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Reflections On The Reinman-Hirsch Exchange: William Kolbrener
Reflections On The Reinman-Hirsch Exchange: William Kolbrener
WILLIAM KOLBRENER
Reflections on the
Reinman-Hirsch Exchange
W
riting in The Jewish Week to explain his reasons for discontin-
uing the promotional tour with the Reform rabbi Ammiel
Hirsch for their jointly-authored One People, Two Worlds, the
Orthodox rabbi Yosef Reinman lamented that he had not yet seen “one
serious in-depth review” of the book.1 Indeed, media attention to the
exchange between Reinman, the spokesman for Orthodoxy, and Ammiel
Hirsch, the spokesman for Reform, was largely focused upon one issue—
the acknowledgement of the Reform movement which Reinman’s co-
authorship of the book had ostensibly implied. As Reinman himself
would subsequently explain, he heeded the call of the Lakewood rashei
yeshivah to abandon the tour because the book’s actual contents were
only superficially addressed (most people did not, Reinman remarks,
“bother to read the book”). Reinman himself became the focus in the
ensuing media uproar, wrongly cast, in his own words, as “the Rosa
Parks of interdenominational dialogue.” 2 Reinman’s actual contributions
to the exchange everywhere emphasize the distinction between Reform
WILLIAM KOLBRENER, a senior lecturer of English Literature at Bar Ilan University,
is the author of Milton’s Warring Angels (Cambridge, 1997), and writes widely on
the literature, philosophy, and history of seventeenth-century England. He has
also written on the interpretive methodologies of H.azal, as well as the philosoph-
ical works of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
208 The Torah u-Madda Journal (12/2004)
William Kolbrener 209
• • •
William Kolbrener 211
One People, Two Worlds opens with Reinman initiating the discussion:
“Let us begin at the beginning.” Let us,” he continues, “talk about truth.”
“We believe,” he continues, that “without question that there is an
absolute truth, and that it is contained in our holy Torah.” So Reinman
asks Hirsch: “do you really believe that there is no absolute truth?” (5).
Rather than retreat from the question, Hirsch registers Reinman’s asser-
tion of “absolute truth,” and immediately takes the offensive. That
Reinman has claimed to possess absolute truth (though he in fact does
not employ the metaphor of possession) leaves him, Hirsch claims
“alone at the pinnacle of piety” (6). Hirsch forwards an argument, the
strategy of which remains consistent throughout: Reinman’s affirmation
of “absolute truth” at the beginning of the exchange emerges, in Hirsch’s
argument, as the center of a constellation of connotations—which he
determinedly associates with the Orthodox position. Thus Hirsch
moves from the attribution of pietism to the attribution of theological
“immodesty.” “How audacious is the notion that I alone possess divine
truth!” (8). Not only does the belief in the absolute evidence bad man-
ners, but truly dangerous tendencies: “if you say that you are in posses-
sion of absolute truth, I find this most troubling—and yes—it makes
those who so believe dangerous.” For “great evil,” Hirsch continues, “has
been perpetrated by people who are convinced that they possessed
absolute truth.” “The implication of this belief is that all other beliefs
are, by definition, not true,” which, Hirsch warns, “taken seriously . . .
