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    Biblical View of Man
    Biblical View of Man
    Biblical View of Man
    Ebook132 pages3 hours

    Biblical View of Man

    By Leo Adler, Daniel Schwartz and Shimon Gesundheit

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    The Biblical View of Man argues cogently that the Bible is more about human beings than about God and insists that, in the biblical view, what human beings need is not so much wisdom or grace but rather their own free will to fulfill the obligations that a loving God has bestowed upon them in order to allow them to prove and improve themselves. According to Rabbi Leo Adler, the exercise of such free will, rather than implying a lack of need for God, actually requires a firm commitment to God. First published in German in 1965, this engaging interpretation of the Bible appears in English for the first time.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUrim Publications
    Release dateFeb 1, 2015
    ISBN9789655241785
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      Biblical View of Man - Leo Adler

      Basel.

      Foreword to English Edition

      by Dr. Shimon Gesundheit,

      The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

      A FEW YEARS AGO I was invited to an international conference at the University of Heidelberg, to lecture on the question: Is there a Jewish Biblical Theology? I began by citing a passage from the late Rabbi Dr. Leo Adler’s Der Mensch in der Sicht der Bibel (1965 — the German original of the present volume) and could immediately feel the great impact that his words had on that learned audience. Rabbi Adler had a virtuoso’s command of the German language. As a public speaker, he spoke with supreme grace. In his writings as well, the reader becomes captivated and enthralled by his creativity of expression, by his excellent German, and by the lucidity and profundity of his thought. The fact that Rabbi Adler’s words, written nearly forty years ago, were received by the theologians present at the conference as one relishes a fresh breeze, testifies to his originality. Such appreciation of Rabbi Adler’s thesis by Christian scholars indicates the vital need for Jewish voices of such stature to be heard in the current theological discourse in Bible research. We must therefore be deeply grateful for the English publication of Rabbi Adler’s work, and offer profound thanks to Professor Daniel R. Schwartz and Urim Publications for undertaking the project.

      The Biblical View of Man demonstrates the existence and vitality of a Jewish biblical theology, which has been doubted by present-day scholars of the Bible. According to the communis opinio there simply is no Jewish biblical theology. There is a variety of arguments for this scholarly consensus. For Matitiahu Tsevat it is the paucity of works on Jewish biblical theology that shows, de facto, that no such theology exists.¹ Jon D. Levenson goes even further, both positing and explaining the fact that Jewish thinkers and scholars have no interest in biblical theology because its literature is steeped — so he claims — in Christian theological concepts together with anti-Jewish prejudices.² In diametric opposition, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein lamented the absence of Jewish theologians of the Bible, and emphasized the vital and pressing need for Jews to take part in this field, which they have abandoned almost completely to Protestant theologians.³ Against these views, Jacob Neusner and Meir Weiss rejected the very idea of the existence of a Jewish biblical theology. Neusner cannot imagine a Jewish theology based on the Bible without the Midrash and the Talmud.⁴ As for Weiss, he held that just as there is no Jewish physics, so too is there is no room for a Jewish biblical theology; such a theology of a particular community of faith⁵ could not claim any objective, scientific validity.⁶

      By contrast, Rabbi Adler’s book demonstrates the vibrancy of a Jewish biblical theology, which aims to be finely attuned to the Bible’s language and to the voice of the primary sense of the text, without neglecting Jewish interpretation through the ages. In his discussion, Rabbi Adler addresses Christian theologians and scholars of the Bible as well — sometimes in agreement, sometimes in contrast to his own views.

      At the outset of Rabbi Adler’s work (p. 5) stands his fundamental tenet regarding the existence of Jewish biblical theology: Man is the focus of biblical consideration. Therefore, there is not so much a biblical theology as a biblical anthropology — conveyed from God’s point of view (p. 10):

      Herein lies the essence of the Jewish interpretation of the Bible. It is directed toward man, for it regards man in light of God, not God in light of man. Judaism teaches not so much belief in God as God’s judgment of man.

      Adler articulates this idea again at the end of the book (p. 99), in his characteristically sharp and antithetic style of formulation: Judaism is a religion which does not proceed from man to ask about God, but rather poses question marks about man in the light of God. Despite the broad nature of this statement, one cannot but be impressed by its true insight: Two thousand years of Jewish thought leave no doubt that it is man who is studied and sought out by the Bible (p. 6). Indeed, theology, in its original sense of the study of God, had a marginal and esoteric status in Jewish intellectual history. Throughout the ages, Jewish intellectual endeavor focused on Talmud and halakha, that is, upon human beings and their responsibilities vis à vis their fellow humans and God, not upon contemplation about the essence of Divinity.

