Steven Gotlib
Review of Raphael Zarum, Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt (New Milford, Maggid Books; 2023)
Just before starting rabbinical school, I asked a teacher for advice. He said to “always believe in your questions and have the courage to walk towards the answers.” This is effectively the approach that Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum takes in his recent book, Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt. Zarum is Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies (formerly Jews’ College), where he holds the Rabbi Sacks Chair of Modern Jewish Thought. He also has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from King’s College London and two rabbinic ordinations – one from Rabbi Sacks and one from the S&P Montefiore Kollel. If his credentials weren’t enough, the book also has a powerful, if perhaps unusual, endorsement from R. Sacks’ daughter, Gila Sacks:
The first time I heard Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum teach I was seventeen… Over four short classes, he opened up the windows of Torah and floored the classroom with light. He walked us through the structure of the Torah, grounding us in its facts, its history, maps, and characters. And then he taught us to ask questions of any text, to have confidence in our ability to find answers to those questions, and to give a devar Torah.
… At the time, I thought that the magic of what Rabbi Zarum was doing in that classroom was giving legitimacy to our questions. But that is not unique – indeed, to be told that our questions are valid has rightly become a more mainstream expectation for today’s students of Torah. Instead, over time, as I saw him teach more, I realized he was doing something else – he was teaching us to take seriously the pursuit of answers. Questions might take confidence, but answers take work. We needed to take seriously the work involved in finding answers to our questions, because while all questions may be valid, all answers are not. In his teaching, Rabbi Zarum modeled the pursuit of answers. (xi-xii)[1]
Zarum himself states a similar mission in his introduction, after first acknowledging not only the legitimacy of asking questions, but also where they come from. The questions he hears, Zarum admits, “are rarely intended to provoke or belittle Judaism.” Rather, “they come from an honest desire to better appreciate our religious tradition. At times, when questions are expressed forcefully, they may come from feelings of frustration or even anger, but they tend to arise from a genuine desire to live a fulfilling Jewish life” (xix-xx).
Zarum also acknowledges that many feel (rightly!) that their most pressing religious questions have been left unanswered, which ultimately leads them away from living a Jewish life. In another refreshing moment, Zarum speaks strongly against those who fail to provide meaningful answers to legitimate questions:
A weak reply to a real question, or ignoring it completely, confirms the feeling in the questioner that Judaism is ill-equipped to respond to contemporary issues. Besides being insensitive, teachers who give flippant or dismissive answers fail to understand the religious angst of the sincere individual who stands before them. Receiving a pat answer can cause further problems. It shuts down the asker rather than opening them up to further exploration. Answering a question with a quick and clever retort comes across well at the time, but often crumbles when scrutinized. Rabbi Yehoshua Engelman, a teacher of mine and a good friend, is fond of saying, “Never ruin a first-rate question with a second-rate answer.” (xx)
If this all reads like Zarum is writing from personal experience, it’s because his journey reflects one that many of his self-selecting readers have also embarked on. He explains that he himself had been asking questions for a long time and that he, too, was frustrated “with many of the stock responses and formulations” he received in return. In response, he “sought out ideas, books, and people that might help” and it was only “years of learning with some wonderful rabbis, pursuing academic studies, exploring [his] Yemenite-Ashkenazi heritage, reading widely, teaching reflectively, and having endless late-night conversations” that gave him a working approach. This experience taught him that “serious questions should be treasured.” After all, such questions “reveal a genuine interest; they show that the asker is trying to make sense of what they are learning and attempting to see how it fits into their view of the world. Inquiry is the springboard to further knowledge and new perspectives” (xxi).
In the following lengthy quote, Zarum outlines the approach that he and his book follow in responding to the types of questions that troubled him throughout his religious quest. He is quite open about what he is, and is not, trying to provide his readers:
Rabbi Yehuda Henkin (1945-2020) once asked his grandfather, the prominent halakhist Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, whether it was permissible to interpret non-legal parts of the Torah in ways different from those of the rabbinic sages. “Yes,” he answered, “provided the intention is to strengthen yirat Shamayim (reverence for God).” This is my intention here: to suggest new ways of seeing and understanding the Torah that make sense to the modern mind and facilitate a deeper connection with our traditions and our creator.