leads to terrible consequences” (6). While Hirsch paints himself in the
garb of theological modesty, acknowledging that “we humans are falli-
ble” and, therefore, can make no claim to “possess divine truth,” Reinman
manifests “the need to take on. . . ‘absolute truth’” (15). Such a need, as
Hirsch tries to represent it (in the knowing tones of the cultural anthro-
pologist) represents a well-known psychological proclivity: “Your need
for truth—certainty—is not unique,” he explains; “we all want certain-
ty” (233). In his own estimation, Hirsch and Reform have overcome
that proclivity, while Reinman’s enthusiasm for “absolute truth” shows
both him and the position of Orthodoxy which he represents to be
“infected” with “theological arrogance.” The external symptoms of arro-
gance and immodesty have, Hirsch explains, a deeper root: “That’s the
thing with you guys—you need, crave, and demand certainty” (15, 17);
and later, “You seem to have a powerful need for absolutes.”8 Hirsch is
not merely content to call Orthodoxy “dangerous.” In his desire to asso-
ciate Orthodoxy with fundamentalist political movements of the West,
he asserts an implicit connection between Orthodoxy and what he calls,
212 The Torah u-Madda Journal
• • •
To distinguish his position from the absolutist or “fundamentalist”
position advocated by Orthodoxy, Hirsch routinely asserts Reform alle-
giance to interpretation, subjectivity, and multiplicity. Hirsch frames his
“search for truth” as the “interpretation and re-interpretation of ancient
texts” (77). Reinman claims a belief in absolute truth; while Hirsch
asserts the importance of interpretation. Reinman’s truth is singular; the
truths which Hirsch claims to advocate are multiple. Hirsch’s pluralist
perspective is “modern”; Reinman’s absolutist perspective “fundamen-
talist” (76). Hirsch’s conception of interpretation is one which creates a
multiplicity of meanings: there is he writes, “no ‘one,’ ‘authoritative,’ or
‘literal’ understanding” (161). The rabbis, he writes, claiming talmudic
authority for the Reform conception of pluralism, were not “interested
in presenting one, absolute truth,” and thus he quotes the rabbinic prin-
ciple, “These and these are the words of the living God” as a precedent
for Reform interpretive practice. Further, interpretation must be plural,
because, as Hirsch explains, “reality is plural.” Not only that, Hirsch
continues, but the pluralistic nature of what he calls “reality” implies a
moral imperative: for “democracy, pluralism, tolerance, theological
humility” are “all the building blocks of free societies.” “Remove any of
these building blocks,” Hirsch warns (again asserting—obscenely—the
connection between fascism and orthodoxy), “and the long shadow of
the totalitarian wrecking crew appears at our door” (51).
Reinman is not content to accede to Hirsch’s appropriations. Yet, to
Reinman’s rejoinder that “there is pluralism in Orthodoxy” (133),
Hirsch is triumphant:
I laughed out loud when I read your assertion that “there is pluralism in
Orthodoxy.” Here is a wonderful example of the contributions of the
Reform movement to the entire Jewish people. . . . We have been so suc-
cessful in persuading Jews of the centrality of pluralism that even
Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews feel that they must measure and jus-
tify their approach to Judaism through the concept (146).
This may be the rhetorical high-point in the exchange for Hirsch,
for he sees Reinman as forced to acknowledge the superiority and prece-
William Kolbrener 215
• • •
Both Hirsch and Reinman, governed by the Greek parameters of the
argument, refuse to emphasize fully the dialectical relationship between
absolute truth and interpretation. Hirsch may pretend to deal with such
a dialectic, but all of his talk about the importance of what he calls
“change and continuity” is betrayed by his version of interpretation in
216 The Torah u-Madda Journal
permit. And [Moses] asked the Holy One Blessed be He about this, and
He said that this will be passed to the Sages of Israel of every generation,
and it will be decided according to them.14
From Ritva’s perspective, using the shorthand which we can adopt from
the Hirsch-Reinman exchange, there really seems to be an absolute
truth, and it was handed down (in its multiplicity) to Moshe at Sinai.
Absolute truth, as Reinman asserts, does exist; it was given at Sinai.
