Liberalism and Socialism - Letter 44, Sections B-C
RAV KOOKS
LETTERS
By Rav Tamir Granot
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This
week's shiurim are dedicated
in memory of Mrs. Cela Meisels, Tzerka Nechama
bat Shlomo,
whose yahrzeit falls on the 14th of
Tevet.
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Lecture #6b:
Liberalism and Socialism -
Letter 44, Sections B-C
B. It Begins with
Division and Ends with Connection
The two most
significant ideological challenges that Judaism faced at the beginning of the
twentieth century were liberalism and socialism. R. S. Alexandrov dealt
extensively with these two totalizing theories, and his discussions on the
relation between Enlightenment and Judaism are connected, to a large degree, to
the apparent conflict between these two philosophical-cultural and normative
systems and authentic Judaism. In what we have already seen, as well as in the
continuation of the letter and elsewhere, Rav Kook deals with socialism and
liberalism from the vantage point of our religious-national thought. Since we
have already established the fundamental determinations, we have an actual
methodology that determines how to approach these challenges. Let us look at Rav
Kooks words regarding socialism and liberalism as a paradigm for the relation
between Jewish thought and any belief or opinion whose source is among the
gentiles.
In our introduction
to the section, we noted R. Alexandrovs position. R. Alexandrov adopts a
methodology of philosophical dialectic: he clarifies the positions of liberalism
and socialism and finds one to be compatible with Judaism while negating the
other. Rav Kooks approach is fundamentally different. Let us see his words from
later in the letter:
The good that is in
historical materialism will itself stand by our side, as we confidently clarify
how it is impossible for it to stand as a permanent doctrine, be it old or new,
with all its branches and shoots, but is in need of pruning and weeding,
refining and purifying, and its good part will last forever, like all that is
compatible with Israel's light, its strength, and its
eternity.
Universal justice,
which we say and repeat, is inestimably higher than that limited characteristic
of liberalism born of a human idea at a passing moment of history and it
does not require cowardice and broken spirit, but rather lives with the cold
logic of the mind as well as with the warm feeling of the heart, and with all of
mankind as well as with the particular nation, family, and individual.
For this reason, I
agree with you that we can see a spark of hope, and only a spark, in the midst
of the great darkness surrounding us. But we know and perceive and with
certainty that the light was once there. "It is not written, 'Let there be
light' but 'There was light' the light already existed," and the light exists
in potential in our treasury. For this reason, that only a spark is now
apparent does not bother us. We are certain that, by this spark, we will come to
find great light, the flame of God, "until her righteousness goes forth like
radiance, and her salvation like a burning torch." (Letters I, pp.
50-51)
It is impossible to
say of liberalism or socialism that they are unequivocally good or bad. Each of
them contains a positive kernel. They can be seen as part of mans general
striving for the ideal good life. Here we arrive at the second focus of this
lecture: can liberalism or socialism be considered religious
movements?
Essence and garb,
kernel and husk in the great isms
In conventional
religious language, these movements are certainly not religious. Their ideals
are not religious according to any accepted yardstick, and they certainly do not
invoke the Name of God.
However, Rav Kooks
metaphysics are revolutionary in that it impacts the language of religion as
well. According to Rav Kook, a movement or action can be religious irrespective
of its relation to a particular normative system (the Torah or, le-havdil
the New Testament); its worldview is likewise unimportant in this regard. The
important question is: what is it striving for? What motivates it? When we see a
striving to repair the world, for a just society, for a good life we know that
we are in the presence of a Godly movement acting in the world, even if it is
not conscious of it.
This does not refer
to the hidden hand of God, as would classical religious terminology. Rav Kook
does not speak of personal supervision or of God running the world. He
determines that the inner psychological or metaphysical foundations of these
actions are Godly, meaning that striving for good and idealism themselves stem
from the Divine dimension of existence, which is revealed in the human soul and
in humanity as a whole as the moral and religious impulse that are the source of
the beliefs and opinions of powerful social and political movements. The
ideological or conceptual trappings of this Divine impulse (the striving for
goodness and perfection) may have no connection to religion. Its interior,
however, is certainly religious, and we accept it as an expression of the Divine
in the world.