      One should note that, with regard to his anthropological approach, Rabbi Adler was ahead of his time. Today, in wake of the works of Abraham Joshua Heschel,⁷ Joseph B. Soloveitchik,⁸ Emmanuel Lévinas⁹ and others, Rabbi Adler’s viewpoint is sure to be received with understanding and agreement. But at the time when Rabbi Alder first expounded his thoughts,¹⁰ these ideas weren’t yet popular in Jewish thought. It seems to me that even today one cannot easily find a probing essay dedicated to the fundamental problem which Rabbi Adler treats so thoroughly in the present volume.

      The anthropological viewpoint provides the framework from which Rabbi Adler’s central thesis emerges (p. 16):

      Being human, for Judaism, is not a philosophical problem but a psychological one, which in the end requires that man choose between the divine and the animal. With his own free will, with which God endowed him in order to allow him to prove himself, man must choose which path he will tread: sublimation of his nature, or self-destruction.

      Rabbi Adler places this viewpoint in stark contrast to other options. As opposed to the Christian view, the exclusive responsibility for man’s choice of his path sits squarely with the human being himself; faith in God’s grace does not free him of this responsibility.¹¹ And as opposed to the Greek conception of motivation for moral behavior, human intellectual accomplishment and its recognition of what is good cannot guarantee that man will choose what is good. Reason alone cannot counterbalance man’s weakness in face of his temptations; he requires divine law to stand at his side as a bulwark.¹²

      Rabbi Adler builds upon a close study of the biblical text, but he expounds his thoughts with theological-existential pathos. For Rabbi Adler did not contemplate in the ivory tower of intellectual inquiry. Rather, he grappled intensely with realities both intellectual and experiential: intellectually, he struggled with Christian theology and Greco-Western philosophy, while experientially he wrestled with the Holocaust and the problem of rational beings remaining vulnerable to evil.¹³ In a way, Rabbi Adler’s book reflects the impact of various inner struggles of his life on his thinking.

      Leo Adler, born in 1915 in Nuremberg, grew up in nearby Ansbach and was educated there in the intense humanistic tradition characteristic of German high schools between the World Wars. He acquired a broad education in the classics and absorbed it into the depths of his soul; to his last days, he could recite the poetry of Ovid and Sophocles by heart. After completing the very demanding matriculation exams, he attempted to study medicine, but restrictions imposed by the Nazi regime prevented him from doing so. As a result, he turned to Jewish studies in the Jewish teacher’s college in Würzburg, and after completing his studies there continued them at the Yeshiva of Mir, one of the most prestigious strongholds of analytic Talmud study in the Lithuanian tradition. Despite his limited experience in higher learning of Talmud in comparison with the Eastern European students, within a short time Adler stood out as one of the yeshiva’s most talented students. Applying himself with great diligence, he studied Talmud for over ten years, all the while struggling to support himself financially. In 1940 he married, but soon thereafter the vagaries of war separated him from his wife and forced him to flee, with the yeshiva, to Shanghai, then under Japanese occupation. Rabbi Adler saw his first son, who was born shortly after he fled, for the first time, only after the war, when, in 1948, the family was finally reunited after years of threat and perpetual concern for each other and for their loved ones, most of whom were killed during that period by the Nazis.¹⁴

      In 1956, Rabbi Adler was invited to serve as the rabbi of Basel, Switzerland. In this way, he was able to return to his native German culture and language without going back to Germany.¹⁵ It was not only the Jewish community that appreciated Rabbi Adler’s extraordinary intellect and personality.¹⁶ He soon became a sought-after public figure, representing the Jewish community with great dignity, and was even asked to speak at prestigious non-religious cultural events held by the city — for instance, at the inauguration of Basel’s new theater in 1975.

      In his dialogue with Christianity¹⁷ and in all his public activities, Rabbi Adler stood out in his integrity; he never hesitated to speak his mind with confidence and intellectual honesty, even when contrary to the ideas of his audience. This characteristic trait of intellectual autonomy and personal courage was expressed in one of his early letters to his wife in 1940, as quoted by one of his sons, Samuel N. Adler, in his exciting book, which he named in the spirit of his father’s legacy: "If we choose to go against the stream, this is

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