But the insufficiency of the Western philosophical shorthand
reveals itself in the commentary of Maharshal. For while Ritva empha-
sizes a truth emerging from the experience at Sinai itself, Maharshal
would emphasize the role of the interpreter—seeming to provide a
precedent for the subjectivism of Hirsch’s perspective. In apparent dis-
agreement with Ritva, Maharshal asserts that differences between the
sages emerged because “each perceived the Torah from his own per-
spective in accordance with his intellectual capacity as well as the
stature and unique character of his particular soul.”15 From the per-
spective of Maharshal, difference of perception—purely subjective or
interpretive criteria—constitutes an integral part of the Sinaitic revela-
tion. Maharshal is not, however, advocating the extremes of Hirschian
subjectivity (his legal commentaries which manifest an engagement
with antecedent texts and traditions evidence as much), but his per-
spective represents a complement to the perspective articulated by
Ritva. I would even suggest that Ritva himself alludes to the corollary
interpretation of Maharshal when he asserts that, in addition to the
explanation that he had already given, and “according to the ways of
truth,” there is yet another “hidden explanation of the matter.” Such an
explanation would almost certainly refer to the subjectivist aspect which
Maharshal emphasizes (for how else do the different perspectives,
received by Moses at Sinai, manifest themselves in history?). The dis-
agreement between Ritva and Maharshal, emerges, in this reading, as an
example of the very principle that they come to discuss: “these and these
are the words of the living God.” Neither pole—subjectivist interpreta-
tion or absolute truth—suffices on its own. For both of the commenta-
tors, interpretation does not compromise the revelation of Sinai, but it
is the means through which that revelation—Torah—becomes manifest
in the world. Absolute truth and interpretation do not, as they do in the
Greek context, represent mutually exclusive perspectives, but exist,
rather, in productive—and dialectical—relationship.16
Hirsch, as Reinman maintains, disregards the absolute altogether. In
his attempts at interpretive modesty, Hirsch claims that we “cannot
William Kolbrener 219
place ourselves in the mind of God” (233). The response may be typical
of those brought up in a Western (and thoroughly Platonized) tradition,
where acknowledging the impossibility of possessing the absolute truth
leads to despairing of the truth altogether. Hirsch may be right to be
skeptical of what a contemporary literary critic calls the “God-trick,” in
which a particular “subject-position” masquerades in the authority of a
“disembodied, all-seeing, hidden eye.”17 But Reinman never claims to
occupy that position, nor does he claim to “possess” the truth as Hirsch
claims throughout (though Reinman’s Platonic language of absolute
truth may have, unintentionally licensed such a charge). Reinman does,
in any event, fail to make the requisite distinction between participating
in the interpretive processes through which absolute truth is revealed,
and actually possessing that truth. Having appealed to a philosophical
vocabulary with specific connotations, Reinman does not go the dis-
tance—which would entail a more rigorous philosophical rendering of
the principle of truth which he tries to represent. To be sure, a philosophi-
cal background is not the prerequisite for kiruv, but once the challenge of
philosophy (and its terminology) is raised, it needs to be pursued to its
end. If one translates Jewish concepts into what the philosopher
Emmanuel Levinas calls the “language of the Greek,” then one must show
a willingness to employ a lexicon which accommodates the complexities
implicit in the original tongue.18
The very question of the absolute and its relation to Jewish concepts
has, however, been raised—most notably by R. Soloveitchik in Halakhic
Mind. By mentioning R. Soloveitchik, I am emphatically not suggesting
that his Halakhic Mind represents some kind of centrist antidote to
Reinman’s approach. I would argue rather that R. Soloveitchik’s approach
provides the unarticulated philosophical underpinnings for Reinman’s
more prosaically-rendered argument throughout his contributions to One
People, One World. Even a brief (and necessarily superficial) approach to
Halakhic Mind, demonstrates—in a philosophical register—the infelici-
ties of assimilating the pluralism of H . azal to a liberal conception of plu-
ralism.19 In relationship both to scientific and religious thought, R.
Soloveitchik demonstrates how pluralism is linked, in the former context
to what he calls objective reality, and in the latter to something resembling
Reinman’s conceptions of absolute truth. R. Soloveitchik asserts that
though what he calls “absolute reality” exists, it is only revealed, and “in
manifold ways” through a methodology informed by pluralism. Such a
pluralism does not deny the “absolute,” but, as R. Soloveitchik argues,
aspects of the absolute can only be revealed (not possessed) through a
220 The Torah u-Madda Journal
truth certainly fits under such a rubric), they should be invoked with
full awareness of their connotations. There are, of course, alternatives:
one such alternative would begin not with the proclamation of belief in
"absolute truth," but rather the non-philosophical assertion that certain
beliefs are held absolutely. For it is less problematic to assert that we
believe, absolutely, in Torah mi-Sinai, than to assert a belief in a philo-
sophical conception of absolute truth. Indeed, the whole concept of
"absolute truth" may be—even when properly contextualized—mislead-
ing. Ibn Ezra, in a philological note to Bereshit 24:49, asserts that Emet
has the same root as Emunah—meaning that truth and faith are inter-
twined. From this perspective, truth emerges not as a function of philo-
sophical speculation, but rather through a relationship created by faith.