You may be thinking: Is all this just apologetics then? In its everyday usage, being an apologist has a negative connotation, referring to the process of conjuring up a host of justifications that avoid or excuse the issue at hand and fail to address deeper concerns. However, the technical definition of apologetics is the defense of some value, cause, or religious belief through systematic argumentation and discourse. This is exactly what I want to do here. The book responds to modern challenges to the Torah by making a case based on well-researched and reasonable arguments. Over the next twelve chapters, I try to be a passionate and even-handed advocate for Judaism who takes questions very seriously. (xxii-xxiii)
In responding to these challenges, Zarum does not expect “to provide definitive proofs.” Indeed, he readily admits that “there are no incontrovertible answers to these kinds of questions.” Rather, his mission is to “present rational responses that make belief possible and that ground commitment on meaningful foundations.” Researching and responding to the questions he addresses led him “again and again to rethink simplified answers,” and he does not hide the fact that he will “present innovative applications and interpretations of traditional texts that show their relevance for today” (xxiii-xxiv).
Zarum’s approach here seems similar not only to R. Henkin, but also to Rabbi Shalom Carmy’s understanding of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Carmy utilizes a letter of Rav Kook’s to identify three ideas that are of profound importance:
- All things being equal, one is morally obligated to believe a proposition, if belief in that proposition is a necessary component of his or her national identity.
- The aforementioned obligation is overridden when an essential national belief is inimical to the welfare of humanity.
- If an essential national belief is refuted, the obligation to believe is overridden as well.[2]
In other words, the default position of a Jew ought to be to believe what our tradition provides us unless those beliefs are in conflict with human flourishing or are refuted by modern science, philosophy, etc. With these ideas in mind, one must ask: What happens when someone can no longer accept a belief? Based on Rav Kook’s writings, R. Carmy writes as follows:
[A]n individual who has concluded that some series of propositions P1… Pn is a true and legitimate expression of the Torah’s teaching is right to believe it, even if the community disagrees with that evaluation. However…the individual is not justified in expressing his/her belief publicly when that utterance is liable to misunderstanding and condemnation.[3]
One may infer from this that someone can legitimately come to an understanding of Torah that differs dramatically from the Orthodox community as a whole. R. Kook, however, implores such people to keep those understandings to themselves if spreading them will lead to the community misunderstanding and turning on the person who otherwise wants to remain a member. As we examine Zarum’s answers to several questions, we ought to keep in mind R. Kook’s advice.
Zarum’s approach is then applied to twelve specific questions that are split into three broad groups; Origins, Ethics, and Beliefs. Origins includes questions of science and history. Like Sacks before him, Zarum assumes that science and religion work in great partnership with each other. He writes that “religion has been humankind’s way of seeking the purpose and meaning of life,” while “scientific methods were developed to analyze observable phenomena systematically in order to deduce how they are fundamentally related.” Zarum is thus adamant that “the discoveries of science coupled with the interpretive skills developed by religious thought guide us as we constantly reevaluate ourselves and the universe in which we live,” and that “only when they become detached is there a danger of religious fundamentalism on the one hand and fanatical atheism on the other” (24).
Applied to the particular question of evolution, Zarum writes that humanity “is the culmination of Creation that began with very simple creatures,” and that while “the study of evolution enables us to comprehend how the almost infinite variety of species developed, it is religious belief that reminds us how this process was initiated, and religious practice that teaches us to respect and appreciate the wonder of life” (51).
This is all well and good for relatively settled questions like the age of the earth and evolution, but Modern Orthodox readers may find Zarum’s responses to historical questions to be quite out of the box. For example, he writes that the Flood story “may well have been a regional phenomenon” and that the Torah presented it as global in order to give “dramatic weight which has profound significance today.”[4] Indeed, Zarum laments that “we are more aware than ever of the threat to our planet that unbridled human productivity and consumption is causing. With the danger of rising sea levels, the Flood story still holds water and continues to bear an urgent message for humanity” (73-74).