Rav Kook taught us
not to relate to the external expression the trappings of beliefs and
opinions. Trappings are a matter of style. Thus, for example, the presentation
of Zionism as a normal national movement is connected with the development of
nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century. The inner content of the
movement, however, is the desire by the nation of
Thus, specifically
because ideas require purification and refinement,
The problem is that
this is very difficult: the ideologies seem to contradict each other, and both
of them seem to contradict faith.
Socialism attempts to
solve human problems by addressing the economic-material dimension. It demands
the relinquishment of competition and of ownership in favor of the collective
ownership of the proletariat. Its ethics are the ethics of an egalitarian
society that enforces just distribution. The concepts of justice and
philanthropy are not relevant to it. According to it, justice is the invention
of human culture that was also designed to serve the proper material
order.
Liberalism sees
freedom as its highest value. It does not limit cultural or material life.
According to it, social development is contingent specifically on the rule of
egoism. Self-esteem is the greatest source of creativity and development.
Liberalism, however, does not reject morality, but rather views it as the
foundation of a good human life a distinction that allows R. Alexandrov to
accept liberalism while rejecting socialism.
We will now attempt
to solve this difficulty vis-א-vis these two movements.
Socialism
As noted, it is
possible to analyze socialism and divorce it from its materialism. Social
justice need not be encased in materialist trappings, and even historical
materialism can be refined. Its true point is the understanding of immanence,
the understanding that reality is driven by natural
forces.
However, Marx only
understood the outer shell of reality materialism. Materialism is correct when
it points out the importance of material motivation, but it misses the mark when
it becomes totalizing. It is possible that the historical failure of socialism
is precisely rooted in the fact that it aligned itself with atheistic
(heretical) materialism. Since, from a material perspective, the liberal and
capitalist West was far more successful, socialism, which was founded on a
materialistic worldview, lost its justification. In truth, as a conception of
social justice, ideal socialism as a moral outlook is correct in principle;
liberalism is cruel from a socioeconomic vantage point. It can thus be said that
the materialistic context of socialism is tragic.
Liberalism
What about regarding
liberalism? One year later, Rav Kook wrote to R.
Alexandrov:
You find hints of
moral liberal anarchism in Judaism. Indeed, all ideas can be found in the source
of truth. Truth cannot be partial; the truth must be all-embracing, but its
singularity is that it overturns everything in its true shining
light.
Not only does the
anarchism of liberalism find its source in Judaism, in the light of
Such relations are
seen in a spiritual, experiential sense in the bonds of loving souls that form
the foundation of the family so that, if it were not so difficult to free
ourselves from habit, we would find that the difference between that feeling of
pleasure or pain that spreads from one limb to another is not significantly
different from the feeling that spreads from son to father and from lover to
beloved.
When these channels
are broadened, the feelings flow more strongly and are more tangible and
evident. When the national body is in its wholeness and perfection, it too is
constructed on the model of the family. Development requires only the widening
of the channels; individual solidarity broadens into the nation. From nation to
mankind is but one step. From humanity to all life is one more step. Concern for
the inhabitants of one planet to a serious and profound interest in all of
existence in its widest sense is only one move, indeed a far off one, but
eternity is in no rush. The matter continues to a sublimation of the whole
cosmos into a single individuality.
Thus, we have no need
for anything but anarchy, a tremendous, great, mighty, and developed self-love.
The paths that lead there, though, are the ways of life that emanate from the
source of unity of the one, the life of the universe, Judaism. When higher
sparks like these fall down, they descend and sink, sink into the deep mire of
life. These are the fallen ones of old.
Therefore, we must
reiterate that Judaism encompasses everything in the widest and best possible
sense, but it actually guides us in accordance with its unique ways, living and
enduring for us and for our children. When their inner light breaks through, we
will not need to seek anything, and the night will shine like day for us, and
the sun will shine like the morning light. (Letters I,
p.140)
In other words, even
liberalism in its radical form (anarchism), based on the absolute reliance on
human spontaneity and human nature, can be purified and refined and is rooted in
holiness.