This relationship (what Levinas understands as the "proximity" to the
divine) is antecedent to philosophical discourse, producing a concep-
tion of truth entirely different from the speculative efforts of the
philosopher. 27 Put in other words, in a context where faith and truth are
interdependent, "absolute truth" becomes irrelevant, as the languages of
philosophy yield to a knowledge based upon a relationship—that rela-
tionship forged between God and the Jewish people at Sinai.28
Notes
I am grateful to the following for their help in conceiving this piece: R. Matis
Greenblatt, R. Emanuel Feldman, and R. Gidon Levenson. The perspective
represented here, however, does not necessarily reflect their views.
1. Yosef Reinman, “Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover,” The Jewish Week,
January 24, 2003 (www.jewishweek.com/top/editletcontent. php3?artid
=2523). For a notable exception, see Eytan Korbe, “Jewish Worlds, Real and
Imagined,” February 2003 (www.jewishmediasources. com/article/561). A
note on names and titles: Despite the problematic associations of the term
“Orthodoxy,” I will follow the precedent of One People, Two Worlds, and use
the term. For ease of reading, I refer to the two authors of the volume as
“Reinman” and “Hirsch” throughout.
2. Reinman, “Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover.”
3. Reinman throughout the book stresses this disagreement, writing, “I admit
that we may never find an accommodation that will satisfy both sides. I
admit that after all our correspondences we may just agree to disagree.”
Hirsch, by contrast, in order to justify the equivalence of the different
“movements” in Judaism, insists on the commensurability of Orthodoxy
and Reform, emphasizing ostensible points of agreement. A line from
Hirsch’s concluding entry is typical: “You and I agree on many things—
William Kolbrener 223
more than you care to admit” (5, 309) All further citations from One People,
Two Worlds are cited parenthetically within the body of the text.
4. Reinman, “Don’t Judge A Book by Its Cover.”
5. Cited by Avi Shafran, “When the Medium is a (Misleading) Message”
(www.jewishmediasources.com/article/544).
6. R. Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters, Joseph Elias trans.
(Jerusalem, 1995), 265. For a strongly contrasting view of the Rambam of
the Guide, see R. Avraham Yitzh.ak Kook, Ma-amarei Ha-Reayah (Jerusalem,
1984):,105-117.
7. Shafran, “When the Medium is a (Misleading) Message.”
8. Other non-Orthodox critics of Reinman have noted the latter’s appeal to
“absolute truth,” and provided a similar diagnosis. David Wolpe in his
“Spiritual Agoraphobia Perpetuates a Shallow Judaism” Jewish Bulletin,
November 22, 2002, (www.jewishsf.com/bk021122/comm2.shtml) writes,
that the assertion of the possession of absolute truth is in fact symptomatic
of “a deep and unwarranted insecurity."
9. Terry Eagleton in his The Function of Criticism: From Spectator to Post-
Structuralism (London, 1984), shows how post-modern literary critics, writ-
ing under what he calls ”the minatory shadow of the holocaust" would reject
all belief systems as fascist (100-101). Hirsch distinguishes himself for associ-
ating Orthodoxy with totalitarian movements (though of course anti-semitic
attacks against Israel now almost habitually associate the Jewish State with
fascism and totalitarianism).
10. The term “fundamentalism,” writes R. Jonathan Sacks, “drawn from the
inner dynamic of Protestantism has only an obfuscating effect when trans-
ferred to Judaism.” See his “Fundamentalism Reconsidered,” The Jewish
Action Reader (New York, 1996), 258.
11. Reinman, in fact, notes Hirsch’s partiality to the term: “what’s this power
fixation?” (206).
12. Reinman attacks Hirsch for assigning “validity to conflicting points of view,”
asking, “how can we both be right if we disagree?” H. azal themselves are
guilty of trespassing the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction, though of
course, as Reinman himself argues, they would not tolerate the application
of their principles to the pluralism espoused by Hirsch (10). Here again,
Reinman’s rhetorical strategies set a limitation on the extent to which he can
explore the complex notion of Truth as it emerges within H.azal.