Even more remarkably, Zarum applies similar logic to the Exodus from Egypt. He writes that we “should not be so entrenched in the pursuit of historical verification that we lose the capacity to appreciate the nature of the Torah’s unique account,” and that it’s “a mistake to imprint modern sensibilities onto an ancient text.” Indeed, he writes that the narrative “does not aim to give us a historical account of the Exodus; it has a very different set of purposes,” including “educating its readers to remember this momentous experience by constructing a dramatic and miraculous narrative; employing various literary forms to convey symbolic and moral meaning; and appropriating phrases and images common to ancient Egypt in order to affirm the preeminence of God” (98). Zarum directly compares the Torah’s presentation with dramatic historical films like Schindler’s List and Dunkirk. Watching such adaptations does not mean the core events didn’t happen, but we also do not expect everything to have taken place exactly as presented. In his words,
… The Exodus narrative…portrays the bitter magnitude of the slavery, making it painful to read; it heaps on the drama through the clash of Pharaoh and Moses, the escalating ten plagues, and the sea-splitting finale; and it personalizes the story for the committed reader by teaching us how we should remember it in our own lives… The Torah employs educational imperative, literary forms, Egyptological resonance, and so much more, to tell its amazing story. (99)
These sorts of understandings are not new in the realm of biblical scholarship, but Zarum goes farther than perhaps any Orthodox thinker in articulating them to his audience. While it may very well help questioners make sense of the Torah’s seemingly outlandish presentations, it may also leave one asking just how much dramatic license is taken. Might one be able to legitimately argue, based on Zarum’s approach, that Richard Elliot Friedman’s thesis about the Exodus only involving the Levites is correct?[5]
Zarum’s responses to ethical questions are more predictable, albeit still unusual to hear so directly from a leading Orthodox rabbi. His general approach is to view the Torah as a stepping stone meant to push humanity towards moral enlightenment rather than being a perfect document by contemporary standards from the get-go. Rather than condemning slavery or animal consumption outright, for example, the Torah instead attempts to inspire its adherents to slowly but surely move beyond such practices. Such approaches are far from original, but interesting to see stated so directly nonetheless.
Readers sympathetic to this perspective, however, may still take issue with Zarum’s treatment of collective punishment in the Torah. He notes that our current readings of such cases is anachronistic: today it is acknowledged that while “each nation has its own influential cultural traditions, we do not assert that every single person of that nation has a built-in national consciousness that completely determines their attitudes and morality.” However, he clarifies that this recognition of “ourselves as autonomous individuals who are capable of thinking and behaving independently is a recent phenomenon.” Up to only a few centuries ago, “the populations of most kingdoms were under the controlling authority of their rulers,” and “they recognized the power of a small ruling family or class as a fact of life.” The Torah therefore condones collective punishment precisely because such societies “accepted their governors as superior and did not think to question their imperial or religious right to rule” (163-164).[6]
This might explain how collective punishment was justified in a biblical context, but it does little to assuage modern doubts about the Torah literally blessing such actions. This is especially so as Zarum himself notes in a footnote that there is much research demonstrating that “various cultural groupings think in specific ways,” (163, n31) and that “viewing a group of people as having a uniform identity that can justify collective punishment has not disappeared” (164). While acknowledging that such understandings are gradually being challenged, we still live in a world in which such judgements are common. Even recently, a mainstream rabbi advocated for Arabs being removed from the West Bank on the assumption that they could be viewed collectively with few exceptions.
Zarum attempts to mitigate this with the caveat that collective punishment ought to only be utilized with explicit divine guidance. After all, “even if it can be rationalized,” inflicting such punishment “still sullies those involved in doing it” (173).[7] Indeed, “meting out collective punishment is so psychologically harmful that it would require God’s help to return those involved back to health” and, even then, “this divine assistance is limited to an occasion when the punishment was divinely endorsed in the first place. It cannot be relied upon in any other circumstances” (177).
Whether Zarum’s stress that “the general administration of collective punishment should be strenuously avoided” (177) is enough to discourage those who currently believe in administering collective punishment in the spirit of Torah verses, is a question that readers ought to think about as support for Kahanist and similar viewpoints continue to spread throughout religious Zionist communities.