The argument that Rav
Kook develops here is an excellent example of the purifying power of Jewish
thought the though of over-arching unity.
Liberalisms weak
point is its disjointed and atomistic worldview. Its ontology is pluralistic. As
a result of this worldview, freedom (cherut) leads to
competition (tacharut): every individual who wishes to express his
freedom thus threatens the freedom of others, and vice versa. The identity of
the individual emerges from the soil of egoism, and is therefore not moral. The
only love that exists is mans love for himself.
However, if these
good sensibilities of freedom, spontaneity, and love were to emerge from the
soil of a unified vision of reality, they would have a completely different
meaning. The idea of over-arching unity belongs to the field of ontology or
theology. Understanding that reality is really an organic singularity of which
God is the soul is ostensibly a matter of philosophy. However, we learn here
that this over-arching unified theory also has epistemological (pertaining to
the ways we view the world) and psychological (pertaining to the way we view
ourselves and the limits of the self) ramifications.
Rav Kooks words can
be explained simply: A mothers love for her children and her willingness to
forego lifes pleasures on his behalf money, time, and the like is that
altruism? Is this mother not egoistic?
The answer seems to
be obvious: a mother who makes sacrifices for her children sees them as
unmediated parts of her self; their connection is organic. This is no act of
self-sacrifice for another - it is the relinquishment of one aspect of a
personality in favor of another aspect. From certain perspectives, the child is
included within the mothers self. In a well-known story, R. Aryeh Levin
informed the doctor that My wifes leg hurts us. Of course, this psychological
worldview can be found in context of national fraternity as well (as in the
kinship that a soldier feels for his fellow soldiers or his homeland, which he
sees as part of himself). Rav Kook says here that, in principle, a person can
feel/see all of reality in an organic sense from within. Plurality and
multiplicity are illusory; unity is truth. In the next lecture, we will deal in
detail with the epistemology on which this view is based. Regardless, it is
clear that conceiving reality as a unity, even though it is not initially
intuitive, is hypothetically possible.
If one has achieved
such an existential experience, his self-love is no longer merely directed at
the narrow boundaries of his skin, but toward reality or society as a whole. For
such a person, love of society is not a normative act or a demonstration of
sacrifice or concession, but a natural actualization of his feelings of love.
His spontaneous freedom is not an expression of a lonely individual personality,
but of the general will of being or society in general. Although this general
will is expressed through the unique spectrum of his personality, it is clearly
not egoism.
In such an
atmosphere, liberalism is not only legitimate - it is ideal. It reveals Divine
dimensions that operate in reality and it need not be rejected or repressed,
conceding freedom or nature in order to accept the yoke of Heaven, which is seen
as external to man and to reality.
The method that Rav
Kook proposes here gives us, if only in its most incipient form, an opening to
consider what lies beyond both of these previous concepts.
Both liberalism and
socialism found their place in the unified vision after they were forced to give
up the original environment in which they were created on behalf of the
individual citizen and on behalf of society, and were repositioned, without
their husks, as building blocks for Jewish religious thought. Proverbially,
these systems are like saplings that were planted in poor soil, and moving them
to good soil allows them to flourish and bear good fruit. Rav Kooks thought
here has a refining and purifying power. Contemplating liberal ideology from his
vantage point (of Divine unity) raised its spark, the Divine content within
it.
The most noble of
the nations
the nation of Avrahams God (Tehillim
47:10)
In conclusion, I wish
to address an additional point that emerges from what we have learned. In the
past two lectures, we have studied the concept of nationalism, and particularly
Jewish nationalism. The humanist position, and global and universal contemporary
thought even more so, relate negatively to the idea of nationalism. Emphasis of
nationalism is considered chauvinistic, necessarily causing inequality, and
consequently lacking in humanism.
In several places,
Rav Kook writes that Jewish nationalism is on a different level. Thus, for
example, the following passage:
The difference
between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings,
character and standing, and the soul of all the gentile nations, on all of their
levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and
the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity,
while the difference in the first case is one of essential quality.