13. It may not be, however, only philosophers, or even philosophy students who
need to be disabused of such assumptions. As Maharal, Ner Miz. vah,
(Jerusalem, 2002) wrote, “the primary attribute of Greek culture was its
attribute of wisdom, and it was characterized, through its universality and its
omnipresence” (33). A Westerner, especially someone who has attended the
university, does not need to expend any energy to think Greek; it comes nat-
urally. On my own strong hesitations about advocating Torah u-madda as a
le-kha-teh.ilah ideal, see my “Torah u-madda: A Voice from the Academy,”
Jewish Action 64 (2004): 25-33.
14. H.iddushei Ha-Ritva al Ha-Shas, Eruvin, 13b.
15. Introduction to Yam Shel Shlomo, Bava Kamma.
16. For an extended account of the arguments of Ritva and Maharshal, in the
context of contemporary debates about literary hermeneutics, see my
224 The Torah u-Madda Journal
“Chiseled from All Sides: Dispute in the Rabbinic Tradition,” AJS Review
(forthcoming).
17. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism
and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 578-580.
18. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington, 1994), 173.
19. For a fuller treatment of Halakhic Mind, see my “Towards a Genuine Jewish
Philosophy: Halakhic Mind’s New Philosophy of Religion,” Tradition 30
(1996): 21-43.
20. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Mind (New York, 1986), 16. R. Soloveitchik
distinguishes, however, between kinds of pluralism. While “operational plu-
ralism, in its essence, is positivistic and annuls the idea of the absolute,” epis-
temological pluralism, associated with both the methodology of the quan-
tum physicist and the halakhic man “does not deny the absolute character of
Being” (16).
21. Ibid., 25.
22. Ibid., 75.
23. John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York, 1995), 175.
24. We should be careful to note that when R. Soloveitchik refers to the role of
subjectivity in scientific research, he certainly does not mean simple preju-
dices or desires (or Ammiel Hirsch’s favorite term, “power”): what he may
refer to are those experimental and cognitive models deployed by the scientist
in his search to describe reality. They are subjective not in that they represent
the prejudices of a single individual, but in that they are models—para-
digms—that serve the scientist in his research. For the claim that R.
Soloveitchik misunderstood the quantum revolution, and as a consequence
gave license to a relativism associated with “post-modern philosophers,” see
Avram Montag’s letter to the editor in Tradition 31 (1997): 90-91 (a response
to my “Towards A Genuine Jewish Philosophy”); for a further elaboration of
the perspective elaborated here, see my response to Montage, 92-94.
25. For a discussion of Bohr’s Theory of Complementarity, see Louis de Broglio,
The Revolution in Physics (New York, 1953), 18-20, 217-238; for Bohr and
what Roger Penrose calls “quantum magic,” see The Emperor’s New Mind
(New York, 1989), 225-301.
26. Interestingly, R. Soloveitchik himself traces the philosophical underpinnings
of Nazi thought to such subjectivist excesses. Without the “piecemeal con-
tact with reality,” presupposed in the world of the classical scientist, the
modern metaphysician in his “romantic escape” from reason was left to
wander in the “wilderness of intuitionism,” falling into the trap of “excessive
philosophical hermeneutics.” Where “reason,” R. Soloveitchik writes, “sur-
renders its supremacy to dark, equivocal emotions, no dam is able to stem
the rising tide of the affective stream” (Halakhic Mind, 52, 60, 53). Indeed,
the “pseudo-scientific” attitude of the “humanist” lead to both “scientific
laxity” and “moral corruption,” and eventually the “racial theories”
espoused by the Third Reich (46, 54, 53).
27. Levinas, In the Time of the Nations, 175. Levinas similarly rejects the agendas
implied by certain forms of philosophy, arguing that the “the relation to
God called faith does not primordially mean adhesion to certain statements
that constitute a knowledge for which there is no demonstration” (170).
28. Reinman does in fact elaborate such an argument in his paraphrase of the
arguments of the Kuzari; see 124-131.