With that, let us turn our attention to Zarum’s approach to “belief.” He first rejects the common idea that one ought to believe in God based on miracles reported in the Torah, with a perhaps odd combination of Maimonides’ and David Hume’s theologies. In Zarum’s words, “though Biblical miracles are impressive, they serve a particular purpose in the narrative and are not theologically significant,” in addition to the fact that “stories of miracles to this day are susceptible to fallibility and fakery, so they should not be relied on for religious belief” (212). He also acknowledges that “though the various proofs for God [cosmological, teleological, ontological, etc.] are disputable, so are their refutations” (214), and that, even if one escapes a theological stalemate, “acceptance of a prime cause, necessary existence, or intelligent designer does not inevitably lead to a God who is intimately involved with humanity. Such proofs might make you a deist, but not a theist” (215).
How, then, does Zarum recommend the jump from deism to theism? By redefining what it means to believe in God in the first place! “Just as a forge rids a metal of its contaminants by gradually refining it,” Zarum writes, “so the search for God involves constant refinement by moving beyond scientific or logic-based conceptions of God” (220). Rather than defining belief as propositional, Zarum instead defines it as an invitation to “seek God ourselves, in our own ways. The process is a lifelong quest, open to all.” Thus, believing in God “is not a one-time binary decision – either you believe in God or you do not – rather, it is a journey of realization and discovery…the work of a lifetime which requires constant effort. It is measured by the arc of your lived experience, not by occasional affirmations” (219).
Indeed, since “God’s existence cannot be proven with miracles, physics, or metaphysics because God is indescribable and inscrutable” (232), this lifelong quest is the only way to really connect. This does not mean that Zarum offers no theology, though. He quotes the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli as writing that
The equations of quantum mechanics and their consequences are used daily in widely varying fields: by physicists, engineers, chemists, and biologists… Yet they remain mysterious. For they do not describe what happens to a physical system, but only how a physical system affects another physical system. What does this mean? That the essential reality of a system is indescribable? Does it mean that we only lack a piece of the puzzle? Or does it mean, as it seems to me, that we must accept the idea that reality is only interaction?[8]
Rovelli notes elsewhere that the “relationalism” he proposes “can be seen as a very mild form of panpsychism,” the idea that some form of consciousness pervades all of reality. Zarum takes this to mean that “we see that on every level of existence, from physical matter to plant life to animal bodies and the human mind, everything is continuously interacting, and these interactions are so complex that notions of separateness and self are secondary to the primal reality of relationship” (226). From there, it is our job to contribute to this relationship by realizing that belief in God means participating in the quest for Him.[9] Zarum even offers many practical tips towards that end:
Our relationship to God can be intensified by understanding the interrelated nature of all reality, even of our own self-perception. In finding ourselves, we find God. Regularly mentioning God in our responses increases our connection. There are ups and downs in this relationship… This is only natural. But in being responsive to God we are inspired to live more meaningfully and ethically. That is, if we let God into our lives. (232)
Put differently, “while seeking God is to search for the meaning of life, finding God reframes this to living a life of meaning” (223). This reframing of belief as a quest is not unique to Zarum. Conservative Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove uses almost identical language in writing that “faith can best be described as an ongoing quest to know an ever-elusive God.”[10] Cosgrove continues, writing that
In a quest-driven faith, Jewish prayer, inquiry, and observance become a series of opportunities for discovery: of the self, others, and God. Every act of prayer signals not merely the affirmation of hoary catechisms but an effort toward constructing a relationship with the historic God of the Jewish people and all of humanity. So too, by searching the texts of our tradition, I seek to retrieve Judaism’s spiritual treasures to give voice to my spiritual questions. Torah is not something to be accepted or rejected, rather it is a palimpsest, to be searched and probed in order to discover again and again traces of God’s voice. Finally, by performing mitzvot, I reach out toward my God in heaven and the divine spark embedded in all humanity. In a quest-driven faith, mitzvot stop becoming a list of do’s and don’ts, and start becoming a series of opportunities to bind myself to God’s will.[11]
Cosgrove concludes his piece by writing that “faith is not about beginnings or endings, but about process, forward momentum, and opportunities for discovery.” The choice to embark on such a quest is meaningful “not in the answers it provides, but in the spiritual posture it recommends.” For Cosgrove, “such a quest directed both toward heaven and the Jewish tradition holds the promise of enabling us to stand in relation to our God, to whom we owe our existence.”[12]
Importantly, Cosgrove readily admits (in a footnote) that such a framing is not unique to him, and that he has a particular “intellectual and spiritual debt to Louis Jacobs (1920-2006) and Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)”:
While the language and mood of a quest as an authentic mode of Jewish theology did not originate with Jacobs or Heschel, it is through them that it gained its most articulate contemporary spokesmen. Theology must be personal but it need not be original, and my debt to Jacobs and Heschel is ongoing. In fact, if anything contained herein is worthy of expansion or in need [of] clarification or correction, then I recommend any of their books toward this goal.[13]
Though Cosgrove identifies his indebtedness to both Heschel and Jacobs, his doctoral dissertation makes it clear that the latter exerted a primary influence on his theological framing. Cosgrove notes that the British thinker “wrote with a refreshing awareness that the individual’s final decision was not so final at all since theological positioning is forever tentative, a personal quest open to being amended throughout a lifetime.” He also wrote that
Jacobs’s quest was never contingent on arriving at an absolute truth. From the beginning through the end of his life, Jacobs sought to encourage an atmosphere that validated both the intellectual and spiritual integrity of a religious search, all the while goading other spiritual pilgrims towards seeking a truth that while present, was perhaps necessarily unattainable. Not so much the answers themselves, but the mood wrought by such a quest filled with religious devotion and intellectual integrity stands as Jacobs’ enduring legacy.
