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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2009
Hans Jonas began his 1961 Ingersoll Lecture by acknowledging the “undeniable fact” “that the modern temper is uncongenial to the idea of immortality.”1 Jonas nonetheless concluded his lecture by affirming that “although the hereafter is not ours … we can have immortality … when in our brief span we serve our threatened mortal affairs and help the suffering immortal God.”2 While he may not have realized it, Jonas's words capture what I shall argue is the dominant view of immortality in modern Jewish thought. Underlying this view is an effort to refute materialist conceptions of human existence without committing to any particularly theological or traditionally metaphysical notion of immortality.
1 Hans Jonas, “Immortality and the Modern Temper,” HTR 55 (1962) 1.
2 Ibid., 20.
3 Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). See also Kevin Madigan and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
4 On this particular phrase and its historical implications, see Jacob Katz, “A State within a State: The History of an Anti-Semitic Slogan,” in Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Chicago: Gregg International Publishers, 1972) 47–76.
5 For more on the equation of politics with the modern nation state and hence with a particularly modern conception of sovereignty in modern Jewish thought, see Leora Batnitzky, “Beyond Sovereignty? Modern Jewish Political Theory,” in Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy (ed. David Novak and Martin Kavka; New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2010).
6 Oscar Cullmann, “Immortality of the Soul and Resurrection of the Dead: The Witness of the New Testament,” in Immortality and Resurrection: Four Essays (ed. Krister Stendahl; New York: Macmillan, 1965) 28.
7 Levenson, Resurrection, 229.
8 T. Sanh. 13:2.
9 For an overview of this subject, see Daniel Jeremy Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy 1180–1240 (Leiden: Brill, 1965).
10 Moses Maimonides, Treatise on Resurrection (trans. Fred Rosner; New York: Jason Aaronson, 1982) 35.
11 On the broader topic of how to read Maimonides and the significance of his claims about resurrection, see Leo Strauss, “The Literary Character of The Guide of the Perplexed,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952) esp. 74. For another view, see Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) esp. ch. 4. See also Kenneth Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin and Nature of the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) esp. chs. 6 and 7.
12 Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed (ed. and trans. Shlomo Pines; intro. Leo Strauss; 2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) 2:25. I have altered the translation slightly by translating Torat Moshe Rabbeinu as “the Torah of our teacher Moses” rather than “the Law of our teacher Moses,” as I believe this conveys the broader sense of Maimonides' claim. See Moreh nevukhim le-Rabenu Mosheh ben Maimon (trans. Mikhael Shvarts; Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel-Aviv, 2002) 2:25 as well as Dala¯lat al-ha¯iri¯n (ed. Solomon Munk; 3 vols; Jerusalem: Yunovits, 1929) 2:25 where Maimonides uses the term sharia as opposed to fiqh, the former corresponding to Torah, the latter to a narrower conception of law (halakhah).
13 This is the argument of ch. 25 of book 2 of the Guide.
14 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 3:27.
15 Benedict de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (trans. Samuel Shirley; Leiden: Brill, 1989) 125–26. See especially Spinoza's claim that that any suggestion of a supernatural order would “necessarily be opposed to the order which God maintains eternally in nature through her universal laws” (130). Spinoza does not mention resurrection explicitly in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, but in a letter to Henry Oldenburg he states that any notion of resurrection must be understood spiritually because “Christians interpret spiritually all those doctrines which the Jews accepted literally” (7 February, 1676, translated and included in The Ethics and Selected Letters [trans. Samuel Shirley; Indianapolis: Hacket, 1982] 255).
16 Spinoza, Ethics and Selected Letters, 215.
17 For a recent discussion of this issue, see Steven Nadler, Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
18 Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 79–80.
19 Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (trans. Eliyahu Touger; 22 vols; New York: Moznaim, 1987) 8:11, translation modified.
20 Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 61.
21 Benedict de Spinoza, Political Treatise (trans. Samuel Shirley; 2d ed.; Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000) ch. 5, par. 2.
22 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power and Judaism (trans. Allan Arkush; Hanover: University of New England Press, 1983).
23 Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon; or, The Death of Socrates (translated from the German; London: J. Cooper, 1789).
24 Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe (24 vols; Berlin: F. Frommann, 1929–1984) 8:21.
25 For recent work on this topic, see Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1994); David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
26 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 130.
27 On Bayle's view of Judaism, see Miriam Yardeni, “La vision des juifs et du judaïsme dans l'œuvre de Pierre Bayle,” in Les Juifs dans l'histoire de France (ed. Miriam Yardeni; Leiden: Brill, 1980) 86–95.
28 On Voltaire, Bayle, and Spinoza, see most recently Harvey Mitchell, Voltaire's Jews and Modern Jewish Identity: Rethinking the Enlightenment (New York: Routledge, 2008). See also Arkush's very helpful explication of this issue and its relation to Mendelssohn in Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment, 145–51.
29 Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften Jubiläumsausgabe, 16 (Letter 154, dated October 26, 1773).
30 On this subject, see Noah Rosenblum's excellent study, “Theological Impediments to a Hebrew Version of Mendelssohn's Phaedon,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 56 (1990) 51–81.
31 Mendelssohn, Phädon, 171.
32 Ibid., 187. I thank Elias Sacks for pointing this argument out to me.
33 See Neil Gillman's discussion of Abraham Geiger's translations of liturgical references to resurrection which aimed to affirm immortality and reject resurrection in The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1997) 198–99. See also Jakob J. Petuchowski, “ ‘Immortality–Yes; Resurrection—No!’ Nineteenth-Century Judaism Struggles with a Traditional Belief,” PAAJR 50 (1983) 133–47. Jon Levenson discusses these publications and offers an overview of the broad affirmation of immortality and rejection of resurrection in modern Jewish thought in ch. 1 of Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, entitled “The Modern Jewish Preference for Immortality” (1–22).