(Orot, p. 156, para. 10)
Pitting humanism and
universalism against the ideal of Jewish sanctity and chosenness from amongst
the nations only intensifies this question. Rav Kook indeed
states:
The universal quality
always fills the heart of mankinds noble spirits. They will thus feel
suffocated if their spirits are confined to the limits of their own nation.
(Orot, p. 152)
The solution to this
problem is that, indeed, universalism is a higher level than nationalism.
However, when addressing the nation of
But the nation in
whom true universalism is embedded in the depths of its soul, the most noble of
nations, the nation of the God of Avraham, always requires actions that befit
its model properly, deeply, internally. A multitude of noble, universal ideals
applies to them abundantly. Their inclusion reaches the highest heights, to
where the eye is weakened and whose heights only the abstract soul, full of
splendor, can reach. Practical restrictions and spiritual broadening are
together the main form of
Here, nationalism is
enlisted to defeat itself, in that it serves as a framework and ideological
basis for the idea of universal perfection, which is the essence of Knesset
Yisrael.
Rav Kook expressed
this idea in a more extreme form in a letter that he wrote several years
later:
Yaffo, 10 Shvat, 5772
Dear Mr. S. Y.
Horowitz, in response to your question regarding Judaism and its future, I
hereby offer my opinion, gleaned from the publication of all that I have studied
and thought on this matter. Knesset Yisrael is not a nation in the
regular sense, but is an ideal microcosm of mankind, which fully displays itself
as a social group with all of its conventions, which is metaphorically called a
nation because all unique human groups are so called. It expresses its many
manifestations in various forms in different eras. It expresses some of them
autonomously and some of its expressions are actualized by other parts of
humanity at its instigation. It constantly strives to rise to this high level
of spiritual breadth so that it no longer needs to spread its power thin through
separate manifestations, time after time and place after place. Rather, it will
all be expressed within itself, in a clear and prominent manifestation, all at
once, through the creation of a new history. Then the nations will follow its
light, and kings will be guided by the glow of its radiance, and it will be
called by a new name that God will designate. Thus, a penetrating aggada
states: In the future, all of the prophets will sing a song in a single voice,
as it says: A voice: Your seers raised their voice; they shout for joy
together. For every eye shall behold Gods return to
It is clear, then,
that even the concept of nationalism itself does not accurately express the
status of Knesset Yisrael in reality; as a microcosm of humanity, it is
essentially impossible to define particularistically, unless it is a mere
metaphor.
In order to explain
this paradox, we return to the segment that we began with and to the connection
between the historical nation of
Malkhut is an attribute, a
unique aspect, amongst the Divine attributes. Does this mean that it has a
separate, independent essence? Certainly not. On the contrary, malkhut is
precisely the ability of the other attributes to work in harmony, organically.
R. Yehuda Halevi expressed the historical dimension of this idea in his parable
of the heart and limbs that appears in the Kuzari.[1] This metaphor
emphasizes, on the one hand, the abundant centrality and importance of the
Jewish People as the heart of the nations. But this parable has a flip side as
well: the organic conception of mankind. Mankind is a complete body with various
limbs, each of which has a different function. As the center of the circulatory
system, which was also the seat of the soul according to the ancients, the heart
connects all of the limbs. When the heart does not work properly, the world does
not exist as a single personality. Were
We can introduce
another metaphor to illustrate this. Humanity today, and throughout history in
general, is like the violin in Picassos famous painting. This is a cubist
reality strips of a single entity that has been dismantled and scattered
across the surface. One who contemplates it sees the mutual connections, the
common source, but does not see harmony. Picassos Violin has tension and
tempest on one hand, and perhaps, one might say, harmony on the other side, but
it is certainly impossible to play it. Now we can ask: what part of the violin
represents
Sources for
Further Study in the Writings of Rav Kook
The
issues are mainly found in pp. 138-143 and 151-158 of the collection called
Orot Yisrael that appears in Orot.
(Translated
by
[1] The metaphor was originally
intended to explain the apparent contradiction between the eternity of the
Jewish People (the heart as the seat of health) and the excessive suffering that
it endures (the heart as the seat of illness). I am interested in relating to a
different facet here, although
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