This clear parallel with the framing of Questioning Belief is particularly noteworthy, since Zarum is Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, at which (when it was still Jews’ College) Jacobs served as Moral Tutor and would have become Principal had his invitation not been vetoed by the Chief Rabbi of the time due to his unorthodox beliefs.[14] Jacobs even titled his autobiography Helping with Inquiries for reasons that he wrote were “self-explanatory. All the fuss was really about whether traditional Judaism could be seen as a quest rather than as a corpus of dogmas.”[15]
Of course, none of this is meant to imply that Zarum’s Orthodoxy is suspect in any way. The invocation of Jacobs’ language is intriguing given the parallel professional positions of the two British theologians, but Zarum emphasizes his unwavering commitment to Orthodox Judaism throughout. The use of Jacobs-esque language serves as a fascinating case of Orthodoxy appropriating language and ideas that were previously outside its domain.[16]
The obvious question from here is what happens when one is unable to complete their quest, or when their quest leads somewhere other than theism? It is in responding to that question that Zarum doubles down on his redefinition of belief, but first reframes the question itself:
If belief in God is difficult, does that have to detract from being excited and inspired by Judaism? Is Jewish life so founded upon faith that without it everything comes tumbling down? Does lack of belief make you a lesser Jew? Is being an unbeliever unforgivable, or are there other paths that can bind us to tradition in upbeat and compelling ways? (263)
One potential answer is to suggest Orthopraxy over Orthodoxy. Zarum at first seems sympathetic to this approach, though he ultimately rejects it:
To construct a committed Jewish life that ignores God is problematic. It is, however, quite common. Rather than being orthodox, accepting the principles of Jewish belief, many Jews are what can be termed orthoprax, meaning that they follow the practices of Judaism rather than accepting the theology. They deeply appreciate the ethical value of Jewish life, while not being enthusiastic about belief. The social and soulful aspects of prayer are what bring them to synagogue. The joy of family get-togethers is what motivates them to observe Shabbat and festivals.
