DO RELIGIOUS JEWS HAVE FAITH IN THE PRINCIPLES OF JUDAISM

Abstract

Sam  Lebens’  The  Principles  of  Judaism  is  an  extraordinary  book  in  its  rigor  and richness. It is a sophisticated examination of three central propositions, which Lebens maintains, are the fundamental doctrines that “can make sense of  continued  commitment  to  an  Orthodox  Jewish  lifestyle.”  (Lebens,  273).  He presents and discusses the following three propositions: 1) The universe is the creation of one God; 2) The Torah is a divine system of laws and wisdom, revealed  by  the  creator  of  the  universe;  and,  3)  The  creator  exercises  provi-dential care over his creation, manifest in the creator’s continued sustenance of the world, reward and punishment for human action, and in the promise of ultimate salvation. (Lebens, 3).Lebens presents the principles as they were variously explicated and de-fended  in  key  Jewish  texts  written  by  the  most  influential  Jewish  thinkers;  he then turns to search for “the most plausible rendering of this set of prin-ciples...” (Lebens, 274). After so doing, he specifies those doctrinal compo-nents among them, which he deems necessary “for making sense of commit-ment to Judaism” (Lebens, 275), identifying a “commitment to Judaism” with being “faithful to the tenets of Judaism” in the sense of having faith in them:To  the  extent  that  these  principles  are  necessary  for  making  sense  of  commitment  to  Judaism,  I  argue  that  you  cannot  be  considered  faithful  to  the  tenets  of  Judaism  without  holding  an  attitude  of  faith  toward  some  element of each of the three principles... (Lebens 275).The  distance  between  Lebens’  philosophical  and  religious  outlook  and  pre-suppositions,  as  they  show  themselves  in  his  Principles  of  Judaism,  and  my  own is great. I shall start with a critique of Lebens’ reduction of Judaism to so-called  Orthodox  Judaism,  and  argue  that  Lebens  has  no  justification  for  characterizing the principles that he identifies, as the “principles of Judaism” without  qualification.  I  shall  then  turn  to  argue  that  there  are  grounds  for questioning whether the principles that Lebens identifies can be understood as the principles that so-called “Orthodox Jews”, too, have faith in. It is, how-ever,  clear  that  the  utterances  that  Lebens  discusses  do  play  a  central  role  within  the  life  of  committed  Jews.  I  shall  end  by  proposing  that  we  adopt  the  later  Wittgenstein’s  philosophical  method  for  making  perspicuous  their  meaning and their different roles