34 Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Siddur (ed. and trans. The Samson Raphael Hirsch Publications Society; Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1987) 414. The same commentary can be found in English in Samson Raphael Hirsch, Chapters of the Fathers: Commentary to Pirkei Avot (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1967).
35 Samson Raphael Hirsch, Commentary to Bamidbar 19:22, as cited and translated in Joseph Elias, The World of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch: The Nineteen Letters Newly Translated and with a Comprehensive Commentary (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1995) 152.
36 Ibid., 224, translation modified.
37 For more on the striking convergence between Hirsch and Mendelssohn, see Leora Batnitzky, “From Politics to Law: Modern Jewish Thought and the Invention of Jewish Law,” forthcoming in Dine Israel, 2009.
38 On the philosophical implications of Cohen's and Mendelssohn's shared discomfort with Maimonides' statement, see Steven Schwartzschild, “Do Noahides have to Believe in Revelation? (A Passage in Dispute between Maimonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, and Hermann Cohen) A Contribution to a Jewish View of Natural Law,” in The Pursuit of the Ideal: Jewish Writings of Steven Schwarzschild (ed. Menachem Kellner; Albany: State University Press of New York, 1990) 29–60.
39 See especially Hermann Cohen, “Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum,” in Jüdische Schriften (ed. Bruno Strauss; 3 vols.; Berlin: Schwetschke & Sohn, 1924) 3:348.
40 Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (trans. Simon Kaplan; New York: Frederick Ungar, 1972) 336.
41 Ibid., 311.
42 Ibid., 359.
43 Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (trans. William W. Hallo; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985) 3.
44 Ibid., 259.
45 Rosenzweig's contemporaries tended to resolve this tension by emphasizing either existence or eternity over the other. For a reading of Rosenzweig that emphasizes his conception of existence, see Julius Guttmann's Philosophies of Judaism (trans. David W. Silverman; New York: Holt, 1964). For a neo-idealist reading of Rosenzweig see Else-Rahel Freund, Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy of Existence (trans. Stephen L. Weinstein and Robert Israel; Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979). In recent years, scholarship has tended to continue to move along this either/or line. For an emphasis on Rosenzweig's conception of existence, see Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) and on the neo-idealist side see Benjamin Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig and the Systematic Task of Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
46 Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, 260–61, translation modified and emphasis added. The German reads, “So hat alles Weltiche in aller Zeit seine Geschichte: Recht und Staat, Kunst und Wissenschaft, alles was sichtbar ist; und erst im Augenblick, wo in ein solches Es der Welt das Echo des Weckrufs zur Offenbarung Gottes an den Menschen hineinhallt, stirbt ein Stück Zeitlichkeit den Auferstehungstod der Ewigkeit. Die Sprache aber, weil sie menschlich ist, nicht weltlich, stirbt nicht und ersteht freilich auch nicht auf. In der Ewigkeit ist Schweigen. Gott selber aber pflanzt den Setzling seiner eigenen Ewigkeit weder in den Anfang noch in die Mitte der Zeit, sondern schlechthin jenseits der Zeit in die Ewigkeit.” Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976) 290.
47 These are among the themes of part 3, book 1 of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, “The Fire or the Eternal Way.” See esp. 298–99 and 315–16.
48 These are among the themes of part 3, book 1 of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, “The Rays or the Eternal Way.” See esp. 337, 352–53 and 377–78.
49 Letter to Rudolf Ehrenberg, 4 November, 1913 in Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe und Tagebücher (2 vols.; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979) 1:142
50 Judaism Despite Christianity: The Letters on Christianity and Judaism between Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (ed. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy; Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1969) 114.
51 A consideration of Emmanuel Levinas' views of immortality and resurrection is beyond the scope of this paper. Here I will suggest only that resurrection for Levinas is the disruption of the continuity of time, not because God revives the dead but rather because another person disrupts one's experience of time. It is in this encounter with the Other, Levinas maintains, that a trace of immortality (what he calls the “immemorial”) reveals itself. In this way, Levinas's view of the relation between immortality and resurrection bears a significant structural similarity to Cohen's and Rosenzweig's in which resurrection is a limited gesture toward immortality. See in particular Levinas's remarks about resurrection in Totality and Infinity (trans. Alphonso Lingis; Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969) 284: “Resurrection constitutes the principal event of time. There is therefore no continuity in being. … In continuation the instant meets its death, and resuscitates; death and resurrection constitute time. But such a formal structure presupposes the relation of the I with the Other …”
52 Ahad Ha'am, Selected Essays by Ahad Ha'am (trans. Leon Simon; Philadelphia: JPS, 1912) 193.
53 Ahad Ha'am, Al Parashat Derakhim (4 vols.; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1946) 3:30.
54 Ahad Ha'am, Al Parashat Derakhim (4 vols.; Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1930) 1:6.
55 Martin Buber, “Renaissance und Bewegung,” in Der Jude und sein Judentum. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Reden (Gerlingen: Lambert Schneider, 1993) 101–2.
56 David Brooks, “The Neural Buddhists,” The New York Times, 13 May, 2008.
57 See especially Hans Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice,” in Mortality and Morality: A Search for Good after Auschwitz (ed. Lawrence Vogel; Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996) 131–43.