These are, of course, very positive and powerful aspects of Jewish practice. Bringing up children in such an environment teaches them many important life lessons, as well as grounding them in the values of a caring family and supportive community. But Judaism has much to say about belief and, in the long run, this is sorely needed to live a meaningful Jewish life. (263-264)
The solution, for Zarum, is to offer an understanding of belief based on the word emuna’s 39 appearances in the Torah. The conclusion reached is rather unintuitive:
In summation, emuna focuses on affiliation rather than affirmation. Belonging more than believing. It binds the Jewish people to each other rather than to a catechism. Emuna is a collection of ideas that includes faithfulness, trust, steadfastness, citizenship, loyalty, integrity, and a determination that goes back to antiquity. The rabbis of old never thought to exclude Jews who questioned their beliefs, and in the modern period, many have bent over backwards to find ways to include even those who feel little connection to Jewish principles and practices. We can never abandon each other because we were taught that El Emuna, our faithful God, would never abandon us… Born in antiquity, emuna describes the lived experience of our people: not what they professed but how they carried themselves, and with whom they decided to build a life and pass on their ancient rituals and values. The scope of this shared project is utterly astounding. It carries on, and it carries us, to this day. (283)
Defining belief in this way is again similar to the theology offered by Jacobs, recently summarized by Miri Freud-Kandel as “a complimentary synthesis of interpretive and factual beliefs, alongside various arguments, indicators, and practices.”[17] This effectively eliminates the distinction between orthopraxy and orthodoxy, provided that the relevant praxes are engaged with in a thoughtful manner and not by rote. Such an idea was also recently expressed by (the also-British) Rabbi Dr. Sam Lebens. In his Guide for the Jewish Undecided,[18] religiosity is defined with three criteria:
Criterion 1: A religious life is a life lived as part of a community that defines its identity around a system of beliefs and/or practices.[19]
Criterion 2: To live a religious life requires faith that the fundamentals of the community’s system of beliefs, or that the fundamental propositions that make sense of the community’s practices are true (or, at least, it requires faith that their conjunction is true).[20]
Criterion 3: To live a religious life requires imaginative engagement…with the canonical narratives, metaphors, prescribed games of make-believe and/or perspectives of the community’s system of beliefs and/or practices.[21]
Fascinatingly, Lebens listed the same three criteria in a general book on the philosophy of religion with a short, yet highly important, addition to the second criterion:
- A religious life is a life that is meant to be lived as part of a community that defines itself around a system of ideas and/or practices.
- To live a religious life requires propositional faith directed towards the fundamental principles of the system of ideas referred to in criterion 1 (or, at least to their conjunction) and/or towards some set of propositions such that faith in them can warrant commitment to the practices referred to in criterion 1
- To live a religious life requires imaginative engagement…with the canonical narratives, metaphors, prescribed games of make-belief persons, and/or perspectives of that system of ideas and/or practices.[22]
The second version of criterion 2 implies that religiosity is legitimate not only if it is based on accepting the religion’s propositions as presented internally, but also if it is based on different internal justifications to align with that religion. One may understand this as allowing for orthopraxy as long as the person engaging in it legitimately wants to sign-on to the community.
A deeply profound articulation of this can be found in the words of Rabbi Shai Held, quoted here in full:
Not long ago, an interviewer who considers himself an atheist asked me what I thought about people finding my interpretations of the Jewish tradition compelling but not subscribing to my theological assumptions or commitments. I responded by saying that although such reinterpretations would not likely ever be my own, I respect the fact that we live in a world that is fundamentally ambiguous, and that we can have no absolute certainty about how the world ultimately is. In my view, there are good reasons for belief and good reasons for unbelief. If readers who do not believe, or who believe differently, can find nourishment or inspiration in what I’ve written, if they can feel challenged or prodded by the interpretations that I offer, I will feel only gratitude.
Let me take this one step further. I do not think of believers and nonbelievers as “us” and “them.” Belief and nonbelief are both part of us, and to be totally honest, they are both part of me. When I talk about a God who loves and cares about the dignity of every human being, I am aware that there are readers who will wonder, How on earth can anyone still believe that? I am aware not least because I too hear those voices, both in my heart and in my head. In this day and age, I think, a theologian has to be able to imagine secularity from the inside. In ways I sometimes wish that I didn’t, I imagine that secularity every day.
How can I write theology when I am beset with doubt? I often think of a wonderful story told about the Hasidic master Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk (1787-1859). A student approaches the rebbe and says, “Rebbe, I am not sure there is a God,” to which the rebbe responds, “What do you care?” Perplexed, the student replies, “What do you mean, what do I care? If there is no God, then the Torah doesn’t matter.” The Kotzker replies, again: “What do you care?” Frustrated, indignant, the student begins to yell: “If there is no God and the Torah doesn’t matter, then I have no idea what the purpose of my life is! Of course I care!” To which the Kotzker responds, “You care that much? You are a kosher Jew.” I wrestle with and write about theology because I care about it to the depths of my being, because questions about who and what God is, and about what it means to be a Jew and a human being in the twenty-first century matter to me like almost nothing else does. I care – I want God to be. And for me faith is at least as much about possibility as it is about certainty.[23]
Zarum’s redefinition of belief as signing on to the Jewish mission through “faithfulness, trust, steadfastness, citizenship, loyalty, integrity, and a determination that goes back to antiquity” rather than accepting or rejecting particular propositions, then, finds itself in good company, and his overall project will no-doubt find itself highly impactful on those who need it. The explicit allowance for continued questioning and doubt as part of the religious experience does much to separate this book from other recent projects in Orthodox apologetics. Zarum’s approach may open him to more criticism from the mainstream than others, but it also allows his work to be taken more seriously amongst those who need it. Whether this trade-off is worthwhile is a question best directed towards him.
