
One of the wonderful aspects of historic Judaism is that people like myself as
well as the most reactionary Haredim are inclusively part of the Jewish community.
So we can all talk together about what it means to be a Jew, and what the future
might bring. I remember asking my father why as a semi-socialist he voted for

Itzkoff_Book.indb 13 23/10/12 5:42 PM

 xiv | judaism ’ s promise , meeting the challenge of modernity

FDR, the ‘savior’ of capitalism, rather than Norman Thomas. He winked. I guess
he meant that his socialism was a big tent.

Rabbinical Riches
The rabbinic tradition is rich. The term “rabbi” is Aramaic, not Hebrew, and
translates as “teacher.” We Jews have been taught by many fine “teachers”: Baruch
Spinoza, Solomon Maimon, Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud,
Ernst Cassirer, Albert Einstein. Not all of them were educated in seminaries. Many
fine American minds have emanated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New
York City and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, both institutions devoted to
the training of rabbis. In a variety of books on the Judaic heritage one finds illu-
minating and unself-conscious truths that are a credit to these rabbinical authors.
For example, Rabbi Shaye Cohen, in his study of the “The Beginning of
Jewishness,” admits to the conventionality of the matrilineal rabbinical law that has
caused so much anguish when Jewish men fall in love and want to marry women
who don’t happen to be born into a Jewish family. It is in the Mishnah, the prole-
gomenon to the Talmuds that one finds the exclusion of children of non-Jewish
mothers married to Jewish fathers from claiming a Judaic heritage [Cohen, S.
1999. The Beginnings of Jewishness, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, pp. 263.]
It was a third-century adoption from Roman law. The Romans had their own
reasons, and the scholars of the Mishnah had theirs. The Rabbis obeyed, and some
Jews meekly followed. Many others left Judaism.
Also, Rabbi Joel Kraemer in his biographical study of Moses Maimonides
(d. 1204 CE), admits to the probable factuality of the oft-stated rumor that
Maimonides and his family converted to Islam under the press of the Almohads,
while many Spanish and North African Jews did not, and were not killed by these
Islamic fundamentalists. [Kraemer, J. 2008. Maimonides. New York: Doubleday,
pp. 123-4.]. The Maimon family had their reasons, probably economic, for so
doing, as they migrated from Cordoba in Spain to Fez in Morocco. Later, Moses
Maimon moved first to Crusader Palestine (Acre), where he seemingly reclaimed
his Judaic heritage, then migrated to Muslim Egypt where he doctored Saladin’s
harem and now flourished in his Judaic intellectualism.

Revolutionary Judaism
In Judaism’s Promise I describe the four revolutionary stages of Judaism. The point
is, why not another revolution? We desperately need to reexamine what Judaism
stands for.

Itzkoff_Book.indb 14 23/10/12 5:42 PM

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