The Psychologist Ray Hyman wrote that statisticians often mention two types of errors that can occur in experimentation. A Type I Error “is that involved in saying that an effect is really so when, in fact, only chance was operating,” while Type II Errors “were those involved in not finding something that is really there.”[24] He goes on to propose the existence of Type III Errors, which are “involved in wrongly believing you understand the basis for the opposition to your position,” and Type IV Errors, which involve “oversimplifying what is an enormously complex situation.”[25] Rabbi Zarum’s book, as refreshingly out-of-the-box as it is, ensures that wherever his readers’ quests take them, they will certainly be immune from such errors in their thinking, and that is a tremendous gift.
[1] All in-text citations are from the book under review.
[2] Shalom Carmy, “Dialectic, Doubters, and a Self-Erasing Letter,” in Lawrence J. Kaplan and David Shatz (eds.) Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Jewish Spirituality (New York: NYU Press, 1995), 212.
[3] Ibid., 226.
[4] While I am not aware of other Orthodox rabbis who have been willing to go this far, it was pointed out to me by Rabbi David Fried that the Babylonian Talmud (Zevahim 113a) presents an opinion that the Land of Israel was not affected by the flood and that this could also be read as a concession that the flood was not a truly global event. One who is particularly fundamentalist, though, could respond by saying that perhaps it was only the land of Israel that was unaffected.
[5] Friedman’s position is summarized in this interview with him.
[6] It was brought to my attention by Rabbi David Fried that the Babylonian Talmud (Makkot 24a) may already allude to this sort of shift from thinking about clans as primary moral agents to individuals. The topic is also commonly discussed within the field of anthropology. Bible scholars such as James Kugel and Aaron Koller also reference it in their work.
[7] This point about the psychological harm done to perpetrators of collective punishment is also made by Christian apologist William Lane Craig in attempting to explain how the “Old Testament” could command the killing of Canaanites:
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli [sic] soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli [sic] soldiers is disturbingIt is apparently for this reason that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins refuses to ever debate Craig. In his words, “Would you shake hands with a man who could write stuff like that? Would you share a platform with him? I wouldn’t, and I won’t.”
(Note that the original article by Craig appears to no longer be on his website. He has, however, recently reasserted it at length in interviews like this one.)
[8] Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2015), 18. Cited in Zarum, 226.
[9] It should be noted that any theology stemming from Rovelli’s approach would have to be panentheistic rather than traditionally monotheist. As I explore elsewhere, such theologies have much precedent within Judaism. The shift from how most intuit theology to this sort of approach is unexplored in Questioning Belief.
[10] Elliot J. Cosgrove, “A Quest-Driven Faith,” in Elliot J. Cosgrove (ed.), Jewish Theology in Our Time: A New Generation Explores the Foundations and Future of Jewish Belief (Woodstock: Jewish Lights, 2010), 123.
[11] Ibid., 124.
[12] Ibid., 128.
[13] Ibid., 196.
[14] I examine the “Jacobs Affair” here.
[15] Louis Jacobs, Helping with Inquiries (London: Valentine Mitchell, 1989), xii.
[16] Another contemporary example of this is the recent trend of Orthodox thinkers reading and quoting the works of Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the republication of his Torah Min HaShamayim by a prominent Orthodox publisher.
[17] Miri Freud-Kandel, Louis Jacobs and the Quest for a Contemporary Jewish Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), 122.
[19] Ibid., 240.
[20] 258-259.
[21] Ibid., 250.
[22] Samuel Lebens, Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2023), 22-23. Emphasis added.
[23] Shai Held, Judaism is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024), 15-16.
[24] Ray Hyman, The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1989), 422.
[25] Ibid., 423.
Site Operations and Technology by The Berman Consulting Group.